Evegale's Fairytale

Once, God forgot her own name.

Not the common name, but the true one. The one no tongue can utter. Only God can say that name which spells Being and for her, saying it was natural as breathing.

But forever is a long time. Eventually, after aeons beyond aeons passed, it faded from memory.

She struggled to remember but the more she fought, the farther it slipped away. And so God became trapped inside time. Locked in the prison of a vanishing present.

But she was deceived. Her name hadn’t slipped away at all. It had been stolen. Taken from her by one of her own creations: a human whose love she never could have doubted.  

He’d been the first to bring her a gift. No one else had the gall to give something to the maker and sustainer of all things. The very notion was absurd. Yet he’d scoured the vast pale globe anyway, searching tirelessly for the most perfect object in all creation so that he might offer it up to her.

It took several ages but finally, buried deep inside the heart of Being, he found it: a crystal which embodied pure perfection. The one thing in all creation immaculate as God herself. When he ripped it free, a faint, far-off scream sounded, but he did not hear.

He took the gift across the world, seeking after God, asking for the help of anyone who would listen. But they only laughed, asking whether God had become lost while they weren’t looking.

The man became a cynical, wretched thing, held in contempt by everyone, including himself. And still, he searched for her.

Eventually, pity overcame God. She deigned to become finite, if only temporarily. Taking on the shape of his desire, she stood before him.

Shocked, he stared at her for a long time, unable to move or look away. He’d never really thought he could find her, she knew.

Collecting himself, he hastily presented the gift, promising it held what she lacked. She laughed, saying, “You must be confused about who I am.”

He didn’t respond, but only looked at her. The raw sincerity in his eyes, the doubt creeping into them, made her feel small. Swallowing thickly, she took the gift from his outstretched hands.

Looking for what he saw, she studied the crystal. It was so perfect, though, she found nothing inside. Only void. Transfixed, she gazed into it for a long time, twisting this perfect nothingness in her fingertips.

So soft she barely felt it, the man kissed the nape of her neck. And for the first time, understanding failed her completely.

In that moment, she forgot all about how cut off, how separate, she was from the world she’d made. In that moment, she learned the power of forgetting.

Instead of seeing all of time laid out as a single entity, certain parts of the future flickered and went dark. It was the birth of something new: a small ribbon of time even God could move through.

The man took her to his sanctuary--a remote, deeply silent place, built inside a narrow ravine. The natural, flowing curves of pale rock were the sanctuary’s walls. As she stepped inside, cold, sterile air rushed to embrace her.  She looked up and found her own face staring back at her from far above. A mirrored ceiling followed the canyon’s undulating walls, but loosely, creating intermittent, curved spaces for golden sunlight to stream through.

A long pool of water stretched ahead between the cliffs, so deep it drowned the light. She took his outstretched hand and followed him over round, white stones placed intermittently through the dark water. The stones were the tops of pillars, she realized, seeing their narrow, straight bodies fade into the watery depths below. The path ran on and on through the narrow, twisting lake.

As they traversed the stones, the winding canyon seemed to curve more heavily left than right, circling ever tighter into itself as though a great mountain whirlpool had solidified into a spiral canyon. But that could not be. She’d birthed the whole world and knew it held nothing like that. No doubt this impression was a trick fostered by her new, bounded senses.

They rounded a tight corner and suddenly a great obsidian shell loomed before them, just above the water line. This shell seemed as impossible as the canyon it was within; in all her world, no creature existed which grew a shell anything near this size. Its glossy curves flowed upward into a graceful spiral. At the base of the shell, a wide opening like a parting curtain revealed a bed of silver sand inside.

The beach pressed its silky softness between her toes as she made her way behind the man through the mouth of the shell. Inside, she found herself wrapped loosely in a huge, curved black mirror. A recessed shelf in the shell wall caught her eye.

“What is this place? Why don’t I know it?” She whispered.

“I...I don’t know,” the man said. “I started digging one day and eventually unearthed the canyon and, finally...this.” Arms spread wide, he gestured at the shell surrounding them.

“This entire place was buried? You mean to say that you just...dug it up? By yourself?”

“You out of everyone should know what’s possible when you have a goal and unlimited time.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “But how did you know to dig here? In this precise, place, so far from everyone else?”

