“I need some time to think things over,” he said. “I’ll meet you later, Shem. Think over whether you want to be initiated as well. After midday prayer, we’ll meet up and contrive to meet the Assistant Abbott, in order to formally apply for candidacy.”
“I’ll think,” said Shem, rather prosaically, and they split up.
Ifunka wandered on his own for a while, filled with a mixture of rage at the ostentatious bishop, excitement about the prospect of becoming a novice and frustration that he could not have the buxom beauty, that farmer’s daughter who had played him so mercilessly with her wiles. If he could not be satisfied, then he would channel his energies towards zealous adherence to the Tamitvar. He took again to the path leading out of the monastery—Shebga Way—and continued walking on for half an hour, until he espied a large, circular stone building—a tvamshaff or ‘farm house’—which was surrounded by fields of sish-tomatoes, ffev-fruit, braksh-wheat and shkometv, barns and granaries.
“This must be the Shiboff Farm,” he thought to himself. “I wonder if I can catch a glimpse of Maina. One look at that angel and my heart within me melts.”
He proceeded to enter the property, passing under the hedge which marked its border and along the shrubs and fallen branches which provided cover for his progress. He finally reached a small, flowing brook, the waters of which wended their way along its winding course, which must lead, he surmised, to a larger river or pond further down. The monastic aqueduct, part of the great water system of Tremnad, passed over the farm, feeding the irrigation system which supports its livestock and produce. Some of the excess water from this system also proceeded down a channel and emptied into the brook. As he reached its bank, he hid behind a tree, noticing Maina Shiboff approaching.
When she had reached the edge of the water, she bent low and took a handful thereof and began to wash her face. Ifunka was exhilarated. Her form was perfectly reflected in the water, such that Ifunka bethought himself that two perfect beings stood at two sides of a veil. Her long tresses touched the water’s surface such that, when she stood erect, small droplets fell upon her dainty shoes. She looked around and then, assured of her privacy, began slowly to divest herself of her outer garments and her fulsome figure was revealed in all its shapely abundance. Finally, she remained in naught but her undergarments which, in Tremna custom, were always modest, reaching to the knees and elbows on the bottom and sides and covering part, though not all, of the bosom. She continued to wash herself, splashing and rubbing her neck, ears, arms, upper bosom, legs and feet before shaking her limbs and trunk to remove the excess water before beginning to reclothe herself. Ifunka observed the entire procedure with an awkward, guilty pleasure, while feeling disgusted with himself. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but he was a slave to his own passions, and resistance seemed all but futile.
‘What if she sees me?’ he feared. ‘But no, she can only see her own dazzling beauty in those crystal waters. Great Spirit! Wash this sinful mind of mine!’
The last sentence he had more said than thought, such that Maina raised her head and looked in the direction from whence it came, hurriedly finished dressing and dashed off in the direction of her tvamshaff. Ifunka stealthily followed her, jumping between bushes or hiding behind bushels of braksh-wheat. She kept glancing back but failed to notice that she was, indeed, being pursued. When she reached the door of the tvamshaff, she turned again, but Ifunka was well-hidden. She had no sooner opened the main entrance when she slammed it behind herself and rushed to her room. She locked the door behind her and fell back onto a heff—a kind of bean-bag which Tremna girls often recline upon. She breathed in deeply and then sighed.
“Get a grip on yourself, Maina,” she muttered to herself. “No one is following you.”
Suddenly, there was a bang! She shrieked and turned to see Ifunka hanging on a vine, dangling outside her window. He had climbed up to the top floor and was now peering into every window till he had at last found hers.
“Creep!” she shrieked. “What right do you have?”
He banged on the window again.
“You don’t understand,” he pleaded. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Why did you follow me?”
“I’m just a curious boy.”
“You’re a creepy, little, hairy monster is what you are!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just go away, Ifunka! Don’t come back here ever again!”
“If I’m to be a monk,” he persisted. “Let me kiss you just one time. Just once! Please!”
