All Living : A Seedvision Saga (9781621473923)

by Humphrey, Michael C.

  Kole felt ashamed of himself and humbled to realize that he had not yet thought to pray, to ask God to make it stop. His instinct had propelled him to react in a very shallow, human way. When he should have been reaching out to God with faith, he had reached inward for fortitude. When he should have relied on God’s grace, he had gambled on his own gumption.

  Tears managed to squeeze their way out of his ash-caked eyes and roll down his cheeks, leaving game trails upon the wilderness of his countenance. And then he felt it, an easing in the air, a cooling breeze from the east chasing the northern winds away. The sky cleared, the day returned. Mothers found their children, husbands found their wives. The child in Kole’s arms kissed his rough cheek and bounded away after his family.

  Kole stood and began to clean up some of the mess around him in a daze. The only human sounds were the reassurances to children from the lips of unsure adults and the painful moaning of the wounded. The sky turned a brilliant blue, and the dust storm fully and truly passed on.

  “I have never seen anything like that,” said Lamesh as he passed by.

  “Nor have I,” said Kole.

  The remainder of the day was spent tending to the wounded (there were not many and nothing serious), cleaning up the camp, and cooking food. Adam got the family organized, and it did not take long to locate missing items and repair broken ones. Huts were re-grassed and clothes rehung. Nothing was seriously damaged, and by late afternoon all was back in order.

  Adam called the family together. “This was a long day, an unexpected day, to be sure. I am glad that everyone is accounted for and in good health. As I live and breathe I tell you that I have seen many strange things in my time, but that was not one of them.” He paused to let his words sink in. “That was a dust storm, plain and simple. A ferocious storm, to be sure, but not an omen of worse to come and certainly not a punishment upon us for some misdeed. The Creator gives blessings and the Creator allows trials. Yesterday we were blessed with a good hunt and today we have been tried. The very fact that we are still here means that we have overcome this trial. It has passed from us and it is time to rejoice. Let us thank the Lord for His protection over our lives, and then we shall once again feast on all the fine food that He has provided us.”

  That night was a subdued feasting. The food was delicious, especially so after brushing shoulders with disaster. The conversations were quiet and modest. There was no dancing. The wine flowed freely from cup to cup and everyone drank toasts to each other’s good health. The children were put to bed earlier than normal and the adults were taciturn or sat in small groups having whispered conversations. Kole had not much to say. His thoughts lay heavy within his heart and he excused himself at the first opportunity. Unable to sleep inside after the events of the day, he found a shadowy spot away from the firelight and conversations and curled up and feigned sleep.

  That night, Kole lay in his blankets thinking about the upcoming reunion with Cain. He had not seen his brother since the day that Cain had killed Abel. That had been over a hundred years ago.

  What change in demeanor had a hundred summers wrought upon his appearance, upon his soul? His hunters coming back empty-handed with stories of his brother returned would not sit well, Kole had to think. But no, for whatever reasons, Kole had not identified himself to Irad and his band of muddy men. They had no idea who he was, and Kole found at least a small comfort knowing he had the element of surprise. And there was one other factor in his favor, Kole realized.

  If the prophecies that he had made were valid then every citizen of the city would be sleep deprived and starving by the time he arrived. All the more reason to get there in a hurry. He would leave tomorrow morning. Kole had no intention of causing undue suffering to young women and children.

  Why then, he wondered, did I make those predictions in the first place He had not meant to; not planned to. The words came out of his mouth, but they had not been his own. He had been as surprised to hear them as anyone. But the words had carried power and warning and Kole had no doubt that they were the Lord’s words, blunt and bitter to human ears. And even if one hardened himself to such threats, the fulfillment of the threat would surely soften even the most stoic of souls. Kole hoped to find a malleable people, changed and ready to repent as a result of the Lord’s chastisement. He drifted off to sleep with bittersweet dreams—visions of his beautiful sister, of his estranged brother, of the two of them together…

  The next morning came slowly like a quiet child fearful of waking his parents. As dawn tiptoed through the treetops it whispered its one word litany like a breeze in Kole’s brain. Rise… Rise… He opened his eyes.

  The air was warm and filled with the smoke of freshly stirred cookfires. Voices were muted and muffled, and the hush hung sticky and thick in the air. Kole found his father stretching, yawning. He greeted him with a noisy smile.

  “Not so loud, Son,” Adam said, smiling back at him. “The day seems hesitant to climb into its proper place.”

  “Oh, good,” said Kole, “I thought it was just me.”

  “No sense trying to take credit, Kole. I believe it may more properly belong to the fruit wine that was flowing so freely last night.”

  “Well, it was a celebration of sorts.”

  “Yes? Well, if so, what does that leave us with today?”

  “Separation,” stated Kole flatly.

  “Still intending on leaving us so soon, my son?”

  “I am.”

  “Could you not stay for a day or two more? Perhaps build a home-hill of your own so that you have a proper place to return to when the time comes?”

  “I have to go, Father. It may be urgent.”

  “How so?”

