The Gift

by Bryan M. Litfin

  Teo dreaded the departure. The finality of departing without Ana was a burden he could hardly endure. To leave these shores was to end a chapter of his life—the phase during which Ana had journeyed alongside him. With a heavy heart, Teo rose from his hammock and opened the footlocker he had been assigned. Among his belongings were the books he had placed in a leather satchel. The sight of the original copy of the Sacred Writing that he and Ana had recovered from the ancient temple stabbed Teo with grief, so he quickly set it aside. Flipping open the Prima, he began to thumb its pages, looking for a hymn that would speak to the emptiness he felt in his soul. He was too weak to rage against Deu anymore; now all he wanted was the comforting presence of the Eternal One.

  Instead of a hymn, the divine pages fell open to the book of Jérémie. Reluctantly yet irresistibly, Teo found himself turning to the twenty-ninth chapter. Although he knew the words would pierce his heart, he let his eyes come to rest on his translation of verses 11–14: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Eternal One, ‘plans for peace and not misfortune, in order to give you a future and a hope. You will invoke me and will go away. You will pray to me, and I will grant your request. You will seek me and find me if you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Eternal One, ‘and I will bring back your captives. I will gather you out of all the lands and all the places where I have driven you away,’ declares the Eternal One, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from which I have made you go into captivity.’”

  Teo’s mind reverted, as he knew it would, to the day he and Ana made the decision to cross the mountains and leave Chiveis behind. Ana had grieved the loss of her beloved home. In that difficult moment, Deu had led them to the passage in Jérémie 29. When Ana first heard the holy words, she claimed them as a special message from heaven. At the moment of her greatest trial, when the Eternal One asked her to relinquish her parents and her people and her land, Ana had trusted Deu’s plans and obeyed him. “I can walk whatever path he lays before me,” she had said. And then she did. Through the wilderness. Over the mountains. To Ulmbartia. To Likuria.

  All the way to death.

  Teo brooded on the word death. Such a quiet word—silent and dark and ominous, like a graveyard at midnight. Its quietness came from its resolute will. Once death made up its mind and imposed its permanent sentence, nothing could ever change it. Never in the history of the world had death’s steadfast decree been defeated.

  Tears came at last to Teo, and because they had been suppressed for so long they came in abundance. He had tried to deny the truth, or rage against it, but it was no use anymore. He finally admitted he had to release his hold on Ana. Sadness engulfed him, the deep sadness that only the bereaved can know. Teo’s emotional reservoir had been filled beyond capacity by a sea of grief. Now the dam broke, and the waters came flooding out. Utterly overcome, he fell to his knees and wept in his cabin aboard the ship that would separate him from Ana forever.

  O Deu! Why did this have to happen? Teo groaned as he ran to the porthole. The coastline of Likuria was already far away. “No! No! No!” he cried. Though he knew repeating the agonized word wouldn’t change anything, he felt the urge to negate a catastrophe of such incredible magnitude. This can’t be happening! I wanted to take Ana with me to Roma! We were supposed to discover the book together! Then we would go home . . . her parents would embrace their only daughter . . . Chiveis would turn to Deu!

  This is all wrong!

  I thought our lives were bound together!

  Teo pounded the hull of the ship, gagging and choking as he wept. Bitter regret gnawed at him. He couldn’t understand how things had gone so far astray.

  “I miss you, Ana!” he cried to the strip of land receding in the ship’s wake. “I miss you so much! I miss your face . . . your voice . . . your pure heart! I never told you how I really feel!” O my God, it hurts!

  Teo’s voice dissolved as sobs wracked his body. Through burning tears he stared across the water until the land disappeared.

  “I’ll always love you, Anastasia of Edgeton,” he whispered.

  Always!

  CHAPTER

  11

  On the little island of Hahnerat the pale man slipped his sailboat into the water under the light of a gibbous moon. It was better to travel by night, Drake believed. The sun was hot during the day, beating down on his fair skin. Recently he had developed lesions on his face and arms, which he attributed to the harsh sunlight. Some of the lesions bled from time to time. They fascinated him. He picked at the scabs often.

