Joan waited, acutely aware of how incongruous she appeared in
the voluptuousness of this classical garden with its lush tropical blooms and
heady floral scents. Three heathen goddesses
had accosted her eyes on the way in with their nude stone bodies, and somehow
had managed to make her feel out of
place in her slim-fitting grey and blue uniform.
Odd how trivialities such as fashion could still intrude, after
all this time. Back in the barracks, even those who eschewed the simplicity of
the uniform still managed to blend due to sheer numbers. Amidst a motley of
everything from tattoos to top hats, Joan thought she’d never feel
concerned about her attire again. Perhaps it was her ostentatious surroundings
that called to mind kings and battles and politics, and made her long for her
armor.
That would send the wrong message though, since she was
here to entreat Michael to assign her back to the diplomatic division. Her fingers
traced the elaborate scrollwork of the stone bench where she sat outside the
tent where Michael quartered. The tent symbolized being
ready for battle, and not tied down to worldly attributes. But the grandeur of
the furnishings, the meticulously trimmed hedges, the rows of unblemished flowers, all
spoke of an army of servants catering to a master, rather than to a higher
calling.
“Some require more training than you,” Tesla explained, when
she questioned it years ago. It seemed
reasonable. She’d grown up on a farm, and if the discipline and steadfastness required to maintain a rather shabby peasant farm had
worked for her, then the meticulous tending of this garden might produce some
excellent soldiers. Whoever was in charge of weather skills for example, was certainly
ready for a promotion. The beams of sun were perfectly warm, and a wafting
breeze caressed silken curtains around Michael’s camp with a
rhythm as regular as a metronome.
As if in response to her thoughts, one of the curtains broke
out of its momentum, and a girl with golden ringlets of hair emerged from the
enclosure. “He’ll see you now,” she said, in a dainty musical voice.
Joan stood to her full height, and tried to maintain a
placid expression. Michael’s dedication to all the
trappings of heavenly imagination was a bit much--they were supposed to be
warriors after all. According to Shakespeare, art
had motivational and inspirational value, but in the presence of angels, who really needed that?
The girl child beamed a pink-bow smile at Joan, as inscrutable
an expression as Joan herself had been known for, not casting any judgment on
the incongruity of Joan’s slim fitting black athletic attire, amidst the
classical beauty of the garden. She slipped behind the fluttering curtain
again, and reemerged holding a large round transparent bubble between her
dimpled arms.
Joan stopped. She’d heard about the helmets. A new
development, yet another barrier between the divine and the human. It had been
so long since she’d last spoken with Michael, but in the timeless nature of
this business, one went by emotional measures, not by chronology. All the times
she’d seen him. Face to face. He spoke with her. He’d squeezed her hand once
and infused her with courage.
She reached out reluctantly. The bubble was rigid like
glass, but with a sensation of softness to it, like the glossy stem or leaf of
a plant. Under her fingers she felt its numbing effect. “Like looking underwater,
but better,” some had described it. “It’s like what dreams were like,” another
said.
She’d never dreamed. She’d always denied, honestly and
emphatically, to the oft repeated questions, “Were you dreaming? Were you in a
trance?” No, she’d said, it happened, it was all real. She hadn’t even known
what a trance was, until those final moments of her former life. She’d thought
of it as a gift, that blurring, that division, where some distant part of her saw
in sharp detail the crowd, her executioners, her supporters, her detractors,
the pyre and torches, and afterwards, when she could feel the searing pain of
the licking flames, but at the same time, not feel the agony of the pain. She’d
understood that separation as the splitting of soul from body, the cleaving of
spiritual and temporal.
And now she was supposed to submit to that separation in order
to speak with the spiritual leader who’d called her, who’d recruited her and
championed her in a world where the spiritual and the human were perfectly
combined?
All the revulsion and fear that she’d tamped down before her
execution, that she thought had been obliterated by her new existence, suddenly came rushing
forth, with a sharp trembling through every vein. The bubble fell from her hands, and the pink
cheeks of Michael’s cherubic secretary paled as she gasped and grasped catch
it.
Joan had turned away, exiting through the ridiculous spiral
maze of hedges, her long red hair streaming behind her. Amidst her anger and
fear and turmoil, that last movement kept registering with her, pricking at her
brain making her wonder if that stupid bubble was really that fragile or if
Michael was that unforgiving, or if the little brat simply had the tedious job
of cleaning the sparkling orb.
