The voice was small, but forceful with anger. Ejelano’s eyes fell upon Dwelo, who now regarded him with open hostility. Elhadra still held him, and was whispering into his ear, trying to calm him. It was a futile gesture.
“All this time, all the trust I placed in you, in your teachings!” he continued. “I wanted to be like you! To be you! And you end it like this!?”
The boy’s face was twisted up with anguish. Ejelano could barely stand to look at him, so ashamed was he. Ashamed for his actions, for the deaths he had caused. Ashamed for abandoning the boy who obviously had loved him enough to hate him so fiercely now for his betrayal. In the end, ashamed that he was committing the greatest of conceits in so cowardly abandoning his life, and in the process torching the last scrap of childhood of a boy who’d idolized him, patterned his young life after him. Ejelano’s face burned with his shame until he felt it would light his skin afire. He longed to escape Dwelo’s furious eyes.
Dwelo was not yet finished with him.
“Fine, then! Go!” he said. “It is better that I see now how you really are! You murderer! You...you vermin!”
The boy who’d proved he was a man brushed his hands roughly across his cheeks, temporarily erasing the tears that flowed so freely. Then, he tore himself away from Elhadra’s comforting arms, and sprinted off through the crowd until he was lost from Ejelano’s vision. It would be the last sight Ejelano would ever have of Dwelo, fleeing from him, from the boy’s own mortally wounded innocence.
The elders exchanged wordless glances. Then, the one nearest Banoro turned to him and spoke in the ancient language, his voice warbling like an old, broken flute. There was no warmth on his face.
Banoro paled, but translated as was his duty.
“‘What is a man?’” he asked, relaying the elder’s message even as the ancient one continued to speak. “‘What is the core of his essence, the center of his soul? How does he choose to do what he does? Why does he choose to do good? Why does he choose to do evil?’”
The elder let the questions hang in the air, not for dramatic effect as Olhando had done, but to allow the crowd to truly ponder the answers to his questions.
He continued, his message amplified by the proxy of Banoro’s baritone. “‘A tree cannot grow, cannot flourish if the roots are damaged. No nourishment can penetrate them if they have been blackened by rot. It is the same with a man. We strive to do good, intend to do good, yet evil lurks in the very best of us, sometimes choking our ability to gain sustenance from our own virtue. If there is enough of this blight present, we may become starved of it entirely. It is in moments such as these that we are capable of the darkest of things.
“‘And so, what is the remedy? How do we redeem the irredeemable? Yes, it can be done, and we can be thankful to the forest that this is so. For a man must be cleansed of this blight, this rot, before he can rise to the boughs of the forest when he leaves this life. If there was no way to do this, we would all be damned by our own wickedness, our spirits forced to wander this physical place with no hope of ascending.
“‘For most of us, we are cleansed naturally by the earth that surrounds our bodies when we are laid to rest. We draw from the soil around us, and our spirits are healed so they can pass into the Beyond, where we will stay for all time with our ancestors. In harmony.
“‘Then, although we have not seen them in this village for generations, there are men such as this.’”
The elder extended an arm toward Ejelano.
“‘These wretches are so infested with rot that they cannot be simply healed by the life-giving touch of the soil. The blight of evil has so thoroughly infected them that more extreme measures are necessary.
“‘And so I ask again, what is a man? I will tell you. The spirit, the soul, the roots of our virtue lay within us, within our very bodies. You feel it thundering within you during battle, or when you feel the fires of passion when you lay with your beloved. It throbs within you during the hunt. It is here.’”
The elder laid his hand upon his chest, gently.
“‘The heart. It is the most miraculous of organs. It holds everything that we are, the parts of us that are laid the most bare, the parts that are seen only by the forest itself. Our love. Kindness. Our very souls are contained therein. Without it, we would be nothing more than husks, damned to wander the world without hope of passing to the Beyond.
“‘And so, having committed an act so overwhelmingly contemptible, the only thing to conclude is that the heart of one capable of such an atrocity has been besieged by such evil that there is only one way it can hope to be cleansed.’”
