Phoenix Without Ashes

by Edward Bryant

  “I would like that,” Devon said.

  “You might starve thyself, boy.”

  Devon shook his head. “I have trapped rabbits.”

  Jubal looked around the hilltop as though searching for remnants.

  “Beyond the next hill,” said Devon. “Almost to the sky. I built a fire.”

  Jubal looked disappointed. “This was to be a time of cleansing tribulation. It is instructive to suffer and endure, boy.”

  “I did, Elder.”

  “It was to be a time for meditation and reflection.”

  “That also, I did, Elder.”

  “And a time for repentance.”

  Devon turned away from the old man and faced the valley. “Yes, Elder.”

  “Recalcitrant whelp,” Jubal said under his breath. He started back down the path. “Come, Elder Micah waits prayers for us.” He heard no following footsteps. Jubal turned and saw Devon still at the tree, still facing the valley with that irritating, faraway glaze upon his eyes. “Devon!”

  Devon’s reverie broke. “Yes, Elder?”

  A peremptory command: “Come!”

  The young man followed the old down toward Cypress Corners.

  There were times when Granny Esther wished for less than wholly pious reasons that Young Garth were her son. Now, as she watched him labor over the garden shears on the anvil, was one of those times. There was much to appreciate about the young smith. It wasn’t just the unruly thatch of curly black hair, nor the candid dark eyes, she thought, though those were indeed attractive.

  Neither was it solely the fine musculature sweat-gleaming in the heat of the forge. (Garth had often volunteered to help her toil in her vegetable garden—a kindness the aging woman acknowledged with plates of Garth’s favorite carrot cake.) No, Garth possessed a combination of intangible qualities she could codify only as some essence of son-ness: honesty, strength, a seemingly inflexible sense of duty. Not, she reflected with some sadness, like her own son; or, the Creator forefend, like his son, Young Esau.

  “They’re done, Granny Esther.” Garth examined the rivet critically, clacked the blades together several times, and then handed the shears to the woman.

  “Such a fine job. I thank thee, boy.” She placed the shears in her reticule. “Will you accompany me now to the noon service? Elder Micah would have all in the congregation attend this day.”

  “I suppose I must.” Garth spoke without enthusiasm. “You sound reluctant,” said the old woman. “Is it because of Rachel?”

  “And Devon too,” said Garth. “He must obey the Elder’s summons and stand before the Council’s judgment today.”

  “I’m sure they will be lenient. The Creator’s mercy is infinite.”

  Garth splashed water on himself from a bucket, then toweled his arms dry. “They will not permit Rachel and Devon to marry.”

  “Of course not. The Creator has decreed otherwise.” Garth slapped his arm viciously with the towel. “The Creator has decreed that Rachel and I wed. It is not her wish.”

  “Is it yours?” said Granny Esther gently.

  He looked anguished. “No.”

  “The Creator’s ways aren’t always apparent.”

  “I feel pain for both Rachel and Devon. They are my friends.”

  She laid a comforting hand on his thick wrist. “Trust in the wisdom of the Council.” She gave him a look he found enigmatic. “Do whatever you must do to act justly.”

  They departed for the Place of Worship.

  SIX

  Midday prayer services had begun by the time Jubal and Devon had crossed the bleaching fields of downed alfalfa and entered the town. They alone trod the dusty street toward the center of Cypress Corners. As they neared the circle of trees surrounding the Place of Worship, Jubal said, “Hold.” The two men stopped.

  Devon heard the sound of light laughter from behind a metal ivy-climb—traditionally called a “communicator booth”—across the narrow street. Jubal stalked over to the dull-gray pillar and Devon followed.

  Aha! said the Elder. Devon peered around Jubal’s shoulder to see who had been confronted. It was a young boy, perhaps eight or nine. He was clad like his male Elders in a white collarless shirt of rough homespun material and black cotton overalls that came up in bib fashion with straps over the shoulders. He was barefoot and was rolling a shining metal stave hoop with a metal rod.

  “Young Jacob!” said Jubal.

  The small boy looked sheepish.

  “Dost thou know what hour it be?”

  Young Jacob thought for a moment. “Aye, sir. Twelve-hundred hours, sir.”

