A Just Farewell

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Rahbin smiled and kissed his wife’s tattooed forehead. “Take a breath and calm now, Rebecca. We must keep the faith that the Maker protects us. We cannot let any bug, as unnatural as it may be, prevent us from appreciating the blessings our divine creator bestows upon us. Show Abraham what you’ve made for him.”

  Rebecca smiled as she held out her arms to offer her son a new tunic. Abraham grinned as he accepted the clean, unsoiled clothing. The fabric felt softer than anything he had previously worn, and he recognized the care his mother must have invested in its creation. Abraham looked into his mother’s face, where he admired the tattoos inked below her skin. For not the first time, he wished the Maker permitted his wives to remove their dark glasses in the privacy of their homes so they might show their children the color of their eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” spoke Abraham.

  Rahbin winked at his youngest boy. “The Maker already favors you with another special day, Abraham. Our neighbor Josef offers his twin daughters to your charge, and expects you to visit him today to mark your ward upon them. You have butchered animals the last three mornings, Abraham. You’ll not offend Josef by wearing a blood-stained tunic into his home.”

  “What about my duties in the butcher’s shop?”

  Rahbin chuckled. “The high cleric gives you permission to take a morning off from such chores. In fact, he requests that you honor Josef’s offer. You can catch up on your butcher training this afternoon, and Ishmael will pick up your household chores for today.”

  Abraham donned his new tunic before Rahbin and Ishmael hurried him to the ladder exiting their underground home in another rush of village opportunity. Abraham paused when he gripped the ladder’ bottom rung to peer back at his mother, and he saw how tears streamed out from her dark glasses to trickle down the swirls of black, ink tattoos that covered her face, a strange language his father had scribed upon that skin to tell of the blessings the Maker delivered their family unit. The realization suddenly washed over Abraham that he would soon scribe the opening passages of his story upon the faces of Josef’s daughters. He had never imagined what he might write upon the skin of a wife, had never thought he would need to think of what shapes to scribe upon the faces of two women. But events unreeled so quickly after he had dug his hole to announce the start of his year of man-making. Everything left him breathless and a little afraid. What if the great devil truly moved his hands while he had painted the shells of his cockroach friends? Would he taint Josef’s daughters by marking their flesh? Suddenly, all things of the Maker’s creation seemed so complicated and dangerous. Suddenly, every decision seemed crowded with repercussions that remained invisible to his judgment.

  Abraham shuddered as he climbed from his subterranean home to enter the shadow thrown upon the Earth from one of the unbelievers’ castles floating overhead. That bastion of blinking lights and dormant guns seemed closer than every before, and Abraham felt he could nearly reach up to touch its rocky underbelly. The clerics preached that a great victory would arrive on the day the tribes reached those orbiting citadels, but Abraham felt crowded by castle’s shadow as darkness slowly flowed across the ground. Suddenly, he felt that the shadow possessed a weight he had failed to before notice, and suddenly he felt his breath quicken beneath such an unnatural creation. Was such doubt another sign that the great devil touched him? Why else would his faith in the clerics, his faith in the Maker, waver?

  “Your visit honors my home, Abraham.”

  Josef raised a hand to attract his arriving visitors’ attention to where he stood in the shadow. Rahbin hurried ahead to embrace Josef, the men laughing as they joyfully slapped one another’s back. Josef’s grin stretched even wider when he released Rahbin to take Abraham’s hand in a crushing, welcoming grip.

  “You’re dressed well,” Josef nodded at Abraham.

  “I’m afraid my other tunic was stained with too much blood,” Abraham responded.

  Josef squeezed Abraham’s upper arm. “And that is nothing to feel ashamed of, son. A butcher’s trade is a fine place within a tribe, and it is one that will make you a fine husband for my girls in their marriage to the Maker. Alexis and Cassandra are prepared for you, Abraham, and we’ll be ready to proceed once the high cleric arrives.”

  Abraham peeked at his father. “The high cleric is coming here?”

  Rahbin winked. “He seems to take a particular interest in you, son, and many would consider that a blessing from the Maker.”

  Josef welcomed Abraham and Rahbin into his home, where his guests found the host’s central living chamber decorated in his family’s finest carpets. Josef’s wife hurried into the room, balancing a fine tray of tea china. Abraham peeked into her face as she poured him tea, an offering he had never before experienced in anyone’s home but his own, one that made him feel many years beyond his actual age. He hoped that a glance into the face of Josef’s wife might give him some idea of the marking he was expected to soon leave upon the skin of his host’s daughters. But the woman’s tattoos of swirls, runes and flourishes only further confused Abraham by covering so much of her skin. He could guess at no history expressed by those tattoos, and he thought that perhaps whatever meaning was to be read by the marks a ward husband placed upon his wife was to be shared only between them and the Maker.

