The Godling: A Novel of Masalay Read online

  Then came my visa. “No, no,” he goes, shaking his head. It was so wrong it made him multilingual. He turned it around so I could see and pointed to the date: “Expired. No good.” To prove it, he pointed to a calendar behind him.

  I tried explaining about Suapartni’s family and their lawyer taking care of everything. That just seemed to make him angrier, and he pointed for me to go with one of the guards.

  In we went to this other room. The guy looked at the visa like me being in Masalay was an insult to him and his mother. After a long time, he rolled this one yellow form into his typewriter. Which tired him out so he took a break. I heard a whistle. He tuned the radio. Some kind of game. He typed a few letters, peered at my visa some more, slapped a few more keys, and so on. There was this low rumble. He crossed something out. Another whistle. I stood up and said astim, astim, which I was pretty sure meant please. He rolled his eyes and pulled out the sheet. Found his inkpad and stamped.

  I grabbed the paper and ran and got to the platform in time to see the last light of the train disappear.

  Evening

  Far Karsk, Masalay

  The shin pie is not pie at all, but rather a stew — mutton, onions, faadiv, and myriad ingredients Tchori can’t identify. It’s scarce the delicacy that Brother believes it to be, but certainly edible if you pick around the mutton (Ashma’s grace that it’s not kainra). Delicious rice, flavored with milk and tamarind.

  Tchori’s brother Midsuro has gone mad for Karskan, always getting aarup on takeaway from some trendy spot. She’s never fancied it. So bland compared to the burn of a proper Sagaran curry. And people claim they enjoy sitting padistu, but that has to be rubbish. Maybe if you’re Talid and brought up that way, your joints conditioned to the bend, but she can’t go more than ten minutes without her knees hurting.

  In Edinburgh, the women at the agency were excited to take her to a Masalayan restaurant they’d heard about. They were an hour fighting traffic bound for Glasgow. As she’d feared, “Masalayan” meant “Karskan.” Not the décor, mind, which was dominated by pictures of Jaya and Liashe — no proper image of the Karsk in all the place. And the music of course was Indian.

  The stereotyped Tchori, the one of people’s teasings, would have been sarcastic about all of it. But she folded her limbs into the padistan and put on an appreciative smile. The aarup kaam arrived, and she pretended to be homesick as steam fogged her glasses and the Scots all giggled from the exotic fun of eating sticky rice with their fingers.

  Carodai and the dear lady get on famously. And Tchori tries to appear engaged, but the dialect is hard and her vision feels shaky. Could be prelude to a migraine. The flickering oil lamps don’t help. She came prepared with a bottle of Motrin, but of course it’s in the car.

  “You’re not feeling unwell, child?”

  “I’m alright, thank you. Just my head.”

  Brother explains to Mashin that his novice is suffering from headache. Regrettable because the woman then bustles off to prepare a cure from her stockpile of rare roots and carcinogens. Returning after a couple minutes’ noisy labour, she produces a frothy, flecked liquid that smells like old fish.

  Instead of protecting his novice from poisoning, Brother only smiles with encouragement. She gets it down fast, smiles gratitude, and hastily chases the rancid taste with iirik and rice.

  * * *

  Such a joy to peel off her robe.

  It’s a comfortable room, and the woman has provided a towel and two basins, one with water. She brushes her teeth and washes her face, wishing for a mirror.

  The walls bear the marks of incompletely erased child scribbles, and when she lifts the mat to inspect for bugs the floor has been scribbled on as well. A naughty child at some point, but who knows how long ago. The few shelves along the far wall are stacked with picture books, and she stoops for a look.

  Tchori has always felt drawn to children’s books. Not to children, mind, just their literature. Her family feel that it’s unlike her. But they seem to be of the opinion that everything she does is unlike her.

  These books are old, nothing more recent than the 1970s, and many of the spines have come loose from their pages. She ought to get to sleep but instead sits with her legs outstretched examining the selection. (She doesn’t trust it — but her head does feel better.) There’s the same Red Horse Reader that she studied in grade school. And a series of tattered paperbacks featuring a mischievous cat. The former occupant of the room has decorated these as well — and seems to have felt particular obligation to provide every character with a hat. One Hundred-and-One Dalmatians in English. Many, many hats. The Wizard of Oz with Dorothy as a red-skinned girl from Anartha and the cowardly lion reimagined as an elephant. Standard editions of The Singing Mouse and Peter Pan. A colourfully illustrated version of The Godling.

  No great surprise that, seeing a Godling book, but she might have expected Mashin to remove it. These rural Ashmanists are such a peculiar lot: genuine devotion to Liashe and yet no compunction at ignoring Liashean doctrine. It’s 280 years since Godling belief was ruled a heresy, yet they go on telling and re-telling the story as if the Kinaat Council never said a word. In one of the closets of the house, there’s likely a hastily hidden Khaadum shrine as well.

