Chapter 13 — Morning

IF YOU’RE NEW HERE, YOU ARE LATE TO THE SAGA OF A TALE OF TWO TIMES. WE ARE SOON ENDING THE 9TH AND FINAL VOLUME OF THE NARRATIVE, WHICH WILL WRAP UP IN THIS POSTED FORMAT ON GOOD FRIDAY OF THIS LENTEN SEASON.

TO START READING AT THE BEGINNING, THE FIRST VOLUME, THE MENACE OF THE ANCIENT FOE, CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING THE BUTTON:

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~ 1 ~ …“Thou hast not baited me into thy trap. I, who am more beautiful and wise, have lured you into my trap. Thou shalt serve me as a mere adornment!”

Rhoda did not give the pleasure of a reply to the Ancient Foe. While he had been speaking to her in mockingly formal Old Goth, she had been fleeing him. But his Soma behind her had ballooned, filling the chamber faster than she ran, and now it knocked her off her feet and began to smother her! She twisted her body beneath the loathsome thing with the strength of desperation, clenched its wrinkled, oozing skin in her hands, and yanked herself free.

Scrambling away frantically on her hands and knees, just ahead of the Soma and enveloped by its stench, she collided with an object—maybe a chair. She grasped it and dragged herself to her feet, her stinging eyes nearly blind in the dark, foul air swirling around her. Cackling voices mocked her while the Hell Stench blew into her face like flowing molten plastic. But she was upright now, and she ran.

A new torment began: Every square inch of Rhoda’s skin itched and stung as if tiny fish hooks were catching and tearing it and scaly little hands were casting salt into the opened wounds.

“Where wilt thou flee? Thou shalt serve me!” rasped the chuckling androgynous voice of the Foe, who was clearly delighting in the pursuit.

Oh, God! I made all of this. It’s my doing. Chagrin spurred Rhoda on toward a dull light appearing before her. Slackening her pace had increased her pain; increasing it was causing her to stumble and careen off the walls. I’m in a tunnel. It’s endless. No; I made the tunnel; it must go somewhere.

The stinging of Rhoda’s eyes increased, and ooze thickened on them. She tried to rub them clean with her stinging hands, then stumbled on more slowly, slipping off her gloves in order to use her fingernails to peel the congealing ooze from over each eye. She cast behind her the eye covers of a slowly-forming death mask.

After ripping from her face the remainder of the ugly gauzy matter, Rhoda was seeing again, in a deathly, livid green light which she knew was the visual essence of the Hell Stench. It had been fabricated by the false Thanes of Tintina who had abandoned their Lord to serve Sunderer.

Rhoda shouted, “I’m dying, but I’m not yet dead!” Feeling the death mask ooze now working its way into her ears, she ripped the gauzy ooze from them and, seeing in her hands the writhing worm-like parts of it which she had pulled from inside her ears, she cast it away in disgust, fleeing on.

In the widening tunnel she passed many closed doors. Rhoda slowed to a walk, searching for an exit while working the ooze from her hair as one disgusting mass. She swung her long hair over her shoulder, trying to complete the removal, and the glob of heavily congealed ooze pulsed as if something were trying to escape from inside it.

Rhoda spun around in violent revulsion, hurling the writhing glob toward the face of the Soma, against which the projectile shattered into glass-like splinters which stabbed deep into the monstrous thing, provoking wails of outrage.

Rhoda had been still just long enough for the ooze encasing her flight suit to fully congeal. Unable now to lift her feet, she frantically yanked down the suit’s zipper and extracted both arms, then reached down and pulled out her left leg. Her right leg was stuck in the suit by the bulge of her ankle dagger, so she shoved her hand inside the stiff leg of the suit, pulled out the dagger, and hastily cut away the encasement. She leaped clear, rolling away from her former flight suit, which was fixed to the ground, hissing and reaching out in search of her like a two-tentacled hydra.

After rising to her feet, Rhoda backed away slowly, watching the inflated Soma’s advancing wall of wrinkled skin pause before the waving hydra.

Rhoda stood naked before the Soma, her dagger raised and the pain and stench gone from her body. The Soma’s skin had attained a metallic sheen, and it rippled like a livid green lake surface. Its androgynous voice wailed to the hydra: “At last thou art mine! Me only wilt thou serve!” The metallic skin formed a beak with which it snapped her animated flight suit into itself.

