Crematorium for Phoenixes

by Nikola Yanchovichin

  Housed created by layers and layers of mud also stood empty, waiting just as a part of the desert, another century to grind into powder what they were made of. There were also shops in which only wooden workbenches stood, as well as public buildings and a mosque. It was covered up, but still maintained its height, home for now only the desert birds and perhaps some spirit that over time will mix with the wind and disappear completely.

  “My God, what happened here?” whispered one man after another, while their footsteps echoed in space.

  Several wells, the reason for the existence of this city, were topped over and only their wooden lids remained, as if a child had tried to shut out something that was crawling out of there.

  Now, only the almighty heat remained here.

  The men did not give any more calls. They were concerned that someone was there.

  Hareth was founded by the outcasts from every tribe of criminals. They had found in the desert a water source with which to survive and so over generations they had changed their livelihood—from dishonest to honest, again to dishonest, changing as the case dictated by the wilderness.

  After going through most of the streets, they stopped over at one shaded market.

  “Maybe, after taking water from the wells, we should again go back and try again to pass the sands with the chance that it will cost us our lives.”

  But this was not a choice.

  “What should we do?” asked Victor Drake.

  “You should say it. I think that we have passed more than reason itself has put as limits.”

  “You are right. Sometimes someone wants too much from somebody else, wanting to be a lover or to go along with him. But the quest for meaning, even in the dark, is the goal of every person.

  “For the latter, let’s check in the center. There we may encounter something, a document, perhaps, to clarify to some extent what has happened.”

  And they left.

  The dizzying heat warmed everything to such an extent that it seemed the very building blocks were vibrating with it.

  The streets almost swayed under the narrow perception. There was a feeling that the Earth would return all the dead, which would then be taken to the courts held between the dead and alive.

  Fortunately, the local center was not far away. Actually it was just a few hundred steps in terms of distance.

  Dug like a tunnel, with nearly scalloped ornaments circling around the town, it seemed to have been used as an acropolis or last line of defense that sheltered the residents in impenetrable red.

  The entrance—a huge round stone—resembled a tomb than a place that is used for public purposes.

  “How can we get in there?” asked one of them.

  “Well, somehow we will move the stone.”

  This “somehow” was really a couple of minutes of pushing, with all the men straining their muscles enough to eventually reveal a gap that was sufficient for a man to pass through.

  “Come on, get it over with,” said Victor Drake. He was the first to slip in.

  The others followed his example.

  A few moments after the last man had slipped in, the vibrating of solid stone was heard.

  Only the narthex shuddered and the hole became a small slit.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The sound of the surf disclosed the location of the tiny island of Emzo, quiet as a crab and crouched amidst the waves of the South China Sea. With his primitive headlight system he was flashing like a darkening star among the waves.

  Several boats complete with their catches were harvesting in the south, directed by their primitive but highly effective fans.

  Among them, or rather bypassing them, was a small sampan, a sight that wasn’t seen very often—not so far from the coast of Southeast Asia.

  Many of the local fishermen thought that it was a vessel far from home, but no one was curious enough to give time to consider it. Their work, the threat of sudden storms, and Javanese pirates who attacked everyone regardless of their size and importance distracted them for further curiosity.

  Therefore, this vessel was moving in its own direction, which according to elementary navigation would not have passed today’s Cambodia.

  Of course, in this area they were already far, far away, which would not seem feasible for this type of vessel, so thoughts about its misguided route seemed legit.

  They were such ships, though rarely ever seen, from the large states in Mesopotamia as well, which usually served for trade further north. These exchanges were staged in the water and even sought to follow the coastline.

  There were some attempts, it goes without being said, but they were rare and usually created more headaches than good, excepting what a few chroniclers managed.

  Maybe the load of the boat, consisting mainly of salted bacon and water, would say something else since it clarified who was willing to eat it.

  Those people were Takeshi, Akuma, and the others.

  They were there after the events on the island of Okinawa, changing from one vessel to another. They went from island to island, covered lines and lines from winds, and only one who has been around the China seas would understand them.

  Typhoons, days of wind, painful hunger, and full sail allowed them to travel among the hundred thousand fleets sprinkled like flames in the mists. All of that they were experiencing as everything become simple life—day after day.

  Everything ended with an obstacle that started with another stop at the crowded islands of the Asian mainland. Stopped on a deserted, almost atoll island of Indonesia, they had passed their days as a broken wind blew from the bosom of the wizard.

  Now, heading northwest, it cannot seem strange to the reader how without any thought-out plan, just like that, the men were taken at random on the horizon.

  That is fact; it is not subject to dispute, but not all of the tale, dear friends, fits in the tiny frames of days. Because, above all, fate doesn’t spear the mud from which we actually built it or what we’re looking for, looking for truthfully in the day, in God, and in ourselves.

