Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

‘Twas the wee small hours and sleep was something on which Christine could find no purchase. Restless, she felt the pull of something beyond herself, a force that drew her to the sitting room window of her stepfather’s house.

At first she feared a hallucination, or perhaps she had fallen asleep and what she witnessed was little more than a fever dream. Rubbing at her tired, bloodshot eyes, she sought to clear her vision, but the image held fast. Outside the window, standing naked as a jaybird in the front garden, Christine beheld a bizarre woman whose gold-flecked skin glistening in the moonlight.

“Call me by my name,” the woman said. Her voice was clear and sharp as if it came directly from Christine’s own mind. “And the wrongs will be righted.”

“But I do not know your name, madam,” Christine said in her softest tone as not to wake her family of light-sleepers. She was suddenly very self-conscious about the bruising on her upper arms, the only signs of abuse that were visible in her nightgown, and sought to cover them from the stranger’s fiery gaze.

“Every woman knows my name,” the woman replied.

And somehow Christine knew this to be truth, for in the back of her mind, balanced on the tip of her memory’s tongue, was a word that no man alive today knew and even if they did, would not have been able to pronounce it for it was the ancient name for the weapon capable of cracking a man’s soul in half.

“Xelintailbheniamh,” Christine whispered, and from the bedroom, her stepfather’s screams of agony pierced the frightened silence of the household.

“You are free, my sister,” Xelintailbheniamh smiled, before moving on to the next woman in need of her services.