“I may be a flirt, boy, but I’m a chaste girl. I’ll only kiss the man I love and marry.”
“Well then,” he said as the vine swung back and forth with his weight. “If that’s that… I’ll go. But you might regret this one day. Everyone will regret…”
Then he slowly lowered himself to the ground and fled, fearing the father’s retribution. In fact, he could see the figure of a man with a wide-brimmed braksh-straw hat, called a geltv, moving in the distance, so he quickly hurried back to the safety of the monastery. Unfortunately, however, the monastery was not as safe as he believed it to be for, as he was running along the path towards the tvagshaff, he bumped right into someone and fell backwards. He felt as if he had hit a wall of bricks! Looking up, dazed and confused, he saw a tall novice monk built like a mountain with wide shoulders, thick muscled arms, a wide, dark, olive-green face with prominent brow, thick cheek bones and azure eyes. He grunted like a ffentbaff, his nose sucking air in and out in his fury. His fists were clenched and his thick legs stood like tree boles fixed with mighty roots into the clay. The novice frowned and growled like a wild beast, flecks of saliva dripping down his cruel, purple lips. His eyes stared fiercely at Ifunka’s, who simply lay there, immobilised on the grass like a stricken animal.
“Watch where you’re going, worm!” the beast shouted. “I am a novice, so gimme respeck or I’ll pulverise you; I’ll crush your spineless body into so much dust the whole monastery’ll sneeze! I’ll snap your body like a twig and use your feeble skull as a drinking goblet. Move, worm!!!”
His voice boomed like thunder and with it came a torrent of saliva and catarrh which foamed and sprayed like a wave bursting upon some jagged rock.
“Sorry, sorry,” pleaded Ifunka when he had mustered enough courage to reply.
“Sorry?! Sorry?!” the beast seethed. “That don’t cut nothin’! You worm!!! No one messes with Ifunka!!!”
“Ifunka? Sorry, I am Ifunka!”
“WHAT!!!?” the beast fumed like a volcano read to spill over and burst forth with a pyroclastic flow. “I am Ifunka Kunug—Brother Ifunka! You are nothing more than a little, spineless worm to be crushed under my toes!”
“Squashed, you mean?”
“Shut it!”
“But please, sir, I am Ifunka Kaffa and shall soon be a novice also. We shall be brothers truly!”
“SPEAK NOT TILL SPOKEN TO!!!” Ifunka Kunug shook with rage. “I’ll teach you…. I’ll teach you!!!”
“Yeah, teach him, Ifunka,” said a familiar voice. “There’s only one Brother Ifunka here and you ain’t it!”
The voice was too familiar. It croaked and wheezed—was by its very nature cowardly and pathetic. The toad! That’s it! It was the voice of Ifunka’s tormentor, Gashiff, who had been responsible for his three-year imprisonment.
“You!” he shouted as the tub of lard emerged from behind the mountain. “You who put me in that underground prison! The Great Spirit shall smite you down for what you’ve done to me. He is merciful but He is also vengeful and His angels brandish swords of fire which shall burn through the layers of lamp oil contained within your blubbery body!”
“You can’t talk to us like that!” Another voice—familiar. It was Wigash, the second of the two trouble-makers who had tormented Ifunka Kaffa so long ago. He also emerged from behind t
he giant. Ifunka Kunug laughed and the other two laughed raucously with him.
“You’re done for, worm! Oh, this will be fun!”
He raised his great fist to pummel the hapless boy when, of a sudden, Ffen rushed into him like a slingshot, knocking the brutish Kunug into the ground. While Kunug lay dazed and confused, Ffen gave resounding blows to the heads of the two other boys with his staff, knocking them both unconscious. When the mountain had stumbled to his feet, Ffen delivered quick blows to his knees which popped like broken guitar strings, sending him into a paroxysm of agony as he fell flat on his face, gurgling and spitting into the mud as he seethed in his wrath and flapped to and fro like a fish cast out of the ocean depths upon some sandy shore.
