The Multitude
stole a sip of her burnt drink. The old fool had tried roasting a pot of hot chocolate over the flames of his hearth instead of doing something modern such as conjuring a stove with controllable burners. Nevertheless, she didn’t complain, and she didn’t use her magic to improve the flavor. Henry had hugged her. She’d respect his ways. She’d even endure a scolding.“I’m thinking there’s a reason you shape yourself in the image of a child,” he said.
“I like the look.”
“You angels live forever. Maybe your emotional adolescence lasts thousands of years.”
“Maybe you should be more respectful of an angel.”
Henry scowled. “Try acting like one. Do any of your little friends have a user’s manual for metaphysics? You might want to bone up on the topic next time you get a notion in your head to mess with history.”
He had her there, on two counts. She’d love to get her hands on such a book, and, “I don’t have any little friends.”
“How do you know? Would you recognize another angel if you saw one?”
Probably not. Nor was she good at pegging messiahs. Her thoughts strayed to the image of a human shadow burned into a marble bench. She shuddered.
“Perhaps your brethren are shunning you,” he said.
“Careful. I might not be done crying yet.”
Henry took up his mug, sipped, grimaced, and set it back down. The browbeater wasn’t perfect. He couldn’t even make a good cup of hot chocolate.
Gabriella stifled a smile.
“Here’s a lesson,” he said. “A small change to the past won’t have any more effect than dropping a stone into the ocean.”
Or a pebble into a pond. “Are you quoting your elusive book of metaphysics?”
He rubbed his hands together. “We’d make a pretty penny selling one, wouldn’t we?”
“You have no answers, do you?”
“I know of a theory.”
“Yours?”
“I’ve heard it bandied about.”
“Do share.”
“The past already happened. You can’t change it.”
“Thanks for the news flash,” she said.
He leaned forward and eyeballed her, glanced at the smoke, then back again. “Wait, there’s more. The theory goes like this. You can’t change the past, but if you create a big enough wave in it, a new version will spring alive in another dimension.”
She blinked.
He nodded.
By telling a mere secret, had she duplicated the world, along with all two hundred fifty million of its inhabitants at the time? She’d have set them on a new course while leaving the original universe intact. One civilization for her and one for God.
Hers might be the better one! She’d spend so much time with this combination of dollhouse and chessboard, guiding mortals away from the violence in their souls.
And yet, all she’d seen while in Manhattan had been… Manhattan. “How would we know if I created a new world?”
“There’s talk of portals.” Henry directed his attention to the smoke again. “Did you have that thing on your heels before your little trip to Judea?”
The pebble of insight nearly flattened her. She couldn’t find her voice.
“Step through it and see what you find,” he said.
Gabriella pushed her chair back and turned to the possible doorway of a magical new dimension. But playing God might be heavy work, relentless. When would she rest? And mightn’t a dimension without Christ’s own influence be a dark place—even worse than the one she’d tried to fix?
Suppose her role was to trudge across this other earth now like Diogenes, searching for an honest man to replace the son of man. How many centuries might that take?
“I need to think about this. Thanks for the hot chocolate. And the hug.”
“Come any time.” Henry spread his hands. “Mi casa es su casa.”
“What if I never step through the smoke. Will it go away eventually?”
The spark of humor returned to his eyes. “Ah, the ostrich approach.”
“Mocking me. Always mocking me.” She headed toward the door, with the gray curtain nipping at her heels. “I just might dropkick this thing back into the Hudson River and walk away.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Henry said. “I can control my curiosity.”
Ha ha. Gabriella had a notion to fashion the smoke into a club and beat him with it. And yet, he did hug her. “Do we have each other’s back, Henry?”
“Are you asking whether I’ll fish you out of there when you get stuck inside?”
“I can control my curiosity, thank you very much.”
She left the castle.
* * *
Back in Manhattan
At the banks of the Hudson River, Gabriella turned to her unwanted pet. “Scoot! I don’t want you.”
The smoke’s waterfall-murmur grew as loud as thunder.
“Go,” she said.
Nothing happened.
“I’m not stepping through you.”
Still nothing.
“I’m not.”
The smoke had all day.
She lasted nearly an hour before curiosity overcame her.
* * *
And on the other side? Sanctimonia:
Forty days before harvest moon, 3346 (still August 6, 1945, in our world)
Gabriella staggered out of a small log cabin located within a meadow surrounded by thick forest. A summer breeze warmed her face, but dusk would soon settle, judging by the position of the sun. She hesitated, considered bolting, and glanced back. The portal of smoke, this ridiculous doorway from one place to the other, hadn’t abandoned her. She could leave whenever she wanted.
She moved away from the cabin then, in slow, measured steps. Ten paces. Twenty. She stopped again, looked back at the portal, blessedly unwavering, then resumed. Thirty. The grass softened her footfalls like a plush rug. Thirty-five.
“Umphhh.”
An invisible barrier with the elastic texture of a balloon bent inward but refused to let her through. She tried to walk around but bumped into it again. And again. Gabriella headed in the opposite direction, back to the portal and beyond. Ten paces, twenty, thirty, thirty-five. Again she hit a barrier. A swarm of butterflies teased her by flying right through it, but when she pushed, the wall held fast.
She returned to the portal and tried another direction but couldn’t break free. She came back, tried another, failed again. More butterflies danced back and forth, unimpeded by the invisible wall. The wind scattered leaves through the barrier. A chipmunk scampered from one side