  “There were things that I said yesterday to Irad. Words that were not mine, and yet came from my mouth. I had no previous thought to say them, yet they fell from my lips as softly as pears, breaking and bruising and left to lie. If they are indeed in effect, I fear those who live in Cain’s city currently are not completely comfortable. I must go, Father. I feel an unraveling in my gut, as if our family is a rush rug, woven and tenuous, fragile for all its complexity and that there are many loose ends threatening to entangle and strangle us all unless swiftly tied.”

  “Would it make things any easier if I were to accompany you?” volunteered Adam. “I am willing.”

  “I’m a frayed knot, Father.”

  Adam snorted. “That sense of humor will serve you well, my son.” He embraced Kole and whispered in his ear, “Remember, Kole Chay, to choose right when the moment is upon you. Rarely are we given a second opportunity.”

  Kole pulled away from his father. “I will, but pray for me.”

  Adam nodded.

  Kole said his goodbyes to the rest of his family, which given the size of his family took a considerable amount of time. His mother’s farewell was the longest, but although she looked to be on the verge of tears and filled to overflowing with encouragements and cautions, she kept silent, saying nothing. Putting her hands softly on both of his cheeks, she stared into his eyes, searching, then turning away.

  Kole picked up his pack and slung it over his shoulder. As if in afterthought he turned back to Adam.

  “Father, you must eat the rest of the three hrak today. Eat the meat and burn everything else that is left. The fat, the entrails, the bones. Leave nothing that might be deemed food for the morning.”

  “Son, those animals will feed this family for several weeks. And some meat should be put away for colder weather. We could not possibly finish them tonight, and it would be a waste to burn the fat or the bone marrow. We have many uses for such things and…”

  “Father!” Kole said with a new authority in his voice, “I implore you to consider this request. For the sake of the family, it is imperative. The choice of course is yours, but we must do this, Father, or within a week there
will be no one left alive in the City of Enoch. Not one.”

  Adam stared at his son, remembering him as a youth, climbing trees and giggling, wrestling with his brothers and snuggling on his mother’s lap. This man in front of him was so unlike that awkward, gangly boy who had been so excited to catch his first fish, start his first fire. Adam remembered something then that he had not thought of in many years, something that the Creator had said to him sometime shortly after Kole had been born. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother…” A boy grows up and becomes a new thing, a man filled with impetuous independence, and leaves his parents behind with nothing but the warm embers of memory. “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife…” Adam refused to dwell on the second half of the words the Lord had spoken to him on that day in the garden so long ago. He swallowed a lump of fear in his throat.

  “Do not spend another moment dwelling on it, my son,” said Adam. “It shall be done.”

  Kole made good time before noon, travelling hard and covering a lot of ground with his long strides. When the sun was at its zenith, he stopped to rest and ate some of the cooked hrak he had brought with him. He trusted that his father would not fail to remember to burn up the remainder of the animals before sunrise. The fate of the inhabitants of Cain’s city, the city of Enoch, depended upon it. Kole looked up at the sun in the sky and wiped the sweat from his brow. A hot day to be sure, but nothing like yesterday morning. What a strange day that had been. Kole had felt like a lump of clay slowly being baked into a brick inside the earth’s oven.

  After his noon meal, Kole resumed his journey. He fully expected to reach the city of Enoch before sunset, but two hours later he came to an unexpected delay. A river crossed his path, and it was swollen with water, some sort of run-off from the distant mountains.

  The rushing water had overrun the banks and now spanned several hundred cubits across in its current state. Trees and vegetation that usually grew cool and dry along its loamy banks were now submerged to nearly the height of a man. Debris and deadfall roared along in its white-capped frenzy, posing Kole with a serious problem of passage.

  He looked up stream and down, hoping to see a shallows or a land bridge that might serve to expedite his crossing, but there was nothing. He could walk a ways along the edge of it, the new bank, hoping to find someplace that afforded a more probable answer, but this would take time and slow him down. Kole felt that it was imperative to reach the city as soon as possible.

  Kole laughed to himself when he realized that he was biting his thumbnail while trying to come up with an answer to his dilemma. That was his father’s habit, and Kole had not realized that he had adopted it. He wondered what other unnoticed similarities they shared. He wondered what Adam would do in the same situation he now found himself in, and he suddenly wished he had accepted his father’s offer to accompany him.

  Oh well, Kole thought, can’t blame the honey for being sticky. I’ll just have to think my way out of this predicament. He hefted his pack up further on his shoulder and stared at the water. It’s too wide to cut down a tree and try to walk across, he thought. It’s too deep to wade. Perhaps it thins out further downstream. But when after a thousand steps the width of the water had not diminished in the least, Kole decided he’d waste more time trying for a better spot to cross than would be beneficial. I’ll just have to risk it, he decided.

  He found a place where the banks on both sides of the river seemed to slope more gently into the rushing maelstrom. He took off his tunic and the sandals that his mother had recently made for him and tied them securely into his pack. Naked, he stepped into the muddy eddies along the shore and using the submerged trees as support, edged out into the swirling current. He reached from tree to tree, gripping solidly until he found firm footing in the rocky shifting soil beneath his feet.

