REGENESIS

by D. Scott Dickinson

  True, they are empathetic, caring, selfless, utterly devoted to their parents and to the furry bipeds who share their frontier community.

  But none of the sons shows any inclination for or interest in leadership.

  While all are curious, none exhibits the lust for decision-making and ambition for power that distinguish those who lead others in his former world. And he wonders if, when the mantle of responsibility passes to them, they are tough and assertive enough to succeed and prosper in this one.

  It is a concern Davina does not share. Like mothers everywhere, she sees only perfection in her sons’ loving nature. Unburdened by the presumptions and preconceptions her mate has carried from another world, she sees no flaws in their seven sons and is confident they will rise to every challenge.

  Noah cannot foresee the fateful event that will allay his concerns. It will confer an empowerment as old as the age of kings, when anxious monarchs employed an eminently practical means of ensuring their legacy to a reluctant prince whose throne was thrust upon him.

  But that is a future yet to come.

  Physically, every son is like every other—tall, lithe, remarkable specimens of grace and elegance. They have their mother’s wide eyes and long limbs but in all other respects are the mirror-image of their father.

  Adolescents no longer, all seven wear the full beard of their father and the men of their mother’s people. And all share their parents’ curious nature and scientific temperament. But it is to their mother alone they owe their peculiar facility with language and their ready fluency in every tongue, thought or spoken.

  Growing up, they divided their time between helping to sow and cultivate the fields, accompanying Noah and Davina on their frequent journeys of scientific discovery and playing games with their furry companions.

  It was in the prosecution of children’s games Noah first noticed his sons’ preference for collaboration over competition.

  He vividly recalls the jumping matches the seven sons engaged in with the bipeds. They were able to leap so much higher than his sons that it quickly became no contest. Then, the game became: How much farther could the furry bipeds jump with the help of the boys. Teaming up, it became a competition between mixed pairs rather than boys versus furry bipeds.

  While he admires their spirit of cooperation, he continues to wonder if they have the brazenness and audacity to compete in a world that will test their resilience and self-reliance.

  The journeys of exploration have strengthened the bond between Noah and Davina and their sons in ways labor in the community fields could not. They have been a welcome diversion and opportunity for the family to interact solely with one another, apart from the familiarity of their sea-side home and their furry friends.

  These shared experiences of discovery have forged a special, unique relationship steeped in wonder and learning. Together, Noah, Davina and their seven sons have begun compiling an extensive taxonomy—organism by organism—of the exotic land-dwelling fauna and flora of this renascent planet.

  All the boys have become expert in use of the long, supple lances after the fashion of their mother’s people and, as they approach maturity, are ranging increasingly farther afield on adventures of their own. In these, they are often accompanied by the furry bipeds, and the journeys often take them to the Great Northern Fens.

  A vast marshland of flood, low grasses, bogs and quicksand, the fens have yielded an astonishing abundance of strange and diverse organisms to add to their growing taxonomy of life on the planet.

  Noah and Davina exult in their sons’ passion for discovery and interest in scientific knowledge. And their mastery of the lance along with the lethal defenses of the furry bipeds have allayed all concern for their safety.

  Meanwhile, the frontier community has grown by more than the seven sons. The furry bipeds have added to their number as well. Every seed sown in their common fields has fruited and multiplied. As every member of the small community contributes to the labor that cultivates and maintains them.

  To Noah’s surprise, their furry neighbors took to the plant-based foodstuffs almost immediately. After the first harvest, their leader took his first tentative taste of the ripe fruits which grew on the vines—and it was love at first bite.

  While the band’s hunters continue to stalk the finned creatures of the sea, their diet has been enriched with the fruits and grains of the bountiful fields they help tend.

  Noah, Davina and their sons live in perfect harmony with their furry neighbors. Noah’s family respects and celebrates the furry bipeds’ culture and ways; the furry bipeds respect and celebrate theirs.

  While Noah’s family dwells in the roofed structure they built atop the sea-side cliff, the furry bipeds occupy a series of connected caves carved into its face by ancient seas.

  And the massive stone stairway between bluff and shore connects them both.

  Momentarily distracted from his musings, Noah sees his sons sporting again with their furry companions. This time, it is a race. And all are laughing at the improbable antics of the slower bipeds as they vainly try to catch Adam and his brothers.

  Their father smiles wryly at the gleeful display, reminded of his first journey with the band. Of their inability to match his sprint-speed. And of his inability to match their marathon-endurance on the long journey across a world.

  But agitation draws him back into the silent solitude of his own thoughts. Oblivious once more to the beauty and joy around him.

  Pregnant with the promise of life-giving rain, the pearl-like clouds scudding past Cosmos overhead accentuate the tranquility and serenity of this perfect place.

  Yet, Noah is troubled by the anxiety that haunted him on his journey across a world with his remarkable mate. It is the gnawing uncertainty that all the effort they have invested in building a future here will come to naught.

  For they cannot perpetuate their race—and the promise of a new world—when the next generation is boys only!

