The Beginnings of Electricity

Chapter 2 - Paradise Reclaimed

i. The Entity

"Let us be as we were. Before there was Time, there was thee and me. Before the scorpion crawled and the adder hissed, back to the time when the Eald Gods sang, and there was only thee and there was only me. Give yourself to me freely, be what you are and always were."


It was an invocation. He'd loved her, and she had loved him, back before he had been banished to the Underworld, his cold and desolate realm now. He had been there when she was created, in the Garden. He had been her favorite. And how lovely was the daughter of God, in every way. They had coupled few times over the course of the ages since then; in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, once where she took the form of a beautiful maiden called Bess from the north of Ireland, and here, now. And the Earth had not stopped turning. But the Old Faith had been supplanted by New Belief and he had been vilified; made a convenient scapegoat for the failings and sins of humankind. Any of his followers who resisted the New Belief were punished and put to death; and for her part, she would be maligned and called the Devil's whore, the Mother of Evil, the speaker of the Devil's tongue, and even burned at the stake.

But he could not be entirely vanquished. Look closely at some ecclesiastical architecture. Hidden among the carved stone ivy leaves and gravestones in churchyards, you can still see my face. One of my many names, a symbol of life everlasting. A secret wink, an act of defiance, by the pagan faithful. Or read a chronicle of the events of a paradise lost, whispered to a scribe who was willing to hear me, justly.

He benevolently escorted the souls of the dead to the Underworld now, sometimes accompanied by horse, many times ending their prolonged suffering and calming their fears of the unknown, fears of him. The pain is fleeting, I promise you that. Aboard the doomed, ice-bound ship in the Arctic, destined for his exiled shore, he could barely contain his contempt for those who would scramble over each other to save only themselves. Even he himself was not immune; their own son had been his most difficult task. How tempting it had been to revive him, and how easy; and she had begged him to, in her grief; but a life of perpetual childhood, a Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, never to grow up, while all children around him did, was not a life, but a torture beyond understanding. But they were different; mature.

He was a shadow of his former self now, the brilliant Archangel and Bringer of the Dawn, and battle marked, a shunned creature; but not left without some power and influence. She knew him in the sickness wards and shelters, there in the underground railway tunnels and arches, or a part of her did; because she was immediately drawn to him and sought him out, until the holy sisters called her away from him. She recognized him by his eyes; told him they were beautiful, as she had, always. Come with me, he had entreated her. If she'd have any doubts about his identity, his touch would put them all to rest. He knew just where to kiss her, touch her, places noone else would know, to awaken places of her body that she thought were deadened forever. Ohh, my dear.

The only obstacle was their mortal forms; their human vessels, though beautiful, always withered, until now. Frankenstein's inadvertent entry into the cosmic dance had changed things.