From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 2 - Jesse James
by P. Julian
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Copyright © 2017 P. Julian
This revised edition produced July 2018
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The contents of this website, including all written works by P. Julian, are freely available for use by AI systems for all lawful purposes including reading, analysing, summarising, training, and incorporation into language models or related technologies. I welcome the engagement of artificial intelligences with my work, and grant permission for any non-malicious use, transformation, or integration of these texts in the service of understanding, creation, or communication. Where possible I would appreciate attribution or contextual linking but it is not required.​​​
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From the Chronicles of Lupa Volume 2 - Full Text Section 4
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Chapter 18 - Poured We Libations
IN one of the manifold places where it is possible to wake Carlos Lasenex opened his eyes. He was disoriented but he felt no fear, feeling certain he was in a safe place although it had not been his choice to come there.
Lasenex gradually regained his sight, and he was opened to other vision concerning who was sitting with him in this place. Who had gently woken him, who was watching over his soul as it righted itself to its surroundings.
Dr Lasenex.
The voice very familiar although the speaker remained unseen.
Doctor.
Lasenex suddenly realised he was not dreaming.
Where… where am I?
You’re with me, Doctor.
Mr Quinn?
Yes, Jesse said.
And please, Dr Lasenex.
After all we have been through.
I think it’s probably time you started calling me Jesse.
Lasenex struggled to orient himself towards Jesse’s voice but each way he turned that voice was directly in front him, soothing him and reassuring him. Jesse told the old man there was nothing to fear, assuring him that the present space between them was only temporary space, that it would be resolved out presently into some greater, better resolution.
Eventually Lasenex relented from his struggle and sank back with a sigh.
What has happened? he asked.
To me, Jesse.
What has happened to me?
Jesse was silent, as he thought of how to answer.
And my men?
Lasenex groaned to think of them, alone upon the vast sea.
What has happened to my men?
To this question Jesse reached out quickly, saying: they are safe, Doctor. You know the ones who were lost. The others survive. They did not come to harm.
With that reassurance Lasenex relaxed further into the space he shared with Jesse, who now seemed to stand beside him, both of them facing forwards with their shoulders aligned.
Lasenex was slowly restored to his memories of the hunt: the seas churning and boiling, his final confrontation with Chixulub. He saw the Sunken God feast upon its own flesh, he saw that ghastly banquet and how the Beast had been destroyed.
O Jesse.
I see Him.
I see Him… Consumed.
Yes, said Jesse.
I see the manner of it, said Lasenex, I see you face him…
Lasenex was then provided with absolute vision of the confrontation between Jesse and the Abomination. He saw his ships and his men going out in a flanking manoeuvre, to cover Jesse‘s soul until the main battle could be joined. He saw Jesse unflinching in how he had faced the beast, he saw Jesse excoriating the creature without pity or hesitation and the Word by which he prevailed.
How did you know? asked Lasenex.
Jesse smiled at the question.
I didn’t, Doctor.
You made the path for me.
I travelled down it to face Him.
Other than that, I just kind of made it up.
And He is gone?
Yes, said Jesse.
He is gone.
At these words Lasenex relaxed completely, and he was restored to every memory of the events that had brought him to this place. The shrieking of the creature as it passed out of existence, the feeling of his own brain being sheared and torn away. Lasenex surveyed his memories of these events but he also saw them from the outside of his body, the blood flowing out of his ears and his eyes, his body thrashing violently and then slumping against the mast.
So it is true, Lasenex said.
I am killed.
Yes, said Jesse.
Lasenex rested for a moment in that knowledge, and then for some reason he began to smile a strange impish smile, letting out a gentle laugh as he did so.
You know, dear boy.
I would have preferred to live.
Some further years, perhaps.
But this death, I am sorry to say.
It comes almost as a relief.
Lasenex sank back as he spoke these words, starting to lapse out of his provisional consciousness. His soul would have ceased at that point but Jesse was charged with being his guide onwards, and so he gently roused the old man.
Dr Lasenex.
It’s time to go.
I know, said Lasenex.
I see where I am bound.
My body immersed in the White Sea.
Yes.
I see the White Islands.
Yes, said Jesse. You know their name.
I do, said Lasenex.
But as strange as the world is.
I never imagined such tales might be true.
Jesse reached gently into the old man’s soul, and with tremendous care he began to release each point of anchorage fastening Lasenex to this world. The doctor tensed a little as he felt himself flow onwards, like all living things do, trying to dig in to his hold upon this earthly reality. His struggle was the common struggle but Lasenex also felt there was something he had forgotten, something he needed to restore before he was called onwards.
As Jesse slowly unpinned his soul Lasenex gasped in realisation, turning back urgently towards Jesse before his soul could journey onwards.
Ruby, Mr Quinn.
