The Trinity

by Laura Gilkey

*

SoulBonding is a power that we have. A power to make people happy, make them laugh, make them cry, make them be things they weren't before. But it isn't a power to control. Never to control. Control, and every other thing, every beautiful thing, is lost.

That's something like the speech our mentors gave us the first night, only I'm improving it for you. There were two Mentors, not much older than us. After everything that happened with them, I don't want to describe them; I don't even want to remember them. It's easier for me just to think of them as anonymous entities. And they didn't say "Soulbonding." They said "SPV: Stable Persona Variability." That proved that they didn't understand it to begin with. Acronyms are always a bad sign, and I have no idea where the word "stable" comes into it.

We were sitting in a room like the lounge in my dorm, with gray-blue carpets and furniture that tries to impersonate a living room, a home, but never quite succeeds. Like the place where I had all those exchanges with my Community Advisor and other girls on the floor: "Why don't you help out, Christine?" "I really don't care to." "Come on, it'll be fun!" If your idea of fun is other people and inane chattering and cheering for strangers in football uniforms, I always thought. I've had conversations like that all my life. "Why don't you help out with prom, Christine?" "It'd be hard to get a ride to the Officers' Club, and I have homework to do." Besides, it's not like I'm going to prom. These people haven't had a kind word for me since fourth grade; why would I want to spend an evening with them? We were at a military base now, too, but this one was a long way from my hometown, and we were in parts of a military base I had never seen before.

"With that power comes responsibility," the Mentors said; so much has happened since then that this is all paraphrasing. "That's why we brought you here."

I was scared at this point, but there were other feelings coming in on the sides. I was scared of being here, just the three of us, caught in some kind of government experiment. At the same time, the thought of three teenage girls being in a government experiment was as funny as a B grade sci-fi movie.

A normal person might have been scared of being alone there, but I have never been normal, and I wasn't. In a selfish way, I wish you had been there, so Seihara and I would both have had our best friends to lean on; I suppose it was self-portraiture that my closest SoulBond and yours would become best friends. But I did have Satie and Dracolyte. Although I'd never met them before, I'd known them intimately for three years, via e-mail. They were in my closest circle. It seems strange, that I would push away the people around me but be so close to people I'd only known through words on a screen. Maybe it's because I had to construct a mental conception of who was behind those words, an imaginary person. But don't we need a mental conception of everyone we know? Maybe we're all imaginary people.

Of all of us, maybe Satie and Dracolyte and I were the best ones to have been thrown into this situation. We were a perfect triangle, perfectly balanced, perfectly mismatched. Satie, energetic and funny, the one who faces the world outside our minds most bravely; me, quiet but involved, innocent but thoughtful, or at least I like to see myself that way; and Dracolyte, diabolical in a way, but so personable, the kind of person who sends you electronic chain-letters about "Top Ten Things I would do if I were an Evil Dictator." The Mentors didn't even understand that the other two still went by their screen names. Before everything went into this downward spiral, I remember how happy I was when I saw them at the airport. Satie had sent photos, so I knew her immediately; tall and thin, with glasses, and long, straight, braided hair that was brown in the shadows and gold in the light. I hugged her, and then I realized it must be Dracolyte next to her. I hadn't expected Dracolyte to be stocky, with that curly short hair. When I think about it, I hadn't even really expected Dracolyte to be a girl, although I had known it in a factual way. I think I had expected it to be Black Star who met us in the airport.

Back to the story. "So, why don't you three start by introducing yourselves? I know you already know each other, but for our benefit," one of the mentors said. "And then tell me who your Personas are; just the strongest ones, the ones you feel closest to."

Satie jumped right in. "My real name—" she put the word "real" in quotations with a hand gesture, "—is Camille Lessing. But my right name is SaturnShip, or Satie for short."

"And your Personas...?"

"They're called SoulBonds," Dracolyte cut in. There was a hint of Black Star in her voice.

"Terry and Lita," Satie said. "He's a knight, and she's a tree, and they saved the world, got married, and now they're dead."

"Dead...?"

She nodded. "They live in Dead People Land now. It's not such a big deal as you'd think, really."

The Mentor asking the question blinked and moved on. I wasn't happy when she pointed to me. I knew I couldn't answer as well as Satie; I couldn't be so brave.

"Christine duMournet," I said, slowly. "My closest SoulBonds are Seihara, a young ancient Japanese fantasy world Emperor who's also a master swordsman, and Aletta Shining Star, a girl who'll create a new type of magic someday."

"...And you?" they turned to Dracolyte.

"I'm just Dracolyte, that's all." We all knew her real name, but no matter how many e-mails we all sent saying that "Belinda" was pretty, she hated it. "My closest SoulBonds are Kyle, he's a werewolf, but not the stereotypical kind. He talks and acts like a normal person, dirty sense of humor and all. And then there's Black Star. He's... He's just Black Star."

I remember how proud I was when Dracolyte SoulBonded a character from a story I had written. Shining Star was happy, too; Black Star was her protector until she found her own magic. Except her, everyone in our e-mail circle was a little scared of him, even I, who created him. We all knew he was part of our circle, that he wouldn't hurt any of us, but we knew he was so dangerous, so cold and so irascible. He had been like Shining Star once, and when he found his own magic, it was the magic of the sword. He could cut a person in half in a motion that looked like the mere passing thought of a dance step, and he would if he had much reason to do it.

"That's all very good. We may not get your names all straight from the very start, but I'm sure we'll get to know each other along our 'Journey.'" The Mentors said that, or something similarly corny. "You don't yet realize what kind of power SPV is, but we're going to teach you that. We'll teach you to give your personas physical form, to control them, to use your power for the defense of this country."

