All Living : A Seedvision Saga (9781621473923)

by Humphrey, Michael C.

  Standing on the shore of the lake, Kole stared into the blackness. The water was cold, icy, and as far as he could tell, extremely deep. He had, upon occasion, caught a few pale, eyeless fish from its depths, but mustering up the appetite to eat them was almost more than Kole could achieve. Something about the eerie, bloodless look of them quickly diminished his appetite. Besides, with the abundance of game, his ample vegetable garden, and the profusion of wild nuts and berries, Kole could easily ignore these underground albinos.

  Setting his lantern in a secure declivity in the rock floor, Kole pulled his canoe from beneath a shallow overhang along one wall and eased it gently into the dark water. Kole had made the canoe in the cave, carrying the materials down through the hole. Fashioned from a large, white piece of light birch bark, it was stitched along its curved ends with animal sinew and sealed with a mixture of pitch and boiled plant oils. He slid his body down into the boat and picked up the sturdy, olivewood paddle, his fingers gliding easily down the olive-oiled shaft and settling into the worn, finger grooves.

  Kole liked this paddle and dreaded the day he would have to carve and sand another. It was his fifth paddle in three hundred years, but at least they lasted longer than the boats. Despite Kole’s best efforts to waterproof his little cave-lake craft, after twenty or thirty years they simply lost their will to survive. Perhaps it’s the constant cool temperature down here, thought Kole, or the tree bark’s objection to the lack of sunlight.

  Kole enjoyed the time that he spent in the cave but more so recently. It was not a place that he had ever shared with Chavvah, the tunnel and the hole being too small for her to squeeze into and he’d never felt close enough with anyone to want to share it with them. His parents had visited over the years, and his brother Jorel, but for whatever reason there was always plenty to do, and the cave never came up in conversation.

  Still the fact that he had never had Chavvah in the cave seemed to bless it with a feeling of separation from his pain; as if the fact that her essence, her spirit, her memory couldn’t engulf him here, and he could come here to remember his friend in his own way, fondly and without the overwhelming sense of loss that seemed to shadow him everywhere else. The cave had no natural shadows. Only the ones he brought with him.

  He paddled stoically for several minutes until he felt the canoe grind onto the beach on the far side of the lake. He climbed cautiously out and pulled the boat up onto the shore. He dried the bark off with a small towel, so the sides of the canoe would not absorb the water and warp any faster than they already did. Then taking his lantern, he entered a small grotto set back in the far wall.

  The nook opened into a small room that Kole had painstakingly enclosed with wooden planks on the floor and around the walls. A modest table sat forlornly in the center of the space, and several small crates were stacked in the corners. Thin shelves lined the walls and held sealed clay jars containing dried fruits and nuts for emergencies.

  Kole set the light in the center of the table and pulled out a stool that he had built from thick tree limbs. He walked over to one of the corners and selected a box, setting it on the table before sitting. Gingerly he lifted off the lid. On top, inside the box, was the worn robe that he was given in the garden from the Gardener. He lifted it out and set it reverently aside.

  Underneath was a collection of items that over the years he had come to attach a sentimental value to—a few of his early wood carvings, some drawings and sketches of his designs for the house, charts and maps of areas where he and Chavvah had explored. He lifted out one of the scrolls of parchment that he made, his most recent journal. When he finally filled it completely with tales of his adventures, he would store it in another of his crates and start a new one. Not much in this life seemed as important to him as recording his memories of the world around him, the people he met and the things he saw, thought, imagined and dreamt.

  Gently he unrolled the scroll and found a recent entry. Taking two large stones that sat on the table he placed them on the ends of the scroll to hold it flat. He reached into the box again and pulled out a long, slender horn, Chavvah’s last antler. It spiraled and caught the flickering light from the lantern’s flame. He rubbed his index finger along the grooves and sighed, feeling for a moment that fading closeness to his departed friend that lingered in his soul.

  He consoled himself with reading about her. He loved the stories even though he had written them and knew how they all ended. When he wrote he tried to stick to the facts, but somehow when he reread what he’d written, he felt the sense of her, the strength and intelligence that she imbued into each moment, the spirit with which she had lived her life, her service to him as a steadfast companion that always filled the empty gaps in his days. He read for nearly an hour until he felt her presence alive again in his mind. She would be with him today. Together they would achieve a dream that they had shared for years. Today they would fly.

  It was not the first time that Kole had flown. Over the last hundred years he had attempted flight numerous times, often crashing, once breaking his leg. That had been a difficult day, but Chavvah had been there to meet him when he landed, to use the term loosely. Somewhere along her journey to keep pace with him she must have fought off some predator. A long shallow gash creased her foreleg and bled freely, but she had carried him back home so carefully he had not even noticed the seven miles speeding by beneath, as her hooves raced across the hard earth.

