* * * *
Not since its shattering or through its slow, painful repair have I left the euchomifier's side.
The daemon is dead, yes. At the far end of the cloister I've piled the machine-innards from the body the Hadez fashioned it. Dakar wanted to take them from me, but I would not let him in. I've lost track of how many times he has sent Frer Doctor Khatib with the sor who brings my bread. I've always sent the doctor away, and Sor Feerah and others too.
I've repaired the euchomifier. Dakar collects the euchoi from the shrines himself again and passes them to me. There are no more than before I destroyed the daemon, it seems.
Sometimes, I cannot bear the euchomifier's mute, mundane presence and what feels like the emptiness of the euchoi. I know they are full because the machine vibrates and trembles like it always has. The epiphany is gone, yet I cannot bring myself to leave.
Sometimes I think I might feel the grace of it again if I could burn away the places where the daemon touched me. I'm contemplating this when there is a knock on the door—contemplating and clutching the dome of the machine, the fissure where it was cracked barely visible.
A knock. I tell them to go away. A knock again, and a pushing at the door; the table holding it shut heaves an inch, then two, then more. I hear voices. Dakar. “Let me in, Adan,” he says.
I rise just as Sor Feerah slips into the room. She gazes around and then stares at me, amazed. “Have you gone mad?” she says.
"Leave,” I say.
"Bishop Dakar and the whole monastery are worried about you."
"So he sends you again. He's always sending you."
"He couldn't fit through the crack in the door."
"I need to be alone,” I say as she goes to the euchomifier.
"No, you need to leave this machine. You need to.... “She looks the machine over, and then turns to me. “Why are you here, Adan? Why did you come back? For this?” Her hand rests on the dome. For one wild moment I fear she'll topple it, push it over and crack it again, even shatter it. “Or did you come back for the city—for Fachi?” She speaks low, incensed. “People are whispering about the daemon—some think there's hope now that it's gone, but others think the Hadez will send another. The problem of water.... People are talking about seizing the Parliament building, Adan. Fighting the Hadez for the desalinator, regardless of all their contraptions and creatures and mecha-priests. What will you do, stay locked up here with ... with a machine?"
"Somebody has to run it,” I say quietly.
"Once you appalled me with how you'd give away euchoi by the bagful. I didn't think I'd ever see you do anything that would make that seem saintly."
"I can't feel Him any more."
"Then find another way to feel Him!” she says. “You gave the machine up once already. Who did you do that for, Adan? Ask yourself that.” She marches to the door. “Let me out of here,” she says to whoever is at the door, but turns back to me, shaking her head. Then she slips into the hall, and I'm alone again in the quiet with my machine.
The silence seems emptier even than the euchoi.
* * * *
The sun is blinding in the market noise, disorienting after the long calm of the cloister. Aimless, hopeless, I don't know why I am here. I wander from tent to tent, fingering carpets, glancing over a kaleidoscope of wares. But ever do my thoughts return to the euchomifier.
There's a strain in the air. Instead of the dull resignation of before, there's a sense in the market atmosphere of something imminent. Women with solemn-eyed children in tow, men with straw bags don't smile as they did years ago. Still, their gazes do not slide over each other, unseeing, as when I was newly returned. The spangled tents of the Hadez have disappeared from the market. Fachi is alive, buzzing with tension, and restive.
I pause at a tent, ostensibly to admire zellige tiles, avoiding the merchant's probing gaze. Under my hands, cobalt and turquoise arabesques entwine on white earthen tiles. I summon my nerve. I am about to bid the merchant ‘come close’ so I may whisper a query about the Hadez daemon when the notes of an unfamiliar tune drift to my ears.
I know who is playing before I even turn away from the merchant.
She's alone, a basket before her where she's seated on a knotted crimson rug. Her eyes are closed as she works over several phrases of an insistent tune; in them is posed some dire question. Clockwork scarabs creep across the rug in circles, their shells iridescent in the sunlight. I leave the zellige tent and stand near her blanket, with others. She finishes on three long notes, releasing the transfixed crowd from their enchantment. She smiles at us, and I can see she recognizes me. As people drop coins into her basket and wander away, I linger, trying to find words.