  Since the scattered islands curled like hair and the jade-green sea tables flared from heavenly sky, as if coming to give a part of it, maybe someone saw through all of them and could answer that everything is a commandment written by the hand of God.

  And to the east, real life was following around as a veil of dreams without any past, present, and future.

  The sampan swelled feathered wings like a bat sails, while small islands or rather bitumen-black rocks bided their time as creatures’ heads appeared above the water line. Flocks of shearwaters merged with other birds and were flying like autumn leaves; a fish passed as melted silver had risen from the depths. Raindrops, remembrances of a loved one separated from us sprinkled themselves from the water, pointing out that perhaps in some other dimension we can be and still are not together.

  The heavens were stained like metal alloys: lead-gray, brownish mercury, copper-green, the horizon was opening and shutting its eyes. It missed only the whitish snowy mountain ranges, the cities that had been built on them, and of course, a story that infuses a little warmth in our hearts that are always cool.

  The water surfaces also changed their faces, thickened as an amalgam of bodily fluids—from pink to ruby red.

  They might even have added that in this world there are some things for which a man will be tossed into the depths not only of riches, but perhaps ultimately a part of their souls.

  The Indochinese peninsula was influenced by the Mekong and Irrawaddy, both of which was getting closer. They had been torn from the flesh of Asia as a chariot of the gods.

  Floating patches of seaweed, reminiscent of tracks from thistles and moss, seemed to channel the very direction and the fishing baskets. Therefore, they helped their walls like lower grown trees whispering forests secrets between them as magical creatures are waiting for fortune and adventure.

  The signs of civilization—antediluvian message columns (or simply put stone or wooden p
illars, which are recorded with visited dates) and small fires—preached of new lands.

  So, rather than the moments of time suggested, the coastline of Asia was nearby.

  ***

  The woods echoed with intensive human activity.

  Men planed wood with nails, removing its bark, while others were carrying such material and made ready to build new huts.

  A little further on the riverbank other workers were prepared. They had accustomed their feet with leaves and fastened around them crossed hoops with raffia to climb up to harvest palm gardens.

  And beyond them in the paddy fields, buffaloes trudged through their wooden yokes plows, while the shouts of plowmen could be heard. Behind them, their wives and children were fragmenting lumps in the muddy water with hoes.

  This picture was supplemented by the fishing shelters located along the river, which mended nets and dredged and supported indigenous canoes that were dragged to the river to become part of its traffic.

  Rice wine, husked rice, meat products (even dog meat), vegetables, and legumes and nuts were transported along the river—not counting the passengers, which included themselves in the construction of new farms.

  This could be seen by all sorts of outworlders: Chinese, Indians, and Burmese, who came along with the local people to get involved in building a territory that much later would be called Chenla, and much, much later, Kampuchea, and subsequently, Cambodia.

  As in a makeshift barge or rather a raft built into a hut, successive settlers paid to find their happiness, and why not say it, and often their doom in the jungle.

  Some of them were eating rice cooked out on the sand. Others who were poorer or were already fed were nudging rafts with sticks, while others rested on logs and straw mattresses.

  This group, sitting in a semicircle, was typical with its Mongoloid features. There were perhaps Japanese people who had surrounded an Aryan one. Those who caused confusion apparently came from distant Persia, as representatives of this nation where they were considered occultists and bringing in their new religious, bent in fragility that still existed in their beliefs such as totemism and fire worshiping. That’s why a lot of eyes were focused on this man.

  He did not respond, and apparently other things engaged him and his companions. They were tucked into what they were discussing. It was something in a language that was completely different from the structure of the locals.

  When asked what they do, they answered that they were healers, which did not prevent them from engaging in small transactions such as the exchange of writing with Chinese judges who they fed and transferred, among other things, on a raft with others who was moving between the thresholds of the river.

  They, as you might have anticipated, thoughtful reader, were Takeshi, Akuma, and the others. They had slacked off course, which we will discuss.

  Perhaps, reader, you have passed the days yet you felt that the world is at a crossroads that will divide a part of ourselves and others.

  And all we will have left is a few tears, a memory, and the steps ahead.

  Exactly as in the confines of the East, many men find new opportunities.

  And backed by little more than an idea and a little less than an oath, their journey ended, they found the convenience of a new life.

  Takeshi gave them the means to start from scratch and now in Chenla the group was much less than it had been originally.

  The river was winding through the inundated mangrove forests.

  Large barges, loaded with wood, used the natural course and descended to the sea, guided by the ferrymen, who, heated from the work and tropical heat, were stripped naked to the waist. They wore just the typical broad straw hat.

  Junks moored near overgrown reed banks and were more commonly used for floating homes. Flora was kindled to release new farmland.

  Pontoon jetties, bottleneck traffic, shoals, islands of silt, and sandy hair, all of these things also changed with the seasons and the rising and outgoing tides.

