Ch7.49 Revelations

The journey is what matters.

To be alive is to be in transit. Conception to death, the length of the road varies but it is always a road. Curves, corners, sudden drops, steep rises. Abrupt stops. Narrowings in the path. Widenings. Crossroads. It is all but one path. A ‘not yet’ at the beginning.

A ‘no longer’ at the end. Everything in between is a ‘for now’ and that is the total sum of things. For now, we are alive. For now, tomorrow is possible, yesterday is certainty. For now, there is hope in that now will stretch and now will remain what it is. A now. For now.

And when now becomes no more, when the thought is entertained of what lies beyond that ultimate threshold where hearts cease beating and chests stop rising and synapses refuse to fire, when memories can no longer be made but held in the minds of those for whom now still lingers, what lies ahead? What happens when nothing else can happen? And why does it matter?

Does it matter, knowing what to expect after death? Or is the terror of not knowing that truly sparks imagination? What is more frightening, to know there is only suffering awaiting beyond the grave or to not know what to expect, even if there is nothing to expect? Can the mortal mind truly believe there is nothing? When the greatest activity of the mind, the prime and beloved occupation of thought is to fill nothing with its creations, to shape nothing and color it and give it purpose, to make it something, can anyone truly even fathom the prospect of nothing? Can we worship it in the same way everything can be worshipped?

Is there a god of nothing? Is it legitimate to create something to embody the essence of nothing and then worship that?

And thus, different religions have sought to fill the void in their own ways. That is, after all, the purpose of religion: to explain whatever is too complex, too frightening, too strange to be explained by conventional knowledge. To replace the harsh truth with little innocuous fallacies that are more palatable, if not as accurate. For while knowledge is essential to understand the world, belief is vital to accept it.

It is the dance of the years. Knowledge challenges belief, brings to question the very foundations of our actions. Of our world. And belief strikes back. It denies knowledge, fervently, waiting for it to crumble, for it to be proven wrong. For while knowledge requires proof, belief requires only itself, and it is often another’s belief in jys own knowledge – and in ours – which leads jyr to produce the knowledge which will question our belief. And then, evidence will either prove wrong the premises from which our beliefs stem or it will fail to prove them wrong. And, in some cases, regardless of evidence, we will choose what to believe in and hold onto that, come Hell or high water. What does knowledge know, after all? Knowledge, heartless knowledge, what does it know of our needs and wants?

In the struggle between knowledge and belief, belief always wins. For belief is our choice and knowledge cares nothing about us, and when forced to choose between a harsh truth one cannot control and a not always gentle but customizable lie, nine and a half out of ten people will pick the lie.

Why accept darkness and nothingness when one can have angels and devils and gold-paved roads and perennial flames and anything the mind can conjure?

It is, after all, what the gods have. In life, but not in death. Not on the Insula. On the Insula, there is the Wheel. Of course, belief has such great power on the Insula that it allows gods to actually live, in the clouds and everywhere else, so some of the various beliefs of the myriad religions coexisting in relative peace all over the mountain do have to be obliged. If mortals want to believe in angel choirs and walks through the desert, then that is what they get…for awhile, at least. Once their souls are collected by death gods – something that the vast majority of people seem to be comfortable with – they can embark on a small eternity of bliss and family members or of flames and guilt and relentless torture. For as long as their souls are traveling into the Wheel, they can experience all of that and believe it will last forever. Because to a soul there is no time. And once they are in the Wheel, they enter a kind of decomposing stasis, losing their shape as their memories of themselves erode. And once the Spinner comes into play, this is replaced with a kind of rearrangement of energies which equates to melting a rock and pouring it into a new mold instead of chiseling away at it with a hammer and a rusty nail.

It all takes quite a lot of energy to accomplish, especially if thousands of souls are to be reshaped and recycled at once. Apparently, about as much as that contained in a relatively young god, full of life and potential. That was what Sharia was using, every year, in a sort of sanctioned hoax carried out by the Life Clan. Perhaps – most likely – with an injection of her own mana, flavored with something which allowed her to force the Wheel to turn.

Always with sacrifice, the Shan’doír had said. An unnecessary sacrifice. Or was it unnecessary? Who would have spun the Wheel, for all those centuries, otherwise? Was it truly essential for the Wheel to be spun or is the need to spin it each year a thing of beings who evolved to care for mortals? Of deities. Gods.

The Shan’doír are not gods. They are before gods, before the concept of a god. Before the need for gods, perhaps. A simpler time. A time of flux, of a war still remembered but not quite understood. A whisper of a memory. Time flowed differently, then. Reality was different. There are just patches of that time left, now. Warped to fit.