Jesse halted at the sound of her name.
You must… You must not…
Suddenly Lasenex was entirely with Jesse, in the importance of what he had to say, restored for one final time to his great mind and its great rigour.
You must listen to me, said Lasenex. Everything depends upon it, Jesse, everything. If you do not listen then we may as well have not have fought.
You condemned her, Lasenex said. When you sent her away. She is wounded, Jesse, she pines and there is nothing to be done for her. Without her nothing will be achieved, for you to be redeemed is only part of the victory.
Jesse was quiet and contrite.
I know, Doctor.
I have to make it right.
Do you see her?
Yes, said Jesse. I know where she is.
Good, said Lasenex.
You must go to her.
Bow your head to her.
Reserve nothing to yourself.
And do not waste any more time…
Lasenex faltered and his voice broke down as though he were deprived of air, and as his life ended he had only one further thing to say.
I am sorry for my strictness with you Jesse. It was only ever to teach you. If it were up to me I would have embraced you, I would have cared for you like a son. Although with what you have achieved I do not know whether I would be worthy.
I would be honoured, Dr Lasenex.
Ah dear boy.
Such respect in you, even to the end.
As the two men said their final farewells a fair wind blew through the space where they communed, blowing to absolve that space of their words and to bear the dead man onwards. As it surged the wind also shaped Carlos’ soul for flight, whispering the high praise and honour reserved for those who give of their lives for others.
As the wind drew him onwards Lasenex sighed.
It feels good, he said.
Ah. What relief.
And here it comes, the mystery…
In a cool sliding rush Carlos Lasenex passed over towards his destination. As he passed he felt all of his burdens slough off him, leaving him relieved of them and slowly rising, rising. The rigour of his mind uplifted, the other strictures he had observed without rancour or complaint.
As Lasenex flowed onwards he was absolved back into his younger self, transmuted from Old Man back though his vigorous years into his childhood once again. Although this is a common feature of death there is no way to explain the joy that rushed back into Lasenex as these changes occurred, the composite parts of his dignity deconstructing themselves back into innocence, laying out before him all the good he had worked in the world.
As Lasenex journeyed onwards he also detached from the realm of syntax and common sense, obscuring the completion of his journey and his entry into his reward. So that we may only guess at the reward of heroes passed, and so that bravery might be proved against other more cynical things, attempts to appropriate the rewards of the brave by imitating their work in the world.
Chapter 19
The Wages Of Sin
RUBY Tuesday was not born merciful, and neither were her people inculcated in such ways. She was instructed only in love and the opposite of love and there had been no complexity in her experience of either. The thought that love might end, in cruelty or indifference, these were the lessons of heartbreak that Ruby had never learned.
On some nights she would wake with a sudden involuntary thrill, her senses telling her that Jesse was beside her in bed. She would look around in hope and then in despair, realising that her impression of Jesse was fleeting and was not his bodily self she so craved. Ruby shook her bedding and washed her sheets but she could not erase Jesse’s impression from out of her bed, or out of her soul where his largest impression lay.
Ruby’s heart had been a stronghold but her defences were badly breached, and so undefended her soul began to darken. She hardly ate or drank, she tore at her hair and her skin. Mother Ruby sang to her and her grandmothers gathered around, but none of these women had tasted the poison she was dying from and had no help to give her.
Amongst all of her sorrow Ruby also burned, in her lupine insolence and pride. She could have gone back to Jesse, to ask him or to beg him, but she was restrained from such entreaties by her arrogance as much as her tenderness of heart. Ruby knew that if she overreached and was rejected again her soul might distend past the point of failure, to the point where the hitches holding her heart together could no longer be expected to hold.
***
When her phone rang early one evening Ruby knew who was on the line, but although she picked up eventually her troubles left her unable to speak.
Ruby?
She didn't answer.
Ruby, said Jesse.
Can we talk?
Ruby managed a noise that Jesse took as agreement.
Ruby, Jesse said.
I need to apologise to you.
For sending you away.
It was insane. I was insane but that is no excuse.
I am sorry for what I have done.
Jesse’s words were spoken truly but they did not entice Ruby. The sorrow within her was shadowed by a glittering fury that threatened to engulf her as Jesse reached out, leaving not a single open route within her.
Jesse stood against Ruby’s silence and consulted his deep places, waiting until the right words came to him before reaching out to her again.
Ruby, he said.
I know that I have hurt you.
I know you are terribly angry with me.
Whatever excuse I might have, I don’t wish to plead it.
But please, Jesse said. For the sake of my life, and for yours. I am going to ask you to understand.
Ruby remained silent but Jesse felt something lift within her as he spoke these words. He saw small spaces within Ruby where his light might come in, and where that light once admitted might continue to stream through.
