All Living : A Seedvision Saga (9781621473923)

by Humphrey, Michael C.

  Step by step, Kole got closer to the not-a-horse creature. He could feel her warm breath exhaling from her nostrils as she sniffed at his hand. Her whiskers tickled his fingers and made him smile.

  “Sure. There you go, sweetheart. Kole smells okay, now doesn’t he? I did just have the most intense bath a moment ago. Will you let me pet you? You won’t run away now, will you? You’re not afraid of me, are you?” Kole stretched his hand out further.

  The female lowered her head toward Kole, granting him his request. The tip of her ivory horn brushed his left shoulder. His hand moved to touch the soft shag of her forelock but she tossed her head back as if reconsidering. Kole froze, his hand half outstretched. Their eyes met, and hers were not afraid. Again she lowered her head to him, but this time her horn rested on his right shoulder, as if she had just anointed him as God’s warrior.

  He fell to his knees, overwhelmed, his right arm still in the air. She lowered her head further, and his fingers met the fringe of her mane, softer than anything Kole had ever touched before. The fur seemed to spring to life around his fingers and he moved them gently, feeling as if there were nothing finer in God’s creation. His head was down and his eyes were squeezed shut. The horse-but-not-a-horse shook her head and lifted it so that Kole had to raise his eyes until they found hers. They beheld each other; in troth, a moment of supreme importance passing between them. Kole heard her chuff softly, and then she was gone, bounding delicately away to disappear into the green wood.

  Kole knelt mesmerized for several moments, wondering what the meeting meant. For surely such an experience was no chance thing. No mere coincidence, that she should be there, one of God’s finest works of art, Kole was sure, just when he was on the verge of collapse. Her presence seemed to have invigorated him, refreshed him. Kole felt finer than he had ever felt, even after his recent ordeal in the river, and all of his aches and pains were now less than they had been moments before. He looked down at his body. The flesh was still torn and bruised, bloody and battered. But he did not feel the wounds. They were insignificant, inconsequential now, compared to the blessing that the Creator had just bestowed upon him.

  With his mind blissfully numbed, Kole made camp.

  He awoke in the pre-dawn gloaming and walked for an hour before the trees gave out, and he found himself on the border of an immense plain, barren and bleak. His soul still sang from the previous evenings encounter with the original horse. For she was that, Kole reasoned. When horses were created, she must have been the pattern used by the Creator. And she herself was nothing less than the pure imagination of God, fashioned in the image of his most wonderful thoughts. Kole stood on a sloped hill leading down into the plain and watched his third sunrise since the hunt in the Valley of Pride.

  The morning dawns slowly, like a faint blush on the cheeks of a shy girl, Kole thought. But all poetry slipped from his mind when, by the light of the rising day, he got his first glimpse of Cain’s abomination. The city seemed to pull and repel him at the same time.

  “Lord, be with me,” said Kole under his breath as he re-shouldered his pack and went alone to challenge history.

  Kole was not alone for long. The walk from the hills to the outskirts of the town seemed to take longer than Kole thought it would. His food and water were gone, and his clothes still felt damp from yesterdays dunking in the river. He was ready to get this over with and get home.

  The first thing that Kole noticed as he drew near the town was the stench. The smell of excrement assaulted his nostrils and made his eyes sting. He stopped to rub them, but the odor was inescapable. Kole pulled a leather pouch out of his bag and tore the seams out of it. This he tied around his lower face to cover his mouth and nose. It helped but not nearly enough.

  He passed through an arched gateway as he entered the city and saw a group of men squatting in the dirt beside a building, playing at some game of chance. When they saw him their eyes widened and they leaped to their feet. Two of them ran off toward what Kole thought might be the center of town and the rest watched him with suspicion. Kole assumed at least some of those men had been on a particular hunting trip a few days earlier and he did not need to ask directions to know that they would not prove helpful to him. No doubt it would not be long before Cain found him anyway.

