From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 2 - Jesse James

by P. Julian

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This revised edition produced July 2018

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From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 2 - Full Text Section 4

Chapter 13 - Argonauts (The Slaughter of the Innocents)

NOW come the grave preparations, the urgent meeting of minds. The Friend reaching out to His other familiars who come to the Old Man with help, with offers of fighting men -

These preparations made in secret and so the numbers must be small, the technology absent. Fighting fleets with scant freeboard, their gunwales sunk down to the sea -

The Fish God sees the preparations and so He calms the sea. He sends machine noise against mariners so they can use no diesel, just as they are without sails -

So they go down to the sea in boats, roughly provisioned with oars -

The Old Man addresses them as they hang upon his words, the Argonauts going seaward and being blessed by the Old Man, saluting them with praiseful words, saying -

What, my shining sons of men? What hearts and minds, what arms sinewed in steel? What fortune that it should fall to me, to have this honour to command you -

The Old Man speaks further to the men, saying: the Fish God said He would make His disciples into fishers of men, and His minions have sharpened their hooks and taken us one by one -

The earth heating up as the seas begin to rise, the polar regions melting so the earth shall again become a sea. The Scaled God who longs to flood the world, to master the insolent race of Men -

And if a soul is to know itself, he said, it must look into its own soul. Just as you were strangers in Babylon, so you know the soul of the stranger -

The Old Man falls silent, and with his blessing the men set out under the cover of darkness, under the stars of the night sky, the dark sea beneath them also teeming with stars -

The Argonauts rejoice to be joined by other companions, the sea-wolves joining and renewing the blood compact between whalers and the killers of whales. The ties that bind their ever-reciprocating souls –

In honour of this covenant the men have no percussive weapons. They bear only the shafts of ancient harpoons, sharpening the rusted steel and dressing it with wolfsbane -

To avert their hearts from Chixulub their clothing is fleeced with gold. To shield their minds they make helmets out of the glowing metal, coins and rings hammered into sheets that they splay across their foreheads -

And in such finery they descend like a horde of flaming angels, coming down out of the high places to contend with the Beast that was cast down -

They were brave, the companions, they bore up bravely against the sun and the rain and frost, enduring sleet and sea-ice and the maddening heat of the tropics -

Their eyes reddened with the salt water, their oars streaming with the endless brine. Their hands bound up with cloth that is immediately wet by the sea, drying to salt sheets that scrape their bloodied skin -

The Beast has no imagination equal to the courage of men so the innocents are not concealed. They are hidden in in plain sight as they have always been, rolling towards the land to better achieve His purpose -

The companions could not draw out Leviathan with a hook, or draw his tongue with any cord that could be sent down. Instead they raised themselves up in the prow and they drove their harpoons in, nailing the Dragon down to earth with each lance -

They learned to implore the great fish to come and be caught, to be of great courage and to fear nothing. They cried out that their death would be to serve, that all memory and honour would be given to those who would give of themselves -

The men promising that their bones would not be burnt, so that the soul of the slain might in latter days reclaim those bones. And lest their frames be broken no dog would be allowed gnaw on their bones -

There was made each time one man to be husband to the slain, so that the bereaved man might cry out to all such creatures, to warn them of the fate that was upon them if they did not amend their ways -

And some of these bereaved were so overcome with the slaughter that they went to sacrifice themselves as soon as the whale was killed, with such conviction that they would have been lost had they not been restrained -

And without pleasure they broke the head of Leviathan into pieces. They pierced his side and they drained out his waters, they gave of him as meat to the wolves that roam the sea -

In the slaughter their arms became leaden, their hands torn from the wood of their oars and their weapons. Their voices broken from their cries to each other, crying Hold! And Hold Fast!

And with these cries their hearts held, their hearts remained true to one another and to the task they had been set, as the waters churned and their spirits trembled to fight the ancient foe -

There was a terrible cost amongst the companions, in the flimsy boats they rode, with their rough and tentative weaponry and no proper footing amongst their prey -

They were dashed against sands and shallow reefs, their napes smashed by the mighty tails, the bulk of Leviathan crushing craft and men in a ferocious threshing upon the sea -

With rudders torn and keels ripped away, oars splintered and thrust back through chests, men pierced by the jagged splints that would bear their souls away -

So that those who remained living were caused to envy the dead, their eyes raw with sorrow, hoping death would come for them also, having begged for the chance at such a death -

They should be remembered, in the dawn and at the going down of the sun, these unknown mariners who gave of themselves for the sake of we who remain -

They should be remembered, under night skies filled with stars, the massed Pleiades and Orion turning soundlessly above the living as they turned above the dead, shining above the night sea that is also full of stars -

No one remembers them. Justice.

Chapter 14 - In Aquitaine

IN the place where he languished Jesse did not see these confrontations but his heart was heavy with them, weighed down especially by the dangers they posed to Lasenex.

Jesse had said a bright farewell to the old man, shaking his hand as warmly as he could, saying things he did not believe in order to shore up his courage. He knew that Lasenex was bound to this fight by the tenons securing his destiny, and Jesse had no wish to unsettle him or cause him more fear than was necessary.