  Drake made the forty-league trip to his destination in about five hours. During the quiet moonlit journey a dark anticipation began to take hold of him. It had been too long since he had enjoyed any companionship on the lonely island. Gazing at the cliffs that rose from the sea, Drake felt saliva gather in his mouth. Soon he would have the secret pleasure of another companion, the kind he liked best.

  Dead.

  There’s something about a corpse, Drake mused, his heartbeat quickening. So peaceful and compliant . . .

  A few years ago his strange fetish had found a convenient outlet. The court officials in Manacho wanted to hire a non-citizen for a dirty job: emptying the oubliette of its grisly remains. Word was slipped to a pirate vessel, but no man was willing to take such an accursed assignment. However, the sailors knew the right person to ask. The next time they visited the remote island of Hahnerat for resupply, they informed Drake of the “opportunity.”

  Drake made a meager living by managing supplies for the pirates who plied the Likurian sea. He kept accurate records of what items had been left by various ships: extra rigging, nonperishable foodstuffs, kegs to be filled with fresh water, miscellaneous odds and ends. In exchange for his careful stewardship, Drake was allowed a little food on which to sustain himself. It was a good arrangement, one that suited his reclusive personality in all ways except one: he had to leave the island to satisfy his twisted hunger. Graveyards were too often guarded by dogs, but the opportunity mentioned by the pirates had provided a perfect solution. The people of Manacho were fond of their regular executions. They didn’t know, or care, what happened afterward to the bodies in the oubliette.

  Pirate gossip had brought news of a recent capital offense, so once again Drake approached the oubliette with the rigging system he had invented. He maneuvered the sailboat as close to the cliffs as he dared, then dropped his heavy anchor and made certain its hold was secure. As the sun breasted the eastern horizon he slid into the water and began to swim. A line attached to his waist trailed back to a winch on the boat. He carried a fisherman’s net in a compact bundle on his back. A pulley dangled from his belt.

  Reaching the base of the cliff, Drake slipped from the sea and worked his way up the climbing rope. It was secured to one of several pitons he had hammered into the rock face above. When he arrived at the entrance to the shaft, Drake attached the fisherman’s net to pitons so the webbing loosely covered the opening, then clipped the pulley above it. A line ran over the pulley, connecting the net to the winch on the boat. With his rigging in place, Drake began to ascend the clean-out tunnel.

  When the shaft became vertical he reached into a cubbyhole and removed a candle lantern and matchbox. Soon the lantern’s yellow flame illuminated the space beneath the floor of the oubliette. The body of Anastasia of Chiveis, the woman executed for regicide, would be on the other side. It won’t be long now, Drake thought as he crawled into an alcove. Soon you’ll have her. Until then, focus on the task at hand.

  Squatting as he reached for the trapdoor above him, Drake noticed something strange: the iron beam that supported the door was missing. Instead the trapdoor was held shut by a piece of wood wedged into the jamb. Drake worked it back and forth until it was loose, then yanked it out. The door dropped open with a bang, and the woman’s corpse tumbled down the incline along with a length of rope. But as the woman flew past, an unexpected sound nearly knocked Drake from his perch.


  The woman uttered a delirious cry!

  The wheels of Drake’s mind began to spin. In the past the criminals had always died by the time he retrieved their bodies. But this time Anastasia’s execution must have been delayed for some reason. The woman had apparently been dropped into the shaft only recently—a matter of hours, not days—and so she was still alive.

  Interesting . . .

  As he considered the matter, Drake decided it would be fun to toy with his new companion for a few days while life remained in her. The feral cats on Hahnerat often enjoyed a little sport before devouring the mice they captured. It would be no different with Anastasia of Chiveis. She would provide some entertainment until he was ready for his deviant enjoyment. Chuckling, Drake blew out the lantern and began to ease down the shaft by the notches he had carved.