Fool, you have taken the bait. Rhoda turned around. Facing the tunnel’s hopeless blind end, she cried out in Old Goth, “Heart Shield, grant me the Death of Sleep!", and threw herself forcefully against the blank stone wall. Her body collapsed, the heat rapidly leaving it as she re-sheathed her dagger. Rhoda passed into silence and cold, sprawled on the tunnel’s icy stone floor.

~ ~ ~

She awoke on her deathbed. Using her fingers, Rhoda forced open her eyes, which wanted only to rest, to be closed forever. After that effort, her hands dropped and would not allow her to move them. Her eyes’ view of the room was stark and sketchy. People were present in it—many children among them—and voices. Although she wanted to hear the words, only parts of them drifted to her, like debris washing up on the beach.

She knelt and picked up a broken piece of wood, seeing that it was curved like a piece of some kind of vessel—a ship’s hull. It was varnished like a well-kept sailboat hull, and between its splintered ends was most of one large gold-painted letter, outlined in sky blue. It must be an "R". Is that me? Rhoda? Am I Rhoda Knox …Chavez? Was it seagrass which was wrapped around the shard of painted wood? No, it was a cord. …the painter of a lifeboat? That must be it. I'll pull it in, because it's attached to a little dinghy there on the horizon. Someone's in it. He's asleep! Rhoda heard herself shouting, ”Hey, you voices! Give me a hand; let's haul it in and see who he is."

Her hands moved independently of her, grasping the fine painter and pulling with enormous strength. But the painter was a thin thread which she felt only faintly. I need to be smaller, so I won’t lose my line! The room became even sketchier, only a few strokes of the line in her hand. Is this an ink line or a pencil line? How can I tell? It’s so hard to think this out! The voices sounded like long breakers crashing softly on a beach. A bolt of lightning flashed over the sea. Only the one fiber of thread remained, but it fit nicely into her hands.

It was a fine rope, expertly made. She felt an impatient tug on it, and, sighting along the rope, Rhoda saw that Hans was tugging on it! She released it, and the little skiff in which he was sitting vanished over the horizon. “Where did he get that white hair?”

~ 2~ The night breeze was fluttering her red-gold hair on the pillow. Rhoda turned her face into its fullness of scent and promise. Then she sat up and stretched luxuriously. The nightmares had fled—or were they a foreseeing?

Her eyes, scanning the room for the source of the familiar sweet scent surrounding her, lit on the softly glowing red and yellow roses in a vase on the bedside table. Addressing the candlelit roses, Rhoda said, "Well, that’s finished. Or, was it a bad dream? It was worth doing, even though I didn't do it well. And the memory—yuck! …Has Hans aged prematurely?”

She sat up and swung her legs around, dropping her feet to the floor. Sitting there on the edge of the bed, she looked down at her robe. Raising her arms to admire its sleeves, she said, "This is magnificent! Manuel must have woven its fabric. Oh, …Mother made it! I grew the flax for the threads! And I bound all of those Living Memories to them.” She stood up, feeling the grace of the well-cut gown, and observed her candlelit self in the large mirror, running her fingers through her hair. Have I received Yohanna's beauty bath? My hair really does feel clean forever, just like Isabel’s hair as she described it.

…The room was a corner room, like her own room in Home Ranch. From its windows she saw only a hint of mountains; it was nighttime now. Rhoda clearly remembered running hand-in-hand with Ricardo through the Commons, and throwing herself in complete exhaustion onto this bed. Where was he?…

Examining the room, she had sensed at first that one window faced the Commons and the other faced Earth’s Province. Now, however, the windows were side-by-side in the same wall. Oh. I'm mellowing. This can’t be more dreams. Can it? Beyond the farther window facing Earth’s Province, a curtain had been drawn across the room as if to partition the bedroom. What kind of privacy was that?

Have I faced the Foe in the Commons? I don’t recall it at all. But I was exhausted. No! I could not not forget that, and I’m not dreaming now. Is this room the high Battleground? I know the Soma and its crew are near. …Ricardo has altered it somehow. …Yohanna, where are you? You’re silent! …A conspiracy between you two? Ricardo, you brought me here blindfolded! Is the Foe, too, confused about the location of this Battleground? Wake up, Rhoda!

