A Woman's Bible: The Black Prince and the Siena Letters

By Terance DeJuan Wilson

What better layer of designs is there than a dilettante in her youthful season, one versed in the fine arts of theft? It is the paradigm of her existence, the moment that she falls in love and the redeeming hour in which she discovers why, turning that so-called initial encounter into something like a deep past. But this is not a love story; rather, it is a fluid indictment of the conscience I live with, a charmingly twisted romantic tale of love and of survival, for seldomly the twain do harmonize. It is the tale of two brothers, natural rivals--one born to the street and cruelly exposed and the other born to nobility and persecuted by fortune. A wholesale dismantling of this hypocritical institution called religion, it is the saga of those enduring moments in between that make time stand still.

Movements of divine interposition that are composed overtime. These cerebral, sensual, intellectual, and refined movements that make her existence exclusive. Curatorial movements circumventing the broken past that she lives with. The oaths avowed in the hypocritical midnight hour. Promises more terrifying than the jealous night that knows her secrets. Her constant fealties are perceived as a cruel and pervasive attack, though they were once virtuous, good, and decent. But she will only keep betraying him. Can you sense it? Do you feel it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662453540

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A Woman's Bible

The Black Prince and the Siena Letters

Terance DeJuan Wilson

Copyright © 2022 Terance DeJuan Wilson

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-5353-3 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-5354-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Always Have a Reason

Prologue

Prologue: A Woman's Worth

The Old Testament Called the Book of Nostalgia

Runaway Love

Sketches of Siena I—August 16, the Year 1500

Kaitz (Summer)

Sketches of Siena II

Sketches of Siena III

Mistreated Heroes

Two Minutes—August 16, the Year 1501

Honest Hearts

The Secret War

Paranoid Riches

New Testament, Book of Maxims, Called the Siena Letters

Stav (Autumn)

Valediction I

Valediction II

Black and White

In the Shade of Her Shadow

Regula Taciturnitis (the Rule of Silence)

Her Religion

The Fates Await

September 1

The Reckoning

Horef (Winter)

An Awkward Eternity

Serenading Seraphim

Coco Chanel

Aviv (Spring)

A Midsummer's Night in the Garden

The Siena Letters

The Lion's Slumber

The Book of Revelations Called the Black Prince

The Black Prince

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Sever all ties and turn to a recluse then, the truth is so-called friends are loose ends. Let's take a walk and reminisce on our first friends, in backpacks we vowed to stay friends until the end. But that was then, pure innocence because in a sense, common sense is y'all ain't had nothing in common since.

—Wol Street

This book is dedicated to my mother, Ms. Joyce. Faint not at my tribulations. My testimony is that I made it through. I took these lessons from my life's story. This is for you and will always be your glory. I was always trying to be a man. I'll explain the best that I can. You will recognize many of these actual events, people, and circumstances, which inspired A Woman's Bible: The Black Prince and the Siena Letters. I tried to tell my story. The other 60 percent is just fiction. I've maneuvered places and occupations, changed names, and dramatized the plot to create an end. But the moral and the purpose is to educate the reader of the ills that I've seen, because it's never too late to change an ending.

The Author, Wol Street, The Black Prince You Made

Always Have a Reason

You wouldn't ask why the rose that grew from the concrete had damaged petals, on the contrary we would all celebrate its tenacity. We would all love its will to reach the sun. Well we are the roses; this is the concrete, and these are my damaged petals. Don't ask me why. Thank God. Ask me how.

—2Pac

Love is an endless act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is me giving up the right to hurt you for hurting me.

—Beyonce

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go by any rules. They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Prologue

Prologue: A Woman's Worth

Is it possible to know a thing and never tell it again? Love, like gold in the fiery furnace, the more it is tested, the more brilliant it shines. The relationships and failures that take center stage, they keep telling me that time heals all wounds, but that just isn't true. It has been seven entire winters since I was trapped inside of the reverie of the one I love. Beauty is a study. She is a title beset with addictions and subject to the elements of unexpected and hidden adversaries. She is defined by what she fancies and what moves her. I found her in time. At first encounter, she is the bearing of what could be perceived for common. But that's just her thing. She has no ego about her. She is conceptual inertia; the content of her work and embracing the experience as process whatever the artist conceives of is art. All the sensibilities of her culmination. Her wisdom should be seized, studied, and memorized, then divined afterward. The sinner, the saint, the Mask, the beauty—I have loved them all…all in time. I just wanted more time, is all. I venerate her strength in the face of adversity and implore that if I must ever brave privation of my own, she will be there to teach me how and help me stand. She is the expert.