I never wanted to be in the military. It was never a lack of patriotism, but I knew that "the defense of this country" as often as not seemed to involve a bullet through someone's head, or their chest, or whatever; no one's particular. But I knew the size of the human soul too well; I knew mine was limitless, even with so much still unexplored. To put a bullet through someone's head, to crush a universe like that... I couldn't do that. I was more frightened of that phrase than anything yet. Yoda once said "Wars not make one great"; I've always wondered if George Lucas is as wise as Yoda.

"Why don't the three of you go and set up your room? We'll meet here at eight in the morning to take you to breakfast."

I was only too happy to leave. We couldn't be ourselves under their scrutiny, couldn't invent the private jokes that inevitably result when the people in our circle meet in real places. We had a suite for four, a little down the hall and past the elevator, with us in three corners, each given a bed with military coverings, dark olive on clean white, and we each got a dresser and a closet. There was one bathroom for the suite, and one sink.

We spent the afternoon setting up. It was a great thing to do together, showing each other the things we'd thought important enough to bring, explaining why, the horrible show-and-tell assignments that are suddenly so fun when you're doing it for friends. We saw Satie's poster of a sailing ship with its hull in the rings of Saturn, worn with years of love. We saw Dracolyte's books of benevolent pagan religion, which I'll admit I was fascinated with, even if I couldn't believe in them. Satie and Dracolyte saw the Seihara doll you made me, and Satie even hugged him.

Once we were set up, I played music from our favorite movies and video games on my little raspy tape player—they hadn't let me bring my stereo—and we talked, and I sat on the edge of my bed and the soles of my slippers hissed against the tile floor as I kicked my crossed legs and we talked in excited tones. I was getting closer to them, understanding them more, becoming more one with them. My fears were almost gone.

We were also trying to understand things besides each other. We loved SoulBonding; it was a great joy of our life. To develop it was so exciting, but power? Control? It wasn't like that. SoulBonding isn't a power; it's more—I won't say mundane—more domestic than that, more peaceable, more of a friendship. I picture myself; I retreat from the world, into my own mindscape, and I picture myself sitting in a plush recliner. There's a sofa opposite me, I imagine, and if I wait and listen for their voices, if I welcome them in, Seihara or Shining Star, or several others who I didn't tell the Mentors about, will sit down on the sofa and talk to me. They come from everywhere, from books I've read, from movies I've seen, from video games I've played, from TV shows I've watched, from stories I've written myself, and they are no less real for that. If I try even harder, if I build even more trust, they will entrust me with their voice, and their memory, and their story plays over and over in my mind, and when I'm alone, I whisper the words they spoke, and I don't know if I'm creating the new parts, or recieving them through some mystical connection to something. I hold them close and I love them, in all their joys and pains. They're separate people, yet they're part of me. It's different for all of us. SoulBonding is the term we made to use.

I remember when Seihara first came to stay with me. I had seen him, in a TV series, but I knew he was so much more than that image on the screen. I had been hoping that he would come and sit on the sofa, but he didn't have to, which made it that much more joyous when he did. He sat with me in front of a bay window, looking out on the world through my eyes, and it was so different from where he came from that he would sit there at the window all day, with a childlike yet scientific curiosity. He watched me go to all my classes, and he enjoyed Geology, where we learned how prevailing winds made patterns in ancient sand dunes. He watched me standing in the lines at the cafeteria, and listened to me tell him that having to wait five minutes for a hot dog is just adding insult to injury, and when we sat down I let him try the ice cream. He held it in his mouth to savor the taste, rolling it around a little because it was so cold. Of course, he ended up with a lump of cream in his mouth and, like me—physically, it was my mouth I was letting him use, after all—he found it difficult to swallow something so rich. I enjoyed lunch that day. Normally lunch is dull, or tense if someone decides to sit by me, but I was happy that day, coaching Seihara through my ice cream while he told me stories about how he met his best friend, the one who came to your mind a few weeks later. Eventually he learned how my world worked well enough to abate his curiosity, so I didn't see him by the bay window as much anymore.

Back in the real present, I thought Satie and Dracolyte and I could talk forever, but within a few hours, our curiosity got the best of us. It makes me feel good to think of us as inquisitive like children. We ventured out of our room, like explorers or spies, down the carpeted hallway, with the cream-colored walls that looked as if they had been stucco once, but were now almost smooth from years of glossy paint. We tried every door, looking around to make sure we wouldn't be caught, although we were laughing as if we knew being scolded was the worst that could happen.

All the doors were locked. Even the metal ones, with windows that I knew looked out to stairs or elevators, even though those windows were painted out. Even the doors the Mentors led us out of to go for dinner, locked. It became like a maze, and Dracolyte went back to find our room while Satie and I implemented a strategy of making all right turns, to keep track of where we'd been.

A locked door boxed us in on every side. We had no keys. Even our own room had no key, and when we left, we left it unlocked.

The very first night, I realized we were trapped here, and I cried in bed. It wasn't because I was trapped, it was because of Seihara. Thinking I couldn't get in contact with you, or with Mom, or my brother, or even my brat of a youngest cousin: these thoughts made me sad and isolated, but I didn't feel those things. I had Satie and Dracolyte to lean on. That sadness and isolation found expression in the darkest hours of Seihara's life, before he knew what it was to have a best friend, or to be loved. In those times, he got up every morning knowing that at night he would still have no one, and he wouldn't even remember the respite of sleep that came between days of the duty-bondage of a young, conscientious Emperor. That night he thought about leaving it all behind, in the most final way. He was so miserable and confused that it hardly even seemed selfish, the effects he knew his death would have hardly seemed real. This never happened in his life, but now, as my SoulBond, he was thinking this, and he cried on my pillow until I fell asleep. I know Satie and Dracolyte heard him, and I held him tight, loving and regretful and ashamed.

