All Living : A Seedvision Saga (9781621473923)
Page 5
Lester noticed something inside the back flap as it shut. “Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing at the journal.
“What’s what?” asked Al.
“That picture inside the back cover,” said Lester. “It looked like a drawing of a woman.”
Hesitantly, Al opened the journal up again to the last page. Inside the back cover was a pencil drawing, marvelously detailed. It was actually a masterful rendering of two women; a younger one, standing with her hands clasped in front of her, gazing out from the page with love in her eyes, and at first glance what looked to be a peculiar, older woman. The younger one was beautiful; lightly shaded hair, narrow eyes, high cheekbones. She appeared to be slightly freckled.
Observing her, Lester could tell she was graceful, elegant, and demure. Her head had a slight downward tilt to it making her appear to tease you with her innocent coyness. Her full figure filled a one-piece, wraparound, knee-length dress to capacity, and her bare feet seemed to find firm footing an inch above the bottom margin.
Behind her, in silhouette, was the face of an older woman that seemed to be distantly related to the first girl, but her appearance was dramatically different and strikingly unusual. Her age was hard to determine, her eyes were like small pieces of flint in deep sockets. Her forehead fell back sharply from a protruding brow, and her hairline was thin. There was plumpness to the face that bespoke ample fare, but there were also lines and creases that hinted at a life of hard work and suppressed sorrow. Radiating through all its unique character was the depiction of a serene face with a slight smile playing about the lips, a continence reflecting the pleasant contentment of one who must have watched countless sunsets with a lifetime lover.
Lester grinned at the pictures of the two women. One, a beauty any man would find hard to resist, and the other, a face that any modern-day scientist would validate as clearly belonging to a pre-historic Neanderthal woman.
“Did you draw this?” Lester asked in an awed voice overwhelmed by the exquisite details of the drawing.
“Of course I drew them, Les. You’re the first person besides me to ever even look at these journals, much less see what’s inside.”
“They’re fantastic, Al.”
“Thank you.”
“Who are they?” Lester asked.
“Keziah my wife.”
“You mean Kesitah?” corrected Lester.
“No, these are both Keziah,” said Al.
Lester looked up. “These are drawings of the same woman?”
Al nodded.
“They look so different from each other. I mean, they seem as if they could be related but definitely not the same woman. Care to tell me a little more about her?” asked Lester.
“We’ll get to that,” said Al. “We’ll get to that for sure. It’s one of my favorite parts.”
“At least explain to me how this could be two drawings of the same person,” Lester asked.
“Well, it’s Keziah when she was young, about the time I met her, and then it’s also Kezie when she was older, just before I lost her,” Al explained.
“I’m sure that makes sense to you, Al,” said Lester, “but I’m still puzzled. How could she look so different?”
“Well, seven hundred years takes its toll on a woman.”
“You mean to tell me she lived over seven hundred years?” Lester was baffled.
“Nearly everyone lived at least that long before the flood,” said Al.
“You mean Noah’s flood?”
“Yep.”
“But how?” Lester asked.
“Well, the world was different then, Les. More pure; closer to its original state of created perfection. There weren’t as many impurities in the air, water, or soil. It was a clean planet, and the people were not so far removed from the natural condition.”
Lester had a baffled look on his face.
“Let me explain it this way,” said Al. “There was less pollution, less ozone depletion, less deforestation, and less congestion. The vegetation and animal life were healthier. The food that mankind ate was not only bigger, better, tastier, and more nutritious, the air itself was richer in oxygen.
“Yes,” said Al, seeing the look of amazement on Lester’s face, “modern science has even discovered that ancient air bubbles trapped in the hardened resin of amber are still nearly fifty percent more oxygenated than the air we are currently breathing. The air of the early earth was a naturally pleasant, sweet, and fundamental part of mankind’s health. Because of breathing better air, the bones in a man’s body were stronger and denser, not so fragile and inclined to break. The blood was blue and thick, flowing with essential vitality. Why, when I was a younger man, in my early hundreds, I could easily jump from a thirty foot height with no fear whatsoever of twisting an ankle or breaking a leg. And speaking from personal experience, even if a bone did break, it would heal in less than half the time it takes for a bone to set nowadays.”
“So you could live longer,” Lester said.
“Precisely!”
“But that still doesn’t fully explain the picture,” contended Lester. “Your wife, she looks so…different. From herself, I mean.
“Les, have you ever seen an eight-hundred-year-old person, besides me I mean?”
“No.”
“Yes, you have,” debated Al. “At least, you’ve seen the remains of them. Every time some scientist or archeologist declares that he’s unearthed a pre-historic man, a Neanderthal or a link in the chain of evolution, it’s a bunch of hogwash. What he has discovered are the skeletal remains of a pre-flood person.”
“What?” Lester shook his head as if to shake loose fifty years of Darwinian propaganda. “Care to elaborate?”
