(First Dune fanfic. A few short narratives by the Lady Jessica on the power of names. )
"PAUL"
(Prophecy)
A human name comes into this world as naked as a child, nothing more than a string of bare syllables wailing into the new light. As yet it carries no marks of this new incarnation, no associations to face or deed. It is a blank canvas that promises to be slowly spattered with paint regardless of the artist's wishes. Yes, at the time of birth a name is like any other combination of sounds: a moniker, an empty vessel waiting to be filled.
I have given two names and been named once myself, and all three times the naming has frightened me. There is an uncertainty to it. The giving of a name begs the question, what shall become of the named? It requires us to wonder where those tiny new feet shall tread in the years. And the namer notes with trepidation the paths they may follow—over stone and blistering sand and the broad backs of worms on foreign worlds.
For how could I, leaning over my sleeping son, know where this name I had given him would lead? How could I say in what context the annals of history would record it, or how the mouths of the next generation would speak it? I shudder still to think of the power of that moment—that warm, peaceful moment, bathed in the damp sunshine of Caladan—when I named Paul Atreides.
"JESSICA"
(Identity)
A human name comes into the world as full of potential as a flower bulb, not beautiful, but ready to become a thing of beauty. It yearns from its first speaking toward the sun, casting out leaves and petals. And its gardener grows beside it, learning to twist it into the shape she wants and requires. Someday, after all, a good name may be a bargaining chip for a cautious owner.
The Bene Gesserit beat this truth into me as I aged, twisting and turning me around the lattice of their society just as I learned to control my own identity. I was to be an extension of them, my name their name. Because a name is the most easily controlled part of a person, and a person the most easily controlled of all animals. I watched them mold Jessica from a slender sprout, waiting for the day when I could be of use.
Jessica they could bind, Jessica they could trim and coax and shape into something loyal and dumb. For years the Bene Gesserit held me hostage in this way, creating for me a greenhouse of my own mind.
But then I walked from their halls and became Lady Jessica, and they found that she was another sort of bulb altogether, one much more likely to grow thorns.
"LETO"
(Memory)
A human name comes into the world as heavy as the metal of a father's helmet, weighing down constantly upon a slender body since the first breath it heaves. Its bearer will not understand, will not feel its ominous cold on his neck, will not know or care beyond a superficial comprehension of its meaning. Even the far-seeing child must watch through a veil, and cannot live his memories with quite the same clarity as those who remember for him.
No, the weight of a name is only fully felt by those who watch him wear it, who knew that ghost helmet once when it was real and tangible. As an old woman I watch my grandchild grow into another prophet. I watch him fell empires with a well-placed glance; watch him change the course of history once again. I watch him play the strings of this instrument we call humanity with all the finesse of a violin virtuoso, watch him rise and plunge and take the universe screaming after him into the abyss. But when I hear his name, so help me, I still hear myself:
Leto—Leto! Gods no, let it not be true! Come back to me; look at me; I am no longer Jessica, no longer Lady, no longer the mother of my son—I am a nameless spirit now, laid bare in my moment of panic. In the end I write this for you, for me, for all who are forgotten—Leto!
(Reviews are lovely, m'dears.)
