The First Gate of Logic

The First Gate of Logic

By Benjamin Rosenbaum (excerpt)

The new clothes were bright white shifts, like Father Grobbard always wore. And Mother Pip, mostly. Fift felt grown up, and strange, and stiff. She was scrubbed and polished and her heads were shaved and oiled and her fingernails and toenails were trimmed. She sat in a row on the rough moss of the anteroom, trying to sit lightly balanced, spines straight.

The anteroom of their apartment was full of parents, practically all of Iraxis cohort. Fathers Squell and Smistria and Pupolo and Miskisk were there in a body each, and Father Frill and Father Grobbard were both doublebodied. Mother Pip was on her way. Only Fathers Thurm and Arevio were missing, and they were watching over the feed.

Father Frill knelt next to Fift, brushing bits of fluff from the moss. He was lithe and dusky-skinned, witch a shock of stiff copper-colored hair sweeping up from his broad forehead, wide gray eyes and a full mouth and a sharp chin. He was dressed for the occasion in cascades of tinkling silver and gold and crimson bells, and a martial shoulder sash hung with tiny, intricately-worked ceremonial knives and grenades. He crouched like a sharp-toothed wild hunting-animal, resting in a tree’s limbs somewhere up on the surface of the world. He ran his hand gently over her bare, oiled scalp, which felt nice, but also distracting because she was trying very hard to sit straight. “Oh, Fift,” he said, “we’re all very proud of you, you know.”

“Well she hasn’t done anything yet,” Father Smistria said, glowering, and pacing back and forth under the pillars of the anteroom, “except finally take a bath! Keep focuses, Fift.”

“Ignore him,” Father Frill said, taking his hand from Fift’s head, leaning in against Fift’s shoulder. He smelled like a rainy day in a mangereme fruite grove on the surface. “He’s cranky because he’s nervous. But there’s no reason to be nervous, Fift. Grobbard and your Mother say that this thing today is just a formality. I -”

The First Gate of Logic. Photo by Elena

“Ha!” barked Smistriam tugging at his beard.

“Stop it, Smistria,” Miskisk said. His fists were clenched. “You’re making it worse.”

Fift got an ueasy feeling in her stomach. (What are my Fathers talking about?) she asked her agents.

The context advisory agent answered, (About your first episode of the Long Conversation; today you will enter the First Gate of Logic.)

(I know that) Fift sent back. She hated when her agents acted like she was a baby.

Father Squell cleared his throat. “It’s really none of our business, Frill,” he said. He was standing near the wall, rubbing the slippery red fabric of his shirt between his fingers. “Whether it’s a formality!”

Father Smistria glared at Squell. Frill, in his standing body, languidly craked his back.

“I just mean – for us to argue about her chances!” Squell said. “It’s not appropriate! This is Pip and Grobbard’ domain…”

“None of our business?” Smistria barked. “Non of our business?”

Father Frill frowned, leaned away from Fift (the bells tinkled as he shifted), and twitched his lips the way he always did when he was sending a private message. He was staring at Smistria, so he was probably sending something like: (Stop talking about this now, you’re scaring Fift.)

But Smistria ignored him.