Reuniting with loved ones without really having to lose them

OK, so this next part of my work-in-progress BRYAN THE TYGER is just a regular chapter where normal things occur.

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

Chapter Forty-Six

When we reach the convent, Bloody Mary Magdalene leaps down off our backs — being wholly spirit, she weighs almost nothing, so her choice to pose astride us jungle cats while we sprinted here was purely stylistic, to effectuate a triumphant entrance. She could just as easily have tossed her golden lasso as a harness round our necks and air-skied in our wake, or floated right alongside us on a broomstick.

Our old friends are there in the high-ceilinged library chamber to welcome us: Mother Lilith, and sisters Sophia and Maria. But, before anyone can speak a word, the instant Bloody Mary dismounts, there is a burst of light accompanied by the sound of an electric harp rapidly arpeggiating, as Ms. Magdalene fuses into vestal Maria: they become one nun. — At first I fear that they have canceled each other out, but then I realize, once the blinding light dims, that Maria remains in the room: she smolders faintly for a few mo­ments after the merger; then returns to her normal high coloring:

“Tyger Bryan and Panther Myala,” sez Maria, “thank you for reuniting me with my free spirit.”

I’m speechless for a spell, but Myala nods her vast Panther-head and replies: “I had a suspicion that you two were consubstantial; for you’re both so enchanting — full-limbed, ruddy, and soft to the touch; with those pagan eyes and their dark, sparkling pupils, which are nearly overflowing with nocturnal mysteries.”

Maria flashes an enigmatic smile.

Here I myself manage to think of something to ask, so I say: “Does this mean that the New Age is over? I mean, will we ever see Bloody Mary again?”

The sisters all laugh. “Oh, quite the contrary,” sez Mother Lilith; “now the New Age is finally, fully and truly upon us: it is no longer something that we must harbor solely within ourselves, as an unshared, interior experience; for it has at last become manifest as external reality, thus we can say ‘Behold, here it is!’ and ‘Lo, yonder lies the Kingdom: look how it grows!’ yes, it has arrived and is empirically observable.

“Moreover,” continues Lilith, “as to your fear about Ms. Magdalene having left our life, verily I assure you that, just like the New Age, your airy friend is now supremely corporeal — far from being abolished, she has reached her fulfillment and lives in the flesh as Bloody Maria here, the Magdalene of Magdalenes. And although no longer limited to the aether, she can always send out her free spirit to glide about the world, to and fro and up and down, whenever she desires to experience, perceive, as well as augment simultaneously impossible perspectives in spacetime.”

I shake my head in astonishment: “This is not just good news — this is the best news.”

“Howbeit,” Myala looks concerned, “what about Sophia’s fiery spirit? Perhaps she is estranged from herself as well . . .”

“I’m fine,” sez Sophia; “I am happy for my sister here: we are now in balance. I have had my higher and lower wisdom about me, all along: you’re familiar with the latter, I believe — my own ‘harlot’, Sophia Prunikos — she is a wide-wanderer and always eventually returns unto me. So, there is no solution because there is no problem. Actually, this reunion of Santa Maria here is rather less important than we’re making it out to be; it’s something of a self-amusement to us: we only take it seriously because it does not need to be – for Ms. Magdalene was never truly in danger of getting lost. Only lambs get lost.”

Suddenly we hear that very creature’s familiar bleat: “Baa-aa-aa!” — We all turn around and behold a silhouette at the entryway.

“Speak of the devil!” Lilith quips.

As our visitor steps into the light, we quickly realize that this form is not just a single being but two: one beast atop another — the sight appears odd at first, but upon further focusing we are able to parse out what seems to be a lambkin tied up in preparation for slaughtering, and this very vocal victim (he keeps bleating throughout the scene, until we eventually untie him) is draped over the back of our friend, Balaam’s donkey, who now brays once, in his kind’s traditional greeting; then he explains:

“I hope you all don’t mind that I followed you here. After my owner slew himself with that lovely woman’s sword, you three stood around for a while just chatting, and I tried to find a lull in your conversation so that I could address you, yet you all were so voluble that I could not get a word in edgewise; I ended up falling asleep waiting (you were talking about things that I don’t care about), and I woke just as you all were planning to gallop away. I saw the resplendent female standing astride your backs — she had grown more colossal at this point (as phantoms can enlarge themselves by expanding the air in their atoms) so that her leg-span fit the positions of you monsters more naturally and comfortably; thus, when you raced away, I tried to catch up, and of course I fell behind immediately, since you’re so fast (you seem even faster than a speedboat or a motorbike), and I watched thru tear-filled eyes as the three of you vanished over the horizon; but, luckily, there was an arrow-shaped road-sign nearby that said ‘Convent (Nunnery)’, and it was pointing in the direction that you were traveling. So I put two and two together; then continued at my own pace, having faith that I’d eventually catch up with you all, as I just did. So the prophecy proved true.”

I can tell that Lilith is trying not to smirk as she sez: “What prophecy? The one that goes ‘Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass’? I’m referring to the fact that you have a passenger on your back — or perhaps instead of passenger I should use the word hostage, seeing as he’s all tied up. Please explain the lamb.”