  “Nearly thirteen-hundred hours,” corrected Jubal. “Second worship hour, lad. Long since time you were at your prayers. No time for idleness and wicked laughter.”

  “I beg pardon, sir,” said the boy. He stared contritely down at the street. As his head dropped, Devon was sure he saw Young Jacob wink. Elder Jubal grunted a perfunctory acceptance of the apology.

  “Then be about it, lad; hie thee to thy place of kneeling and rid thyself of impure, wicked thoughts lest the Elders mete out severity.”

  Head still hanging respectfully, Young Jacob dropped his hoop and stave beside the ivy-climb and scampered through the ring of cypress toward the steps leading up to the Place of Worship.

  Jubal watched, shaking his head at the frivolity of the young. “I’ll never understand those to whom piety doesn’t come early,” he said, reverting momentarily from the stiff, formal speech usually affected by the Elders. “It makes things so...” He hesitated. “So inexact.”

  “You were once young,” said Devon.

  “I think not.” His face set in dour lines. Jubal led Devon up the wide, plank steps. From between the cypress doors they could hear a voice.

  “Hush,” said Jubal. “Elder Micah’s sermon...” Devon recognized the voice; words as hard and cold as the mica schist he had found half-buried in the hills.

  “One hundred kilometers across be the world of Cypress Corners,” said the voice of Elder Micah. “One hundred kilometers be all the plot of land given us by the Creator. To work and nourish and on which to find our salvation. ‘Twould be simple for thee to fall into the wicked thought that there be more to the good life, the life given to the service of the Creator, than these one hundred kilometers; that there be thought ne’er thought, deed ne’er done, that thou might rise above thy fellows with certain deed and certain thought...”

  Again with a gesture for silence, Jubal led Devon between the slab-sided doors of the Place of Worship. The interior was barnlike in its spaciousness and simplicity of arrangement. A center aisle led to the front. On either side the congregation, all in black, sat in the hard metal pews. A few heads turned to look as Jubal and Devon advanced down the aisle. Like a whip-crack, Elder Micah’s voice brought them back to eyes-forward.

  “...and that the will of the Elders may be summarily flouted. Be there aught amongst ye who feel so?”

  At the front of the Place of Worship was a low platform. Elder Micah stood behind a metal lectern. On the bare wall behind him there was only a burnished metal circle; for the Elders, the symbol of Belief.

  Jubal conducted Devon to the aisle seat of the front row. Throughout the room there was a barely audible rustle of whispers. Tall, gaunt, forbidding, Micah leaned forward across the lectern and fixed his gaze on Devon. He repeated,

  “Be there aught amongst ye who feel so?”

  Quick replies from the congregation; loud but reverent: “Nay!”

  “Nay, Elder Micah!”

  “Nay, nay!”

  Like a herd of horses being led to the barley trough, thought Devon. He nearly laughed. In the dim light from the slit windows, Micah’s eyes seemed almost to burn.

  “And what say you, Devon? Be your humbleness merely worn like shirt or shoe? Dost thou harbor secret spite ‘gainst thy Elders?”

  Devon knew he was expected to dip his head in humility; yet he did not. He stared directly into Micah’s eyes. “Not spite
, Elder Micah, but there are questions I would ask you.”

  Micah smiled slightly, but completely without humor. “Even in thy speech thou art troubling. Thou callest thy Elder ‘you’ with all familiarity. Thy stay in the hills hast done nought to cleanse thee!”

  It took all the resolve he had generated in the hills to reply. Devon said quietly, firmly: “If it’s love of Rachel you want to ‘cleanse’ from me, a hundred cycles in the hills would not serve.”

  Micah raised his gaze from Devon to the congregation and they responded—murmurs, then louder and angrier cries, shouts:

  “Impiety!”

  “He answers back!”

  “He should be driven out!”

  Another grim smile. Obviously pleased with the response, Micah raised his hands for quiet. The Elder looked back down at Devon. “Set this thought forefront in thy demeanor, Devon: thy parents be long dead, thy station be of the lowest, thy prospects slim, thy manner bitter as water drawn from the pollution pool. Thy genetic rating unsuitable. Thou art maintained in Cypress Corners as ward of the Elders. Young Rachel...”

