The Great and Terrible

by Chris Stewart

  “Just give me a body!” he cried out to the empty air. “Give me something to fight with, and I will fight them for you!”

  * * *

  At about the same time Ammon lay in the darkness looking up at the stars, Balaam stood at his doorway and watched Lucifer slip into the night. He stayed there a long moment, staring at the empty dark and feeling a chill that was not from the cold.

  He kept reminding himself what Lucifer had promised at the Great Council. “Not one soul will be lost. Not one single soul!”

  And Balaam believed him. He had believed him ever since he had heard the two proposals for how to carry out the Father’s plan. It was clear from the beginning which proposal had more potential, which showed more mercy, which demonstrated more love. More importantly, there was so much more power in Lucifer’s way. Angels and minions would fall at his feet, anxious to do his bidding, knowing their very lives were dependent on his call and whim. Fear and respect, Balaam thought, were greater forces than love, and if they didn’t love him, they would respect him still.

  And Lucifer had promised from the beginning to share his power with them. All of his followers would share in his wealth. It wouldn’t be hoarded by the Father, as in Jehovah’s way.

  And though sometimes Balaam wondered if he was on the right track, he was not turning back now. This was his chance to make a real name for himself, to gain the fame and recognition he had been starving for. Forget all that teaching. Where was the glory in that? There was no real distinction, no real power or fame. So he was sticking with Lucifer, no matter the cost.

  * * *

  After their night meeting, it was a long time before Balaam saw Lucifer again, for the Deceiver quit walking openly among the children of God, finding it difficult to work in the Light. Still, Satan continued his work, passing instructions to his followers through an army of messengers who still worked and lived with them.

  Over time, Lucifer took many of his followers and migrated to other parts, to cities far off that could provide a harbor for the rebellious and those who supported him. His people quickly became mischievous and subtle, anxious to protest and find pretext for offense. And though the cities he inhabited were not out of sight (for all things were known unto God), they were far enough away that Lucifer and his followers could be left by themselves, and yet close enough that they could proselyte their rebellion among the children of God.

  As their work progressed, Lucifer was very pleased with the result. His angels proved to be defiant and persuasive; indeed, they proved powerful. And they were tireless in their efforts, taking true pleasure in their work. With so many to deceive, so many to bring down, the field was white and their harvest was full.

  Chapter Six

  They walked side by side, Luke and Elizabeth, and she slipped her hand easily through his arm. He leaned toward her slightly but did not turn his head. He was quiet, which was unusual, for Luke was generally hard to rattle; high-strung and impetuous, he always had a smile on his face (though Ammon sometimes teased that was only because he wasn’t smart enough to realize when things were going wrong). But he was troubled now; she could see that by the distant look in his eye. He was too slow to answer, too slow to laugh, his mind obviously elsewhere as they walked the path through the woods.

  The garden was beautiful, with moss-covered rocks, wildflowers, and lush trees reaching a hundred feet over their heads. A pool of clean water, cold and crisp, babbled over the stones, and the heavy scent of lilacs filled the afternoon air. A group of children squeezed by them, racing down the path, laughing in delight as they ran between the adults, brushing their legs as they passed. As the little ones pushed by, Elizabeth smiled, winked to Luke, then chased after them. “Race!” she called out. “First to the river wins!” The children laughed even louder and ran down the grassy path, giggling and screaming with the enthusiasm unique to small children. Beth laughed along with them as she disappeared around a bend in the pathway. Luke quickened his pace, but didn’t chase after her.

  As Luke approached the cool pond, he found her waiting on a rock, resting, her chin on her knees, looking over the water, where it formed a wide pool. She wore a simple white dress that fit to her calves, and she pulled it tightly around her legs as she sat. The children had left them, racing on to the next great adventure, the sound of their laughter quickly fading away. It was humid and cool, the shade deep and full from the umbrella of trees. The water babbled around them from a small waterfall, and the birds filled the branches with a wonderful sound. The scene was flawless and complete, incomprehensibly perfect. It smelled fresh, like the forest. Beth took a deep breath. “I hope I can remember what it smells like,” she said.

