King of Shards

by Matthew Kressel

  “For five years I thought you were dead, Marul. Now that I’ve found you, I’m not going to let you vanish again.”

  “Rana, you cannot come. It’s too dangerous.”

  “No,” she said, “you’ll be coming with me.” Then she whispered, “I plan to kill him.”

  “Goddess, no, Rana! Put such foolish thoughts out of your mind.”

  “But Caleb is mortal, yes? And weak. We’ve seen him bleed.”

  “We can’t kill him,” Daniel said. “We need him. How else will we stop—” He swallowed again. “Stop Mashit from killing the Lamed Vav?”

  “Don’t believe his lies,” Rana said. “Marul, you said if he dies, you’d go free?”

  “I believed that the magic binding me here would be broken if he died,” Marul said. “But he says that’s not true.”

  “Only to keep you under his thrall,” Rana said. “We should kill him as soon as possible.”

  “And what of Grug?” Marul said.

  “What of him?”

  “Grug is my friend,” Marul said. “His companionship was all I had to keep me from insanity. Rana, this is foolish talk. You are no more a killer than I’m a mason. Keep your knife. We’ll let Caleb take us out of the cave, and once we’re free, you will go home, and Daniel and I will take care of this Lamed Vav business. My decision is final.”

  “What decision?” Caleb said as he and Grug strode into the room. To Rana’s disgust Caleb was still naked. Grug carried a large container in his arms. Several heavy satchels were slung over Grug’s shoulders. He deposited everything onto the ground.

  “I will help get you and Daniel back to Earth,” Marul said.

  “I’m glad you see it my way,” Caleb said.

  “Not all of us agree,” said Rana.

  “Some dissention in the ranks is to be expected.” He smiled at her, and damn it, she blushed again! Couldn’t he put on some clothes? “We’ve a long journey ahead,” he said. “We need to build up our strength.”

  So demons need to eat and rest too, she thought. Could he die of starvation or poison? She stole a glance at Marul, who glared at her, as if to discourage her malevolent thoughts.

  Caleb flipped open the container. It had been stuffed to the brim with large cuts of bloody meat and smelled of a fresh slaughter.

  “Where did you get meat?” Marul said. “There’s nothing but rats down here.”

  “On the mountainside,” Caleb said.

  “Outside?” said Marul.

  Grug’s hands were stained with blood, as was the hilt of his sword.

  “The she-camel,” Rana said.

  “You killed it?” Daniel said, shocked. Rana felt sickened too. She had set the camel free only to see it die. She vowed to herself she would not let the same thing happen to Marul.

  “Make us a fire, Grug,” Caleb said.

  Grug tore apart the container with astonishing strength. The rusty nails squeaked like rodents as he yanked the boards apart. Echoes scurried down the tunnels. His movements were quick, repugnant, offensive to the senses.

  “Why did you have to kill the camel?” Daniel said.

  “We need to eat to build our strength,” Caleb said.

  “Well I don’t eat meat,” Daniel said.

  Caleb picked up a bloody cut and peeled off the hide in strong, quick jerks. “I’m afraid you’ll find, Daniel, that Gehinnom isn’t kind to vegetarians. When the choice is between meat or death, what will you pick?” He threw the bloody cut to Daniel, who leaped out of the way. The meat rolled to a stop on the floor.

  “You don’t eat meat,” Rana said, “and you have the strength to hold up a world?”

  Daniel stared at the flesh. “Sometimes it takes more strength not to do something than to do it.”

  Rana’s knife lay on the floor. She turned to Marul. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  ——

  Daniel sat away from the flames, elbows on his knees, staring at the ten circles of the sephirot that Marul had painted on the floor. He was inside the central sephirah, Tiferet—Beauty. But there was nothing beautiful about death, the total destruction of being. Once, it had been a camel, and though it didn’t know much of the future or past, didn’t plan for birthdays or pine for the days gone, it did savor its life, as all creatures do. Now it was just meat.