***

The next day, as we were led down for breakfast and back—I noticed the Mentor unlocking the door to the elevator and locking it again behind us—the Mentors were the only boisterous ones. At the time, I thought it was just paranoia, but now I think they were happy to see us more docile, more broken, more manageable. They took us back to the "floor lounge" we had talked to them in the night before, and put us through "exercises." They kept trying to make us get our SoulBonds to talk to them, through us, and wondered why they were all so shy. The Mentors claimed to be SoulBonders, too—actually, they claimed to "exhibit SPV;" I was beginning to think there was a big difference—but they didn't understand us, and SoulBonds are always shy around such people. Or perhaps we're shy. Perhaps as a SoulBonder, I have a sacred duty, to protect the people who sit on my mental sofa and let me share their lives to such a full extent, and perhaps I won't let people who don't understand them hurt them, as such people have hurt me. Sticks and stones have never broken my bones to date, but I've fought a cruel hail of words all my life. We all have. At any rate, the most the Mentors would get out of our SoulBonds was the occasional snide joke from Terry or Lita; Satie was the only one brave enough to let her SoulBonds within the Mentors' reach, even for that brief moment. It was so embarassing, like being asked to role-play some shameful situation in front of classmates; just sitting and listening and refusing over and over was a strain.

It wasn't long before they gave up on us. Despite our reticence, though, I knew they had beaten us in some way; we went back to our room, quiet like scolded schoolchildren, walking in single file. Even Satie wasn't talkative. When they left, we tried to talk, but even as close as we were, we were closer to our SoulBonds who were also ourselves, and whom the Mentors had pursued, driven to ground so deep within ourselves that it took hours of halting snatches of conversation to coax us all out.

We couldn't let that happen again. "United we stand"; if we let them drive these wedges between us, we were at their mercy, and we were fast coming to see them as the villains of our story. I don't know which of us had the idea; I suspect it was Dracolyte, but I don't remember how the decision was made. What I do remember is that we each took the pillow off our bed, out from under the army-green coarse blanket and starched white sheet, and set them on the floor, in a close circle, and we got down with our knees on our pillows and joined hands, and we formed the Sacred Triangle. Three is a holy number, and I pictured the two closest SoulBonds we had listed kneeling behind each of us, making us three threes, just for good measure. Not that this is exclusive. I want to open up the triangle, for everyone in our group, for everyone of our kind, for everyone who understands that not everyone is an extrovert, that people in books are just as real as us, or more so, who'll sit and wait and trust for a SoulBond to come in and sit in the mental sofa across from them. How much more sacred than our triangle would be a square, a pentagon, a decagon, a figure with a hundred sides? What is that called anyway? I bet Satie knows; she loves mathematic things like that. She says it's a centagon, probably.

But we formed the sacred triangle. We had always said in our e-mails, half-jokingly, that the world was covered with an evil force, a curse, keeping people like us apart, and that if all of us ever came together in "real" life, the curse would break and a new era of peace and happiness would cover the earth. Three wasn't enough to break the curse, but we knew it was enough to stand against anything the curse threw at us.

And so we decided, whatever happened here, in the free time in the evenings, we would form the sacred triangle. The pillows were less comfortable than our beds, even a bit into each gathering, when we got off our knees and sat with crossed legs, but somehow it was worth it for this cohesion that made us feel safe and strong. All the apprehensions washed away, and we talked and laughed freely. Sometimes, though, it was just Satie talking to one or the other of us; she was always ready to chat, but there were times when I or Dracolyte just didn't feel like talking, and that was fine. My true friends don't try to make me talk and "be friendly" when I don't want to. We all knew that our worlds inside were bigger than what anyone else, even a close friend, could percieve, and sometimes a person had to tend to that inner world on their own, and we understood, and just offered companionship. Someday I want to hear each of them tell this same story, to know how much more it was for them than what I could see.

Often, Dracolyte did Tarot readings for the rest of us. I didn't want to tell her that I didn't believe they could tell my future, but I let her read the cards for my SoulBonds. Satie and Dracolyte didn't even think less of me when they realized that all of Seihara's readings came out dark—I must have subconsciously stacked the deck, as you said people do—and they realized that he was taking most of my fear and pain on his shoulders. I was so afraid that they would look down on me for it; I was a tremendously relieved.

Strength flowed from the triangle, as if we sat in a circle of the light of our own world, where magic is possible, and fate might choose you to save the world tomorrow, typical teenager though you may be. By the end of the first week, we were forming the triangle briefly in the mornings, and it gave us strength for the day, for the exercises. Our SoulBonds remained evasive, but we had the strength to protect them without running away, to laugh in the Mentors' faces.

Whatever SPV they might have exhibited; they still lived in the real world of political scandals and unbreakable laws of physics. By the end of the first week, we knew that it was our world against theirs. If they got control, they won. If they succeeded in dragging us, the real us, our loves and priorities, away from the places we carried with us in our minds, they won. We create our world by our constant love and care; if they could get us to neglect it, even for a moment, they won.

But they won't win. Our world has no boundaries; our world is purer and more beautiful. Our world is larger; our world is stronger. In the end, our world will win.

***

Once we said that SoulBonding didn't necessarily make a person one of us. Our mentors were swiftly becoming proof of it. Friday night, they took us to the Officer's Club to let us "mingle with the guys," likely expecting teenage girls like ourselves to crave contact with the opposite sex to the point of distraction. In our case, they couldn't have been more wrong. They were trying to give us one little treat, to keep us satisfied, but it was proof that they didn't understand. I would rather have been anywhere except there, in the crowds that I hate so much, a crowd of people who, I was proud to say, would never understand me, even when they were sober, to say nothing of what they were now. Satie and Dracolyte and I would sit in a table in the corner, and everyone would usually leave us alone. Now and then someone would try to socialize, but the way we talked to them, you'd think Black Star lived in all of us, not just Dracolyte. They took the hint rather quickly, but we always heard the laughter when they rejoined their own groups. As if we cared.