  “You won’t,” Luke replied sadly as he moved to her side. “It has to be taken, Beth, all of it taken away.”

  “Everything?” Elizabeth asked.

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  Elizabeth looked out on the pool, then extended her leg and dipped a bare foot in the water, swirling it gently, feeling the cold. “What do you think it will be like?” she asked.

  Luke thought a moment, then hunched his shoulders. “It won’t be as pretty.”

  “But do you think it will be close? Could it be almost as wonderful?”

  He walked to the edge of the water, which was so clear he could see twenty feet down, to the bottom of the pool. “I don’t see how it could be,” he answered as he bent down and dipped a single finger into the water.

  Beth nodded, unhappily. “I suppose you’re right. Worse, our Parents won’t be there, and neither will Jehovah.” She took another deep breath. The two were silent; then Beth turned quickly, her face suddenly brightened by a wonderful smile, a smile that seemed to emit from somewhere inside her, somewhere from the depths of her soul. Her eyes danced, alive and excited. “But it will still be beautiful, Luke!” she said happily, easily putting her previous questions aside. “It will have to be beautiful, for it will be patterned after this place.”

  Luke watched her and smiled. She just wouldn’t stay down. And her optimism was as captivating as her smile. “I suppose,” he answered as he turned from the pool and sat down by her side. “But look around you, Elizabeth. Look anywhere. Everything. Everyplace. It’s so perfect. The people, and the beauty of being with Father. Talking face to face with Jehovah, drawing on his experience and listening to him. Being held by the Father and feeling his love. It’s too good to remember. The memory has to be taken. It is part of the plan.”

  Elizabeth nodded slowly. “I wish we could remember something,” she said.

  “You want to know what I think?” Luke offered. Elizabeth nodded hopefully. “Though it won’t be as beautiful,” he continued, “I think the earth is going to be a lot like this place. Here there are more sounds and more smells, more color. The music is more perfect, feelings more vibrant, the things we see more intense. The little things are more subtle and the big things more grand. Everything is more powerful and more perfect here. Even love is more perfect, more forgiving and complete.

  “But the earth will also be beautiful. And it will be similar, even familiar, because, like you said, it will be patterned after this place. It will be darker, I suppose, even on the best days, even in the most beautiful spots, but it will all be familiar and I think we might know, or at least we might feel we have been there before. And I believe we will recognize some places, recognize the same feelings of awe that we feel right now. But I suppose it might be like looking out on our world through a thin, wispy veil, a veil that is blowing in the wind, quiet, almost transparent, yet still always there, sheer enough to see through, yet material enough to hide the detail and clarity that we see in this world. The same beauty will be there, but I suspect it will not be as intense. Still, it will be enough to remind us there has to be more, that there is another place, and that we want to return.”

  Beth nodded, her long hair shaking lightly against her back, then looked around again. “I will miss this place.” She moved h
er head slowly, as if she were trying to memorize the view and then said, “I wish I could capture this scene, that I had the talent to portray this beauty on canvas and oil. But

  I never could. No matter how much I practice, I could never capture this beauty with paint.”

  Luke glanced at her hands, seeing the tiny flecks of color on the ends of her fingers and nails. She painted every day. It was one of her goals. “You have gotten very good,” he answered. “That last picture you did, the one with the blue and pink pastels, it is as beautiful as anything I have ever seen.”

  Beth brightened again, her voice suddenly excited. “Do you really think so?” she asked, grabbing hold of his hand.

  “No doubt, Beth, no doubt. Ammon had it framed. He’s going to put it upstairs in the sunroom. He loves the painting as much as I do.”

  Beth nodded gratefully, then looked around and said, “Still, I will miss this place.”