  The smell of it cooking, the grease dripping onto the flames of a roaring fire Grug had kindled, reminded Daniel of Gram’s brisket. She had roasted one every Sunday when he’d lived with her, though he’d long since stopped eating it. He suddenly missed her nagging, her Yiddishkeit, the way she could be comforting even as she harangued. All those stories she told him growing up, those bobe-mayses. They were true, weren’t they? Dybbuks possessing the bodies of young brides-to-be, shedim—demons—leaving cocks’ footprints at the foot of a dreamer’s bed. Dumah and her thousand eyes, waiting at the sinner’s grave to crack it open with a flaming rod and drag the unfortunate down to Gehenna.

  Was Gram saying Kaddish—the mourner’s prayer—over his grave now?

  The fire flickered with memories. Rebekah’s face formed in the flames; perhaps he’d imagined it. He remembered that hot summer day as they held hands and walked along the sculpted High Line Park in Manhattan. She took his photo beside a cluster of black-eyed Susans, then they sat on a bench and shared a cup of coffee.

  “Cargo trains,” she’d said, a drop of coffee on her upper lip, “used to come through here, right where we’re sitting.”

  The crooked boardwalk, built over the rails, went right through a dozen skyscrapers, following the old route. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” he said, feeling inane. His tongue always tied in knots around her.

  “This was a thriving trade route,” she said as the hot breeze fanned her hair. “But the route wilted, decayed.” She looked wistfully down the boardwalk, as if peering back in time. “The trains stopped. The rails rusted. Weeds grew tall. It was a graveyard. Now look at it, Danny. It’s been reborn.”

  Crowds of people had walked past them, entranced by the flowering plants, the modern skyscrapers leaning over the path. Daniel was happy. Human life was mostly suffering, true. But for the moment the world seemed at peace.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  “It gives me hope,” she said.

  “Hope?”

  “Because it shows that dead things can be beautiful again.” She stared at him, her eyes two more hazel flowers in the edenic scene.

  “This wasn’t dead,” he said, “just abandoned. There was plenty of life here.”

  She nodded. A brave bumblebee navigated the crowds to dart between the black polka dots of the black-eyed Susans. “We’ve been given a garden,” she said. “And what have we done with it? A few live in luxury while millions suffer. We’re destroying the world.”

  He nodded. “I see us as confused adolescents,” he said. “We stand on the precipice before a vast, strange universe and are utterly terrified of the view. So we cower and hide in consumerism, in the mindless purchasing of products. We don’t realize our creative power, our absolute freedom to build the kind of universe we want.”

  She let slip a smile. “Yes! We can turn the abandoned places into gardens again. You and me, Danny. We will make great things together.” Her hand held his, warm and welcoming. They sat on that bench for a long time, letting the world and its potential speak for itself.

  A timber popped in the fire, and Daniel awoke from the memory. Was Rebekah a fantasy? A charade played by a demon? What of all the charity work he’d seen her do? And what of the nights under the moon and the orange-lit city, when they lay in bed, grasping each other and forgetting the bleak world? Were those lies too? He remembered Rebekah’s face at their wedding, how it had withered like an ancient tree, how she wasn’t perturbed at all by the shape shifting man-dog leaping toward them, but kept insisting that he break the glass. An act, Caleb had said, that would have allowed her to destroy him.

  He stared into the fire. Maybe he had been a fool to
believe such a person could exist. Or maybe he was a fool to believe Caleb now, as Rana had said. He felt queasy with ambivalence.

  “You’d better eat,” Caleb said, and the singsong Wul consonants tickled Daniel’s ears.

  “I’m not hungry,” he said, even though his stomach was rumbling at the smell.

  The smoke from the fire blew out of the chamber, whisked off by currents of air. Strips of meat hung on a spit, and the fire flared as grease dripped. He hadn’t eaten meat in seventeen years, not since his parent’s death. But the meat smelled delicious, tempting.

  Caleb had covered himself in a draping, sand-colored linen robe tied with a brown leather belt. As he poked and prodded the fire he resembled a stately Roman senator.

  “We’ve a long journey, Daniel, and you won’t find any fruit or edible plants for hundreds of parasot.”

  Parasot. The plural of parasa, a measure of distance, which he now understood to be roughly three miles, another curious artifact of this new fluency.

  “There will be only water and meat,” Caleb said, “and little of either.”

