Mayhem Whisperer
Sinrik followed the little swamp birdie as she made her way through the marsh carrying a long stick out before her.
A white, horseless knight bouncing merrily into early morning battles.
Her voice rose and fell like an orchestra of wind and peeps, singing all about the swamp’s business—which were its people according to her.
He took notes as she sang, discovering two remarkable gifts. A little brain capable of processing and storing endless data—ninety percent useless—and the ability to give that much of a fuck about all of it. It wasn’t normal. And he was exhausted on her behalf.
“Oh!”
She dropped her stick and ran right for him, eyes big as she grabbed hold of his coat and hid behind him.
He searched for the threat, his muscles forming a shield for whatever had spooked her.
“There’s a spider! A big one, right in the path!” she gasped, her words muffled in his coat.
He moved to go see and she yanked him back. “Leave it! We’ll go around.”
Around? For a spider? “How big?”
“So big!”
“I’ll kill it.”
“No!”
He turned and she still hid close to him. He stared down at the white head. “Why not?”
“Because,” she whispered, peeking around him. “He has to do his job there. God gave him that job to do.”
Her answer didn’t compute. “And yet… you hate it.”
“I don’t hate the job he has to do I just… I have a severe aversion to spiders.”
Sinrik again looked down at the tiny white head. He could easily go the rest of his life not knowing why. “Explain,” he said, instead.
“I… I just did explain.”
“Why do you have such a severe aversion to spiders. The little girl that wages war against principalities in places she has no business.”
She stepped back a little and he angled his head, regarded the offended look on her face.
“Well, I may be little,” she said at this top offense, “but I’m a full-grown adult.
And my aversion stems from a child-hood trauma I would prefer not to talk about with you.
But I have confronted it with a therapist, and he said it was perfectly fine to have an aversion to things I dislike, everybody does. ”
He looked around the gloomy woods. “How far is the route around your aversion?”
“Not far at all,” she assured.
“Say that while looking at me,” he said, hearing the lie in her voice. “And remember you’re a nun.”
Her gaze meandered up, making it as far as his mouth. “Maybe… a mile farther.”
“A mile. Over a spider.”
“A very big spider.”
Uh-huh. “That you have severe aversions to.”
Her hands clasped tightly at her chest as she nodded. “That’s right.”
“Are you praying that I’ll listen?”
Her blue eyes hit him dead on and it was the first full look of her he got. “I don’t pray about such silly things. Besides, I know you’ll listen.”
He angled his head at her, crossing his arms, sorting the unusual angel puzzle. She looked surreal enough to make him wonder if maybe she was an angel or maybe he was in a coma, dreaming. He watched her face transform from impossible purity to a fierce pout.
“Are you laughing at me?”
Oh, now he was.
“It’s rude to laugh at people,” she said above his laugh, wrapping the rebuke in kindness.
“I will slay the spider,” he offered through chuckles. “And your soul will remain pure.”
He stepped back and she lunged and grabbed his coat. “You can’t!”
He stared down into her adamant face. One minute she was a soldier in the heavens, the next she was a little girl with an aversion to spiders that she was fully prepared to protect and despise.
And yet through all her dark journeys she maintained a fierce grasp on her crayons and glitter.
No wonder her god gave her whatever she wanted.
He shrugged, looking around. “Fine. We’ll go around.”
The explosion of radiance on her face for such a small compliance was the oddest thing he’d ever witnessed. And amusing.
She smiled right along with him, nodding and thanking him. “I will find a way to repay you for your trouble!”
Sinrik gestured to the path. “Lead the way, Sister.”
Her laughter flew out, a shower of glittering rainbows across the gloom as she spun and headed back the way they’d come. The wind-peep orchestra returned to full blast as she caught him up to speed, all the way up to a civil swamp issue she was concerned about.
She stopped abruptly and turned, aiming all her sincere concern right at him. “It’s the males,” she said. “I don’t like the looks they give.”
Something pinged in his blood as he stopped a foot before her, needing to observe her up close while she confided her big problems to him.
“They don’t look at me as though I’m committed to…”
He watched as her stormy blue eyes and furrowed brows sorted the messy problem right in front of him.
He got that strange dreaming sensation again as he focused on skin too fair, eyes too blue, mouth too…
something. But if he was dreaming this vividly it meant something critically wrong had happened to him.
“I think it’s the soldier arrangement,” she whispered, darting her gaze up at him.
“Soldier arrangement?”
