Marlowe – Faustus, Act 1 Scene 3

Domus Dei, Porta Coeli – Closed Tuesdays.

Sign on the door of a Brabant church

“Everything east of Vienna is a mess.” Bishop Youngdog-Smith leaned in towards the general of the angelic army, Lady Pure Bird. “But I expect you already know that.”

The angel took another marshmallow. She raised it to examine it closely, squashing it lightly between her radiantly elegant finger and thumb. George Perkins, a man between, watched the pleasure ripple across the feathers of the angel’s wings.

“These things are such an abomination,” the angel said. “The House of Seven Corners has declared them anathema, but I find them an endless source of fascination.”

“You see that, George?” The bishop waved a hand before the blind eyes of Lady Pure Bird. “It’s like they exist in a different stream. Flowing next to us, but never quite mixing.”

“What you want me to do about it?” George tried to tear his gaze away from the heavenly cleavage, and managed it for a generous three-quarters of a second.

“You’ve experience with the Coelic realm …”

George raised a hand in the bishop’s face before he could finish.

“I went to a concert there once,” he said. “And I danced with a couple of …,” his eyes glazed over from the lack of words.

“Yes, we know, George. And not a man of the cloth does not burn with jealousy for your experience. But of the living, only you … only you, George, came back.”

The General of the Angels snapped her gaze to look at George, sudden focus returning to all her eyes.

“Vision can pierce the veils, George Perkins. But you have to be brave enough to use the sight you’ve been given.”

George looked up, trying to meet the eyes of the radiant being. Trying and failing.

“Do you perceive us?” he said.

“Of course we do, George, but we’re kind of busy. There’s too much of an experiential gap to make your kind worth communicating with. But we do love you. You’re so cute.”

George reached out to take a marshmallow so he could hide his embarrassment behind it, but the angel got there first, taking the last little gelatinous squidge for her own enjoyment.

“Ha,” the angel sighed. “Time must be completely baffling from your point of view,” she said. “Poor thing.”

“George?”

Perkins looked up. “Are you still with us, George?” The bishop asked. “You faded out there for a second.”

“The angel …,” George tailed off.

“What angel?” The bishop looked around, panic and not a little fear in his eyes. “Was she here, now? Bollocks! Did I miss it again?”

George leaned into the high-backed chair, reaching for the cup of episcopal coffee, weak and bland.

“She enjoyed the marshmallows, though,” he said, looking at the empty plate.

**

Low clouds covered Paris. From the observation lounge of the 06:30 zeppelin from Waterloo East, George scanned the grey overcast looking for the landing station.

“This fucking thing is such a nightmare for a vegan,” he said, taking another mouthful from his kebab. “Two-hundred-and-fifty meters long and made from the stomach linings of newborn calves. That’s a lot of cows. A whole lot of dead cow babies.”

The blue-eyed airhostess nodded.

“It is as you say, tuan.”

“Where to first, George? Once we’ve landed, I mean?” Afollon Drutz lay stretched out on the lounger beside him.

“I’m not looking forward to this,” George said. Afollon made no reply.

“I’m yet to have a good meal in Paris, Affy.”

“What was that place on the Loire we went to?” Drutz ruffled. “Amboise, was it? A five-course meal that could have been cooked by your angel friends, and a Château- bottled Vouvray, the memory of which can still make me cry. So don’t you judge French food by the muck they serve up in Paris.”

George shrugged, “Périgueux,” he said.

“What about it?” Drutz turned back.

“We’re meeting Elvira in Paris, then we drive to Périgueux."

“Elvira?” Afollon leaned up on one elbow. Obviously trying to look innocent, and failing.

“Is she bringing that indiscreet sister of hers?”

“Pixie?”

“No, the other one, Poppy.”

“She might be.”

Drutz unfolded his overlong legs and stood by the observation window looking down on the cloud tops. “I wonder if she’ll remember,” he said.

**

The Landaulet, a Maybach, steamed on. Elvira! George never got over her, not since that time in Amsterdam. Elvira, beautifully careless of her reality.

Once, on a trip down to Antwerp in his old Lambo, he had woken from a passenger seat doze in time to catch the speedometer coming down towards three-hundred kph. He’d traded the Lamborghini for the Maybach afterwards. Elvira was still wringing its neck, though. Lead foot, all or nothing, way above two-hundred and still climbing.

Afollon and Poppy rode in the back, the partition up and only the occasional yelp making it through the smoked glass.

