The boys all nodded their heads.
Jacob sighed. ‘Yes, it may be hard for many of the older people to understand what’s coming. For them it will seem like more of the same, and maybe even harsher. But the catastrophe that befell our planet, the Great Turning, is exactly that – it is a Turning. And with that turning will come the young ones, with a new understanding.’
‘We don’t like the old ways.’ This time it was Sal who spoke up. His piercing blue eyes were framed by a short-cut mop of blonde hair. The other boys murmured in agreement with Sal.
‘They too will pass,’ replied Jacob, as if reassuring them.
‘I hope they pass soon…before it’s too late. Things just seem to be getting, well, kinda odd around here.’ Sal fell into silence, as did the whole group.
Jacob raised his palms and spread them out as if spraying the children with an unseen bond. ‘Be prepared. Be strong, and be prepared to take on the role awaiting you. There can be no future if there is no human heart. You must become the future. Believe in this.’ Jacob lowered his eyes and sat back.
All the young heads around the table smiled and nodded, as if their inner thoughts and suspicions had just connected with a home. Then it was Jacob’s turn to ask questions. He wanted to know more about the settlement of Spring, and especially from the boys’ perspectives. He listened attentively as each child in turn added descriptions and events to the tapestry that was life at Spring. Through each of them - Ash, Moss, Rio, Olly, Sal, and Kai – Jacob got to learn a lot of the goings on around him, and of the people too. It was revealing how much young eyes and ears could perceive from the mosaic world around them. Jacob drank in the boys’ insights as his mind sat quietly at the back, observing the new thoughts that arose.
After the children had left, Jacob excused himself from the dwelling and went for a walk in the chilly early evening air. The beacon lights had been lit, and most of the inhabitants of Spring had moved indoors to stay warm. Jacob could hear the animal noises sift through the air. Where there is pessimism, thought Jacob, there is also hope. Yet some things needed to be left behind. And Spring, despite it clinging for survival, may itself need to fall back into its past.
Jacob didn’t feel the cold as he walked the avenues. It was as if he existed in thoughts, and not in his body. He had been walking for some time until he realized he had arrived at the far perimeter fence.
‘Hey, you!’ A voice called down from the watchtower.
Jacob peered up into the darkness. A small flame flickered on the watchtower above as a silhouette seemed to shift.
‘Hey you!’ the voice called again. ‘It’s nearly curfew time. You need to be heading back to your dwelling for the night. You don’t have long. Got it, mister?’
‘Aye,’ called back Jacob. He turned around and took a parallel avenue back towards the dwelling of his hosts. Suddenly Jacob felt extreme isolation, as if spliced off from the vibrant rhythm of the cosmos. It felt to him as if the cosmos was contemplating letting this limb of human life adrift. A brief fractal failure in the enduring eternity of the ever-unfolding order would be laid to rest. Now a cold tinge entered his body, as if the hand of winter was reaching in for the very first time. Jacob knew then that his time in Spring was running out. He would be forced to move on, to continue his path - his pilgrimage -toward Nous-City – to meet with his calling.
Jacob walked back along the avenue of lit windows. As he passed by one particular window a young female face was peering out from the warm interior. Sorrel saw the lean figure of the Seeker stroll past her view, as if he were a strange apparition in Spring.
TWENTY-FOUR
Jana yawned as she climbed out of bed and sauntered into the centre room where breakfast was waiting upon the table.
‘Mm,’ she murmured dreamily as she put the warm bread into her mouth.
‘Ready for another day, dear?’ asked her mother, Sorrel, as she lifted the pot of boiling water from the stove.
Jana shrugged. ‘Interesting.’ She continued to munch on her buttered bread.
‘It’s going to be an interesting day then, is it?’
Jana shook her head. ‘No, mm, dream was interesting.’
‘What was it this time?’ Sorrel placed a mug of steaming herbal tea on the table and sat down next to Jana.
