He clenched his jaw.
She folded her arms for warmth. “I wonder if we will ever return.”
It seemed Mason considered the thought, then looked at his fingernails to pick the dirt from beneath them.
Sarah sat beside him and let her feet dangle over the edge. She looked below and her stomach coiled at the distance. She shifted back. “I know what you did for me.”
He tipped his head.
“Peth said you never left my side.”
Mason gazed at the night sky and breathed toward the City.
“You speak with your presence.” She bit her cheek, resisting the emotions that had surged through her since awakening. “Thank you.” And then she could resist no longer. She wiped her cheeks and nose, and leaned her head against his shoulder. He was a rock long warmed by the sun, something solid to keep her upright. Her guardian. Her protector. “I am frightened.” She glanced toward the men and women by the fire thirty yards away. “I can’t find Cain.”
Mason’s gaze flicked toward her, and his eyebrows crouched.
“Your father was always a hard man, but he was never a monster.” She let the silence extend. “Maybe Cain is still in there, somewhere, but something has changed. I can feel it, but I cannot feel him. No? I don’t know either what I mean by that. I just feel that something isn’t right with him.” She stood, crossing her forearms over her belly. She caught Mason glancing at the motion and acted as if she had been brushing dust from her tunic.
In the sky, the North Star shone like the point of a sword stabbing a veil, and the moon hung beneath it naked, exposed.
“I always wondered why the Almighty never let you speak. It made me angry, all those years. Now, for the first time, I’m thankful for your silence.”
Calebna stared at the empty tomb of the Almighty and rubbed away the oil he had drenched himself in. “Tell me how you died.”
Seth exchanged a knowing glance with Ayla, who shrugged. “When Adam returned and told us Cain had killed—” Seth stopped short and studied Calebna, as if realizing too late what he was about to say.
Calebna said, “My father has been dead for weeks. Hearing the truth can wound me no deeper.”
“Forgive me. There are many things still positioning themselves in my mind,” Seth said.
“You are forgiven. But hide nothing out of fear of offending me. I have grown tired of subtle deceits and hidden intentions.”
Seth rubbed his fingers together and cleared his throat. “When Father told us Cain killed Abel, I thought he was lying. My mind knew it was true, but I thought that if he were dead, surely the Almighty could give life back to him. So I ran to the Temple.”
“Foolishly,” Ayla added. “He was injured after throwing himself against rocks.”
“Why in God’s name would you do such a thing?” Calebna asked, then sat on the edge of the Almighty’s tomb.
“Ayla enjoys embellishing when the result is me looking foolish.”
Ayla scowled. “He was assaulted by visions and thrown to the ground. I saw him fall, and when he awoke, I helped him to shelter, where Adam told us what happened. Lilleth was there, but ran into the storm. Tell me, is she with the others?”
“Mother disappeared that night and still has not been found.” Calebna pressed his palms into his eyes, and for the first time, allowed himself to feel the depth of that loss. His throat ached as he said, “Every single one of Lukian’s children, then Philo, Tuor, and Kiile’s eldest and youngest. So many lives have been lost.”
“Are you the only one left?” Ayla said.
“I’m the only one who stayed.”
Seth laid a hand on his wife’s leg. “We still haven’t answered his questions. I, too, would like to hear what has happened, but it should wait until we finish.”
Calebna once again stifled his emotions, for duty had ingrained in him the ability to do so quickly and without strain. “What did you see when you arrived at the Temple?”
“The torches were extinguished and no light reached past its doors, but I had to see the Holy of Holies before believing the Man was gone,” Seth said.
“I found Seth lying facedown before the throne of the Almighty. And in the throne—” Ayla bit her lip.
“Did you see the Almighty?” Calebna rested his elbows on his knees. He sensed a hardness in his own heart, and thought bitterly of what had forced him to become so.
“We saw his torn and bloody cloak, and on top of it his crown, but not him. I could no longer deny Adam’s claims. I lost myself.”
“But then there was a flash, and the world went dark,” Ayla said.
“Went dark?”
“All sound and sight were simply gone. The only way I can explain it is that my soul had been a tense coil, and instantly, I was released,” Seth said.
Calebna eyed them.
Ayla nodded. “The world slipped away like a heavy cloak, and after floating through nothingness, I awoke on a beach with Seth, who I didn’t recognize.”
“You both died and somehow just ended up in the same exact place?” Calebna said.
“It was a place that should not exist. A place beyond this world.”
Calebna squinted, but waved them on nonetheless. “What happened next?”
“We were drawn into a jungle by this beautiful Music. We ended up in a grove filled with ruined buildings. We entered the ruins to a place called the Shrine of the Song, where we were greeted by this … thing.”
Calebna waited for more, but neither spoke. “Can you describe this thing?”
Seth chuckled and rubbed his scalp. It was a nervous habit that reminded Calebna of Cain, and he thought, This is now Cain’s only brother. I wonder what Eve would do if she knew he was alive?
“It was like a human,” Seth explained, “and yet made of metal. A word for it came to me then: machine. That was what I called it in my mind, though everything sounds so very strange to me now that I speak it.”