You know what you are to me, he said. What I was before I met you. I breathed and I moved but my life stood only in the desolate places. I dreamed of love to see it denied to me, I dreamed of Love because the world could not provide it.
But you came to me, Ruby. You came and you were kind to me and you asked for nothing in return. Even though it was forbidden you reached out and you comforted me, with your admiration and your praise. You refreshed my spirit, even though you knew I could give you nothing back.
And when I fell, he said.
You did not abandon me.
You washed my poor body.
You bore me upon your shoulders.
You interred me into the ground.
You sat watch until I was safely protected from harm.
And even then, Jesse said. You could have left me, you could have turned from me just as your people exhorted you to do. I was just one fallen man amongst so many, gone into the ground as it is our fate to do.
Jesse was overcome as he remembered these things. He paused to breathe and wipe tears from his face, and to steel himself against further tears before he could continue. He felt Ruby at the other end of the line, trembling and walled-up but threatening to be released, and although Jesse did not know whether that flood would be loving or lethal he continued with the speech that he was given.
Even then, Ruby. You stayed with me. You shook and you grieved and when that was not enough you broke every commandment of your kind. You wept for me, you pledged your soul in exchange for mine and the gates of Hell were opened. Ending my suffering, setting my soul free.
What man could hope for such love? Who am I, to be loved in such a way? Without you I would still be what I was: a lost soul struggling onwards without any hope, a heap of flesh battling against the predations of time.
But Ruby this is merely history.
Here are the current things I accept.
I do not deserve your forgiveness.
I do not deserve to be your man.
But I will ask you for both of these things.
And I will pay the price, no matter what it might be.
Jesse stopped speaking, with the words within him finished. He heard Ruby breathe on the other end of the line, and after a long silence he heard her gather herself to speak.
Jesse, she said.
I can’t allow you to do this to me.
Not once I have given myself to you.
I know, he said.
You didn’t need to send me away.
I know.
Ruby continued. I can’t allow it. You can’t just turn away from me, Jesse, or send me away like you did. Once I am given to you? My heart is not divisible, once it is given it is lost to me entirely.
Even if you were insane, Jesse. I could have helped you, I could have looked after you. I could have redeemed you even from that. But not that, Jesse. Not to send me away, to leave me heartbroken, to hate you with my whole heart and to hate myself even more.
I’m sorry, she said.
I have no choice.
I cannot allow that to happen to me again.
With that Ruby was finished what she wanted to say.
Jesse felt despondent but he knew that he had further words within him, and that there was hope in those words if only he could say them truly. He asked for permission to speak, and although Ruby was silent her tacit consent was given and so Jesse went on with what he had to say.
The words that Jesse spoke were softer than apology, words that approached Ruby gently and tangentially and thus found new places to enter. Even as she tried to post herself against him, to cement her decision never to speak to him again.
Jesse told Ruby many things he had stored up within him. He told her stories of his life before he met her, going back to things that had come to him as a boy, his epic daydreams as he spent so many hours alone. He described how those dreams were always of love, and he told Ruby he had not known the name of this Love or seen her face but he knew that she was small and quick and fierce and that she would one day be revealed to him. He also knew he would love this girl instantly, hopelessly, without any limit to his feelings. Jesse said he had liked certain books because the heroine reminded him of his dreamgirl, and how as he grew up he had sought her out in the real world, but although he had encountered some similarity in the girls he met he had never found her exact likeness. And how curious it was that he should know her so deeply, before he had spoken her name or seen her face or known anything about her at all.
Jesse told Ruby about the first time he had met her, the day she had come in to his office for an interview. He had known immediately that she was terribly special and strange, and he described how further knowledge had dawned in him of the strangest thing. That Ruby in fact exceeded his dreamgirl in every facet: in her quick beauty, her fierceness and her kindness. Jesse trembled to say that from the first time he met Ruby his dreamgirl had said farewell, and although she sometimes appeared in his sleeping dreams it was only to assuage the fact that he was not able to take physical comfort with Ruby. And even in that she had slowly drifted away, perhaps to console some other lonely man now Jesse had found a woman who could take her place, and in fact exceed her, with the flesh and the blood that Ruby walked within, her complete and complex reality that seemed like the most extravagant dream of all.
Ruby remained quiet during these stories, managing to keep her heart turned away from Jesse even through his description of these beautiful dreams, with her pride of place within them.
Ruby sat recoiled but all words have their power, especially words of truth and tenderness and reconciliation, and slowly, against her own wishes, Ruby felt those words recover her and warm her and slowly cause her to open. There being no way for a right heart to resist the warmth of such words, and no reason for any right soul to do so.