A firm knock at the door sounded like Ricardo’s. Eagerly, Rhoda opened the door.

“You sent for me? I trust that I am not late.” It was Sigurd!

Rhoda was taken aback. Then a twinkle in Sigurd’s ancient, lined face betrayed him. At last, he had mastered the art of the practical joke!

Smiling, Rhoda replied, “I recall my deathbed, Father. I fear that you are too late to hear my confession.”

“I’m told that Visions can be unreliable guides to the future.” Father Sigurd stood aside.

Ricardo, dressed in his wedding robe, stepped over the threshold and ceremoniously took Rhoda’s hand. Standing beside her, he looked at Fr. Sigurd. “Good Padre, I acknowledge Rhoda Maria Ottilie Ortega y Knox to be my bride, my spouse.”

“And, Good Padre, I acknowledge Ricardo Miguel Hernandez y Chavez to be my bridegroom, my spouse.”

Ricardo slipped the ring onto Rhoda’s finger.

“May the Good Lord grant you health, children and frugal prosperity, and protect you from the world, the flesh and the devil.” Fr. Sigurd withdrew from the room, and Ricardo closed its door.

“Ricardo, is what comes next really what we want?”

“What’s next?” Ricardo untied Rhoda’s robe and slipped his arms around her.

“But, Ricardo! The Foe! We haven’t faced him yet. We can’t… Can we?”

“Rhoda, we have world enough and time. Trust me.”

“Oh. Yes… Yes! I’ll trust you…”

~ ~ ~

Rhoda stood alone near the window to Earth’s Province, languorously stretching and yawning as she turned slowly around, viewing the bridal chamber. Her field of vision shifted from Ricardo’s glowing gaze on her naked body, to the chamber’s windows, to Manuel’s hanging.

From the opposite side of the hanging, Gabrielle’s eyes, in the head of the silent Green Serpent, were riveted on Rhoda. The fine curtain fluttered, the dragonfly ornament attached to it swayed back and forth, and Gabrielle absorbed the sight of Rhoda as the statue of a goddess—a vision which was shared by the Friend, who was one stroke removed from complete vesture in the Soma. The stroke was Gabrielle's. The Friend and all of his Thane-gods were personally present to Gabrielle, who was hearing and living the ecstatic cacophony of the gods as they saw, earthly-wise, Gabrielle's vision of Rhoda.

The serpent advanced slowly on its beautiful prey, stealthily extending its head toward the shadowy side of the hanging.

Rhoda’s stretching arms hesitated in their motion, her eyes having caught the motion of the Dragonfly Device clinging to Manuel’s Hanging. The Device released itself and flew into the space behind the curtain, hovering before the Green Serpent, to which it was invisible.

Hey! I didn’t command that move! The Green Serpent was invisible to Rhoda, but she did not call back her Device. She looked out through the dragonfly’s eyes, experiencing a double Vision: In the place of the Green Serpent, Rhoda saw a huge predaceous larva of a Permian dragonfly in a pool formed by a flow from Manuel’s hanging. Her feet were bathed in the pool.

Simultaneously, Rhoda saw the god Sunderer, who was personally present to her in all of his original splendor—in the Beginning.

Rhoda smiled at the god. Gesturing to him, she said gently, “Come with me, Friend. Make our joy complete, sharing in it.” They were facing each other as peers. Sunderer beheld her with perfect clarity in his own light.

Sunderer’s First Thane, Cleaver, also saw, and communicated to him, “You have received an agreeable invitation, My Liege Lord.”

But Sunderer replied, “I am the Truth Carrier: I have pledged to draw all of humanity into the being of my Denizens. I will be true to myself, rather than stoop to accept this invitation from the Fool of that accidental race!”

“Nor will we let you!” chorused the cohort of gods—all, except for Cleaver.

The cohort found themselves in a single place in Earth’s Province. Cleaver alone among them grasped the meaning of Sunderer’s term, "accidental race", and Cleaver knew his Liege to be wrong in the understanding which led him to use the term, for any creature of Earth’s Province who was somehow also in the Beginning, could not be an accident. Yet only from here, in this Place in Earth's Province, was Cleaver able to see it!