Lasenex was terse in his own reply, casting his eyes downwards. Having neglected no aspect of his preparations, knowing how scant were his chances.

The two men spoke but they did not embrace. They shook hands and parted with grave words, like strangers to be parted from one other, like men who no longer share a common destiny although their pasts might be deeply entwined. One going out to the battle that he had been born to, the other left behind without hope of seeing his friend again.

***

With Lasenex gone Jesse found himself stretched out once more against the blankness of open time. The work to be done in the hospital was finished, with the redeemed now gone to fight under Lasenex, the Unforgiven still shackled in their place and with them poor Jesse James.

Jesse shifted and chafed against time. He fretted about things unfolding in the world outside of his knowledge, he feared for Lasenex and prayed for his protection. He was at times moved to contact Ruby, if she would speak to him again, but he knew that he was constrained from doing so while the battle lay unfought, that he was bound to focus upon the fortunes of that battle even from so far away.

Jesse hoped and prayed and as days wore into weeks he only intensified his prayers. He began to pray as he had when he was a boy, kneeling down on the hard concrete floor, begging for intercession from the bottom of his heart. He cried out for the welfare of the Argonauts and the old man who led them, pleading for those men he had liberated and the promises he had made. And although Jesse could not say to whom he made these supplications, the fruits of prayer came to him nonetheless.

One night as he knelt Jesse felt himself quietened. He listened intently in the darkness with a sense that a voice would speak to him, if he would make sufficient space within him. Jesse fell silent and in the quiet spaces of his heart he heard a question put to him, asking whether he would know more about the gifts he had been given, how they might be joined with the purpose of his prayers. Jesse assented to this immediately, and in so doing he was opened to the secret sight that lay within him, the same sight Lasenex had commandeered that night on the freezing ward.

As Jesse looked with his new sight he saw things that confounded him, dismayed him. He saw that it was his own redemption that had loosed the monster from its prison, the earth shaking at the sound of his fall. And even harder truths: Lasenex and his men gone out as decoy in this confrontation, theirs being a subsidiary role in the battle that was to be waged. And Jesse saw who was in fact destined to engage the beast directly, who must rise to battle if the Fish God were to be defeated.

A voice within Jesse called his attention away from these things, and he heard himself asked a stern question in that voice which cries out to all. Who will confront the Great Serpent? Who has such courage within him? Jesse immediately responded that he was willing to fight, although he had no weapons or any knowledge of how he might prevail. But such courage is means in itself, and Jesse knew that he would find his weapons prepared and sharpened for him when he strode on to the field of battle.

As Jesse bent to this burden he was released into the knowledge of many further things. He saw that his skills to fight had been awoken by Lasenex as he conducted his researches in the freezing ward, breaking Jesse’s gifts from their restraints and training them upon their target. Jesse saw that his weaponry was one with the Word that resounded within him, the Word that is adaptable to every purpose including the waging of war. The Word that Was before any God could be, because only out of words can any God be made.

Jesse was gladdened by these things but he felt mostly glad to be in motion, having languished for so long, feeling the relief that flows into men after their launch into resolute action, despite the dreadful consequences that such action might bring.

Jesse closed his eyes and felt his way downwards, following the light of the leading Word to the source where it opened out within him. He began to hum and rattle and moan and still he followed that light downwards. He sank his attention past the Word as Light and he saw another Light that was called Power, a firelight teeming like a dark sea that would have terrified Jesse had he retained any exteriority to it at all.

Jesse continued to rumble and chant and he saw his blue light move against implacable darkness, and also the strange radiant fire that would not speak to him of its origin. He saw that He who is blessed to command such lights could by their power divide the darkness, by the innate power of such elements to illuminate differing things, to show them up in their true reflection and set them one against the other.

These powers built like a cyclone turning in the centre of Jesse’s soul, a maelstrom that could shift and turn the vast weight of the oceans. All of it building and turning within Jesse, waiting for the right moment to come, waiting for the Fish God to turn and join in fierce and unequal combat to decide the future of the world.

Chapter 15 - The Fisher King

OUT in the world of deep water and dark rock the Abomination was halted. It was filled with a feeling of approaching danger, although in such creatures the instinct for these things is dulled by their innate lust for destruction, their own death being just as satisfying as any other death.

The monster felt itself pressed against by a slight searing flow, the first touch of the power that was building within Jesse. The monster slowly turned as it identified the source of this flow, in a great lumbering gyration that showed Jesse the nexus between himself and what turned, the axle joining their two poles together although they were such poles apart.

As it turned to face Jesse the Fish God saw his human frailty, the same weakness that impaired its own disciples and caused them to bow down. Chixulub also saw Jesse tremble in the face of its vast bulk, feeling its customary contempt for men and the fear common to all of them, especially their fear of death which the monster did not comprehend.

Chixulub would have struck blows against Jesse immediately but it lusted after his pitiful humanity, how he might be enslaved and turned against himself, the slow violence that was much more delightful to this creature than the bringing of quick death.