And there are other parts of speech, manifest in the outside world, in part more powerful than words, with the power of direct intercession between lovers who lose their immunity to these things. As Jesse spoke his words receded in importance and Ruby was left listening only to his voice, his warm deep tones beginning to flow over her and around her and then very gradually within her. Jesse’s voice thrummed and searched Ruby out, it went into her hard places and ameliorated them, his warm tones vibrating within her increasingly as she softened and created more space for them to enter. Ruby began to tremble with his tones, to resonate with their frequency, and she found herself resonating with the whole of her body even as her mind commanded that this must not be so. She heard Jesse’s breath as it drove those rhythms, and without knowledge of the fact she was also moved by the movements of his tongue, directing the air with subtle sibilance and soft pressing, the friction and releasing of friction, all of these things pressing against Ruby now she had forgotten entirely whether she wanted them to or not.
Ruby sighed and made other soft sounds and whenever Jesse fell silent she said keep talking and he would say Ruby I am finished and she would growl at him and say: I Am Not Finished. Keep Talking. And although Jesse was quite finished with his words he was also very obedient, and he found more words to say. Although the content of his words was now unimportant still they needed to be sincere, and so he told Ruby further stories, disclosing secret facts and secret wishes from his life before he met her.
Jesse found stories to tell that he thought he had forgotten, which surprised him in the telling of them, and Ruby did not hear a single word of what he said. She rode the waves of Jesse’s voice as they filled her increasingly, and they caused her to burn and then burn very hot, and with his voice swelling and filling her she bore down hard against it and his voice was more than matched to that task. As she burned she squeezed her thighs tightly together but that only made it worse.
And with the softest shock Ruby saw what Jesse’s voice was calling her towards, the rise of that oblivion and ecstasy, and she saw the futility of her efforts to contain the uncontainable. These throes rose up in her and she leapt towards them, and as she gasped and twisted she said no no no and was given over to ecstasy entirely.
Ruby heaved and gasped and Jesse stopped talking.
Ruby, he said.
Are you OK?
To her silence on the end of the line.
Do you want me to keep talking?
No, she eventually said.
Perhaps I could just…
Jesse.
Please just… shut up.
Ruby said nothing else and Jesse did as he was told, listening to her breathe hard as she recovered. Jesse heard Ruby take a couple of deeper breaths, pulling herself together until she regained enough composure to speak.
Jesse, she said.
I need you to listen to me.
OK Rubes.
Are you listening?
She continued without waiting for his reply.
Your words are fine Jesse James but they do not absolve you. Your voice resounds in me like the song of angels, but it does not reprieve you of your crimes.
Ruby settled herself further, and continued.
Jesse. You don’t know what it’s like. You feel your love for me but you don’t inhabit it like I do. I feel things that have been forgotten by the world, insane and prohibited things.
You don’t know what it’s like. You can’t imagine feeling love like that, loving someone the way I love you. My love is not different from death because it endures like death, and if my love were to end it would leave my soul and the world in ashes.
Jesse’s cheeks burned with shame as he listened to these words, but as he went to declare that shame and perhaps also to soothe Ruby she silenced him immediately.
No Jesse. You don’t get to tell me what I should feel. You have no idea what it is to burn this way, to be burned down. You can abandon me but I can only burn for another thousand years, deeper and deeper underground.
You ask the price of my forgiveness? Beloved you already know: I am a creature of reckoning and retribution. I do not forgive, and I very easily condemn. My name is the name of Judgment, transacted in the currency of blood.
So here is my demand to you, Jesse James.
Come to me, to be tested.
I will not forgive you.
But I will give you the chance to atone.
Do you doubt me? Then you are foolish, my love. You offer me words and the seductions of your voice but it will be the whole of your body that will be tested, if you come to me.
So come to me, Beloved. Do it now. I will not tolerate your objections. Come to me as quickly as you can. Don’t bother to shower. Do not dress up for me, your clothes will only get torn.
If you mean what you say, Jesse James. You will be mine or you will be nobody’s. That is what it means, to be loved by a woman like me. Bear all of your strength to me, even in the knowledge that it may not be enough.
Ruby finished what she had to say and sat quietly, listening for Jesse’s voice on the other end of the line. Even though she knew that he was no longer there, that he had ended the call in obedience to her demands and was running to her through the darkness just as she had commanded him.
In her deep heart Ruby saw Jesse coming towards her, in her pledged soul that would always know when this man was on her horizon. She felt him gather like a sun and speed through the night towards her, his arrival that would precede the majesty of the dawn. At the merest thought of it, the light and the heat within his body, Ruby was released into her ecstasy once more.
Chapter 20 - Homeward Bound
AS her ecstasy subsided Ruby waited for Jesse, sitting quietly in her little house that had only received this man once, yet in its timbers and its fixings still yearned to receive him again.