So this was the sort of place where they held my senior prom. Although it was nothing like a prom just now, I rather liked the idea of being in such a place, eating fancy food, drinking something—I wouldn't touch alcohol, but something—from a glass that was a crystal flower with a stem. The only thing I regretted about not going to prom was that I never got a dress. I know prom dresses aren't designed for my imperfect figure, and you've told me over and over that they're uncomfortable, that the one thing you don't learn in Women Studies 105 is why women still inflict formal clothing on themselves, but just once, I would've liked to wear something like Cinderella, something silky and expensive that would slide over me like water and lap in waves around my ankles.

Things are always reminding me of stories, of my SoulBonds. I remember the time Seihara took a trip, a mission—oh, how he fought for a few weeks of the freedom of suffering in a hot sun he'd never truly known before—and somehow ended up wearing wool, or cotton, when he'd had silk against his skin every day of his life. He missed his freedom on returning home, but he appreciated so many things in a new way: a bed, soft and clean and warm; long baths in scented water, heated to the perfection that lies just on the near edge of pain; loose, water-smooth fabric of his night-robes around him, lapping against him with each stroke of the silver and the tortoise-shell combs through his long, silky hair; eating fancy food, and drinking something—he made it a point never to touch alcohol, but something—from a glass that was a golden flower with a stem.

As I thought these things, I let my back straighten, my hands fold in my lap, my manner of cutting small bites, one by one, become more dainty. Seihara might be a man, but he has the most ladylike manners in my mind.

Satie and Dracolyte noticed the change, which was awkward because Dracolyte, jarringly uncharacteristic as it seemed, openly considered Seihara extremely "cute," and he's so dignified and already taken.

***

We had watched the Mentors leave the Officers' club once we had settled in, but maybe they were there somewhere, watching us quietly, or maybe they had informants, spying on us. Perhaps whoever it was noticed the change, too, which was even more awkward because the next morning. The Mentors decided we were as ready for the "next phase" as we would ever be, as we sat on the couch in the lounge, with Satie squeezed between me and Dracolyte, and they paced in front of us.

"We hate to rush you. This is a rather delicate process, but we also have a timetable to keep. Today, we'll start showing you how to bring your Personas into physical form. If you really are as close to them as you say and just haven't seen fit to share it this week—" I'm sure there was a meaningful look at me right here, "—this is your chance to prove it. If you aren't I don't suppose it matters to tell you this; you won't be able to do it anyway."

"Anyone can act like a Persona," one of the Mentors explained. At this point, I thought surely I was just being paranoid, but that didn't keep me from being angry. I was sure they were pointedly referring to me at the Officers' Club the previous night. No, not even me. That wouldn't have made me so angry; it was Seihara they were talking about with such disdain. Of all the arrogant presumption, to look down at someone who had suffered and achieved as he had...

"Anyone can act like a Persona, but what you need to make a Persona real is total empathy. You can't just think about how they act, but you have to think about what it would feel like to be that person, in every detail, from the clothes they wear to the weight of their hair and the length of their fingers. And you can't just think about it, you have to feel it, and then, you have to give it a push-off, and make it separate from yourself, and it only lasts as long as you can keep your experience separate from your Persona's. It's not a game, and it's not easy."

Dracolyte laughed. I didn't blame her; this was like a briefing in a James Bond movie.

"Oh, you think it's funny? We'll see about that." The Mentor closed their eyes, and we waited. There was a tension, I could feel it in my chest, but it wasn't real, it was like the tension of watching a suspense movie.

And then, it happened. The Persona didn't appear, didn't materialize, it was as if she had always been there, and I was only noticing her now. A tall, slim woman, in hose and heels, a fitted, notched-collar jacket and a knee-length tube of a skirt, her long, curly blonde hair parted to one side and tumbling over her head. I sat straighter and breathed in awe; not that I was impressed by her as a person, but I was impressed by her as an event. It really was possible, to give a SoulBond physical form!

"So, Vicky, why don't you introduce yourself?" the Mentor asked.

The woman stood. "My name's Vicky Earnhardt, and I'm a reporter for the San Marco Post-Dispatch, now what's going on here?"

"Just wait, Vicky, this will only take a moment." The Mentor turned back to us, a little scoldingly. "You see, it can be done. We didn't want to reveal it to you in this way until it was necessary, but I think you need a bit of motivation." As they spoke, Vicky Earnhardt stood still and silent, like a taped performance on pause. Already, I knew her well enough that I expected her to protest waiting, to insist on the right of the press, but she was still and mute like a puppet on a shelf. The Mentor was controlling her.

Dracolyte was still laughing, harder now. I understood, but I was almost ashamed of her. I didn't know whether to be ashamed; laughing at the Mentor wasn't so bad, but I didn't want to think she was laughing at Vicky. I know how much it hurts to hear a SoulBond slandered. And I felt for Vicky; standing here in her confining business suit, the kind that even Women Studies 105 won't tell you why we submit to, she seemed so small, stripped of her freewill. More hatred toward the Mentors than ever welled up in my heart, and my heart went out to Vicky, their victim.

Between them, the Mentors agreed for one of them to take Dracolyte back to the room, and Satie and I stayed there for hours, trying to do what they said. But I could never quite succeed. It wasn't so hard for me to imagine how it would feel. I had never been a man with a long, lithe build like Seihara, so I didn't know what it was actually like, but I didn't think it mattered; I could imagine how it would be, but I couldn't quite make myself feel it. It was like the times I had tried to meditate; I couldn't quite get my mind to block out the things it was supposed to block out. And I felt so ridiculous; everytime I took a deep breath, I became convinced that I looked idiotic, and the thought of the Mentors there, watching like predators, dragged me back into their world.