These are the true histories of the greatest intellectual theft in the history of mankind. I was the sculptor, the architect, the artist, the world's most prolific art thief. It reverts to me… In this instance, history will absolve me. It's a remarkable story. Win my truths; finish the story. Love is an anthem. If it kills me, I beseech you to tell my story. It is our story…

Part I

The Old Testament Called the Book of Nostalgia

Chapter 1

Runaway Love

Isle of Hope

Chatham County, Georgia

I would like to share my story with you, my earliest memories… The little orphan boy stood frozen in utter silence, impaired by a sudden and tremendous trepidation. He was taken by the mere size of the great mansion; never before had he witnessed such a breathtaking view. However, his merriment quickly gave way to shame. Looking down upon himself in poverty and rags, he felt so degraded, disgusting, and worthless. In some tattered overall rags, his feet were shoeless. Hell, he even had a piece of straw in his mouth. He looked like the black Huckleberry Finn. Whatever had he been thinking leaving his adopted home in Savannah in the middle of the night, running without as much as a final goodbye? It was the girl! With all her big ideas and grandiose wisdom. She had first planted the seed that he had been cheated and injured. It was the girl who had first convinced him to detach himself from life's misfortunes and griefs, rousing curiosity, hatred, and ambition.

After all, the Rush clan were well-intended folks. He had been welcomed into the home warmly enough and had even been given a name. Other than the group home, his current two and a half years with the Rushes was the most time that he had spent in one place after his own bitter experience at the group home. Why had he taken for granted the Rushes' hospitality? Granted they were always harping about the gospel that Jesus saves and he should repent. And although he was very often the soft target of Mr. Rush's hard fist, like they always reminded him, they were just saving his soul. They were a refuge from the conflicts of the world. He was a boy continually instructed to be patient, a boy dissatisfied with his conditions. In fact, the Rushes could hardly provide the children with necessities, so the things he, like any other boy, would wish for were never even hoped for. But the boy understood that there were five other orphan mouths to feed and a child of their own—a precocious Shirley Templesque girl, a born performer, splendidly unaware of her effect on others. She was called Natalie Ambrosia at once! She was his consolation and muse. A finely wired, cerebral, and curious girl, she was born with a storybook in her head.

The boy was gaining an emerging consciousness of an inherent longing for love. He even convinced himself that he was in love with the girl. And she often told him the same. She taught him things like how to swim and skate on ice. They even attended the same gymnastics academy, and at school, she was the prettiest girl. He knew that all the other boys just liked to watch her be beautiful, but to him, the longer he watched, the more fascinating she became. He absorbed everything that she said and did as organically as he'd mastered his lessons in academia. The other girls in his classes gravitated to him and clearly adored him, but Natalie was special. When the boys in his class teased him because he was different, the girl was quick and unabashed, even hard-hitting, in his staunch defense. She'd assumed the role of both savior and protector, the Vada Sultenfuss to the boys. Thomas J. Sennet, for the longest time, felt safest in her acceptance. They were inseparable, so closely intertwined that her pain often made him physically ill, and the girl empathized with his experience. She'd closely observed that it was often difficult for him to emotionally shut out other people's noise and opinions. Eventually, she led him into an introspection, a secret recess that had always existed inside of himself. It was a hypersensitive, kaleidoscopic, psyched, drowsy reverie state in which his mind was framed. He could organize and arrange people, places, and things and control and alleviate every discomfort.

The girl even engaged his ideological development by encouraging him to learn about his history—the histories that they never learned about in his classes. After school, they would spend hours at the public library together doing their schoolwork and perusing history in volumes. They made a game of learning new things. But it was Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man that would forever influence the smallest details of his life and have a lasting impact on his cultural development. The many contradictions and facts of life emerged. The novel read like a dark mirror, presenting a stark reflection of the present-day America through the impressionable lenses of a black boy. It was a startling, effective narrative of a man passed by as insignificant and his struggle for liberation. You remain as ignorant as you choose to. The truth evokes as much or as little as the reader is willing to acknowledge. The boy read the narrative clearly and confessed it in darkness. At night, when he lay in his bed with his eyes closed tightly, classic jazz music spilled through his record player. He could listen to his most intimate, quiet thoughts, and out of those quiet reveries, he began to build a philosophy, searing indelible, enduring impressions onto his consciousness. The eye through which he would receive the universe. Solitude in which he entered to seek. To wander in the mind, escaping the noise-enamored world.

