A Just Farewell (10 page)

No one invited the twins Alexis and
Cassandra to share in that feast thrown in Abraham’s home to
celebrate their coming marriage to a boy who promised to be the
vessel of the Maker’s love. They were left alone in their dim
chamber, left in their bonds until they calmed. They were left tied
to their cots so that their hands did not scratch at the marks that
burned upon their cheeks. Though their father had tied them very
tightly, their gags couldn’t choke their sobs.

Thus, they were helpless when a strange,
ugly cockroach with an unnaturally orange shell decorated with
swirls scurried out from the shadows. Their eyes widened with fear
to watch the bug scamper onto the ground between them as its fine
antennae smelled at the air. They feared the great devil visited
them, and they feared no one, not even their father, cared to chase
away that bug.

* * * * *

Chapter 9 – Scratching at the Sky

“I’m sorry, Ishmael, but I’m afraid I can’t
go with you into the metal garden. I must tend to the butcher shop
and my training all day.”

Ishmael grinned. “It’s fine. I petitioned
the clerics for you company, Abraham. They’ve agreed to give you a
break so that you can spend the day with me.”

The good fortune he had experienced since
climbing, battered and bruised, out from his hole continued to
amaze Abraham. “Why would they agree to that?”

“It’s a special occasion,” winked
Ishmael.

“What would that be?”

Ishmael rolled his eyes. “I will tell you in
the middle of the metal garden, brother. Would I dare involve the
clerics in any of my lies?”

Abraham didn’t doubt Ishmael’s word, for he
knew his brother cherished every opportunity to please the clerics,
and he knew Ishmael took pride in policing the clerics’ law. His
brother would do nothing that was contrary to those bearded men’s
desire, and so Abraham was glad to follow Ishmael out of their home
and across the hard, cracked surface, both of them pleased that the
massive citadels of the unbelievers remained far from passing over
their path, a sign both took to be another of the Maker’s
blessings. The journey to the metal garden took the morning, and
the brothers where happy to reach the first of the broken and bent
columns of steel, which rose like fractured teeth from the ground’s
shattered jaw, before the sun reached its pinnacle to heat the day.
Once within the metal garden, Abraham and Ishmael could find
shelter from the sun within so many piles of ruin strewn about the
landscape.

“There’s no more powerful proof of the
Maker’s power than the metal garden,” Ishmael smiled as he surveyed
the fields of scattered debris.

The Holy Book taught that a great,
glimmering city once stood on the grounds of the metal garden, a
city of high, crystal towers that shimmered in the sun. The clerics
claimed that the city’s population on any given day far surpassed
the numbers the tribes could gather if even the Maker gave their
clerics the power to resurrect the ghosts of their great, lost
warriors. Life was easy and comfortable. Children didn’t thirst in
the hottest, summer droughts, nor did the old hunger when a year’s
harvest proved lean. Within the city, humankind lived apart from
the elements, sheltered behind steel and glass.

The people of such an age possessed
everything, and still their craving magnified. The Holy Book taught
that such cities rose from greed, that all of their reflection and
polish idolized mankind instead of showing the Maker the reverence
he deserved. Mankind chose to forget his creator god and arrogantly
cast aside the Maker’s divine law to live according to his
individual pleasure and whim. Man no longer feared the great devil;
man no longer believed the great devil existed at all. Thus, the
Maker’s terrible enemy reigned free, his image cast in a billion
motes of mesmerizing light, his voice echoing through such cities
that worshipped any kind of song but the one composed to pay glory
to the Maker. Mankind rebelled against his Maker, and all of his
creations, tainted by the great devil, rose as blasphemies to the
creator’s original masterpiece.

