Heaven

Mountains

Hashday had given me the key to his second home, but I hadn’t used it once. There was no need to; I preferred to walk in the gardens when I needed to get away. But today I sat in his upstairs room for the first time since Hashday had shown me it, looking out at the mountains rising in front of me. I was ready.

I had visualized what I’d do in the days leading up to this, and fortunately it happened exactly as I’d pictured it. I removed Ibnfirnas’ wings from their pedestal—the contraption was surprisingly light, given its size—and I moved the pedestal out of the way. I walked with the wings to the far corner of the room and turned myself to face the window. 

“Here it goes,” I said, and I signed myself with the Cross.

In a blur I took off running and leapt from the edge of the building. The wings carried me far before I felt myself veering downward, and I pulled at a string. This only made me fall more steeply, so I quickly tugged a string on the other side. With a puff of air my wings lifted me, and I sailed up toward the mountain crest. 

I looked down and saw the Azara, tiny below me and far behind. I had done it—I’d left that hellish paradise. But my journey was only beginning. I was on a clear path, finally making progress—visible, tangible progress. 

And that’s when I lost control. The wings stopped obeying my tugs at the strings, and I fell like a wounded hawk, spiraling toward the rocks below. 

When you arrive at God’s home, you become small. You become small because everything around you is so big—too large to understand. You enter God’s home, where you do what it is you have to do. And now you have a choice. You can return to the world again, normal-sized, to all the people you left behind, the people who are waiting for you. You can return to Earth—wiggle back into the skin of your body, screaming, before coming back to life. But you don’t have to go back. You can stay there—that’s the second choice. When you arrive at God’s home, the spirit of the world opens up, you fall in—and you’re with God. You can stay with God. When you’re there, you realize that you’re one of many, and that they are all people of the world. 

I was on top of the mountain, I was in the mountain, I was under the mountain, I was the mountain, and I discovered that this was the central mountain of the world. The wind, the animals and the cosmos all cycled around me, converging on the one, central point that was my mountain that was me, and I was perfectly still. And when I learned this I realized that the central mountain was everywhere, everyone. That each of us experiences life revolving around ourselves, and that we all take part in the same song of the world, sowing the same eternity. And this is God: a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. The central mountain, every mountain, all of us. 

And it was here that I learned that true communication is without words. I was leaving the world of names behind, because the only thing coming up with names ever did was cause trouble. Names like God. All the name of God ever did was cause trouble—that’s all it ever could do—because God is many and God is one and God is in each of us and God is each of us. No, names were no good, especially the name of God, and especially now that I was in God’s home. 

It was time to leave the world of words behind.