“Quickly! Let’s be gone before the brutes awaken,” Ffen urged.
Together, they ran off to the tvagshaff to meet Shem. They said their midday prayers and ate heartily with the other plantings and novices—all, that is, save for the three trouble-makers who were nowhere to be seen.
“I’ll kill them if they ever try something like that again, I swear it.”
“Stop saying kill, stop it!” Shem screamed, his voice trembling. “We serve truth. We serve peace.”
“Sometimes the sword begets peace,” Ifunka observed. “What of Ishmael? I believe he was my ancestor, which is why my face is so hairy. He brought an era of peace to all Tremn after he crushed the Biknogs of Kraina. Does not the Tamitvar allow the sword?”
“Not for monks,” Shem observed.
“Sometimes we must do what we must do,” said Ffen. “Where the Tamitvar is silent, act!”
“What are you young chaps debating?” came a mild-mannered voice.
They turned to see a man of about forty, a senior monk but one who had evidently risen in the ranks quite quickly. His face was rather flat but long, with a poky chin, long ears and light-green side burns, dark, forest green eyes and a long, arched nose which hooked at the end. His mien was genial and his bearing that of an intelligent and thoughtful individual.
“Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself, young masters, have I?” He spoke with a polished accent like one cut from the right glass, but seemed approachable and kind. “My name is Brother Ushwan. I don’t believe we’ve met! I’m just having a little look-see at the current cohort of plantings to see if there are any right and ready to up their game and join the novice club. You two seem in splendid form”—he pointed to Ifunka and Shem—“What are you twain called?”
“I’m Ifunka and this is Shem.”
“I’m Ffen.”
“No, not interested in you. I’m scouting for new blood. You’re in the ranks already, private. But keep mum while I interrogate the newbies.”
“Right,” said Ffen, visibly annoyed.
“So, chaps, why haven’t I seen you around before?”
“I was imprisoned for three years for I-know-not-what and there I learned and read, prayed and found the Great Spirit.”
“Ah, a regular pilgrim’s progress story, brilliant. What about you, Shem?”
“I can’t… say.”
“Taciturn lad, in’t he? P’raps you can be his interlocutor?”
“He was much mistreated, beaten and broken. Only our friendship saved him, really; and now he’s beginning to make a recovery.”
“Excellent, excellent. Jolly good, that. Well then, I shall recommend you both to the bishop for initiation tomorrow evening. Get some rest! If you’re chosen, it’s a serious business this. It’s not a ceremony to be entered into lightly but more than this I cannot say. Mum’s the word. Cheerio then!”
“That was odd,” Ifunka remarked as the monk walked off.
“Bit rude, perhaps,” said Ffen. “But you two are in! It’s an honour to be initiated by a bishop, at least in the eyes of the Theocracy. If we can continue our rise, perhaps we will be enabled to climb its ranks and then exterminate it from the head, install a new king who can weed out corruption and separate the braksh-wheat from the chaff.”
“An interesting thought, though I don’t think Shem approves.”
“You taught me to forgive,” said Shem. “You! Let me be a simple monk and that’s that.”
“Wow, our usually taciturn friend burst out loquacious!” said Ffen enthusiastically. “As you wish,. Shem. It’s just an idea. Let me not sow any seeds of doubt in your mind. As for Ifunka and I, we’re taking to the zealous path.”
“Let’s finish eating and close this train of thought,” Ifunka advised. “We never can tell who might be eavesdropping. Let’s go about our business today and we’ll meet just before sunset to discuss our plans for the morrow, at the edge of the forest by the stream where I first met Brother Wiffka. Then all shall be decided. Adieu brothers.”
The three arose, embraced one another, and separated.