In his new understanding, Cleaver saw that this Place was not the Soma. Cleaver saw that he, with the other gods of Sunderer’s cohort, were confined to the Province of the recently fabricated Miner Device. With that realization came the knowledge that this Place was a trap—a god trap—devised by the recently departed Herbert Schooner, who had been his own "Hand", the Maker Gesalec!

Cleaver was at once aware of being in the Beginning and in this Place. The Seam had not closed on this long event!

“Seize my Wild Way’s Front Gate!” Hearing Sunderer’s command to Gabrielle, the Left and Right Hands loped forward around the serpent’s body to receive Rhoda’s still-living body from the snake’s jaws.

In that instant, an outburst of violent hatred of Rhoda’s resplendent beauty drove Gabrielle to strike in fury, seeking to destroy Rhoda with her Calipers’ Refining Fire!—rather than use the Calipers’ jaws to maim and hold her.

~ ~ ~

Cleaver, in his new awareness, grasped the supreme folly of Gabrielle and Sunderer. Each of them was in the act of transgressing the Design of the Soma. By flying in the face of the Ethical Force in this manner, they would achieve, in an instant, the very opposite of their goal!

Cleaver, well aware that his own agency had a part in preparing the way for this moment, experienced a flash of enlightenment: His acts—all of them—had been ugly! None of them had possessed the beauty which a god by its very nature pursues.

At once Cleaver found himself back in the Beginning. He was also in his own Province in the middle Airs, uniting the Province of the Miner to his own—in which he saw the instantly enormous hovering Dragonfly open its jaws wide and, intercepting the striking Green Serpent, snap off its head!

The Green Serpent and all of its its retinue were at once thrown out of Earth’s Province helter-skelter, in a blinding flash of Electrum!

Because of Cleaver's location, the power of the Electrum stroke was diverted into the Commons, toward his Place. If its power had been directed into Earth's Province, it would have consumed the galaxies.

At the same moment, the huge larva at Rhoda’s feet—the Soma’s Heart Root—vanished.

In Earth’s Province, the only sign of this entire event was a flicker of Rhoda’s ring as she completed her welcoming gesture to the Friend.

Ricardo had been watching Rhoda, admiring with deep pleasure the sensuous grace of her nude back, from her heels to her outstretched fingers. He saw her ring’s odd flicker.

As she slipped back into his arms in the bed, he asked, “What was that odd sparkle of your ring?”

“That was a reflection of your eyes’ twinkle, my love.”

Ricardo was yet unaware of the perfection with which his strategy—leaving in Rhoda’s hands the encounter with Sunderer's Soma—had succeeded. And Rhoda had not realized that her encounter was yet a work in progress.

~ 3 ~ “You overwhelmed me, my love. ‘On my moon day of moon days, it was glorious. Your bride thanks you’.” Into Ricardo’s ear Rhoda whispered the ancient endearment by which, in Old Goth tradition, the bride greets her husband on their first morning.

In the earliest light of dawn, she held Ricardo’s head tenderly against her breasts. “Sic transit gloria mundi,” she murmured in Latin. “Thus passes the glory of the world.”

“Ricardo.” She slid down his body to face him. Taking his head in her hands and looking into his loving eyes, she said, “I’ve conceived already. I’m sure of it; I know every molecule of my body.” They wrapped their arms around each other in a profound embrace.

Suddenly, Rhoda flung off the bedcovers and shoved Ricardo out of bed. As he fell limply onto the floor on his back, she leaped on him and pinned him down, her hands pressing his shoulders hard against the floor. Ricardo smiled blandly up into her face.

“Ricardo! You Trickster!”

“It was rather good work, wasn’t it, dear?” Ricardo’s male delight was maddening to her, but intriguing. “And you were brilliant.”

Rhoda sighed. “My dear Trickster, you used our mutual ignorance so well, to arrange our wedding night perfectly!” They smoothly shifted their positions on the floor, into an embrace…

~ ~ ~

Daylight flooded their room. Rhoda had bathed long and luxuriously. Then she had wrapped herself in her wedding robe and had sat on the bed’s edge with Ricardo’s robe neatly arranged over her knees, admiring his slumbering body while he lay entangled in the bedclothes on the floor. When the sunlight touched his face, she nudged him gently with her toes, waking him, then reached down and took Ricardo’s hand. After raising him from the floor and herself from the bed, she ceremoniously clothed her husband in his robe. After standing back admiring him, Rhoda grinned. “Honey, go splash some water on your face and freshen up, so we can go find us some breakfast!”

