The Maiden
She shielded her eyes from his light as her lover hung before her in the sky. His pain flooded her and she could feel the tearing in her heart— the separation, the confusion, the betrayal. Once again she cursed the soldiers who had taken him from her, elevated him above her, turned him against her. Mary remembered warm nights in the olive garden. Gentle nights, made intoxicating by the fruit of his vine. Wild nights of ecstatic worship, when he laid upon the earth and filled her with seed. Dark nights of forbidden fantasy, when her perfume clouded his intellect, speaking to a deeper, lower, need and being.
Soldiers and sheep— she couldn't decide which she hated the most. Big beefy bulls pushing around anybody who disagreed with them. Horny bastards, waving their swords around, taking whatever pleased them, raping rather than receiving. Blood was their wine, broken bodies their bread. They wanted their king. They needed their king. They needed someone to follow, someone to serve. They needed an excuse for living, someone to feed their rage and bless the unnatural copulation between their blades and the beating hearts of their victims. So they took him from her. They raised him up and named him king. And, at midday, they gave him a spear, draining away all the love she had given.
All for the fucking sheep. After all, she thought sarcastically, they needed to be led to green pastures and still waters. They wouldn't need it quite so badly if they didn't befoul every place they inhabited. Clueless clones, that's what they were. Fucking and feeding without feeling. Man or mutton, it didn't matter to them, as long as they had their grass, or whatever. They needed a pastor and a pasture. They needed someone to follow, someone to serve. So they bleated their pitiful psalms until he, entranced, gave them his greengrass body.
Predictably, they devoured him, pissed on him and left his memory buried in their crap. They have fattened on my lover; tonight, I shall come to them as a wolf.
The Mother
Mary looked at her son as he hung in front of her. She sighed, remembering the feel of his lips upon her breast in the days of his infancy. She knew, more than he, how much he needed her love today as he hung naked and exposed before the crowds, his proud body as broken as the spirit slipping away from it. In a timeless moment she watched him grow— so precocious, so smart, so vital— from child to man. Those were bittersweet days; so alive was he that he seemed to burn with unquenchable fire, yet she lived half her hours unwarmed by his love, haunted by ghostly prophecies, while he cared for others. She winced as the pain tore a cry from his lips. Love-child, she thought, why cry in anguish for the father you know not, when I stand ready to receive and comfort you?
She stepped closer and looked up intently into the face of her son. His brilliance hid, eclipsed by grief and doubt which turned his radiance inward, shunning earth and moon alike. The crown he had reached so hesitantly for was a dark corona resting on his brow. Woven from some Dionysian vine and set with thorns, it marked his inauguration into this court of ecstatic frenzy. Crimson tears dripped from each wounding prick. Rejection, disillusionment, fear, confusion, uncertainty, and betrayal ran in tiny streams from the headwaters of his consciousness. Wherever a drop fell to earth, a crimson rose sprang forth and blossomed instantly, mocking him like lost loves, beneath him and out of reach.
Mary didn't even flinch as his blood splashed her. A drop fell upon her lips and stained them red forever. His blood stained her clothes and made every dress she would ever wear crimson.
The Crone
Mary brushed aside a tangled wisp of her graying hair. She had done her best to teach the child the secret ways when she could pry him away from his mother for a lesson or two. He had become a first rate healer, an accomplished alchemist and a powerful sorcerer. He could command angels, demons and men. This, she thought as she focused on the epithet scrawled on parchment above his head, was his crowning achievement. The sky was growing dark. The crowd was melting away, stunned, sated after their gluttonous feast. Suddenly, with the disintegration of his Ka, there was a brilliant flash of radiance, which the soldiers took to be lightning. Almost immediately, his Ba resonated with a deafening thunderous peal just before it imploded.
In darkened silence she strained to see the tree on which his soul had hung. It was lifeless— rotting already— albeit imperceptibly to the uninitiated. Yet his face held a dull phosphorescent glow sometimes found on rotting trees, because the Light loved him, and refused to desert his memory. It made him look a bit like a street lantern near some temple. It frightened those who remained and they fell to their knees. His friends, of course, were quick to take advantage of it, shouting hallelujah to each other and chastising the few sheepish thugs that remained from the mob. Mary motioned imperceptibly and the soldiers closed the circus and chased the clowns away. Let them go. These buffoons would be worshiping a contorted face of pain for the rest of their lives.
Another gesture, and the soldiers lit torches. Mary saw then that the radiation from the disintegration of his Ka had been so intense that the shadow of the cross was permanently etched on the ground. It resembled a crossroads. Her lips twisted in a smile as she remembered the chant: Upon the dead I stand, with all the world at hand…. Without finishing the song, Mary spread her legs and arms to mimic the stars, all sons of her womb, all deep in her tomb. She uttered a brief invocation. From the darkness, a cowled presence stepped forth. With a word and a smile she directed the soldiers to take the corpse down from the cross. Like zombies they stiffly responded to her command and handed the body to the dark-robed figure. Soldiers are my friends, she thought facetiously, then began her pathworking to the tomb beyond the stream. Mary's summoned servant carried Jesus, while the sorrowful slut and the vengeful bitch followed behind with the ritual supplies and tears.
Mary stood before the tomb and clapped once. A moment passed and the stone rolled away from the entrance. The robed one laid the body on the altar. Mary gave her servants a dinar for carrying the body across the stream to its resting place, freeing Jesus of the debt, then dismissed them. Mary took a veil of linen from her sister and chanted a few words while the youngest of the three burned incense. She laid the linen across the fungal luminaries still clinging to his face. They seemed to burn into the cloth, but were extinguished in the process. Better no light on those features as they change, she thought. They finished the ritual and left the tomb. Mary clapped twice and the stone rolled back into place. She reset the wards and they left that place.
Epilogue
Womb to tomb and tomb to womb, over and again, it seemed all the older sister could do to remember which stiff to place where. As they neared the town gate, the three went their separate ways. The youngest sister went to find her dogs to prepare for a wild hunt. One of the nicer soldiers, a believer, hailed Mary to console her on the death of her son. The older sister wondered to herself what the Tau it was that led folks to change the womb of the earth into such a cryptic image. This dusty town was of no interest to her anymore. Time to move on to another place, maybe even a different time. Let's see, I'll need a new name as well, she mused. Heck, Kate would do, or maybe Kat.
Anything with a good Ka. She'd find another young spark to fan to brilliance somewhere.
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