Inside there, secrets could be encountered—a place where he could explore the vast mysteries of life, and he never had to tell anyone that he never wanted to be alone. A place where he could arrange the most enticing collection of people, and he was no longer surrounded by senseless peril. Inside, his heroes came to life. In an intimate, dark lounge, he could observe the conversing of the likes of Malcolm X while he lectured on his political travels and his reexamining of his philosophical position. To be a black prince in a white world, is there a worse fate? he asked Malcolm. Malcolm paused for a spell, and a light grin entered his intelligent eyes as he pondered the boy's question carefully, turning it over in his mind before replying that yes, there was a worse fate, but he would not elaborate. He regressed into a political discourse with Angela Y. Davis. The boy would sit for hours listening to the powerful debates of Malcolm and Angela. James Baldwin cleared his throat, directing the boy's attention. When a black man whose destiny and identity have always been controlled by others decides and states that he will control his own destiny and rejects the identity given to him by others, he is talking revolution.

A timeless castle arch that he had constructed out of little more than shoestrings, broken fragments of glass, and a few paper clips, but over time, it began to resemble a treasure chest. In his mecca of sorts, the boy found the content and space in which to dream extraordinary things. Of course, there was always the exposure to a new kind of danger: that of lingering inside too long or burying something therein in silence—an invisible thread of truth encompassing reality and passing through everything. All-becoming is painful. After obtaining a glimpse of the allurements of the world, the boy had gained momentum; he had outgrown his circumstances. But then one fateful autumn day, everything changed. The naive girl had so eagerly and foolishly confided that she had given her first kiss to a certain schoolboy that was not him. The experience proved traumatic, creating a painful anxiety. The free spirit deserted him, and he became a little more than a whisper. With that betrayal, he shrank within himself, tucking himself further into the well-guarded portal of silence, his dilapidated castle. The experience got his dander up, destroying the infrastructure of his faith.

It was not the physical but the emotional aggression that made him seethe. He had been willing to take the abuse for the sake of the knowledge that he could not save her or salvage her stolen innocence, and for that, he had punished himself severely. The rebel spirit emerged, every expression of love had been rejected, and his ego became attached to the institution of emancipation, grasping all illusions, losing everything. The girl had always owned a talent for collecting other people's secrets, often what they were ashamed of, sometimes even crimes. She was good at it. The previous summer, she had betrayed a scandal about the Saint-Laurents. By listening, the boy would inevitably and unconsciously act in concert with an unseen chain of occurrences that would bring about a series of consequences he was powerless to avert. With the discovery, the boy was intrigued, but he hid his emotions well, something he had learned to do over time. But a seed had been sewn. What would it be like to have a real family of his own? And the girl was looking at him with a new respect. Together they had compiled the knowledge. The truth about his real family began to come together. When you lack all the pieces, the details and perspective of a picture can seem overwhelming.

Confirming the familiar C. S. Lewis quote: If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. To think that after all this time, there was a possibility that his real family had always existed a few miles away. But the reclusive Saint-Laurents seemed a fairy tale or, in the very least, the closest thing to a myth that the boy had ever considered viable. The legend was that the Saint-Laurents were very affluent, old money, shrouded in secrecy. There were no photographs, viable evidences, or tangible proofs. The girl's heart began to throb as light dawned on the chance of fortune. The details in print spilled over like rainfall in the summer. The boy had an identical twin brother. Their internet source revealed that he was called Prince Sir Royce Saint-Laurent. The orphan thought, What a beautiful name. Still, he felt no telepathic connections. And that was what twins were supposed to sense, right? But the orphan felt no affinity at all.

Aren't you even curious? Even then he felt the weight and measure of the girl's influence. He instinctively feared the spontaneous combustion of her emotion.

At the time, he had shrugged, but gazing into her eyes, the prettiest brown that he had ever witnessed, even then they were new and more tremendous than ever before. He could almost feel their physical pressure, her uncontrollable delight, with golden-brown curls framing an oval face. There wasn't anything in the universe that he would not do for her. What for? he questioned hesitantly. They didn't want me the first time.

Natalie's eyes were suddenly dangerous, a seductive flash of gold, and he knew then that he was afraid of her, what she was capable of. Look at you, she had protested so passionately. You're so beautiful now. It was true there were material evidences that he was an exceptionally handsome boy. Won't you do it for me, please? I bet if they see you now, they'll love you. Indeed, the girl painted a satisfying picture.

I don't think they will. They wouldn't understand me. He did not have the Saint-Laurent pedigree, and he could not just shed his orphan breeding. It would always be a black mark on his patronage, a resentment infused into his mind, his enduring reality. All the time that he had spent harvesting tears, mourning his losses. He was saving his tears up just in case. They were a delicious pain.

The girl was indignant. What? She could not believe what she was hearing. They will. They have to! When they learn that you are the best student in our classes. Look, it even says here that prince Sire is an exceptional athlete. So are you. They'll come. Maybe they've been searching for you this whole time. Can you imagine you've only been a few miles away? Her eyes were on the verge of tears, tortured by the years of poverty.