  “All of us will. Somewhere deep inside, we will all want to come home.” Reaching down, Luke ran his fingers through the grass, his face suddenly troubled. “It is too perfect here,” he said softly. “No worries, no anguish, no fear, our lives conducted in incredible joy. From time immemorial, that’s how it’s been, time with our family, always making new friends, summer days, winter evenings, all the time in the world. Learning and growing together . . . ” His voice dropped to a whisper. “But all that is fading now. It is going away. And it all makes me weary. I don’t want things to change.”

  Beth bit on her lip, then lifted a finger and played nervously with her hair. Luke smiled at the action, knowing she was in deep thought. “I think you hit on the key,” she said after a moment of silence. Luke looked at her, puzzled. “Think of what you said,” she explained. “Learning and growing. That’s what we’ve been doing together. And now we’ve progressed to the point where that has to change. We can’t progress any longer in this estate. And though we’ve been happy, we’ve never felt perfect joy. For that, we need to be tested, we need to grow. We need to attain physical bodies and become like God.

  “So yes, it is fading, things are changing, that’s true. And in the coming process, we are going to have to feel pain.”

  “If you ask me, pain is overrated,” Luke joked. But he hardly smiled.

  Beth knew he was only half kidding, and it worried her. She folded her arms in her lap. “Luke,” she asked quietly, “can I ask you something? Something personal? And will you be honest with me?”

  Luke turned to face her. “Of course, Beth. You know that you can.”

  She stared at her hands, adjusting them in her lap. “Are you ever frightened?” she asked. “Are you afraid of being born?” She lifted her eyes and looked at him anxiously.

  Luke stared across the water and furrowed his brow. Was he afraid? He didn’t really know. At what point did uncertainty cross the line into fear? “I guess I’m a little scared of the pain and the darkness that accompany birth,” he answered. “But Father has promised he will stay at our side as we pass into the next world, so that doesn’t bother me that much anymore.

  “The thing that really scares me is that we are going to forget. Like we just said, we forget everything! How can that be? How could we forget this place? But the forgetting is so complete, that once we are there, we don’t want to come back. We fight to stay there, we fight to stay on the earth. It’s like fighting to stay in prison. It doesn’t make any sense, but we develop a terrible, loathsome fear of death, of coming back home. I don’t know, but that strikes me as almost absurd. We get so involved in our earth-life that we fight to stay there! And we mourn those who proceed us to this side of the veil. That seems so incredibly . . . I don’t know, but it’s a little scary to me.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes twinkled as she touched his arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll . . . ” she started to tease.

  “I know,” he interrupted. “I’ll take care of you!”

  He had known her so long, he could almost read her mind. And he didn’t want to leave her. He wanted to stay there forever with her, with the others. He wanted to stay there forever with his Parents and his Eldest Brother.

  This place, all these people, it was enough for him. He was satisfied. He didn’t need any more.

  Young and tall, Luke was a man, but only barely–and in some ways he was still a child, for the growing process in the spirit took a very long time and maturity came slowly, with many lessons to learn. Still, he was supremely confident, for, unlike many others, he had felt the spark of perfection inside.

  Luke’s needs were simple. To him the world was already perfect. Every day, every hour was another chance to be happy, another chance for excitement or conversation with his friends. He embraced pessimism only when it came to his studies, for he wasn’t fond of the classroom or the one-on-one time he had to spend with his teachers. He wasn’t slow–in fact, quite the opposite, he was extremely bright–it was just that school could be so boring! So rigid, so stiff! Why did they have to study? All he heard was unending talk about the need to prepare. Was it really so important? Weren’t there other things to do? What about the sun, and the beach, and the mountains, and the parks, his friends, and his dog, and his brothers. And there was flying! Oh, there was flying. How he dreamed of that day! Could there be anything in the universe that might be better than that? And there was his reading and his writing . . . and the list went on and on.