  She opens the book, more curious than offended. Perhaps the heresy should offend her more, but one can’t help admiring their doggedness. Easy to understand in any case. The foundations of Ashmanist theology lie many strata below where these people walk every day. The Av Udaan, for instance, is a dense poem from a remote era, full of abstruse metaphor and words with no modern equivalent. It’s not even complete, doesn’t have a story to tell. Can it really be expected to compete in people’s imagination with a ripping good yarn like the Godling?

  And, to be fair, the Church has never denied that a boy called Khaadum existed. The Council’s heresy decree left room for the possibility that some elements of his story could have basis in fact. What the Church denied, firmly, was the claim of divinity.

  Ashma has breathed perfect grace into humanity precisely three times: Once at the dawn of time. Again at the dawn of humanity, as revealed in the Av Udaan. And then into the soul of Jesus who was Christ. Khaadum may have existed, but he was no “Godling.” To believe in a series of God-children — not only Khaadum but his supposed successor to come — is so sadly misguided. It’s such the fad now to deride orthodoxy as a form of coercion, but hasn’t the Church a duty to shepherd people away from error? To spend your existence on earth always waiting on magical intervention, always checking around the corner for a new god, is to misunderstand, gravely, Ashma’s power and purpose.

  But that’s no reason not to look at the book.

  It seems the entire tale is to be told by an adorable rabbit. Brilliant — let’s ignore the plain fact that Masalay had no rabbits two millennia ago.

  The character of Lirim is introduced straight away. A typical Cinderella-like depiction: Lovely, pure of heart, destitute but courageous, her devotion to Ashma absolute. And then on page two: the soldier Gaalit, in love with Lirim but weak of faith.

  Ashma breathes into Lirim’s womb — no pictures, mercifully — and Oblivion (depicted as a whirlwind aboding in the depths of a cave) senses the change and becomes enraged.

  Enter an ominous whirlwind. The Skythk. Always the most interesting element in Godling stories — Oblivion made physical, an infection of nature and mind, to quote Burton’s poem (which the book, alas, does not).

  What does it mean that in all the hundreds of Godling adventures that have accumulated over the centuries, Khaadum’s noble protectors remain boringly one-dimensional whilst his nemesis the Skythk morphs cleverly in every telling? Time and again, the bemused holy child foils the Skythk (occasionally with help from his less entertained mother and attendants), but it’s ever the Skythk who is endowed with personality and initiative. If these Talids so adore the Godling, why does their creativity always go to imagining his annihilator?

  Come pag
e five, the whirlwind condenses into a sinister man whose Runai-like features and dress are drawn straight from the tried-and-true slander palette. So transparent it’s almost comical. But then you can’t have a Godling story without some Runai-baiting, n’est-ce pas?

  On page seven, we have Lirim surviving the attack of birds. Next outwitting the malevolent waves of Ghaatasira. Escaping the hungry jaws of a vawdra on page nine. And then the child is born, emitting a light as bright as the sun (poor Lirim), and the people bow in worship.

  Come page eleven, Khaadum is already a toddler and tormenting his mother by turning himself blue. He twists the serpent Skythk into a knot and drinks the flood-Skythk through a straw of reeds.

  Not only does Tchori’s head feel better, but a pleasant warmth is spreading from her neck to her fingertips. She brings the book over to the mat and pulls the sheet over her bare legs.

  Such poor print quality, the lad’s colour goes purple as they begin their trek to Liashe. They traverse the island, thousands flocking to Khaadum’s side. More Skythks incarnate and are vanquished.

  On page twenty, we have Bishop Rivaadi and his craven advisors clinging to power and refusing to open Liashe’s gates to Ashma’s child. And so begins the Khaadum party’s year of encampment outside the city.

  Quick progression to the final betrayal. On the boy’s eleventh birthday, his playmate Daajris teaches him a new hiding game. The rabbit sees that it is a trap but can’t warn Khaadum in time. The net is thrown. His body is bound. And Daajris becomes the whirlwind.

  Cut to Liashe and the Blessing Well. Khaadum dangling over the abyss. Rivaadi proclaims that the boy’s parents can save his life if they deny his divinity. Gaalit falls to his knees and blathers the apostasy. But Lirim refuses to deny her God.

  Cackles Rivaadi, “Well if he is divine, he will not fall.”

  And from Khaadum the famous reply: “I am the magic, not the magician.”

  We are spared an image of the little boy being cast into the abyss. But the illustrator does depict Lirim and Gaalit (strong at last) hurling themselves into the same eternity.

  The rabbit has the last page to himself. Admonishing us to be like Lirim and never abandon the infinite wonder of Ashma. Across the back page he scampers, leaving (nice touch) a trail of blue paw prints.

  Fading fast, Tchori curls up on the mat. Sleep comes easily. But damned if she doesn’t dream about the rabbit.

  Evening

  Patchil-Kinaat, Masalay

  I had this sweet boyfriend once. Todd. He got this idea that I was just as smart as him but that I just hadn’t had his advantages in life. Which was true, the part about the advantages. The smartness thing, maybe not as much.