The elder now leveled his eyes, still sharp despite his extreme age, at Ejelano.
“‘We must do it, ourselves. We must cut it out, and purge the blight.’”
Murmurs began to spread through the people as they grasped the meaning of Banoro’s translation. Banoro himself looked at the elder in shock and horror, before he had to force himself to continue deciphering the ancient tongue as the old man relentlessly pushed on.
“‘For his own sake, indeed for the sake of his very soul, we must take from this man his most sacred, most precious possession, and cast it into the flames of our fire. His sickness cannot survive the flames. It is his only chance to dance among the leaves in the Beyond.’”
Ejelano could only stare at the elder’s pronouncement. He had expected death, wanted it, but this? How was he to endure such a thing? He struggled to keep his knees, which had suddenly rubberized, from buckling under him and spilling him to the ground in a heap.
Lena, help me....
A wave of uneasiness moved through the faces of the crowd, of his fellow brothers and sisters; even the ones who had looked upon him in revulsion when told of what he’d done. Olhando, who just a moment ago was celebrating his good fortune, now turned a shade of green.
Ejelano put it together instantly. Olhando would have to be the one to do it. He was so busy relishing his role as the Mouth that he’d seemed to completely forget that he was also the Hand, the one assigned to carry out whatever sentence was passed down by the elders.
Although Ejelano detested Olhando’s tainted ambition, he still felt a pang of pity. It was one thing to take one’s knife to an animal in the forest to mercifully end its life, completely another to thrust it into the flesh of one’s own brother. Ejelano knew this, now better than any other. He knew that although Olhando was being called to perform such a grim task at the bidding of the elders, for the good of the village, he would be forever altered by it.
Yes, Ejelano did pity him.
The elder again spoke through Banoro. “‘Bring wood! Bring kindling and the spark stones! We shall light this holy fire here, in the heart of our refuge. Let this be done, with haste!’”
Feet flapped in the dirt, and in a short while a pile of wood was placed before him, arranged vertically so that the fire would climb high into the air. Straw and dead grass was stuffed into the interstices so that it would burn hot. It reminded Ejelano of the harvest festivals that he and Lena had so anticipated, where they had danced to merry music that pounded the night with a wild abandon that their love had matched. The memory agonized him now, like a hot poker probing inside his head.
Two stones were struck together, and the smallest of hungry sparks fell to the kindling. All at once the flames devoured the grass and straw, and Ejelano was forced to close his eyes against the blasting heat. The wood ignited, and then the bonfire rose to its full glory, exhaling a great billowing column of smoke into the skies above the clearing. The sun had begun to set, so most of the light that bathed the faces of his brethren now came from the fire. Shadows of the people flickered against the backdrop of homes and trees, making a mockery of their more substantial counterparts as they danced. The skies frowned on him as they withdrew their light.
It is just as well. My light is lost, also.
Banoro again communicated the will of the elders, the fire illuminating the lines of sadness on his
face.
“‘I see the fear in your faces, brothers and sisters. Know that what happens here, on this day, is not the cold-blooded thing it might seem to be. We are releasing this man, enabling him to find his rightful place in the world after this one. We should be joyful that he still has a chance to join us there. The momentary pain he will feel today is nothing against the eternal peace he will find on the other side. He is sick; let us heal him and send him to his rest.’”
At this, the elder’s strained voice fell silent. Banoro’s speech was once more his own.
“Olhando,” he said, softly.
Olhando looked at him with haunted eyes. “Banoro, perhaps there is another....” he began.
“The old laws do not bend for our convenience, my son,” Banoro said. His tone implied to Ejelano that he was not the only one who pitied Olhando. “Take your knife and be done with your duty.”
Olhando strode over and stood before Ejelano, who was forced to his knees by his captors. They, too, looked uncertain, their eyes darting at one another as if seeking...what? Comfort? Strength? Perhaps they sought justification for the role they were to play in this horrible rite of cleansing. Whatever they looked for, they did not seem to find it.