  School. Well, yes, he knew that he had to learn, that he had to prepare, but sometimes he wondered. Was everything so urgent? Was it all so necessary?

  A sudden smile crossed Luke’s face as a powerful memory flooded his mind, a ridiculous recollection from a long, long time before.

  * * *

  He was young, foolishly young. Ammon was a little bit older, but still far too young to know better. On the warm summer days, he and Ammon used to lie on the grass and stare at the blue, dreaming of what it must be like to fly, effortlessly slipping among the stars and the sky, moving in space, zooming up, screaming down, calling from the mountaintops and landing on distant planets, feeling the coolness of the clouds on their lashes while laying their heads on great pillars of white, then falling through them like rain, but never touching the ground.

  Yet, not being perfect like the Father, they were bound to the laws of their world. In the future, on the earth, some of them would learn to fly, but in the premortal existence there was no need. Still, like so many before them, they dreamed of that day when they would move like the Father in an effortless dance through the sky. It seemed to be inherent in some spirits, an internal, almost primordial yearning to fly.

  So, working brother with brother, they came up with a plan. It was time for their world to see the first flying machine.

  They spent hours studying the birds in the skies before they came up with their final design. Many happy hours were spent in construction, and when the contraption was finished, it certainly would have made the greatest scientist proud, though it was likely to bring a stab of fear to any aviator’s heart. A wooden box and steel wings with various feathers glued on, it might have flown. But only for a moment. And only straight down.

  About the time the child adventurers were dragging their contraption onto the roof for their maiden flight, their Father sought them out to see their flying machine. He stared at it proudly, a great smile on his face. He asked lots of questions as he admired their design. It was a beautiful contraption, he announced to his sons, and he was certain they had great futures in aero design. Still, it took him several minutes to convince them that it was probably not a good idea to launch their machine. “You’ll scare all the birds,” he explained with a smile. “But someday,” he promised, “you will get your chance to fly.”

  * * *

  Luke couldn’t help but smile as he relived the memory. Ammon had been so certain, so convinced that their contraption would fly–so why, Luke had wondered as they were dragging it onto the roof, had he insisted that Luke be the first one to try? Upon hearing of Ammon’s plan to
launch his little brother into space, Father had laughed, then pulled Ammon aside to have a private chat. Ammon kicked the grass with his feet as his Father explained that Luke was his little brother and he had a responsibility to take care of him. Ammon had learned something that day about being a big brother. And Luke learned that his Father was patient with his children, even when they hatched foolish plans.

  As Luke and Elizabeth sat in silence (for silence was a common and comfortable part of their world), his thoughts shifted to their older brother, Sam. Why had he left them, and without even a good-bye? Beth seemed to sense the change in his mood, for she turned to him with concern in her eyes. She started to speak when a small rabbit crawled slowly from under a nearby brush. She reached down to pick it up and held it carefully in her lap.

  Luke watched Beth as she stroked the rabbit. She was so beautiful! Slender, with dark eyes and long, dark hair. And that smile! Oh, that smile, like a light from her soul! She was bubbly and quick, most called her lighthearted, or light-headed, some teased. What was the word Ammon used to describe her . . . giddy, yes, that was it. But she was also very smart, though she had to push herself to concentrate on the task at hand. It could take her hours to get dressed if she had the time, two hours to watch the sun rise, an hour to comb her hair. The problem was that there were just too many distractions, too many fascinating things to divert her. It could drive others crazy, but she didn’t mind. Life was to savor, not to rush through!

  Elizabeth stroked the rabbit gently, pulling lightly on its ears, then set it down to let it nibble on the grass at her feet. Turning, she placed her hand on Luke’s arm and looked him straight in the eye. “You’re angry at Sam. I know that. But you’ve got to forgive him,” she said, showing that she had indeed read his thoughts.

  “I miss him,” he said sadly, even angrily, as he stood suddenly and walked to the edge of the pool. “What was he thinking? I just don’t understand! How could he do that . . . ”