  He looked above Devon again, and to the right. Devon turned his head slightly. Rachel sat there in the next pew behind. She sat with her younger sister, the two of them between Aram and Old Rachel. Hands folded, eyes downcast, Rachel did not react.

  Micah continued harshly, “... Young Rachel is promised since birth to Young Garth...”

  Young Garth sat between his mother and father in the pew behind Rachel and her family. The same age as Devon, Garth was half a head taller. He was a broad and solid man; deeply tanned from the fields, but also callused and muscular from the hammer, forge, and anvil of the metalsmith to whom he was apprenticed. Garth and Devon had been friends almost as long as each could remember. Now Devon caught Garth’s eye and Garth looked away.

  “...promised by the word of the Creator’s machine,” Micah’s voice droned on. “Dost thee still question the decision of the Creator?”

  Devon looked from Garth to Rachel and then back to Micah. He said angrily, “I still question! I still ask why the sky is metal and the ground is not. I still ask where waste goes when we put it down the trap. I still ask why Young Rachel must wed a man she doesn’t love!”

  Again Micah’s gaze rose to the congregation. Again, led by the other Elders, they responded like a well-trained pack of dogs with cries of “Blasphemy!” and “Shame!” And again Micah quieted them with a wave of his hand.

  “When first thee came to thy Elders with this blasphemy,” said the Elder, “thy anguish was met with kindness. Thou wert given leave to go to the hills to cleanse thyself. But thee hath returned to our prayer time still surfeited with recrimination and wickedness. See this, ungrateful child.”

  Micah stabbed the center of the lectern with one forefinger. “Perhaps you may give heed to the Creator’s machine.” There was a low whir. From out of the lectern rose a miniature replica of the rectangular, metal ivy-climb outside. The Elder touched one of a row of keys on the top of the Creator’s machine. A panel slid aside; Micah spoke into the exposed grille: “Respond to my voice. I seek again the answer to the mating question of Young Rachel and Young Garth. Be there genetic relevance for consideration of Devon as mate to Young Rachel? Answer.”

  The machine chuckled briefly to itself as though a small animal inside were rummaging through nutshells. After a moment it spoke; its voice was loud and flat. “Gene pool orders original mating selection without variance. New factor, coded: Devon, unsuitable. Balance maintained. Answerrrr...” The voice of the Creator distorted, dropped in pitch, slowed down. Micah tensed, staring down at the machine. “Answer: none.”

  With triumphant finality, Micah punched a key on the top of the Creator’s machine and the device began to whir back down into the lectern. The lines in Micah’s lean face bunched hard. “Now, spiteful Devon, before this congregation, in the sight of the Creator and in the Creator’s words, thou hast been spurned. Wilt thou now relent? And join with thy betters in conjoining these two young people?”

  Devon said nothing as he stared back at Micah and the lowering top of the Creator’s machine. He opened his mouth but no words emerged.

  “Wilt thou?” said Micah.

  Devon turned his head toward Rachel.

  She met his eyes; her gaze fell first.

  He turned toward Garth.

  The smith’s apprentice would not meet Devon’s eyes.

  “Wilt thou, boy?” Micah repeated the words implacably, giving them edges like hammered metal.

  Devon opened his mouth again, but words still would not come. Clenching his fists, he turned and bolted from the Place of Worship. Whispers ran through the congregation until Micah raised a paternal hand. “This boy has been possessed by a fine wickedness. From this moment forward, henceforth let no member of this congregation speak unto Devon, let no soul touch his, let no notice be made of him. For us, humble in the name of the Creator, this Devon is a spitefulness, a contentiousness, a spot of rancor. Let him be, then, gone from our sight. Now: return to thy labors.”

  The congregation rose, facing the circle design on the rear wall. Each man and woman and child linked thumb and forefinger over their hearts as a symbol of their piety. Even Garth. Even Rachel.

  SEVEN

  The forge of Old William the metalsmith was an open shed on the northern edge of the village. Old William seldom took up the iron hammer these days; the stiffness in his joints was too painful. He had turned the major responsibility for his craft over to his young apprentice. Old William had taught his charge well; there were seldom complaints from those who ordered tools from the new smith.