  When he got home she actually entered his house, for the first time ever, and deposited him on his bed. She then went and stood guard outside his window. He had set his own leg, bound it, and fell into a troubled sleep. The odd thing was that when he woke the next morning there was a cup of water and a half loaf of baked bread on the table beside his bed. The bread had the distinctive marks of equine teeth in it. How Chavvah had managed to bring those things to him remained a mystery. How an animal could even conceive of such an act perplexed him. But that was the kind of creature that Chavvah was, intelligent and thoughtful in a remarkably human way.

  Kole continued to think of her as he paddled back across the subterranean lake and climbed out of the tunnel. He closed the rock opening in his closet and slid his clothing back on the rod. The morning sun was just gilding the horizon, and the light peeled away the layers of darkness that shrouded the room.

  Kole picked up his pack and went outside. His wagon was loaded, and it took him no time at all to hitch up his horses. After a quick inspection of his sheep in the corral, he set off on the two-hour trip around the mountain. Before the sun had even begun to warm the earth, Kole had unloaded his supplies and was climbing.

  It’s not every day that a man attempts something that no other human being has ever before attempted. Kole felt a giddiness in his limbs and a familiar nervous fluttering in his belly. Always before, Kole had flown with a destination in mind, never allowing himself to get too far off the ground. His first few failed attempts had confirmed in his mind that he needed to launch his glider from a height that was still a safe fall if things went wrong.

  He had started off on small hills, running with his wings stretched out, trying to catch a gust of wind, a buoyant breeze, occasionally catching some air and gliding in short hops down the slope. He had taken quite a few nose dives, smashed his air-rider into trees numerous times, landed in ponds, broken his wings in mid-flight, and generally had more failures than successes. He had nearly given up.

  His first few crafts were designed to mimic birds in flight. He had pondered long and hard how to attach feathers to his arms, how to form his wings, how to move them up and down. He had tried various shapes and sizes, all to no avail.

  He had used a variety of materials to create his flyers. Feathers were his first thought and a difficult one to discard. He believed that it was just a matter of getting all the variables right: size, shape, materials, weight. When that time came he would prove his theories correct. Unlike the
cave, he had shared his ideas for flight with others. His father and mother both cautioned him to be careful but had admirably kept any kind of discouragement to themselves. But Kole had seen the looks that they shared and seen the colors of their skepticism.

  Jorel had been more outspoken. At first he openly ridiculed the idea, thinking that Kole was teasing him. Kole remembered that day only too well.

  Jorel had been staying with him for a few days. One afternoon, Jorel had challenged his older brother to a wrestling match. Kole had reluctantly accepted and the two had found a cleared area of ground to hold their contest.

  “I know you’re strong,” said Jorel, “but don’t hold back, Brother. I want a fair fight.”

  “As long as I break a sweat and work up an appetite,” laughed Kole, “I’ll consider it time well spent.”

  The two of them squared off and with an unspoken signal began to grapple. Jorel went for Kole’s leg and a takedown but Kole danced out of the way. They had each other locked in an extended arm grip, Jorel with his hands on Kole’s shoulders and Kole with his hands on Jorel’s upper arms. Kole faked a lunge but then pulled swiftly back, catching Jorel off-balance. Kole landed on his own his back, pulling Jorel over his head, then executed a swift backward roll and pinned Jorel’s arms under his knees. Jorel’s whole body bucked, trying to shake Kole off, but it had no effect.

  Kole grinned down at the face of his brother and said, “Give up?”

  “Never,” said Jorel between gritted teeth, straining to free himself.

  Kole had not expected his brother to surrender and was not disappointed. He did, however, ease up a touch, not enough for Jorel to notice or complain, but just enough to make it a more even bout. Jorel got an arm free. Using his newly liberated limb, he reached across Kole’s body and managed to latch his fingers onto the side of Kole’s neck using his legs as leverage to thrust Kole to the side. Kole swung with the momentum and pivoted around, flipping Jorel over and grabbing him behind and just below the knee, wrenching it up in a painful manner.

  “Give?”

  “Never.”

  The two of them tried to maneuver around. Jorel attempted to gain an advantage of some sort but Kole never lost his grip. Their bodies were, by this time, both sheened with sweat, and Jorel was panting heavily in the humid air of the afternoon.

  Kole decided that now would be a good time to end round one, so he looked Jorel in the eyes and said, “Tomorrow I’m going to try to fly.”

  It was such a random statement, delivered with an equal amount of deadpan levity, that Jorel didn’t seem to make much of it.”

  “You’re pulling my leg,” he replied.

  “I’m serious,” said Kole, “and I’m wondering if you’ll spot for me.”

