A Just Farewell

by Brian S. Wheeler

  The cleric shrugged. “The men of the village all know how to dig without the supervision of their clerics. Besides, the best way to answer the guns of that castle floating overhead is to prepare all the warriors we might. Do you want to keep the Maker waiting when he summons you to battle within the stars?”

  Abraham held his chin high and didn’t flinch to return that cleric’s stare. “I do not. I’m ready to become a man and to wear my cape.”

  The bearded cleric tussled Abraham’s hair. “Then follow us. The unbelievers’ guns have collapsed the chambers we typically employ for this final rite, but the butcher shop’s rooms should well suffice.”

  * * * * *

  Abraham sensed none of the irony as the clerics escorted him into the butcher shop’s slaughter chamber, where the blood of so many creatures had stained the floor on its journey down the central drain. There, the clerics hoisted Abraham upon a cot carried into the room before binding his ankles and wrists, a precaution the cleric’s told Abraham would protect him from unnecessary hurt should he prematurely return from the numbing dreams the ritual would gift to him. Abraham in no way felt like any of the animals that had been taken to slaughter in that chamber. He knew he was about to become a warrior, infused with the Maker’s divine fury and wrath. As the clerics prepared the potion that would grant him sleep, Abraham wondered what visions had come to his brother Ishmael, and to his father, when they too had lain upon a cot while the clerics implanted the Maker’s weapon within their bodies before granting them their own capes to proudly display upon their backs. Abraham again marveled at how strong he had become since he had dug that hole to mark the beginning of his man-making, for he felt no child’s fear as he watched the cleric’s sharpen the glistening knives and prepare the needle and thread that would be employed during the procedure.

  “This will taste very bitter,” a cleric presented a clay mug filled with a chalky, gray concoction, and Abraham’s face contorted as he smelled the pungent odor carried by its steam, “and it will hard to swallow at first. There is no shame in drinking it in small sips. We would prefer to administer this through a needle in your arm, but the attack forces us to make do as best we might.”

  Abraham swallowed greedily at the foul drink. He was about to become warrior, and he wouldn’t be intimidated by medicine. But his stomach and throat revolted at his courage, and Abraham vomited and coughed no small measure of the potion back. The clerics in the room laughed.

  “He might be young,” chuckled a cleric who gripped a thin, glistening knife, “but he certainly has the will for it.”

  Another cleric who gingerly handled a strange package nodded. “He’s not the first to soil his tunic with regurgitation. I’m sure he kept plenty in his stomach all the same.”

  The cleric who administered the drink looked into Abraham’s eyes as he drifted a finger back and forth. “I need you to count to fifty for me, Abraham. Then, the Maker will grant you wonderful dreams, and you will feel no pain as we implant the Maker’s fury beneath your skin. You will be a warrior when you wake, with a cape of your own.”

  Abraham’s proud voice reached the number of six before sleep closed his eyes.

  * * * * *

  The bearded clerics worked silently upon the boy. They wielded their blades with uncustomary care, for they couldn’t afford to knick an artery with a slip of a hand, nor to give infection a firm foothold upon their patient by clumsily working any of the instruments that imparted the Maker’s power to the body tied upon the cot. When the boy stirred, they ceased their labor to pour more potion down the sleeping child’s throat, careful that they didn’t send their patient into a deathly slumber by administering too much of the medicine that saved the child from feeling the procedure’s pain.

  With their concentration so focused upon their surgery, none of those clerics noticed the orange, burrowing cockroach that watched from the shadows that leaned against the chamber’s walls. That bug leaned back upon its haunches, and it waved its fine, sniffing antennae in the air to monitor the status of the clerics’ operation.

  None of those bearded clerics would’ve likely given the bug much consideration had they paused in their delicate work to notice its presence within the chamber. They might’ve shrugged upon noticing the orange color of its shell. Though the swirls that decorated its carapace might’ve peaked their curiosity, the working of the needle and the stitching wouldn’t have afforded those clerics the time to debate if such a strange bug might have been one of the great devil’s minions. Likely, those bearded clerics would’ve merely allowed that orange bug to watch until it scampered away, for implanting the bomb within that boy was too important a task to allow themselves the simple, distracting pleasure of crushing a cockroach beneath their boot.

  Certainly, the bearded clerics would have had no way of realizing how intently that cockroach with the orange shell and the painted swirls regarded them, nor any way whatsoever of recognizing the danger surrounding such a little bug.

  * * * * *

  “Abraham, come back to us.”

  A pain throbbed within Abraham’s skull as he became aware of a warm sensation of light swaying back and forth upon the back of his closed eyelids. His fingers tingled, and a pain tugged upon his abdomen when he wiggled his toes. Wincing, Abraham slowly opened his eyes as a rumble of murmurs rushed into his ears.

  A bearded face smiled at him. “We have a glorious cape waiting for you, Abraham.”