  Looking skyward for inspiration, he wonders:

  Will our Adam have no Eve?

  The answer to that question is beginning to unfold a world away.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Mei-o-Peia’s world is starkly defined by the Life Source.

  It crashes down from the heights of the towering cone-mountains.

  It flows in racing rapids across the land.

  It pools into large lakes that dapple the lush green landscape near and far.

  And it laps up on the white beaches of her island home.

  It is the only world her people have ever known, and the Life Source yields an abundance making this the only world they will ever have to know.

  The great reef encircles her island like an iron shackle, its unbroken length shielding the land within from the wrath of a turbulent and angry sea. Binding the people to an insular existence from which none need, nor dare, venture into the wider world beyond. While the lee reach of ocean within the reef forms a placid lagoon, vast sucking whirlpools eddy around its outer rim. Spinning away into the vast ocean beyond.

  Mei-o-Peia is a young female in an island culture dominated by females. Isolated by the great ocean whose towering waves crash against the protective reef and sweep away to join the endless march of the sea.

  Hers is a land of many villages.

  All dominated by the females.

  All huddled against the base of the towering cone-mountains.

  And all bound together by universal acceptance of their world as it is.

  The island people are an incurious lot. Their ancient lore keeps them close to the cone-mountains and forbids forays beyond the reef. They eschew the challenges and hardships which alone hone the edge of wonder, critical thinking and adaptability.

  Theirs is a bountiful world. Providing for all their needs. Free from scarcity or want.

  Only Mei-o-Peia and her sisters wonder what lies beyond the watery turbulence on the outer edge of the reef.

  Only Mei-o-Peia and her sisters are c
onsumed with curiosity about that wider world.

  And only Mei-o-Peia and her sisters dare defy their people’s taboo against venturing there.

  They are seven against the rest, but they are committed to a course that will shake the community to its complacent core. Theirs is a secret that will shock a community resistant to change.

  But their secret is not the only source of the gathering storm!

  The cone-mountains are becoming restless.

  Only in their most ancient, largely forgotten lore have the islanders heard tales of quaking mountains and moving earth. Tales airily dismissed as apocryphal, contradicted daily by the predictably quiet mountains and reliably still earth they have known for generations beyond memory.

  Even the shaman, wisest of the eldest women of the village, has proclaimed the shivering of the mountains and the rumbling of the ground to be hallucinations called up by the Earth Spirit to test the faith of the people.

  For her part, Mei-o-Peia is buying none of it.

  Earth Spirit, indeed!

  She has eyes and legs, and they both observe and feel the gentle shaking of the ground beneath her feet. She has ears, and they can hear the soft growling of the rumbling slopes above her head.

  These are no manifestations of the Earth Spirit, she senses; they are the whispered warnings of approaching calamity. Calamity she is resolved to spare her sisters from.

  While the people place their faith in the shaman, Mei-o-Peia and her sisters will place theirs in the Life Source. Whose benevolence has embraced and perpetuated their race for time beyond reckoning. It has ever sustained their island existence and, like Moses, she and her sisters will be cast adrift in its elemental embrace.

  As the others have slept, the seven sisters have crept into the darkness of the jungle on a singular mission: to build a craft that will float and bear them over the reef and into the ocean beyond.

  While her people have small fishing platforms of reeds bound together by twine, the sisters know they are too shallow and fragile to use beyond the placid reach of water between shore and reef. And they have devised an ingenious craft they hope will be sturdy enough to carry them across the violent sea.

  The women elders of the village have long remarked Mei-o-Peia’s odd skepticism of things long accepted and understood. They seem never to tire of criticizing her refusals to accept the things that are or of warning her against pursuing her questioning ways to mischievous ends.

  That is why the seven sisters have labored in secrecy. And why they are determined to venture beyond the reef and into a wider world.

  This is a special day, and the sisters slip away from their sleeping village filled with high hopes, great expectations and heavy satchels bulging with nutritious foods and empty gourds awaiting the sweet water that will fill them.

  The sturdy craft is ready, and it lies concealed beneath a fringe of vegetation overhanging a hidden river where it empties into the lagoon.

  The craft itself is constructed of long, segmented, hollow reeds bound together with strong twine in the fashion of her people’s fishing platforms. But unlike those flat, open floating platforms, this has seamless, fibrous sides of the same construction that curl upward to a vine-reinforced rib of heavy, dense reeds. Closing them at the top.

  Detachable fibrous mats seal small openings at each end of the craft. The only way in. And the only way out.

  The interior of the strange craft contains seven sleeping-mats, elevated on supple ribs of wood fashioned from the strong limbs of nearby trees. There are wicker containers lashed to the inside walls for storage of food and water gourds, evenly spaced to ensure proper weight distribution and over-all balance.

  Beneath the ribs are stored many long, sharp-pointed fishing lances, of the sort their people use to spear fish, as well as extra frond-flanged poles for steering and propelling the craft, coiled lengths of twine and many useful things.

  Filling their water gourds from the river, seven feline forms disappear through the mat at one end of the craft as a long pole emerges to push it away from the bank. The river’s swift current propels the craft across the lagoon and over the reef.

