Eternal Confession by Amy Keeley

The Accuser would be here soon. Agatha’s powers didn’t answer her call. Lying in the dim light of her bedroom, listening to the soft weeping of one of her descendants, glimmers of light filtered through her consciousness, memories hazy in the sunlight falling on her bed from the window.
In her mind, she looked down on a girl with eyes cold and dead, not moving, a summer breeze testing strands of hair. Autumn now. A man protecting his family, lifeless. Further back, memories flipping past like movies, photographs, fragments of pottery. And in the beginning, a young man, horrified, then falling as if asleep.
But he wasn’t.
That one was old. Hazy. Like a dream on the edge of consciousness, she knew there was more, but couldn’t touch it. Too old. Too many incarnations.
The sound of the priest arriving pulled her back to now. His voice reached through the walls, explaining what was to come, the last confession. The last propitiation.
As if she has anything to confess, she heard another descendant say with amusement.
Too good, too much generosity. No, nothing to confess.
She shuddered.
The sunlight turned, altered, formed sparks. A faint hint of the sun-fire that caught the edge of her bedpost, burning on a plane that only her soul would feel.
She moaned, but no sound formed from her wrinkled lips.
Couldn’t close her eyes to focus. They might think her dead. Willing concentration, her mind searched for the one who would give absolution, if possible.
The Accuser.
She would appear, Agatha knew it. She had every other time another chance had been given.
The flame rose, danced, then coalesced, forming the burning figure of a woman. A smile lit her face, the sun incarnate, but not the sun. “Well, Agatha,” the fire sighed, “it seems your time has come. Again.”
Agatha grunted, waving her hand.
The accuser laughed softly. “Did you really save the nation? Is that how your bank account became so large?”
I earned that money in blood from those who were no saints, she wanted to say. This time, I tried to balance the scales. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“Ah, you’ve forgotten how to speak, Kara Bloodriver. Or should I call you, Naze the Conquerer, Shea the Brutal, or Nashe the One Who Destroys All? I’ve waited a long time for this. The gods feel you are so very close to earning out your debt to the universe, but me? I think you’ve spent too long paying back to have enough energy for your final confession. And I’m not even certain you’ve learned your lessons.”
Agatha began to hit the bed with a clawed hand that would have been a fist earlier in this life. She opened her mouth, trying to force her confession out.
The Accuser watched impassively until Agatha’s attempt became a silent sob. “I do feel for you,” the Accuser said. “But one more life among the mortals might be just what you need, Eternal One. Do another life, and then you can join the stars once more and travel in their waves. Build and grow and create once more. What’s one more life, after all, to one like you?”
Her words echoed back to her, remembering, remembering that she had once said those very words in a council that did not exist here, after she had…she couldn’t remember that.
The memory was entirely gone. Her chest heaved in panic.
The Accuser blinked. “You’ve begun to forget.” The words were not impassive. The face began to look concerned. And yet, the Accuser could not step in and help, could say nothing more but either pass judgment and consign her to another lifetime (and another, and another) or say the words of absolution and allow her to return.
But there could be no return without the physical confession of sins, letting the vibration of the spoken words linger behind her, cleansing her presence in the universe.
The door opened, the priest entered. Incense filled the air, oil touched her head. Words she barely heard echoed in the room, distracting her from the most important rite of her life.
In her mind, she stood in the council, facing judgment.
What had she done?
Frantic, she went over the memories again, the list of the dead, the payments made in each lifetime, each incarnation, again and again until tears streamed down trembling cheeks.
“It’s okay granma,” one of her descendants said. “The priest is blessing you.”
It’s okay. It’s okay. The memory floated just at the edge.
The last rites, and she would linger in the darkness of unbeing until she was born again. Dying. And eternal.
“Is that what you are?” The words floated through her thoughts. An image of a man, with a warm smile and bronze skin. And she floated before him, an altar between them.
“Grant us rain,” the man begged, “and we will give all to you.”
To be one of you, she had asked, though she knew it was impossible. Until she got too close. Until she loved the ones around her. And hated them, too.
Her breath came in snatches. I forgot. Her silent words became an apology. I forgot. I am sorry.
Closing her eyes, she breathed in the last bit of energy she would have for some time and gathered it to everything that would allow her a few last words. “I have…confessed all,” she whispered. “But not the first. Because that ‘sin’ was done for love.”
The flames gathered around the Accuser as the memory grew stronger. Someday she might forget, but not this time. Not this life.
The priest shrugged as she fell silent, and continued with the rite. Agatha sighed and let the flames swallow her up, wondering what her next life would be like.