30.3

 

A hairline crack appears in the air behind Hasmed. Barely noticeable, especially not to the humans, for it comes without the sound of tearing or ripping it is nevertheless disturbing to the immortals, for it is a fracture in the concept of Creation.

By its definition, Creation was the start of everything, and everything in it was pre-ordained from the start. Except The Fifth of Justice. Adding Justice to Creation was not unlike full bottle of Cola and expecting it to stay in the bottle after adding a Mento.

Hasmed’s wings twitch — a stuttering, glitching movement, as though the absence they are made of is trying to fold in two directions at once. His voice emerges, hollow and distorted: “She… belongs.”

The word belongs hits him like a sledgehammer against the Berlin Wall. His form flickers, blurring, sharpening, blurring again as the logical path of his thought doubles back on itself.

Astaroth murmurs, almost gently; his face the picture of regret, as if Hasmed is a child who must suffer the consequences of his decision to ignore advice. “There it is.”

Roisin takes a step forward to be at his side. Despite Astaroth being the same height as the enormous Hasmed, he is now barely two inches taller than she. “What’s happening to him?”

Astaroth doesn’t look away from Hasmed. “Since the Beginning, he has only had one rule to follow. Ascertain whatever does not belong in the architecture of Creation and remove it. Now he is encountering a truth he cannot erase.”

Roisin shakes her head. “I don’t get it. Doesn’t Creation, by its very definition, contain all that there is, and all that can be? Including, if I can say it in confidence, me?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Astaroth turns a gives her a look as though he’s weighing up whether she’s mature enough to have a real answer, like the one her mother gave her when she asked why a man on the bus had squeezed her backside on the way to school.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He nods, more to himself than to her. It is a curiously human gesture, for someone who has never been human. What proportion of human mannerisms had been inherited from angels, she wondered. They were here first, after all. He looks back at the glitching angel of annihilation again. “Have you ever followed an author so closely that you’ve read everything they’ve ever published; even short stories and anecdotes they’ve jotted down and published in a compilation?”

“Not really.” Roisin thinks of all the authors she’s ever read avidly. She was mad keen on Enid Blyton as a child, until she realised how problematic they were, but she’d never read everything. The same with Agatha Christie as a teenager, but again, not everything was to her taste. “Why?”

“Imagine loving a writer so much that you own everything they ever published, even down to different editions of the same book where he’s written a new foreword for the latest imprint?”

“Okay. I knew a couple of people like that in college.”

“Good. Then imagine the author dies, and you’re sad about him dying, but you can gain some small measure of comfort by knowing you own, or have at least read, everything they ever published?” He waits for her nod then continues. “But then, completely out of the blue several years later, someone ‘finds’ a manuscript he never finished, and publishes it anyway.”

“I get it. It’s like loving every piece of work by one artist and then finding one that was hidden away in an attic somewhere and it’s rubbish.”

“Exactly.” He gazes at Hasmed. “Creation is like that. Once in a while there’s a new edit, or a new story crafted from two sentences the author one wrote on the back on an envelope. Did he intend that story to be published, or was it supposed to remain marginalia?”

“I see what you’re saying. So, I’m a napkin scribble, am I?”

Astaroth laughs. “Something like that, but those unique napkins become hight sought-after collector’s items. Oh dear.”

“What?”

“I think poor Hasmed needs a mental wellness day.”

Roisin turns back to the angel who, not five minutes (or five aeons, for all she knew) was about to crush her head into Beanstalk Giant’s flour. Hasmed has taken a step back while he reasons through his dilemma, and the pavement beneath his foot has vanished as if the void had taken it again. It has been removed from existence.