They kept us longer than usual that day, and by the time I went back to the room, I was hot and tired and frustrated. I dragged myself along behind Satie, and as the door closed behind me, I was looking forward to the triangle, but I was looking forward to a nap first.

"Hi. I was wondering when you two would get back," Dracolyte said, already on her pillow, which was white against the green tile floor.

"I was afraid they'd decided to keep the girls to themselves." The hushed voice was familiar, but I'd never heard it before, and then I noticed Kyle, sitting on one of the dressers, his reddish fur peeking out around jeans and a T-shirt and sport sandals. I'd always pictured him huge and muscular, but instead he was small and wiry.

I wish I could say that I was joyful at that moment, but I wasn't. This will sound odd, but I wasn't even that surprised. Where Dracolyte was, Kyle had always been; he wasn't new. I want to blame it on the Mentors for tiring me, although I don't know how true it is. It shames me, but the truth is that I was annoyed and jealous. I'd tried so hard that day, for nothing, and Dracolyte was back here playing and... Dracolyte was better at it than me. I wanted it so badly, to see Seihara, to put my arms around him and feel his soft-solid human body through his layers of silk, to see Shining Star after she found the magic, to see her wings; but Dracolyte was better at it than me. And why did it have to be Kyle? I respected him as a friend's SoulBond, but I've never liked Kyle. I wanted to slap him.

Dracolyte put a finger to her lips; things would be much worse if the Mentors knew we could do what they were asking and were holding out on them. She was smiling, but I didn't want to play the game. I walked over to my bed and threw myself down on it without another word. "It was hard on her today," I heard Satie saying; that at least was good. I don't know what I would've done if she had forgotten me, even though she had the right to enjoy the moment of achievement. I couldn't bring myself to speak, but I smiled as I closed my eyes and slowly lowered myself into a heavy sleep.

***

Satie shook me, and I woke with difficulty; it took me all of dinner to wake up, but after some rest, and something sweet and caffeinated to drink, I felt better, more peaceful, but I felt guilty. When we returned to the room, we set out our pillows and formed the triangle, and I was the first to speak. "Dracolyte, Kyle, I'm sorry about how I acted earlier. I was just tired and..." Much had been made in our e-mail lately about being honest with each other, although it was so hard. "I wished I could do it as easy as you..."

"You were actually trying?" Satie asked. She held my shoulder, still caring after the incident earlier.

"You weren't...?"

"I didn't want to do it in front of them."

"Besides," Dracolyte said, "it's best if we can learn how without letting them know we know. If they turn us into their little soldiers, there's no telling what they'll do with us, but if we get them to decide we're hopeless, they'll send us home with everything we've learned."

I smiled, although I felt a little stupid. Why hadn't I realized that? Of course, it would be Dracolyte who looked at it in such a Machiavellian way. I was still frustrated, but I laughed with relief. That would be the real victory; to discover the secret and yet remain free.

"You can try it now if you want, Christine," Satie said, cheering me on. "I know you can do it, like you did Seihara yesterday. Oh!" As if suddenly struck by the idea, she darted over to my bed and brought the Seihara doll.

I laughed again. "Okay, but don't watch. I won't be able to do it with an audience."

"Okay!"

It was awhile before I heard them talking and the fwip fwip of the Tarot cards, sounding absorbed enough that I didn't see Satie and Dracolyte watching through my closed eyes. It was very late when I felt the perfect medium, strengthened by their presence, but not weakened by their scrutiny. And then I tried to be Seihara, as I had the day before. I thought about his hair, falling over my face, flowing down my back; his water-smooth silk clothing around me. My back straightened, but sitting on the floor, I couldn't find a proper way to fold my hands in my lap. The emperor would never sit on the floor.

But Shining Star would. I had been closer to Seihara recently and neglected her; now, I tried to bring her close again. I imagined how it felt to be small and slight, to wear a skirt and not hate it; I folded both of my legs to one side, rather than crossing them. I imagined my head lighter, without my thick waist-length hair, but instead Shining Star's, shoulder length, almost weightlessly fluffy.

But still, I was distracted before I could make myself feel it. "The Ten of Swords," Dracolyte was saying. "Trouble, affliction, ruin..." Satie made a diffident sound.

I tried with all my strength to redirect myself on the task, and just then a breath of breeze came from the slightly-open windows, and I imagined there would be... I knew there would be... And I felt it: a tickle of short fluffy hair on my neck. I could feel the new muscles in my back; my magic, my wings. The joy filled me so that the "push-off" the Mentors had talked about never entered my mind; there was only one experience reaching me, and it was not Christine's. Why should I separate myself from this feeling? Why should I push away these wings for my plain-looking, powerless, clumsy self? I lifted the wings outward, and I felt them getting heavier, the tension of gravity tugging perversely at them. Then they felt something, and I heard a plastic crash as my tape player hit the floor.

"Christine!"

"What's going on in there?" came a voice from outside.

"What!?" I opened my eyes, and Shining Star fell away, the wings vanished, my long hair rested on my back. I didn't fully know how Shining Star would react to this situation, and it was good that I didn't. One of the Mentors looked in as I scrambled over to my tape player. "I just knocked it over," I said, and after a moment's skeptical look, the Mentor closed the door and left us in peace.

"I'm afraid it's unsalvageable," I said, holding up the broken door of my tape player.

And then Satie and Dracolyte were on top of me, hugging me and laughing.

***

The rest of the week was like that, although I never again let myself become as tired and frustrated as I had the first day. We waited through the Mentors' new "exercises," and when we were back in our room, in the Sacred Triangle, we really studied. For Dracolyte, it came naturally in Kyle's case, although she was always asking me questions about Black Star, wanting to understand him more fully so that she could bring him out, and I told her things that I hadn't intended anyone to know until I sent out the final chapters of his story. I told her about his days as a soldier, about the day he found the child of one of his enemies, a little girl, dead beside the road, and realized that he was not a hero. I told her how he found his magic the moment he destroyed the conqueror he had meant to serve, how those who saw it called him the Angel of Death, how ever since he had been searching. He was looking for a battle, a cause, an opportunity to fight for black or white instead of a shade of gray. Then came Shining Star; what could cloud the purity of protecting this innocent child?