It's she who speaks. “It's the frer,” she says to me in her rough Arabic, silver earrings swaying.
"It's the girl who fears no daemon,” I say.
"Ah well, they say the daemon has gone and another replaced it,” she says. That gives me a start. “They say they do not know what the Hadez will send next."
I mumble, “I was hoping to ask you a question.” I crouch beside her in the dust. She waits, the imzhad cradled in her lap. “Forgive me, but ... you don't go to the shrines,” I say. “How then do you pray? How do you know God is with you, how He protects you.... “The sudden faltering of my voice surprises me. “Like from the daemon?"
Her eyes narrow. Perhaps she thinks this is a trick, or worse. “A frer man asking this of me? They say my people were abandoned by the gods.” She lowers her head and reaches for a bag in which to put her instrument. “Do not mock me."
"Wait—I mean no insult.” I reach for her arm but draw back as she looks up, startled. “It's just, you don't go to the shrines. You don't kneel there, or put prayers into coins to be taken to Him."
"I talk to Allah like He is standing here,” she says. “I talk to Him—"
"When you play your music?"
"Well, yes,” she says, her hand still on the bag.
"How do you do that?"
She shrugs against the urgency in my voice, eyeing me. “Maybe I am praying by the voice of the instrument. Maybe it makes me an empty space, or...."
"What do you mean, like...?” Like something else I know.
"His voice is the music, and He is speaking through me."
"You are a voice box,” I say, “He the voice.” I the dome, He the celestial vibration.
"The imzhad speaks for Him; I am the place he speaks through. That is what it's like.” She shrugs again.
I find myself nodding slowly, standing.
I'm a few steps away when the weight of something left undone slows my feet. I turn back, hand in my pocket.
The coins that I hold out to her in exchange for a scarab are not euchoi, but ordinary Algerian dinars.
The thing squirms mechanically in my hand as I turn toward the monastery. The lilt of Tafat's imzhad rises up behind me like a desert breeze.
* * * *
By the time I emerge from the cloister again—after days? A week or more?—Dakar has ceased to send Frer Khatib, or Feerah, or anyone. Heading down the worn marble stairs, down the cool, quiet corridor, I have no sense of the day or time. At the heavy doorway to the men's dorter I pause, listening to silence. They must be eating, and that, with the slant of light from a high corridor window, indicates it is just before vespers—time for service.
At last the men pass me; I am pressed deep into the shadows of the chapel foyer, cool stone against my back. As the women pass next, I glimpse her in their midst and waver. When I bring myself to call her, the rawness of my voice surprises me. “Sor Feerah. Sor Feerah!"
She lets the others trail inside; when I step out from the shadows, she is framed by arches of limestone.
"You're out of the cloister,” she says.
I nod. “I need to ask you,” I say, keeping my voice low. “I need to know if you'll do something for me."
"What is it?” she says, her dark eyes wide.
"I need you to te
ach me to sing."
Some unnamable emotion passes over her face. “To ... sing? Adan, are you...?"
I hold out the hand that conceals the scarab, and she extends her own, reluctantly. She gazes at the motionless insect I give her, its shell satiny in the shadow, a gold key protruding from its side.
"To sing,” I repeat. “To replace the machine."
Sor Feerah blinks at me once.
"You wind it up,” I say, nodding to the automaton in her hand. “I got it in the market."
At that she smiles.
* * * *
In the cloister, I lay hands on the euchomifier's gleaming dome for the last time. I feel nothing of God's residual grace, only the cool of porcelain and metal. Still, turning from it is not without pain.
By the doorway sits a bag of newly emptied euchoi. There are so many people who could use them. I feel a pang of temptation....
But there are better ways to piece together the shards of Fachi. I take my robe off, leave it upon the table. I step back into the hall empty-handed.
