Maria didn’t know what to say, so they kissed and hugged and Angelique saw her down to the boat. There was some water in it, but it was still more than serviceable.
“Which way do I go?” Maria asked her in that strange tongue.
Angelique pointed. “Just below the setting of the sun. Trust your feelings, for they are the wind and water helping you. Goodbye, and may the spirits favor our side.”
Maria was uncertain, scared to leave and make a go of it, unhappy to be leaving this strange girl with her even stranger series of tragedies and afflictions, but more than happy to get out of there and toward civilization. She started the engine, surprised that it caught the first time, and Angelique untied the vines, and watched the small craft back up out of the tiny inlet. It was out of sight when she could hear the engines reverse, and the sound grew loud, then slowly vanished in the night.
Angelique stood there until the last remnants of that noise were gone, then turned and walked back into the miniature jungle. She knew she couldn’t stay, half in this world, half in another. It was pulling her apart, and madness served only the Dark Man’s ends. But the Dark Man had underestimated her strength, courage, and determination, and he had the modern man’s contempt for ancient and more primitive cultures.
Primitive, though, now as ever before, was a relative term, one used by modern man, modern civilization, to judge on the basis of the way a culture looked and what a culture used in relation to their own digital watches and jet planes and computers. It did not measure the soul, nor admit that a different value system might be no less sophisticated than their own.
She removed the belt and the two hanging straw flaps that formed the breech clout, and the headband, and let them drop to the ground. She went to the center of the tiny island, which itself was barely a thousand feet across, then sat, assuming her cross-legged posture. She directed her own power inward, inducing in herself a trance-like state, slowing heartbeat and respiration, clearing her mind of all thoughts, all hopes, all fears. Time, and place, had no more meaning to her.
For a while she existed in this peaceful state, but then she began to float, like a spirit of the wind. She floated upward, out of her body, toward the heavens.
And a great presence came to her, without shape or form, and touched her. It had great power, greater than she had ever known, but it was not stained or tainted and was pure.
“I have had a long sleep,” said the presence, “yet I did not think that I would wake until judgment called, for none were left to my authority. The great, rich plains full of game have turned to sand as humans cut the timbers that preserved it; even the great jungle forests are mostly gone, and what remains is being ravaged by humans or eaten by the encroaching sands. Who is this who calls me from my slumbers?”
“I am called Angelique, and the evil has forced me to this, yet I do not mind.”
“I know you now, Angelique, better than you know yourself. Know me, then. Once I had charge of the tribes of the Earth, those who lived in harmony and peace with nature and were a part of it. The Sioux, the Cherokee, the Delaware, the Iroquois and a thousand more knew me once. So, too, did the tribes of the south, and of Africa and Asia, and the Pacific know me, and lived full lives in harmony with me. They were human, and I had my opponent, but their sins were against one another, not me, and the balance was preserved. Together we built trade routes that spanned continents; together we created great art of the Earth against the canvas nature provided. Together we built civilizations deep in the jungles and along the mighty, free river systems. War, famine, and disease were my enemies and theirs, yet so, too, did we have honor and respect.
“But then the kings and princes of the world lost their honor and respect, bending to the will of evil. They believed that their civilization was so high that many proclaimed themselves gods and had their people worship them. The altars ran red with human blood as the demons ascended, and they traded honor and respect for power, and went to conquer and enslave the lesser peoples. They descended into the deepest pit of depravity, and mocked nature itself, setting themselves up above the heavens. They fell upon one another and destroyed one another, and so great was my pain and anguish that I destroyed what was left. I reduced their numbers so that they could no longer maintain their civilizations, and confused their minds, and sent their children back to the wild once more.”
‘ ‘Are you, then, the greatest of spirits, the Father of the Universe?”
“No. I am but a pale reflection of that greatness, a servant. No more. I was a guardian, and an inadequate one. So corrupted were the souls of humanity that in the forests and the jungles they still remembered what they had once been and hungered for it. It is humanity’s lot not just to suffer what fate brings, but to triumph over that suffering.
“The Hapharsi are a microcosm of the whole. Once they were a small part of a great civilization that ruled central Africa and built great cities and temples and discovered great things. Then evil corrupted the leaders, and they fell upon one another and ripped their civilization to shreds. Only scattered remnants and no structures remain. The Hapharsi, who followed one of those leaders, were reduced to hunting and gathering in a jungle that could support and sustain them only by their constant working, their constant search for food and the basics. They might have reached for harmony, and so lifted themselves out, but instead they cursed their toil and their lot. They let their groves grow wild, and they depleted their game rather than managing it; they brought themselves to the brink of extinction. And when by their own foolishness they brought this upon themselves, they blamed not themselves and their impulses but Heaven, and cursed it, and took the easy path that Hell always offers.”
“I am saddened for them, but why must all the choices be so terrible?”
“What is is not what seems to be,” it answered. “Life is choices, and most are choices of evil, or misery, or sacrifice. Misery can be a learning experience, as can joy. Evil promises immediate rewards, but an eternity of misery followed by oblivion. Sacrifice promises immediate suffering, but an eternity of joy and reward. Consider the Hapharsi. They prospered for a time in evil’s service, but eventually one of the newer civilizations, one from the north, swept in and cut them down, recognizing evil for what it was. Not a man, woman, or child was spared, and the demon who they served did not intervene, but rather rode with the conquerors and ate the souls of the Hapharsi as they fell. The demon now rode with the conqueror, which promised greater rewards for it, abandoning its charges.”