  Daniel stared into the flames, searching for hints of Rebekah’s face. “Are there any of those pomm fruits left?” he said.

  “No,” Rana said. “You ate them all.”

  His stomach rumbled, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat the camel. Grease and blood smeared their cheeks as they ate. Soon, little was left but bone and gristle. Where was its head? Had they left it in wide-eyed terror on the cliffs above? He imagined scavenger birds pecking at its eyes. He grimaced as Grug cracked open a bone and sucked out the marrow.

  “I have a treat,” Caleb said, holding up a wooden box.

  “You’re going to kill yourself?” Rana said.

  Caleb laughed. It was a haughty sound, as a king might make at the antics of his jester. “Tobacco. From Earth. I hid this box here ages ago. Let me roll us each a tube.”

  In Wul there were a hundred words for “pipe,” but not a single one for “cigarette.” Paper, he supposed, was not easily acquired in a desert, and certainly not something to burn. Caleb offered Daniel the first. He was never a smoker, but he took it, if only to stave off the hunger.

  Caleb gave “tubes” to the others. Rana studied hers, opened it, and dumped the tobacco into her hand.

  “You broke it,” Caleb said.

  “No,” she said, quickly refashioning her cigarette so that it was as well formed as a Marlboro. “I perfected it.”

  Caleb smiled. His gaze was predatory, more animal than sexual. Whatever Caleb saw in her, he savored it.

  The demon lifted a brand from the embers and offered the glowing tip to Daniel. Daniel puffed, inhaled. His head spun and his body tingled as the nicotine surged through his body. He laughed at the absurdity of it all.

  “What’s so funny?” Rana said. She sucked her cigarette as classily as Lauren Bacall in Casablanca. In the firelight, Rana was stunning.

  “Here I am,” Daniel said, “smoking with a corpse-man, a demon, and two women from another world, while speaking a language I’d never heard of yesterday. That’s what’s funny.”

  “I’m no corpse,” Grug said.

  “Sorry,” Daniel said. “I didn’t mean to offend.” As more nicotine entered his body, the words scratched on the walls seemed to shake and glow. They were written in Hebrew and Aramaic and cuneiform and other scripts, rambling on about exits, portals, escape.

  Caleb sighed and leaned back, exhaling a gray stream of smoke. “My energy returns like Ora rising above Abbadon’s cliffs at dawn.”

  Rana squinted at him, in malice or perhaps curiosity. “Ora?” she said.

  “One of two suns that spin about each other in Sheol’s sky.”

  “Sheol?” Daniel said. “The realm of the dead?”

  “Dead in spirit, perhaps, but things live there. Sheol is a realm quite distant from Earth, furthest from its sustaining waters. The oldest demons have dwelled there since the Shattering. Twin suns burn in Sheol’s crimson sky. At night, giant red stars infest the sky like a pox. By day the air is too hot, by night it’s too frigid. The land is barren, mostly granite and basalt cliffs. Eons ago Great Abbadon built the first kingdom there. From the dust, under his leadership, we lifted ourselves up. From the ashes, we built a home. We renamed the palace after him when he died. I took over his throne, and ruled Sheol for twenty-five hundred years. Until Mashit betrayed me and cast me out. Sheol is my world. My home. And I have been exiled from it.”

  “My heart bleeds,” Rana said.

  Caleb seemed not to notice Rana. His eyes were glazed, as if lost in memory. “It’s not just my world. All the Shards will die if we don’t act.”

  “The husks?” Daniel said.

  “The Shards are shattered worlds, universes that the Creator destroyed because they had too much judgment, too much wrath, and not enough mercy. Their myriad fragments float in the Great Deep like potsherds in a field. Sheol exists in but one Shard of millions.”

  Rana spit into the flames. “Who cares? Why should we risk our lives for cosmic debris?”

  “Because,” Caleb said, “those shattered worlds are not empty! Trillions of beings dwell within the Shards, leading bitter lives. Their worlds are ragged, broken things. They sip the water of life from Earth in drips and drops, like a dog begging for scraps from his master’s table. The little life force they receive from Earth bleeds out like water through a cracked jar.”

  “Better that they all die,” Rana said. “Why should we give a damn about a bunch of broken worlds filled with demons like you?”