Empty-handed, but in the pockets of my kaftan are wheels and cogs, gears and cylinders of metal from the Hadez daemon's body. For I will gather Fachim to track whatever else the Hadez send into the city, and these apparatus will teach them about the mecha-bodies fashioned for the creatures. I can tell them the rest.
Though I said once before that this would be the last time I'd leave the cloister, this time I feel it's true. I'm trembling, but the cogs sway in my pockets, and they hearten me as I go down the chipped marble stairs, one step at a time.
I'll go to chapel again, yes, to see Sor Feerah, and Dakar. But this is the last time I'll pass through the dark foyer of the monastery into the dusty street ... into the street where the Fachim gather and sedition lies tense in the silences between words, between carpets and swaths of dyed yarn, among bronze teapots and creatures that subsist on fire and steam.
I'm going to the heart of Fachi, where I'll help the people piece our city back together one shard at a time; going to the heart of Fachi, to find an empty space where God can speak through me.
The Dragon's Thorn, Sword of Kings (& Fred) by Idan Cohen
The Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings, slayer of evils abundant, forged a dozen centuries ago in the deepest caves of Angurbandur, enchanted in the finest halls of the Seven Hidden Kingdoms, both aesthetically and practically a fine figure of a sword, found its way to Fred by a complete accident that neither would deign to talk about. Nonetheless, it was a fact: the Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings, wielded by the hands of Jirard the Blue himself, which had hewn the breast of Bloody Tinarisiar and ended the Fifth Great War, and which could not, in fact, talk, due to a small confusion in the contract presented to the Angurbandurian blacksmiths and the enchanters of the Seven Hidden Kingdoms, was stuck.
With Fred.
So it got off to a rocky start.
The Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings, whose perfect point once pierced the single vulnerable spot of Grigor the last Dragon, which stood as a symbol of the Pridehorn nations for a hundred years, and which was never (even once!) thrown into a lake, motioned Fred—to action! It was obvious this was what it meant.
Fred, uncertain (he was an accountant at a minor firm, but he was thinking about moving up to the big leagues), whispered harshly, But that is my wife!
The Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings, sower of destruction upon the fields of man, grew ungratefully quiescent. It did not mutter a curse, but if it could have, it surely would have; but it could not because there had been a confusion in the small print of the contract presented to the Angurbandurian blacksmiths and the enchanters of the Seven Hidden Kingdoms.
Time passed. The Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc., lay upon the shelf and the mantle of Fred, who had had to get a shelf and a mantle, though first he had had to look up mantle on dictionary.com, which had been a lot of help. Fred, in fact, thought dictionary.com was one of the great inventions of the age. Fred held very few opinions, but this was one of them; if he ever happened to meet the inventor of dictionary.com, he would very thoroughly shake his hand. This was also one of Fred's opinions.
Occasionally the Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings, took it upon itself to leap into Fred's hands, as though by magic, guiding his arms and making him the greatest swordsman in the land. The dodge, the parry, the thousand moves of the master dueler rose in Fred's mind, and his legs could dance while his arms flashed like lightning and a dozen men fell beneath his wrath.
Sadly, the Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings, unerringly chose to do this when Fred and his lovely wife (whose unfortunate resemblance to Grigor the last Dragon need not be mentioned in this story, as it is a sordid tale that began when Grigor the last Dragon was walking in the woods and came upon a fair maiden, and then there was some anatomically inappropriate tête-à-tête, if you will, which we really did say need not be mentioned, but then who listens to us anyway) were having a dinner party. The guests, needless to say, while amused the first two or three times, were losing fingers and toes and other small appendages at a growing rate, and they began to make sarcastic comments about the quality of the wine. This always sent Fred's unfortunately-faced wife into a crying jag, and when the Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings, started slicing her tears into perfect halves, well, that was just too much.
It has to go! Fred's wife said. By this she meant, of course, the Dragon's Thorn with all the descriptives.
Well, said Fred.
Well what?! she said.
It's sort of part of the family by now, isn't it? said Fred. The Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings, did not perk up its ears, because it did not have ears, and this was quite all right, since there was no mention of ears in the contract we have already mentioned twice.