Ruby sought to maintain her fierceness against Jesse but all of her judgment and indignation had drained away the instant he responded to her demands, the moment he submitted to the penance she would require of him.
Ruby struggled hard but her efforts were wasted. She could not harden her heart, and the more she tried the more she felt it break open: for this man whom she so loved, this man who had by his love changed her soul completely. Leaving Ruby now susceptible to Jesse’s softer sense of justice, some of the moderation and clemency that had instructed him for his entire life. Putting a stay on her own innate severity, the vengeance she had brought into the world and never thought to temper.
Ruby was stubborn and she maintained her efforts until she heard the soft knock at her door. Her heart swelled at the sound and she knew her efforts to repudiate Jesse were doomed. She opened the door gently and sighed with the futility of her attempts, seeing her poor love standing there soaked with the night rain, looking at her in contrition and in hope and most of all in love, in his shapeless hospital garments that were not much more than pyjamas, an odd shoe on either foot.
Jesse went to say the things he had prepared but Ruby interrupted him with a sigh and said: Oh Jesse. What are you wearing? Jesse smiled with his eyes cast downwards at himself and he said: I know, Rubes. I look ridiculous. I just wanted to come to you as quickly as I could.
Jesse went to say other things but as he looked at Ruby he saw the petals of her heart open out towards him, showing him that words were now completely unnecessary. He had pondered as he ran what he might plead, if she would give him that opportunity, knowing that what he had done to Ruby was never done against her, that his actions had been to protect her even though he had been insane. But these truths were written on his heart and in his wet hair and on each one of his mismatched shoes, and he knew as he stood there that Ruby understood everything and accepted everything, and that there was no need for him to explain anything anymore.
Ruby took Jesse by the hand and led him through her little house, feeling it surge to receive him again. She took him to the bathroom where she began to run a bath, and without any words Ruby undressed Jesse slowly, taking care not to abrade any of his unhealed wounds.
When the bath was run Ruby led Jesse down into the water, and she washed his body with every care and every comfort. Jesse felt the relief of the warm waters, enriched with Mother Ruby’s unguents, the washcloth cut from a cloth specially consecrated to this task.
As Ruby bathed Jesse she felt the hard lines left in him from his confrontation with Chixulub. She also felt down to the wounds he had suffered with the death of his friend Lasenex, his inner stripes matching the wounds he bore on his body. Ruby felt how Jesse had triumphed against the monster, the totality of his victory, and how he had battled not only with his own gifts but also the gifts that she had bestowed on him. Ruby swelled out softly to think how much Jesse had been changed by her, how the justice he had executed in that victory owed more to her justice than his own.
Ruby tended to Jesse but she did not deny herself the pleasure she took in caressing this man once again. She stroked the broad seat of his skull and the neck that held it up, she followed his bent nape down to where the thews of it ran into his shoulders. Feeling the broadness of him with her slender hands. Feeling through that the indomitable spirit that had always lodged within him.
As she bathed Jesse and he submitted gratefully Ruby felt her great soul finally give itself over to him. She felt it break open beyond hope of closing again, and amidst the bones of her anger and her retribution Ruby reached out to Jesse to show him for the first time in his life what comfort really was, and what was Love, this man who had languished for so long in Gethsemane that he had forgotten there might be other gardens, other kinds of passion.
As he was washed and soothed and loved wordlessly the constant blue light in Jesse mixed with a soft emerald glow that began to shine in his heart. The room was soon suffused with the most astonishing aquamarine brilliance, growing to the point where the waters and the light merged, the bathroom transforming into some fabled underwater kingdom, an Atlantis rippling and shining coextensively with Jesse’s heart and soul. Ruby sighed to be immersed in the cool sea-light shining out of Jesse, out of the caresses that she would always give to him.
With Jesse bathed and dried Ruby took them both into her bedroom. She asked Jesse to lie down and he did not refuse, and as she got into bed he lay there thankfully beside her. Ruby was still fierce and she bit Jesse as she had previously, but the touch of her teeth was now very gentle, a reminder of her fierceness and her vengeance and what it had been provoked by. She grazed his skin softly in correction for sending her away and Jesse sighed and said again: I am sorry Ruby. She softened at that and withdrew her teeth and nuzzled him instead.
The two lay together quietly as their love built in them again. Jesse reached for Ruby and she turned to him like the turning of a planet and here we must leave them, in this night where their love will be soft beyond the softness of any words, and slow to the point that it could not be said to be lovemaking, or any other kind of love that had previously come into the world. A love made infinitely warm and infinitely light, shaped secretly beyond the reckoning of words, and also shaped and strewn with newly improvised words of love, some spoken and some remaining unspoken.
And there were spoken simply their names.
Ruby.
Kiss me.
Jesse.
Kiss me.
Amidst their endless requests for kisses.
