In The Beginning

by Richard Webber

  Chapter Fifty Six

  The next six months dragged by. Kalou and I stayed occupied with the administration of the capital and travel to neighboring cities to visit family and perform official duties. I made a few trips to the south into the middle of the nation, but did not go to the far southern cities. I felt as if I was waiting for the next stage of my life to begin, and it frustrated me. I did not like to wait.

  There was no real planning necessary for the trip to the east. The Nephilim always travelled light, normally carrying only weapons and a small pack containing a cloak and minimal food and water. My plan was simple; start in the far north and travel south through the entire land.

  Dependent upon the number of people we found and where they lived, our trip could be long and arduous, or it could be relatively brief. The Nephilim could travel quickly, but we had to cover all the territory, since we knew that in the past numerous individuals had left the main village and lived in the countryside. Those people could be good or evil, and we would need to find every one of them and uncover their intentions.

  Any and all villages would need to be taken and every citizen interviewed and judged. I alone would evaluate those that desired to become law-abiding citizens in my kingdom. Any that I judged to be good would come to live in the Western lands, where they would be trained in our language and way of life.

  All those people I deemed to be evil would be killed. This was a harsh decision that would need to be made, but one that was necessary. I knew from experience in our own land that if evil people were allowed to live, their evil would fester and grow, poisoning the cities and the people.

  Sadly, it is and always will be impossible to eliminate evil. All people will sin, no matter how hard we try not to, because we are human. Everyone has the capacity to do both good and evil, and the option to choose to do right or wrong, and even the very best people sometimes choose to do the wrong things. In the East I would not be searching for the essentially good people that had made the normal, human, bad decisions that led to sin, but the people that had freely chosen and embraced a life of evil.

  My first trip to the east had been a journey of exploration and adventure, and on my second trip I had been focused on finding the village, so my memories of geographic details were vague. Even so, I remembered the land as a very good place with abundant water and wide meadows and rich forests teeming with game. The only negative was the wide, waterless plains of grass which began at the great river. This grassland combined with the river to separate my people from the rich, habitable areas.

  It was on my second trip that I realized the grasslands were actually a barrier that had been placed by God to keep the people of the east from returning to our land, and to keep us from joining them.

  On our coming journey I wanted to find the best locations for new cities; sites with abundant water for drinking, fishing and farming, as well as plentiful wood and stone for building. If it could be done, I hoped to establish the first city in the east opposite my capital city of Enoch. I hoped the location of the first city could be at a narrow section of the grassland, in order to shorten the travel across the grassland from the river.

  Travel from the river to the new cities would be the greatest difficulty. Once the cities were established they would be self-supporting, and there would not need to be a great deal of travel across the grassland. But of course, there would always need to be some interaction between the people on both sides of the river, lest the two areas become separate and estranged from each other.

  The problem with travelling across the plains was the lack of water. To move any large number of people and animals across those plains we would need a lot of water, water that was not there. At this point I didn’t know how we would carry the amount of water that would be needed, and I hoped that on our coming journey someone in my family would be able to discover a solution.

  My plan was to start by establishing one large ferry service across the river that would be a safe and secure way for goods, people and animals to cross. I knew it would be difficult, but I did not think it would be impossible to set up a ferry. Next we would build one main road which ran directly east from the great river to the location of the first city. We would need to build guest houses along the road for travelers to rest every night, and those guest houses would need water. Over time other cities would spread from the first city to the north and the south along the range of mountains. I had complete faith that with the great minds of my family working on the problems, answers to the challenges of obtaining water and building the ferry, the guest houses, and the road would be found.