Commentary of Curate Symphonius
The Toll was not only a man of flesh, but a master of it. He possessed the ability to transform into any creature, or multitude of creatures. This verse illustrates his ability to become a great flock of birds, most likely eagles, falcons, or owls. Graceful. Noble. Wise. But also to be feared and respected. Creatures that were the epitome of all the Toll was.
Coda’s Analysis of Symphonius
The ever-present problem with Symphonius is his inconsistency. He sees things as symbolic or literal whenever it suits him, thus his interpretations are more whim than wisdom. While it’s possible that the Toll could have taken form as a flock, is it not more likely that he simply possessed the mystical ability to fly, like the caped heroes of archival graphics?
32
A Grim Fulcrum
The cathedral bells that rang out the hours for nearly a thousand years in EuroScandia had been silenced. Ripped out, torn apart, melted in a makeshift furnace. A great concert hall in the same region had been raided in the middle of a performance, and, amid the panic of the crowd, Tonists flooded the stage, breaking the smaller instruments by hand and taking axes to the larger ones.
Your voices are music to my ears, the Toll had once said. Which clearly meant that all other music had to be destroyed.
These extreme sibilant sects found, in their devotion, a need to impose their beliefs on the world. No two sects of Sibilants were alike. Each one was its own unique aberration, with its own frightening interpretations of Tonist doctrine and twistings of the Toll’s words. The only thing they all had in common was a propensity for violence and intolerance – including the intolerance of other Tonists, for any sect that did not believe precisely as they did was clearly lesser.
There were no Sibilants before the Thunderhead fell silent. Yes, there were sects that had extreme beliefs, but the Thunderhead and the Nimbus agents of the Authority Interface reined them in. Violence would not be tolerated.
But once the world was unsavory, and the Thunderhead spoke no more, many things in many places began to fester.
In the oldest cities of EuroScandia, groups of roaming Sibilants would leave bonfires in public squares full of pianos, cellos, and guitars, and although they would be caught and detained by peace officers every time, they would not stop. People hoped that the Thunderhead, even in its silence, would supplant them, replacing their minds and their entire identities with ones that would be content and not prone to violence. But that would be a violation of religious freedom. So the Sibilants were detained, forced to pay for the replacement of the things they had destroyed, and then released, only to destroy these things again.
The Thunderhead, if it could speak, might say that they were providing a service – and that by destroying musical instruments, it provided work for those whose job it was to create such instruments. But even for the Thunderhead, enough was enough.
The Toll appeared to the EuroScandian Sibilants as they prepared to lay waste to another concert hall.
The EuroScandian Sibilants knew it must be an imposter, for the Toll had been martyred at the hands of a scythe. Resurrection was not a tenet of their belief, so the zealots were skeptical.
“Drop your weapons and fall to your knees,” the imposter said.
They did no such thing.
“The Tone and the Thunder are offended by your actions. And so am I. DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND FALL TO YOUR KNEES!”
Still they did not obey. One of them ran forward, speaking in an old language native to the region that few people spoke anymore.
Then from the imposter’s small entourage, a denim-robed scythe came forward, caught the attacker, and threw him to the ground. The attacker, bruised and bloody, scampered away.
“It is not too late to repent,” the Toll imposter said. “The Tone, the Thunder, and I will forgive you if you renounce your destructive ways and serve us in peace.”
The Sibilants looked past him to the doors of the concert hall. Their goal was so close, but there was something commanding about this young man before them. Something … divine.
“I give you a sign,” he said, “from the Thunderhead, to whom I alone can speak, and to whom I alone can intercede on your behalf.”
Then he spread out his arms … and out of the sky they came. Mourning doves. A hundred of them swooping in from all directions, as if they had been waiting all this time in the eaves of every building in the city! They landed on him, perching on his arms, his body, his head, until he could not be seen anymore. They covered him from head to toe, their light-brown bodies and wings like a shell, like an armor around him – and the color of it. The pattern of the feathers enveloping him, the way they moved. The sibilant Tonists realized what he now resembled.
He looked like a storm cloud. A Thunderhead billowing with wrath.
Suddenly the birds took off in all directions, leaving him and disappearing back to the hidden corners of the city from whence they came.
All was silent but for the last flapping of departing wings. And in that silence the Toll spoke in nearly a whisper.
“Now drop your weapons and fall to your knees.”
And they did.
Being a dead prophet was much better than being a live one.
When you were dead, you weren’t obliged to fill your days with a mind-numbing parade of supplicants. You were free to go where you wanted, when you wanted – and more importantly, where you were needed. But the best part about it was that nobody tried to kill you.
Being dead, Greyson Tolliver concluded, was much better for his peace of mind than being alive.
Since his public demise, Greyson had spent over two years traveling the world in an attempt to wrangle in the sibilant Tonists that were popping up everywhere. He and everyone with him traveled as modestly as possible. Public trains, commercial airlines. Greyson never wore his embroidered scapular and violet tunic when they traveled. They were all incognito in simple, drab Tonist attire. No one asked questions of Tonists for fear that they’d start espousing their beliefs. Most people would look the other way, avoiding eye contact.
Of course, if Curate Mendoza had his way, they would travel the world in a private jet with vertical landing capability, so the Toll could plop out of the sky like an actual god-machine. But Greyson forbade it, feeling there was already too much hypocrisy in the world.
“Tonists are not supposed to be materialistic,” he told Mendoza.
“Neither are scythes,” Mendoza pointed out, “and how did that work out?”
Nevertheless, this wasn’t a democracy. What the Toll said was law among them, no matter who disagreed with it.
Sister Astrid was on Greyson’s side.
“I think your resistance to extravagance is a good thing,” she said. “And I imagine the Thunderhead agrees.”
“As long as we get where we’re going by the time we need to get there, the Thunderhead has no opinion,” Greyson told her. Although he suspected that the Thunderhead was rerouting trains and flights to speed their way to their destinations. Greyson supposed that if the Toll proclaimed they must travel by mule, the Thunderhead would somehow supply them with racing mules.
Even with modest travel, Mendoza always managed to find a way to make their arrival dramatic and impressive enough to shake sibilant Tonists to their corroded foundations. Whatever strange and disturbing things they were doing, Greyson would reveal himself to them as the Toll and denounce them, renounce them, and basically shut them down, leaving them begging for his forgiveness.