  Abraham’s eyes winked as the cleric extinguished the match he waved before his eyes, and Abraham’s eyes focused upon his surroundings as a fog lifted from his perception. For a moment, he believed his mother stood beside his cot, that she had survived the guns the unbelievers unleashed upon their village, and that she had come to him holding a new cape of golden filigree and symbols to announce his graduation into a man and a warrior. The woman’s hair was the same color silver as had been his mother’s, and her eyes might just have been the same color as those hidden behind his mother’s dark glasses. But Abraham recognized that the woman stood too tall, that her form was too slim, to have belonged to his mother.

  “The wife of your neighbor Harold wove that cape for you, Abraham,” spoke the bearded cleric leaning over Abraham’s cot. “I’m sorry, son, but your mother didn’t survive the attack on our village. She remains buried in her home along with your father, a proud resting place the Maker provided them in thanks for her family. But Harold’s wife is also good with the needle, and she did you great honor in crafting your cape.”

  Abraham moved to sit up upon his cot so that the cleric might drape the cape across his shoulders, but pain flared from his abdomen, and Abraham couldn’t choke a cry. He noticed that blood stained his tunic, and his fingers gingerly reached for his stomach, where he felt the raised, thick threading of his stitches. Moving his shirt, Abraham gasped at the red, jagged wound that crisscrossed across his abdomen.

  The cleric gently pushed Abraham back upon the cot. “Take a breath and slow your heart, Abraham. The Maker especially favors you. He granted us a very large bomb to implant beneath your skin. We planted this one next your stomach, where it will wait for the opportunity to strike the unbelievers and deliver you into the Maker’s kingdom. Your appetite might be diminished, and we must be careful to avoid infection. But with a little luck, you will have your opportunity to carry the Maker’s battle into the stars before either danger might hurt you.”

  Another cleric chuckled at the foot of Abraham’s cot. “We didn’t just slice open your guts. We also gave you a wonderful earring, and it looks magnificent upon you.”

  Abraham gingerly touched his right ear and felt the earring’s smooth surface, cringing slightly to discover that the lobe of the ear was also tender. He wondered about the purpose of such an ornament. Ishmael had sported no earring after earning his cape of manhood.

  A third cleric, with a beard peppered with a bit more gray, leaned into Abraham’s face. “Did the Maker grant you visions while you slept?”
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br />   Abraham nodded. “He gave me wonderful sights.”

  The clerics gathered in the chamber smiled and nodded towards one another.

  “Can you describe them to us?” Another cleric asked.

  Abraham closed his eyes to calm some of the hurt that emanated from the ragged incision of his surgery and summoned what filaments of dream he could back to his inner sight.

  “I saw such wonderful skies,” Abraham started. “I saw skies teeming with lavender clouds, with fragmented, silver moons. There were skies filled with two, dim suns, and when night rolled across those landscapes, strange and unfamiliar groups of stars sparkled in the Maker’s heaven. I dreamed of one world after another, and the castles of the unbelievers floated above none of them to taint the ground with their shadow. There were forests brimming with such strange trees, filled with the song of shrilling creatures. Calm seas of turquoise lapped against crystalline cliffs. Snow and ice filled the air of some of the worlds of which I dreamed, while waves of heat lifted above hot sands of other desert worlds. None of those worlds held any of the ruin of the blasphemer’s tainted creation. Everything was newly painted by the Maker’s brush. The Maker unveiled the complexity of his creation while I slept, and I understood why mankind so greatly offends the divine creator with each vain project of his making.

  “My dreams never felt so real, for a warm breeze tickled across my face while I stared at each world the Maker revealed to me. Capes of our fallen warriors fluttered everywhere in such wind, and I could easily and instantly read the histories of their battles in the designs and symbols sewn so beautifully into the fabric, telling me that the Maker himself guided each stitch that glimmered beneath so many strange stars and moons. My sleep was so short, and yet the Maker showed me his designs in a span of eternity. I watched our peoples arrive on each of those worlds, carried in great, metallic arks beyond anything the unbelievers ever lifted into the heavens. Through our hands, the Maker erected new cities, composed of spires of glass and crystal whose inner glow pulsed to a great heartbeat. None of our future people lived beneath the ground. None of our coming kind needed to seek shelter from the blasphemers’ guns. Our victory against the unbelievers was complete, and the Maker gave us worlds far more lovely than anything we could dream after we cleansed this home world and provided him a great, clean canvas for his touch.”

  “Praise be to the Maker.” Tears streamed from the eyes of every bearded cleric gathered at Abraham’s bedside as they whispered their beloved chant.

  No matter his pain, Abraham also smiled. “Praise be to the Maker.”