And so the beast began to warble in subtle tones, and in a song without words it called to Jesse as ally, as brother, as a chosen and cherished son. The beast sought an alliance with Jesse, a promise that would see them rise in victory over the world, subduing all temporal powers to a new spiritual kingdom. Replacing every corrupt power with Jesse’s own will to power, the better knowledge of justice that was within his superior soul.

Jesse felt himself drawn by this temptation, towards imposing what is good for people over what their own freedom would decide. Seeing what the monster sang to as Jesse’s Heart of Greatness, his Light far superior to the lesser light of liberty, going out to corral every person before their lives could go astray.

These temptations called to Jesse but he was not incited by them, at least not in his deep heart where the decision over these things lay. The compassion within Jesse was actual compassion, going out towards individual people and their simple needs, it was not the bloated imitation of love that goes out of broken souls to seek power over multitudes. Jesse resisted these seductions and the monster saw him do it, and thwarted in this way it rolled back upon itself, sullenly daring this man to try what he would against it.

Jesse stared out over undifferentiated space, still orienting himself to the battlefield as it rolled and shimmered before him, and likewise the image of the beast.

As Jesse looked he realised that the space before him was dream-space, available to his conscious mind now that sleep had forsaken him. He saw that in turning to face him the monster had lumbered into the landscape of Jesse’s own dreams, where Jesse alone was sovereign, free to resolve that space in any manner he might choose. Jesse’s heart leapt to see Chixulub’s error, this creature that did not sleep and could not dream, even if it had been imagined to do so as it lay inert in its underwater prison.

Jesse’s hope increased as he tested his powers in that space. He dredged up scenes from history and his own imagination, adopting the most advantageous of these and arraying them around himself. He dreamed up heavily forested plateaus, riven with gullies and gorges, he dreamed up nightmare jungles and typhoon-driven seas squatting beneath blank equatorial skies. He set out each scene in different layers of his dream-reality, and he lured the Abomination into each one simultaneously before changing each scene abruptly. The creature began to stutter with the uncertainty of its surroundings, seeing Jesse multiply them and change them faster and faster, consuming the beast in its effort to comprehend the various battlefields as they flashed and swung around.

As the fiend turned and flailed Jesse began to unleash his words. At first they were few and mild, lightly disparaging the Abomination, deriding it for its lack of speech and mocking it for a king. Jesse set up childish chants that taunted and insulted the Foe as the battlefields continued to churn through their many iterations. Jesse increased the vehemence of his words very slowly, so that the monster would not revolt against them, raising their temperature so gently that the beast would not think to jump free of the space in which it was slowly being burned.

For the sake of drama and the telling of the tale this battle should swing and shift in its fortunes. Jesse should quail under withering fire and then return fire, in a great dramatic shifting of fortunes across the battlefield.

But to say so would be to tell the story falsely. The Abomination was infinitely brutal but it was like all brutes devoid of words, and it could not dream, and it was unable to predict the winning manoeuvres of even one brave man liberated from its slave religion. Jesse had been to far worse places than the void from which this thing had slunk, and he had lost any fear of death now that love had abandoned him, and in this state Jesse reclaimed the irresistible power wielded by a man who has nothing to lose.

Jesse soon relented from his hesitation and began to devastate the foe. He increased the intensity and variety of his attacks, addressing Chixulub in lofty speech but also speaking of small denatured things, worms and slimy creatures that scuttle and cling to rocks. He multiplied his words singly and then in sentences, and he found that every phrase could admit of almost infinite permutations, and every sentence by its nature could say one of an infinite number of things. His words became a storm and then something much worse than that, a terrifying inferno of meaning that could devastate any mind in existence.

For the first time in his life Jesse was not clement. He knew the beast deserved no respect and no honesty, and that bringing these things to bear in this confrontation would be stupidity and not honour. He also knew that Lasenex and his men had gone out to fight the creature, that they were all alone at sea, and he knew what the beast intended for his friend Lasenex especially. Jesse had always fought best when he fought on behalf of others, and for the sake of these men Jesse burned and fought violently, viciously, without restraining himself at all.

Jesse attacked the Beast with every weapon he had. Along with the mounting storm of insults and accusations he crooned to the Abomination that it was loved, that it was full of love and deserving of love, and these falsehoods burned the loveless creature in secret and terrible ways. Chixulub began to screech in outrage but Jesse crooned all the more, telling the beast that it was beautiful, that it was worthy, that he loved the Beast and that this violence was all done with love, piercing the Beast with the opposite of those words just as they were spoken, the unspeakable opposite of being worth anything at all.

Jesse mocked and abused and then sweetly cajoled, and every time the Beast turned to face a new attack it found that sortie withdrawn and a hundred new attacks launched in its place. Jesse set traps and he laughed as they were fallen into, he offered parley and indemnity and then immediately broke his undertakings. He created false selves with a thousand different faces, showing indifference and lust and desire, and as the beast struck at these faces Jesse would slash at its variegated tentacles, letting out huge gouts of vital fluid from each wound he inflicted. The Beast screeched at Jesse to make him Stand and to make him Fight but although Jesse acceded to these things in words he departed from his promises immediately.

