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Times of Sand
Remy flew over the battlefield and brought the news of Menes’s victory.
“Upper and Lower Kingdoms are united,” he announced with a bow.
“I wish we could have won as easily!” Alais smashed the miniature palace she had built of sand with her hand. It would have cost her nothing to enlarge it to a grandiose size and dwell in it. They would be surprised by a palace made of sand in the desert. It would be easy for an angel to fly into such a palace, but the crumbling arches and ceilings would most likely bury the man who walked in.
The sandy palaces were nothing compared to the heavenly palaces. Alais felt homesick. It was always bright in heaven, but evening and night often fell on earth. Before the angels had fallen to earth, it had always been night. The light brought into the deserts of Alais was only enough for part of the day.
“The sun has followed me fickle ever since we fell here. Do you think it has given up on me?”
“It’s more likely that its rays can’t reach you here,” Remy concluded. “You were too far away.”
Part of the sun has fallen on land that was once in perpetual darkness. Oh, my! Alais laughed, and her wings trembled. A chill ran through her body.
“The sun is where I am!”
Remy nodded in agreement. Alais’ body shone in the night in a way that dispelled the gloom.
Gemstones crunched in the sand beneath her feet. You could pick them up with your hands. Some people found out that the desert was full of jewels and came to get them. That’s when they fell into the claws of the monster armies.
Somehow it so happened that the blood and tears of the angels that fell in the sand turned into precious stones. The angels, having fallen to earth, became known as demons.
Were they demons? Alais frowned. The word was unfamiliar. It seemed to be what Mikhail had called them all when they were tortured after their defeat. Not long ago there had been a sea of stakes and red-hot blades, but now there was only sand.
The light of the sun was reaching the ground, overcoming the distance. The sun’s rays reached out to Alais. They touched her face, slid across her skin, and solidified something like a golden plate.
“It’s a mask!” Remy explained. “I heard Michael call our cut-off faces masks. He flew around the stakes on which your armies were crucified and cut off the faces of the defeated angels. He made masks of the cut-off faces for some reason.”
“I don’t remember that,” Alais peeled the gold plate from her skin. “So you’re called a mask!”
The mask completely copied her facial features. Looking at it was the same as looking in a mirror. The only difference was the color. The white changed to gold.
“Michael wants to talk to you,” the mask sang, its lips rounded.
“It’s the first living mask I’ve ever seen,” Remy marveled and touched the golden face with the tip of his claw. “The masks Michael had taken off all of us and carried to heaven were dead.”
The golden mask wriggled and squirmed in Alais’s hands.
“Tell him I don’t want to see him, and I don’t want to talk to him.”
“I can’t tell him anything,” the mask hissed, moving its ears like wings. “My function is only to relay reports to you. He wants you back. Everyone wants you back.”
Alais tosses the mask back into the sand. Let it lie there. The mask tried to crawl after her for a while, but then fell behind.
Soon the discarded masks became numerous. The sunlight that reached the deserts was as if it were trying to create a replica of the lost angel. Its rays froze Alais’ face and turned into talking masks. One day the sun’s rays created something like a golden statue that was trying to come alive. The statue copied Alais’ winged figure and her curly head.
Alais looked at it as if in a mirror. Golden curls snaked down her shoulders and folded into a halo-like shape at the back of her head, her facial features strikingly beautiful. The wings were the largest organ of her body, towering over her head and casting a shadow over her shoulders.
“I should fight again!” Alais lovingly stroked the hilt of her sword. “But it is not yet the time. We are too exhausted.”
“Shall I gather the masks?” Remy asked.
“No, let them crawl wherever they want.”
“But they can take some of your power.”
“They’re useless,” Alais said, tossing the last of the masks into the dune. The mask moved as if it were a lizard.
The masks could crawl and even fly, moving notches in the form of wing-like ears, spikes, or horns. But Alais didn’t care about them. They’re just masks. They have no personality. They’re just a mold of her.
“I wish I could take away the masks Michael had cut off the faces of my legionnaires,” Alaïs closed her eyelids. She was reminded of the heartbreaking screams. The armies that had followed her into battle were doomed. They had been tortured, they had been destroyed. They were worse than dead.
Alais lifted one golden mask and scrutinized the flawless features.
“I was the most beautiful angel in heaven, and I still am. Who would have thought my entourage would be monsters!”
The abandoned mask flew into the sand, managing to sing something. These masks were too talkative. Her head ached with their suggestions and prophecies.
How was Menes? Was he happy that he got his kingdom with the help of demons? Of this the masks did not know. It was useless to even ask them.
They could have paid Menes a visit on their own, but it wasn’t time yet. He had only recently won. He would have to settle into his role as ruler before an angel from the deserts would appear to him. There is no hurry. Alais had grown accustomed to the fact that time flowed incredibly slowly.