  The city was laid out with more forethought than Kole had noticed from the distant ridgetop. The streets were parallel and straight, the buildings plumb, and the ground level. The dust that covered everything seemed to be more a result of the recent sand storm than from consistent neglect. Many of the houses were built from fired clay bricks, but others were clearly constructed of cut stone. The blocks seemed to be fitted together with an eye for detail, and there were very few chinks in the seams. Most of the cracks had been filled with clay or mortar and painted with a coat of whitewash. Kole was surprised that so many of the names and new words that he had learned from his family came easily to his mind.

  Doors on street level were brightly stained in reds and greens. Carvings of animals and men detailed the wooden frames around them. The windows on the taller buildings had colored skins hanging from them, either to keep out the sun, the dust, the bugs, or the smell. The town seemed oddly still. No animals roamed the streets and no children played in them. There were no women hauling water, no men building. A city this size must consume considerable labor, speculated Kole. I wonder where all the inhabitants are?

  The tight confines of the buildings and streets opened unexpectedly into a large circular central plaza. In the middle, a fountain burbled up in a small pool surrounded by a low rock wall. Water gushed out from a spout in the side to form a shallow trickle that flowed down the middle of a street along a stone-lined channel. Small, wooden bridges arched over the water in several places. The channel in turn stretched the length of the plaza and disappeared into a dark hole beside a low squat building to Kole’s right. Above the building, a column of black smoke rose heavily into the stagnant morning air. A bit of a breeze would do wonders for this place, thought Kole, but before he could close his eyes and sing for one his attention was captured by a new sight.

  Perhaps the most impressive structure in the city towered in front of him, directly behind the fountain from where Kole stood. He stopped and stared. It was a large, red stone building, four levels high, with dun colored columns lining a receiving patio. An enormous entryway gaped between the pillars leading into a vast dark chamber. Kole thought he saw shadows moving around inside but was not certain.

  Before he could inspect the building further, he noticed a man kneeling on the ground. Two upright wooden stakes had been hammered into the earth, and a beam was attached across the top of them. To this the man was tied. His arms were outstretched and his head hung limp, hair nearly dragging in the dust. A sheen of sweat glistened on his shirtless torso and a swarm of black flies hovered around him. More than a dozen welts criss-crossed his back, the blood from the wounds dry and caked. The injuries had obviously been allowed to bleed untended, for the hem of his loin cloth was stained pink. What is this abomination, thought Kole. Adam had certainly had to discipline the boys from time to time when they were younger, but they were never tied down nor left to rot in the heat of the midday sun. And there had never been blood. Kole wondered if the man was dead. With a tremendous effort of will, Kole tore his eyes away from the body and continued to inspect the building in front of him, the scene permanently etched in his mind.

  Three steps led up to side porches where benches lined the outer walls. The columns supported a roof of the same red stone that rose from both ends to form a peak the height of ten men. Kole had never seen anything manmade of such gigantic proportions. It was quite an accomplishment.

  As Kole’s eyes traveled up the length of it he had to tip his head back. That was the moment he first noticed the engraving. He had not noticed it before because it was layered with the same fine coating of dust that covered everything,
but in the center of the triangular face of the roof that covered the patio, small chips of black stone had been stuck to the surface. A patchwork picture had been shaped from the stones depicting a large human eye with lines radiating out from it. Below the eye was an almost-triangle with its top point missing.

  Kole was still staring up at the image, trying to determine some meaning in the mosaic, when he heard a voice addressing him. He lowered his eyes to the shadowy entrance beneath the shelter and observed several men coming down the stairs. The one in front appeared to be in charge but was clearly not Cain. He wore a camel-colored tunic that dragged on the ground behind him and a wide belt that emphasized the broad thickness of his neck and shoulders. He tugged at his long, flowing brown beard with first one hand and then the other, stroking it as if he were milking a goat.