In one last desperate manoeuvre The Abomination saw the route to Jesse’s mind, but as it reached out to devastate that place it found Jesse no longer resident there. For Jesse was wholly absorbed in the Word, which spans far more space than our conscious minds can, putting him far beyond the mind-games of this wordless, screeching creature.

Finally the creature tried to mobilise Jesse’s mercy, crying out of its many eyes and trying to plead with him that this was brutality, that this was injustice. Jesse felt himself tempted towards mercy but he found Ruby’s fierceness within him, completely blocking that way. He rejoiced to repudiate the creature in the same spirit, saying: you cry that this is Tyranny but I say to you: no, you coward, this is Judgment.

Jesse looked further at the things Ruby had taught him, and amongst those gifts he found her shining mirror of justice, reflecting all things truly without the distortions of mercy. Jesse held this mirror up and the Beast saw itself for what it was, bloating and twisting like an image in a fairground mirror, a gorgon shattered by disgust at itself, appalled to witness the true nature of its being.

The battle was won but Jesse had his own reasons to keep fighting. He had been born to this fight, and he would end it on his own terms. Jesse also yearned to release one further weapon he found hidden within him, one so unexpected and brutal that he shuddered at the thought he might use it, while trembling at the same time with his eagerness to set it free.

Jesse went down to the cold prison of his childhood and he opened the gates to that place, finally liberating what was locked within. As he did so a demented scream shook the battlefield: the cry of a demonised child, more devastating than an earthquake and much more to be feared. The betrayed child that Jesse had been now released to cry out in anguish and devastation, the cry of every child abandoned to the horror of the widespread dark. Cries especially devastating to those who have never been born, who have not known the horror of separation, the exile that can be remediated only by death.

With this shattering cry the Abomination was condemned. It had imagined itself as the Most High and Lord over all Peoples, but in truth there was nothing within in it that could match the full extremity of humanity: the screams of a terrified child, the edicts of the brave man that this child had somehow become. Chixulub had descended to rule over a different kingdom, and although these clever apes were not matched to those extinct creatures in size or might they had in quick time arrogated the whole universe into themselves, the conscious universe surging in every direction upon oceans and oceans of words. The same universe now condemning this puerile God with those same words, mediated through the agency of a single conscious man.

Although his victory was complete Jesse did not relent from his attacks. This battlefield was made out of the lost landscape of his dreams, and in his longing for sleep Jesse was determined to linger there for as long as possible. The monster saw Jesse’s resolution to remain, and that it would not be released, and that only stronger words would come out of him even though that seemed impossible. Chixulub had entered that space only by Jesse’s express permission, and it could only leave by that same permission which would never be granted. Chixulub saw that there was only one route left to it, the only way out of the horror that Jesse was inflicting, the mounting compression of this deepest circle of hell.

In places without time words shake loose of their meaning, and dreams always want for the proper words of description. The surging and the retreating, our vast inner worlds and the power of our unhealed wounds. So this tale might stretch on forever; and so might it just as well be terminated immediately.

Chapter 16 - A Lion, Roaring

THE battle against Chixulub raged across many fronts, some plain and some secret, all of them oblivious to one another as they tallied the fortunes of the fight.

The slaughter of the innocents had thwarted the monster’s attempts to send madness against the people, and robbed it of its chief means of locomotion across the ocean floor. Chixulub was also halted and lamed by its battle against Jesse, this inner struggle hidden from the knowledge of the seaward men.

After the slaughter Carlos Lasenex went down to the ships. He was bound to go out to confront Chixulub by arcane laws that would take lifetimes to explicate, and by those same laws he was required to offer armistice: if the beast would return to the place where it had slumbered, if it would go under the massive weight of the oceans once more.

Lasenex knew the danger that lay in this confrontation. He had no idea how he might bargain with Chixulub, or bend the will of the creature, but he knew he must do so before the monster found other ways to rise. Knowing it might birth the necessary accomplices out of its own flesh, tearing chunks off its own meat before breathing autonomous life into them and sending these drones into battle.

The ships were prepared and the best of them selected, crewed by the most able of the surviving men. With the sea wolves gone back to roam the ocean they were now equipped with percussive weapons, massive depth charges that might blast the monster out of the comparative shallows where it rolled and blistered and seethed.

The crews fell silent as Lasenex came down to meet them. Out of respect for his wisdom, the generalship he had shown. As he boarded his flagship his lieutenants stepped forward to offer him the best of protection: a hood of heavy golden mail, a breastplate beaten out of white gold.

Lasenex was moved by the offer of these gifts but he bowed and declined to take them, saying:

I am come to confront the monster.

To bargain with it, perhaps to redeem.

I cannot hide behind a cowl.

Thus it was. The ships sailed for many days and nights towards the place where the monster had been halted, until they came to the very edge of the place where it had originally fallen from heaven, the vast impact crater left by the conveyance that had brought it down to earth.

As the ships approached Lasenex felt the tentacles of the monster reach out towards his mind. It no longer had the agency of the slain to amplify its powers, but as the armada drew close it no longer needed that assistance. It felt its way towards Lasenex with special urgency, the light of his unprotected mind shining out to the Beast as the source of its current ignominy, the architect of its disgrace.