She went for the Hapharsi, and for the souls of the conquerors as well.
“But what of today? Evil rules much of the world and wants it all. It prepares for the final battle against Heaven.”
“Evil is always with humanity, for without it how can good be determined? Today is no different than yesterday. Humanity is ruled in the main by oppressors who may not even know that they are evil. The demons can whisper words in the ears of people that are so sweet that they can believe that black is white, blue is red, and evil is good. Today there is power greater than that of the rulers of nations. Mighty companies sell weapons to rulers filled with fear of their enemies, and sell the same weapons to their enemies. They build great things for the rulers of nations, yet those things are at the expense of the people who are suffering and oppressed. Such companies take on a life of their own and thrive only in a world of evil.”
And she was ashamed, because she knew the corporate symbol on those orders for guns and bombs and planes, ornate palaces and super computers.
“Your father believed that the evil crept in and took control of his great work, but he was wrong,” it told her. “Evil can not exist without human beings who embrace it. It is humans who perform the evil, and when so much evil is concentrated at one point, one focus; the ultimate evils are possible. The Father of Evil himself is drawn to such a place like a magnet, but the magnet, like the woes of the Hapharsi, was created by humans of their own free will. They had the easy choices, the simple choices. But as that evil becomes stronger, the choices of those who would oppose it also become more odious. Your father could recognize this, but not fight it, since he could not see that the conditions were of his own making. He had fashioned the beast of Hell and was content with it so long as it did only his bidding. But like the demon of the Hapharsi, it grew too strong and too ambitious, and consumed him. Now it rules, with a power incomprehensible to those who believe it serves them.”
Reduced to this, the distance between the Hapharsi and Magellan was not that great at all. “But is there no hope?” she asked it. “Is this, then, the way humanity dies?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. They move deliberately to structure events to fulfill a prophecy. Left unchecked, they will force the final war. In this, you are the key. No army can prevail against them. No long-range determination will break them. The choices given to the few who must fight will be increasingly severe, the price extracted for a temporary respite will be high. They can lose a thousand times. Ten times ten thousand times. They will not stop, and they need win only once. It has been thus before and will be until they prevail.”
“But this need not be the time?”
“This need not be, but without shedding of innocent blood there is no remission. To save yourself is simply to choose the correct path, though that is hardly simple. To save the world requires the ultimate choice, the Messiah Choice. Each in turn will face it, you more than once, but at the right time and the right place it must be made by another.”
“But we are humans, not gods! We carry the seeds of our imperfections within us! We are no Messiahs, who can take upon ourselves the sins of the world!” She thought again of her own private Hell, the hospital, the pain, the total lack of movement, on and on, year after year. . . . She knew, even now, that she could not make such a choice as that.
“To gain strength and inner peace, be one with nature. To reconcile yourself to your condition, you must accept it and embrace it. Renounce all but nature, and gain your power from it alone.”
“The spell can not be broken, then?”
“Any spell can be broken, and will be. But to break it you must face its creator, and that time is not yet, and may or may not be, for choices lie between. It is given only to One to know, and I am not He. If you are true inside yourself, what matter who or what you are? Your choices will shape, but not necessarily determine the outcome. If evil may use the tools of good, then so the reverse is true. Merge with me now, and be cleansed.”
And she merged and saw the world with eyes that saw what no human’s could. She saw the beauty of every glistening dewdrop on every leaf, and the wonders of color in the ripples of a pond. She saw the beauty in a blade of grass, and felt the awesome power of a storm at sea. She saw and felt the joy and wonder in the faces of innocent children of all races and colors, and shared that wonder herself, becoming again the child of wonder and so beholding this corner of the dominion of God.
She walked in wild abandon with the spirits of the elements, and rode their breezes around the world. The Earth was alive and still wonderful, if one but stopped to see. There was nothing that anyone really needed that nature and the spirits could not provide, yet to mask one’s humanity built a wall between it and nature that obscured the basic truths. And yet, the ordeal was to come, and she was human and as weak as the others. She could deal with the mystic world, but she no longer had a place in the material one.
Maria had been piloting the boat mostly on instinct and the basic directions that were given to her—west southwest—but now she could see lights in the distance and much closer some navigation markers in the water that could only lead to the harbor in the distance.
She was amazed it was really there, and that she had found it so easily. She began to wonder, just a little, if maybe there was more to this magic stuff than she’d thought.
She got down to where she could make out the darker outline of the small and remote island even against the darkness of the night. She had no intention of coming right into town; they would almost certainly have some people watching there.
Instead, at minimum throttle, she worked her way south of the town, since it looked like there was something of a beach there, while the north edge was rocky and had lots of rocks painted white and a few battery powered warning lights.
About a hundred yards out from the beach she cut her engines entirely and tested the direction of the flow. The tide was coming in, by luck, and she was being taken towards the sandy shore.
The boat was now a liability to her, since it could easily be traced back to its origin and would raise signals all over the southern Caribbean. There were drain plugs in the deck, but they looked like they’d need tools and strength to get out and she had nothing.