At sunset, they all began to gather at the edge of that same river, which was called Shiv. It flows from its source in the Varome Sintva, the ‘White Mountains’ to the west, and wends its way through the Great Forest of Ffushkar before passing, in one of its distributaries, through Ffantplain, and then through many forests and valleys until it empties into the Great Encircling Ocean while, in another distributary, it feeds into the River Ritva which passes through Ritvator to the east before reaching the great city of Kubbawa, where it takes the name ‘Kubbawa River’. An underground stream passed beneath Uncle Matuka’s home and this stream spilled into the Shiv, which led Ifunka to the Monastery of the Brown Owl. What else but fate could have produced such a fortuitous path? And what else but fate sets all the courses of our lives, which begin like droplets, frozen in ice on the summit of a lofty mount and then, when spring warmth does melt them from their crystal shell, they come trickling down in sundry channels which congregate into streams; these course together to form brooks which then descend into a common course and form a river flowing down the hill until they reach the plain, which is this mortal life in all its great, amplexive length and width and depth. It flows, as our life’s path flows, and bends and turns with the happenstances of life, as decreed by the Great Architect of our destiny, He whom the Tremna worship as the Great Spirit and yet others God or the Divine Being, the Lord or Father, the Maker or Creator. When it has finished this path, it empties out into the vasty ocean, where the sea of eternity surges. How puny is the drop, the particle, and how vast the ocean! Yet without the drops there would be no ocean. And how transient the trickles, streams, brooks and rivers, yet do they not all reach a goal of eternity? So it is with life: from smallness, we reach greatness. From temporality we reach eternity. From the lofty heights, frozen in nonexistence, we descend to the plains of mortality and then, from thence, to the vast, limitless, everlasting realm of true existence. These thoughts, however, were far from mind as the three gathered at the hour when the sun, glorious Vukt, began to make its descent to the bowels of Tremn. Its golden rays glowed like burnished gold, arraying every leaf and stem, every branch and trunk with its rufescent effulgence. The crimson, tornish-cherry blossoms glowed blood-red, the stamens and stalks bathed in a ruddy aura. Vukt’s bloody disk shimmered bright on the rushing waters’ crystal-clear face—refulgent fire burning deathless within its cold body.
This time, this hour, this sacred hour of sun’s descent, the three boys gathered to set zealous fancies to concrete mould. What thoughts should profane the holy hours but those which piety had engendered, whose genesis in holy pages of sacred writ had given forth in fertile minds, like seeds misplanted in a foreign soil, pestilence in place of cure and tares instead of wheat. Their green faces burnt bright-red as the sun continued to make its descent. They sat upon the bank, their backs facing the thick forest and monastery path. Ffen was the first to speak as it was he who first planted the murderous design of slaying the Bishop of Ffantplain into Ifunka’s mind. The boy was only a few years older than his planting, but he was mature for his age, being one of those many products of mon
astic education—this education which strips a boy of his childhood, individuality and independent thought. For several years he had imbibed and absorbed the doctrines and creeds, rules and rites of the Order to which he belonged, i.e. the Order of the Brothers of Bishgva, one of the three most popular of the twenty-four acknowledged religious orders of Tremnad, the others being the Order of Inta and the Order of the White Gisht. Like an empty vessel, he had been filled with reams of knowledge, memorised hundreds of verses and chants and become bent to the purposes of the Theocracy. Yet this education and training inspired more than simple obedience. Nay, rather, it placed the seeds of fanaticism within his fertile breast, such that, when he learned of the Theocracy’s betrayal of its own highest values, when he realised that it had covered up the reality of Ishmael and the vision he had received from mighty Solis, his loyalty to the Theocracy broke, as it stood in plain contrast to the religious values that same system had instilled in him. Such was every contradiction now apparent, every violation of trust manifest in his mind. The bishop stood as an embodiment of this betrayal—a symbol of what must be destroyed in order for his mind to rest at peace. Ifunka, newly rebuilt through the agency of faith and inspiration, was suggestible to his friend’s whisperings.
“So, friends,” said the first conspirator. “We are gathered here when Vukt is setting, at a time sacred to us all, so that we might discuss things which shall exalt our religion.”
Green Monk of Tremn, Book I: An Epic Journey of Mystery and Adventure (Coins of Amon-Ra Saga 1) Page 8