A slight envy of Menes tormented her. He’d achieved victory all too quickly. She, on the other hand, had to wait and save her strength.
Alaïs sat on the white horse that had come from the darkness with the rays of dawn. It was her former friend and comrade-in-arms! She recognized him by his eyes and his posture. Strange that he had become a horse. But the horse, as it turned out, could turn into a burnt creature with black sagging wings. He’d just been with mortals and noticed that it was in fashion for their chiefs to have horses, so he became a horse for his mistress. Mistress, not lord! It still sounded unfamiliar. Alais clenched her incredibly strong hands into fists and unclenched them again. The strength was not gone, but her appearance had changed slightly. She was even more beautiful than she had been. But it was the sex… It felt like something was missing. Masculinity, darkness… Her stronger part seemed to be slumbering somewhere, turned into animated darkness. And to live without it was somehow a misery. Alais was ready to run through the desert all day to find what was missing, but how to find something that you only assume exists and it might not really exist? But she could feel it. It was there. The golden desert breathed darkness. A part of her, drained entirely of darkness, rested here somewhere. It must be found. Only by uniting with her can the war in heaven be fought again.
The shield behind her back retained, like a picture, the image of the head of an angel who died in battle. Her standard – bearer became the shield that protected her to this day. Orvelyn! His reflection in the shield seemed to see her. He had serpentine curls, a cold, beautiful face, and golden spikes on his wings and claws. It was a pity he was only a shield now. His company had always pleased her.
The desert had become a living creature, like a monster. And that monster now served her. Alais looked around the expanse of her new kingdom in the sands. She could lay here for centuries, accumulate strength, and rush off to war with the heavens again. But Remy had said it was time to conquer the human realm, so she decided to give it a try.
Mirror of the Universe
The first mirror that Dennitsa looked into after he fell and saw his transformed maiden face there was only a puddle on the sand. The puddle solidified into mica and then turned into amalgamated glass. A ligature of golden symbols stretched along the edges of the glass. The gems in the ornament flashed like watching eyes. Eyes they were. There was a special power and a special mystery in the mirror.
“There is not even ash left on you,” Remy murmured beside him. “Truly, God loves you, because even when you have fallen, you are as beautiful as you were. Or is he powerless to harm you? Then you are truly our commander, for there is no one stronger than you.”
“What is about the darkness?” Alais sensed something stronger in the wilderness, but separated from herself. “It is my shadow!”
“It is yours! Then it’s yours to lead,” Remy hovered around her, bloody meat blotches and blackened gold ornaments on his ash-burned elbows. It was as if he had pulled them out of the earth, where they had been forged by fiery dwarves. Alais didn’t recognize them at first as soldiers in her army. Too stunted, but then she recognized their voices coming from the depths of the earth. How had they shrunk so much?
“Only you can control your own shadow,” Remy insisted, though he, too, had sensed the darkening power thickening over the desert like a black cloud.
“There’s something wrong here!”
They couldn’t see the source of the power yet, but it was felt as something shattering, ready to sweep away the world they were in with a single blow. Her desire to do this, too, could be felt. So why wasn’t the job done yet? What is holding back the darkness?
“It is your unwillingness to reunite with it!”
“Is that what you said?” Alais turned around, but Remy was no longer there.
“It is your unwillingness to share its burns and its pain,” the voice murmured again over her ear, dark as night. “It is your fear of getting burned by what people call passion and what you don’t know at all. It is your fear of going back to heaven and finding the all-consuming fire there again. Your reluctance to lose your independence, but together we would be better off. After all, we are still one.”
So says the genie of the lamp in people’s tales. That’s how her spirits work when they see mortal travelers. And in the lamp they may well come to live. One such lamp, made of gold by an underground dwarf, Alais took for her. Many spirits had taken up residence in it, gushing out in a silvery mist. They were twelve or thirteen. All of them served her faithfully. Even while in the lamp, they could easily observe events around the world and could find out about everything to report to her. But from where and more importantly from whom the dark voice emanates, even they did not know.
“We are made one, like sun and shadow. Like fire and the ash it creates. Like beauty and ugliness united in your army. Our army! We must be together again.”
The voice began to drive her mad. It must be God’s attacks. He wants her back, leaving her burnt servants on the ground.
“Don’t compare me to them and to him. To overthrow him would make me a better man. We simply lacked strength and unity. Only together are we strong.”
The banner of hell is fire. Alais sensed those who had descended into hell, the abyss that opened beneath the earth. A voice spoke from there. And it didn’t belong to any of her warriors. It was as if it spoke to her from her own mind. It was the darkest part of her. Angels don’t have a shadow like humans, but after the fall, it seemed to appear.
“We walked through the fire to be together,” the voice continued to exhort. “God cannot divide us.”
“But He did!”
Why did she say that? The darkness let out a shriek of rage that shook the desert.