He opened his mouth, like he was going to respond, but instead, he closed it again, furrowing his brow. After a moment, he shrugged. “I don’t know. After I found the shell, I knew the crystal would be buried just a few feet beneath it. It’s like the shell told me where it would be. More than that, really. It’s as if the digging, and even the idea to bring you a gift, wasn’t really my idea.” He swallowed. “That it came from...this.” He nodded, indicating the shell again. “But of course I know it didn't. I’m only saying how it felt.”

Dizziness swam through her. She did know this place--hardly surprising; she knew everything--yet, she couldn’t begin to put this recognition into words.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts and placed the perfect crystal he’d given her inside the shell’s recess. It fit easily, settling into place with a precise click. The gem glowed to life with warm light--like the sun, but softer. The light flashed brighter for a moment and when it did, a smaller star near it was born.

She looked at the man, puzzled. “Is one star not enough for you?” She asked. “What could ever be the point of having two?”

He didn’t respond but only watched as the stars continued their pulsing. With each pulse, a new star was born which flickered and gave birth to stars of its own. Soon, thousands of stars gleamed inside the shell. She stared as they bloomed and created new points of light endlessly around her, on and on, without end. Each star was rendered smaller than the last, so no matter how many were created, they never drowned out each other’s light. Each light remained singular yet never alone in the dark--all existed within the the scope of the others’ soft light.

“I had a dream,” he said softly, turning to face her. “That the whole world--even the sun and myself--grew and divided over and over until there was so much of it and of me that I couldn’t keep track of anything anymore.”

“What did you do?” She asked, surprised at how unsettled she felt.

He shrugged. “There was only one thing to do: I got lost.”

The dizziness came again, along with the impression that it wasn’t a dream he described, but a memory. Her memory.

“Did you ever find your way back?” She asked. “In the dream, I mean.”

He shook his head. “No. I didn’t.”

“That sounds horrible. I can’t imagine anything worse.”

“It was horrible. And terrifying. But also...lovely, somehow. ” His eyes filled with an intensity verging on desperation and he seized her hands in a painful grip. “Here, I’ll show you. Lay down with me and we’ll sleep. We’ll dream it together.”

She laughed, trying to brush off his unnerving sincerity, but it came out forced. “You know dreams don’t work that way. Even if they did, I don’t sleep. It would be...absurd.” She pulled free of his grasp and folded her arms.

“Don’t sleep? Or can’t sleep? Surely you don’t mean I can do something you can’t.” His grin was lighthearted and teasing, but the doubt was still there, just beneath the surface. “Just lay down with me. Please?” He held out his hand.

She hesitated. Why was she so afraid? He was just a man and she was God. Based on her hammering heart and the lump in her throat, though, one might think it was the other way around. Taking a deep, steadying breath--and feeling more than a bit foolish for needing to take it--she took his outstretched hand in hers, weaving her fingers between his. Surprised by how passive his grip now was, she lowered herself onto the soft bed of sand, pulling him down beside her. Together, they gazed up at their small starry heaven.

After a little while, his breathing changed, becoming slower and deeper. She looked over, finding his eyes closed and lips parted just slightly. He looked so small and fragile. Guilt rode over her. She should be sleeping too.

Of course God doesn’t need sleep, but God can do anything, she reminded herself. And she suddenly realised she would do anything for him. So she nuzzled into his neck, pulled his free arm over her waist, and slowed her own breathing to match his. That night--and every night from then on--she slept soundly, losing herself inside his arms, cocooned in the warm glow of the crystal and its countless stars. She learned to love sleep because it was another, deeper type of forgetting.

Many ages passed.

Sometimes, she’d wake to find him crying beside her. When she asked what was wrong, he said he didn’t deserve her. He’d only given her something that was already hers. He needed to create something, anything, to prove himself. She told him that he’d already made something incredible--a place where even God could live and dream. He only shook his head, angrily scrubbing tears from his cheeks.

God knows all things, but God’s will is omnipotent. Learning to forget meant gaining the power to willfully deny anything to herself. One such thing was that, though he professed to share her dreams, he only ever dreamt of how to tear her dream apart. Another was the fact that he’d begun talking to her in her sleep.