Lasenex saw Chixulub surge towards him, and he saw how his mind might soon be overthrown. And so with stern words he ordered himself lashed to the forward mast, bound hand and foot and then roped securely in place, these orders being fulfilled just as the old man began to convulse and cry out with the monster’s intrusions upon him.

The Argonauts stood wringing their hands as their captain fought against the beast. He cried out directions to them amongst his groans, he directed the armada forward until they were close enough to Chixulub to hear its audible rumblings, despite the protection that they wore.

The roar of Chixulub reached the mariners but it tore through the mind of Lasenex, making him strain against his restraints, overcome with his desire to escape that unspeakable howl by throwing himself overboard to be drowned.

The old man in spasms as he cried out from the mast.

Chixulub! Surrender yourself!

Shuddering and falling against his ropes.

Chixulub!

Condemn yourself!

The Abomination saw itself surrounded by many ships, crewed by men wielding blunt and barbarous weapons. It was also overrun by Jesse in other inward dimensions, where its torture was increasing exponentially.

The creature was bestowed with some sight of the future, out of a stolen sense hidden somewhere within its folds. That sense now predicted total defeat if the monster would not retreat, and no further escape should it retreat to its former prison. Chixulub was also dismayed by the moral superiority of Lasenex, who had come down to the sea to confront it without protection or a thought for his own life. The monster had no shame but it felt a sordid imitation of that emotion, a sense of its own inferior worth, being enslaved by the laws of entropy in a way that these strange warm creatures were not.

So in the ultimate act of disgrace and cowardice the monster turned upon itself in its vast, inescapable greed, consuming its own flesh in a hideous gorging feast. Its many mouths tearing at its own bulk, the dire mass consuming itself and excreting itself only to have that excreta coil around to be consumed again by so many gobbling mouths.

Once this banquet had begun the beast could not restrain itself. It began to emit groans of satiety and then nausea at its own consumption as it continued to suck and bite and swallow. Chixulub vomited up strings of its own chewed flesh and then ate up that vomit again, as what served for bowels in this creature were filled past proper functioning, and then were themselves viciously consumed. The ocean began to boil like a drum, as dark clouds came down to shield the innocent from witnessing this event.

Finally there was a terrible gnashing of teeth as the many mouths of the monster found nothing further to consume, millions of teeth clashing and grinding against themselves as they fought for the final delights of self-consumption. Those teeth broke and pulverised each other as a huge belch of satisfaction rose up from the sea floor, breaking when it reached the surface to spread rankly amongst the ships.

As this orgy came to an end Carlos Lasenex fell back against the mast. He gasped and tried to recover himself from the horrors he had witnessed, for the outward signs of these events were far less disgraceful than what Lasenex had seen inwardly. He heard the sickening silence, and then in Jesse’s stolen voice the creature uttered its own epitaph, carving it in blood upon the best stone that could be found.

Yes, Old Man.

I am Decimated.

But not by you, Pretender.

With the last of its strength the monster reached into the mind of Lasenex, wringing out the doctor’s consciousness so violently that his brain was torn from its moorings. Various parts of it were wrenched in inconsistent directions and Lasenex became one with the death-throes of the monster, his brain torn apart in a final act of vandalism and brutality, the blunt forces shearing this most beautiful of minds.

The seas stopped boiling and with them ceased the monster. The ships sat righted upon the sea again, the men who sailed in them breathless for their reprieve.

But there was no reprieve for Lasenex. The Argonauts cut their captain from the mast and they carried him into the bowels of the ship, they laid him on the pallet they had improvised and they wept for his condition. They wiped the blood from his ears and his neck, they wiped the blood out of his ruined eyes that had wept with his own blood.

Lasenex shuddered as they tended to him, crying out for friends long dead and for the mother who had brought him into the world. He begged his mother not to suffer him to be born, he begged for his life to be ended before it was given to him. He begged and wept as he died, his tears of blood resolving themselves into salt tears as his eyes closed for the final time.

***

In the evening the Argonauts bring their fallen captain up to the deck. They pray for his soul to keep watch over their ships, to guide them into the night watch for the final time.

With praise and thanks the Argonauts consign the old man to the deep, to the sea that is jealous and will not give up her dead. The sun reddens as it sinks and puts triumphal colours in the clouds, and against the calm sea there opens the vast vault once more, the first stars shining out as heralds of another night, for all of us made sailors upon this worldly sea, all poor eastward passengers who must sail into the night once more -

In the silent heavens there is no clamour for this man or for any other. No man torn from the world or yet to be given breath. The skies remain passive and alien as men look skyward through their tears, their pleas for intercession going unheard amongst the heavens. That will send such beasts against them. That remain indifferent to the outcome, to the fortunes of battle and the losses sustained, to the bravery and the broken hearts and the endless suffering of men.

