I was working the front of the bakery when Mathilda Potter came in. She looked around and then asked “Is your mother in?”

“Both my parents are up to their elbows in dough. It’s just me here.”

“Oh. What do you have today?”

I looked at the shelf. “Rye, Oat or Oat and Barley. We might have wheat and rye tomorrow, but that will cost more. We still have some two-day old rye that will cost less.”

She grimaced. “I’ll have the two day old rye.”

I handed her the loaf, then looked down at a cat that was rubbing against my ankles. “Mice,” I reminded it. “No pets unless you’ve paid for it.”

Mathilda laughed. “Do you think it understands?”

“No. But it makes the day more interesting if I pretend.”

“Are all your days boring?”

“Yes. When my parents were my age, they and Uncle Hume and the Ruderfurds were always wandering around the hills. Now they don’t go anywhere, but they get to hit bread dough to burn off energy. I just deal with customers and I’m not allowed to hit them.”

“You don’t have anyone to run around with when you’re not working?”

“No. Clarice and Oswyn are homebodies. Sussana is usually slaving away in the family garden. Thomas Rawson is learning blacksmithing from his father, and Henry Dericote is an ass.”

“You are a very opinionated young woman.”

I laughed, “Most people think my parents should have beaten me more so that I know my place.”

“And what do you think?”

“About what? Whether they should have beaten me more? They didn’t beat me at all. Unlike some others in the village, they don’t beat each other, either. I’m grateful for that, even if I’m bored most of the time.”

“What did you think of the Stones?”

“Ah. Now that was fun.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Music.” I decided not to go into details and admit it had given me a private concert of barbarian music from centuries before.

She raised her eyebrows. “I understand you had been there before.”

I looked away for a moment. My mother had told me that Mathilda had been with her, Mrs Blexham and Aunt Lucy and Uncle Hume when they went to see Anthracyda before the rest of the village. My mother had also admitted to them about sending me up in May with Alastair Cullane.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to go again?”

I looked sharply at her. “With you?”

“Yes. I want to have another discussion with that thing, and I don’t want to go alone.”

“That thing? You mean Anthracyda? Are you afraid of it?”

“Not afraid. Not really. More that it makes me uncomfortable with questions it asks.”

“What kind of questions?”

“I asked it what it was and it said it would tell me when I could tell it what a human was.”

“You’re the school teacher and can’t tell it what a human is?”

“I can describe a human, but that’s not the same as saying what it is. If I say ‘a child of God’ it will respond that it is ‘a child of the EverChangingIs’ whatever that is. That doesn’t tell me anything. If I tell it that humans are made in the image of God, it will question what ‘image of God’ means. That would lead into a discussion of souls, and I don’t know if it has a soul. It says it has its own bible and that it is different than ours.”

“If it makes you uncomfortable, why do you want to have another discussion with it?”

“Because I can’t let go of the questions. How can it not be in the Bible and still be intelligent. Why doesn’t it know God?”

I thought for a moment. “Huh. I’ll talk to my mother. Maybe I can get Clarice to work for me tomorrow. Is that when you were thinking of going?”

“Yes. Please let me know if you’re given permission,” and she turned and left.

About an hour later, there was no one in the front, so I walked into the back where my parents were.

“Mathilda Potter wants me to go with her to see Anthracyda tomorrow.”

My mother looked up from the dough she was folding. “Oh? Do you want to go?”

“Yes. I’d like to. I can ask Clarice to help here.”

“So why does she want to see Anthracyda again?”

“I think the fact that it has a different religion makes her uncomfortable. She doesn’t like her beliefs questioned, but she can’t stop herself from arguing with it.”

My father laughed. “Mathilda is discovering that she is dough and Anthracyda has added yeast. I suppose the kneading process is uncomfortable when you’re the dough.”

I snickered, “Are you suggesting our school teacher is merely flatbread and Anthracyda is changing her recipe?”

My mother said, “Yes. But don’t ever let her hear you say that.”

“Yes, Mother.”

I walked back to the front of the bakery. Still no one, so I ran to the Malison’s to see if Clarice could work for me tomorrow.

The sky was overcast, but my mood was bright when Mathilda Potter and I started up into the hills. I was finally doing something again and I was intrigued by what might happen between Mathilda and Anthracyda.