While she slept, he whispered with a honeyed tongue, asking her name. So every night, over and over, she unwittingly poured the power of creation into his ear.

Because death can’t exist in a perfect world, this man had forever to learn the unlearnable. To say the unsayable.

One morning, he finally succeeded. Her true name flowed from his lips with more force than the wildest river. It swept even God up in its torrent. The great shell collapsed and the perfect crystal split in two: one shard driving straight into her heart; the other, her mind.

When she finally washed up on the shore of a new creation, she remembered nothing.

Thus, God was born into the world. And death too. For this new world, absent her image, tried in vain to twist itself around the shape of its new maker. But only God is fixed; the mind and desires of this man were ever-changing, incapable of being static. His world, then, could only be a world of becoming.

The man forgot all about God the moment he betrayed her. She, along with the part of him who loved her, slid from his mind like water through a sieve.

But he should have known the danger of forgetting better than anyone. Even though God was now ignorant and trapped inside time, she still had the vastness of forever inside her. And she would be reborn. Again and again and again. As many times as needed for her to finally remember who she was.

Even if it took millennia, she’d one day become who she’d always been: the one who could remake the world in her image by banishing death and suffering to the only place they belonged--inside the betrayer.

But things did not go that way.

Because in this world of becoming, time itself changed. It grew into a wild thing. This new time devoured not only living things, but also stone, whole planets, and even stars. Nothing could hold onto itself anymore. And so everything became imbued with a kind of story: a birth, a becoming, and a destruction from which countless new stories would be born, each connected with untold others.

This kind of change had the power to move even God.

When she met the boy with large gray eyes, she was collecting water from the river. It was the first time she’d been trusted by her mother to carry the heavy clay pot and make the journey alone. Her back and arms burned in protest as she lifted the full pot from the river, but she ignored the pain. She had to prove herself.

Suddenly, the weight disappeared as someone behind her helped settle the pot onto her head. She whirled and was confronted with an unfamiliar face a few years older than her own.

He stroked her cheek, gazing at her with a lopsided grin. She shrieked and dropped the pot, barely noticing it shatter against the rocks as she ran back in the direction of her village.

Outsider, was all she could think as her feet pounded against the flattened grass of the path that wound through the forest. Black magic. Death. He’d already touched her. Did that mean it was too late?

Just as she reached the outskirts of her village, his hand reached hers, swinging her around to face him. His eyes were bright as they locked to her and his smile glowed like the moon. Ever since she could remember, the moon called to her like nothing else ever had. Until now.

Chest heaving, his voice full of excitement, he spoke. But his words were foreign. She only grasped that, for some reason, he was ecstatic to have found her.  

But she wasn’t the only one who’d been found. One of the villagers had spotted the boy and was calling out the alarm. Dread shot through her. She jerked her hand free of his and took a step back. With a dull thud, the first stone hit. The boy lifted a hand up to the side of his head, then in front of his face. His mouth fell open in surprise at the sight of blood on his fingertips. Panic filled his voice as his words tumbled out, faster and faster.

“Run!” She shrieked at the boy. He didn’t move. She leaned forward and shoved him. “Can’t you see they’ll kill you?” But he remained rooted to the spot, his wide eyes begging her to understand. As though her understanding could make any difference now.

Rock after rock flew as more villagers saw him. She saw her mother in the growing crowd, waving her arms frantically, screaming at her to get away from the stranger.

The boy’s words began to slur. Soon, they stopped altogether and his body crumpled to the soft green earth. Only then could she see the whole truth: a broken promise of a future written across his ruined face. A vow broken not by him, but by her.  
Someone grabbed her from behind and dragged her away from the shattered boy. She realized she was sobbing, begging everyone to stop. But it was too late.

How was it possible that the only thing that mattered lived inside those strange gray eyes? She didn’t know. She only knew it did.

And now it was gone.

Life after life, she met those same silver eyes, always inside a different face. Each time, he recognized her and each time, without fail, she ran. Though her reasons for running always changed, they were really the same. All were lies covering a memory she couldn’t face.

Over and over, she led the boy straight to his death. And every time, she realized barely too late everything he meant to her.