“Doctor van Beethoven, could you slow down a little bit, please?”

“We are driving towards the epicentre of the apocalypse,” Elvira said without taking her focus from the dangerous lanes. “It is already too late to worry about your safety.”

George sighed, “You are clearly correct, but if judgement is coming, I would rather face it in one piece.”

He consulted the map floating over his wrist. “Pull off at Agonac, there’s a little Bar Tabac there. I might still be able to get a soft-pack of Gauloises. We can have a decent cup of coffee and strategize.”

Lady Pure Bird peeked in from whatever space she lived in and kissed him on the cheek before leaving again.

“Agonac it is,” Elvira said, plonking her foot flat to the floor.

**

A little gazebo offered protection from the afternoon sun to the few small tables scattered in the shade. George ripped open half of the top of the plain pack of cigarettes, tapping the still closed side until one of the little paper tubes stood proud above its siblings. The packaging, unadorned and colourless by governmental decree so as to remove any hint of French cool, gave up its contents. George decanted them into his rebellious cigarette case, still displaying the blue logo of the Asterix helmet encapsulated on its cloisonné surface.

“I refuse your anonymisation,” he said to the air and nobody in particular. He took a cigarette and ran his nose along the length, pulling in the dark aroma, then lifting the coffee cup and breathing in the still real, sweaty scent of aggressive French coffee.

“God! I love France.”

Elvira raised a plucked and arched eyebrow.

“Hou je smoel, tête de noeud!”

George chuckled, “I can’t help it. It’s just a grumpy lifetime of miserable experience.” He held his hand out and Elvira took it. They sat in companionable silence for a few seconds.

The back door of the Maybach opened and Afollon and Poppy emerged into the afternoon sun.

“You look like a flapper, Miss van Beethoven,” George shouted across the tiny carpark.

“Thank you, Mr. Perkins, I try.”

“God! I love a woman who’s read a book,” Afollon said.

“In Poppy’s case, that book is usually the Karma Sutra,” said Elvira, mostly with a smile.

“I love you too, sister dear,” Poppy beamed nastily.

“So, the fallen angel …,” George interrupted before family got ugly.

“Well, as far as we can tell, it’s not so much an angel as a perverted weapon.” Afollon produced his notebook, a real pad with paper and everything. “Ten days ago, a giant head appeared, floating over Périgeuex. One face to each of the cardinal positions. Well, near them, to be exact, the alignment isn’t precise. And before it, a sword of flame of indeterminate length. It swings around to prevent anyone from entering or leaving the town.”

“Why?” Elvira looked George in the eyes as she asked the question. “I mean, I don’t actually expect you to know, but you’re the one with the Empyrean connections.”

George shrugged. “I’m sorry, my love, but to be honest, I seem to know less than I used to. All I really know is a whole lot of stuff that didn’t used to exist has chosen to stop not existing, and unlike personal and private delusion, we can all see this shit.”

George caught sight of Lady Pure Bird sitting in a tree, her wings spread wide to catch the sun. “Well, most of it.” He wondered briefly if angels were solar powered, like Superman.

“I am a frivolous man, living in serious times,” he said. “I don’t really have the depth to deal with this, but it seems to have been punted into my lap.”

Elvira screwed her face up. “Punted?” She asked. “A boat with a pole?”

“No, no. To kick a ball with the toes. Lots of power, but no control to where it ends up.”

She digested his words for a few warm seconds. “You think you are a mistake?” Elvira squeezed his hand a little in what could have been reassurance. “An unfortunate target of a careless kick?”

George took a last sniff at the outside of his cigarette before placing it in the case with the others. He nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t really believe in things that seem to believe in me. However, I’m a cooperative sort, and I haven’t got anything much else on. So, I might as well try and sort out the war in Heaven. Something to do, ain’t it?”

Elvira looked deep into his eyes.

“You know, George, I can’t always tell with you.”

**

A couch-load of American pilgrims, all wearing identical cassocks and baseball caps, spilled out of their tour bus. Only two or three of the group were super-obese. George and the others had abandoned the Maybach once they got caught up in the tailback caused by the French army and their fairly pointless roadblocks.

A couple of the god-botherers stood near the back of the bus, vaping. George could hear a few snatched words from their conversation.

“I can’t believe the French don’t respect my right to bear arms.”

Her companion nodded. “S’right. The tour guide took my 1911 before we set off. I feel naked without it.”