  Yet that thought didn’t at all help Abraham imagine what he would tattoo upon Alexis and Cassandra’s face when Josef placed the inking needle into his hand.

  Echoes from the ladder announced the high cleric’s arrival, and the community’s spiritual shepherd smiled as Josef’s wife offered a cup of tea before retreating out of the central chamber. No one said a word for many minutes as the assembly enjoyed Josef’s tea service, which tasted strong, and a little bitter, upon Abraham’s young tongue. The silence magnified Abraham’s anxiety, and he was pleased when the high cleric spoke as he poured everyone a second helping.

  “Your wife brews excellent tea, Josef. I must remember to ask her for advice before returning to my quiet study. Forgive my tardiness in accepting your invitation. I stopped by a home to hear another family describe the strange, colorful cockroaches lately seen scurrying about our community.”

  Abraham gulped, and his eyes locked on the contents of his cup.

  Rahbin’s eyebrow arched. “My wife claimed to have seen such a thing this morning. Do you think the great devil might have sent spies into our flock?”

  The high cleric sipped at his tea before answering. “It is too early to tell, nor have I seen such a bug for myself yet. Perhaps the Maker sends color into those bugs to remind us that even cockroaches count among his blessed creation. Or perhaps such bright shells are merely the handiwork of a foolish child.”

  Abraham shivered at scurrying sound that echoed from opposite wall’s shadows. It was so faint that he doubted he would have been aware of the noise had it not been for his recent familiarity with the creature responsible for the noise. The bug hid well in the shadow, but Abraham spotted its orange carapace a second before it retreated from his vision, perhaps nesting deeper within some crack in the wall, or perhaps exiting Josef’s home altogether through some concealed and tiny tunnel it had already burrowed through the ground. Abraham’s instinct led him to suspect, however, that the bug remained close, its fine antennae no doubt wavering in the air, its eyes likely finding a nook from which it could spy on the gathering. What if the great devil watched them through that bug? What if the Maker looked through the cockroach’s sight? The uncertainty pained Abraham, but perhaps that too was another challenge of his year of man-making.

  The high cleric softly cleared his throat, and Abraham thought the cleric’s eyes stared in the direction of the bug’s shadow before the old man’s dark eyes squared upon his own.

  “I realize I haven’t asked you yet, Abraham, but do you agree to serve as the Maker’s husband to Josef’s daughters, Alexis and Cassandra?”

  Rahbin quickly answered. “The Maker will bless Abraham with twins. He is honored to ac
cept.”

  The high cleric shrugged. “Tell me, Rahbin, has your son dug his own hole?”

  “He has.”

  “And did you not notice the injuries your son carried home after that digging?”

  “I did, and they made me proud.”

  The high cleric frowned. “And yet you ignore them?”

  “I do not,” and Rahbin’s eyes cast upon the floor.

  Abraham took a breath when he saw a fire catch in the cleric’s eyes. “Then you will show your son the dignity he has thus far deserved and close your mouth before I cut out your tongue.” In a breath, the high cleric with the long beard was once more the instrument of the Maker’s law and wrath, and Abraham dared not deny anything that high cleric demanded. “So tell me now, boy, will you be the vessel for the Maker? Will you open your body to the Maker when he chooses to plant his creation within their wombs?”

  The moment felt as confusing to Abraham as it felt momentous. Strangely, he recalled how one of those twins had waved at him on the day the clerics’ great horn had summoned the tribes’ men to witness the butcher’s execution. He didn’t intend to hesitate before answering the cleric, but he felt so foolish, and so young. He felt lost, and he prayed that the Maker, and not the great devil, moved within him when he answered.

  “I will open to the Maker, and I will accept the girls.”

  The high cleric smiled. “Then you must mark them both as yours.”

  Josef clapped his hands. “This way, Abraham. Alexis and Cassandra wait for you in another room.”

  The high cleric and Rahbin followed Abraham as Josef guided the boy through the dim hall that lead to his daughters’ chamber. Inside, Alexis and Cassandra lay on a pair of cots spread upon the floor. Abraham hesitated in the threshold to that chamber, for the sight of those girls surprised him. He had expected the girls to welcome him, to smile at the boy the Maker sent to be their husband. He thought they might have a moment to laugh and to play together, to perhaps even sing a song. Yet he found the girls’ arms and legs bound together so that they could not move, and he saw that gags covered their mouths. He thought they would be pleased to accept his mark upon their face and so start the story of a family. Yet those girls called no image of celebration into Abraham’s mind. Instead, the way those girls were bound, and the way their eyes widened at the sight of him standing in the door, recalled the image of that lamb tied next to the butcher shop’s drain. He remembered the panic and the cry of that creature after he failed to deliver it a merciful death, and he worried that his hands lacked the skill, strength and resolve that would be needed when Josef put the ink needle in his hand and asked him to mark his daughters.

