The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

With a shaking hand, I reached up to touch her face. More rounded than mine, prettier, but the lines were the same as what I saw in mirrors. The hair was longer, but the curl was right. The artist had set her irises with pale green jade. If the skin had been brown instead of marble I swallowed, trembling harder still.

We hadnt intended to tell you yet, said the old woman. Right behind me now, though she shouldve been too fat to fit through the gap. Wouldve been, if she had been human. Pure chance that you decided to come to the library now. I suppose I couldve found a way to steer you elsewhere, but I heard rather than saw her shrug. You would have found out eventually.

I sank to the floor, huddling against the Itempas wall as if He would protect me. I was cold all over, my thoughts screaming and skittering every which way. Making that first, crucial connection had broken my ability to make others.

This is how madness feels, I understood.

Will you kill me? I whispered to the old woman. There was no mark on her forehead. I had missed that, still used to the absence of a mark, not its presence. I should have noticed. Shed had a different shape in my dream, but I knew her now: Kurue the Wise, leader of the Enefadeh.

Why would I do that? Weve invested far too much in creating you. A hand fell on my shoulder; I twitched. But youre no good to us insane.

So I was not surprised to feel darkness close over me. I relaxed and, grateful, let it come.

12

Sanity

Once upon a time there was a

Once upon a time there was a

Once upon a time there was a

Stop this. Its undignified.

* * *

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A little girl who had two older siblings. The oldest was dark and wild and glorious, if somewhat uncouth. The other was filled with all the brightness of all the suns that ever were, and he was very stern and upright. They were much older than her, and very close to one another even though in the past they had fought viciously. We were young and foolish then, said Second Sibling, whenever the little girl asked him about it.

Sex was more fun, said First Sibling.

This sort of statement made Second Sibling very cross, which of course was why First Sibling said it. In this way did the little girl come to know and love them both.

* * *

This is an approximation, you realize. This is what your mortal mind can comprehend.

* * *

Thus went the little girls childhood. They had no parents, the three of them, and so the little girl raised herself. She drank glimmering stuff when she was thirsty and lay down in soft places when she got tired. When she was hungry, First Sibling showed her how to draw sustenance from energies that suited her, and when she was bored Second Sibling taught her all the lore that had come into being. This was how she came to know names. The place in which they lived was called EXISTENCEas opposed to the place from which they had come, which was a great shrieking mass of nothingness called MAELSTROM. The toys and foods she conjured were POSSIBILITY, and what a delightful substance that was! With it she could build anything she needed, even change the nature of EXISTENCEthough she quickly learned to ask before doing this, because Second Sibling got upset when she altered his carefully ordered rules and processes. First Sibling did not care.

Over time it came to be that the little girl spent more time with First Sibling than with Second, because Second did not seem to like her as much. This is difficult for him, First Sibling said, when she complained. We have been alone, he and I, for so very long. Now you are here, and that changes everything. He does not like change.

This the little girl had already come to understand. And this was why her siblings so often fought with each other, because First Sibling loved change. Often First Sibling would grow bored with EXISTENCE and transform it, or turn it inside out just to see the other side. Second Sibling would rage at First Sibling whenever this happened, and First Sibling would laugh at his fury, and before the little girl could blink they would be on each other, tearing and blasting, until something changed and then they would be clutching and gasping, and whenever this happened the little girl would patiently wait for them to finish so they could play with her again.

In time the little girl became a woman. She had learned to live with her two siblings, each in their own waydancing wild with First Sibling and growing adept at discipline alongside Second. Now she made her own way beyond their peculiarities. She had stepped in between her siblings during their battles, fighting them to measure her strength and loving them when the fighting turned to joy. She had, though they did not know it, gone off to create her own separate EXISTENCES, where sometimes she pretended that she had no siblings. There she could arrange POSSIBILITY into stunning new shapes and meanings that she was sure neither of her siblings could have created themselves. In time she grew adept at this, and her creations so pleased her that she began to bring them into the realm where her siblings lived. She did this subtly at first, taking great care to fit them into Second Siblings orderly spaces and arrangements in a way that might not offend him.