Or existing in parallel, like the Wheel, being touched by and touching pieces of the current reality, like the souls of those whom different from the beings of yonder days, inhabit now the space of the living, the space of that feeble existence that encompasses the totality of everything and believes that beyond it is only nothing.

Belief and knowledge. In Alma’s mind – better yet, in her soul – the dance continues. Reaching the Wheel, something which should happen only once in her life – and right at the end of it – is suddenly easy enough that she can do it without aid, if she relaxes enough or if something chases her away from solidity. If she can master it, maybe she can use it as an advantage, somehow.

And she can be in the Wheel without losing her ability to think, though thinking becomes harder without the physical support of a brain to organize thoughts into synapses. Sadly, without eyes, there is no landscape to see, so there are no golden roads or halls of drinking. Without ears, there is no sound. No angelic choirs, no courts of accusation.

There is, effectively, nothing. The ‘voices’ of the Shan’doír are mere projections of their souls into Alma’s, like memories shared directly. How long did they wait for a new Shan’doír soul to slip out of the Wheel? Did they send one of their rank to be spun and reborn into Alma? And does it matter? The souls awaiting in the Wheel are like fireflies, sparking her attention. She cannot see them but knows they are there, knows how to contact them, to touch them. To spin them.

Were all Shan’doír able to spin the Wheel? Were all of them necessary to do so, in their time, while Alma is expected to do it alone, now and forever more? Can she ever plan to ascend, if she is to remain the only Spinner? Is she to remain the only one?

Truth be told, spinning the Wheel was almost painful and it was tiresome. But then, Alma hadn’t had this sphere active in her. Now, a whole new array of abilities is blooming. And spinning the Wheel for Nasheena was easy. Recycling the souls broken by the Soul Bomb was easy, once she relaxed and stopped fighting them. She does not see it wearing her out through the centuries in the same way it consumed Sharia. And from what the Shan’doír tell her, nor should it happen.

“The Wheel spins always, at its own pace,” they tell her as she hovers at the center of the Wheel, just a few days after her lesson with Sharia. “Faster or slower, it means little to this plane.”

“Then why is the Spinner necessary?” Alma asks.

“The Spinner is the heart of the Wheel, setting the pace of its spinning,” they reply.

“And how do I know how fast or how slowly to spin it?” Alma insists. She detects no hesitation from the Shan’doír as they answer her questions with their cryptic statements. But still, it is frustrating not to get a straight answer on anything.

“You will know,” the Shan’doír voice says, three words Alma suspects she will be hearing more frequently than she would like. “Because the world of the living will tell you. How quickly should a heart beat? It is the body who determines it.”

It makes sense, Alma must admit. But… “Am I…doing a good job?” she asks, fearing the answer. Can she truly replace Sharia and not become worse than her for being able to actually have an effect over the Wheel? “Can I hope to be a good Spinner, even without much guidance to go on from the realms of the living?”

“The Wheel rejoices in its new heart,” the Shan’doír say, reassuring. “It sings its song to you. Listen. And you will learn to sense when things are right…and when they are not. Then, you will know to change.”

A song…yes, Alma can sense a certain cadence to the Wheel’s movements, like background noise of birdsong and insects buzzing in a forest in the lazy hours of the early afternoon. “But I have known no other song to the Wheel, other than this one. Is this the right song? Or is the Wheel wrong?”

“It is the song of the days before you,” the Shan’doír say. “The song of the days after us.”

“And why are you no longer its heart?” Alma asks.

Silence, for the first time. Is that hesitation out of fear? Or out of pain? “Its heart was broken. And then you came.”

“Who broke its heart?” Alma insists. “And what does it mean?”

“You will understand,” they insist in return. “When the time for understanding comes.”

Alma tries a different approach. “Am I one of you? Did you send my soul into the Wheel to be cleansed and reborn?”

“You are Shan’doír. Of the Wheel. The Wheel chooses your time to serve. To bear it and to link it to the living realms. We have served. We have chosen our fate. You will serve in your way. And choose your own fate.”

More questions. Every answer just sparks more questions. “Will I be bound here, like you, when my time comes?” She pauses, unable to avoid pressing the issue. “Have you…done something to break the heart of the Wheel?”

“The war broke the heart,” the voice replies, sounding tired, pained. “It broke our hearts. The scars…they bind us together.”

“Will you show me?” Alma pleads. Any crumb of information could be vital, though she does not yet know how or for what.

“When you can understand, you will understand,” the Shan’doír voice says, the words projected into her mind as if no more will follow, no matter how much she insists.

Still, she does. “And until then?”

“Until then…you can believe.”