  Rahbin, likely mistaking Abraham’s hesitance for shyness, gently pushed his son into the room. “Do you know what shape you’re going to mark on each girl’s cheek?”

  “The harder I think about it, the less I know what to mark. I’ve never learned anything of the language husbands employ to record their family’s history upon the faces of the Maker’s wives.”

  “There’s no language to teach,” commented the high cleric. “The Maker guides the marking of those tattoos. That’s all that matters.”

  Abraham winced as his father punched his shoulder. “Enjoy this moment, son, because you can never travel backwards through the years. I still cherish the memory of the first mark I sketched onto your mother’s face.”

  Josef withdrew a long, hallow needle and a vile of black ink from a mahogany box set between his daughters’ cots. “Here you are, Abraham. Forgive Alexis and Cassandra for their fear. They’re still young.”

  “That fear will pass soon enough after you finish,” commented the high cleric.

  Abraham didn’t need the high cleric to elaborate. His experience the last several mornings killing the livestock the old man with the long beard brought to the butcher shop educated him in the kindness of swift and confident hands. His father helped him fill the hallow needle with ink, and Josef mimicked moving the needle in the air to show Abraham the proper way to manipulate the tool. Alexis and Cassandra squirmed against their bonds and moaned against their gags as Abraham gripped the needle and turned towards them. Abraham looked at the girls and tried to decide which girl to first mark. They looked identical to him. Green eyes sparkled in both of their faces. Autumn hair tinged with a sheen of red fell to the shoulders of both. Abraham took a moment to consider the shapes of their lips, the contours of their chins, the arch of their noses as his imagination stretched for something to etch upon their faces. Alexis and Cassandra appeared the same, and Abraham knew it would not be long before dark glasses covered their green eyes, before their hair was stained that color of silver known by each woman among the Maker’s faithful tribes.

  Abraham gripped the ready needle and approached the girl to his right. Josef pinned his daughter’s shoulders against her cot, and Rahbin squeezed her legs, the men using their strength to keep the child from squirming. Abraham resisted his urge to flinch as the girl struggled against her bonds and captors. He set his knee upon the girl’s chest, and with his free hand pressed a side of her face into the cot so that the opposite cheek provided an unmoving canvas. Reminding himself to work with a steady and strong hand to show that girl kindness, Abraham poked the needle in and out of his subject’s cheek, his fingers suddenly confident of the design needed to be etched below the skin’s surface. His needle worked efficiently, as if the Maker himself entered Abraham to guide the boy’s effort. Abraham left a red, bleeding mark upon the girl’s face and then applied his efforts to the other sister. The high cleric smiled to watch the boy work. As he hoped, the task of killing those creatures he had delivered to that child had well prepared that boy for the needle. The high cleric never doubted the ability of Abraham’s artistic craft.

  Josef clapped his hands as he looked upon the blossom of swirls Abraham left on each of his daughter’s faces. “What a glorious beginning. I don’t doubt that with time you will see those swirls expand and grow to write such a wonderful history upon Alexis and Cassandra.”

  “The Maker moved within you, Abraham.” The high cleric nodded.

  Abraham breathed a long sigh of relief. He felt proud of the marks he placed beneath the skin. His hands had not shaken and trembled so badly to force a poor effort with the tattoo needle. And most importantly of all, the high cleric said that the Maker moved within him. The designs etched upon the faces of those twins, those swirls that were very similar to those Abraham had painted upon an orange shell of a cockroach, were not tainted inspirations delivered by the great devil. They were glorious decorations whispered from the divine Maker’s grace. He no longer needed to fear that the great devil possessed him. A future and a place within his community and tribes unfolded before him.

  Rahbin gave his son a short embrace. “You transform into a man before my very eyes.”

  “He’s not a man just yet,” spoke the high cleric. “Abraham must undergo another passage before he acquires his tribal cape.”

  Josef rubbed his hand through Abraham’s hair. “Oh, but I’m sure we won’t have to wait long.”

  “We shall see,” the high cleric nodded.

  A rare, salvo of joy rushed Abraham out of that room. Rahbin invited Josef and the high cleric back to his home, where his wife greeted them with a celebratory feast. Neighbors and other clerics visited briefly throughout the afternoon to congratulate Abraham on his engagement to Josef’s daughters, and the high cleric even excused Abraham from any afternoon duties within the butcher shop. Abraham no longer felt like such a frightened child. He felt like a man, whose faith in the Maker was rewarded with a long and grand future.

  No one invited the twins Alexis and Cassandra to share in that feast thrown in Abraham’s home to celebrate their coming marriage to a boy who promised to be the vessel of the Maker’s love. They were left alone in their dim chamber, left in their bonds until they calmed. They were left tied to their cots so that their hands did not scratch at the marks that burned
upon their cheeks. Though their father had tied them very tightly, their gags couldn’t choke their sobs.