Kage Baker liked the name Maundy Thursday. It amused her, being an old-fashioned word. It might refer to charitable purses given out by English royalty to the deserving poor. (Whatever the deserving poor might be – they only seem to occur in England.) It might be derived from the Latin word mandatum, meaning a commandment (as in Christ’s Last Supper instruction to his disciples: A new commandment I give unto you. That you love one another as I have loved you); but no one is quite sure …

She wasn’t as fond of its actual implications. It’s the night of the Last Supper, nearly the end of Holy Week, the eve of the Passion and Sacrifice. That mattered to Kage, though she kept the remembrance in her own way. She was more into lilies and white candles than the Passion. Contemplating the death of Christ made her feel ill. She preferred to think of the living godhead. God, she always felt, shouldn’t have to die; but if He does, Man should not prefer that Death to the glory of His living in the first place.

She didn’t approve of death. Or loss, or change, or endings … transmutation was acceptable, as long as the original essence was still discernible. Conservative in her miracles, was Kage.

I’ve spent the day making editorial corrections to TWONG II. Survived a sick headache and a flat tire, and the hideous traffic attendant on the masses of people leaving town for the holiday weekend. Or fleeing the Westside to get away from all the closed streets and grim young men in sunglasses, since the President is over there tonight … it was an especially secular day, as a matter of fact.

Tomorrow, I’ll try to turn my thoughts to some resurrection or other – it’s good for the soul, after all, Christian or no. Nothing to scorn in lilies, chocolate or bunnies, either. But right now the immortality of the soul is a topic that occupies my mind a great deal. It probably always will through what is left of my own life, wondering where Kage’s has gone on to and what it’s doing there …

Sitting on a hillside in the spring sunlight, I hope; sipping sweet white wine and eating candy eggs, while the Young Lord of her choice bends over her with His arms full of lilies.