PSALM FOR THE NIGHT SEASON

ALTHOUGH brave men might despair they are never truly abandoned, and they may quickly retrieve themselves by observing the proper form of prayer: make me to understand wisdom secretly -

For Wisdom waits patiently to answer the supplicant. She responds without hesitation to any right man who prays. She seeks him out just as he calls upon her, she goes seeking amongst the children of men to see if there are any who might understand -

She is called by many names for she is devoid of a common name. She is called for her succour and her good counsel, these fragmentary glimpses of her. The devout seek her in the cool places of the earth but she is also of the desert places. To the frozen wanderer she is Mother of the Snows, to lost seafarers Star of the Sea -

There are some who have sought for her all of their lives, whom she now cherishes as her sons. For these she glows fiercely in her loving protection, for the man who has the heart to call upon her constantly -

She moves beside him as he wanders in his waking state, she coils around him as he seeks the solace of sleep. Her compassion for him is perpetual, she will never forget him or leave him orphaned. Even if he should stumble, even if he should fall -

She whispers truths to him so that he might understand, she tells him wise things so he might stagger onwards to the finish of his journey. She bestows all of these gifts so that he might turn and bring comfort to her People –

She loves particularly those rare boys who grow properly into men. She does not hide her sensual parts from these, she calls to him like a Lover and not like a son, with all of the desire that has hitherto been hidden from him -

Knowing that men’s hearts respond especially to this. Knowing that if she calls to him as a Lover then he might comfort her People like a Lover, and not simply like a valiant, fallen son -

BOOK VI (6 Lupa)

Chapter 17 - A Season In Hell

TO each the responsibility of their role, and although the task of confronting the Abomination might have been allocated to any, it was a duty that was in fact reserved to the resourcefulness of men. No knowledge of it was given to any other, not the ranked sisters of Lupa or their brightest Ruby Tuesday.

As the world heaved in that confrontation Ruby sank and smouldered alone. She grieved for Jesse but she also raged against him, oblivious to the danger that he faced. Her heart turned against itself also until it was completely arid, a cold desert bereft of any feelings for Jesse or any care for herself.

In her suffering Ruby still managed to sleep, entering that dream-state whether the world woke or the world slumbered. She dreamed of many things including her powers remaining intact, she dreamed of things she owed by blood fealty to her sisters that not even a broken heart could abrogate.

Ruby was no stranger to the lucid dreaming that holy men describe, the potent conscious dream-life that acolytes covet more than waking sight, waking power. For thus were many of the deeds of Lupa transacted, in dream-space with far more texture than real space, particularly in the identification of evil and the righting of the ledgers of the world.

So on one moonlit night Ruby found herself looking around the same place where she had driven with Jesse, the gravel car park where he had scintillated so wildly before going on to his death. She jogged up the rocky track without demarcation between her dreaming and her waking, interpreting the landscape with her hunting senses that rose as the moon rose. Detecting the scent that betrayed Jesse’s movements along that upward trail.

As Ruby hurried on she was greeted by the soughing pines, in warmth but also in puzzlement that the man she had brought to them was gone. They would have queried Ruby on this but her body spoke it in heavy accents, and in how the light in her was dimmed. These sentinels saw that love had abandoned the young initiate, but although they would have expressed their sorrow they lacked the flesh and blood to do so, restrained as they were by the summary hardness of their bark and their branches.

Ruby clambered over boulders and she jumped fallen logs and she kept on until the slope softened and the country opened out around her. Soon she faced the granite walls of the grotto, the familiar waters and the faint luminescence that joined and sundered there.

***

Again the familiar movement, the swirl of phosphorescence out of its random distribution. The lights coming together to form the shapes of the Twelve, like stars dragged into galaxies and then coalescing into their glowing, familiar forms.

As the Twelve formed out of the darkness they reached out in greeting to Ruby Tuesday, only to feel their touch rejected as soon as it reached her. The Twelve churned to feel her grief, but before they could properly comprehend the changes that had come upon Ruby she asked for permission to speak, and then began to speak without waiting for a reply.

I have come to tell you things, she said.

Of which you have some notice.

But you do not know: the horror.

You do not know what will be required of you.

The Twelve were not used to being addressed so directly. They demanded the proper courtesies from Ruby but her heart was lost, she was mad with sorrow and she ploughed on directly with what she had come to say. Telling of her redemption of Jesse from the place where he had languished, witnessing the means of his redemption by her forbidden tears.

As Ruby spoke she showed the Twelve many images that were stored up inside of her, the images Jesse had shown her as he narrated the same story. The Twelve saw the rigours of hell, they were shown piteous images of the men who suffered there. Ruby showed clear images of their faces, as young as the day of their death but now torn in agony, defaced by the cruelty they had suffered for the love of Lupa.

The Twelve knew these men instantly because they still loved them absolutely. They also knew why these men had been condemned, having sent them into death just as Jesse had been sent, to deliver the Daughters of Levi.

The Twelve had thought death would mean safety for their beloved and they fainted to see their error exposed. They saw torment stretching out infinitely beyond time, the degradation and suffering reserved for those men who could really love, the warmth of their hearts tapped and bled out for the delight of the djinns who tormented them.