George slid away. “Ignorantia legis non excusat,” he muttered. The others waited for him by the side of the road leading down the valley towards the River Isle. Elvira and Poppy stood less than patiently, holding a picnic hamper between them.

“We go on foot from here,” George said. “We should be able to see the lie of the land soon.

“I hope so, George.” Elvira sounded deeply unimpressed. “Maison Schiaparelli does not deal so well with cross-country.” George took in her thigh-length brown leather boots and matching miniskirt. He thought of something short and pithy, but he decoded the look on Elvira’s face just in time, and whatever he was going to say, he kept it to himself. The affair of the suede bikini came to mind, in all its pointless fury.

A herd of miniature Lamassus galloped by them, their wings furled over their flanks, their platted and woven hair flowing like black manes over the white of their shoulders. Each one made a little shriek of a battle song as it passed by.

“The line, the line. Bigger and wider, the rip must be sewed. We hold the line; we hold the line. Our blood to pay the extra debt that is owed.”

Afollon watched them charge off to whatever engagement called them, a look of undisguised disgust on his face.

“I’m a man of science, and even though I can see these ghastly little things, and I know you can see them too, I choose not to believe.”

“Well done, old fruit.” George patted him on the back. “It’s all part of the same pattern. Belief, disbelief, they both bleed over to various other sides, like wet rot through old floorboards.

“Shall we get on?”

**

The cathedral of Périgueux, a brutal basilica of the local grey stone, formed a giant cross branding the land, surrounded by the old town on three sides and the River Isle on the other.

“Why would you name a river ‘Isle’?” Poppy asked, holding hands with Afollon.

“I dunno, it’s French, innit,” he said. “But to be honest I’m more interested in the giant head with four faces floating over the cathedral. A vague feeling I recognise the human one.”

George nodded. “Angel faces are like that. You’ve probably had many conversations with them, and you won’t remember any of them, but there is always an uncanny sense of familiarity when you come across one the next time.”

Elvira jabbed him in the ribs with a finger. “How do you know that, George?”

George looked off at the horizon near the angel head. “Let’s just say, one of the ‘thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to’ stuck a spoke in my particular wheel and I sort of limp along where others flow as the river is meant to.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” she said.

“Probably for the best,” he said, eyes filling with the reflected pain. “I take no joy in my particular way of being broken.”

The sword of flame flew around to point at them. It looked like it swung a lazy arc, slow and graceful across the sky above the town, but when it turned it struck as quick as lightning.

“Do you think there is metal underneath the flame? You know, it being a sword and all.” Afollon asked.

“Well …,” George looked up to where the flames from the sword cooked the boiling dark clouds it had called over the town. The brown sky imparted a sepia tint to their reality. “I think you need to ask who this weapon was forged for. An interdimensional sword of flame seems a bit overkill just for us poor little humans.”

“How do you know it’s interdimensional?” Elvira had her arm around him from the back. She looked over his shoulder up at the cathedral and the celestial intruder, her chin jabbing painfully into his shoulder. He said nothing, however, as he liked the warmth of the embrace.

“You can’t measure it. The more people try, the bigger it seems.”

“My God!” Afollon shouted suddenly. “I recognise the granulation. It’s the surface of a star. Somehow, they’ve connected a sun, and via dimensional manipulation allowed it to touch our world wherever they want.”

“This is an ancient trap, George Perkins.” Her voice, Lady Pure Bird, Nin Mushen Babbar. “It guards the Edin.”

“The what?” George looked around, surprised in all sorts of ways. She stood before him; her face wrapped in her own wings. This was a moment out of the flow. Everything around stood still, only he and the angel free of time’s tyranny.

“The old garden, George. The walled garden. The first garden.”

George, hypnotised by the ridiculous number of breasts, struggled with his sketchy knowledge of scripture.

“But that’s in the east, isn’t it?” he stammered and stumbled.

“Not the east, George. The ‘edge’, an easy mistranslation. One it suited us to indulge. But the garden has been revealed; it comes around again, and our enemies pull back the curtain to show its promise.”

She unfurled and somehow moved in a direction George didn’t recognise, ninety degrees to all the others.

“George, this must all seem terribly important from your point of view, but on the cosmic scale this is less than small beer. Merely a fight between different microbes in a Petri dish, the outcome of which affects the universe as a whole by not even the width of one atom. Only mild curiosity draws us to it.”

“Are we really so unimportant to you?” George felt like he’d been stung. “Are we really just cat videos on your heavenly internet?”