“You are my reflection, and I am yours, and we will be together again.”
“Angels don’t have reflections, but she did. First in a puddle spit out by a water creature that crawled into the desert, then in a mirror.”
“You’re not an angel anymore, and neither are anyone else with you,” the grim voice continued to whisper.
Alais glanced over her shoulder at her wings. Yes, they had turned black. It probably seems that way because of the darkness. They were golden in the daytime. But they’re supposed to be white for angels. Gold is the color of vice brought to earth by fallen angels. Gold is the solidified substance of the sun. A dead sun! And it is supposed to be alive. Gold as a metal is contrary to its original divine nature, which may be why people so often kill each other over it. Just as often they killed each other because of Alais herself, who became the source of birth, both light and gold. The desert was filled with the blood of travelers and their corpses, which were devoured by her ever-hungry servants. They ate the flesh, drank the blood, but their wounds hardly ever healed. What could be done for them?
“Abandon them!” It was the voice of the shadow that spoke again. “And go back to heaven. Apologize! God will immediately forgive you, and you will begin to prepare his angels for battle again. Many will follow you again. You are so good. If you fall again, God will forgive you again. He has always adored you, my bright shadow. Seduce him at last and destroy him. And then summon me.”
She recognized the voice of her own mind, though she thought differently now. The fall had changed her.
“I can’t leave them all behind,” she nodded at the monsters crawling in the sand. “All those who followed me are my responsibility now.”
“They are defeated and crippled, and you are wasting your time with them.”
“I love them!” She knew how wild that sounded right now. She did not love them when their beauty delighted the heavens, even when they followed her into battle, they were only an army. Every warlord needs an army. It is a tribute to custom. Feelings were restrained. But now love broke through. Because of her they were brought down, because of her they were tortured, because of her they were mutilated and burned, and yet they were still willing to serve her.
“Would they love you if you were as ugly as they are now? You’re lucky your ugliness lives apart from you.”
“What do you mean?” Alais asked, but secretly she was already aware of it and shuddered inwardly. The memory of something burning and mutilated being separated from her by the fall pierced her brain with pain. It had happened! And it had not been a dream! And even if it had been, her dreams had never lied to her. In heaven in general, it was difficult to separate dream from reality. There, eternity passed like a dream. Grim reality began on earth. And dreams of magic invaded it with golden spells.
“We must show mortals what magic is!”
“Why?” A voice grows wary.
“Their lives are empty without it.”
“Mortals will not appreciate you, nor understand you.”
“But I’ll take my chances anyway.”
“And you will run into their knives.”
“I don’t think so, I’m still immortal. They are.”
“They will put you in a cage for your skill.”
“They are weak, I am strong. Only I have the power to rule them.”
“You’d better stay here with me.”
“I can’t even see you.”
“But I can see you, and I like your beauty, detached from me, even more than when it shone on my own face. It is only when we lose something that we know how valuable it is. Such is God’s curse.”
“He chose to teach us a lesson, but instead he gave us freedom. The world is our kingdom. We no longer share it with any god. Here we can become gods ourselves, we and our army.”
“You’ve already begun to talk about us as one. I like that.”
“You’re a good persuader. I am beginning to trust you,” or my dream. It doesn’t matter! She always trusted herself more. But the darkness was indeed half of herself.
It condensed beside her. Its outlines were forming into claw-like shapes. First it touched her golden curls, then it tried to penetrate her, but it failed.
“People call people like you genies,” Alais shared. Her ears were clearly picking up what mortals whisper behind the deserts. “Djinns are my warriors who have no bodies left-just a blob of darkness instead of a shell.”
There were also djinns of fire, but it was the pillar of darkness that hovered before her.
“Which of my warriors were you before you died? What was your name?”
“I have no name,” the darkness clung to her. “I am you! We have the same name! “Dennitsa.”
“Dennitsa means dawn! And you are all dark! How can you be called Dennitsa?”
“Do you want to give me a new name like you gave yourself?” The darkness’s voice became soulful.
Alais closed her eyelids, feeling a strange pleasure in the intimacy of darkness. The darkness enveloped her entire body, caressed her wings, sought to penetrate her skin.
After the battle, Michael shouted insults-the devil, Satan. This meant an opposing angel, an apostate. These were probably her new names.
How absurd it all came out! Michael loved her to pieces, but the first argument over power ended in tragedy. The admirer had become the enemy. Alais remembered the way Mikhail’s blond hair had fluttered in the firestorm. She longed to cut off his head with her sword, to grasp it by his beautiful hair and hold it in her hands like a trophy. His head would remain alive even after it was cut off. It can be spoken to, it can be rebuked.
This naive angel wants her to go back to heaven. And she wants his head.
The darkness caressed her like a lover.
“I am you,” he repeated.
“Then your name is the devil,” Alais recalled Michael calling her.