  Devon waited in the half-concealment afforded by the shadows beneath a copse of elm. The rest of Cypress Corners’s commerce started up around him while, he awaited Garth’s return. Voices passed him on the other side of the row of trees: men returning to the fields. “Devon was never all that clever.”

  “I know I would not wish to be cast into the darkness by Elder Micah.”

  Mumbles of assent.

  “I don’t know.... That Rachel’s quite a piece.”

  “Hush, lest Aram hear you.”

  “He returned to fetch the water skin.”

  “Nonetheless, don’t defile his daughter with your tongue.”

  Someone’s half-stifled laughter. “I know I’d like to...” The voices faded out of earshot. Devon lay back, his head resting on the hard pillow of an exposed root.

  A few minutes later, Garth arrived at the forge. Devon continued to wait, watching as Garth resumed his work. His childhood friend was obviously distraught; Garth’s face was a mask of gloom. He clattered about the shed, futilely kicking a bucket of scrap nails across the room when the thing failed to get out of his way. Garth turned the gas jets of the forge up to full. With the tongs, he thrust a horseshoe into the roaring, orange flame.

  If only he loved Rachel, Devon thought briefly, and then wiped the thought away. No, I do not wish that at all. He realized how truly selfish he was. One more sin.

  In the fire, the metal shoe began to glow a dull cherry red.

  The color, Devon remembered, of the embers of the house. Years later he had wondered at the cruelty of children toward one of their fellows who had been orphaned. Perhaps they feared the same fate, and, fearing turned on the source of that alarm.

  Six of them had cornered Devon in a glade beside the small lake called Temperance. Not yet ten cycles old, he had looked warily from one to another of the older boys. He said, “What do you want?”

  Young Goodman laughed nastily and said, “Just your garments, Devon.”

  Devon looked puzzled.

  Esau, a thin, cross-eyed child, said, “The Elders have directed us to clean Master Silas’s school and we need your clothing for rags.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Devon. “Why—”

  Without warning, Goodman struck him in the face.

  Though surprised, Devon struck back automatically, hitting Goodm
an in the throat. All the other boys save Esau rushed into the fray.

  “Bastard!” cried Esau from the sideline. “In naked shame we’ll send you to the women.”

  Goodman had grappled with Devon. Breath ratcheted from the older boy’s mouth. He echoed Esau, “Bastard.”

  Superior size and age finally prevailed: four of the boys held Devon’s limbs to the ground. Goodman and Esau stood back from the spreadeagled figure. Goodman still found it difficult to breathe, much less speak. “Beg for—” The words garbled as he choked. “—fatherless—”

  Esau roughly jerked loose Devon’s belt and pulled his overalls down around his knees. Devon struggled but his captors held fast. “You’re the bastards,” he said. Goodman drew his foot back to kick. Then he was knocked sprawling.

  “Garth!” Esau cried. Even at the age of ten cycles, Young Garth was fearless. Large for his age, he knocked the boys aside as though they were wheat going down before the scythe. After they got up, they joined Esau and fled.

  Without allies, Goodman had no stomach to fight further. He took a tentative step toward Garth; then, thinking better of it, he wordlessly turned and ran away. Garth helped Devon to his feet.

  “I thank you,” said Devon, “but why did you help? This wasn’t your fight.”

  “Six of them,” said Garth. “It was not right.” He looked embarrassed.

  Devon gingerly touched his own nose, checking for blood. “They called me a bastard.” He looked belligerently at Garth. “I had a father and a mother.”

  “Yes,” said Garth. “I know. I liked them.”

  The two boys silently walked along the shore of the lake Temperance. Then Garth said, “I’m on my way to prayers.” Devon said nothing. “Will you walk with me to the town?”

  After that afternoon they remained friends.

  And now, is this right? said Devon silently. He stood up and walked toward the shed.

  His back to the wide doorway, Garth turned the glowing horseshoe over in the flame. He pulled it from the jet, examined it critically, then set it on the anvil. With his other hand he picked up the three-kilo iron hammer.