Ejelano once again heard the eerie chanting rise around him. Hee hee, haa haa, it went again, first only by the elders, and then more of his brothers and sisters as they lent their voices to it. It made way for his doom, galloping at him now at the speed of sound. Ejelano fought his fear with a will that had been forged through many battles, and tested at the spears of his enemies. He closed his eyes and conjured an image of Lena in his mind, an intangible phantasm that he could not touch but from which he could draw some comfort nonetheless. She smiled at him, her thick, dark hair cleansed of the blood that he had spilled, her eyes filled with the vigor that she’d possessed in life. She beckoned playfully at him, bidding him to follow her.
By the tree....
His eyes opened. Banoro had rejoined Elhadra, who was weeping now, openly. Banoro held her in his arms, trying to share with her a comfort that he didn’t possess. Ejelano felt a bitter cloud of regret, not for himself, but for the pain that he had caused them. They, who very much felt to him as a mother and a father feel to their son. He wept, too, for them. For the absence of their younglings, the absence of that singular joy that they could only feel through other parents, but never in themselves.
He returned his eyes to Olhando, who now held his knife in his trembling fist. The blade also caught the light of the fire as if it too was set aflame, and Ejelano began to tense himself for that burning touch. Olhando’s face, in contrast to the warmth and light of the fire, looked pale and cold as he looked down upon Ejelano in disbelief of what he was now to do. Casting a quick glance at the elders, Olhando swiftly knelt down where his face could be close to Ejelano’s, and Ejelano suddenly saw something in him he’d never before glimpsed. Not arrogance. Not ambition.
Remorse. Humility.
“Brother,” he said, his voice a small ship in the storm of chanting around him, “I have been guilty of many things. I have gone to less-than-noble lengths to find the eyes of favor upon me, and in this moment I am not proud. Everything I have done, I feel I have done to raise myself to your level. Before I do this thing I must tell you that you are my standard, and I am not worthy of you. Even after all my tireless pursuits, I still have not even glimpsed virtue for myself such that you command. And so, I selfishly need you to do once last thing for me, brother.”
Olhando’s eyes grew fevered.
“I need you to forgive me.”
Olhando’s honesty—his vulnerability—touched Ejelano, even through the thorny canopy of his fear. He recognized that Olhando’s confession to him was a great honor from a worthy rival, and Ejelano considered the possibility that, with his death, he might open the way for Olhando to find the qualities in himself that could ultimately make him a great leader. It gave Ejelano a warm feeling, and a small reprieve from his guilt, to think that his death could bring a benefit to one besides himself.
“You do not require my forgiveness, brother,” Ejelano told him. “But if you have to hear the words, then I forgive you. I, too, became some of what I am because of you...all for the better...and for that I thank you.”
Relief washed over Olhando’s face. The two rivals exchanged a wordless few seconds of mutual respect and gratitude, each one acknowledging the worthiness of the other. After the moment was over, Olhando reached a hand down and clasped Ejelano’s hand.
Then, with his other, he drove his knife into Ejelano’s chest.
* * *
Chapter 32 – Ejelano
“Hee hee, haa haa, hee hee, haa haa....”
Ejelano knew the ripping bite of a blade for the second time that day. Olhando drove it deep into his flesh, just below his sternum, and the excruciating pain that it produced almost made him black out. He would have welcomed the darkness, where all sensation was an alien, abstract thing...where he could escape his fate in the nest of its soothing limbo. Cruelly, it was not to be. His eyes remained open and his mind all too aware of what was happening to him.
There is a knife in my chest. By the forest, there is a knife in my chest that is carving out my heart. Help me...Lena...somebody help me help me help me....
Grimacing, Olhando sawed his knife back and forth, cutting through Ejelano’s flesh, and it was as if every nerve fiber it touched was being boiled.
Ejelano could no longer endure it. He let out a scream that shook the very roots of the trees, while the chanting of his brethren buffeted his ears.
“Hee hee, haa haa, hee hee, haa haa....”