“Okay,” said Al, “think of it first in terms you can understand. The skull, as well as all the bones in the body, slowly change shape with the passing of time. That is why the shape of an eighty-year-old person’s cranium is not the same as when they were eighteen. The brow ridges have calcified somewhat. The skull has flattened out, to a degree, from the effects of gravity. The jaw thickens and elongates, the spine telescopes. Ever notice people tend to get shorter after they reach a certain age. They begin to shrink; they change. Now multiply that effect by ten, eighty years becomes eight hundred years. Science had to discover a way to explain and justify the dramatic differences in skull structures that they were finding, because they refused to believe in a Creator, and because they have never actually seen a living, breathing eight or nine-hundred-year-old person.”
Al stopped talking.
Lester put his head in his hands and sat there for a moment.
“Too much information too quickly?” Al asked, concerned.
“No,” said Lester, shaking his head but not looking up. “Keep going.”
“If mankind were to embrace a Creator, then he’d have to obey divine laws. But most people would rather follow their own hearts, doing what is right in their own eyes. Or even worse, choosing to live however they want because it’s their life, not someone else’s.
“But the problem is that people crave structure. They want freedom, but they desire community, society, civilization. So people made their own laws, established their own kings, and eventually spawned their own religions. But religion, or churchianity as I like to think of it, is a domineering force that seeks to rob a man or woman of a true relationship with our Creator.
“So the logic that was instilled into our very substance rebelled from this dictatorship of the spirit and sought out new ways to explain why and how this happened, thus scientific evolution. First, the Big Bang Theory; not a fact, mind you, but a very weak theory. Then, another theory came along called ‘survival of the fittest.’ Not entirely rot but certainly incomplete without a designer and planner in the picture. How many skyscrapers are there that have been drawn
, calculated, and built without an architect? It’s complete nonsense.”
Al took a breath. “Don’t get me wrong, science is not evil. I love science. I love looking into the night sky and asking, ‘what is a star?’ But evolution? Ha! I’ve seen more solid theories at the bottom of an outhouse hole. It’s like believing that a thousand dump trucks filled with nickels can dump their loads and all those nickels will land face up. It’s ridiculous. It’s pathetic. But people will grasp ahold of it like a drowning man will grab a life preserver, and all because it’s easier to believe an untruth than to have faith in a hard truth.
“Faith, Lester. It’s a rare commodity. Most people don’t have it because they have to see something to believe in it. The past is so wondrous and fantastic that it boggles the mind. Science gives a miniature slide show and people say, ‘okay, there’s hard evidence,’ but I know the past for what it was. I don’t need to have faith in the past; I was there. I witnessed it. I save my faith for the promises that were made concerning the future. And if you think the past was wonderful and fantastic, hold on to your headstone ‘cuz we ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“Okay, I think I get what you’re saying,” said Lester, “but correct me if I’m wrong. If we were capable of living to be eight or nine hundred-years-old, we’d all look like Neanderthals?”
“There never were any Neanderthals.”
“Yeah, but we’d look more or less like what we currently describe as Neanderthal?”
“Absolutely correct, my friend.”
“Okay then, Al. How come you don’t look like a Neanderthal? I mean, you’re a lot older than eight hundred, right?”
“I am,” said Al, “and the only reason I still look the way I do is because God has frozen my degenerative processes for all these years and obviously minimized the effects of gravity and old age.”
“How?” asked Lester.
“Well, I don’t know how it works, but I’m sure it has to do with the fruit of life.”
“The fruit of what…?”
“The fruit of the tree of life; I was given some of the seeds of a fruit from the tree of life when I went back to the Garden of Eden. The Creator wanted to keep me around until the time of the end, so He prolonged my life in a very tangible way. He did not give me the gift of eternal life, but he did bless me with a rather long mortality. But we’ll get to all that.”
“Can I see some of the seeds?” Lester asked anxiously.
“I don’t have any, Les. I had to swallow all six before I left the garden.”
“Six seeds?”
“Yes, one for every one thousand years of life, including my original nine hundred and ninety year lifespan. The last one must have kicked in over nine hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Al, can I say something?” Lester asked.
“Sure.”
“I’m almost sorry I asked about the drawing,” said Lester.
Al laughed. “Why’s that?”
“Because I think I’d rather just listen to you read some more out of your journals. True stories are way easier to swallow than true science. You know what I mean?”
“Sure. Easier done than said,” joked Al, reaching for his black bag once again.
Kole stared into the center of his small camp’s fire. The flames of orange, red, yellow, and blue danced around in significant patterns. Kole was sure of their significance. He just didn’t know what they meant. He sighed. The meanings of life and the mysteries of death had perplexed him for the last three days. Abel’s death had served no purpose that he could see. His brother’s very existence was interrupted by a pointless and abrupt end. Kole knew the Creator could re-create Abel, or bring him back again, but Kole had waited over Abel’s body for a day and a night, and there was no life-breath given back to Abel.