For thirteen years? No, Natalie, I would rather be right here with you. The truth is, the boy was satisfied with their condition. The girl was superior to the pain that it evoked. I don't want to be noble, rich, or famous. Until today, even now in fact, I hadn't even the remotest concept of poverty. I didn't even know that we were so poor. At least we have each other, right? I'm not leaving you.

But the girl was determined in maneuvering him into her campaign of pity, to sweep him into her fantasy. He had always admired her dignity despite being bred in poverty. But you have to try so we can escape this miserable place. Then we can see the world together. We could live in Italy or happily ever after in Hollywood. We could be together forever, I promise. If you truly loved me, then you would do it for us. I don't want to be here anymore. It was a charge so tender, and tears welled up in her glorious eyes. If not for the severity of her concern, the lengthy charge was almost comical—an uneducated girl from the trailer park with the big dreams of a sophisticated, worldly woman. Consider the animus when the wounded and abandoned boy gains a cause worthy of his warrior passion, an adventure his soul craves—to share in her dark burden. When a boy who grows without the capacity to experience pleasure, when a boy who grows without affection or a cause finds a girl who embraces his needs and efforts toward liberation, the greater is his incentive to action. Consider a girl who goes unaware that she is perceived in an oppressive and sexist capacity, admired for the delicate glories of a nature she cannot yet comprehend. She perceives that this is love, but she is always alone, swayed by fluctuating impulses. The sublime realization of his poverty came into existence, manipulating his mind. The beauty of her nature had always been sufficient to lessen the miseries of the world. But now he saw that they were the answer to each other's conflict. Repressing his instincts, he began to reflect upon his condition. Deferentially, he yields to her influence.

He recalled the conversation word for word, considered it alone worthy to be enthroned upon the tablet of his heart. It was during this tumultuous period of his youth that he grew closest to his feelings of humiliation and shame. He could no longer avoid the truth. His surface story was all a delusion, a convenient story. But when reality strikes, the delusion can be cruel. There is never a weening off a convenient reality. Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored. The truth is that the Rushes were sadistic fundamentalists incapable of conveying affection. The only attentions that were ever bestowed were biting criticisms, and the boy was usually singled out for specific mistreatment. The Rushes were financially motivated; the orphans were simply pawns in a welfare war game. The monies that they lavishly gave the church were a penance. It gave them a peace of conscience for the crimes that they were inflicting in their home against the children. Mrs. Rush was even a dope fiend who sold herself from time to time, with the mister's blessing, for a couple of extra bucks that went directly to her binge habits and into the pockets of her alcoholic, psychologically abusive husband.

The children suffered in unusual silence with the delusional assumption that their existence was normal. Theirs was a traumatic bonding, one of necessity. But the delusion only lasted so long, exploiting oblivion. Early on in the experience with the Rushes, the boy was taught that mistakes would not be tolerated. The hostile arena had been calculated and crafted all too well. Of course, he was in living hell. The struggle with ingrained prejudices that were designed to break him and undermine his sense of self-worth were scientifically employed. He adapted to each and every circumstance with a studied indolence. It was more convenient to expect, accept, and anticipate the disappointment and to accept being lied to and thoroughly dehumanized.

The orphan boy perceived that it was best not to convey those internalized emotions. Increasingly introverted, he hid his personality until it was rendered invisible. He went inside as a means to escape self-created disappointments; therein he wandered in his self-created world. It was an inexpensive means of escaping his existence unfolding in the home. He was becoming sensitive to his own anger and resentment. In there, he could linger inside of his favorite memories. His one extraordinary grace—those bucolic summers at the retreat with Hadessa. These were two entire weeks away at Stone Mountain for church camp, away from the entire Rush clan. He went every summer, even prior to moving into the Rush home. He approached these summer retreats with a heart-thumping march that could lead a warrior king into the most severe battle. But those two weeks out of the year were never enough. He was always so absorbed in them that he completely misplaced his misery for two weeks every year. The experience only intensified his suffering when he awoke from the dream.

Escape was an alternative to captivity. There would be years of running to ensue. Running was like therapy, a soft protest that he would don like a protective armor. The boy would even question God. Why did he allow innocents to suffer or children to be born into this world orphaned? He was full of inquiries while these savage heathens prosper… He was full of opinions. Strange fires… Why me? he often questioned. But there in the depths of sterile soil where even the weeds dared not grow, a seed fell among thorns, and when tentative tears welled up inside of the glass castle, he took them to a safe place to mourn alone. He began to collect those tears the same way some collect coins or stories. He was saving them. He learned to bury them in the garden of silence. The architect of man.

