27.2

 

Roisin’s breath catches as she frowns. This is not what she expected. She thought the mantle would pull her toward a battlefield; a pandemic in full infection rate; a wave of starvation sweeping a beleaguered Middle Eastern country; the assassination of a respected politician. Something news-worthy; something upon which historical records would be written; something worth of the attention of a Horseman, but this is nothing noteworthy.  

“History revolves on trivial events,” Astaroth’s voice is in her ear. Whether it is actually the Fallen Angel, travelling with her, or whether the mantle of knowledge is relaying this information in a voice she already trusts (can anybody really trust an angel? Even a Fallen one?) is a question she can ponder later, but for now she lets it give her a basic introduction; a course in ‘Justice 101’ delivered as a voice over to set on animated images on a TV screen somewhere. That would be such a good idea. If they could get Sir Anthony Hopkins to voice the mantle, it would rule the ratings war.

“Tiny details alter the course of history,” the voice continues. “In 1914, a wrong turn in Sarajevo by a limousine driver brought Archduke Franz Ferdinand into the path of a man having coffee in a street café, and Gavrilo Princip was already carrying a loaded gun.”

Rosalind half-expected words to appear in front of her; subtitles and instructions of how to move left and right and change the angle of view.

“A failure in the sanitary cleansing of a petri dish led to some mould preventing the intrusion of bacteria in 1928.  Alexander Fleming could have just cleaned the petri dish but his curiosity led to the discovery of penicillin instead.”

“I get it. Tiny details. Just bookmark it and I’ll read the Cliff notes later.” Roisin frowned as she got an image of a man spilling coffee on a radar screen. “What’s so special about this family?  What are they arguing about? Tell me it’s not child abuse. There’s never any excuse for that.”

“There’s always an excuse for child abuse. Suffering brings a person closer to God, remember? The more a child suffers, the closer to God they become.”

“Except for the seventy per-cent plus of them who aren’t baptised.”

She can hear the voice scowl. “They don’t count. I’m trying to tell you that the smallest pivots can change the world as much as huge battles, slaughters and natural disasters. The most insignificant-seeming action can lead to world-shattering events. Adolf Hitler being rejected by the Austrian Art Academy, for example. That one professor who said no instead of yes to his application was the cause of the death of millions.”

“Is there a short version of this?”

“The mantle of Knowledge is not dramatic. It is precise and brings a scalpel to the root cause, not the symptom. And the root is here, in this quiet house on a quiet street where a single moment of despair is about to tip into something that will echo far beyond its walls.

Roisin nods. “…a family.”

“Balance begins small,” says the voice. “The world does not break all at once. It fractures in households, in hearts, in choices made in kitchens at midnight.”

“I get it. Someone is about to fall,” she says. “And if they fall, the Four will feel it. And if the Four feel it, they will move, and if they move, the world tilts.”

The mantle inside her pulses again — a gentle tug on her pelvic muscles, a reminder, a rising wave of urgency. She gets it. A small imbalance can become a large one, a single despair can become a wave, a quiet collapse can become a cosmic shift.

The Fifth is not called to stop apocalypse. The Fifth is called to stop the beginnings of apocalypse.

Roisin straightens, her eyes sharpen, her breath steadies. “Let’s do this, motherfucker.”

As she steps through the gate, her perception sharpens, clarifying the details that confront her.

The lavender is overgrown because no one has had the time or the energy to tend it; the bicycle is on its side in the drive because the child didn’t want to go back inside, and left it there ready to cycle away the moment he escaped the house; the cracked window hasn’t been repaired because the argument that caused it hasn’t ended. The imbalance feels like a too-large penis inside her, diverting attention away from the wave of pleasure and into micro shifts in position, trying to avoid or override the discomfort. This is a family on the brink, a moment about to tip, a silence that could become a fracture.