‘Well,’ began Jana as she waited until she had finished her mouthful, ‘I was with friends. But not the friends here, they were other friends. I knew them, but I don’t know them yet. And we were just talking. Y’know, like we usually do. But with these friends we didn’t use words. We were speaking in images, sharing images in our heads. It was weird at first, but I soon got used to it. When one of them spoke I received an image of what they wanted to say. It was a single image, although it contained the whole conversation. Something like a bundle, with everything all wrapped in it. And then I did the same. I wanted to say a whole lot of things, and this one image would go out from my mind, and the other children would get it and feel the whole conversation immediately. It was a really quick way to talk. Well, not talk…but, you know – to communicate.’
Sorrel stroked her hand through Jana’s long, straight blonde hair. ‘That’s lovely, Jana. That’s maybe how it will be. And you’ll be there when it does. Don’t stop dreaming, little one.’
Sorrel made sure Jana was dressed and ready for school, and then sent her on her way. Sorrel washed up the dishes, looking at the hardened skin on her fingers. Her once soft, dainty hands had now been ground into appendages of work. Her mind roamed onto the image of the Seeker, the one person in Spring who still held some promise of the unknown. Or perhaps it was a faint whiff of the future that he gave off whenever he passed. Sorrel cleared away the things in the kitchen and, with a sigh, made ready to leave for her morning shift at the granary.
On the short walk from her dwelling to the granary, Sorrel caught sight of Prentis as he marched past her with his small brigade of burly security men. It always gave her the shivers to be so close to such uncertainties in human nature. With such men, things could turn in an instant. She knew Spring needed such security, and men who would fight to protect them, and maybe even die to protect the life of Spring. Yet such people were sometimes just as dangerous looking in, as they were looking out. Aggression, thought Sorrel to herself, always comes at a cost – even aggression for survival.
‘Sorrel, looking spring-like this morning,’ said Prentis with a wink as he passed her by. Yet with the one eye that didn’t close in a wink, he penetrated through her clothes and into the flesh beneath. Sorrel shivered a second time, and walked on. Being pretty used to have its advantages. Yet in the midst of a tussling Nature, the colourful butterfly stands out with its fragile wings in the storm.
Sorrel kept her head low as she climbed the few steps that reached up into the timber framed granary. Here the grains were kept dry, and livestock feed was also stored for all of Spring. Hence the granary was a large structure, topped by a slate roof and supported by large, heavy stumps. There were a few windows high up for light; otherwise it was a sheltered cloister. Here Sorrel could work alongside her thoughts, those silent yet never slumbering treasured companions. A bird fluttered and rapped against one of the high windows from the outside, as if tapping a song it could no longer sing. Its alluring tapping, like some code of the natural world, made Sorrel stick her head out of the door to look up. It was then that she saw the Seeker standing at the pen below, gazing into the eyes of the animals.
Jacob heard some soft footsteps approach on the grass but he didn’t turn around. He was enjoying a brief moment of communion with the animals; an unconditional space where language held back and tied its tongue.
‘Seeker, sorry to disturb you.’
Jacob wasn’t sure if the female voice spoke a question or an apology. He turned around and gave a slight nod to the woman who was now standing at his side. He saw that she was dressed in work clothes, and yet the curly strands of her blonde hair cradled a young woman who appeared to be in
her early thirties. Her face was strong, rounded, and yet endearing. Jacob sensed there was goodness in her.
‘You do not disturb me,’ he replied, and pointed to the animals in the pen. ‘My worry is that it is I who am disturbing them!’
Sorrel gave out a little laugh. ‘I shouldn’t think so. They’re just pleased to have company, I guess.’
‘Company that doesn’t kill them, no doubt,’ said Jacob softly.
‘Yes,’ murmured Sorrel. ‘But sometimes killing animals is necessary. At least now we kill them in a more natural way, without the factories.’
‘Perhaps. But did you wish to speak about this now, or something else?’