  He tried talking philosophy to me and bringing me to lectures. I did learn a few things, just not at the level of sophistication poor Todd was looking for. There was this physicist we went to see once. Accent like Sean Connery but a sucky public speaker, reading word-for-word from his PowerPoint. Todd asked a question at the end, and the guy’s answer stuck with me a lot longer than Todd did. It had to do with the laws of physics — if they were even a tiny bit different, the universe couldn’t exist as we know it. What the guy said had to do with the possibility that there’s an infinite number of other universes that are almost, but not quite, identical to this one.

  I like thinking about that. It helps me make sense of all this. If there are a billion universes that have me in them, then I think there are probably 999 million universes where I never even come to Masalay. And out of the million that are left, there are thousands where I don’t get left at that train station. And thousands less where I make my way to that lake. And I think only one, this scary beautiful one right here, where I find the single other person with my same urges. And we make this baby.

  What happens in every other universe, I’m pretty sure, is that I go crazy.

  And maybe in this universe too, seeing how things are going. I don’t have a dime to my name — shilling, whatever — or passport or clothes or even shoes. I can’t understand the language worth a damn. I’m sure my job is gone, I’ve probably been evicted, I’m sure my dad has given up on me, and I don’t know where the father of my baby is. But this perfect baby is inside me. And it moves.

  13 October

  * * *

  Far Karsk, Masalay

  Brother Carodai is waiting for her at the crest.

  They’ve been trudging the lane more than an hour, and he’s been spry as a goat whilst Tchori’s own hands are scraped from falls, and her robe, her nearly ruined robe, is damp and spattered in mud.

  There was rain all the night through, and she slept almost to nine. Declined a bowl of hot cogis that smelled annoyingly much of nutmeg — a decision that she’s paying for now with low blood sugar and rumbling stomach.

  The dear woman didn’t want to talk about Rith Idiiye. “Such sadness,” she murmured with downcast eyes, and Brother could elicit no more (though he might have tried a little harder). She promised they’d only need to continue an hour or two, but the evening’s downpour had made a quagmire of the lane. An hour on, they’d gone less than a kilometre, and with the Fiat’s tyres whirring in another slurried rut, Carodai decided they should surrender to the conditions. The walk would do them good.

  “Splendid to be out in the air,” he says as she reaches him, “don’t you agree?”

  “Why I didn’t think to pack boots.”

  “Ah well.”

  “I wasn’t thinking. That’s the point. A place like this, how could one come without boots?”

  He grins, enjoying this all a wee much. “We’re doing quite well, I’d say.”

  “Right yeah. Brilliant.”

  He retrieves a cigarette from the case in his vest pocket. “Terrible habit — I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  “Not for me to say, is it then?”

  “In my defence,” he says after finally getting the match to ignite, “the health consequences were not always as apparent as they are today.”

  “It’s fine, Brother.”

  He’s silent a moment, contemplating. “Perhaps I should tell you a bit more. Continue where we left off yesterday.”

  “Whatever will enable me to help you,” she answers tersely. The curiosity she felt yesterday hasn’t survived her headache and the morning fog. What she wants now only is to serve Carodai through this — whatever this is — and make it back to Liashe. And he should be more prudent in what he tells a novice. “I’ve no need for information that’s not of my concern.”

  “You must understand,” he persists as they continue down the hill, “the Church and University were different then. The University hadn’t expanded. We had but sixteen scholars in my class. The interrogation process for entry, I expect you’ve heard the horror stories; they’re not exaggerated, it was torturous. Gratuitously so, but we do love our traditions. Keep in mind as well that one did not get a second chance — fail once and you would not be invited back. So of course one wanted to be as prepared as possible. The standard practice, very prudent, was to attend university in Britain first and only then to submit for interrogation. I shrugged that off, didn’t believe I needed it. My mentor, dear fellow, quite brilliant — oh he was so offended by my arrogance.”

  “But you were right.”

  “Well no, I was fortunate,” he replies with a laugh. “Unprepared, woefully. But that year’s interrogation happened to focus on the meagre subset of content I actually understood. And I did have a talent for languages, which always helps when feigning broader knowledge. A talent you possess as well, dove. Not the feigning, of course — the languages.”

  “You’re too kind, Brother.”

  “Now, if you keep keen watch on these woods, you may espy a fox. Introduced intentionally by one of the latter viceroys, I’ve forgotten which one. Bennett-Smythe, I expect — a true fiend that one. They were without natural predator, of course, fairly took over the Far Karsk for a time. But then nature does have a way of balancing out. I unders
tand there are but a handful remaining. Handsome creatures.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out, Brother.”

  “It was your plan at one time, do I recall, to read law?”

  “My family are always telling me I should. Since I was little. ‘Born for the law’ is how it’s said.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think that I’d do fairly well.”

  “And I concur. Now, help me, I met your parents once? And your sister, was it?”

  “My sister-in-law, that was — when I’ve graduated High Academy — my grandparents as well. You were truly gracious, Brother.”

  “You’ve a close family, my dear?”

  “Yes.”

  “They expressed — correct me — true consternation that you were graduating a religious institution.”

  “A bit secular, we are. They are. My brothers and sisters, they’ve all graduated Queen’s Mission. In Sagaro.”