But those tears leaked subliminally; they fell upon sacred soil, impelling him onward. And yet the true tragedy came by way of association. The orphan boy hadn't even the slightest concept of the fact that his hardship had been so severe; he was not so aware that he had existed in the crippling shadows of an unflinching poverty—that is, until he'd learned of his strange connection to the Saint-Laurents. The girl, so determined to learn his secret, had uncovered a ghostly link to his anguished origins. But a seed had been planted; a minor sacrilege had been committed. His damaged petals tattered beyond repair. He had gained a longing for some affirmation of his orientation, a nagging maelstrom of discontent, for which he blamed the girl and would eventually learn to despise her. Had the boy known then just how very much he had in common with his twin brother, the true tragedy might have been avoided.

Back at home, his only consistency was fear. It was every child for themself. There were so many distinct personalities, each of them clamoring for attention. But like the rain, the boy was never louder than a whisper. But it was always him and the girl. They'd formed a traumatic attachment, a pact. He mirrored Natalie's intensity. Their emotional senses were intertwined. He intuited her moods; he could even experience her physical pain, sometimes stumbling, sometimes falling. They promised each other that whenever they had children of their own, their children would never fear them. They would be different. The Rushes were impossible to please. Each day after school, the children huddled together on the sofa anticipating the sound of Mrs. Rush's turquoise-green Buick Century. It could be heard from a block away. They listened fearfully. It was a distinct and unmistakable sound, the rhythmic ticking of the sputtering engine. Cowered in fear, they would rack their brains wondering if they had shown the slightest infraction that day. He only wanted to protect her.

But then the girl had gone and kissed the other boy. The suffering resulting from the act would eventually prompt the boy to act. After the initial instigation, the boy went inside to map out the escape terrain. He would ponder the train of his exodus for about a week. He ventured profoundly into the dilapidated castle in which the hearts of his heroes, dead or alive, beat with their unfulfilled passions. It was a sphere deliberately hidden from unbelieving eyes. He went in there to hang in that dark intimate lounge with Otis Redding and Miles Davis while they reflected upon their mischief in philandering. The boy was delightfully intrigued. Billie Holiday sang his kind of dark romance blues, and in confidence, she even advised him to leave the girl alone.

Then at night, he had the transforming confrontation with the face of evil. The devil possesses many forms. Still the boy was not prepared for her. Her eyes lured him into a confrontation, but he was not afraid. The look on her face at first was like she had been caught in the act of something illicit. But she smiled beatifically. The orphan boy rolled over and pretended to be asleep, hoping that she would just go away. Of course, she did not just go away. She was still there a moment later when he chanced to peek. He could not just wish this confrontation away, and it was not a dream. The succubus beckoned him by name. It was a phantom whisper, a sweet inward intoning. Her mouth did not move. The sound of her voice was resonating from within, a droning noise that he could not silence. The malice in her eyes made him shudder. He could smell her fetid odor despite the attempt she had made to cover herself with a white silk dress, with flowing gold fringes. Pearls were adorning her braided golden tresses. A white veil obscured nearly half of her face, but her pale blue eyes were glowing. That night while he slept, something happened. The orphan boy would spend much of his life attempting to delude himself into believing that he had not, in fact, seen what he had witnessed that night.

He awoke the morning after the episode with a tremendous competence and an even greater air of elusiveness, a gravitas that only the day prior he lacked, a new determination. Something veering between impulsive feeler of the edges and a reckless daring before settling with a sense of entitlement, splitting the difference. Fate intervenes, and lots are turned at the crossroads of these chance encounters. As if his created world could be comprehended, the boy delved further into the glass castle, gathering strategies for his escape. He became opinionated, and he was angry about it. Whatever it was. He was intent on running away, asserting control any way that he could. It was his way of saying to the world, You don't control me. He was serious now and emotionally impelled, so on a naive impulse, he stole a car. It was a '91 Caprice Classic. He had intended it to be a romantic gesture. Her imagination took him further. She convinced him that it was either now or never, and he gave the affectionate nod. It was the occasion for their escape. It was irrational, but for a wild moment, it made perfect sense. Their semi-ever-after depended upon it, something external to direct their intentions rather than to deal with her true emotions. And for the orphan boy, there was no hope in sight. He existed in the moment alone, the thoroughly tangible now that stood still. He felt it so thoroughly that he was cursed to witness his own pride and a contempt for authority.

For his bravery, the girl gave him something illustrative of her devotion overnight as they were parked at a rest stop. It was not all the way, but it was prodigious gratitude—the taste of her flowing vines and limbs blooming with the first of summer roses. She left the boy struggling to comprehend the magnitude of what she was giving him. He left the fantasies of the mind only to come into the magic of the present moment, where only a part of him was present, experiencing what was happening.

