Fiction: Four Snapshots of Eternity

"Yesterday's rose endures in its name." -Eco

One.

She thinks that she is going mad. She writes but without direction; her hand has a mind of its own. She writes memories. Her memories, but they are new to her as they form in black ink beneath her fingers and spread across each page with lightning speed.

She lives, until inspiration or restoration seizes her and she takes up the pen as before, writing. She remembers, sitting in the shadow of a black wall that stretches on without end, like some mammoth serpent. She remembers, and writes of three revolutionaries, and of all the evils that fell upon a city called Babylon. She remembers, and lets the words cross her lips:

"Iddo's daughter."

It is something that she has never heard herself called before and yet, she knows, it is a title that she has held before. And, she feels, a name that she will shortly come to bear again

Two.

She slips into an infinite recursion, and writes of when she wrote, with memories of remembrance. In the midst of her growing library she writes of libraries: of knotted strings in darkness, of ashy rooms and markings scratched in bone, of bags of rice and of turtle shells.

She has dreams of dreams, of a dream beyond dreaming. In her writing, and her writing of writing, there is no end. She knows, as if by instinct, that neither the world itself nor the seven stories of Beth-el could contain all the books that were due to be written, but it seems that her heart is big enough to hold them from life to life.

Three.

"I know who I am, " she says. "Or at least I'm in the process of finding out."

Her friend stares at her, then at the hot chocolate in his hands. "How many other worlds have you written about?"

"Hundreds. I've written of writing many more. Your name is in them." His eyes widen, and she nods. "Many times." Then she turns her head away. "But we're not always friends."

"Whoever those people are, they're not me and they're not you," he insists.

She shakes her head. "I am the sum of my acts, and out of the books do I know, and am I known."

She quiets, and listens to the music playing in the background. Eventually she speaks again. "I remember water turned black from ink. I read the words of every other scene of these endless lives, but that is an image, and I dream of it in every life."

Four.

And it comes to pass that Hannibal, as it were, stands at the gate, whose lettering proclaims, "The place of the cure of the soul: Enter, and be filled." It is the greatest library in the world, a treasure of the ages, and the curator therein its solemn witness.

When he enters in he does not go alone, but with his captains. They have heard much of her. The woman of the Book, who speaks of things better left to the dark, and to children. Who makes vast presumptions on the honored law, and whose writings are unbefitting for a society in need of tranquility. Who has friends abroad, but enemies in places both high and low.

They walk through the halls for several minutes. Not all of the books that he sees are written by her but there are enough to unsettle him, and the remainder are little better. When he sees her, he inclines his head. "My lady," he says.

"My greetings to a prince of Hell," she responds. She is sitting among stacks of books, dressed in casual wear, as if despite the signs she had expected there to be nothing to distinguish this night from any other. In her hand is a little book, and to this she pays more heed than to her visitor. "Nabu-kudur-usur," she adds flatly.

"That is not my name."

"That which I called you is your name," she continues, "and Murderer, for you were so before the foundation of this world was laid. In my books your names were written, but in the Index of Babel, whose pages you are not worthy to open, they will not be so."

He ignores her. "It should come as no surprise to you that we are here," he says with a dignified tone, "nor should you wonder at our purpose. But you yourself can still go. We have come only for the books."

"And as I ride away there will be an accident," she replies. "Nevertheless these men witnessed my trust of you, and my acquiescence to your proposal, and they will spread a tale so that it is heard far and wide that my blood does not cry against you from the earth, and that in the end I esteemed my library as dross and abandoned it to vandals. I called you Murderer, and it is a true name: I have written what you remember not."

Finally she takes her eyes away from the book in her hands. "Nor could I leave, had I chosen to flee. You said that this night was to be expected and you are right. But there are those that love me, and if they do not stand beside me now then it is so that they do not die beside me. But for all that they are not with me, they are not far from me, but are without the walls of this library." She smiles. "Every point of access has been shut and barred since the time that you entered, and fires thrown in as well."

The blood drains from his face. "Madwoman. You would destroy yourself and your writings also."

"Iddo's daughter," she corrects him, and then adds, "They help to remove a greater scourge from this world than they know, and the record of my words persist. You thought to destroy my books, but you only remove them for a time: the book in my heart will not depart from me, and I have stepped foot on many worlds. This, too, shall be written of in time to come."

She turns to her book again, and he notices how few pages remain. "You may rail against your prison, and beat against the walls in vain, but I knew this place's purpose before ever I built it and the walls are sure. Struggle and rage, or sit with me in peace as we wait for the fires to reach us." She smiles. "As for myself, I intend to finish reading this story."

She dies, but hers is a road that is without beginning of days or end of years.

Follow-up: Identity Agreement