“Neither do I.” Jehovah moved at last, lowering His black eyes to look upon His hand, which He raised before Him with uneasy wonder. “I remember infancy,” He began. “My nurse often put My hand against hers, and I realized Mine was growing larger, deducing thus that these large beings that fed and lifted Me must be what I was going to become. I had known I was becoming more powerful, mastering how to grasp a thing, to turn it in My hand, to make it near and far. With no experience of the finite I had assumed My growth would be infinite. In her I saw its limit. Was that all? To see? To grasp what is within reach? To plunge forward in time, freefall, knowing only what lies behind, while what lies ahead remains invisible? Tu… Ya…” He stumbled now, one word then another falling stillborn as He realized it would not serve with monoglot Carlyle. “All things being right,” He tried at last, “I should have but to Will a thing for it to be, yet here I was reduced to these weak tools: hands, eyes, memory. Beyond these limits I would be forever powerless.”

Carlyle felt pain imagining such thoughts. “They say no one can remember infancy.”

“I make the most of what few tools I have.” Jehovah lowered His hand, and let His eyes lock on the sensayer trembling in the aisle beside Him. “Your flesh will drain your strength less if you sit.”

“Thanks.” Carlyle sank onto the pew opposite.

“As I grew I met words,” Jehovah continued. “These made sense. These one Willed into being, as is proper, and of them one could create anything, near or far or infinite or past or perfect. I thought I had discovered the real matter of this universe, but even words were too limited. Each person, I learned, could only perceive words made in their presence, and no new words could be made, only the same repeated that I heard from them, like atoms, diverse only when they recombine. Even these might have been building blocks enough, but, as I added more variety to my words, they affected the so-called adults less. Tutors told me each adult could only understand certain groups of words called ‘languages,’ that what had power over my nurse did not over Pater, or Papá, or Chichi-ue, or Monseigneur le Duc. Even now for you, Cousin, I must use only words in the set named ‘English,’ for the rest would pass intangible through the coarse net of your understanding, as they do through Aunt Kosala’s. The tutors promised that, with time, it would come naturally to Me, speaking only one language at a time, but how can it be natural to paint only with shades of red, or to build with atoms from only one column of His Periodic Table?”

Carlyle’s breath caught. “You mean God’s?”

“This Universe’s God,” Jehovah clarified. “I am not one small god among many, as you imagined Zeus, Anubis, and Apollo. I am the only God, the infinite, omnipotent creative Will, the source of all My universe, which is not this one.”