‘Something else, Seeker. I worry about things, a lot of things. And mostly I worry for my young daughter, Jana.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Nine years; and already a young lady.’ Sorrel looked away into the distance, at the perimeter fence that cut into the sky above it.
‘And you worry for her future? And not for your own?’ Jacob waited for Sorrel’s gaze to return so he could look at her directly. He preferred to see the other person’s expression when speaking. It helped him understand more.
‘My own future is limited,’ replied Sorrel softly. ‘We came from the old world. We knew what it was like – what we did to it, and how people were. We can’t bring that into the future. Only something new can create any good future now. And Jana, well, she was born here. She has never known anything different. And that’s just it. The ones who are born here are different from the ones who came here. That’s just it, Seeker – the new young feel a different world is possible. And something inside them also feels that it’s coming. Don’t ask me how; it just is.
Jacob nodded. He knew what Sorrel was saying was true. He had felt it too. There was something different in the young children; something in their very being.
‘Yes,’ said Jacob in a low voice. ‘After the old is washed away, the new always comes.’
‘Always?’
‘Always. Because it can, and it must.’
Sorrel dropped her head. ‘What are we doing for the earth - for ourselves?’ she said after a moment of silence. ‘I still feel something burning in my heart. And yet, here, it feels as if there is a prison around us. And the old just doesn’t know how to go away…how to learn. And things just dry up again. All I can do now is to live for my daughter. I put my future into her…all our futures upon them.’
‘Yes. Our generation is but a preparation. And then we must step aside.’ Jacob glanced once more into Sorrel’s face before stepping away, and leaving her alone in silent communion.
25
There were no children in Nous-City. No children had been called forth as Seekers upon the pilgrimage. No one seemed to question this. Seekers were seen wandering through what remained of the world, and no one knew what made a Seeker. Did they choose themselves? Had they heard a voice, a calling – had the angelic ones visited them?
Who knew if they were a genuine Seeker or not – why no children Seekers?
Maybe it was because few children survived well the Great Turning, if they survived at all. In the ravages of panic, in the anarchy of fear, in the deadened veins of struggle, the children fared the worst. A generation of hope became the victims to a frightened mob that behaved as less than children themselves.
Young parents had their hearts ripped in their search for vestiges of safety. And those who found safety were afraid of bringing new hearts into such an impoverished and decimated world. Fewer still were the children born after the Great Turning. Those that were born were brought up within the splintered order of human settlements.
No children would be born into or brought within Nous-City.
TWENTY-SIX
Meryl was standing in the frame of the large wooden door of the school hall. Her gaze was outward, waiting for her guest to arrive. The children had been looking forward to the morning when the Seeker would come to speak with them. The older class of students didn’t seem too bothered. One of them even referred to the Seeker as a religious relic; another said they were social dropouts. The older children had their eyes on positions in Spring, and fantasies in their heads of hierarchies and heresies. But the younger children, most of them aged ten and below, were enthused and excited about the Seeker’s visit. For them, he meant something – he represented something.
Meryl’s eyes lit up when she saw Jacob approaching, his lean figure strolling over from the agrarian section of the settlement. She clasped her hands together and almost skipped off the step. It was not very often that pleasant surprises came to Spring, or to the school. She led Jacob into the foyer of the school building.
‘You have no coat?’ she asked surprised.
Jacob shook his head.
‘Oh, but its getting chilly now. You really need more than that long jumper of yours. Let me see if I can find you a coat.’
Jacob rested his hand upon her broad shoulder. ‘No, thank you, Meryl. I won’t be needing a coat. Just show me to the children.’