The strength of his pain was matched by that of Olhando’s determination, as the Hand performed his grisly duty. Ejelano could feel his executioner working as quickly as possible so as to not prolong his misery...the utter hell that had found him. This knowledge was no consolation.
As if sensing its fate, his heart spurred its rhythm to a frenetic pace. It galloped in his chest, like it was searching for an escape from the edge of the knife that sought to sever it from its host.
Suddenly Ejelano was coughing, sputtering, and blood was in his mouth. Somewhere in the demolition of his mind, a single thought rose out of the smoking cauldron.
I can’t breathe!
The blade had torn open one of this lungs. Blood was flooding in. Now, not only was he mortally wounded, but drowning as well. He wondered what would kill him first: Blood loss, or lack of oxygen.
By some morbid impulse, he dropped his head so he could see the damage his body was suffering from Olhando’s relentless strokes. Horror struck him as he saw the bloody crescent that had been cut into the center of his chest, with the knife at the leading edge, tearing through him. His body still fought to fill his now-useless lung with precious air, and the urge to breathe was now almost as unbearable as the wound itself.
“Hee hee, haa haa, hee hee, HAA HAA....”
Somewhere beyond the scalding electricity of his pain, he started to feel a haze that was growing. The tattered modicum of his hope swelled for a moment. Was death approaching? Was he feeling his body, at long last, giving in to the inevitable?
Come, Death! Claim me! Release me!
“HEE HEE, HAA HAA, HEE HEE, HAA HAA....”
Elhadra had buried her face in Banoro’s chest, unable to look at his suffering. Banoro himself did not look away, but the agony on his face made it plain that he would do anything to end Ejelano’s torment, if it was possible.
The throbbing cadence of the crowd’s chanting reached such a level that it dominated all other sound. Its pulse mocked the distressed organ in his chest and its arrhythmic twitching.
It was then that Ejelano despaired, and all small shards of hope he’d been clinging to left him. He would never see Lena ever again. The forest had forsaken him and he would be cast into the deepest hollows of the Beyond for his crimes. He was foolish to think that he would be forgiven. There would be no absolution.
No redemption. There would only be endless darkness and cold, and his soul would never feel warmth again. He despaired, not only because of his impending damnation but for Lena, who waited for him on the other side. He would never appear, never show, and she would be forever left wondering what fate had befallen him.
I’ve failed you, Lena...I’m so sorry...so sorry....
His world was fading. The haze he’d felt in his mind now almost completely engulfed it, and indeed he barely even felt the knife anymore, barely felt the need to breathe. He felt nothing. There was no one else in the darkness besides himself, drifting in the folds. The sounds and sights of the world were winking out, and suddenly he found that he no longer cared what happened to himself. He deserved nothing. He deserved to be nothing, to settle into the nadir of his oblivion. He reached for the frozen face of his own death...prepared...wanted it....
HI THERE.
His barely-conscious mind froze. Had someone spoken to him? Or had his dying brain just randomly conjured the raspy voice, doing anything it could to remain active?
WRONG.
In the far distance, he was dimly aware of the knife that still tore at his chest.
HOO, BOY. NOW, THAT LOOKS LIKE IT HURTS.
Whatever the origin of the odd voice, it seemed to respond to his thoughts. Had he gone mad, in those final ticks of his clock? Could dead men go insane as well as the living?
MAN, YOU ARE JUST TONS OF DUMB, AREN’T YOU? I HOPE YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE THIS DRAMATIC THE WHOLE TIME.
The voice in his mind positively dripped sarcasm, condescension. He couldn’t hear it, really, at least not with his ears. When it spoke, it was as if it had come from inside his brain. It was difficult to determine whether it was something separate, or merely a fractured subset of his own thoughts.
OH, PAAA-LEASE, DON’T FLATTER YOURSELF.
The voice was playful, but under the flippant tones Ejelano sensed a deep malevolence, a complete disregard and contempt for...what?
Himself. The world. Life, in general. Existence. All of it.
The Footsteps of Cain Page 24