  “I am pleased to see you here,” he said, although what he meant seemed to imply just the opposite. He might have said something prior to this greeting, but if so, Kole had no idea what that might have been; he had been too thoroughly engrossed in studying the artwork above the awning.

  “I must admit,” the man continued, “you’ve got a lot of guts.” A ripple of mockery behind him, and Kole realized that he was now surrounded by men. The man on the steps laughed at his own joke. “But perhaps it is not so much your courage as your foolishness that compels you to come here.

  “I believe you have met my son, Irad,” said the speaker, gesturing to the man who had been tied up and tortured at the bottom of the stairs. “Although he lacked meat, he came back from his hunt with many fine stories to tell, stories that I would be most curious to hear you tell as well.”

  Kole stared at the man until the silence grew uncomfortable. He could hear the shifting of feet in the sand and the clearing of throats from the men behind him. He looked up at the sun and closed his eyes, seeing the orange of its light through his eyelids and feeling the warmth of its rays tanning his face. He pictured the men before him. None were his brother Cain. These men had similar features but also…something more.

  They shared the hungry look of men who had not eaten in days. The pinched look of their mouths and strained lines on their brows spoke volumes to Kole. The half-moons bagging the undersides of their eyes revealed several days of sleeplessness. And there was fear. These men were afraid of someone. Kole opened his eyes and pulled the leather veil off his face, the sweet and sour stench of the city seemed as strong as ever.

  Kole spoke, his aim to anger the man into revealing where Cain might be hiding. “It intrigues me that you would be more interested in hearing histories from me than in the courtesy of making your own introductions, boy. Are your such a stranger to visitors that you have forgotten your manners?” questioned Kole. “Perhaps you would like to make amends for your lack of civility by inviting me to your home for a meal. Even a cup of water would be an offering that would redeem you in my eyes.”

  “Why you belligerent whelp, it is you who have forgotten your place. You are a lone stranger here and surrounded by my sons. With one word I can have you strung up on a pole and carried back to the valley where you stole our meat and shamed my firstborn. There you would be planted in a hole to live out your last few moments of misery watching vultures and hyenas draw lots for the privilege of disemboweling you.”

  Kole took a step forward and heard a rumbling from the throats of the men behind him but did not turn around. The group of men surrounding the speaker drew up into a tighter knot, every muscle in their bodies taut with barely concealed bloodlust. Their auras flared a sickly mottled green, and Kole sensed the discordance of the city emanating from them.

  Kole gritted each syllable from between clenched teeth. If it was fear that these men responded to then he would give them some. “Before that word even fell from your lower lip I would stamp my foot on the ground and all the buildings in this city would fall down around your ears. The last sound that you would hear would be the terrified screams of your innocent women and children, who even now huddle behind their curtains and hang upon your every word. Spare them your blasphemies.”

  To Kole’s astonishment, the man laughed, a wet, phlegm-filled laugh that ended when he hacked up a large glob of mucus and spat it on the steps at his feet. “Who do you think you are, you young pup? God or something?”

  “I think you know better than that,” said Kole, “and you would do well to hold your tongue, youngster, if the only good thing that can come from your mouth is your spittle.”

  The man’s face turned purple with rage. “Youngster!” he roared. “I’ll have you know that I am the eighth oldest living human being. I am Enoch, and this city is mine.”

  “I’m sure your father Cain would be interested to hear you put it that way,” shrugged Kole. “And I’m sorry to have to disappoint you Enoch, but you are the ninth oldest now, for I am Kole, the firstborn, the third eldest, and I have returned.”

  Enoch’s jaw dropped in astonishment and the mouths of all the men hung open in wordless wonder. A collective gasp could be heard from behind several of the windows where the women were listening. The crowd on the steps parted and a man pushed his way to the front, shouldering past even Enoch. It was Cain.