Reality would ensue. They would only make it eighty miles from home. When the boy saw the flashing lights in his rearview, he was flooded with the pain. You'll never take me alive! was his war cry. He never felt the tears that flooded his brown cheeks. Determined, he took the police on a chase, ready to go out in gun smoke, just like Bonnie and Clyde, because death was the appealing alternative to his cursed nominal existence. On the radio, Van Morrison's Brown-Eyed Girl played. Her silence fell softly into its elusive echoes. Eventually, she would convince him to surrender. Intoxication and surrender, symbolic of greater themes: shame, remorse, guilt, degradation, pain, fostering resentment. He would surrender, but inside, he was seething, undaunted by the failure he was already plotting for the next chase.

For the joyride, he would spend eleven days in juvenile hall, and upon release, he knew that one day he would be right back in custody. He had come from nowhere in particular, but he had arrived in style. In his transformation from warrior to lover to king, the boy had learned that there would be sacrificial losses and deprivations for the honor of a girl. Her every contribution was woven into the fabric of his very nature—a patchwork quilt of paths taken and paths avoided, of love, grit, and battle scars. The incident reinforced a knowledge that he could only rely upon himself. He was a boy departing his glass castle leaving the world his crown, mourned by a newfound equilibrium. It wasn't the poverty that he was struggling against; it was the shock of learning that he had been denied something that was the thirst for gain and the fear of losing something.

Back at home, he felt a certain unbearable tension from the Rush clan. He had decided while in jail that he would no longer accept things the way that they were. The Rushes would no longer abuse him or Natalie. She had confessed that she admired the new Trinity Rush. And having tasted her union, her absence was felt more keenly, felt like falling through an open space. She had left him with the delicious ache of anticipation, his secret heart craving more. Then, and just to rouse his jealousy, she went and kissed the other boy. It was his first taste of betrayal. The impact of this incident caused him to rue, indulging a flight of fancy, running from intimacy. Nihilism and nascent anarchy, his philosophy, one born of a sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

So as the boy stood there gazing upon the Saint-Laurent mansion primed to ring the doorbell, he heard the all-too-familiar sound of volatile arguing. He heard a woman shouting, Everything is a lie, you bastard! You made me do it. It was all a lie! So with his head hung, feeling ashamed to be so dirty, the orphan picked his rucksack back up, and with a final gaze into the heavens, he turned back to the taxi driver. He had stolen the cab fare from Mrs. Rush's pocketbook. It didn't even matter. He was prepared to face the music. He would return to the Rushes with a contrite spirit. Why integrate into the Saint-Laurents' burning mansion? He supposed that after some time, a boy could get used to anything, even the Rushes, even if he must retreat into himself, closing off all avenues out. What was the beloved verse from Jasmin Cori's Freefall to the Beloved? I must not search with my eyes but rather feel with my body, my heart the most sensitive to the divine caress.

That was it. He would maneuver about in the cruel world—a boy, invisible, taught by bitter experience.

Chapter 2

Sketches of Siena I—August 16, the Year 1500

Am I beautiful? The impressive lady first made an appearance in the young prince's memories in the sacred blooming flower of her youth. An impressionable swain, she saw herself in his reflection. A sagacious observation, transient gazes that betray the evidences of an oppression. They could lavish such tenderness, rendering her precious beyond all recognition. With indescribable pleasure, she played on his attentions, endeavoring to perceive their meaning. His eyes were the barrier between art and the real world, constructing a paradise of realities from scores of miniscule snapshots. As if unrestrained by observation, his subject matter inspired to make the viewer conscious of her own unique impressions, her proud glance conveying the light and playful mood, her beauty cruelly mocking his vain attempts in capturing it's parallels with brush, palette, easel, and canvas—the thing that had first inspired her bravery.

His eyes were indeed an honor, anxious and inquiring. They were soft, dark, melting, emotional eyes. They were almond-shaped and incredibly patient. The lady wondered whether he saw in hers the same emotional reflection. He had a prodigious effect on her conscientious beauty. Her gorgeous mouth was habitually smiling. She wondered if he noticed her thick, kinky black tresses or her eyes. They were the color of maple leaves in autumn, large and bold like a dove's. She was a rich visual experience, completely in profile, crowned with a glorious diadem of glossy gold-splashed laurel leaves, her hair embroidered with pearls. She harmonized well with the rustic paradise arbor in which she inhabited. The lady endowed with the wild grace of a delicate, fragile body, and a keenness of wit seemed to promise every delight of an exquisite flower. He made many observations of beauty, extracted them with a theatrical effect, and studied elegancies.