Lady Pure Bird shrugged. “Meh … .”

George felt the swelling outrage of the slighted, the “Hey!” moment of understanding the insult.

“We … I, have importance, angel,” George’s anger empowering him. “Maybe not to you, and maybe not for long. But my existence, and my course through this mist of reality, has a point, a purpose of its own. I value it, and that is enough.”

The angel snorted, a most unattractive sound. “Listen to the pig in the slaughterhouse proclaiming the worth of its life, when all it is, is another meaningless sausage. One of billions.”

George stood up on his hind legs. “And what meat did you farm me for, Angel? Do you need my faith, my belief? Is that what feeds you?”

“The truth requires no faith, George Perkins. You are no more than a kitten spitting its clawless fury. But we will lean down and untangle you from this ball of yarn you’ve knotted yourself up in.”

“Understand Khipu,” And as she spoke, George did.

“Understand the Moirai,” And as she spoke, George did.

“Understand Copenhagen Interpretation,” And as she spoke, George did.

“Understand you live only because I choose not to kill you.” To be honest, he’d already figured that one out for himself.

“George Perkins, you are my favourite pet, but if you throw up on my best rug, you’re going to get a slap.”

“This is what I remember from my trip,” George said. “That concert in heaven. Dances with creatures of immense beauty, but also immense cruelty and menace. It was all about threat. Why did I come back, angel?”

“Do you think I’m here to answer your questions, George? For you to be able to Google the unanswerable? No, George. Today you are merely a billiard ball en route to a cannon made by players beyond your ken, in a game vast as all the universes at once. Do you explain your motives to the pawn on the chessboard?

However, come back you did, and you brought all this shit with you. Make sense of it, or don’t … makes no odds to us.”

“George!” Elvira sounded like she was using the third-time voice. She snapped her fingers before his eyes. “Come on, George, focus.”

“Mmmm,” he said. A vague feeling he was about to say something. That tip-of-the-tongue moment where thoughts disappear over the horizon of retrievable memory.

“What was I going to say? Oh yes, I remember. Or do I? No … never mind, I’m sure if it was important, it’ll come back to me.”

Poppy had laid out a groundsheet and set out their picnic. Good bread, a decent salad glistening in extra virgin like a plate of jewels. Langoustines with mayonnaise and all accompanied by a self-chilling, gurgling-fish-jug of some of the local swigging wine. And over everything, a sword made from a star threatened immediate extinction to the whole human race.

“Et-la!” said Poppy, arms out wide. “Déjeuner au bord,” she said.

“If you start taking your clothes off, I’ll tell mum,” Elvira added while reaching to break a loaf.

Poppy, a wicked look in her eye, said, “Actually, this is our partie carrée. I think the boys are the ones who should be naked.”

George reached out to grab Afollon’s wrist as he went to undo his cravat. He shook his head slowly in admonishment.

“I think you’ll find Miss van Beethoven was joking, my dear Affy.”

“Ah, yes … of course. Wine anyone?”

**

“I was an awful young man,” George said.

“You had your good points,” Elvira slapped the back of his head. “Now, pull yourself together. The end of the world needs your attention.”

“Oh, it’s not the end of the world. The Earth will spin on, and there will be other animals to take our place. Maybe other angels; time is so deep, eternity is a mind-blowing infinity, and you know how mathematicians feel about those.”

“George, what are you doing here?” The question came from the sky, from the giant angel head behind the sword.

“Because this is the edge, apparently, and there’s a murderous angel behind me.”

“Very good, George,” Lady Pure Bird fluttered. “I know this is a struggle, but you can do it.” Her tone of voice exactly that of someone calling a dachshund to jump up on a sofa.

“Lu-Idu,” Lady Pure Bird shouted up at the angel guard. “Lu-Idu, let me in, I wish to enter.”

The human face of the giant head turned, its eyes full of fire.

“Lady Fifteen? I never thought to see you again.”

“I go by Pure Bird now, Iduweh; there have been many changes, and I come for the tree.”

“You may enter as always, my lady, but your animals remain outside.”

“George here is my plus-one.”

“Very well, my lady. But you know the rules, Paradise is walled for a reason. Please keep him under control.”

“What about my crew?” George turned as he asked the question to find the van Beethoven sisters and Affy had fallen asleep in a contented wine heap under a fig tree.

“Never mind,” he said. “They’ll be fine there. I’m assuming this is your doing?” he indicated the dozers with a dismissive wave.