“I’ve known much strangeness in the past few weeks,” Calebna said.
Ayla stood and began to pace. “But you have never seen anything like the Shrine. It was enrapturing, and the Music walked with us. It grew and changed into something we hadn’t expected, and we came to understand it was capable of affecting this world.”
“What do you mean?”
Ayla glanced at Seth, who said, “The machine showed us a window through which we could view the Song’s inner workings. The Music we heard in that place beyond Time is driving some sort of contention here. I think that it is somehow at the root of everything that has happened.”
“You are saying the Music killed my father?”
“I’m not saying that. However, the machine claimed we could become Instruments of the Song. We’re not sure we know all of what it means, but we do think that we can stop it.”
“How can you stop what you don’t understand?”
“The machine’s speech was strange, but what we saw through that window was clear enough. We are all parts of a singular conflict, one whose origin lies beyond the Sands of Time.”
“So how will you save us?”
“I can’t. Not alone. The machine talked as though we were the vectors of the Song. It was as if the Music had been constructed to entice us, but its true purpose was much more sinister.”
“Death,” Ayla whispered.
Seth looked up. “A living death.”
Calebna’s scorn turned to interest. “You think the Music has done more than just influence this world. You think it has come to life.”
“There is some Thing here that never should have been, and it is the centerpiece of a struggle spanning all of Time; a struggle beyond us, but for some reason conducted through us. It grows in power only as we give it power. In this way, then, I think we could stop it. Not one man alone, but together through the choices we make, through the evil we refuse to tend in our minds like Forbidden Gardens.” Seth paused. “Danger and deliverance lurk in every decision, and if we stray but a little, all h
umanity might be lost.”
Calebna leaned back, looked at his hands, and realized they were fisted. He rubbed the sweat from his palms, thought of Cain’s gray skin, and said, “If what you say is true, Almighty help us all.”
45
Lukian slipped away just below the edge of the forest to relieve himself while the others bustled around the fire and gathered water to boil roots dug out of the hillside. He stayed away because, judging by the stillness around him, no one seemed to have followed, and he desired solitude.
“Blood. Why blood?” He shook his head, trying to rid it of the incessant buzzing. All he wanted was to see it again—to smash a living skull and watch the life ooze out, to smell the smell and taste the taste. “Maybe it was the children.”
Yes. Maybe watching his children die had broken something. Or maybe, in that instant, he had simply given himself up to something that had been there all along. Whatever it was, as he found his children murdered and knelt in their lifeblood, he was consumed by raw desire, and now that desire chewed at his insides.
A chill rushed past, and with it, a whispering voice, thin and harsh, like distant Music carried on the wind. He felt a pinch at his neck, rubbed it, and brought his hand away marked with thin lines of red. There were footsteps, and through the darkness approached a small boy whose skin was silver, as if the flesh had died and only just begun decaying. The hair on Lukian’s back tingled as scar-like memories ached. “Lamech?” he said. It looked just like the twin brother he had lost to the Jinn. But how could it be?
The boy stopped and seemed to assess him. It nodded and whispered, “I have seen the war, both outside and in, and have come from beyond to give guidance.”
“Brother?” He reached for the boy’s hand, which he saw clenched and dappled with blood. Then the boy grabbed Lukian’s fingers, and he realized that the apparition before him was more than just a ghost. It was real enough to touch and feel. It was soft and warm, all its blood on the inside, not on the outside as his memory had betrayed his eyes into seeing just moments ago. “Is it you?”
No answer. Just that presence. Just those fingers in his hand. Just those eyes staring into his.
Words spilled from his mouth like water over broken levees. “I shouldn’t have pushed you into that cursed Fog. I should have urged you away. I should have grabbed your cloak and pulled hard enough to twist you around. I should have run before—”
“I am free.” Three simple words whose impact stemmed the flood. “And soon,” it said, “if you follow my guidance, you will be as well.”
“But how?” Lukian bent as if craning to see a detail too small. “What do I need to do?”
“Listen and obey. Will you promise to do that?”
“I am dreaming,” he said. “This is a dream.”
“Will you promise?” As if plucking it from its back, it reached behind and pulled out a pale fruit the size of a peach. It raised it so Lukian could see it unshadowed, and its skin seemed to shimmer—or was it a trick of the eyes? “Taste and see.”
Lukian was reaching for the fruit, but didn’t remember directing his hand to do so. Then the fruit was in his hand, but he didn’t remember grabbing it. The world was moving in strange shifts, as though Time itself were skipping beats. The fruit was in his hand by his waist, then at his nose, now between his teeth, and the red juice dripped down his chin and chest and fingers.
Then the fruit was gone, and so was the silver boy. He looked around, wondering if he had been dreaming strange visions of death and insanity. He felt so very strange. He clenched his fist and the juice bubbled between his fingers. He looked down and saw dark fluid like blood staining his clothes. Horrified, he tore off his outer garment, comforted that only a few drops remained on his undergarment. He balled the bloodied garment and wiped his hands, face, and neck with it before stuffing it under a bush. He turned to dash back, then thought better of it and dug a hole in the dirt with his hands. The ground a few inches down was hard and cold, and his fingernails were not strong enough to release it and one bent back. It bled and darkened, and he sucked on it as he threw the garment into the shallow hole and covered it with dirt, but it wasn’t enough, so he gathered leaves and twigs and threw them over it, but that looked too intentional, so he kicked it a few times and nodded and turned away.