“Oh, no-no-no,” the donkey sez; “not that prophecy. I mean the one where I said to myself: ‘I will find them’ (‘them’ meaning you all). This was the oracle that I uttered to myself while I was staring at the arrow-shaped road-sign, before setting off in the direction that it was pointing.”

“Alright, alright,” laughs Lilith; “now what about the lambkin?”

“Oh, yes, I can explain that,” sez the donkey. “You see, as I was trailing after you at my own pace, it came to pass that at a certain point (sorry I can’t be more specific exactly when and where this occurred — the truth is that I lost track of how far I had traveled) — I say, at some point during my trek, I met a very elderly man who was headed in a path that was perpendicular to mine. He had a donkey of his own that was packed with many items — there was burning wood, a sharp knife, and a young boy (this child was tied up just like my lamb here, as if prepared for a sacrifice) — and his donkey was the most beautiful she-ass I have ever seen. So I said to this man, ‘Man!’ And he half-woke from his sleepwalking and answered, ‘Here am I!’ Then I said, ‘Where are you going with this bonny she-ass?’ (I said this loud enough so that the donkey could hear me clearly; and she blinked her eyelids in rapid succession, which I assume indicated that she was flattered by my compliment and ready to marry me and begin producing offspring.) The man replied, ‘We are taking my lone begotten son to one of the mountains in the land of Moriah, where we shall burn him for an offering. God told me to do so.’ And, at this point, the man’s young boy who is tied on the back of the donkey raises his voice and sez: ‘Father! Father! You told me that God will provide himself a lamb for an offering.’ — Now the boy’s old man darts his eyes back and forth between the lad and myself; then announces: ‘We must go now.’ — So I wept while parting ways from that ravishing she-ass; and the man and his son and their beast continued traveling in their own direction, while I headed toward the convent.

“Then,” continues the donkey, “when I was a little ways further, I lifted up my eyes, and looked, and behold: there before me I saw a cherub caught in a thicket by its horns; and it was holding a lamb under one of its arms — this same one that I carried here today,” (the ass jerks his head upward a couple times, to indicate the passenger on his back,) “the lamb’s two forelegs were tied together, and his two hind legs were tied as well, exactly as you see him now; and the cherub was holding him by the belly, and he was bleating like crazy, just as he’s been doing nonstop since I took him — for when I approached, I opened my maw, clamped the cherub’s scruff in my teeth, and pulled back with all my might: this yanked the fellow from the prisoning thicket. Now the cherub looked relieved, and it said to me: ‘I was charged to deliver this sacrifice to a being named Honest Abe.’ – And I performed a happy hop and said: ‘I’m honest!’ – So the cherub was relieved to accomplish its mission in life, and it draped the lambkin over my back, like so,” (here, again, the ass jerks his head distinctly twice — back and to the left; back and to the left — in case we’ve forgotten the focal point of his story,) “and after braying goodbye to this cherub, I trotted here to your nunnery as fast as I felt like moving.

“However,” the donkey adds, “after I was about seventy hoof-steps away from the scene above, a light bulb ignited in my mind, so I turned around and saw that the cherub was still within shouting-distance: it happened to be heading directly towards another thicket, about to get its horns stuck again. Thus I brayed loudly to win the cherub’s attention; then I yelled out my question: ‘Are you one of El Shaddai’s messengers, or the other kind?’ And the being made a gesture that I’m not familiar with, while shouting back: ‘Thou sayest.’ — So it seems that I might have had a direct encounter with an Angel of the LORD and lived to tell about it! . . . Anyway, here’s the gift that it gave me.” (The ass jerks its head back one last time at the bleating lamb.)

Laughing compulsively now, Lilith steps forward and pats the ass while lifting the lamb off his back. She unties the creature’s legs, and he finally goes quiet; then, lowering him gently down onto the stone tile mosaic floor of the library, the beast stands unsteadily on all four hooves, trembling.

Lilith addresses sister Maria: “You got a double blessing today. First your own spirit returns, and, next, her little lamb that was lost!”

Maria giggles.

“What should we do with him?” asks Sophia.

“Put him with the other ninety-nine,” Maria sez.

“I wouldn’t mind mauling him,” I myself speak up, shyly.

“Me too,” sez Myala.

“Bryan! Myala!” Lilith addresses us in her kindly scolding voice, “always so hungry, you two are!” She now thinks to herself for a moment, quietly; then she turns to her sisters and makes a suggestion: “How about we make a piñata lookalike, fill it with mutton for the jungle cats, and return the christ-lamb to the fold?”

Maria and Sophia appear amenable yet undecided.

“Or, instead,” I Bryan the Tyger offer an alternative, “how about placing the effigy into the fold, so that Myala and I can partake of the actual offering?”

Lilith reluctantly agrees. So, while my soul-mate and I savor the sacrifice, the nuns all fabricate a piñata and then position it next to the wolf.

Also Balaam’s ex-ass gets assigned to the position of the nunnery’s Second Guard Dog. This makes him very proud; tho he proves rather ineffective at the job, as he just sleeps all the time.

But, before we finish devouring our treat, my soul-mate Myala the Black Panther has a playful idea — she sez: “Let us save a small amount of the blood.” And this we do. So, after dining, we smear this lamb’s blood on each of the side-posts and over the top of the convent’s entryway, for good luck.