After a long time in the bathroom, Ricardo appeared again before his bride, looking wonderfully fresh, and ready for breakfast.

Rhoda looked at him accusingly. “Ricardo, I asked you to splash some water on your face, but you’ve taken so long bathing that I’ve grown weak from hunger. Have you forgotten already that I’ve got to eat for two now, because of you!”

“Well, dear, when I saw that you had bathed in splendor, I felt compelled to do likewise.” He kissed her tenderly.

Rhoda poked a finger playfully at her Ricardo. Then she took his ring from the open box next to the vase of roses, and slid it onto his finger. “There, sweet love; what would people think? …That delay in the rings was a part of your Device, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, my love. The timing of symmetrical form is everything.”

“Ricardo, when are we? And where are we?”

“I don’t know the date, sweetheart, but I’m pretty sure we’re over a half-century in the future of the day on which Thersa woke up Thiuderieks. I do know where we are: We’re in our Bridal Bower, and it’s a Device that I fashioned secretly, with Benjamin’s help, at this little Clan outpost in the Chilean Andes. Here, in this Hold, we have to mellow in political secrecy for about fifteen years, beginning to raise our family, before we venture into the wider world.” Grimly, he added, “We have at least two years in which to face the Foe.”

Ricardo missed Rhoda’s raised eyebrow, in turning away at the sound of a knock at the door. At once he unlocked it and opened the door at which Rhoda had greeted Fr. Sigurd the previous night, and long ago. Before releasing the opened door, Ricardo experienced an unexpected sense that they were still mellowing.

An enticing kitchen aroma accompanied the figure in their doorway—the scent of fried sausages wrapped in dough which was now baking. It was the Home Ranch custom to serve these pigs-in-the-blanket on First Sundays, in honor of Ottilie Krüger.

“Good morning. I am Isabel Rose Fuentes, the first daughter of Thiuderieks and Thersa, who are now known as Theodor and Betty Adler. I have prepared breakfast for you.”

Ricardo replied in Spanish, “Isabel Rose, I must ask you please to stay outside the threshold of this room. I have just now discovered that we need at least a few minutes more of mellowing into your today.”

Isabel Rose took a step back from the doorway, but she continued to watch them attentively. The door had appeared that morning in the wall of this hall, and, looking into the room to which it had opened, she sensed a mellowing prism in the open doorway.

Thersa had told her daughter several years earlier, when they had begun watching for the awakening of Rhoda and Ricardo, “It will have been a long night, and they will be very hungry.”

For a long moment, Isabel Rose Fuentes looked intently at Rhoda, and Rhoda looked as intently at her. Rhoda saw much in Isabel Rose’s appearance which was like Yohanna’s mother, Edna. And it seemed to her that it was Thersa’s eyes which were looking at her from this tall woman’s smooth, dark face.

Long ago, Thersa—young, fair-skinned and raven-haired—had, to find her mate, sacrificed a caribou to Ingundis, who was the northern deity of her tribe, ruling the stars circling the Pole. A thousand years later, Thersa had found her love: the African man Thiuderieks, who was the first Keen Maker. Now, after another nine-thousand years, their daughter was standing here before her! Rhoda was dizzied by the rush of those years into the present.

This small Clan Hold in which they were, high in the Andes, consisted of multiple connected apartments which had been delved into the upper part of a huge butte’s interior. The room into which Isabel Rose was now looking had always, before that day, appeared to her to be solid rock. On either side of it a room had been delved into the rock, leaving here a room-sized pillar of rock between them. Windows in these two rooms looked out from the side of the butte, and now the windows of the new room between them looked out on the same view. From air taxis approaching the Hold, the windows of the new room were now visible.

“If Ricardo Chavez’s Bridal Bower Device succeeds,” Isabel Rose’s father had told her, “then when (and if) their moment on the Advancing Front coincides with ours, their apartment will appear in a twinkling one morning, just about here.” He had placed his hand on the paneled wall. The wall had always felt cool from the mountain’s stone behind it. Now, a sturdy carved door existed in that wall. It was the same door, to the same room to which Fr. Sigurd had been led by Ricardo, decades earlier, to secretly witness the quickly-spoken nuptial vows by Ricardo and Rhoda, in what was then a distant future to Fr. Sigurd.