I was good at being Shining Star by the end of the week, although I never could manage that "push-off," so instead of her appearing in the room beside me, as she was apparently supposed to, she always appeared in my place, and Seihara was sitting quietly in my mind, at the bay window again. He wasn't the center of attention at the moment, but he bore the pain and the pride in my achievements with all the patience and gentleness I know in him. It was hardest for Satie. She could never bring Terry or Lita out for very long, because their world was so different from the one we sat in; it was more lighthearted and colorful. Their world and their lives were a joke, and they rather liked it that way. And I just tried my best to be supportive, as Satie had cheered for me the first night I spread Shining Star's wings.

Friday, again, they took us to the Officer's Club, and I was happy. I felt powerful and beautiful, like a princess, and I could hardly help but laugh at all the men around me, who made themselves drunk and vulgar like mean peasants. When we sat down at our table in the corner, we were smiling, but it was silent. Everything we wanted to talk about was classified now; we had to sneak around with it, holding it tightly, wrapping ourselves around it to hide it. We couldn't talk here.

Now and then, again, the men would come over and try to talk, and we brushed them off as we had a week before. They seemed superficial; not one of them spoke a word that wasn't self-centered. I remembered my high school; this was what the men at my prom would have been like. It was the real reason I didn't go: I wouldn't have had anyone to dance with. Cinderella can't go to a ball without a Prince Charming, or it doesn't mean anything, and no man I had ever seen was that kind of person. I know what that kind of person is like, and that's the problem every one-dance suitor who meets me in this corporeal world has. Few can survive comparison to the men I've SoulBonded; none can survive comparison to Seihara. That's the real reason I never got the dress; sitting at a table, alone, a dress would make it so much more melancholy a scene.

I don't know why I did this next thing, it was so selfish, but it was so beautiful. Just once in my life, I wanted to have my fairy tale come true. No one member of this crowd around me, this crowd of superficial people who were not of my world, mattered, but together, they were "the world," and just once in my life, I wanted the world to watch me dancing in my Cinderella dress, and know how beautiful I was, to strike the sparks of my own universe with my shoes on a ballroom floor, to dance until one of those sparks had illuminated every corner of it, so that all could see its glory.

I didn't even do it consciously, but I felt a self—not mine, but Seihara's; not within me, but within my mind, which is larger than me—in a strong but slender body, with silk around him and silky hair flowing down his back, and he could see me, not as everyone in the room saw me, in a plain brown ponytail and blouse and slacks, but as I imagined myself, as I saw myself in the events of his life, as the girl he had waited his life for, saved his loneliness for, knowing that she would wash it away like water. And I waited for him, in my dress that was actually a kimono, but it was silk, and it flowed over me, soft as water, and swirled around my arms and ankles. I felt both his experience and mine, both vividly, but I felt them separately.

I rose, and Satie and Dracolyte rose, too. They seemed shocked, but Satie was also happy, and she hugged me before I set out on my great adventure, and as I ran to Seihara and took his hands, she walked over to the jukebox—I still laugh to think of it, the fairytale couple, dancing to a jukebox—and found something I liked. I had to thank her; I usually don't like popular music, so it must have been hard, but soon "Sunny Came Home" began to play.

I put my arms around him, feeling his warmth through his robes, and I rested my head on his gently solid shoulder, and we started to dance, slowly at first, like being rocked in a cradle, picking up into gentle, sweeping circles as the song built up to its circular rhythm.

Days go by, I don't know why, I'm walking on a wire
I close my eyes and fly out of my mind, into the fire

The room was silent except for that song. Satie stood by the jukebox and smiled at me, but all the others, even Dracolyte, were staring in shock and awe as we turned across the floor, my shoes tapping musically on the tiles' thick coat of gloss. I was in rapture, with Seihara holding me close, and for the first moment I knew my power. I knew I was so much more than that plain, clumsy, powerless self; that I was strong and beautiful and glorious, not because I could bring this person into the world to do my will, but because I could let him come into the world to do his own will, and in so doing he would take my hands and dance with me.

For that reason I can never totally bring myself to regret that night, despite everything. I love him; call it narcissism, to love someone who is also myself, but I do, and I wanted to dance until my shoes struck sparks that would light every glory of my hidden world. The loose dream-silk swirled around us, the perfect balance and contrast to our close embrace, and his robes lapped at me like water.

Oh, light the sky and hold on tight,
The world is burning down...

***

Maybe it's unfair of me, but when I tell this story, the Mentors are the villains. Leave it to them to turn my moment of rapture into something ugly. I know it was my fault; if I had followed Dracolyte's shrewd advice, we could have kept our hidden treasure and returned to our lives happily, but now they knew, and they wouldn't let us go. All this time they had kept up their sweet masks, acted like our gracious benefactors, and now all that fell away. They cursed at us, they threatened us. I don't remember many details of that week. I didn't regret my fairy-tale evening, but I shrank into silence, and I could barely stand to listen, let alone remember, because I knew that it was my fault.

And still, we didn't give them anything. We couldn't. Seihara would come forward to dance with me; he wouldn't come forward to please a tyrant, and Shining Star hid deep within me, retreated into her story, hid behind Black Star. But now that they knew, they kept trying, and they kept us in that imitation living room that, ironically, had become our torture chamber until late in the evening, and the three of us sat on the couch, huddled together, holding hands. The triangle flattened, with Dracolyte and I holding hands behind Satie's head, but it retained its promise and its power. I don't know what would have happened if it hadn't, and I don't want to imagine it.