The muse, so affected by his glances, lay stretched out like a lazy river, shifting languidly and striking winsome poses. She lay upon a black velvet spread in a knee-length sheer violet silk chemise fastened at the neck with magnificent diamond clasps and embroidered with gold roses. Her prepubescent curves were faintly perceptible beneath the fabric, and her boundless legs got his imagination going, like a mystical experience. Her feet were delicately formed. The most exquisite delicacies merited the appreciation of the curator's loose, expressive brushstrokes, touching the edges of the canvas. In the backdrop, brilliant purples, blues, and yellows contrasted against the greens of the rolling hills and the majestic gray-brown mountains. The young prince applied delicate grooved strokes, creating the smooth transitions of dramatic light and shadows.

Mixing colors on the palette, he considered the question she had asked while completing the strange, dynamic iridescence of the glowing orange fireball dipping in the background as the sunset in dramatic gesture. He engaged the lady's partial eyes with a devotion of his own. I haven't seen anything so extraordinary. I think you delicately beautiful, like a rose. The prince's pet monkey, Oliviero, studied the painting contemplatively, his hand caressing his sturdy chin. When the critiquing was over, Oliviero turned to the prince with a grin, squawking and clapping his hands approvingly. My mate Oliviero agrees, said the prince, reaching into his kit to produce a bright-yellow banana, which he gave to his small companion.

The lady lay propped upon a blue cushion, her face caressed in her palm. She dreamily gazed on the prince, coveting his furtively stolen snapshots. His keen eyes intimated a yearning to share in her most intimate privacies, like they had always known her. They made her feel necessary and a bit dangerous, giving her a theatrical conversion like everything that she did was original, exclusive, and exceptional. They inflicted mania upon her heart and were her most ardently desired possession, and she intended to keep them hers and hers alone. There was the slightest rustling of foliage, and her high-pitched cry pierced the air. Serpent! She recoiled, dancing on the tips of her toes.

The prince hastened to be nearer her, to protect her, and pursued the serpent that she had indicated into the shady arbor. He heard her shout, There! The writhing serpent was harmless, but for the sake of chivalry, he took up the largest stone in sight and feigned to beat it senseless. Though secretly, he'd set it free further in the olive grove. He kept his eyes on it, when suddenly, the apparition happened. Right before his eyes, the thing became supernatural. Its vertical pupils were searing a vivid red, and it swiveled its head, assessing the prince menacingly, hissing. The serpent gave an eerie grin before striking forth. However, the boy prince was quicker, drawing back his leg before striking the serpent with his heel, crushing it.

He heard the lady's voice in the distance, Is this what you see when you look at me, Sir? She now hovered over the artist's canvas, viewing his work analytically.

Excessive words cede common expression to what is uncommon. Something so rare. There are moments which make the heart stand still. That is when the conscious creates. The time returns and does not pass in waiting. You are beauty. That is what I know, and beauty should not be wasted.

Her heart was in ecstasies, for she had perceived his meaning. Do you swear?

Why ever would you doubt?

Will you remember me? She wanted to know, aghast. Who else could paint this much beauty? Will you always paint my portraits? She gave him a searching, supplicating glance.

It's merely a hobby, my lady. The hands of man are of no reputation and only lead to the vulgar temptation, no. One day I will be a celebrated military general. Kingdoms afar will tremble at the mention of my name.

The lady could not seize the aria of gorgeous laughter. I do apologize, Sir, but I do so love it when you act adult and so serious.

Stupid girl! The prince flushed. He thought, Who is this girl to mock me? How old are you? he demanded.

I am nearly thirteen summers. She challenged, undaunted. Hurt and dignified at once, she considered him in paint-covered smock, embarrassed by a girl, reeling. And she laughed again.

Far too young to realize the intricacies of state craft and war. He scoffed. In this world, a man must attain his moment of glory. But you do not understand. After all, you are but a girl. Her laughter incensed him. He was not in the habit of yielding to such provocations.

That is just pretentious! She was not backing down. I do understand your precious avowal of war. I understand that it defies divine law, that it is proud, it envies, it covets, and it is without reason!

As is love, the young prince said in reprisal. For all that it entails, it wages war of its own. Nonetheless, it lies, it tortures, it condemns, and in all of its ends, it is never sated.

The lady expired a wisplike breath. Her eyes swelled with tentative tears, her pride condemned. You do not truly espouse such convictions on the matter of love, do you? Her dreamy countenance left an irrevocable trace in his memory. When her unskilled attempt at negotiating failed to elicit a response, she vowed, Then I shall be brave. And you will never be great while being false. You are an artist, but you would rather be remembered as a murderer.

Realizing her passion, how she was so affected at his words, he had to concede something to her open heart. Fate is designed by every opportunity. I must play the villain to this childish whim of love, but a man must gently guide the hand of fortune. Of this I am certain. He made an affirmative gesture, expressing a deep tenderness. And yet I've never quite witnessed anything like you.