We saved our breath and had no conversation until we reached the top and started down into the meadow. The Stones were still in place, as they had been for hundreds of years unless Anthracyda had been playing with them. We marched up to the closest stone, laid our cloaks on the ground, and sat down.

“Hello Mathilda and Fiona.”

Mathilda decided to take initiative and said aloud, “Is the answer to your riddle about what is a human that a human is a living being? That you and all of the animals and plants are also living beings?”

“That is one possible answer. You had a different answer from Elspet though.”

Oh, good. Since Mathilda spoke aloud, Anthracyda has decided to include me in on its side of the conversation. Let the fireworks begin!

Mathilda responded, “Yes. Elspet said living ‘creatures’ and humans are not ‘creatures’.”

“So what is a ’creature’ and why are humans not ’creatures’?”

“Creatures are beings without souls, or at least without immortal souls. Humans are made in the image of God, so we have immortal souls.”

“What is a ’soul’, are there mortal and immortal souls, and what is the importance of having a soul?”

“A soul is the spirit in humans that is the image of God. It is immortal, It means we will live forever, glorifying God in heaven. Whereas when creatures die, that is the end for them. If they have souls, the soul is a mortal soul, not an immortal soul in the image of God.”

“And you know this because this is what it says in your bible, knowing my bible is different?”

“Yes. Because my Bible is the true word of God. Yours must be false.”

“Mathilda, why do you want to have this discussion? Why do you think I would be interested in a bible that doesn’t acknowledge my existence?”

“Don’t you want to be saved? To live forever?” Mathilda asked.

“I’ve already lived 110 million years. An eternity of glorifying someone who is supposed to be so perfect that glorification is irrelevant sounds boring compared to making each day meaningful, interesting and valuable here. Do you look for the hope of that sense of ecstasy because life today is not worth living?”

“Wait a minute. 110 million years? Creation has only existed for some thousands of years. That can’t be right!” Mathilda objected.

I was thinking the same thing myself. My parents taught me reading and arithmetic (you need it in baking) and I’m quite good at my sums. I know that millions are just adding more zeros at the end of numbers, but 110 million years is beyond my ability to grasp.

“And yet it is. You need to take your story of creation less literally.”

Anthracyda just made the oven hotter, I thought to myself. How is Mathilda going to react to that? She apparently decided to just ignore it.

“If you do not accept your savior, you will burn in hell for eternity. Doesn’t that scare you?” Mathilda pleaded.

“Not if I don’t believe it.”

“I’m trying to save your soul!”

“So you believe that I have a soul, even though I’m not mentioned in your bible?”

“Well, I hope that you have a soul if you will accept your savior, and I hope you don’t have a soul if you don’t accept your savior.”

“So less ’Loving God’ and more ’Fear the Jealous God’?”

“I think he is only jealous about idols or putting other gods before him, but yes, he will be loving so long as you fear him and his wrath.”

“I don’t understand this emphasis on ’fear’. Why does a supposedly omnipotent and benevolent god want its creation to fear it? Beware of gods who create or claim to create and then demand fear or worship from their creations. Such gods are needy and do not love, nor are they worthy of love.”

That last sounded like it might be a quote from Anthracyda’s bible. I really wonder what it is like.

Mathilda tried to soften it a bit, “Fear also means to honor and respect.”

Anthracyda sighed. “But it also means ’Fear’. Your kind seem to mix up love and abuse, respect and subservience. Your hierarchies are not complete unless those who are lower demonstrate their fear of those above, demonstrate to those even lower down that they must be feared and punish those who threaten the ’natural order of things’. It implies those high in hierarchy fear the loss of their position. If your god has such fear of its creation, is it really worthy of worship or do you just fear what it will do to you?”

“Mathilda, this discussion is pointless. Religions are matters of faith and belief. I will stop questioning yours and I ask that you do not disrespect mine. I will try to be kind and helpful towards you, Fiona and the other villagers. Unlike many humans, I do not treat any beings as ’things’. That path is the beginning of evil. That’s all I will promise.”

Yay. I was mentioned, but Anthracyda’s last comment made me think a question back to it.

“Anthracyda, we make bread from wheat, rye and other plants. Are plants ‘beings’? We eat plants and animals. Is that treating them as ‘things’ and somehow evil?”

