“It’s a surprise,” she said, her lips spreading into a smile. This was actually the first time we’d spoken since I came back. We had spent several days silently passing each other in the house.
“I don’t think I can take any more surprises,” I said.
“Elymas does have a flair for them,” Nana replied. “It’s part of his charm, I suppose. But I wouldn’t trust everything he says and does.”
I looked at her. “Should I trust you?”
“You should trust the truth, child.”
“What is the truth, Nana?”
“The truth is what makes you feel calm and loved, nothing more than that.”
“That’s meaningless.”
“No it isn’t. It’s the only meaning. Truth is never anger or fear. They’re illusions, and Elymas traffics in them.”
I looped the thread and pushed the needle back through the fabric. I was working on the toe of an angel blowing a trumpet.
“He told me you would call him a false prophet.”
“He also told you that I’d be upset, but I’m not. You’re free to follow false prophets if you wish. They all expose themselves eventually… and truth is never far away.”
“I saw Bo and Sarah with my own eyes. I held them in my arms.”
“I know, dear, I know. And you sailed on a caravel and walked through Tara, and everything around you here seems so real. But it all disappears. Things and bodies are not real. They’re symbols, and symbols are impermanent. Life is impermanent.”
“Bo’s life has been ruined.”
“According to Elymas, it has. But who’s to say? Is Bo closer to the truth by working at a homeless shelter or sitting in front of a television camera?”
“What happened to her? What happened to me? What are you hiding?”
“I’m not hiding anything, child. It’s you who doesn’t see the truth all around you.” She closed the almanac and pushed herself up from the chair. “When you’re ready to see it, you will. It’s time now for us to get ready.”
“For what?”
“You’ll need an evening gown.”
That got my attention. “And where do you expect me to find one of those in Shemaya?”
She had the devious look of a grandparent teasing a child with a present. “In your closet.”
I went upstairs and opened the closet in my mother’s room. There were five different gowns-beautiful silks, satins, and crepes with matching stockings and shoes. I was thrilled. Nana stood at the door, watching me.
“They’re beautiful,” I said, holding each one in front of me. “Won’t you tell me where we’re going?”
“I can’t,” Nana said, “it’s a surprise.”
She sat on the bed as I tried on each gown, twirling past her. They all fit perfectly, but we liked the black satin gown with straps and the low bodice that exposed my shoulders and back the best. I was actually enjoying myself. We went through the same process in her room, settling on a gown for her with more color and a high neckline. She pulled two strands of pearls and two matching pairs of earrings from her jewelry box and gave a set to me. Standing before the mirror, we made a striking couple, and neither of us needed hair brushes or makeup. Hair and complexions are always perfect in Shemaya.
We left the house with the last of the four suns from the four seasons dropping beneath the treetops. Nana led me out the back door and through the woods on foot to the entrance of the train station. There were strange new sounds when we entered the vestibule, mystical and resonant-the sounds of water rushing and wind blowing, of dolphins laughing and birds singing, of children talking and parents sighing, of all creation living and dying. It was the sound of the earth rotating, if it could have been heard from space, primordial and otherworldly, as viewing the earth from orbit feels both primordial and otherworldly. It turned out to be the sounds of a band. A handwritten note on the doors read: “RECEPTION FOR NEW PRESENTERS.” We walked in.
All the postulants were gone, and with them the static discharge of their memories and the sad, horrifying, but sometimes beautiful, states of their deaths. On an elevated stage near the board showing arrivals but no departures, hovered four faceless minstrels, like Legna, dressed in long gray cassocks. Two played instruments that looked like violins, one a bass, and the other a cello that vibrated in colors: auroral greens, violets, and blues. Before the band milled a crowd of formally attired men, women, and children, some off by themselves enjoying the performance with a plate of hors d’oeuvres and a glass of champagne (or milk for the children), others gathered into small groups, talking and laughing. Banquet tables had been erected in the four corners of the hall and piled high with pâtés, caviar, cheeses, fruits, and other delicacies, and next to these were bars fully stocked with wine, liquor, and other refreshments. A small army of faceless, gray-dressed creatures tended the tables and bars and collected the empty glasses and plates from the guests. A magnificent crystal chandelier and a constellation of lesser chandeliers bathed the room in a warm, sparkling light. I looked around, trying to gain my bearings. Luas emerged from the crowd, dressed handsomely in a single-breasted tuxedo.
“Welcome! Welcome!” he said, greeting us. “We’ve been waiting for you!” He gave each of us hugs, then turned and waved his arms over the crowd. “Grand, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I yelled over the din.
“And all in your honor, my dear. You’ve graduated with flying colors, and you’re ready for your first client. I must say, we’ve got an excellent group of new presenters. Time for a little play before the work begins. You both look wonderful.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But I really don’t feel like I’m ready to graduate or represent anybody. I barely understand the process…and I don’t think I agree with the results.”
“Have no worries, Brek,” Luas assured me. “Everyone’s nervous the first time, you’ll do just fine.”
“Brek was very suspicious about tonight,” Nana said. “She almost forced me to ruin the surprise.”
“Was she now?” Luas said. “Ah, but she’s an inquisitive one. That’s what we love about her.”
“Here’s another question, then,” I said. “What have you done with all the postulants? The hall was filled a few days ago.”
“And a perceptive question as usual,” Luas said. “Didn’t I tell you, Sophia? They’re still here, actually. Come, I’ll show you.”
We walked back out of the train shed and closed the doors. “Okay,” he said, “now, open them again.”
All at once the music was gone, along with the minstrels, food, tables, chandeliers, and beautiful guests, and the postulants were back-thousands of souls lurking in the dim, sulfurous light of the train station, comatose and naked, wandering endlessly over the cold, filthy floor. The soul of a teenage girl approached me, and in her I saw a doctor explaining that there is nothing he can do to stop the treatment for her leukemia from making her nauseous; her stomach hurts and she’s crying, squeezing her stuffed rabbit, Mr. Ears. She returns to school thin and bald, a freak in her own eyes. Her mother has quit her job to care for her; she is a tender, loving mother, but the girl despises the woman because she is healthy and beautiful, and responsible for bringing her into this horrible world. Most of all, the girl despises her sister, who is younger and also healthy and beautiful; she plays soccer and flirts with boys, flaunting her life. She has no idea of suffering. The sick girl refuses to speak to her sister, and refuses to smile. She infects others with the blackness that infects her, for she believes no other goals are attainable, and she is alone. She would die for a last laugh. And she does.
I looked next into the soul of an old man from Congo, and from him I received magnanimous humor and love. His life begins in a shack with a dirt floor, in a village with a dirt road, and ends in the same shack with the same road and the same dirt. He has fourteen children and loves each one, although eight died before the age of ten. He loves his neighbors, his fields, and even the wild boar that gores him to death. Most of all, he loves his wife, who tries with all her strength to heal the infection that becomes gangrenous and ultimately kills him. Offered to do it all over, he would happily say yes.