  At the shaft’s entrance the woman lay tangled in the net, moaning and disoriented. When Drake released the net from the pitons, it closed around his victim like a drawstring bag. The line went taut as she dangled from the pulley. One leg extended awkwardly from the net, and her shoe dropped from her foot into the ocean. Drake descended the climbing rope and swam to the winch on his boat. He lowered the woman until she lay in a heap on a boulder protruding from the water. Occasional movements within the net signaled she was alive.

  Drake scaled the cliff again and removed his pulley. Returning to his boat, he dragged in the net and hauled the woman over the gunwale. Her brief immersion in the ocean seemed to have revived her, for she sputtered and gasped on the planks, though her words were incoherent. Drake opened the net to take a good look at her. Her hair was ragged in the back, and her sackcloth tunic was threadbare. She wore only one shoe. Manacles bound her wrists, and a cross-shaped amulet hung around her neck. Drake snatched the necklace from her. Opening a flask, he poured water down the woman’s throat. She gulped it, then gagged and coughed.

  “Do you believe you are alive, Anastasia of Chiveis?”

  The woman held her forehead, trying to shake free of her delirium. “Who . . . what . . .”

  “You may be out of the hole, but you are still dead,” Drake taunted. “In a few days you will lie still. Then you’ll be mine.”

  The woman’s eyelids fluttered, and she took a deep breath. She seemed to become more aware of her surroundings, though she was still confused. Drake rose from his seat at the rudder and retrieved a stone jar of gruel. A wooden spoon protruded from it. Drake hawked a wad of mucus, letting it dangle from his lips before it dropped into the pale, lumpy porridge. He mixed it in, then turned to Ana. “Perhaps you are hungry?” She nodded weakly, and he handed her the jar. Drake snickered as she wolfed it down.

  To the east, the sun had already climbed well above the horizon. Drake hoisted his sail and took a southwest heading. Soon he would be home with Anastasia, his new companion. He shivered at the pleasing thought of what the days to come would hold.

  The lash of the whip was like the sun overhead: merciless and unrelenting. The foreman brought it down for no apparent reason on the shoulders of the men who toiled to move a load of marble blocks down a rough track. It was dangerous work even without the threat of the whip. One misstep could make the sledge lurch, toppling its load of massive stones. The sledge was attached to hemp ropes that ran uphill around a pylon, then down to the strong arms of the “releasers.” As the men played out the line, the sledge skidded on top of slick wooden beams. Workers grabbed the beams from the rear of the sledge and brought them around front to be used again. It was a fine-tuned dance requiring perfect coordination. Unfortunately, the men performing the labor weren’t coordinated, so they perished in droves. A constant supply of new Defectives was needed to keep the quarry running.

  Sol wiped his forehead. Though nights in these mountains were cold, the glare of the sun made transporting the blocks hot, sweaty work. From dawn until dusk the team lowered sledges from the high marble quarry. Once in the valley, the stone would be transported to the sea a few leagues away. Eventually the material would adorn the beautiful palaces and temples of Likuria. No one there knew what a steep cost in human life had been paid to extract it—and if they had known, they wouldn’t have cared.

  The labor continued until the sun went down and no more work could be done. Sol followed the men back to their hovels, having eaten only a little bread and some raw vegetables at midday. His evening meal of thin soup wasn’t enough to satisfy his hunger, nor to replenish the energy he had expended on manual labor. Many of the Defectives succumbed quickly to malnutrition in the quarries.

  After eating his meager portion of soup from a clay bowl, Sol grabbed his dirty blanket and collapsed on the floor of his hovel. He lay on his side, for his back still hurt from the hot irons that had been applied to his skin. He was ashamed to recall how quickly he had cracked under torture. Though he had been defiant at first, the agony of those red-hot brands was more than he could bear. He admitted his association with Teofil and Anastasia, divulging their belief in the true God. Yet Sol prided himself on one thing: he had managed not to inform the shamans about the precious copies of the Old Testament. By breaking early and offering what seemed to be an ample confession, Sol had tricked the inquisitors into thinking they’d learned everything there was to know from him. It was a small victory, but one he cherished.