She nodded a little, her fingers clasping at her chest again like the prayer formation was a form of comfort. “The marrying part,” she added in a whisper.
A door opened in his mind and in walked the details Beth had mentioned. “The nuns marrying cyborgs,” he realized.
“Not cyborgs,” she hurried quietly. “Synthetic… something made to evolve into… something like a….”
Seeing her cornered in her mind flipped a dark switch in him. “You don’t have to go through with it since you don’t want to. Who coerced you into such a thing?”
Her blue eyes plugged right into his, wide with worry. “I never said I didn’t want to go through with it, I’m—”
“You’re saying exactly that very plainly to me, minus the actual words, Sister.”
Her mouth opened then slowly shut as she considered. It opened again. “But I never said that,” she barely muttered, sounding curious how he managed that one.
“And there’s nothing to be ashamed about,” he added, addressing her guilt spilling out everywhere.
“You can see that too?” Her worried shock would’ve been amusing if he didn’t smell coercion all over her problem.
“I’m trained to read the things people say without words. Who told you to marry one of these soldiers?”
Her face lowered then she faced the swamp.
“Hands and tongue tied,” he muttered. “That means either somebody you’re scared of or somebody you care too much about.”
She faced him, mouth and eyes wide open. “You need to teach me this trick,” she whispered.
“Which is it, Sister. Actually, don’t tell me—”
“Somebody I care about but not too much.” She returned to her spot from before and he wondered why she felt so comfortable getting that close to him.
He put his hands on her tiny shoulders and moved her back a foot. “If you’re in the practice of violating the personal space of males, then that might be adding to your other problem.”
“The Sister I could never care too much about secured our escape from a very bad place with this arrangement.” She regarded him, taking another step back. “And I know the males I’m safe with,” she informed. “But I should’ve considered your disposition on that. It won’t happen again.”
He fumbled with the first part of that puzzle, while all the others demanded his attention. “There’s nobody in these swamps that would require you marry a cyborg to secure your safety, Sister.”
She regarded him sharply. “What makes you think that?”
“The Belle Eveque—I think you know her as—makes me think that. I know for a firm fact she wouldn’t stand for that bullshit.”
A small smile crept over her mouth. “She’s just like Sister Isla in that regard. And if it wasn’t for our commitment, Sister Isla wouldn’t stand for it either. But we all agreed and it’s very important.”
He had no argument for that part, given the current circumstances. “Why exactly don’t you want to fulfill the agreement?” That answer ranked just as critical to him.
She gave lip chewing and eye shifting for answers.
“If it’s not too personal to say,” he added, not wanting any female confessions.
“I do want to, it’s just… I’m not altogether sure it’s… morally permitted.”
“To say or to do?”
“To do,” she said.
“Religious exemption, then,” he offered easily.
She angled her gaze at him. “My religion doesn’t exempt me, Mr. Chaos, it requires me. This is a world-saving mission that I’m very much obligated to, and that part I’m happy to give myself for.”
Mr. Chaos. Good one. He gestured to the path. “You can tell me what part you’re having issues with while leading Mr. Chaos to Mr. Morgue.”
She looked around then nodded, hopping back on the path, giving him all the details in one long bubbly confession.
“For one, have you seen these soldiers? They’re terrifying!
Mr. Quantum King, the Triplets—who are known as the Terror Triplets by the way.
And there’s poor Mr. Kaphas who has so much power he nearly killed his wife with it!
I pinch myself many times in a day to make sure it’s all real, these strange creations, the state of the world, the spiritual signs of the time, the people here in these swamps, it’s all remarkable and I have never been more honored to partake—”
“Then why don’t you want to marry a soldier?” Sinrik interrupted, ready to know that answer.
She was quiet for a dozen steps before finally saying, “Maybe it’s private.”
Hearing she wasn’t sure where that line was, made it less worrisome. “Tell it for a nine-year-old.”
“Nine, glorious heavens you don’t tell such things to a nine-year-old!”
“Pretend you’re wording it for a nine-year-old, Miss Beatrice.”
“Oh!” she giggled. “Haven’t been called that in a while.”
“Your name?” he wondered, kind of disgusted.
“No, Miss. Well, the children sometimes do but the adults always say Sister. I don’t mind,” she hurried. “I feel less odd being called Miss than Sister given our current assignment.”
“Agreed,” he muttered.
“But if you’re needing a nine-year-old explaining, then I surely can’t tell you. I’m not into scandalizing people.”
His laugh belted out.