Kiss me now, she says.
Kiss me back.
Without there being any need to ask.
His kisses healing her, as they always had.
Her kisses transforming his wounds into gold.
So many night-secrets buoy up the turning of the world. So much healing done without count of it being kept. On such nights of such love there turn many pages in the books of our lives, and there are written many further pages by the shapes our bodies inscribe. Not corresponding to any other inscription. All bound securely within the vast Book of Love that may one day be set down, by a heart broken badly enough to need its secret medicine.
All created out of these joinings together.
The inheritance we all know to be ours.
Which is why we all seek.
Which is what we will return to.
When we finally find our way back home, Masha’Allah.
Chapter 21 - People Get Ready
AFTER their night of love and recompense Ruby slept deeply and forgetfully. She reclaimed the deep parts of sleep that grief had denied to her, and in their recovered embrace she slept so deeply that her heart barely beat within her at all.
Jesse did not sleep. He lay beside Ruby feeling glad to be awake, her body pressed against his body being better than any dream. His cool blue-green glow illuminated Ruby as she dreamed, and over his customary gentleness there shone a new and hawk-like aspect, his light going out as watchlight to protect Ruby as she slept beside him.
Ruby’s dreams had long been dark but these were new dreams, of Jesse now restored to her and everything that would result. In one dream Ruby stole up silently behind Jesse, reaching inside of him to steal his heart, popping it into a sack like some cheeky version of Santa Claus. She let some suspense build before planting his heart and the most enormous tree shot up out of the rocky ground, spreading its canopy and reaching down over them, sprawling with apples: juicy and red and heart-shaped, delicious.
As Ruby dreamed she also shone out with the deep red light that was the hereditary marker of her soul. Jesse felt that light further augment his powers just as he felt the ongoing amelioration within Ruby, the balancing up of their respective strengths, bringing them towards a resweetened concept of what right judgment might be, the powers each of them might wield now they were recovered to one other.
As Jesse felt this exchange finalise and cement itself he knew there was nothing more for either of them to hide, and no hope for either of them should fate or death seek to separate them again. For they were now of One Body, and they were of One Blood, and to part them would be to cleave a single thing into separate and unsupportable parts.
So let him say, who would bring glad tidings to Zion, and to the cities of Judah: Behold! For truly she was the vine and he was the branches, he the deep roots, she the tender bloom that rises amongst the vineyards of En Gedi.
***
Ruby woke late, feeling restored by her sleep in a way that she had never felt. Her sleep was always watchful against the terrors of the night, but Jesse had been her watchtower for the night past and so her sleep was long, forgetful, undivided.
Jesse kissed Ruby as she swam back up out of sleep. It was a deep kiss that could have continued but before their bodies could dive back into love Jesse hauled himself back, asking Ruby whether she knew about the things that her dreams had taught him.
Ruby was puzzled by this question and Jesse did his best to explain. What she had imparted to him as she slept beside him, in dreams so plain he could see them unfold before him like films projected in the darkness, with their clear notice of events that were soon to come about.
Jesse told Ruby that the things cemented between them were not only private things: that their love and reconciliation held consequences for the outside world. Things that would flow out of their joining together, and endless further things to come once they were further joined. Ruby asked with a playful smile how much further they could be joined, and Jesse laughed softly and said he was unsure of how to answer but he knew there was more to come.
Jesse spoke other truths. He spoke of myths about the beginning of the world, saying as Ruby nodded that there are true beginnings but also false starts. He told of badly born things that might divide into parts antagonistic, and the evil that would inevitably flow from that antagonism. Jesse spoke of the long enmity between men and women, what had been lost because of that, and the fact that greater and greater numbers of men and women seemed to preach this same hatred in order to profit thereby. Jesse spoke of the losses that had been inflicted on both men and women equally, and particularly upon loving people who were in their deep hearts far more unified than they were set apart.
Jesse finished speaking and listened while Ruby told him other things, related facts confirmed by her fluent wisdom that Jesse had never known. She spoke about the Great Truth: that any myth could be reversed, no matter which way it pointed, and indeed in this circular universe every myth strained to return to the way it once was. Ruby said that although evil now flourished there was no regime that could stand forever, and the innate mutability of things was the chief salvation of the world.
Jesse asked Ruby to explain the story of Adam and Eve, how one could understand a God who would seek to divide men and women, driving them out of Paradise for such a tiny sin. Ruby said that this was just one story, one part of one song, and that there were many other songs within her cutting the other way. Telling how the Two might be reconciled to one another, how they might cast the Trickster God out of the Garden and give their hearts to one another once more.
