"What are You asking me to do?" Jude said. "Are You telling me I should add another body to the heap? Another child?" She laid her hand on her belly. "This child?"
She hadn't realized until now how covetous she felt of the soul she was nurturing.
"It belongs to the butcher," Jokalaylau said.
"No," Jude quietly replied. "It belongs to me."
"You'll be responsible for its works?"
"Of course," she said, strangely' exhilarated by this promise. "Bad can be made from good, Goddess; whole things from broken."
She wondered as she spoke if They knew where these sentiments originated; whether They understood that she was turning the Reconciler's philosophies to her own maternal ends. If They did, They seemed not to think less of her for it.
"Then Our spirits go with you, sister," Tishalulle' said.
"Are You sending me away again?" Jude asked.
"You came here looking for an answer, and We can provide it."
"We understand the urgency of this," Uma Umagammagi said. "And We haven't held you here without cause. I've been across the Dominions while you waited, looking for some clue to this puzzle. There are Maestros waiting in every Dominion to undertake the Reconciliation—"
"Then Gentle didn't begin?"
"No. He's waiting for your word."
"And what should I tell him?"
"I've searched their hearts, looking for some plot—"
"Did You find any?"
"No. They're not pure, of course. Who is? But all of them want the Imajica whole. All of them believe the working they're ready to perform can succeed,"
"Do You believe it too?"
"Yes, We do," said Tishalulle. "Of course they don't realize they're completing the circle. If they did, perhaps they'd think again."
"Why?"
"Because the circle belongs to Our sex, not to theirs," Jokalaylau put in.
"Not true," Umagammagi said. "It belongs to any mind that cares to conceive it."
"Men are incapable of conceiving, sister," Jokalaylau replied, "Or hadn't You heard?"
Umagammagi smiled. "Even that may change, if We can coax them from their terrors."
Her words begged many^guestions, and She knew it. Her eyes fixed on Jude, and She said, "We'll have time for these works when you come back. But now I know you need to be fleet."
"Tell Gentle to be a Reconciler," TishatUll6 said, "But share nothing that We've said with him."
"Do I have to be the one to tell him?" Jude said to Umagammagi. "If You've been there once, can't You go again and give him the news? I want to stay here."
"We understand. But he's in no mood to trust Us, believe me. The message must come from you, in the flesh."
"I see," Jude said.
There was no room for persuasion, it seemed. She had the plain answer she'd come here hoping to find. Now she had to return to the Fifth with it, unpalatable as that journey would be.
"May I ask one question before I go?" she said.
"Ask it," said Umagammagi.
"Why did You show Yourselves to me this way?"
It was Tishalulle' who replied. "So that you'll know Us when We come to sit at your table or walk beside you in the street," She said."Will you come to the Fifth?"
"Perhaps, in time. We'll have work there, when the Reconciliation's achieved."
Jude imagined the transformations she'd seen outside wrought in London: Mother Thames climbing her banks, depositing the filth she'd been choked by in Whitehall and the Mall, then sweeping through the city, making its squares into swimming pools and its cathedrals into playgrounds. The thought made her light.
"I'll be waiting for you," she said and, thanking them, made her departure.
When she got outside the waters were waiting for her, the surf lush as pillows. She didn't delay, but went straight down the beach and threw herself into its comfort. This time there was no need to swim; the tide knew its business. It picked her up and carried her across the basin like a foamy chariot, delivering her back to the rocks from which she'd first taken her plunge. Lotti Yap and Paramarola had gone, but finding her way out of the palace would be easier now than when she'd first arrived. The waters had been at work on many of the corridors and chambers that ran around the basin, and on the courtyards beyond, opening up vistas of glittering pools and fountains that stretched to the rubble of the palace gates. The air was clearer than it had been, and she could see the Kesparates spread below. She could even see the harbor, and the sea at its walls, its own tide longing, no doubt, to share this enchantment.
She made her way back to the staircase, to find that the waters that had carried her here had receded from the bottom, leaving heaps of flotsam and jetsam behind. Picking through it, like a beachcomber granted her paradise, was Lotti Yap, and sitting on the lower steps, chatting to Paramarola, Hoi-Polloi Peccable.
After they'd greeted each other, Hoi-Polloi explained how she'd prevaricated before committing herself to the river that had separated her from Jude. Once she jumped in, however, it had carried her safely through the palace and delivered her to this spot. Minutes later it had been called to other duties and disappeared.
"We'd pretty much given up on you," said Lotti Yap. She was busy plucking the petitions and prayers from among the trash, unfolding them, scanning them, then pocketing them. "Did you get to see the Goddesses?"
"Yes, I did,"
"Are They beautiful?" Paramarola asked.
"In a way."
"Tell us every detail."
"I haven't time. I have to get back to the Fifth."
"You got your answer, then," Lotti said.
"I did. And we've got nothing to fear."
"Didn't I tell you?" she replied. "Everything's well with the world."
As Jude started to pick her way through the debris, Hoi-Polloi said, "Can two of us go?1'
"I thought you were going to wait with us," Paramarola said.
"I'll come back and see the Goddesses," Hoi-Polloi replied. "I'd like to see the Fifth before everything changes. It is going to change, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," Jude said.
"Do you want something to read on your travels?" Lotti asked them, proffering a fistful of petitions. "It's amazing, what people write."
"All those should go to the island," Jude said. "Take them with you. Leave them at the temple door."
"But the Goddesses can't answer every prayer," Lotti said. "Lost lovers, crippled children—"
"Don't be so sure," Jude told her. "It's going to be a new day."
Then, with Hoi-Polloi at her side, she made the hour's second round of farewells and headed away in the general direction of the gate.
"Do you really believe what you said to Lotti?" Hoi-Polloi asked her when they'd left the staircase far behind "Is tomorrow going to be so different from today?"
"One way or another," Jude said.
The reply was more ambiguous than she'd intended, but then perhaps her tongue was wiser than it knew. Though she was going from this holy place with the word of powers far more discerning than she, their reassurance could not quite erase the memory of the bowl in Oscar's treasure room and the prophecy of dust it had shown her.
She silently admonished herself for her lack of faith. Where did this seam of arrogance come from, that she could doubt the wisdom of Uma Umagammagi Herself? From now on, she would put such ambivalence away. Maybe tomorrow, or some blissful day after, she'd meet the Goddesses on the streets of the Fifth and tell Them that even after Their comforts she'd still nursed some ridiculous nub of doubt. But for today she'd bow to Their wisdoms and return to the Reconciler as a bearer of good news.
22
Gentle wasn't the only occupant of the house in Gamut Street who'd smelled the In Ovo on the late-afternoon breeze; so had one who'd once been a prisoner in that Hell between Dominions: Little Ease. When Gentle returned to the Meditation Room, having set Monday the task of bringing the stones up the stairs and sent Clem around the house securing it, he found his sometime tormentor up at the window. There were tears on its cheeks, and its teeth were chattering uncontrollably.