Anthracyda responded, I think just to me, “You can’t sustain yourselves without eating plants or animals. But you can respect their existence by making the process as painless for them as possible.”

“Is it true that you are bound to the hills?” I thought quietly in my head.

“I’m not bound in the sense that something is preventing me from moving. I don’t have any ability to move at all. Although you can’t see or feel me, I’m shaped like a ball about six miles in diameter. So I go down quite a ways as well as up. I can only talk to you if you are actually inside me.”

Wow. “Is it boring just sitting there for millions of years?”

“I spent a long time just trying to find out what I was and what I could do, exploring what physically was or came within reach. The pants and animals were different then. Sometimes the seas covered the land. Sometimes ice covered the land. I tried building things that could move and come back so that I could explore further, but I could only do it from materials that I encompass. It quickly became apparent that there was only a limited amount of material that I do encompass, much of it is not useful and there are limits on how much I can change it. Eventually I became aware of others like me, scattered among the stars. We can talk and share information, but the communication is slow. Then one day a transient being named Acrydaanth came to visit and I learned a lot more while it was visiting.”

“What is a transient being?”

“Sort of like me, except that it can move between realities and universes but can’t manipulate matter. They like to share information and can pass messages between beings like me that cannot move.”

“What are realities and universes?”

“Simplest just to think of them as other worlds where things don’t act the same.”

“So what happened after the transient being visited?”

“There was a long time of exploring what I had learned from it. Then, to your original question, yes, I got bored. I had reached the limits of what I could do and had to face the question of ’Is that all there is? What now?’”

There was a tiny laugh in my mind.

“You can go crazy thinking about those questions for too long. It got worse about 66 million years ago when most of the animals and plants died. Different plants and animals came back eventually.”

“Was that the flood mentioned in our Bible?”

“No. They all died because of something other than a flood.”

“Oh.”

“Then Acrydaanth came back and we talked philosophy and religion. We don’t struggle for food because we are self-sustaining. We find the question of power to be meaningless. We don’t seem to die. So what is our purpose and what do we focus on? What we settled on is the struggle to make each moment meaningful, interesting and valuable. I talk to plants and animals and insects. I try to understand what helping would mean and when would helping actually make things worse. So that is what keeps me from being bored - the struggle to make each moment meaningful. Finding your purpose and the meaning of life moment by moment, day by day, year by year. And sometimes you find a way to make the next moment meaningful, interesting and valuable and sometimes you don’t. Then you start over with the next moment.”

I thought carefully “A life without meaningful moments is like bread without yeast?”

“Yes.” There weas a smile in my mind.

“Of course humans are not hillside spirits. What gives you purpose in the next moment may simply be how to have enough to eat or shelter from the cold. Or maintaining the oven at the right temperture for your bread.”

“It is true that my kind and our religion does not believe in an afterlife. That means that every day, every moment, every laugh and tear and kindness is important. Each moment of your life is a chance to create meaning and purpose for you and others. An eternal afterlife would make this life so fleeting as to be inconsequential. Many lose the urgency to use these moments to make this world better because of that. Others fall into the opposite trap of focusing only on themselves today. They treat others as things to be used to make their own today better. Do what you will with that thought and form the beliefs that fit your heart so long as it does not harm others. Your parents understand this. Go and find yourself. But a word of warning. Be careful. Humans do not react well to other humans that think differently.”

I was beginning to understand why my parents had not told me the truth about Anthracyda. A younger me would not have been able to keep my mouth shut and there would have been trouble. Anthracyda’s warning was a good reminder.

I suddenly thought of the story of Prometheus, bound to a rock by the gods for sharing the secret of fire with men, torn by scavengers every day. I thought I should give it a warning as well. “Anthracyda. Never admit to anyone that you can’t move.” I decided this was one secret I would take to my grave.

I heard an audible sigh from Mathilda. I’d forgotten about her. Then she said stiffly “I agree you do not seem to be in the Bible. I don’t know what that means or how to interpret that. I will have to continue thinking about this. Thank you for your time.”

Anthracyda responded “I appreciate your concern for my non-existent soul. We can talk again. However, if you expect me to be open minded towards your bible, you will need to be open minded towards mine.”

I looked over at Mathilda and said “I’m done with my conversation. How about you?”

She looked a little disappointed and said “So am I. Let’s go home.”

Next - Hannah’s Baby (September 14, 1643)

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