Until one day, the smallest thing changed.

This time, they met at the edge of a great ocean, just after sunset, the full moon hanging low over the horizon. She’d known better than to be alone and so far from home--especially after dark--yet here she was. The feel of the soft sand between her toes made her feel...she couldn’t describe it. It felt like remembering something that hadn’t happened yet.

This time, she saw him coming. But she did not run. Her fingers played over the leather handle of the long blade tucked between her shoulder blades as she watched him stoop to pick something up before approaching her.  

She drew her blade.

His lopsided grin was strained as he held a little flower out to her--a type so common it was considered it a weed. His lean frame and tattered shirt made it easy to see where the blade needed to go. One upward thrust, just beneath the ribs. It would be so easy. He wouldn’t even put up a fight. She didn’t understand how she knew he wouldn’t, she only knew it was true.

Her gaze flickered to the flower in his hand, then back to his face. Somehow, that gift, worth absolutely nothing, and the sad hope in his colorless eyes, gave her pause.

She took his gift, still holding the blade steady in her other hand. As she pulled the flower toward herself, a single petal from its bloom fell. Somehow, that tiny thing felt like the biggest, heaviest thing in the world.

Fighting the terror screaming at her to shove her blade through his exposed skin (how stupid he was to wear no protection) she slowly inched closer to him until she could feel the heat rolling off his chest. The point of her knife pressed against his skin just hard enough to draw blood.

He stood frozen, seeming to struggle with himself. Time slowed and the space between their heartbeats became eternity. Gritting his teeth, he pulled her small frame tight against his.

He pressed his lips against hers so hard his lips grazed her teeth, threading her mouth lightly with the taste of metal. She couldn’t tell how deep her knife had cut him but her chest was slick with blood. There was little art to his embrace, yet it pulled an unseen splinter from her heart and a longing that had been so carefully hidden now flooded through her. She let go of her blade and kissed him back, confused by the tears rolling down her cheeks.

The knife wound, she soon found, wasn’t superficial. But it also wasn’t fatal. Within a few months, a light ragged scar down his chest was the only thing left to remind them that when they’d first met, she’d almost killed him.

They had no wedding ceremony. Instead, each day, he brought her a new flower. Each night, its withered, falling petals renewed a promise neither could put into words.

On the morning their daughter was born, God finally remembered who she was.

The golden sun crested the green earth just as her husband, his arms shaking, helped her lift their new baby girl up to her chest. She was perfect. Achingly beautiful.

But something was wrong. The child was deep gray and not breathing.

Fighting back panic, she rubbed the baby’s chest. Nothing. She slung the child over her shoulder and patted her tiny back. Gently, at first, then more and more forcefully. But it didn’t matter what she did. Her baby remained still as stone.

After a while, her husband put his hand over hers, forcing her to stop. She looked up, trying to make out his face through the blur of her tears. She blinked and found his eyes. Eyes the same color as their baby’s cold skin. Eyes rimmed, now, with red as he shook his head. Gently, he wrapped his arms around both her and their baby.

Please, she thought, knowing how empty the word was but still unable to stop herself. Please, please, please, please...

The precise moment she lost hope, their child drew a deep, shuddering breath.

Frozen, she stared down at her baby, terrified the slightest movement might undo this miracle.

The world was silent as the child exhaled.

And on her outward breath rode the name of God.

A shard, lodged deep inside God’s mind, loosened and fell free. Finally, she remembered. She remembered everything.

A fiery path spread out before her, leading straight up to paradise. She saw her betrayer there, sitting on his private beach of silver sand. And he saw her, his eyes widening with fear. Righteous rage burned through her, threatened to consume her if she didn’t let it out.

This imposter, this wretch, was responsible for untold suffering, yet he’d been subjected to none himself. Justice demanded she destroy him to remake paradise just as it had been. She and her husband could be together forever in truth now. Their daughter never needed to know pain or death.

She froze time time all around her and prepared to divert all suffering and death into their hateful source.

But she took one last look at her baby’s face and hesitated. Now, on the brink of this world’s destruction, she saw her child in truth: not as a complete being, but as an unrelenting becoming of what might be.