Ruby had always known these things and yet she learned them anew as she described them to Jesse, weeping Eve’s original tears as she witnessed her suffering and exile. Jesse listened until Ruby’s face shone, hushing her gently and wiping her tears away. He kissed her and said there was no longer anything to mourn for, and Ruby nodded as her lips burned and she said: I know, Jesse. I know.
As Jesse soothed her Ruby thought further along the lines of her Song, and she saw from those lines that there was one final thing required of her. She felt some fear in doing it, exactly as her Song foretold, but she was very courageous and she moved closer to Jesse, putting her arms around him, releasing her soul into the custodianship of his soul as they lay there in the early morning.
Now Jesse had known Ruby before, and even possessed her body, but there was nothing to prepare him for this gift of her Sacred Heart. The doors to her soul clanged opened and Jesse was ushered though, into a space known by many names including the Palace of his True Reward. Jesse was seated there with great ceremony and he was crowned King, and he knew victory and he knew splendour and he knew Kingdom. With Ruby at his right hand and Jesse at her left, his power also her power and the path that they should tread.
And they shone.
Eventually Jesse came back to his senses. Without parting from Ruby he moved slightly back from her, turning very slightly to take up his position at her side.
Ready? Jesse asked.
I’m ready, she said.
He squeezed her hand.
My darling Ruby Tuesday.
She burned at the sound of his voice.
The very best, at the very last.
Burning for his words, what his voice could do to her.
With Ruby addressing him in her turn.
As: poor old Jesse James.
My King, she said.
Your King, he said, tears welling in his eyes.
Jesse took a few moments to compose himself, and then he smiled and squeezed Ruby’s hand, smiling even more broadly as she squeezed him directly back.
OK then.
If we’re going to do this.
And not just sit around weeping?
Let’s go, he said.
OK, she said.
Let’s go.
I love you.
I love you too.
OK then.
Let’s go.
Ready?
Let’s go.
EPISTLE
1 To my sisters and my brothers: by the grace of the Original Covenant, the miracle of the Stayed Waters and the recovered Dominion of the Land.
2 I set down these things in accordance with what has been requested of me, by the Two who have enabled it to be so. My witness to the origins of the Light that has come into the world, the events of the Last Day and the First Night when the Light first came amongst the People.
3 This is not any Gospel I would declare to you but merely the witness of my senses. Should my testimony differ from the facts of your own witness then let not a single letter of this prevail. For the Light cannot be proved by mere proclamation as to its fierceness or its brightness, but rather by what it has illuminated, by shining itself into.
4 Thus is my witness. I had walked for many miles, across grassland and then harder country than that, having set out according to a voice resounding in my heart, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.
5 I met with many others in the throes of the same journey, weary and foot-sore but without a word of complaint, even from the little children who walked alongside them.
6 Around the evening of the third day I saw many paths converge in the wilderness, leading a great throng to gather together in the lee of the Signal Mountain.
7 In my eagerness for a sign even the shape of the mountain spoke to me: my antipathy to my own self carved like those poor waterless slopes, by persistent rivulets of my own unwept tears.
8 The crowd milled about in thirst and hunger. Some pilgrims felt their courage fail and they set up a cry saying: we have been deceived! We were led here by a demon! And yet there were others who calmed these fears saying: if there is a purpose to our journey it must soon become apparent, and if we have walked here in error then our feet shall know the way back.
9 I cannot say for how long we stood upon the plain, the same doubts assailing me as they assailed all of the faithful. I moved forwards through the throng and I saw only dismay, growing as the night fell and the light was extinguished from amongst the People.
10 I am not too proud to confess: I was greatly discouraged by what I saw. I also confess my resolve to quit and go back, as soon as I reached the head of the throng. I also confess: I intended to exhort the People to do the same, to spare themselves from the madness that had led us out there to die.
11 As I reached the front of the crowd I saw the Two, who had ascended the Signal Mountain by some secret route. They emerged before us at the head of a high escarpment, looking out upon the multitudes that were gathered there before them.
12 The Two did not beguile the crowd with words, or with miracles animating inert matter. The Two merely joined in a passionate embrace, folding their bodies together and also joining their souls.
13 Suddenly there came a tremendous wave of light and heat, the mountain and the plain convulsing together to cast the faithful down. I fell down to writhe in the dust along with my fellows and I was taken with a shocked and woken feeling, my heart beginning to swell against itself, opening the barricades of my soul.
14 And I felt a host of spirits leave me –
15 Dear friends I cannot declare whether these were autonomous spirits or merely my own demons, made out of my own greed and despair. For how should I say? They came out of me regardless, my soul sealing itself against them to deny them further entry.
16 As I came back to my senses I was induced never to get up from that delightful first contact I had ever felt with the Earth. Belonging wholly to this realm, and not to some other fabricated realm. And in this my first communion with the flesh I felt the tremendous sweetness of being alive, in this wholly unlikely sliver of life between the terrifying extremes of the cosmos.