“Hmm …? Oh yes. They’re your emotional support animals, as you are mine. They serve me no purpose. And honestly, I don’t see what they do for you either.”

“You’re very dismissive, angel. I don’t think I like you anymore. You clearly have no idea what goes on in a human heart.”

“Aw, don’t say that, George. I understand you as well as I need to. Your continued affection is very important to me.” Her orbiting eyes all smiled at once. “Take my hand, George. Walk with me into the grove.”

She held out a paw, and George regarded it with a fair amount of scepticism. Holding hands with an angel did not sound like a good idea.

“I accept the gap between us,” he said. “Even if I don’t really understand it. So, I make the intellectual choice to trust you, even though everything in me is screaming to run away.”

“And that is why it was you, George. You never stopped fighting, and in your vulnerability, I saw something making you worth saving.”

“There are moments, angel,” George said, “Where I know a wrong choice could result in my immediate and probably painful death.”

“And?” the angel said.

“No, no. That’s all.”

“I thought you were going to say something else.”

“Then I think you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

He plonked his hand into the open palm of Lady Pure Bird and the world unravelled in an explosion of ridiculous colours. George reeled, stepping backwards under the assault of a new level of reality, deep and wide and more ferocious than anything he had even dreamed of. Colours of atoms leaping out at him, streams, brooks and irrigating ditches intense as molten silver, cutting paths between towering trees, foliage exploding like tamed novae in distant skies.

“No, George. You never get used to it.” The Pure Bird said in answer to the question he hadn’t even got to, but would have, if given the chance.

“A kiri grove in the world you were meant to live in.”

George covered his eyes with an arm

“Just a terrarium, angel. Just a tank for the human race. Our world is better. Not as bright, not as intense, but it is ours.”

Lady Pure Bird sighed, and the garden reacted.

“You are not the first to think that,” she said. “The Night Bird along with the Woman Who Would Not Bow, queen of witches. They both left this place, but they’ve come back to stand between us and what I seek.”

“Night Bird?” George lowered his arm from his face, and through squinting eyes he looked again. “Some kind of owl?”

The angel laughed, a sound unlike anything George had ever experienced, warm as love, a pure song lasting forever in that one moment.

His eyes hurt like healing.

“So why is the Garden of Eden in France?” he said.

“It’s not in France, George. It’s sort of next to it … at the moment … as you understand it. I mean, it’s been here before, and maybe will be again. Who can tell.”

“I think you know who can tell, White Bird.”

The voice came from behind, a resonant masculine growl. George jumped like a startled guinea pig. As he turned, he faced a man, handsome as all predators have to be, the medieval acme of angel-kind. Dressed in a scarlet robe, his beetle-black wings spread wide as if to hide the sky. He stood on the backs of two lions, all wreathed in lightning, his face a sculpture of leonine grace.

“Whatever you’re seeing, George, is just the manifestation of his self-delusion. Don’t trust your senses.” Lady Pure Bird moved to stand between George and this new dark angel.

“Does the word ‘trust’ not writhe in your mouth, Lady Fifteen? Does it not burn you as you shape the idea of it?”

“Anthud, I have no hate for you, we need not be enemies.”

“How about me, Fifteen?” A woman stepped out from the shadow of his black wings. Rich as the reality of this grove was to George, her beauty carried the smoke of all carnal earthliness. She was the spirit of untamed, unbowing woman, with all her scent, her flesh, her heat and, above all, her fury. “Do you have hate for me?”

“Hey, Lil. You’re looking well. How’s the child murdering business going for ya?”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said the woman. “But I am disappointed, Fifteen. I never expected you to believe all that crap from Central Office.”

George at this point had hidden behind one of the massive kiri palms, peering out, not sure if the angels had noticed him or not. As they yowled at each other, they kept getting bigger, like cats standing sideways and arching their backs.

Anthud and Pure Bird summoned swords, drifting up into the air, facing each other in snarling menace.

“You should not have come alone, Fifteen,” said the woman, wreathing herself in summoned flame.

“What makes you think I’m alone, Lil?”

George clung to the trunk of the tree, terrified. Real, mind-fucking, sanity-destroying, bowel-loosening dread. The sort of fear to make a soul feel sick, and at the same time incapable of even breathing. His hands trembled all the way to his shoulders. He’d been caught in an air raid once, locked inside a lightless garage, sudden inexplicable death blooming on his city, a random raining down of heavy missiles. Hearing the explosions all around and not knowing if the next moment would be his last. Yet, this was so much worse.