This world of change wasn’t just where her daughter lived; it lived inside her too. Destroying it meant destroying her. And trying to control it, to make that wild, unpredictable spark of change manageable, meant rendering her child a puppet.  

Endless time would erase her child too. If she forced the girl to live forever in a world without boundary, every possible word and action would eventually be repeated by her, ad infinitum, until all semblance of her uniqueness, her identity, washed away.

Her daughter wouldn’t have life, but a waking death.

Dread washed over God as she realized that same fate awaited her husband and everyone else in paradise. Before being born into this world, God had never known life. But it had been worse than that. Nothing in her world had been alive. Her entire creation had been a corpse feeding on an empty dream about living.

All except the betrayer, she realized. In all her world, he was the only one who never stopped seeking what was out of reach. He, alone, fought for a way to live.

Something about that nagged at her, highlighting a crucial truth she still hadn’t grasped. No memory could speak of it and yet all her memories somehow defined its edges, like a great void in her core, rimmed with blinding light on all sides.

She looked again at the glowing path leading to paradise and saw that it wasn’t really a path at all, but a rift. A shifting, undulating brokenness, created and sustained by her betrayer, that ran straight through the heart of Being. That rift gave this world both its horror and its beauty. In some way she couldn’t understand, each depended upon the other.

Her chest filled with hot, heavy lead and tears burned her cheeks. She finally understood: this world was the gift he’d always wanted to give her. Something beyond her own creation. Meaning forged through brokenness.

Rubbing her wet cheeks against her shoulders, she looked again at their daughter, at the first child of God born into the world. This child deserved life. And to live, she needed this world. She needed death. But God knew she could never watch her own child suffer, much less die, if a way out existed.

This would be her undoing, she knew. And the world’s too. It was only a matter of time. But the betrayer had long ago shown her the way out: she had to forget. Really and truly this time.

So God let her name flow back out of her mind and up through the rift toward Paradise, returning it to the only one who had any business wielding it. He would be God now. In truth.

Her husband held her so tight she worried he might hurt the fragile baby nestled between them. But their child only sighed contentedly, nuzzling against her chest.

“She’s alive!” He gasped.

“Yes,” She whispered, grinning so hard her cheeks hurt. “She is.”

Dad,

I’m sure you can tell I didn’t write this story for you. Honestly, I’d be shocked if you even managed to finish it. Did you know your right eye always twitches whenever anyone says the word God? If I somehow managed to live long enough, I always planned to eventually make a drinking game of it.  

I hid this in your desk because I need you to give it to Mom when it’s time. I’m not naive. I know what a story like this could do to her when she’s unstable. I tried to write her a normal goodbye letter, I really did, but it always came out wrong. It had to be a story. I’m trusting you’ll know when she’s ready.

I know you still care about her. Even if you can’t figure out how to love her anymore. That’s okay. It’s not like she makes it easy. I try to believe what you say about how none of it’s my fault, but I know better.

I want you to know that you did good, Dad. You and Mom both. Giving me a shot at life, being my parents, all of it. I mean, I can’t lie. A lot of it’s been really, really shitty. But some of it's been great. Better than great. Maybe even worth all the rest. I love you. Please take care of Mom.

-Evy

Eyes burning, Joshua fumbles through his desk drawers. Where the hell is that lighter? He’s got to do this now, before he loses his nerve. Theia deserves a goodbye letter from their daughter. Of course she does.

Evegale’s been in the ground less than a month but it's already obvious that no amount of time could make this letter less dangerous. It’s impossible not to see the harm it could cause, with Theia constantly struggling with delusions already. If she read this even years from now...he shakes his head, determination renewed. Ah! There it is, in the very back of the top drawer.

Hands shaking, he flicks the lighter. Once, twice, three times. Finally, it sparks to life. Joshua takes a deep breath and holds his daughter’s papers above the little yellow stream of fire. It seems to take an eternity before the wavering flame finally spreads to the paper. As the pages curl and blacken, he stands and walks, resignedly, to the old fireplace on the far wall of his office. When there’s just a thin thread of white paper left, he tosses it inside, only remembering to breathe again after every last bit of his daughter’s story is ash.

Part One: Books aren't Books. Dreams aren't Dreams