She wasn’t hungry, but she took the food anyway. She didn’t want
to have to explain herself. The alabaster knight in the center of the table
watched her eat. That and the clack-clacking of the old clock made for a
crowded room. The old lady didn’t wait for her to finish before fetching a
plate of some kind of pale gelatin with all kinds of awful things stuck in it
–a magpie’s collection of fruit, herbs, meat, and flower petals. She’d never
broken a bone, she explained, and it was because she ate gelatin with every meal.
A widow can’t afford to break a bone. She would wear what bruises and cuts she
would earn working her land, but she’d never break a bone.
“Your bones are the fulcrums God gave you to act against the
great winding-down,” she said, “Winding-down is the natural state of things
untended. Living things, unliving things, the whole of creation needs winding,
just like a clock does. A rock falls down a hill, and it won’t go back up
unless someone’s got the mind and a lever. The will and the agency. The brain
and the bones, you see. Leave your own life untended and it will wind down to a
stop just the same. God’s creation is great, but under the majesty are the
gears of a great clock, and we are the winders, not Him. You want a purpose,
there it is. And no one else will keep your springs tight but you, and it’s
your duty to yourself and to Him to keep them so, and if you got no bones, it
doesn’t matter how right your mind is, whatever the Methodists say.”
The girl surrendered a polite nod and carved a modest scoop
of gelatin, trying to dodge any suspended bits she could not identify, and she
was surprised to find she did suddenly feel a compulsion to eat it. The kettle
whistled and the old lady floated off through the doorway. I’m a winder,
thought the girl. Silly as she thought the story was at first, she felt a heat
in her arms and legs, and she was anxious to lift, mend, join, and wind. The
clack-clacking of the old clock was her own heartbeat. She dutifully took a
bite of the gelatin. It was not sweet. In fact, it had no detectable flavor of
any kind, but she ate it gladly, and could almost feel a subtle power charge
her restless arms. She felt it creep into her sinew, muscles, and bones.
The old lady returned from the kitchen carrying two saucers
and two steaming cups of some new wonder. She was pleased to find the girl lost
in thought. The girl was looking at her forearms and hands with the reverence
normally reserved for ancient artifacts –ceremonial daggers covered in runes
and wrought for some purpose unknown and unknowable. The old lady said, “I
think you really listened to me, yes? You understand?”
The girl started at the lady’s voice, and at once her arms
were arms again.
“Yes, I think I do understand.” But- the girl faltered.
Suddenly she felt heavy, but somehow weightless at the same time, as though
some critical anchor line had been cut. And then, she knew the feeling for what
it was –she’d felt it many times before. She said, “but I’m afraid I’m
dreaming.”
The old woman gave her a pitying, almost condescending look.
“Maybe,” she said, “but that doesn’t change everything. There
are somethings you can take with you –all the most important things.”
She sat down and passed the girl a cup of tea. The girl took
it, but the magic was gone from it, and she thought it might dissolve into the
air.
“You’re worried about the wrong things,” said the old lady. “All
the trivia –whether or not you got tea in your hands right now, how many chairs
there are at this table, that kind of thing, that kind of fact, contingency,
you try to carry that through the veil and you’ll be disappointed, yes. But
real truth isn’t just a list of true facts, real truth is in the relationship
between facts, and real truth can pass through the veil.”
The girl listened, but did not hear. “Sure,” she said,
dispirited.
“For example,” said a voice that was not the old lady’s. The
girl was only so surprised to see the alabaster knight step off of his dais in
the center of the table and, with great effort, scratch two crossing lines into
the surface with his marbled sword.
He continued, “a line is a breadthless length –that is a
contingent fact. It is true on this side of the veil, and it may be true on the
other side as well. Likewise call ‘angle’ the measure of the inclination
between two meeting lines. That a ‘line’ is such, and that an ‘angle’ is so,
are contingent facts. If you’ve learned them here, you can’t take them with
you, but” – He made a dramatic sweeping gesture with his sword – “consider
these crossing lines. Crossing so, they define four angles, and it can be
derived from our contingent facts that the measures of those angles opposite
each other are equal.”
The knight ascribed an unfamiliar symbol to each of the four
angles, and in a strange martial display carved several expressions into the
wood. The girl recognized the symbol for equivalence here, and a substitution
operation there. It was at once familiar and strange.
The old lady scowled. “Arthur,” she reproached, “I wish you
would have used a mat. I’ve got plenty.” But he didn’t seem to hear and when he
was finished, he bowed.
“I see,” said the girl, “opposite angles are equal, because
they are adjacent to a common neighboring angle, and because the sum of this
common angle and either opposing angle sums to a straight line. That either
opposing angle added to their neighbor produces the same sum means they must be
equal! So, it is a real truth that opposite angles are equal!”
“No,” said the knight, “that is also a contingent truth.”
The girl despaired. “But then what is a real truth? What can
I take? The knight retook his place on the dais.”
“The real truth,” he said, is that “when ‘line’ is such, and ‘angle’
is so, opposite angles are equal."
The old lady mournfully touched the fresh wounds on her
table. “You see, love,” she said, “real truth isn’t in the facts themselves.
Real truth is in the bones.”