Recovering from her dizziness, Rhoda exclaimed, “Isabel Rose, I can see that you are Thersa’s daughter, but you appear to be about the age of my mother, when I last saw her! …O brave new world which awaits us!”

Isabel Rose had greeted them in Spanish, with an accent which was new to Rhoda. Rhoda had spoken in English, and Isabel Rose now responded in that language, “Rhoda Chavez, for many years there’ll not be too ‘many people in’t’—if we are to keep your presence secret from the ears of the Foe’s Circle and the world.”

Rhoda immediately liked this new Isabel, who continued, “When I was young I met Victoria, your mother, in New Home Ranch. I can see that you are her daughter. Of course, she and your father have passed.”

“They knew that Ricardo and I were dead to them, if not to the world, when we parted. …The smell of pigs-in-a-blanket is wonderful!” Rhoda closed her eyes in a long moment of silent reflection.

Isabel Rose’s mother had told her about Rhoda’s character; she knew to wait for Rhoda to speak.

“Are you named for Isabel Tavares?”

“Yes, Anna; my parents named me for the Isabel who accompanied my mother through the Commons to rejoin my father. She became Isabel Tavares Mendoza of New Home Ranch, who’s now old and in very frail health.”

“I assigned that task to Isabel Tavares only days ago! I see that she has succeeded in it. Ricardo, will we be able to see her and Diego?”

“Sweetheart, for that to happen our Isabel needs to live another fifteen years. During that time, only members of Thiuderieks's household may know that we’re alive, so you and I have the new and more personal burden of separation from our old friends in their old age.”

“That means we can’t even be known as Rhoda and Ricardo. Okay, Isabel Rose, what are our new names going to be?”

“Anna and Antonio Marquez are the names that you’ll be known by. We’ve created all of the papers that you need for your new identities, and we’ve printed out a detailed account of your new lives, for you to study. Your fictional family history goes back to the early days of Walter Knox and Reyna Schroeder.”

“Ricardo—Antonio, honey, did you take a hand in creating our new identities?”

“No, my Anna; when Diego and I talked about the need for new identities, we didn’t discuss names or family histories.”

Rhoda drew his hand into hers, pressing it with deep appreciation. She had expected, when she had thrown herself exhausted onto her bridal bed, that she would wake up and face the Soma, and most likely die with Ricardo in their attempt to cast down the Foe.

Rhoda smiled to herself, recalling her eager groom. He had not anticipated their need to mellow, so it seemed to her a certainty that he did not yet know that the successful encounter with the Foe was past—although, as he had promised, she had possessed world enough and time for Ricardo and for Sunderer.  What timing!

“We’ve been keeping watch for you for several years,” Isabel Rose told them, “and then this morning I found a new door in this wall. It hadn’t been here even yesterday morning.  So right away I ran down the stairs to the kitchen, to prepare your breakfast.”

Rhoda smiled appreciatively at her.  “It smells delicious.  “Antonio dear, since we have to wait here for it, will you please use the time to tell me how you worked your magic for me and the Friend.”

Isabel Rose looked at her.  Friend?  Not Foe?

“It’s simple, sweetheart.  We merely piggybacked on that extraordinary excursion by Thersa and Thiuderieks into the Advancing Front on their wedding night eight-thousand-one years ago.  We sailed ahead of them by about a half-century, in the Bridal Chamber Device here.”  (Ricardo’s arm gesture indicated their bedroom.)  “I knew you would enable Sunderer to the utmost, by generously renouncing your stake in the Friend’s Heart Weight.  That made all the difference my Device needed, to be perfectly free of his distorting power.  Of course, I couldn’t risk telling you.”

“I know, honey.”

“Fifty-eight years,” announced Isabel Rose. “That’s how far you’ve advanced in time. I’m the first child born of Thiuderieks and Thersa, and my birth—a year after their reunion—was fifty-seven years ago.”