  Large vessels with oars, with the rhythm of drums, carried blocks of cut sandstone. They were often the measurers of time as well.

  As far as they knew (and they had traveled there), several tens of kilometers up there were degenerate temple complexes, whose scale and splendor would not let man simply pass by.

  Towers, surrounded by almost crucified human statues were rising tens of meters high. They were speechless in breath, pointed west, and blended their lines as delicate snowflakes.

  This exercise, undertaken in principle, was not so backward, but still did not reach a level of development possible, at least not in this historical epoch. Suspicions aroused in the men, so that they would, for better or for worse, finally execute the Apollyon Project.

  The local tribes were recently interest in the generations before and their hunting and gathering. They enhanced these riddles and had suddenly shown talent in sculpture and large-scale construction; land surveying took all the savvy that looks with supernatural origin.

  Many of the boats that traveled also went there to be hired, so that the group used the opportunity and managed to convince some who already had relatives there to flow into this stream.

  And so, saddled with specific equipment for elephants, they swayed along the coast, leading one another with trunks, bringing new supplies, and beating new paths to the new focal center.

  Meanders of the river turned and merged with the sky. Flocks of birds descended over thousands of gold veins in the water, hoping to perhaps grab something from the almost indistinctive hatcheries and shrimp farms.

  In this piece of beauty one can see a memory, depending on what it is you seek. Perhaps the most beautiful things in this world: God or a loved one.

  Therefore, the raft was moving among aquatic thresholds to stop at a home for a small pile of support.

  And with a bit of strain, as we see fit, the novelists were overcoming several dozen kilometers that were dotted with submerged logs in the water. Here and there marsh vegetation could be seen, and there were larger settlements covered by rope bridges and larger buildings. All of this was surrounded by clouds of bamboo standing like an anthill, and before him, standing on the borders of the construction, the men waited to enter.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Several altars were red with dried and caked blood. Pieces of skinned leather had been glued on the ground, covered with a thin layer of ash; they were stacked like grease fat.

  Everything fit to be used for combustion in the vicinity was gone, leaving only the hills covered with their anemic turf. They looked like burial mounds.

  Indeed, the residue of horse collars, torn pieces of cloth that could be either a cloth or armor, and children’s blankets and the rusty scabbards of swords could be seen here and there, as if left by an ancient battle or rite.

  Among the decay—like the hands of denuded branches, moved a small group that had just rested their bulky backpacks.

  “Let us have patience. It is hardly far,” said one of them.

  “Good,” answered the rest.

  A man rolled up his sleeves. Tattoos moved up in his arm like smoke.

  It was Tammuz, leading, of course, the others.

  Passing almost all of Israel, they were headed east, looking for those whose fate were intertwined with theirs.

  It is difficult, reader, to explain our relationships with others and why this fellowship had done everything they had here.

  Because associated with memories, one sometimes wonders whether or not forgetting meeting someone would be the better option.

  Because it hurts like a finished world without outputs.

  Earth’s frequency and dimples become more frequent. Sacrificial altars, do, too.

  Something that has long been worshiped now lay in oblivion; it was undistinguishable whether this was good or bad.

  There was no guidance—just the products of a long-forgotten cemetery or crematorium.

  “At least we have something to eat,” they said, trying
to refresh themselves.

  And yes, they had pieces and pieces of dried meat and rusks, sufficient for distances away.

  But they weren’t hungry.

  Their throats were tight with the bitterness that preceded the memory of sin produces.

  From time to time, they were finding something interesting stuck between the rocks. Sometimes they were dotted with an ornamental sword that was intact, as if it had just been knitted by the reds of armor, or even the entrance of the tomb, which has been kept secret from the time of its being sealed.

  But more often, as it happened, all they found were iron pieces or memorial stones that no longer resembled anything.

  “How much?” a man asked in a roundabout way.

  “I do not know, but I doubt it is far,” he responded with that firmness by which small things were actually supported. “According to the rumors that you heard yourself, those who suggested what we seek need to collect in these places.”

  And the shedding land, scratchy as a gilded vessel has changed into another and created spaces of burned grass that has no end. And if there were such, it would flow into the deserts of Mesopotamia after the spinning of several Earth axes.

  There would be just an area devoid of even birds and clouds, sky and land, with its saturated colors

  Only a few dugouts—or just flaps over tufts of grass that had been diluted for miles in the distance—showed that there still had to be someone who had not been lost here.

  Rather, they, like small mining towns, were more frequent and were cutting the baboons, creating the feeling that at any moment, like a broken spell, the area would be bustling with people and animals.

  Alternately, hidden among almost flat surfaces, they were merging with it in color due to passage of time or due to the skill of the designers, or perhaps because of both.

  “Easy, we will get there,” said Tammuz, laboring from the several hours he felt weak but still led a great multitude. “We just have to persevere.”