A red-hot feeling flushed her face. Oh no! She flinched. I amuse you. Just don't cry, she encouraged herself. I don't require your platitudes. For she knew the impossibility of altering a determination once formed. All it takes is a single brushstroke to alter the way that you impact the world. The love that I speak of is indeed pure. I'm not just any girl. Her countenance was expressive of fact—facts that influence our attitudes and beliefs. You didn't kill the serpent, said the lady. You set him free. You're not a murderer.

Who are you? the prince inquired from this invincible spirit. He could not yet comprehend the significance of the question. The virtues of rare minds kept a man secure in the world from every invasive intrusion, but for that of an equally keen wisdom of a beautiful lady. And even then, the man is only imperiled if she sees him back. Tomorrow, he thought, this will seem but a fantasy, a delusion. Tomorrow I will see with clarity when I shall be divided from you. To the lady, he ceded. To know that the universe is watching. I just need some time apart from you to think.

The lady lowered her head, but she was agreeable.

Chapter 3

Kaitz (Summer)

The Excerpts

Be gentle with these damaged petals. The thorns are the ugliness beneath the beauty. O', but we were so young and with a richness in mind that the possessions of the world could not account. In the most rewarding season of my life, she was just a budding rose. What a strikingly poetic image for our story. A noble rose blooming in spring's last freeze. Her frost-bitten petals were crimson-hued and tucked tightly inside the crisp green edges by the toothed crystals that formed in the predawn's healthy dew. My love, I want you to hold me just like that inside of these torn and tattered pages, and when the sun rises with its scorching heat and the rose begins to wither, when the beauty fades and her blossom wanes, we will still be lost in these pages of a love letter. I wish that I could convince you that everything will be okay, but I can't, and it's killing me. What if there was nothing that you could do to save the thing that you loved? How would your priorities change? There is a time wherein every moment of your life there is a critical purpose for being, and war is a steadying occasion. My mission is to make the world a safer place for you to cherish such rare moments and achievements.

But every glorious rose has its thorns, and even if it does bloom, I will never forget the process—those periods of enduring intense suffering in scaling the heights of enlightenment. How very fleeting life is. A woman is a very dangerous thing to know. I mean, to understand what lies beneath that surface beauty. Her bloom is but a clever mask. It is the most fatal of all delusions. The presumption that she is the gentler, weaker vessel. A dangerous assumption for which she makes the man pay dearly with scores of escalating taxing, hidden demands. She makes him regret every occasion for all the insecurities ensconced in the heart of a girl. He will suffer contradiction after idiosyncrasy, enduring inevitable compromises, infinite complications, sacrifices, and heroic surrenders, to know her. After all, she is a girl, and everything in life amuses her. The utter totality of her body. What she can touch and what touches her back. Her divided attentions. She is inventive in the characters she creates, and maybe there is no greater proof of man than that in which he is willing to accomplish on her behalf. For what better layer of designs is there than a dilettante in her youthful season? One versed in the fine arts of theft. It is the paradigm of her existence, the moment that she falls in, and the redeeming hour in which she discovers why, turning that so-called initial encounter into something like a deep past.

But this is not a love story. Rather, it is a fluid indictment of the conscience I live with, a charmingly twisted romantic tale of love and of survival, for seldomly the twain do harmonize. It is the tale of two brothers, natural rivals—one born to the street and cruelly exposed, the other born to nobility and persecuted by fortune. A wholesale dismantling of this hypocritical institution called religion, it is the saga of those enduring moments in between that make time stand still. Movements of divine interposition that are compounded over time. These cerebral, sensual, intellectual, and refined movements that make her existence exclusive. Curatorial movements circumventing the broken past that she lives with. The oaths avowed in the hypocritical midnight hour. Promises more terrifying than the jealous night that knows her secrets. Her constant fealties are perceived as a cruel and pervasive attack, though they were once virtuous, good, and decent. But she will only keep betraying him. Can you sense it? Do you feel it?

The world has a billion open doors, and every one of them is meant for exploiting endlessly. Memories of this fact shall endure. I tell you a truth, but you must have an imagination. There once was a rich fool who squandered his divine blood inheritance in order to gain the treasure of the world, and there was the girl who loved him. As for rain in a time of drought, she was like a succulent desert flower, one that had lain dormant for several dry seasons, but when the rain came and the winds blew, they stirred the forgotten soil, begetting everything we witness. Some people spend life peering into mirrors, measuring other people's reflections, betraying themselves in effect in order to be perfect and pleasing to others. But we ran free. And nothing, not the nobility, not the fortune, nor fame, nothing was more exhilarating than these summer seasons with you. You. There are no prettier words, none better loved…

Chapter 4

Sketches of Siena II

Trinity? Over the rim of her wineglass,