Though angered by mankind’s mockery, the
Maker’s wisdom recognized how he could save his lost flock of
mankind in the destruction of those cities of shimmering glass. The
Maker spoke to men, and his spirit returned to remind them that
they were all still magical creations of a powerful god, no matter
how much science claimed the contrary. The Maker possessed
mankind’s hands, and the Maker employed them as his tools that
pulled those blasphemous towers of steel to the ground. The word of
the Maker spread like fire across the land, for mankind’s heart and
soul pined to be reunited with the divine, and through the
faithful, the Maker waged a new war against the great devil. The
Maker reminded the Earth of his will and of his way, and the tribes
emerged across the landscape, the Maker’s great warriors who waged
relentless battle against those who refused to believe.

Abraham and Ishmael lived in a wonderful
age. They lived to witness the Maker’s tribes spread across the
land, and they lived to watch the last of the unbelievers flee in
their metal rockets. They would live to watch the Maker’s battle
against the great devil extend into the very stars, and Abraham and
Ishmael would see the blasphemer’s castles swept out of the sky so
that the Maker’s great heaven reunited with his Earth.

Ishmael gripped his brother’s shoulder.
“Looking at all the twisted rebar and steel reminds me that we have
much for which to feel thankful, brother.”

“The Maker is powerful,” Abraham agreed.

Ishmael winked. “And he is glorious.”

A reflection sparkled amid the ruin at
Abraham’s feet, and he bent to recover a glass shard that twinkled
in the sunlight. When the air was not too hot, and when the castles
orbiting overhead vacated the sky above the metal garden, Abraham
enjoyed scurrying about the piles of ruin to scavenge small,
shining baubles and sharp pieces of glass. He would offer the most
colorful pieces of glass to the clerics, who would often allow
Abraham to watch as they pieced one bit of blue glass with a
fragment of yellow or orange to compose their stained windows that
helped them teach to their village the stories contained within
their Holy Book. The process with which those clerics assembled
something beautiful from something that was ruined never failed to
amaze. It was as if the clerics found magic in the waste of a
ruined world, and it reminded Abraham of how the Maker employed man
to return his original beauty to a fallen world.

Abraham held the glass shard up to the sun,
and he grinned as the light filled the bauble with a blue glow.

Ishmael smiled. “You always had such a fine
eye. I could never spot the treasures as could you.”

“You never scurried out to the metal garden
as much as I did,” Abraham returned. “You will learn to spot the
treasures if you remain patient.”

Ishmael shook his head. “I will not have the
time to learn your skill. The clerics tell me the Maker summons me
into battle. I will be a hero in the Maker’s great story.”

Abraham thought his heart stopped beating.
Each man of the Maker’s tribes possessed the power to be wielded by
their god as a terrible weapon. The cape granted to each boy who
survived the final ceremony of his year of man-making attested to
that divine power. Though Ishmael proudly wore his cape wherever he
went, Abraham never paused very long to consider how his life would
change when the Maker summoned his brother to serve as a warrior.
He supposed he had always considered Ishmael as a boy rather than a
man. Abraham sighed, for his childhood, and that of his brother’s,
seemed to have slipped away a very long time ago. He didn’t doubt
that was according to the Maker’s will, but Abraham all the same
felt there was something melancholy about the vanishing of such an
era.

Abraham’s eyes again followed those crooked
and chard beams of steel that rose so high into the sky. How many
ages might have passed beneath the great Maker’s eyes? How many
cities might have risen and fallen since the Maker breathed first
life into man? How had that metal garden appeared before the
Maker’s tribes and warriors destroyed such mockery? Why did the
Maker grant mankind the power to create in ways contrary to that
divine creator’s pleasure? Did the Maker enjoy the destruction as
much as he enjoyed the invention? Why could a god who enjoyed
building not permit anything to last?

“When will you answer that call?”

Ishmael’s eyes sparkled. “I battle tonight,
brother. Tomorrow, I will sit next to the Maker.”

“Where will you battle?”

Ishmael chuckled. “It would only be the
clerics’ place to share such information with you even if I knew. I
was told only that I go to the east.”

“In the direction where the rockets
rise.”

Ishmael nodded. “Perhaps I will be among the
first to fight in the stars. Don’t look sad, Abraham. The Maker
blesses me, for the stars themselves will sparkle as memorials to
my sacrifice.”