  “Because,” Caleb said, “Gehinnom floats within a Shard too.”

  ——

  Lies!” Rana said, leaping to her feet. She wanted to strangle Caleb and wipe that persistent smirk off his face. “Marul, tell me these are all lies!”

  Marul hung her head and closed her eyes. Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head.

  Rana felt a sob grow in her throat. “So Gehinnom is, what? Broken? How?”

  “It is like a painting you become unsatisfied with,” Caleb said, “and have torn to shreds. The Creator was not satisfied with this universe, and so she smashed it.”

  “Marul,” Rana said. “Say something!”

  Marul opened her eyes. They were rheumy and tired. “I’m sorry, Rana. His words are true. Gehinnom floats in a Shard.”

  Rana shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. If our universe is broken, how do we walk and breathe? How does the sun rise and the moon set? How do the stars twirl across the sky if everything is broken?”

  “Fill a jar with water,” Caleb said, “and smash it. Most of the water spills out, but a few drops remain on the shards. Gehinnom is like one of those drops, clinging to the surface.”

  “Until we evaporate!” Rana said.

  “My point exactly,” Caleb said. “It’s only Daniel’s Earth that keeps the Shards from drying up. Which is why we must preserve it.”

  Rana felt as if she were suffocating. Yesterday the world seemed so small, circumscribed by a compass and a rule. She could have built anything she dreamed if she’d had the stone and tools. But what kind of tool would one need to repair a universe? Daniel stared at her, his eyes as haunted as the boys who had come home from the war.

  “I must rest,” Caleb said. “You should too. Grug, will you?”

  Grug muttered four harsh words, and the fire winked out, except for a single candle guttering near the wall. The sudden absence of heat made the room feel cold, and Rana shivered.

  “Grug has blankets for you,” Caleb said. “Tonight we sleep with rock above our heads, tomorrow we sleep under the stars.”

  Marul said, “Oh, how I miss the stars.”

  Caleb took a blanket from Grug, laid it flat in a corner, and spread himself upon it. He closed his eyes and lay as still as the dead. Rana eyed her knife, which remained on the floor where she had dropped it.

  Caleb added, “I’m a light sleeper. Don’t waste your time trying to kill me.”


  “Yes,” Marul said, eyeing Rana. “I suggest we all rest.”

  Rana trembled with rage. If Marul had always known Gehinnom was a failed work of art, smashed and discarded, why hadn’t she told her?

  Was it because, Rana thought, Marul believed I couldn’t handle the truth? Well, Marul, I can! I can!

  But even as she thought this she trembled. She felt as if the ground might crumble into a million pieces, flinging her soul across eternity, with no Lamed Vavnik there to catch her.

  Grug offered her a blanket. “Don’t curse your lot,” Grug said. “Be thankful for your portion, however small. Endless scores live far worse than you ever have. Compared to some worlds, Gehinnom is a paradise.” His unholy yellow eyes peered into hers, and she shivered. She took the blanket and sat upon it, next to Daniel.

  “What’s your world like, Daniel?” she said. “What’s different about Earte?”

  “Ear-th,” he said, stressing the hiss. “There most people don’t believe in demons. I definitely didn’t. They don’t have giant eagles or talking dogs. But I guess the most obvious difference is that we have more . . .” He seemed to struggle to find the right word. “Tools. So many tools to help us get through the day. We have one tool where we can talk to each other even though we’re hundreds of . . . parasot away from each other. We have giant metal ships to fly through the air and metal wagons that whisk us across the ground. There are these . . . boxes that show scenes from far away. But the people aren’t all that different. The humans at least.”

  “I think you will find, Daniel,” Marul said with closed eyes, “that humans on Gehinnom are much less forgiving of being kept awake at night. Now the two of you, listen to your elder and go the hell to sleep!”

  Rana frowned. How could Marul sleep now? Daniel lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. In the weak light, Rana quietly picked up her knife. Daniel watched her slip the blade into its sheath. Her hand squeezing the hilt, she looked at Caleb. Grug was staring at her. He averted his eyes and, without a word, left the chamber.

  The white-haired demon lay still, three paces away, as she considered what to do.