The Multitude
effective when whispering their suggestions from the shadows.The pilgrims had already started forming a ragged line a few yards away, but Asura didn’t seem ready for them. The girl brushed nonexistent wrinkles from her kimono, traced a fingertip across the butterfly tattoo on the underside of her wrist, then moved her hands to her head and fussed with some loose strands of hair. Nerves, probably. Too many visitors seeking miracles day after day.
“Asura.” Gabriella motioned beyond the pilgrims, farther down the path, where stone blocks had been fashioned into a circular entrance in the center of the garden wall. A great eye one might pass through, or a clock, without hands. This gateway framed the fairyland of rocks, shrubs, and blossoming flowers on the other side. Koi darted after insects at the surface of a pond, creating ripples with each thrust. The scent of lilacs wafted in the breeze. “Look into the garden to calm yourself.”
“I did, but the weight of the world’s secrets still crushes my serenity.” Although Asura delivered her odd comment with a tremble in her voice, she managed a half smile as the first pilgrim approached her.
An old woman came forward, dropped an apple into Asura’s basket, and touched the girl’s hair. The woman moved on in deference to the others, but Asura held up a hand to stop the next from approaching.
Gabriella probed Asura’s mind and beheld a wondrous sight, a treasure chest overflowing with impossible information—the precise locations of the world’s oil deposits, as well as its gold, silver, diamonds, and uranium. “How did you learn these things?”
Asura shrugged as if the priceless knowledge she’d gained were no more important than an old coin found in the street. “A girl told me about them in a dream.”
Only someone from the distant future could share such knowledge. Perhaps an angel who learned these things after mankind had fully mapped the world. An angel traveling backward through the vast, timeless World of Mortal Dreams to visit Asura in her sleep. And yet, “We messengers are forbidden from allowing our secrets to escape the deepest realm of slumber. You shouldn’t have remembered them.”
Asura’s smile widened. Mischief sparkled in her eyes. “Is this rule carved in stone?”
From the mouths of children! Gabriella probed deeper into the girl’s mind but reached an impenetrable wall. “What are you hiding from me?”
“Perhaps the rules for a game.” Asura motioned another visitor forward. The line of pilgrims curved out of the wall’s shadows into the glow of the early-morning sun. An air-raid siren blared, but no one looked up. Bombings happened in places other than this.
A gray-haired man approached and bowed his head. “I have pain in these old bones. Heal me.”
“I am not a miracle worker. Rise above your handicap.”
Something didn’t seem right with Asura. She was a miracle worker in the sense she knew how to trick people with remarkable illusions. Why undermine her potential dominance by claiming to be ordinary?
A chilly wind swept out of the garden, spurring dead leaves into broken flight. Something wasn’t right at all.
The man moved on, and a woman came forward. Asura held up a hand to again slow the homage any messiah worth her salt should have hungered to receive. “I have a ball in the garden, Gabriella. We could chalk the path for our game.”
“You’ll disappoint these visitors. They’re your friends.”
“No, they aren’t.”
Gabriella had been planning to broach the subject of an alliance, but too many questions now hung in the air. “Asura, tell me about this girl you dreamed about.”
Asura reached into the basket for the apple, pulled it out, took a bite, chewed. The gleam in her eyes intensified. “She told me I should ask you a question.”
“Yes?”
“What would happen if we dropped a pebble into the garden pond?”
“Nothing. A ripple would form but fade away.”
Asura leaned across the path and offered the apple.
“Thank you.” Gabriella bit where the girl had bitten. Perhaps her sense of foreboding had been misplaced. She plunged ahead with her proposal. “I want to work with you, Asura. You can’t imagine how strong we could be together.”
“Strong?” Asura met Gabriella’s eye with the unsettling expression of one who truly did know all the secrets. The breeze sharpened, stirring a murmur among the pilgrims, some of whom had to chase their hats. Asura’s face remained a mask of innocence despite the unsettling show of power she’d just unleashed. The breeze hadn’t strengthened to these gusts on its own.
Gabriella swallowed. “I’m suggesting we could do more than stir the weather.”
“Tell me,” the girl said.
No. The morning had turned unlucky. A day earlier, ten minutes earlier, Gabriella might have revealed her desire to subjugate the dithering masses. After two horrible wars within forty years of each other, who couldn’t read God’s message that mankind needed better leadership? But Asura had let down her mask, revealing wisdom and strength far beyond the simple, frail saint she pretended to be. The girl couldn’t be manipulated.
Feigned altruism was best for now. “We might save mankind, Asura.”
A monarch butterfly landed on Asura’s knee. She puffed her cheeks and blew the insect back into flight. “My dream visitor said your pride is too great.”
This damnable dream visitor was far too perceptive. Gabriella groped for the best response. “Perhaps it is, but a girl who can remain humble despite learning the world’s secrets might help me overcome this flaw.”
“The question I asked has two parts.”
Gabriella cringed but kept the smile pasted on her face. “Ask the other.”
“What would happen if we dropped a boulder into the pond?”
Dozens of fluttering butterflies grabbed Gabriella’s attention. They’d abandoned their randomness to form a V in the circular gateway, becoming the missing hands of the clock she imagined earlier. They followed a remarkable choreography, rotating from right to left, the long hand moving so fast it lapped the shorter one, mimicking a clock spinning backwards.
Gabriella couldn’t imagine mindless insects flocking in such a manner by chance.
Had God spoken to her at last? Her heart pounded.
She’d never heard His