Let\u2019s go back a little further.<\/p>\n
Jeremiah Sandiford is homesteading. It\u2019s after the scissors-fall. He is sweeping the scissors away. He is cleaning a neighborhood in Respite, Kansas, in the hopes of legally claiming it after the scissors are gone.<\/p>\n
He isn\u2019t planning to become the god of a new millennium.<\/p>\n
He isn\u2019t planning to do anything strange.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s trying not to let all this shake him. He\u2019s trying not to be afraid of the dead scissors \u2014 I mean, I guess all<\/em> scissors are dead scissors, in a sense, but still \u2014 in their piles and drifts.<\/p>\n He\u2019s trying not to freak out entirely, like most of humanity is trying not to freak out entirely.<\/p>\n He\u2019d lived in a world of reason; calm; and of sanity, but that reason is starting to fray.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just the scissors, either. It\u2019s not just sextillions of scissors suddenly falling from space. He cleans and he stares at them and every now and then he fills a barrel with the swept-up metal \u2014 it\u2019ll be melted down. But it\u2019s not just the scissors. There\u2019s the Konami Thunder Dance, too. That\u2019s not normal. Nor all the summoning. And there\u2019s rumors of great snakes in the sea and of vast wolves.<\/p>\n It\u2019s everything<\/em>.<\/p>\n He feels like he\u2019s floating. He feels like he\u2019s drifting.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t want this to happen.<\/em><\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t think things this . . . uncleanly . . . ought to happen.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t think that the world ought to be this way.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s the day Hans dies. There\u2019s a vacancy.<\/p>\n And sunlight pierces through Jeremiah Sandiford like a spear.<\/p>\n It is shining in on him from all directions. It reflects in on him from the scissors and from the sky.<\/p>\n It pours in on him suddenly, all golden and all fierce.<\/p>\n Gold light congeals within him as a thought \u2014 not a thought of words, but a thought of intention<\/em>. It wakes in him a lion of purpose, a lion of sacredness, a shining, burning magic that roars through him and is not touched anywhere by the shadow of despair.<\/p>\n It illuminates him.<\/p>\n It fills him with a thunder like the falling of a hammer; like the shattering of the gates of Hell.<\/p>\n He is shining, then, in that moment.<\/p>\n Sacredness pushes out the weakness of him. It falls from him like a shadow from his lip. Divinity tramps out the impurity of him like it is some vintner pressing grapes. He is thrilling to it, it is resounding through him, it is tuning him to its self.<\/p>\n He weeps whole, pure tears.<\/p>\n He sinks down onto his knees. He takes up a handful of broken scissors in his hands. He holds them before his heart, like they in their awfulness are sacred, and then he lifts them to his lips and he kisses them full-on, he is gentle but he is firm, and his lips are bleeding from it.<\/p>\n He says to them: \u201cBless you, who are my enemy, for you have given me my grace.\u201d<\/p>\n Then he blows on them and they denature; they turn to dust; they fly away.<\/p>\n He is no longer Jeremiah Sandiford.<\/p>\n He rises, among the scattered scissors then, as Jeremiah Clean.<\/p>\n He rises and he stretches, he stands there like Atlas unleashed; unburdened, like a titan who has just now realized that there is no dome, there is no burden, there is only the great clean openness of the sky.<\/p>\n \u2014 and with that realization made it truth.<\/em><\/p>\n Jeremiah roars.<\/p>\n The world echoes with it; it shudders; everywhere there are those who hear that roar. Emily hears it. Eldri hears it. Linus Evans, a child in Sussex, hears it; he loses his innocence; he realizes in that moment that there is nothing good in all of life.<\/p>\n Then, like the settling hackles of a dog as it relaxes, the sacredness recedes from the cleaning man.<\/p>\n To be God \u2014 to make himself as <\/em>God \u2014 that would be uncleanly. To make himself God, or King in America \u2014 that would in itself be a breach of reason. That would in and of itself represent a kind of scissors\u2019 victory.<\/p>\n So he lives, does Jeremiah Clean, among us, as a man.<\/p>\n Just<\/em> a man.<\/p>\n Just an ordinary man \u2014 save, his heart is pure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s go back a little further. Jeremiah Sandiford is homesteading. It\u2019s after the scissors-fall. He is sweeping the scissors away. He is cleaning a neighborhood in Respite, Kansas, in the hopes of legally claiming it after the scissors are gone. He isn\u2019t planning to become the god of a new millennium. He isn\u2019t planning to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-0-5-glory","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Icon_Jewel_NoBG.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5473"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6113,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5473\/revisions\/6113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5473"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}