Adam had finally come over quietly behind Kole and placed a hand on his shoulder. The touch loosened Kole’s grief, and once again he was overcome with emotion. He turned to his father, looked into Adam’s own wet eyes and mouthed one word. Why? Adam only shook his head. The two men had clasped each other in an embrace of consolation and stood there, a father and son learning to mourn over the body of the first fallen family member. His mother and sisters stood a distance off to one side, their muffled wailing the only sounds in the night.
Cain was nowhere to be found. Kole had searched for Cain, needing to have his questions answered by the one person who might have answers, but Cain had disappeared. Kole suspected Cain was enduring his own personal grief and needed time to understand his actions as well.
On the morning of the third day after Abel’s fall, the family had wrapped his body in a soft, leather hide and laid him gently on a stone shelf in a cave across the stream. There was no sense of completion to the act, no feeling of fulfillment. It merely seemed necessary.
Abel’s sheep followed the family and stood outside the entrance to the cave, bleating repeatedly, as if they too felt a sense of loss for their shepherd. Finally they had quieted and begun to graze peacefully on the tender young shoots of early summer grasses.
But that was yesterday. With one hand Kole rubbed the pad of his thumb over a small, wooden bird that he was carving for Kesitah while with the other he poked at the wood in the fire pit with a stick, pondering the events of the last few days. A splash of bright sparks leaped into the air from the hot coals and swirled aimlessly on the breeze before burning out and disappearing. Kole wondered if someday there would be thousands of people swirling around, bright, hot sparks of life, burning aimlessly, only to then blink out of existence. Thousands of people! Seemed hard to believe, but if his parents, as two, could start a family, then a family could become dozens, and dozens could become hundreds. Why not hundreds of hundreds, eventually?
Kole thought about Kesitah and the children they would someday have. Children he would enjoy watching grow into adulthood and have children of their own, who would then have children that would have children and so on; unless brother turned against brother, or sister against sister, or child against parent. There were no promises made that would ensure survival. If Cain could kill, if Abel could die, then there were no guarantees.
Kole had followed this line of reasoning more than once in the last few days, and it was this thinking that had led him to be sitting where he was, a day’s journey west of his parents’ camp. He knew of only one location where answers could be found, and it was toward that destination that he now traveled. A place he had not seen in thirty years, and a place he remembered nothing about. Yet it was a sanctuary, a spot for solace that had been described to him and his siblings many times during a family meal or before falling asleep as a child. A wonderful site where perhaps promises were to be found, guarantees made, or resolutions encountered. Just thinking of the place made him shiver.
The garden. If such answers were to be had in Eden, Kole would pursue them. If indeed solutions existed as to why this bad thing happened to his brothers—to his family—Kole would wrestle for them and claim them for his father and mother.
There was no going back in for Adam or Eve. They had been sent out, never to return. They were banished from the garden, driven out by God and the entrance guarded by Cherubim. Kole wondered if the angel of the Lord would still be at the gate. His parents had described the guardian of the Creator, but they had only a fleeting glance from a distance before they turned their faces from the Way and stumbled out into the Land. Kole wondered how he would gain access to the garden and if he would be granted an audience with the Lord. Such thoughts kept him warmer than the small fire he tended, the night being a cool, windy one for a lone traveler in a vast, empty darkness.
Kole thought he heard a noise out by his sheep. He turned his head to listen, but they were quiet and resting. Kole knew that if anything were there to disturb them, their bleating would alert him. He added more wood to the fire and pulled his wrap around
himself. Using a rock for a headrest, he lay back and stared at the countless stars in the heavens, counting them until he fell into another night of restless sleep.
Kole woke the next morning to the sound of a songbird. He opened his eyes and smiled when he saw the feathered little warbler only a few cubits from his face. The little bird had her chest all puffed out and was singing with great gusto as if to wake him. He lay very still and watched for several minutes, admiring her musical finesse and the way her tiny body was so perfectly created. Finally, without moving from his sleeping spot, Kole put his lips together and gave an adequate impersonation of the small bird’s few seconds of song. She got quiet and cocked her head as if to listen to him. She chirped, and he whistled. She whistled, and he laughed, causing her to fly away to a low tree branch where she sat and studied him as he rose and stirred at the coals in his fire.
“Oh well,” said Kole to himself when he realized they were cold and beyond reviving. He pulled out a couple pieces of dried fish that hung in a pouch, secured around his waist by a leather strap. He munched on them while he relieved himself, dressed, and went over to inspect his sheep where they stood grazing. A quick head count revealed an even number of sheep, which was odd because he only had seventeen. He surveyed the flock again and quickly noticed the intruder, a second year lamb with a strange gray muzzle. It was one of Abel’s flock, the one he had called Nod.
Kole approached the small animal slowly, not wanting to frighten him. The lamb watched him approach for a moment, then took two hesitant steps toward him.
“Hello there, little one,” said Kole, reaching out a gentle hand to stroke the small animal. The lamb lowered his head, allowing himself to be touched, then looked up at Kole with sad, round eyes.
“You miss Abel as much as I do, don’t you?” he said.
The little lamb bobbed his head up and down at the sound of his shepherd’s name.