A Just Farewell

by Brian S. Wheeler

  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 direct
ion 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.

  That rocket nearly reached the castle before it erupted in brilliant light. The men of the village cheered as streamers of fire and debris fell from the sky before lifting their hands in unison to chant.

  “Praise be to the Maker!”

  But the high cleric didn’t return that chant, instead gazing silently at the stars. A chill ran up Abraham’s spine and pulled his sight onto the great castle overhead, whose blinking lights shifted and moved a breath before the floating bulwark turned.

  “Everyone return to their homes!” The great cleric held up his hands while another bearded leader blared the great horn’s emergency wail.

  A searing beam of brilliant, golden light burned out of the floating castle, searing across the sky and striking the ground to the east of the village from which that single rocket had risen. A crack echoed through the air, and Abraham held a breath as a giant mushroom explosion rose from that beam’s impact. A wall of hot wind punched Abraham in the gut, motivating him, along with the remainder of the village’s men, to run towards the holes of their homes. Abraham turned before he reached his family shelter and darted towards Josef’s ladder, where he called for Alexis and Cassandra.

  Josef’s head appeared in the hole. “Where will you take them, Abraham?”

  Abraham shouted above the wailing horn. “The butcher shop’s chambers are dug deeper than those of any home. Let me take them there for shelter.”

  Josef nodded, and a second later that father pushed his daughters up the ladder to the young boy, turned only ten, who had marked his girls’ faces with tattoo swirls in a promise to be their ward. Abraham pulled and pushed, pleaded and shouted, at the girls as they ran over the short distance separating Josef’s home from the butcher shop. The ground shook as they raced to the bottom of that shop’s ladder as great, booming concussions struck the earth above their heads. The girls cried as Abraham led them into the shop’s drainage chamber, where the stain of blood from so many animals could never be completely cleansed from the floor. The room was the deepest of any carved within the village, and there Abraham, Alexis and Cassandra huddled together as bits of ceiling fell onto their heads, all of them praying to their Maker that the ground didn’t collapse to bury them alive.

  Abraham did his best to comfort Josef’s daughters, holding their hands and hugging them as he thought the Maker might expect a good husband to do. He comforted himself by thinking of the great victory his brother must have brought to their village. He dreamed of the hurt Ishmael must have given to those unbelievers who attempted to hide from the Maker’s justice in the stars. Ishmael’s martyrdom must have been a glorious one deserving of a magnificent story sewn upon his cape, for after decades of silence, the castles again levelled their guns upon the villages of the tribes.

  * * * * *

  “General Harrison, is there anyway we can push the timetable forward? Is there anyway to more quickly execute the ultimate answer?”

  General Harrison shook his head at Governor Praxis’ face glowing within his communications monitor. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t do us any good pushing ahead with the proposal after Governor Spencer exercised his executive initiative and unleashed that salvo from his castle cannons. Had Governor Spencer asked for my advice, I may have warned him that such an attack would diminish the collective energy reserve of our castles and delay the implementation of our ultimate answer, even if Governor Chen had already affirmed our plan with her final vote. Seeing as we’re not going to have the capacity to move forward for some time now, Governor, I see no reason to hurry Governor Chen’s decision.”

/>   Governor Praxis sighed. General Harrison wondered if his face had aged as much as the governor’s apparently had. The governors were feeling the danger. The general had warned them not to underestimate the tribes’ cunning resolve. Time and again, he had told those governors that, no matter how much faith those living within the stars placed within their space stations, the tribes, savages they might be, would sooner or later strike the orbiting castles. Despite all their precautions, the tribes managed to infiltrate another human bomb onto a rocket bound for Governor Spencer’s castle. The tribes planted their explosive within a boy who, from what accounts the general’s team gathered from the ground, appeared to have been no older than twelve. General Harrison’s heart saddened, for he so easily imagined how compassion motivated some sentry at the rocket facility to let down his guard so that a dirty, dusty child might ascend from a barbaric world and discover a civilized life within the stars. They were fortunate that the rocket’s captain conducted the precautionary scans following his launch as the general had suggested so that the explosives surgically implanted within that child were discovered. The rocket crew sacrificed their lives and detonated their rocket so that the child couldn’t reach Governor Spencer’s delicate space station, and measurements recorded from that explosion clearly showed that the child had packed enough firepower to fracture the space station and expose it to the vacuum. General Harrison shuddered to think of the lives that may have been lost and of the series of failures that might have followed that may have doomed the castle to a fiery end as it fell back into Earth’s atmosphere.”