Twelve Days: the Seventh

[avevale_intelligencer]

SEVEN

For Tig, who gave me a list

Around noon, Carol stopped being a tree and went down to the beach.

The Kyriakou estate, about thirty-five kilometres out of Athens, had its own private stretch of sand, and Chris had taken the kids down that morning to play. The kids. Carol smiled to herself as she descended the steep hill, past the flaking doors in the white, white walls, and the black-clad women nodding over their beads. Strictly speaking, they only had the one kid. Strictly speaking, most of the others weren't kids at all.

She'd told Chris, back when this had all started, that she didn't fancy starting a commune, or a cult, and she hadn't changed her mind. Cults were creepy. But this wasn't really a cult. There was no worshipping, no brainwashing, no hellfire and damnation for those outside "it," whatever it was. It was really more like an extended family, and not the Manson model either. It was...

It was love. That was all it was. Mind you, love could be creepy sometimes too. It got in among your thoughts and shifted them around. Decisions you'd thought settled and immovable suddenly seemed to need re-examining. She had fully intended to stay in Avevale, in her little cottage down by the river, in her job at the College; but somehow, when she'd flown out here with Chris on their honeymoon, she'd fallen in love with the place, the impossibly blue sky, the sunsets—oh God, the sunsets. And the estate was just sitting here, acres of land, vines and fields and gardens, all Chris's. And gradually, they'd realised that they wanted to stay.

It hadn't been easy. There had been drought, and economic collapse, and learning the language had been surprisingly hard for Carol; but they had found ways to alleviate the difficulties. Kyriakou money had helped, of course; there seemed to be an awful lot of it. And in the meantime, her friend Monica had come out to join them, and they had made friends locally, and gradually—again—the house had filled up with people, with friends, with...lovers.

That, strangely, had been the least creepy thing about the whole process. Carol had not even felt herself changing, not after that first rush; but it had happened. It was all down to the tetrad, of course. Chris's family had kept it in darkness for generations, till Chris himself had unwittingly touched it and its power had entered him, bringing out his mythical other selves and triggering his transformation into something altogether greater than the sum of his parts. And when he had shared himself with Carol for the first time, it had entered her too, bringing its incredible, terrifying gifts with it...and it wanted more.

There was nothing wrong with that, of course. Looking back on her old self, Carol could hardly imagine what it had felt like to be so restricted, so fearful, so—crippled—as to think that one could never love more than one person. She could scarcely comprehend a moral system that declared that one could only love one person, and that person only of a certain kind. Love shared only intensifies; she loved Chris more for loving more people herself, and she knew he felt the same. When you thought about it, so much fell into place; the injustices of history, the runaway greeds and hatreds, the overmastering, overwhelming fear that had become so much a part of living for people in the modern world that it seldom even broke the surface of consciousness, they all assumed a deeper meaning. They were all symptoms of the sickness that grew when you starved the soul of love.

She had reached the low wall that bordered the beach, and she perched on it, her blue and purple batik sundress flowing in the breeze from the sea. Distant white shapes circled in that deep, deep blue heaven. Of course it was not as simple as that. You couldn't reach out to a Hitler or a Dennis Nilsen and heal them with love alone. Something more was needed. The tetrad. Study each face. Travel each edge. Conquer each corner. Know thus the centre. It was the true wisdom of the Greeks, gnothi seauton, brought to its highest level. The tetrad brought nothing out of a person that had not been there already; it simply amplified it. It weaponised the soul, in a way. Whether that soul then became a weapon of destruction, or of peace, was still a matter of personal choice. That, Carol thought, was where the love came in. Knowing the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do right was a simple thing, if the choice was made with love, with understanding, with reverence, and with wisdom.

That was how she knew, to the deepest core of her heart, that nothing they had done was wrong. When Chris had taken Monica tenderly to bed, she had known, and felt nothing but joy. Now Monica herself carried the power of the tetrad, as did everyone with whom they had shared love. It was a closer bond than marriage, effortlessly bridging all gulfs. No, not a cult, not a religion or an ideology or even a diet plan—though they did all seem to be looking well on it. It was both more and less than all those. Given enough time, it could genuinely change the world.

And what then? Carol was not entirely blind to the possibility that it was all a trick—that the tetrad was merely using her and the others as helpless vessels whereby to propagate itself. She knew, though, from whence that thought had come; from the fearful, angry, desperate part of humanity that dare not believe in unconditional good, that denies the possibility of the free lunch because it has been hurt too many times through trusting. To overcome that fear, to dispel the illusions it conjured, all that was needed was courage, and a little humility. We have nothing to fear, Carol quoted to herself, but fear itself.

The white shapes were descending, growing larger. Carol eased herself over the wall carefully—this body was about four months along, and while there was no discomfort, going more slowly was still easier—and sank her bare toes into the warm sand. She could have come to meet them as dryad, or either of her other two forms, but this was the one she wanted Chris to see when he became himself again. The tetrad found different forms within everyone it touched, but some were more likely than others.

They touched down in the water, their hooves churning it into foam; Kostas, Atalanti, Aris, Georgi, Rhea, Monica and Chris himself. Folding their wings, they galloped out of the sea like a metaphor, and one by one exploded into their human bodies.

Carol smiled, and went to greet her family.

Comments

[janewilliams20]

Lovely! I just wish it was true.