Meryl and the other teachers had gathered almost all the children of the school together, both young and old, into the main hall. Jacob slowly entered from the top of the hall and gazed over the rows of children seated cross-legged upon the floor. He guessed there may have been around thirty children. In the front row he spotted Johan and his friends Ash, Moss, Rio, Olly, Sal, and Kai. Mixed with them were some girls of similar size and age. Although he didn’t know it, he was looking at Jana, Sorrel’s daughter, and her friends Amber, Jasmine, Aster, Betony, Cassia, Disa, Ivy, Lily, Posy, and Mai. Behind them sat a range of children upwards to sixteen years of age. The younger children – aged between five and eight – were still in their classes as Meryl had considered them just a little too young for such a talk.
Jacob opted for a lower wooden stool rather than the chair that was offered. Sitting in silence he continued to gaze over the seated faces. Some of the older children shuffled and wriggled, as if bodily trying to control their agitation. The younger faces were fixed upon Jacob, their eyes following his own in keen expectation. Silence reigned in the room like an uninvited conqueror. Finally Jacob spoke.
‘The fish needs to asphyxiate before it will first leave the water and attempt to walk upon the land. The first amphibian arose from a need, a great cry – an incredible suffocation. Until one begins to suffocate, to lose one’s breath, one doesn’t begin to really cry out. And that formidable cry is the very thing that will push you out of the water and onto the land. You must really, truly need it, and not just want it a little. First you must experience the asphyxiation.’
Jacob paused and looked into the children’s faces. He sensed more than he could see, and felt he knew to whom he was speaking.
He continued. ‘It doesn’t take much for the whole machinery to break down. Just one loose nut in the machinery and all that humanity has worked towards comes crashing down. And we’ve seen it because it has happened to us. And when that happens we are left with just one thing – ourselves. We are forced back into the pure moment, into the need to be. It is only our being, our humanity, which can take us forward. Not our machinery. When everything breaks down then another dimension comes in – and this is the essential, the true human heart. The future is not somewhere else, over there. It is not in the distance or ahead of you. It’s in you right now. The world is within you, and you are within it. Everything is inseparable – the future, the world, you. It’s all one thing. And you need to let this world, this future now, unfold within you. You must merge and become with it. If you don’t then you will continue this separation, and the world will move on without you. You must become the world and the future all at once. Only you can bring about a future. It is waiting inside of you to take action. You are here now because you are the future. It can exist, if you trust in it – if you trust in yourselves. You must find your own meaning – your own burning existence. Find your own true burning heart. Make each second a living part of your hear
t. Without meaning you are not truly alive. You need to be alive within each burning second, with a thousand burning hearts all in communion together. Let it burn!’
Jacob stood up, and without waiting exited the hall.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The ochre sky burned as a backdrop to the trees in the copse. Yellow blanched leaves covered the floor, moist and in mid-decay. Thin throngs of chill darted across the air and clashed with each exhaled breath. Winter was coming.
Zachary stood alone, gazing out across the fields that fled away from Spring and into the yonder. He knew that out there lay uncertainty, disorder, and likely death. Security had to come at a price. And sometimes force was needed to maintain stability. Besides the trade and bartering that had arisen between nearby settlements, there was little news about what was really going on in the outside world. He needed to question the Seeker more about this, he decided. He was the only one who had wandered far. And until now he had divulged very little about the world out there. Zachary’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone approaching.
Zachary turned, and nodded. ‘Eli.’
‘Evening, Zachary. Thanks for agreeing to meet me here.’
‘Why here, and not at my place, or at your chapel?’
‘I prefer to speak outside on sensitive things, away from buildings, and people.’ Eli appeared to give a little unconscious wince as a spoke.
‘Becoming paranoid, Eli?’
‘Not at all, not at all. I just prefer to say things discreetly, that’s all. And it’s personal, nothing official, you understand.’
‘Okay.’ Zachary nodded and eyed Eli. He wasn’t sure what to make of him. He had never been sure what to make of Eli; he had always seemed to him to be an odd character, somewhat aloof.
Eli took the pause as a sign to continue. ‘I think we’re soon going to have a real problem in Spring. Do you know that, Zachary?’
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