So I’m giving you the crib sheet right now. Maybe you’ll understand it and maybe you won’t. Your whole question is the mistake. Who’s the serpent and who’s the Holy Mother? Who’s bad and who’s good? Who persuaded the other one to eat the apple? Who has the power and who’s powerless? All of these questions are the wrong question.
It’s more complicated than that, sugar. However complicated you think it is, everything is always more complicated than that. There are no shortcuts. Not to understanding and not to knowledge. You can’t put anyone into a box. Listen, even a stone isn’t the same as any other stone, so I don’t know where you all think you get off labelling humans with simple words and thinking you know everything you need. But most people can’t live that way, even some of the time. They say: only exceptional people can cross the borders. The truth is: anyone can cross, everyone has it in them. But only exceptional people can bear to look it in the eye.
Look, I’m not even real. Or not real like you think ‘real’ means. I’m here to tell you what you want to hear. But the things you people want, I’m telling you.
A long time ago, says the voice, another Prophet came to tell me that some people I’d made friends with wanted a King. I told them what a King would do. He’d take their sons for soldiers and their daughters for cooks – I mean, if the daughters were lucky, right? He’d tax their grain and their wine and their cows. These weren’t people with iPads, you feel me; grain and wine and cows were what they had. I said: Look, a King will basically make you into slaves, and don’t come crying to me when that happens. That’s what kings do.
What can I tell you? Welcome to the human race. You people like to pretend things are simple, even at your own cost. They still wanted a King.
Allie says: Are you trying to tell me there’s literally no right choice here?
The voice says: There’s never been a right choice, honeybun. The whole idea that there are two things and you have to choose is the problem.
Allie says: Then what shall I do?
The voice says: Listen, I’ll level with you: my optimism about the human race is not what it once was. I’m sorry it can’t be simple for you any more.
Allie says: It’s getting dark.
The voice says: Sure is.
Allie says: Welp. I see what you’re saying. Been nice working with you.
The voice says: Likewise. See you on the other side.
Mother Eve opens her eyes. The voices in her head are gone. She knows what to do.
The Son in Agony, a minor cultic figure. Of roughly similar age to the portrayals of the Holy Mother here.
On the desk of Margot’s assistant, a phone rings.
She’s in a meeting. The assistant tells the voice on the other end of the line that Senator Cleary can’t be reached right now, but she can take a message.
Senator Cleary is in a meeting with NorthStar Industries and the Department of Defence. They want her advice. She’s an important person now. She has the ear of the President. Senator Cleary cannot be disturbed.
The voice on the other end of the line speaks a few more words.
They sit Margot on the cream-coloured couch in her own office when they tell her.
They say, ‘Senator Cleary, we have bad news.
‘We’ve had word from the UN: she’s been found in the woods. She’s still alive. Just barely. Her injuries are … extensive. We don’t know if she’ll pull through.
‘We think we know what happened, the man is dead already.
‘We’re so sorry, Senator. We’re so sorry.’
And Margot is falling.
Her own daughter. Who put the tips of her fingers in the centre of Margot’s palm once and gave her the lightning. Who curled her little, waving hand around Margot’s thumb once and held on so tightly that Margot knew for the first time that she was the strong one. Now and for ever she would put her body between this little scrap and harm. That was her job.
There was a time when Jocelyn was three. They were exploring the apple orchard at her parents’ farm together, mom and little daughter, with the slow intensity with which a three-year-old examines each leaf and stone and splinter. It was late autumn, the windfalls just turning to rot. Jos stooped down, turned over one of the browning fruit, and a cloud of wasps flew from it. Margot had always had a particular terror of wasps, ever since a child. She grabbed Jos and wrapped her arms around her, holding her close to her body, grabbed her and ran for the house. Jos was fine; not a scratch on her. And Margot, when they were comfortably seated on the couch again, found that she had been stung seven times, all the way down her good right arm. She had not even felt it. That was her job.
She finds she’s telling them this story. In a gabble, in a moan. She cannot stop telling this story, as if by telling it she could go back now just a little way along the path, and put her body between Jos and the harm that found her.
Margot says, ‘How can we stop this happening?’
They tell the Senator it has already happened.
Margot says, ‘No, how can we stop it happening again?’
There is a voice in Margot’s head. It says: You can’t get there from here.
She sees it all in that instant, the shape of the tree of power. Root to tip, branching and re-branching. Of course, the old tree still stands. There is only one way, and that is to blast it entirely to pieces.
In a mailbox in rural Idaho, a package sits unclaimed for thirty-six hours. It is a yellow padded envelope, about the size of three paperback books, though it rattles a little when shaken. The man who is sent to the post office for it feels it suspiciously. It has no return address: doubly suspicious. But there’s no solid bulk that might indicate a home-made bomb. He slits it open along the side with a pocket knife, just to be certain. Into the palm of his hand tumble eight undeveloped rolls of photographic film, one by one. He peers in further. There are notebooks, and USB sticks.
He blinks. He’s not a smart man, though he is a cunning one. He hesitates for a moment, thinking this package might be just another piece of junk sent to the group by men who are more crazy than disaffected. They’ve wasted time before on meaningless trash that men claimed represented the Start of the New Order. He’s been personally berated by UrbanDox for bringing back parcels that might contain tracking devices within home-made muffins, or inexplicable gifts of jockey shorts and lube. He pulls a handful of the notes out at random and reads the even hand.
‘For the first time today on the road I was afraid.’
He sits in his pickup truck, considering it. There have been others he’s thrown away without hesitation, others he knows he must bring back.
In the end, the thought slowly crosses his mind that the camera films or the USB sticks might contain nudie pictures. Might as well see what they are, anyway.
The man in the pickup tips the rolls of film back into the envelope, and pokes the notes in after them. Might as well.
Mother Eve says, ‘When a multitude speak with one voice, that is strength and that is power.’
The crowd roars its assent.
‘We speak with one voice now,’ she says. ‘We are one mind. And we call upon America to join us in the struggle against the North!’