  Stones, slippery with moss and silt, rolled out from under him, threatening to send him sprawling into the surging stream. He held tightly to the last sapling, judging the distance to the far shore, the strength of the undertow and the depth of its passage. He secured his pack to his back, tying it around his shoulders, and looked upstream. When he saw what he thought to be a break in the barrage of floating fragments of trees and brush that had been ripped forcefully from their roots by the oblivious violence of the water, he took a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and plunged into the churning froth. He kicked his legs hard and struck out with long, steady strokes of his arms but almost immediately knew that he had made a terrible mistake.

  The water was deceptively murderous. It seemed the surface was nothing more than a calm lake on a still day compared to the power and force beneath. The river grabbed him immediately and tore his breath away, dunking him into its cold, dark depths. Twisting and turning, Kole struggled for the surface but had no more say over where his body went than a leaf did in an autumn wind. His body hit jagged boulders and shelves of slag buried beneath the sinister surface, bruising and bouncing him from one to another.

  Sharpened spears of wood lanced his flesh; branches tore at his face and hands as he fought to break the river’s hostile hold on him. At one point, his ankle wedged between two large rocks, and he felt as if the force of the river’s pull on him would completely sever his foot from his leg. But the river won at last, and as the rocks released him he was thrown forward as if from a sling.

  His mind, at this point, started to shut down all bodily functions not associated with survival; his hearing, his vision. Both seemed warped and unreal. Sounds became no more than one continuous buzzing. Sights flickered in and out as if he were blinking far too rapidly. His lungs were screaming and on fire despite the water all around him, threatening to extinguish them forever. Spots of various colored lights began to flash behind his eyelids and he knew that he was going to drown.

  Yet it was at that moment that a strange current in the water spit him up into the air like a hollow gourd. His mouth tore open and he swallowed air like a starving man. His body seemed not to want to respond to any commands that he gave it, and the world seemed to rotate around him in slower motion than was usual.

  At this point, two things happened simultaneously: A large wooly moose, dead and water-bloated, popped up out of the water right in front of him, its face hideously distorted and mashed. Kole choked and got a mouthful of water that to him tasted ominously like a dead moose might. Then the full force of the moose’s weight rolled over him and Kole was struck hard by one of its massive antlers across the bridge of his nose. The world exploded into one pain-filled white light. Kole screamed. Unfortunately he was underwater at the time and could not even say that he heard himself. What he did notice was the taste of blood in his mouth, salty and hot, and he hoped that it was his and not from the moose.

  He finally got his legs to work and kicked hard toward what he hoped was the far bank and not the one he had started from. He was completely disoriented by then and felt satisfied just to be able to tell which way was up. His head came out of the water again, and his feet hit solid ground. He became aware of the shore near him and lurched hard in that direction. His hand grasped a tree limb that protruded out from the water, and he pulled himself up on to it.

  Carefully sliding his body along its rough length, tearing the skin and hair from his chest, he reached the thick mud of the shore and crawled, half exhausted, onto the dry sand along the river’s edge. He collapsed, weakened and weary, into a state of semi-consciousness. He lay there for some time, how long he did not know. Slowly the world became aware of him again, or he of it, and he opened his eyes.

  Summoning what strength was left in him, he crawled further up the bank on his hands and knees, until his fingers felt the soft warmth of the grass bordering the beach. Kole realized at that point that he was no longer wearing his pack containing his food and supplies. And his clothes! This sent a burst of alarm through Kole and he stood up suddenly, his troubled gaze returning
to the turbulent waters. He gasped in disbelief and then sighed as his eyes spied his pack hanging precariously over the water from a small branch on the fallen tree near the bank. He carefully made his way into the river once more and retrieved it without further incident. As he turned to clamber back to shore he spotted a most peculiar creature standing just among the trees, watching him, studying him, as if thinking to itself, What a silly species these humans are.

  The animal was a horse, or nearly a horse. It was very horse-like in nature but had one unique feature that clearly distinguished it from the animal that Kole knew as horse. Protruding from the center of its forehead, about the length of Kole’s arm from shoulder blade to fingertip, was a slender, spiraled horn, delicate and unnatural in its perfection, as if it were made of some celestial shell that had fallen into the sea. Kole stood stunned.

  The animal was beautiful, to be sure. Its coat was the color of light cream and beeswax. Its mane was long tresses, thick with ringlets. The eyes of the beast were huge, liquid pools filled with intelligence and compassion. The muscles in her neck and legs were long and sinewy, well-developed, graceful and coiled, able to spring away at the slightest hint of danger. But she stood as still as Kole, self-assured, never taking her eyes off him.

  Kole could see that she was a female. Never in his life had he seen a finer animal. Something about her presence commanded his attention, and he moved very slowly from the shallows to the sand. “Hello there,” said Kole softly, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. The horse with the horn just continued to stare at him, not alarmed at all by the sound of his voice. Kole let his pack slip softly from his hand to the sand and took a cautious step forward. The creature seemed content to let him approach. He put one hand out to her, palm forward, and continued talking.

  “You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you? What’s your name then? I don’t remember my father ever telling me about a beauty like you, and I’m sure I would have remembered.”