All the same, the hope was wearing thin. We knew, in the end, we were at their mercy. We knew enough to be dangerous, we had a power they feared, but how would even our SoulBonds save us? Terry and Lita could barely grasp this world enough to exist in it, let alone have an adventure here. Shining Star had fallen back to the time before her magic, when she was but a powerless child, and what would Seihara's sword or Kyle's teeth and claws be against soldiers with guns? I wouldn't try it; the risk of them being hurt is too great. What would I do if Seihara were shot? Would he just dematerialize, or would he die? Would I lose him? I couldn't take that risk.

Black Star might have been able to do it, but I wouldn't ask him to. He's my creation, and I love him, but he frightens me so. The cure might be worse than the disease.

I was surprised that they let us go to the Officers' Club again Friday night, but there was something in that room we didn't like. I can't describe it directly; I can best capture its essence as the ashes of a dream, a fire-gutted storybook castle. It was drizzling a little, but after a light dinner, we got sodas and went outside with them, just to feel the cool night air, and talk into the silence of the night, alone and free, to wait for the Mentors to pick us up. That night some of the soldiers from the base laughed as we left, and a few followed us out. In that moment, we hated them all intensely, but we imagined they'd hang around for a few minutes before realizing that we were an insoluble puzzle and losing interest. They'd walk away and laugh about us, but we didn't care, as long as they left us alone. We lived in our own world, a higher world, a better one, which they couldn't hope to understand, even after last week's vision of it in this same place.

"You know what the guys workin' on you say?" one of the more inebriated men said, putting a hand on my shoulder as I sat down on the conrete slab at the nose of a parking space. I remember him as a monster, that's why the things I'm telling you he said sound so ugly, things I'm ashamed to write. "They say, like, 95 percent of you PVC people are virgins. Can you imagine that? Pretty girl like you is probably in the other five, huh?"

"No, I'm not." My and Shining Star's innocent morals there gave way to Seihara's imperial dignity. "And you will not touch me again."

"Come on, is it so bad?" he said. "I don't know what those voices in your head tell you, but I'm telling you it's okay."

I didn't like the way this was going. "Get away from me!" I said, starting up.

"Don't get like that," he said, grabbing my wrist. "I know what they say about powers and all, but having voices in your head? I know you were dancing with your imaginary friend last week. How desperate does a girl have to be, huh?"

"How dare you!?" I snapped aloud.

He jerked my wrist. "Maybe if you keep it all in it turns into something. Let's see about getting it out."

"Let her go!" Dracolyte shouted, as a couple of the man's friends grabbed her and Satie.

Satie, who had struggled so much, was the first to do it, what the Mentors told us. I won't say use SoulBonding as a weapon; that sounds like what they're thinking. She was the first to call on a SoulBond for help in a moment of need, and Terry was there, with his sword. Tonight he was serious. "Let the lady go!"

The man holding her landed a punch across Satie's jaw, and Terry vanished. She couldn't bring him out strongly; he doesn't belong in this world. He doesn't belong in a world where such things as this happen.

A push, and I was on the ground, wet asphalt biting into my palms. I had to collect my wits. There had to be something I could do. I couldn't just be helpless!

Seihara! I wrapped my soul around him, thankful with every glimmer of being for all the times he'd been there to save me, all the grief he'd borne for me these past few weeks. I think he smiled at me just before I gave way to his thoughts, his feelings. I concentrated on sliding into his life, his history, his sacred imperial flesh, flesh that a person could be killed on the spot for touching with their eyes, let alone his dirty ungentle hands.

But that was all anticipation; he was still standing over me, arms crossed, laughing. I was afraid, but I tried to glare up at him defiantly, feeling my own clumsy fingers slide into a state of tone and surety, as if Seihara's sword hand were some metaphysical glove.

Then, my concentration was broken by a voice soft as a breeze, yet more terrible that anything, that made the horrors of their drunken shouts as nothing. "You should have let her go for the one who would ask," Black Star said.

I never even saw it. All I know is that the man standing over me fell to his knees, then his face landed on the asphalt between my feet. Black Star stood behind where he had been, his long black coat and long black hair rippling in the night wind, and some of the glint of the moisture on the pavement had turned red.

I stumbled back; I couldn't deal with it. So much in just a minute, more than someone should handle in a day, in a year, in a lifetime. So many battles raged inside me; my relief against my revulsion and guilt, my joy at seeing Black Star against my fear of him and horror at what he had done.

I saw Satie kneeling down beside me, the men running in terror, and I knew we were all safe. It was over. Black Star knelt on the other side and took me up in his strong arms. His black-on-black eyes looked down on me with concern showing through as a point of light in his darkness. I knew why; he was looking at me, no, through me, and seeing Shining Star. "My Shining Star," he had called her. He's my creation, my child. I know better than anyone how he looks at Shining Star and sees the innocence he lost so long ago. I let her trust and comfort of being held by him, her head on his shoulder, soak through me, and I felt warm and safe as I sank into the darkness.

***

It was the next day when they had us in a room we had never seen before. The carpet and upholstery was a grating earth-orange instead of the soothing gray blue, and we were in office-ish chairs with polished metal frames, sitting in front of a Mentor at an office-ish fake wood desk with polished metal corners. "The men know how important this project is. They were just playing around. Nothing serious would have happened."

"It didn't look that way to us!" Satie insisted. "Getting punched isn't my idea of 'playing around!'"

I wish I could say I said something, but I was too shy, and frightened, and ashamed that someone had died for my sake. I sat silent. Dracolyte was also letting Satie do the talking, but it was different. I was quiet like a child awaiting punishment. She was quiet like a condemned martyr, smiling at the firing squad because she knew she was right.

"All the witnesses have been questioned. They say it was nothing more than horseplay."