Abraham wiped his eyes to prevent a tear
from streaking his cheek. “I suppose that’s better than even a cape
fluttering in the wind.”

“It is indeed.”

The brothers spent the last morning
remaining to them strolling through the metal garden in search of
bright pieces of glass for the clerics and their holy stories. They
often stopped to huddle beneath some pile of ruin, to sit in the
shadow and laugh while they replenished their energy for another
foray into the sun. Abraham did his best to hide his tears whenever
he thought of his brother forever leaving him, and Ishmael showed
Abraham compassion by not faulting his younger sibling for his
emotion. Abraham felt thankful to the clerics for providing him the
time to spend with Ishmael on their last day, just as he was
thankful to clerics for providing Ishmael with such a grand
backdrop of stars for his battle against the unbelievers, just as
he was thankful to the clerics for providing him a butcher’s place
within their community, and for providing him with two young girls
to soon love as the Maker flowed through him. And most of all,
Abraham felt thankful that the Maker built such a lovely world on
top of the ruins of an ugly and old one.

* * * * *

Later that night, Abraham sat with his
father and mother in the central chamber of their subterranean
home. Ishmael’s cape hung proudly on the wall, and Abraham wondered
what instruction the clerics would deliver come the morning
regarding the pattern his mother would weave onto his lost
brother’s cape. How would she stitch one star after another onto
the fabric so that the material crowded with sparkle? Would the
clerics advise her to weave great sunbursts of explosions to convey
the Maker’s fury Ishmael’s body delivered to the unbelievers? How
long might Ishmael’s cape flutter in front of the cleric’s scaffold
tower before the clerics allowed Rahbin to carry that remembrance
of his son home? Would they recognize the moment when the Maker
made Abraham a martyr, and how would they know if his attack
brought victory?

Abraham peered down the dim hallway that
connected the central chamber with the home’s sleeping rooms, and
within the shadow he perceived that orange shell of his loyal,
cockroach friend. That bug continued to possess an uncanny
curiosity. Yet Abraham no longer feared the bug’s presence as a
sign that the great devil lurked nearby, for the cockroach’s shell
was painted in the same, dark swirls that adorned the faces of
Josef’s daughters, and the high cleric had judged those markings to
be blessed by the Maker. He would allow that cockroach to eavesdrop
however it might desire. For all that Abraham knew, that bug may
have possessed nothing less than the great Maker’s spirit.

The cleric’s great horn suddenly shrilled to
fill the underground room with noise. Rahbin raced to his home’s
ascending ladder at the sound, but Abraham hesitated a moment to
peek into his mother’s tattooed face, wondering what emotion he
might have there read had those dark glasses not covered her
eyes.

The men of the village hurried towards the
clerics’ tower as the horn’s long note continued to wail. The night
was cool, and the sky was dark, teeming with a field of stars that
led Abraham to suspect that the Maker had crafted new jewels to set
into his sky. One of the unbelievers’ massive castles floated
directly overhead, and its shadow didn’t seem to move over the dark
world, as if those blasphemers hiding behind its walls
intentionally stopped their monstrosity over Abraham’s village. The
clerics’ horn sounded the same note of celebration as it had the
night not so long ago when Abraham had watched the unbelievers’
rockets explode in the heavens, and Abraham wondered if the clerics
had called him onto the surface to look towards the east and
witness the fire that would announce his brother arrived in the
Maker’s arms.

The high cleric didn’t make any kind of
announcement after the great horn silenced. He merely looked to the
east to direct his community to turn its attention to the
constellations hanging in that direction. A low rumble whispered
through the ground, and a single rocket, rising on a plume of blue
and white fire, rose from the ground, lifting towards the massive
castle that hovered above their village. Abraham held his breath,
waiting for the flash that would claim his brother and give his
family a hero. Everything went quiet as the village waited,
watching that rocket climb closer and closer to the castle
overhead.