“Thank you, Isabel Rose.  So, Anna sweetheart, the farthest-past Anchor of the Bridal Chamber’s Niche was joined to the Soma’s farthest-future Anchor event, which is Thiuderieks’s awakening.  This joining allowed us to stretch out those fifty-eight years in the Place that the Foe’s Circle reckons to be our Court—thanks to Isabel Tavares’s calculation, which they purloined. Although Isabel calculated correctly the time of Thersa’s awakening of Thiuderieks, her model assumed that Thersa had conceived on their wedding night 8000 years in the future of the Advancing Front. Actually, Thersa conceived her first child, Isabel Rose, fifty-eight years ago in Earth's Province.  Because the Circle accepted Isabel Tavares’s incorrect assumption about the date of birth, they were unable to foresee our Bridal Chamber Device.”

“Your Court?” asked Isabel Rose.

“According the Soma's Design, Sunderer must appear before us in the Earth's Province forecourt of our Front Gate, to receive our command for his first use of the Soma.  Our plan is for Rhoda to command him to produce a quantity of mineral wealth, such as a thousand tons of pure silver.  If Sunderer complies, then, according to its Design, the Soma will be his.

“We fully expect Sunderer to instead try to recast the Design so as to destroy us before we can issue a command for his use of the Soma.  But now that we can consult directly with Thiuderieks, we should be able to counter any possible recast Soma Design.”

Rhoda ‘s raised eyebrow was seen by Isabel Rose, but missed by Ricardo, for whom it was intended.  Rhoda said, “Isabel Rose, your father must have told you that the original purpose of the Device was for extracting pure minerals nondestructively.”  Isabel Rose nodded.  To Ricardo, Rhoda said, “Honey, if your magic has been so accurate, why are we still mellowing?  I would have expected the mellowing to be anchored by Isabel Rose’s knock on the door.”

Isabel Rose offered, “My father has engaged in a lot of private speculation about the details of these things; I know he will be very much interested in talking about them with you.”

Rhoda frowned. “Isabel Rose, your mother has aged fifty-eight years since we parted, while I’ve aged only eight days, so I know that meeting Thersa will be a more unsettling experience for me than anything else I’ve ever encountered in the Commons.”

“Oh, Rhoda, she told me she expects that meeting you will make her feel young again.”

While Isabel Rose and Rhoda had been talking through the doorway, Ricardo had been coming to a realization that Rhoda’s question about the delay in mellowing was not a trivial question.  He had not expected that they would need to mellow even one second beyond the knock on the door. Thinking now about the comment which he had made after Rhoda had called him a “Trickster”, he realized that his reply—“It was rather good work, wasn’t it, dear?”— might have a double meaning which hadn’t crossed his mind at that moment.

“Let’s see how our mellowing is proceeding,” he said, carefully removing the dragonfly Device from the hanging and handing it to Rhoda.

As she took the Device, Rhoda was struck by the realization that she, herself, did not know why they were mellowing!

Rhoda had not commanded Sunderer to mine silver with the Soma; instead, she had invited him to partake of the joy which she and Ricardo shared.  She knew that if she had issued the command to Sunderer about his use of the Soma, they would have mellowed according to Ricardo's plan!

Oh, no! We’ll never mellow! We’re trapped in this Bridal Chamber which will soon disintegrate into the Commons, and we’ll all die: Ricardo, me and our baby!

Isabel Rose was thinking that the dragonfly, with its wingspan of over two feet, looked like an elegant metal garden ornament. Rhoda, holding the dragonfly in her hand, was thinking, What can I do now?

Ricardo pressed his hand against Manuel’s hanging.  “The wall behind the hanging is still soft,” he said.  He was approaching nearly full understanding, hearing in his mind Rhoda’s delighted thirteen-year-old voice:  “You win, I lose, I win, Ricardo.”  At that time, he had set down his ping pong paddle and looked away from her, as the meaning of her words had dawned upon him.

Rhoda’s understanding of what she could do was dawning on her as she considered the Heart Shield’s reason for vaulting her and Ricardo into the ancient making-music for the Father of Phytas.  She understood that Ricardo’s vault from Texas had extended the past anchor of his Keen Maker’s Niche, giving him a good understanding of the origin of the War Thing, deep in the history of Earth's Province.  That understanding had allowed him to guide the events which had united Thersa and Thiuderieks, and to fabricate the Bridal Chamber in which he and Rhoda were near to, yet far from, returning to Earth’s Province.