It, said Fred's wife, has to go!
Fred marshaled all of his manly power, that which had been hidden inside him for years and had been unleashed by the strength he felt momentarily when holding the Dragon's Thorn, butter knife of dukes, and said, No.
Fred's wife looked at Fred with her unfortunate face, which was unfortunate but unavoidable; she did not have any other face.
Fred's manly power took a Viagra, girded its loins, set out to the battle, took a look at Fred's wife's face, and wilted completely. Fine, he said. I'll go throw it in the lake.
So the Dragon's Thorn, nail clipper of squires, was taken firmly in hand and led to the lake, which had of course been there all along, and though it pleaded quite a lot, it was to no avail, since it could not speak Fred and Fred was not very good at Sword.
He took it in his meaty accountant paws.
He swung it round and round and to and fro. And he—
Released.
Thus ended the confusing relationship of the Dragon's Thorn, sword of kings most likely, slayer of whatever needed slaying most at the moment, forged and enchanted at the places we have mentioned earlier, and Fred.
And what forward in the future unknowable? Well, it's unknowable. But we're fairly certain the sword found a person of its own to make a king, and Fred, well, he actually ended up finding the Crown of the Ancients while walking down Main Street, but since it did not fit on his head, he gave it to the Lost & Found. The Lost & Found eventually went bankrupt because no one ever returns things any more, and the Crown went back to Fred. But what his wife said about that, besides, Did you take out the garbage already?, is another story.
And unknowable.
Probably.
Dangerous Innocence by Joseph Jason Roger
* * * *
* * * *
Attack of the Mennonite Paratroopers by Ivan Dorin
The North. Vast, rugged, untamed. Wellspring of the Canadian imagination. Behind me, the stubborn granitic core of the Anvil Batholith slumbers beneath its Paleozoic blanket. Before me, the ramparts of Rose Mountain tower over expanses of boreal green veined with silver streams, where salmon who have swum fifteen hundred miles arrive to spawn and be eaten by grizzlies. The primeval silenc
e is broken only by the distant rumble of hundred-and-seventy-ton trucks in the huge open-pit mine to the south. Yes, it's an awe-inspiring view. And it's mine, all mine. I helped the geologist with reconnaissance this morning, but now he's doing detailed mapping, so I don't have to do much more than provide an alternate target for the bears, and they're all down in the creeks anyway.
I'm holding pen to paper and just beginning to feel inspired when I hear the crunch of a booted foot on gravel. I turn to see a stern-looking young man, dressed in combat fatigues but unarmed except for a large leather-bound Bible. He nods to me and lies down next to me on his stomach. Then he opens his Bible (to one of the Old Testament chapters—I think it's Ecclesiastes) and, holding it open in his left hand, begins to read while doing one-handed pushups with his right.
There are quite a lot of questions that spring to my mind at this point, but somehow I'm most preoccupied by the fact that I'm sitting on a slope of twenty degrees or more, and his body is pointed directly downhill.
"Doesn't your head hurt?"
He stops mid-push and looks at me politely, over his right shoulder.
"Pardon me?"
"Uh, doesn't the blood rush to your head when you do that?"
"Oh, a little. It's not that bad once you get used to it.” He waits for a reply and then, seeing that none is forthcoming, resumes his exercise.
A few pushups later, he stops and turns his head again, to find me still staring at him. “Don't mind me,” he says. “Just go right ahead with whatever short story it is you're writing."
"How do you know I'm writing a short story?"
His head snaps forward and his shoulders move in what is, considering his position, a heroic attempt at a shrug. “Did I say ‘short story'? It was just a guess. I mean, a man's entitled to a lucky guess now and again, isn't he?"
He heaves himself into the air and transfers his Bible from his left hand to his right, but doesn't get the left hand back underneath himself in time to avoid a collapse. “Whoops,” he says. “Didn't make too much noise there, did I? I hope not. I won't disturb you now that I've changed hands. You just carry on with, well, whatever."
GUD Magazine Issue 3 :: Autumn 2008 Page 3