[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

What was Mother Elouise like? She was a woman of contradictions. Even with me, she would work for
hours teaching me to read, helping me make tablets out of river clay and write in them with a shaped
stick. And then, when I had written the words she taught me, she would weep and say, "Lies, all lies.''
Sometimes she would break the tablets I had made. But whenever part of her words was broken, she
would make me write it again.
She called the collection of words The Book of the Golden Age. I have named it The Book of the Lies of
the Angel Elouise, for it is important for us to know that the greatest truths we have seem like lies to those
who have been touched by the angel.
She told many stories to me, and once I asked her why they must be written down. "For Father Charlie,"
she would always say."Is he coming back, then?'' I would ask. But she shook her head, and finally one
time she said, "It is not for Father Charlie to read. It is because Father Charlie wanted it written."
"Then why didn't he write it himself?" I asked.
And Mother Elouise grew very cold with me, and all she would say was, "Father Charlie bought these
stories. He paid more for them than I am willing to pay to have them left unwritten.'' I wondered then if
Father Charlie was rich, but other things she said told me that he wasn't. So I do not understand except
that Mother Elouise did not want to tell the stories, and Father Charlie, though he was not there,
constrained her to tell them.
There are many of Mother Elouise's lies that I love, but I will say now which of them she said were most
important:
1. In the Golden Age, for ten times a thousand years men lived in peace and love and joy, and no one did
evil one to another. They shared all things in common, and no man was hungry while another was full, and
no man had a home while another stood in the rain, and no wife wept for her husband, killed before his
time.
2. The great serpent seems to come with great power. He has many names: Satan, Hitler, Lucifer,
Nimrod, Napoleon. He seems to be beautiful, and he promises power to his friends and death to his
enemies. He says he will right all wrongs. But really he is weak, until people believe in him and give him
the power of their bodies. If you refuse to believe in the serpent, if no one serves him, he will go away.
3. There are many cycles of the world. In every cycle, the great serpent has arisen and the world has
been destroyed to make way for the return of the Golden Age. Christ comes again in every cycle, also.
One day when he comes men will believe in Christ and doubt the great serpent, and that time the Golden
Age will never end, and God will dwell among men forever. And all the angels will say, come not to
heaven but to Earth, for Earth is heaven now.
These are the most important lies of Mother Elouise. Believe them all, for they are true.
All the way to the airplane clearing, Elouise deliberately broke branches and let them dangle, so that
Charlie would have no trouble finding a straight path out of the range of the Rectifier, even if he left his
flight to the last second. She was sure Charlie would follow her. Charlie would bend to her as he had
always bent, resilient and accommodating. He loved Elouise, and Amy he loved even more. What was in
the metal under his feet that would weigh in the balance against his love for them?
So Elouise broke the last branch and stepped into the clearing, and then sat down and let Amy play in the
unburnt grass at the edge while she waited. It is Charlie who will bend, she said to herself, for I will never
bend on this. Later I will make it up to him, but he must know that on this I will never bend.
The cold place in her grew larger and colder until she burned inside, waiting for the sound of running feet
crashing through the underbrush. The damnable birds kept singing, loudly, so that she could not hear the
footsteps.
Mother Elouise never hit me, or anyone else so far as I knew. She fought only with her words and silent
acts, though she could have killed easily with her hands. I saw her physical power only once. We were in
the forest, to gather firewood. We stumbled upon a wild hog. Apparently it felt cornered, though we
were weaponless; perhaps it was just mean. I have not studied the ways of wild hogs. It charged, not
Mother Elouise, but me. I was five at the time, and terrified. I ran to Mother Elouise, tried to cling to her, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]