  As night fell and a chill descended, Sol found himself exhausted yet sleepless. The moon was covered by clouds, and the room was dark. A crowd of Defectives wheezed and snored around him. No one had a mattress, though some had woolen blankets. Others lay shivering and exposed each night, their coverings having been confiscated by the foremen as punishment for some supposed offense. One of those unfortunates lay next to Sol now, a blond-haired fellow who worked as a “releaser.” He was new to the team. Even in the gloom, Sol could see his eyes were open.

  “What’s the matter?” Sol whispered. “Can’t sleep in such luxury?”

  The man chuckled under his breath. “I’ve slept in better places, and sometimes in worse.”

  “Worse than this?”

  “I was a frontier scout back in Ulmbartia. A few of the nights I spent in the wilderness make this shack seem comfortable by comparison. At least I have four walls around me and no ice in my beard.”

  “What are you here for? I don’t see any defects on you.”

  The young man remained quiet for a long moment before answering. “They say my inclinations are . . . queer.” He paused again. “What about you?”

  “My religion is illegal. So I guess we’re both ‘defective’ in a manner other than physical.”

  “And for that we’re sentenced to death.”

  “We’re not dead yet, friend.”

  The blond man sat up on his elbow. “We’re as good as dead,” he declared flatly. “What hope is left? They’ll work us to death eventually. The only question is how long we’ll last in this rotten hell.”

  “We may die here,” Sol admitted, “or we may find deliverance. It’s hard to say what will occur.”

  “What makes you think there’s any hope of deliverance? The shamans are in charge of everything. They have absolute power.”

  Sol grimaced as he worked himself into a seated position. “The shamans don’t have absolute power, just the ability to make it seem so. There is only one whose power is absolute.”

  “And who is that?”

  “The God who created this world. His name is Deus, and he’s a savior of the oppressed.”

  The man scoffed. “If he’s a savior, he’s been absent lately. From where I’m sitting all I see is slavery and abuse.”

  “Men can be very cruel to each other, no question. The strong prey on the weak. Yet the people of Deus resist this. Often it seems pointless and unproductive—until all of a sudden . . .”

  Sol hesitated as a foreman strolled past the hovel outside. They were always lurking around, even at night.

  “All of a sudden what?” the blond man whispered when the foreman had moved on.

  “P
eople start to believe,” Sol finished. “Faith catches, and spreads, and people are set free.”

  The man sat up, then tucked his elbows against his sides and breathed into his cupped hands to warm them. “I think you may possess wisdom, old man. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Sol.”

  “My name is Bard.” The two men clasped hands. Bard leaned forward and spoke quietly. “So where did you hear about this god?”

  “I had a book once, before the shamans got me. No telling where it is now.” Sol smiled. “Would you like to hear a story from it?” When Bard nodded, Sol began to recount a narrative from the book of Departure. He described how the people of Deus, the Israëlites, were oppressed by their overlords until a shepherd named Moses was appointed to deliver them. Though Moses was often fearful, he obeyed Deus and acted on his commands. Deus sent a series of plagues upon the evildoers, culminating with the slaying of their firstborn sons. At this fearsome punishment the wicked king let the enslaved people go, and they departed for the wilderness. Then the king had second thoughts. He pursued the people, but Deus led his children through a sea as if on dry land. When the king and his army followed, the waters closed upon the oppressors and destroyed them forever.

  As Sol concluded the story, Bard exhaled with his eyes wide. “Do you think Deus would do the same for us? I mean, would he lead us out of here with miracles like that?”

  Sol shook his head. “He doesn’t promise such things. Yet he is that kind of God. He has the power to deliver his followers—in his own time and way.”

  “What can I do to call down this power?” Bard asked. “There has to be something! What if I smeared blood on the doors like those people did?”

  “Deus isn’t manipulated by magic charms. You must wait and believe.”