  “Kole, brother! I thought it was you. But how can this be possible? You look the same as the day I last saw you. I could not believe my own eyes when you walked into the square. I figured Mother and Father had finally spawned a new son in your absence who mirrored your image. But it is you, isn’t it? I can see that now. What strange wonder has preserved you in such a youthful state? I must know.”

  Now it was Kole’s turn to find himself at a loss for words. Confronted for the first time by his brother Cain, no words seemed adequate. His brother had changed, that much was certain. His voice was harsh as if he had eaten gravel. He was still tall and muscular, tanned and arrogant to behold. But time had creased his face around the eyes and flecked his beard with gray. He wore a white tunic of supple leather, hand worked with ochre-colored stitching. From the belt around his waist hung a pouch made from the skin of a stoat, the head forming a flap over the opening. In his hand was a well-oiled staff of black wood, tapered at the bottom and a swollen, polished burl at the top resembling an egg. His hair cascaded down over his shoulders and gleamed wetly in the sun. But the most noticeable difference was the dark brown mark upon Cain’s cheek, just under his eye. It was in the shape of a triangle with no top. Kole resisted the urge to look up at the enormous replica of the mark that had been tiled upon the face of the building above them.

  So this was the mark that the Creator had stamped upon Cain’s countenance; neither the thumbprint of God nor the first letter of Cain’s name; not some image of a horrific beast to frighten men or a meaningless smudge imbued with power. No. This was a daily reminder to Cain of the moment he committed his greatest folly. Not the murder of his brother, but the murder of his God.

  He had built an altar and then sacrificed the closeness that God offered him. Slain the love in his heart for his Creator. Sacrificed love. Cain was indeed a changed man. Time had reshaped him. But the greatest difference in Cain was not what he looked like on the outside but the cold emptiness that gnawed at his insides with brittle fury. Cain hid it well.

  “Speak, Brother. What greeting do you bring after so much time apart? There is cause for celebration in the city of Enoch this night. We will send out the hunters and feast on fresh flesh when the sun goes down. We will send out the women to carry clean water from distant springs. We will have the children dance for us and the young maidens sing songs.”

  “But, Father…” interrupted Enoch.

  “Silence,” snapped Cain, whipping his head around. “Can you not see that your elders are talking?”

  Enoch’s face paled, and he mumbled an apology. Kole could see Cain’s jaw muscles clenching and knotting up beneath the thick blackness of his beard and noticed the knuckles of his hand throb in a wh
ite-fisted grip around his staff. But Cain kept his voice under control as he turned back toward Kole. His smile did not quite make it to his eyes.

  “Do you wish to hug me, brother?” asked Cain, spreading his arms wide.

  “Do you wish to be hugged,” asked Kole.

  Cain laughed and dropped his arms. “No man who is truly a man wishes to be hugged. Come brother, walk with me. Enoch, see to the preparations.” Cain started to turn but then had another thought, “And if there is any life left in your son, clean him up, and have him on hand.”

  Hatred played across the features of Enoch’s face but he turned away and followed orders.

  As the other men left, Kole moved around the fountain and approached Cain.

  “We need to talk, Cain. It’s long overdue.”

  “Ah, my brother Kole, never one to mince words. I can’t say that I’m happy to see you here. You have caused me no end of trouble over the years.”

  “Have I?” asked Kole, eyes widening. He didn’t know what Cain might say to him, but he had not expected that.

  “Yes, trouble that I had hoped to have left behind, buried in my past.”

  “I suspect that if I have caused you trouble, Brother, it was no more than you deserved, and while you were burying your troubled past, you neglected to bury our brother Abel. You left him bleeding in a field, dying in my arms.”

  “That’s an old tune, Kole, and not one of my favorites, if you want to know the truth.”

  “That would be refreshing.”

  “You grieve me, Kole. Is that what you’ve come back to do? Cause me grief? If so, I’d have to say your welcome here will be brief.”

  “I’ve come to sort things out, Cain; come to set things right between brothers, if such a thing is still possible.”