"They were all drunk!" Satie shot back. "They don't know how we took it! They don't understand anything about us!"

"Be that as it may..." Up to now, the Mentors had just ignored us, the real us, the parts that weren't things they could use. In those five words, they actively threw us aside. They had tried to reconcile our world with theirs, and decided, as everyone does, that they didn't want it. Our treasure, our pearl of the world, our universe, they threw away as garbage.

"Be that as it may, such a thing cannot be allowed to happen again. The rest of you obviously need more intensive training before you can be released, but we're arranging to have Belinda"—they said Belinda, not Dracolyte—"sent home."

That wasn't right. I knew it wasn't. They wanted rid of Dracolyte because she was dangerous. They weren't going to loose her on the general populace. I had sat silently while so many events flowed past me. This one would not. If I had to build a dam out of my own blood, this one would not!

"We came here to see each other, not you," Satie said, challengingly. She knew what I did; I could hear it in her voice. I had never thought I would hear Satie, the gregarious one, whose SoulBonds knew their lives were jokes and liked them that way, I had never thought I would hear her snarl. "If Dracolyte is going home, we'll go with her."

"I'm afraid that's impossible," the Mentor said, standing up.

There they were, the footsteps in the hallway outside, keeping time with my pounding heart. All I had ever wanted was innocence and peace, but each blow inside my chest screamed "You must fight! You must fight!" Yet within me and below me, there was an anxiety even more profound than mine, as a V-shaped river, with a narrow bottom flowing faster than the surface.

Shining Star. She knew who they wanted, and I understood. They didn't want to kill Dracolyte. Dracolyte could be useful. The one they had condemned was Black Star, and that was worse. Certainly, Dracolyte was priceless. Any reasonable person would take any amount of risk if it meant Dracolyte could live, but Black Star was something even more. He was a story for the ages, he was a piece of imagination, he was creation, he was truth, and they would destroy such a thing, for such a base reason as that it was not useful, not controllable, not convenient.

"You must fight! You must fight!"

Moments turned into eternities, as if I were slowing down time to catch this moment in my net and freeze it to death. I had time to think about it, time to drive my heart faster and harder. My friend, my protector, my child, about to be snatched away like smoke.

The three of us stood. Not myself and Satie and Dracolyte. They were still vital, but they were outside. I stood: Christine and Seihara and Shining Star, and the throng of others. We stood as one. We would fight as one. It was all a matter of who stepped forward first.

My protector would not be taken away. So many years it had taken me, since Black Star said he would protect me until my magic arose, so many years it had taken to see through the darkness to the light, to see that if the innocence was lost, it was still yearned for...

I am Aletta Shining Star, and this is the moment when I look through my soul to the magic within. I spread my wings of light: light that searches, describes, illuminates, discovers. Light that dissolves the weight of things, that bears me up. No unfeeling thing like gravity can bind me to the earth. No soulless things like brick and mortar can keep me in this box of anxiety and death. No base thing like ignorance or expediency can untwine that which I love from my embrace. Christine and Seihara, Dracolyte and Black Star, Satie and all the rest: I gather them to me like my children, clinging to me, masses of them like a mountain, but I cannot be weighed down, cannot be boxed in. My spirit is the breeze for my wings, carrying us to a sanctuary.

***

Me and Seihara both have a best friend in you, and we told Shining Star to carry us to you. And so, here we are.

I'm glad you weren't there. In the next few days, your life will turn upside-down, but I want you to have the joys, and not the horrors. You will learn from someone who understands.

*

~Laura Gilkey

Author's Notes:

First things first, the song used in here, "Sunny Came Home," was written by Shawn Colvin and John Leventhal and is copyright (c) 1996 WB music corp./AGF Music LTD./Scred Songs/Lev-a-tunes (ASCAP). The song appears on the album "Shawn Colvin: a few small repairs," and the lyrics and copyright information are taken from the album leaf.

Okies, on to what I have to say about my story here. This is a work of fiction; although Soulbonding is an actual practice (look at my website for more about it, if you're interested) Soulbonders can't really do this. I'm sure you all knew that, but you never know, so it's better to get it out there. Also (I say too late for anyone scared off by it), as you can see, the title doesn't mean that the story has anything really to do with Christianity. It is intended as a reference to the Mystery of the God who is three persons and yet one, kind of a "divine multiplicity" if you will. I wrote The Trinity years ago, probably 1998. Christine, as you may have guessed, is largely a self-portrait character, although she was never entirely me, and whatever part of me she incorporated, I've done some growing up and my world-view has changed quite a bit since then.

I wrote this for a Creative Writing class in college, but don't hold that against the story; I really rose to the occasion with this one. My non-SBing classmates returned quite a strange array of comments when they reviewed it though. Some had difficulty with the juxtaposition of reality and fantasy (er, that's what the story is about). One person claimed she couldn't get a handle on the time period and suggested that I insert more obviously present-day references. Like, oh, say, George Lucas and Yoda?

This story should not be taken as any kind of "political" statement, either. A lot of what I "say" in it still rings true, although reading over it now, I marvel at how simple the Soulbonding world was at the time, and how simply I viewed the world in general. The way I see things has gotten less fairy-taleish since then, less black-and-white. If I were to write The Trinity today, it would look a lot different, but the way I wrote it then is still, I think, good and powerful, and it could be that I wrote it at just the time in my life when it needed to be written. In fact, reading over it to prepare it to post, I decided not to make any real revisions to it, because in doing so, I would probably have succumbed to the temptation of putting it through the lens of my ideology now, and in so doing, I would've mangled Christine as a character; these are her views, and I don't want to take them away from her. Take it for what it is, one person's view. Just as Christine said that she wanted to hear Satie and Dracolyte tell the same story, because she knew there was so much more going on for them than she could see, we all have our own universe, our own story. This is one of them, no more and no less.