  The cleric with the beard peppered in gray leaned again into Abraham’s face. “Such dreams tell us how the Maker truly blesses you, son. Soon, you will heal well enough from your surgery, and we will cheer you and pray for you as we watch you leave our village to walk to where the unbelievers’ great rockets rise. You will beg for the opportunity to live among their people. You will tell them that you turn your back on the Maker’s compassion. Tell them that you are without father or mother, that you don’t have so much as a brother or sister to count as family. It will not be easy for a man as devoted to the Maker as you, Abraham, but you will beg for a seat on another of their rising rockets. Call us whatever names you must. Cast even the name of our Maker in derision if it’s necessary. The Maker will understand, and he will know your true heart.

  “The unbelievers will no doubt pity you and open their world to you. Foolishly, they will see you as only a child. They will arrogantly believe that they save you by taking you from this earth. You will wait as that rocket takes you into their castle. Thank the Maker, Abraham, the moment you enter those walls. All you must do is pinch the lobe of your right ear, and that will tell us that you have arrived in the home of our enemy. We will cheer for you, and we will detonate that power implanted within you, and the explosion will be so great as to pull that castle down from the sky. You will feel nothing before feeling the pleasure of the Maker’s kingdom. In a wink, you will earn the Maker’s eternal love and take revenge for everything and everyone the unbelievers have stolen from us.”

  “Praise be to the Maker.” Abraham smiled.

  The cleric nodded and tenderly squeezed Abraham’s hand. “Now rest, our warrior. Heal so you may walk across the ruin to reach the unbelievers in their purgatory. You make all of us very proud, and you please the Maker.”

  Abraham did his best to settle into his cot’s comfortable cushions as the clerics left that chamber deep within the butcher shop so that the child they molded into a martyr could have his needed slumber. Abraham found it much more difficult to fall into his dreams. None of the clerics’ medicine coursed through his blood to force his eyes to close, and pain burned along his abdomen’s incision at the slightest movement of his fingers or toes. But Abraham patiently bore the discomfort, and he closed his eyes to recall the wonderful sights the Maker gifted to his previous round of dreaming. He had nearly fallen back into those dreams when he felt something scurrying atop his legs. Opening his eyes, Abraham was not startled to watch that burrowing cockroach with the orange shell painted in strange swirls crawl upon him before reaching his abdomen, where it paused to seemingly consider the red stitches that ran along the skin.

  The bug repulsed Abraham. The bug reminded him how all that a man’s hand might craft without the Maker’s presence was doomed to be ugly abomination. Abraham saw such incredible worlds crafted by the Maker within his dreams, and all of them taught him how his practice of painting bugs with the colors stolen from his mother’s loom was a vain and empty pursuit of a child, a wasteful practice of a boy whose ignorance failed to recognize how the Maker had crafted even the lowly cockroach according to his intended design. Abraham’s work with the orange paint and the brush had perverted that creature and had turned it into a broken vessel that provided a space for the great devil’s essence. He had behaved like an unbeliever.

  Abraham batted the orange bug onto the ground, and he winced as he stood from his cot, his mind still dizzy from the medicine the clerics had administered to numb his body during his surgery. The orange bug didn’t retreat as Abraham gingerly stepped towards it. The bug failed to scurry for any concealing shadows. Rather, the bug merely waved its pair of fine antennae as Abraham lifted his bare foot before bringing it down to squish the creature’s innards into the floor.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 11 – In the Wink of an Eye

  Governor Kelly Chen didn’t bother accessing the miniscule cameras of another one of her bug spies’ eyes after the boy crushed the orange bug she employed in considering the type of humankind that remained upon Earth. The choice no longer felt a very complicated one to her. It felt tragic and terrible. It was indeed sad and irreversible. But the weight of that vote pressed in front of her lifted from her shoulders. As General Harrison had told her, the world had been lost a long time ago. Those who called the orbiting castles home had just done their best to deny it.

  Kelly tapped at the armrest of her theater seat to open a straight channel to General Harrison’s home castle. “This is Governor Chen. Is the general in his office?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Governor,” answered a calm and kind voice. “The general’s instructed us to reach him immediately, no matter his location, in the event that you should call. One moment please.”

  Kelly listened to a few beeps before the general’s voice answered. “Have you reached a decision, Governor Chen? Or, is there anything else I can do to help you in your deliberations?”

  “I need nothing else,” Kelly replied. “They made the boy into a bomb. Were you aware that they were going to do such a thing?”

  “We had our suspicions,” the general answered. “He’s not the first boy to be crafted into such a weapon.”

  “Then we’re certainly not going to let him get anywhere near a rocket launch facility, are we General Harrison?”

  “All sentries currently posted on Earth have strict instructions not to allow anyone walking out of the
waste to near any of the rockets.”

  “And in the future?”

  The general sighed. “The tribes have their reasons for turning children into bombs. Maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not next year, but sooner or later, the chances are good that someone will again let their guard down and pity some girl or boy who comes crawling out of the old world’s waste begging for a chance for a better life with the remnants of civilization up here in our castles.”