What had Rhoda’s own vault accomplished?  Because she had heard Ricardo entering into the making-music, she knew that the past anchor of her Keen Maker’s Niche was more ancient than his.  And she understood that his anchor could not be nearly as ancient as the Permian swamp from which her vault into the past had begun…

All of it came together at once in Rhoda’s mind: She knew now what her subconscious reason had been for asking the Friend to join her and Ricardo and share in their joy. She knew, also, why it was that they had not yet mellowed, and she knew what to do about it!

It was simple: Although she had not fully completed the encounter, her offer to the Friend was true, because her vault had taken her into the deep past of the making-music for the Father of Phytas—before the time of Earth’s Province’s actual beginning!

In that imponderable past time, the god Sunderer had not yet resolved to make Denizen vassals of the whole human race, for his Netherworld Province.

Rhoda understood that her entire life had been directed in such a way as to give Sunderer the opportunity to repent, thus undoing in Meaning, all of his consequent actions!

In Doing, the blow struck by Rhoda in their combat had been the ultimate act of enablement which one creature could offer to another: She had offered him the opportunity to repent. And Sunderer’s answering blow had been his order to Gabrielle to seize Rhoda.  As this knowledge penetrated Rhoda's heart in full clarity, she understood that she had only to ratify her blow in Meaning, for the Bridal Chamber to mellow.

Ricardo had turned his gaze on Isabel Rose as the double meaning of Rhoda’s words had come again to him. Isabel Rose was staring intently at Rhoda, who was delicately balancing the dragonfly on her fingertips, pointing its head toward the hanging and sighting along its body.  Isabel Rose wondered…

Rhoda released the dragonfly, and it hovered for a moment, then darted straight through the wall hanging…

And unimaginably glorious light burst into being! As the light filled the room, accompanied by a truly enrapturing new scent, Isabel Rose experienced in the light, the light of every sunset and every rainbow, while the perfume’s scent brought to her the glow of every beautiful face.

Rhoda went to the hanging and knocked; she felt and heard the solidity of the wall behind it. Then the dragonfly reappeared, woven into the hanging like a part of its decorative design. And Rhoda said gently, “There now, my Friend, it’s done. What more could we have done for you?”

~ ~ ~

She dropped to her knees and bowed her head. For minutes, the tableau remained in place—Isabel Rose’s eyes on Rhoda, and Ricardo’s eyes on Isabel Rose—silent and motionless, until the wondrous perfume-light began to fade softly from the room as the Heart Shield said to Rhoda, “Rejoice, Rhoda my daughter! Your task is accomplished!”

Rhoda was overcome by joy and pleasure. Reaching out to Ricardo, she said, “Help me up, honey; I feel weak.”

Ricardo turned his eyes from Isabel Rose to Rhoda. Taking Rhoda’s offered hand, he raised her up.

Isabel Rose, feeling the spell break, breathed a deep sigh. She stood motionless in the hall outside their room, watching Rhoda and Ricardo gaze into each other’s eyes in a long, deep, and silent conversation.

Ricardo looked again at her. “Isabel Rose, the beauty of your face was extraordinary in that light.” Rhoda, brushing her hair back with one hand, smiled at Isabel Rose. Then she looked back at Ricardo as if she were getting her bearings.

Is Anna seeing me for the first time again, because of this strange mellowing? Isabel Rose thought of her as Anna, because she had been trained for years not to use Rhoda’s given name.

“What has happened?” Isabel Rose asked softly, thinking that Anna might need to hear her voice again.

Ricardo looked again at her as he drew Rhoda close to him. “I think, Isabel Rose, that you have beheld the radiance of Sunderer in the dawn of creation.”

Isabel Rose comprehended then that the future encounter with Sunderer about which Ricardo had spoken, was now past! The mellowing prism was gone.

Rhoda turned to her. “That‘s true, Isabel Rose. …As Fr. Sigurd might have said, ‘The corruption of the best is the worst.’ Your namesake, Isabel Tavares, has experienced the worst of the god; now you have experienced his best. Sunderer might have been called 'Heart Melter'.”

“Oh, Fr. Sigurd still says things like that! He lives with us in the Hold, Rhoda. He is by far the oldest man living, and he’s a Clan secret known only to us here.”

Rhoda stared at Ricardo, who was displaying no surprise at Isabel Rose’s disclosure. He shrugged his shoulders. “These things happen, dear.”