But how could he explain the few droplets on his garment? They would wonder if he had injured himself.
My fingernail, he thought and smeared it along his undergarment in a few other places.
Fool, he thought again, they will wonder about your nakedness first, and for that you have no answer. What madness is overtaking you?
Men laughed and sounds approached. He stumbled and fell before the bush beneath which he had buried his garment. Between the leaves of the shrub were dark berries he had not noticed. He plucked some and smeared them in his hand. The juice smelled and looked identical to the stains on his clothes.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to settle his breathing. You are seeing things, he thought. You are imagining terrible things, conjuring ghosts of shame because you are filled with shame for letting your children die, just like you let Lamech die.
He knelt, grabbed more berries, and burst them between his fingers. He thought he should feel comforted that the visitation with the boy had only been a vision, but he could no longer trust his perception, and that made him feel cheated.
He dug up his garment. Dirt had stuck to and caked in the wetness, but after he slapped most of it off, he slipped the tunic on, turned toward the approaching footsteps, and walked back to change his clothing and burn what he wore.
“Strange fruit,” he would say. “I tripped and fell on a bush with strange fruit that stunk like death.”
PART NINE:
THE GARDEN
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.
—GENESIS 3:4–7 ESV
46
Cain’s toes sank into the desert sands as he led his family ever forward. He strained just to keep himself upright, but knew their final destination lay just beyond the mountainous dunes ahead.
An oasis in the midst of a sea of sand. A Garden, cool and comfortable, wrought in the twilight of Time with strange seeds and no little bending of the rules that hold nature strung together.
The sun positioned itself at the edge of the horizon and tossed its red cloak high. Then, as it dove and the color faded to twilight, the vertebral marks on Cain’s arms glowed. He struggled up the incline and, as he reached the top, found Sarah by Mason. Her green eyes gleamed like burning copper, and her shape seemed extracted from the world, something too vibrant to belong amid so much gray.
Soon, he thought, her belly will become obvious, and the others will wonder if the child is mine.
The thought struck him then as it never had before. He had been so consumed by every decision, and how their weight bent the streams of Time, that he had never actually wondered if the child’s origins could be questioned. To think Abel could be living on through Sarah’s womb …
He looked at her red hair and felt the desire to snuff the flame as never before.
But the Sarah you know would never stoop to such evil. You only recently felt the bond between her and Abel grow.
But sex could have been the impetus. You should kill her now.
Cain’s gaze was caught in the hem of Sarah’s garment, so much so he couldn’t tell if he was fighting the voice of the Abomination or his own paranoia. We loved each other once. I remember us lying with fingers entwined until sleep froze our thoughts.
Or was that too a lie?<
br />
Uncertainty burned in his mind. He brought his hands to rub his eyes, but stopped midaction. How could I forget the streams?
His eyes lingered on her. Mason was staring from his peripheral, but Cain could not tear himself from the thought of being with her once more, of her body pressed against his in the warmth of total acceptance.
I could swim the pathways of Time and find the truth. I need only the opportunity. When we arrive and the others rest, I will drink, and then plunge into the past.
He crested another dune and there stood the Garden, glowing with a faint bioluminescence. The others followed and gasped at the sight of its high canopy bending with the wind like a hand in the distance waving them close. As they stilled and their glances hopped between Lukian, Cain, and the Garden, Cain wondered at the importance of this moment. There was deep resonance here, and he basked in it.
“They have chosen to follow you and wonder at the repercussions.”
Cain frowned. I myself wonder. But soon I will know, because I will test each minuscule choice against the outcome I desire. It won’t be long. I will rid myself of you. There will come a day I will see you bleed.
He walked to their new home, and Eve was the first to follow, though she still led Adam hand in hand. Next were Sarah and Mason, and some of the women and children. Finally, Kiile and Machael helped Gorban up once more to finish the final steps of their journey.
Except for the shuffling of feet and rustle of clothing, they made no sound. As they neared, the faintly luminous leaves grew against the darkening canvas of night, the moon and stars disappeared under a sweeping sheet of clouds, and the Garden seemed the only source of illumination.
As Cain passed beneath the canopy, the buzzing intensified. His ears rang, and he shook his head and tipped it to rid himself of his discomfort. They huddled together until they came to an end closed off by a tapestry of thorny vines and green globes bobbing on stems bent with their weight. The globes bobbed toward Cain, and their subtle slits peeled back to the stems, revealing what looked like red eyes that danced and glowed. As one bobbed toward Jacob, he cried out and shuffled back. Mason let them brush against him and seemed comfortable enough, but the others swatted at them when they came near.
Cain: The Story of the First Murder and the Birth of an Unstoppable Evil Page 21