From behind General Pure Bird, the sky stretched away, running away. It made new space into the storm-circling pink clouds, and soldier angels gathered in squadrons. They popped into existence from their staging posts, each one a star. Each carried a sun sword the equal of the one scorching the Earth below.

This was the host, Lady Pure Bird finally at the head of her army.

Behind Anthud, the Night Bird, an answering army of flame-equipped monstrosities bled into the space above the garden.

“Any war is filled with the horrors of malicious pleasure.” A new, quiet voice spoke at George’s shoulder. “But a war between these creatures casts shadows across the dimensions.” George was too terrified to move. Whatever spoke to him stood behind and to turn would be to give it a reality he was not prepared to concede.

“They seek to control the tree,” the voice continued. “The Hullupu tree, Kalpavriksha, the Sampo, Yggdrasil. The dendritic structure of the entire universe and all the realms of reality held in its branches. And I have had enough of their squabbling. This tree is a work of universal art. It contains power, sure, why not. But that was not the purpose of its shaping.”

George tried to speak, to summon a question, anything, any word, maybe just to call for help. But he could not talk. The only sound he could make was a thin peeping noise, like a child trying to scream in their sleep.

“Have you grown up, George? Have you earned the knowledge of Good and Evil? Do you even know the shape of it?”

“Actually, I do.” He felt an artificial strength flowing, coming from the presence behind him. He pushed off from the tree and stood up on his two feet. “It was a phrase in the vernacular, meaning to know everything, because if you knew all the good things, and all the evil things, then understanding everything in between would follow.”

“Are you ready for such knowledge, George Perkins? Remember, you answer for all humanity.”

George looked up at Ishtar’s Skipping Rope, the moving line of battle between the two armies above. Both sides seemed paralysed in the moment-out-of-time thing Pure Bird had done to him.

“Time is not so baffling, George. If you ask the right questions.”

He let his thoughts bubble to the surface. Taking the question he’d been asked as seriously as he could, considering.

“Our world is filled with the obsessed, vile accumulators of power. Murderous leaders spreading their empires of terror and ignorance. The populations of sheep, believers and zealots, become enforcers, opening the sluices to a torrent of violence. People who would turn their back on knowledge, replacing it with faith. Maybe they would be better without knowing. But without knowledge, we are just animals.”

George looked up at the Lady Pure Bird frozen in a moment of violence. Her sword already swinging in a fiery curve towards the neck of Anthud, the Night Bird.

“This is just a representation set at your level of understanding,” said the voice. “To see this reality requires more dimensions than you have eyes for. His family is in the tree, George. He fights for his children.”

“What you want me to do about it?”

“You have to answer the question. Are you, as a species, ready for the knowledge about to be unleashed on your kind? Have you grown up?”

“Give me a second. You can’t answer a question like that without chewing it around for a bit.”

He found a fallen log, hacked into the shape of a very basic bench. And keeping his back studiously turned on his interrogator, he sat, unconsciously mimicking the pose of Rodin’s Thinker.

“Are we ready for it? No, clearly not. Are we grown up? Some are, but most are not. We are divided, and the rational, the thinkers, are losing to the feelers. The faithful will win and our species will sink under the weight of furious ignorance.”

“Your decision, George. What will you say?”

“To know is better than to believe. Reason is superior to emotion. Knowledge, no matter how painful, how dark, how bleak, will always take us further, for us to rise above what we have always been and become what we have the potential to be … .

“Yes … we are ready, near enough … almost. Which is the state we’re usually in. We’ll just have to adjust to the consequences afterwards.”

George had the sense of a hand waving, like an earthquake and a blast shockwave combined. Both armies flew away like chaff in a gale. The garden faded, and George sat in the dark.

**

“Are you alright, George?” Bishop Youngdog-Smith asked. His face a mask of concern. “You stepped out there for a second.”

“I’m fine,” George said. “In fact, better than fine. I feel brandy warm, and lamb-fleece wrapped. Don’t know where it comes from, but I’m suddenly all kinds of glowey.”

“Ha!” the bishop laughed. “You must have been talking to an angel. I think it was Aquinas who said the only way you could tell the difference between an angel and a demon was how it made you feel once it left.”

“Didn’t his teacher also say,” George dropped his voice half an octave, “you’re a dumb ox, Aquinas. But one day you will fill the world with your lowing.”

The bishop smiled.

“Why don’t you take the last marshmallow, George.”

Einde