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Entry tags:	court, red, red5

Red Settlement 47: The Tower & The End Of The Sky
The baby makes me tell myself fairy tales, the ones I remember and the ones I make up myself, to practice for her.

Red Settlement 47

The Tower & The End Of The Sky

Link and Chess, Chess and Link. Up there in the sky, at the right time in the night, you can see a red glimmer low in the sky, like a star or at least I can't tell the difference except it's a little bit brighter. And if you look at this light which is not very bright I believe that if you look closely and truly believe, you can see your loved ones there on Red looking back. If you believe hard enough.

The baby makes me believe things like this. The baby makes me tell myself fairy tales, the ones I remember and the ones I make up myself, to practice for her. The baby makes me maudlin, and the baby makes me tired, and the baby makes me cry even at stupid Book vids of people doing stupid things for no reason but the stupid Book. The baby makes me so angry sometimes too. Sometimes at the vid when I can't tear myself away from the idiot Readers making their plans and hateful speeches. One of them says the men and women on Red are making horrible plans and that they should have been separated and the men declared convict of sex crimes or self-declared can stay on Red and we'll send the women and the thought crimes to Green, because it's a strange chemistry (the word is alchemy but nobody knows what that word means) of subversion and hateful dissent up there and the sky will crash down. I say I will be the first to cheer when Red rises up; the baby kicks; I change the channel. She responds to my heartbeat and my rage chemistry more than the hottest foods. She is weird, like my mom.

Who has left Presh and tells me this even though we've never talked about it so I don't know if I'm supposed to be shocked or proud or creeped out because "affair" connotes "sex" and my mother having sex connotes "vomit" which the baby does her best to make me sometimes too, in addition to making me almost piss myself sometimes. The baby has set up camp in me like a fifth column.

But soon enough she'll burst forth like an angel in the Book and make everything different, and I am waiting for that day. Every day the edge comes closer and every day I peek at it and try to see over the edge but my psychic powers are not what they might be, and I can't see the future anymore. Once you could: Link (Chess) and marriage and a bunch of babies and the Book and no job and no hope. Which was comforting in that you could start planning now. But I made a different plan and destroyed that future and the one that replaces it is building itself day by day almost without my help. The only certainty is my angry little angel and maybe we'll go to Red, or to Green, or wherever the people will go then that hate Blue and Book.

The Book was once the Bible and it was one of several Books. The rest are gone now, either compiled into the Book or burned on pyres with those that loved them. I wonder if the Rail has copies and I can read them some time. Bible means Book like all along they knew it was the only book that would ever be read, one day. Blue was once Earth and Red was once called Mars and Green was once called Venus. Earth means mother who always cares and has food for everyone. Also called Terra and Tara and Demeter. Mars means war who makes plans in heat and burns out what doesn't work. Also called Ares or Aries which is what I would have been called back in the day, so I'm kind of Red already. My daughter would have been called Cancer, or a child of the Moon, and she could have walked on water and swum in it. They took all those words away and said the Book meant they were hate. Venus means love and sex between those who love or think they love. Also called Aphrodite. I wouldn't mind living there. I think it's a form of very personal, very quiet war to call things what they used to be called. My mother is Merit and a Capricorn. My father is Field and a Libra. Link was Virgo and Chess Sagittarius. We live on Earth and they live on Mars. When the baby comes I won't have any secrets left because my body will split open and we will see the red inside me. I am not looking forward to that part of the process but it'll be fun because my dad will be there, mortified, and I will have a sort of revenge on the Book in that moment.

These words are crimes and revenge too, and they feel good and strange in my mouth. It's always been Blue because that's what it's called, and Earth Terra Demeter are such strange words, like rich earth in the mouth or a taste of silicate stone. Mars is something in your mouth too, muffling, and Ares and Aries are a horn, a tusk of ivory slicing through the air, the whisper of a sword. Venus sounds dirty like a word you shouldn't use about your own body. Aphrodite is a name you would give your baby if you were in a cult. Bible is an idiot trained to menial labor, a little drool on his chin: "Bibble-bibble-bibble hee-hee-hee." I don't like any of the old words, except Aries, but I use them every day and that's how I keep us safe. It's a line I draw around us both, the silence of those words and the power in them.

So when Merit comes to me, I tell her these secret names of power and she smiles and laughs and corrects my pronunciation. She tells me there used to be colleges where you could learn whatever you wanted instead of being trained in a job by the Governing Body and put where you fit best. I said that didn't sound very efficient but she said the life of the mind is what was lost, and that the human spirit doesn't do efficient. My mom is always surprising. She knew when I told her these secret names that I forgave her for Presh, so we didn't talk about it at all, and the next time we talked about it I was the one that brought it up.