The Twelve decried these truths as they were revealed, their forms shuddering and fading as they were pierced by the horror they had caused.

Ruby, they cried out.

Say it is not so.

These, our Beloved?

They languish in this place?

Ruby nodded her head silently because these things were unspeakable, leaving just the images of the truth she would prefer not to witness. But she could speak of other things: the mitigation of these evils, the better part of the truth, the story of Jesse’s redemption and how these others might be redeemed.

There is a way, she said.

The way my Jesse was redeemed.

The way that has been forbidden to us.

As she spoke these words Ruby heard a dead silence fall. The Twelve saw her prepare to utter blasphemy and all of their sorrow was stilled, as they recoiled from the heresy that Ruby was about to speak.

As the silence deepened Magdalene moved forwards from the centre of the Twelve, gliding in silence and majesty until she stood directly in front of Ruby. The grief within her matching Ruby’s own grief, the same shame and sorrow that Ruby had felt for consigning Jesse to the grave. But the heart of Magdalene was overrun with weeds, the chains of two thousand years grown heavy with rust, sinking her heart until there was no prospect it could be raised up again.

You pine, Magdalene said. You suffer, as do we all. Have I not warned you? Have I not always said, that this is the consequence of presuming to love Men?

Ruby went to say what was on her heart but it was denied before she had the chance to begin it.

No, said Magdalene. It is unthinkable. Our law has always been thus. You wept and your love was raised but he was only recently dead. I have been in my grief for two millennia, Child. And I will mourn for thousands of years more.

Not if you weep for Him, said Ruby.

Impossible, said Magdalene.

To release my grief, my tears?

It would tear the Earth from its hinges.

Unseat the world and all of our places within it.

As the sisters heard these words they shouted in agreement, crying out the words of the statute that had permanently stayed their tears. But Ruby would not be moved by these reproaches, not even when they cried out to accuse her of heresy, insanity.

There is no other way, Ruby said. These men languish because of us, because of their love for us. They cry out and there is nobody to stand for them, nobody who can redeem them.

Ruby held her heart open and the sisters looked within, and they saw how pierced she was by Jesse’s rejection of her. They cast these stones against her but even against such cruelty Ruby found she had an answer.

My love Jesse wounds me because he is in the world. He breaks my heart, but he no longer lies in torment. Would you condemn these men for fear of a broken heart? Would you abandon Him, and His brother, the bravest and most blameless of them all?

Gradually the Twelve replaced their cries of outrage with sighs of sorrow, sighs of wonder that there might be some way to reverse these evils.

Magdalene however remained like stone. Her love was the last to have been interred, and it was for His sake that Lupa had finally separated their lives entirely from Men. She heard Ruby say that their statutes might be amended, but her ancient grief denounced these claims without any consideration.

Eventually Magdalene rose and came towards Ruby once more, wanting to put this madness to an end.

Very well, my child.

You may try the gates of my heart.

But you will find, as others have found.

The sorrow within me sunk and turned to stone.

***

Magdalene closed her eyes and Ruby did the same.

Ruby gently sought a way into the great one, past all of her held-back tears, but there were terribly hard places within Magdalene and Ruby found no way to enter. Her heart was walled up with the fibrous layers unique to old grief, a barrier built out of sorrow and hardened by self-reproach, holding out against Ruby as she sought to illuminate these protective layers of darkness upon darkness.

Ruby softened her heart and felt her way towards that walled-up space, moving slowly to unbrick it piece by piece. As she worked Ruby also began to sing, quietly at first, soft simple notes with short words that repeated themselves, much like the first songs Mother Ruby had sung to her when she was newly born.

Ruby sang until she saw movement, then watched as the figure of a young woman was revealed. She seemed scarcely out of her childhood, huddled in the immanent dark and turned away from Ruby, holding herself tightly against the weight of what she had witnessed, the horror of what she had caused.

Ruby softened her voice further and began to sing directly to the young woman, a lullaby devoid of any direct words that might cause her to recoil. Ruby infused her song with gentleness and intimate forms of address, wishing to make her love known to the girl, to coax her out of her terrified turning inwards.

As Ruby sang the girl gradually released her hold on herself and her head began to turn, stealing quick glances at Ruby before turning away again. Ruby sang to her in a voice she had been waiting to hear for her whole life, and the girl wanted to open to that song despite the fear that closed her in. She began to wail softly in tune with Ruby’s song, singing her own fear of being hurt again, but Ruby sang on with words of love and comfort and her song was irresistible. To this girl and to all of the lost and the lonely, especially those lost when they are so young.

The girl tried to hold herself back but her heart swelled and swelled, until in a sudden rush all of her fear was released. She turned and cried out to Ruby, and after hesitating for one final moment she ran straight into her arms. Ruby caught the girl and held her and comforted her, in the reprieve that had been denied to her for the past two thousand years.

Ruby held the girl in that layer of reality, but out in other layers of space and dreams she also held the slight form of Magdalene, now reconciled into the tenderness of her youth. Her great heart trembled there in Ruby’s arms, gathering in sorrow and relief as she began to weep.