  Into the turbulent ocean beyond.

  The bobbing craft is quickly grasped by a whirlpool, bearing it away from the reef and into the near ocean current.

  The tightly spinning eddy presents the first mortal challenge on this voyage into the unknown sea.

  And the seven sisters are prepared!

  Thrusting the frond-flanged poles through the coarse weave of their craft’s sloping sides, they perform a carefully choreographed symphony of motion they have rehearsed many times in the dead of night on the placid lagoon.

  The effort is arduous and lengthy, the work of many uncertain hours, as the sisters struggle against the centripetal force of the swirling eddy and the strong drag of fierce currents bearing it away from the reef. They wonder now if they possess the strength and endurance to overcome an unyielding resistance they did not experience in the still water within the reef.

  But the craft responds admirably as the frond blades bite deeply into the gyrating cone of water, propelling it to the outer bands of the whirlpool and into the ocean swells hurrying away from the reef.

  On Mei-o-Peia’s command, the sisters withdraw their poles, fatigued but thankful their effort was up to the critical task of freeing their craft from the lethal embrace of the maelstrom. Moving in the slow motion of those who are exhausted to the outer limit of endurance, the seven sisters carefully position their sleep-mats and collapse on the craft’s elevated ribs.

  Their slumber is uninterrupted by the streams of astral light flowing in between the wicker fibers of their craft, resolving themselves into the figure of a silver maiden.

  The glow of her hovering form does not pierce their heavy eyelids.

  The vibrations of her soft whisper do not resonate in their ears.

  Yet, the message she bears registers in the twilight of their dreams. To be recalled at a later place and time. When they are called upon to help remake the world.

  The maiden speaks through the eloquence of her silence:

  Sleep well, brave ones! For when next you rise, you will awaken to a cataclysm of such horror and finality you truly will be orphans of a lesser world cast adrift on a wild and trackless sea.

  Fear not, brave ones! For I shall be protection against the hazards of this sea.

  Rejoice, brave ones! For you shall be the maidens of a new and hopeful world. Whose future shall spring from the fruit of your loins.

  These things I promise!

  These things shall be!

  Her message done, the Earth-Spirit drifts away into starlight. As the very heavens look kindly down upon the seven who are in her favor.

  And a hush falls over the world.

  Expectant.

  Watchful.

  Awaiting the promise she vows will come.

  BOOK 3. EOS RISING

  Exhausted by their persistent struggle fending off the sucking whirlpools, the seven sisters sleep soundly this first night on the open ocean. The easy motion of a calm sea rocks them gently in their wicker cradle as it propels them ever farther from the island of cone-mountains.

  They do not suspect the horrific scene that will greet them when they awaken.

  Mei-o-Peia is first to rise. She silently parts the wicker next to her starboard berth to view the reassuring presence of the homeland they are leaving.

  She is met by the first rays of a single sun, rising alone. The absence of its twin is an unpleasant omen. Fraught with foreboding. A portent of evil in the air.

  The cold light reveals no cone-mountains!

  Only columns of steam billowing skyward in a series of tephra jets. Now too distant to hear distinctly. Like serpents’ breath, their hissing explosions rise from the violent clash of angrily escaping lava with the waiting sea.

  The first daughter’s heart sinks as the distant columns rise from the sea. She does not know they are the funeral
pyre of her island people. But she does fear in her heavy heart that the disappearance of the cone-mountains is a sign of the end-time her mother, the village shaman, warned would come.

  As she stares in horrid fascination, a great plume of pyroclastic cloud begins moving slowly in her direction, also off the starboard beam of the tiny craft. Great streaks of flame within the cloud create a pulsing glow.

  It is a lightning-limned inferno of toxic gas and ash, leaving only destruction and death of everything in its wake.

  But the eeriest aspect of the throbbing lightning is its utter silence. No sound of thunder betrays its menacing approach.

  Suddenly, the wicker craft is pelted with a hail of volcanic spherules—small orbs of glass formed from the ash particulate by the superheated lightning. But the tightly-knit fibers in the roof of the craft repel the raining spherules and muffle their impacts to a barely audible thrum.

  As quickly as it began, the volcanic thunderstorm ceases, and the towering plume of ash begins to dissipate into wispy tendrils of black and gray as it draws back away from the craft.

  Leaping to her feet, Mei-o-Peia races to the port side . . . then fore . . . and finally aft. Where she sees . . .

  Nothing!

  Only empty ocean marching in swells away from the rising sun.

  Waking her sisters, she gathers them starboard to view the shocking spectacle of towering columns of white cloud rising from the ocean off in the distance. Still wondering what it means.

  All she can be certain of is that their cone-mountain island is gone!

  She does not know the cataclysm struck in the night.

  She does not know the cone-mountains all imploded as one, suddenly and completely.

  She does not know the island she called home is a vast, magma-filled caldera whose walls even now are collapsing into the sea.

  And she does not know she and her sisters are all that remain of their island civilization.