"Now that we are in the Rail together," I said, "And now that I am about to become a mother, do you think it would be too horrible if we were frank with each other?" She looked at me like I wanted to talk about sex and she wanted to crawl out of her skin and carry it across the road like a beautiful purse, and I said no. "I want to ask you about Presh and ask you why." She said it was complicated, and I said, "No, I mean why Presh specifically?" She laughed and shook her head.

"There is something very strong in his religion," she said. "There is something very beautiful about a man who can be strong and humble at once. It is a beauty you cannot see and it has nothing to do with faith or belief -- those were always the problem between us, those things -- but it has to do with the fact that so few men, especially now on Blue, that can even comprehend that they are smaller than something else. A true Reader knows that there are things larger than him, and it makes him tender toward the things that are smaller than him."

"When he's not beating them or raping them or crushing them," I said, thinking of the Governing Body functionary who'd taken my testimony at Chess's fourth and last inquiry. He was a devout Reader, it was written in his jaw and the lines across his fat face, and he was not a man of tenderness. She shook her head again.

"Those come from fearing you are small, and trying to put the balance back right so that you feel big enough again, Court."

"I get that. So you thought Presh was gentle?" I'd never thought of it that way, but I supposed it was true. You had to be pretty humble to marry Chele. Humility was her specialty.

"That's part of it. And the rest ..." she got a faraway look. "I wanted Field to notice me."

I didn't know what to say to that. To her mouth saying my words. I just nodded.

"I needed to prove something to him, that I wasn't ... replaceable or ... I don't know. Ask me an easier question."

"What is going on now with you and Dad?"

"That's the easier question?"

"If we're friends, and mothers together, it's my question."

"Your father's fine, Court. Totally fucking fine."

"Field is many things but he's not fine. He's always been sad. This must have made him sadder. What are you going to tell him?"

"You honestly think we haven't talked about it? He caught me almost immediately and it was sad. Very sad. I felt really sad with him and we talked about it, and he knows that it is over."

"And now the three of you can just work the Rail and hold down regular jobs? And it doesn't drive you insane to be around them? And they don't have fist fights?"

"Court, your world has always been livid and spectacular. I envy your powers of imagination in response to the everyday. Of course they don't fight, this isn't a vid. We're all doing what we have to do. I can't speak for them but I know that neither of them particularly bears ill will toward me, and that's enough for me to stop worrying about it. What's between them is what's always between men: a secret you don't want to know."

"Court, there are a lot of different kinds of love. Your father and I are married and we've learned to love each other again almost every year."

"You've been having affairs every year?"

She laughed. "You are so insolent and horrible. No, I've never had an affair before. But you drift apart and you come together. If the world were different we would have gotten a divorce."

"What about me?"

"What about me?" she asked, her voice going a little sharp. I apologized. She looked up at the ceiling and thought for a moment.

"Tell me, you loved Chess?"

I nodded.

"You weren't in love with Chess. You were going to marry him, even though you weren't in love, and then you came to me and you said, 'This marriage isn't happening.' You said, 'Chess is dying and we have to help him.' Because you loved him. Yes?"

I nodded again, but I creased my brow.

"Court, you were not raised in a house with any dearth of love. Think about every other home on this street and ask yourself if you ever felt a distance between your father and I."

"Are you saying Daddy's Red? Because that will blow my mind."

"I'm not saying it was like with Chess, I'm saying you have to do what you have to do. 'In a different world' is a pretty big hypothetical, don't you think? I'm saying on a different kind of Blue, we would have loved you separately and not together, rather than figuring out ways to make it work."

"Good."

"I guess so. Except then I had an affair because of it, so you tell me."

"Do you feel guilty?"

"Maybe I should? I don't know. I don't feel guilty about it, because it's how we all joined the Rail, and our lives have become holy and strange as a result, and you, my dear, have become holy as a result."

"But not strange."

She kissed me.

"You were always that."

And she turned off the light. I resolved to find my father, to climb inside him and pull him out again with me, like Theseus in the books that don't exist anymore, so that he could be happy too. My parents aren't old enough for this fight or tall enough to chase or scream the monsters away, but they can stand on my shoulders.

And the three of us -- the five of us, with Chess and Link -- will raise my daughter together and she will know absolute peace and absolute love, and she will see the works of the Rail burst the Book open, like something rotten and soft, and she will be whatever she wants. We will bring Red crashing down to Blue and we will have peace.

My daughter will be Queen of herself and the most beautiful princess in all the land, and one day when I am ready she'll let down her hair and I will climb up the tower and past the tower, and holding hands the six of us will ascend to Heaven and we'll bring Red crashing there too. There is no place my war will stop, if that war can keep her safe and free. There is no end to that bloody, bleeding sky.