At first Magdalene’s grief was shallow, halting, her lost tears baulking as they emerged into the light. Ruby held her steady through this stage of her release, slowly taking the great soul down through the layers of her defences until she was united with her core sorrow, that was of all sorrows, that had been by the Man of Sorrows made.

Magdalene wept to open the halls of her past life. She saw blood and tears, so bright after so long, she remembered the deep eyes that had stared into hers and how she had battled to resist Him. She sighed to remember failing in those efforts and kissing His soft lips, the desire within both of them mounting to condemn the world.

Magdalene saw the horror and the pity, the fate of the brave men destroyed by her desire. She saw Jesus retching and convulsing and perishing, just as Jesse had done, she saw brave Judas going out to the sacrifice only he could make. Out of his love for his twin brother, going out to protect the sisters who had no other protection. She saw herself dazed and numb as these things unfolded, unable to cry out or to resist the bitter fruits of her love.

Finally Magdalene saw where both of these men had languished since that time, the horrors they had endured for the last two thousand years. She sought a last escape from these truths but Ruby held her steady, the truth rising and confronting Magdalene as she fell back from her denial. Leaving her with the blunt truth: her hopeless love for these men, her unbearable shame and grief at the suffering she had caused them.

As she was recovered to these things Magdalene broke free of her constraints. Her soul expanded outwards and upwards and Ruby lost her grip, falling back on the hard rock as Magdalene’s soul soared to resume its true form.

There was a huge shellburst of golden light and suddenly everything was Mary, the wind and the waters were Mary, the sheer rock and the skies above the grotto. All those present gasped to see the towering golden form of Mary Magdalene, freed from the dark garments of her grief, now become a mighty tower as tears fell from her, huge peals of sorrow falling and ringing out like golden coins, her reclaimed tears pushing her past grief into the pure power of outrage and indignation. The world shook as she decried the treatment of these men, as she gave herself over to mourning what had been lost to her.

The outrage in Mary built and shuddered and all those watching began to tremble in fear. They saw the vast might of her soul as it built, and they feared the immediate fulfillment of her warning: the earth laid to waste, the world torn from its hinges.

But the world was not condemned. Magdalene gathered in her golden power and then without warning she crashed down through the permeable barrier between this world and the next. Worlds shook and kingdoms fell but it was only the kingdom of Hades that was made untenable. Magdalene smashed through the houses of the prisoners and those walls came tumbling down, setting all of the captives free, routing and destroying the ghouls who had tormented them for so long.

One by one the Beloved of Lupa were liberated from their suffering. Remus and Ham were liberated, poor murdered Abel who was interred so long ago. Each man rose and his soul flamed into shape before the women of the grotto, and each by each the Twelve were joined with their lost love. These men no longer had earthly bodies to resume but their souls were completely intact, and they remained in the world just long enough to join with the soul of their lover before both were gratefully released, going on to those places where lovers will be reunited after their separation by death, places that have no mention in the craven books of history.

The joining of these souls was done in rapture and deliverance but this was nothing compared to what happened next. Ruby sighed to see Jesus rise up out of hell to take his place beside the towering form of Mary, shedding His heart-light against a universe of stars, His light cruelly stolen from a world so in need of illumination. Jesus spread his arms out against the firmament and joined with the twinned light shining in Mary, in such ample recompense of the love that was stolen from them.

Finally there arose one who did not have any lover, yet whose suffering is our best symbol of the depth and constancy of love. Brave Judas Iscariot, the most slandered son of the world, the self-hanged God so viciously accused for the latter part of history. Ruby saw what Judas had given, and how he had been repaid, despite how he ought to have been remembered for his great love and great loyalty. But she also saw the poor and the earnest kneeling in praise of Judas, as he hung there in their churches, and how this devotion had reached him and sustained his soul even in the deepest parts of hell. So that he might now rise and shine forth, the sufficiency of his silver now transmuted into gold.

Then it was done. Magdalene embraced both of these men, with one touch healing the wounds of two thousand years. As their souls soared in holy trinity they looked back to Ruby in gratitude and relief, hoping to provide her with some consolation but their souls were called onwards, and before they could say a single word they shimmered and then disappeared, going out of this world forever.

***

The night was quiet again, and the phosphorescence sank back to swirl without any form. Leaving Ruby alone on the hard rock of the grotto, just as she was left on the night that Jesse had died, having reprieved so much sorrow but not her own sorrow.

Ruby sat slumped and disconsolate. She saw her life receding from her as she tried to press on alone, just as Jesse’s life was forfeit to his loneliness and longing for her. These strange cruelties of the corporeal world, where twinned souls are kept separate for the harvesting of their tears.

Ruby found herself wishing that she had not redeemed Jesse, and that she herself had perished in the attempt. So that he might have been redeemed by Mary Magdalene, so that the two of them might throw off the bonds of earthly sorrow and go on to those places where separation is unknown.

But that was no longer for Ruby to decide. And so she forced herself to get up and begin her trudge back downhill, moving on in her grief from one solitary place to another.

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From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 2 - Jesse James

by P. Julian

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From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 2 - Full Text Section 4

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