Mycroft, I know thou intendest this descriptor ‘witch’ to make me uncomfortable, but thou succedest too well. Some archaisms are nuanced, others merely gross. Kindly leave out this slur against both Thisbe and those good people in history who really did call themselves witches.
As you command, good reader, I obey.
Bridger grinned. “Is it a pretzel?”
“Way to spoil the surprise.” Thisbe took out the ‘surprise,’ fresh in its packet from the Mennonite Reservation in Pennsylvania.
“Does it have cinnamon-sugar?”
“Maybe it does. Better taste it to make sure.”
He dashed close enough to seize the treat, then hid behind Thisbe, eyeing the sensayer as a cat eyes a new footstool intruding in its living room.
Carlyle crouched to face the boy more evenly. “Hello, Bridger. Thank you for agreeing to see me again.”
Bridger opened the pretzel, wrinkling his cherub nose at the steam. “We’re supposed to talk about if I should bring Pointer back.”
Carlyle sat back on his heels. “All right.”
“Thisbe said sensayering is supposed to be private, but I wanna have the Major listen, to be safe.”
“That’s fine, if it’s what you want.”
“And Thisbe, too, and Mycroft’s going to listen on my tracker.”
“That’s fine. It’s not strange for you to be nervous the first time.”
“And Lieutenant Aimer too, and Crawler, and Nogun, and Medic, and Nostand, and Stander-Y, and Stander-G, but not Looker, Looker’s on lookout, and not Croucher, Croucher’s back with Mommadoll.”
Carlyle made his chuckle warm. “That’s quite an audience.”
“Is that against the rules?”
“Not if it’s what makes you feel safe. But you and I, we’ll be the two that talk, the others will just listen make sure you’re okay. All right?”
You too shall join us, reader. You may feel like a voyeur, invading this intimacy which only the most scandalous movie dares depict. I know your fear, that if you find yourself agreeing, two of a kind in the same faith, you will have taken your first step toward a Church, and the bigotry and violence Churches vomit forth. But you must come. This will be the gentlest of sessions, as Carlyle takes a child down the many paths of skepticism, not to conclusions, but to questions. I will show you worse in time, but you will never understand this history if you do not dare read about another’s God.
“Croucher says you’re going to blab and damn us all, and the Cousins will take me away, and lock Mycroft up, and Thisbe will get put on trial, and Boo will get dissected, and the army men will be locked in an evil lab forever and ever, and they’ll torture me, and make me make some horrible thing that’ll wipe out the world.”
I can’t tell with Carlyle whether his easy smiles are trade tricks he learned at the Conclave, or whether he is so sweet by nature. “That won’t happen.”
“It won’t?”
“No. Mycroft and Thisbe and everyone are taking every precaution, and I’m not going to tell any bad people about you, no matter what. I promise.”
Bridger’s light brows furrowed as he weighed the stranger’s promise.
“Bridger, can we have a quick miracle over here?” It was Nogun who called, his voice cracking like an adolescent who should not yet be allowed in uniform.
“Yup!” The child reached between the soldiers and touched the nearest of the plastic dishes. Without sound or pomp, a glistening realness spread across the food, as when a dying man’s eyes lose their sparkle, but reversed. Feasting and feast’s happy murmur followed.
Bridger settled in the grass facing Carlyle and buried his arms in the folds of his sloppy sleeves. “I’ve been thinking,” he began, “about how I’d bring Pointer back if I decide to. I could make a Frankenstein machine and throw the switch, and it would zap them to life, and that way it would be science that did it, not magic, so I wouldn’t break science or anything. But then they might come back as a zombie monster. Or I could make a magic resurrecting thing, like the holy grail, or a unicorn horn, or mermaid blood, or phoenix blood, but things like that might have side effects, not just on Pointer.”
Carlyle thought for some moments, which I took as a good sign, patience and digestion before he ventured words. “Then, have you decided definitely to bring them back?”
The child frowned at his pretzel. “I want to, but I feel like I’m not supposed to, like it’s not allowed.”
“That’s a very natural feeling,” the sensayer assured. “You don’t know what it means to bring them back. You don’t know how life and death work, if there are some invisible rules you would be breaking. Anybody would be nervous. I’m nervous too.”
Bridger munched on his pretzel. “You’re nervous?”
“Mm-hmm. I have to do a good job helping you decide, just like you have to do a good job deciding. So we’re both nervous.”
“That makes sense.” Bridger scratched a small rut in the soil with his shoe. “Are there rules to death?”
Thisbe retreated to the sidelines now, exchanging glances with the Major, like parents hovering on the first day of kindergarten.
“Some people think there are rules to death. Other people think there aren’t.”
The child’s frown disapproved of something, and, by his eager munching, it wasn’t the pretzel. “If there are rules, would it be like karma?”
The sensayer nodded at the term. “Yes, karma is a good example of a rule some people think death has. And reincarnation, do you know what reincarnation is?”
“That’s when you live again and again.”
Carlyle nodded, watching carefully the movements of Bridger’s eyes, the fidgeting of his feet, signposts of the subtle border between discussion and discomfort. “People have a lot of different ideas of different ways that reincarnation and karma might work,” he continued. “If they do exist then they might have rules, and by bringing Pointer back you might affect those rules in some way. Similarly, if there is an afterlife that dead people go to, then there could be rules about that, and you might affect those rules. And there might also be rules for this world that would be affected. Lots of possibilities.”
“Rules for this world?”
“Yes. Some people think there are metaphysical rules for this world, just like people think there could be for an afterlife. For example, do you know what Providence is?”
“That everything happens for a reason.”
“Yes, that’s right. And specifically that everything happens for a good reason. There are lots of different philosophies that believe in some kind of Providence.”
“So Providence is rules for this world, like Heaven and Hades is rules for the afterlife?”
“Yes, possibly,” Carlyle confirmed gently. “Remember, these are things some people think, you have to decide for yourself what you think, and you don’t have to decide quickly, you can take lots of time to talk and think. If there is Providence, and everything that happens is for a good reason, then that could mean that Pointer died for a good reason, so it’s good that Pointer died, and it would be bad to bring them back. Or it might be that Providence made you have the powers you have partly because Pointer was going to die, and Providence intends you to bring Pointer back, so bringing them back would be good.”
The boy frowned. “That’s backwards of itself.”
“Yes, well put. It’s difficult to figure out what to do if you believe in Providence. Even among the people who believe in Providence—which is only some people—there are lots of different ideas about how Providence might work. And Providence is just one of many kinds of rules some people think the world might have. Or it might have none at all, and just be chaos.” He leaned forward, toward the boy. “With so many possibilities it’s important to be patient and give yourself lots of time to think.”