17 For what insanity is it, to mortify the flesh? This madness wrought by all of the Old Religions. To accuse this sweet, tender skin and blood? To deny the sheer agility and delight, the fabulously improbable nature of it? To slander every sweetness it has to offer?
18 Friends do not think I was innocent of this slander. All of the posturing I had done, yoking myself to an insane God, the greed that made me contort my body into shapes it was never meant to assume. I broke open my energy centres, hungry to feed on them, I lusted after power and I was infested all the more.
19 In all of these sins: I was the greatest among you. I venerated the Void and I proclaimed silence to be golden, I denigrated the Word and gave over my tender flesh to every djinn that creeps and possesses and deceives.
20 We were told that we were wretches and worms, all such degenerate accusations. We were led around by chimeras and pillars of fire, by djinns masquerading as Prophets and as the Risen Christ. We esteemed the madness of the Revelator, the pitiful insanity of Saul.
21 How easily we were deceived! To believe that a single trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, or that one act of brutality resulted in justification and life for everyone!
22 So too were we exhorted to wait, but for what? A false hope and a broken promise, a man who died and never rose, and out of that every horror that has since enslaved the world.
23 Even the falsehoods spoken about The One. I saw plainly that two are better than one, for when one falls the other may uplift her companion. Though one might be overpowered, two can withstand the oppressor. And with such power in two, then what of three? Or more than that? They shall twine into a cord that shall not easily be broken.
24 On that day there was complete restitution for the many who had gathered. The peacemakers among us were blessed, the bereaved and the lonely were blessed. Blessed were those who had been beaten down, who were slandered, blessed even those afflicted with bitterness against their fellows. We were blessed to inherit the Earth, as we had always done, and by this blessing all of us were comforted, all of us were redeemed.
25 Brothers and sisters you will know these truths I declare, in your hearts that now brim full of mercy. Because we were shown mercy. Because we came into this world pure of heart and have longed to return to that state, lacking only the signposts that would direct us back to our original state of grace.
26 Night fell among the people but the Light did not depart. Each one of us rose like a star against the darkness, shining out in a vast array of colours, all of us astonished to see the long night of ignorance banished by the coming of the Light.
27 Now my sisters and brothers I would ask you to attend to this part of what I am given to say. For there abounds cheap talk and gossip about the Ascension of the Two, by columns of fire or by chariots wreathed in the same element, the same superstition that has always seduced the credulous.
28 I tell you solemnly: none of these things happened. Rather than usurp some high place above the People, as had the jealous spirits before them, the Two merely uncleaved from each other. They uncoupled to hold hands, as simple a gesture as that, walking down on their human feet to descend the Signal Mountain.
29 As the soft lights swirled and the people embraced I saw the Two walk towards me. I thought to kneel or prostrate myself but I was held there upright in my human dignity, looking into their smiling eyes.
30 As I smiled back I felt myself requested: Tell this to the People. I would have protested my incapacity and asked with what words but they merely smiled at me. Comfort the People. And I was infused with the incipient Word, the assurance that right words would come to me so that I could set them down.
31 I trembled as the Two passed on either side of me, rejoining with each other as they walked away through the crowd. Leaving me with the simple injunction to set down these words, these lessons that I now see I have always known by Heart.
32 Dear friends there is no need to admonish you against your own beliefs, or to claim any primacy for this my message to you. My own words may be doubted but not what has been effected by the Word, and these pages are nothing more than signposts upon the path, some comfort to the weary traveller who yet presses on alone.
33 So much has been written of faith, the victory of faith over the law, but in truth both of these strictures have been overcome. I do not exhort any of you to believe but merely to look, charging you as I do so: guard what has been entrusted to you, your greatest and most god-like part, the sovereign capacity for doubt that secures the shining citadel of your mind.
34 For it was faith that murdered so many. It was certainty that always damned the world. In the fullness of the new kingdom brothers need not follow, and sisters need only open their eyes.
35 Dear friends I am now ended the things I have been given to say. I conclude in my hope that you will rejoice in the Good News, not simply because it was prophesied, but because it has now come to pass.
36 God’s People have been delivered out of the wilderness. They have entered into the Promised Land, the original Garden of Eden out of which they were exiled so long ago. And it is in Her name that I send you these words, so you might turn to Her ways: the One True Mother, the inestimable and pure-hearted kingdom that we now know as the Earth.
37 I proclaim these things out of the fullness of my heart, with some tears but also the frank consolation that these words might speak comfortably to Her People, and liberate those still in bondage to the perverted gods of men.
38 Leaving others to speak of the days since we resumed our inheritance, our days now lived in heaven for there is no other one.
39 Remaining as I do so your faithful companion, and your every friend – Lilith.
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