  “I’m serious too, Brother,” said Jorel, “you’re pulling my knee in half, and I think my hip just popped out of the socket.”

  “Oh, sorry about that,” said Kole, letting go of Jorel’s leg.

  In the time it took to draw in a breath, Jorel swung his leg up and over Kole’s head and slammed him into the ground with it. The move actually caught Kole off-guard…a bit.

  “Do you give,” panted Jorel, out of breath.

  “I give,” laughed Kole, tears of mirth in his eyes. Jorel removed his leg from across Kole’s chest and sat up. Kole just lay there, laughing.

  Jorel looked at him. “Next time you’re going to try to distract your opponent,” he said, “at least make it something believable.”

  Kole laughed even harder but managed to catch his breath long enough to toss out a couple sentences. “Good round, Brother,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

  Kole had brought the subject up again as they supped, but Jorel had so adamantly mocked the idea and bristled when he thought Kole was having a jest at his expense that Kole had let the subject drop. He had not gone flying the next day and had not brought the topic up until many weeks later.

  Since that day though, Jorel had witnessed many of Kole’s test flights. He had helped him as Kole practiced short, gliding hops along flat ground. He had ridden a horse with a special harness that Kole could attach to his glider with a long rope, pulling him and creating the wind speed that the craft needed to become airborne. Two-minute glides became twelve-minute flights. Jorel was admittedly impressed when Kole remained aloft for over an hour on one effort, but he still refused to participate.

  “It’s not that I’m scared,” Jorel had told Kole when Kole invited him to give it a whirl, “It’s just I feel that if the Creator had wanted man to fly he would have…”

  “…stuck us with feathers and given us beaks?” Kole finished for him.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Just thinking of something Cain said once,” mused Kole.

  “Oh,” said Jorel, feeling slightly confused but not willing to lose his line of thinking. “It’s just that, how sure of all this dominion-over-the-earth stuff are you really? I mean, are you sure that would include dominion over the air as well because if it doesn’t then you’re going to fail. And fall.”

  Kole shrugged him off and made light of his brother’s foreboding, but for years after that day his mind gave sanctuary to secret doubts, feeding them with fear and lodging them snugly under quilts of anxiety. Today all that would change.

  The path up the mountain was not an easy one. Kole had been up there before to sit and look out at the plain that spread before it. Jorel had accompanied Kole on a few occasions and he had labored up the slope. Upon reaching the pinnacle Jorel, out of breath, had flatly commented, “You want to throw yourself off of this?”

  But Kole had only laughed, and truth be told he was a bit leery of doing that. For years he had worked to perfect his air-glider. He had not wanted to perform this particular test before he was ready. But now he had utmost faith in his design. He had flown it on numerous runs, making minor adjustments to the wings, the harness, and the controls. He had dreamed of this day, planned for it for years, but had continued to put it off until now.

  Life had a way of intimating itself into the daily affairs of a man. He had come here for solitude and had found it. He had taken years to build his home and acquire what belongings he had. He had buried his mother and father, been present at Cain’s death and Kesitah’s. He had lost his friend Chavvah and a number of his brothers and sisters. Over the centuries he had developed many projects: the running water in his home, his boats, his experiments with clay and metals, his animals and his crops. Spare moments seemed few and far between, even for a man as unburdened with immediate family obligations as Kole was. His boyhood dream of flying had not materialized overnight, and over time it had seen many manifestations.

  From the start Kole had thought that it was simply a matter of wings and feathers. This proved to be a dramatic miscalculation. He had used animal bladders and later animal skins sewn together to make kites and later full-scale models of large bags filled with hot air that he hoped would carry him into the sky. But the results had left him wanting. He had no good way to keep the air in the balloons hot enough to maintain lift.

  Using oils from plants and animal fats, he had come up with several hotly burning fuels that, although they burned hot, were insufficient to heat the trapped air fast enough to keep him aloft. He had experimented with glass and mirrors, angled to catch the rays of the sun, hoping they could be used to direct the sun’s warmth into the airbag, but to little avail. Also the skins had a tendency to slowly leak.

  Kole’s next endeavor was to create a type of glue that would seal the bag, make it airtight. Pitch and tar had proved too heavy. Using the natural materials available to him he had ground nuts and berries, bones and stones, leathers and feathers, glass and grass, beads and seeds; trying to achieve a paste that would have the effect that he desired.

  Eventually he had traveled, looking for useful oddities that might prove to be wha
t he needed. He had met others whose ideas intrigued him: woven cloth from plant fibers, from animal fur and hair, oddly enough from the excretions of particular types of worms. He had discovered interesting attributes with certain types of tree saps, soils, and sea life.

  He had taken all these ideas home with him to be poked and probed, seen, sniffed, and sung to. He had heated them up, cooled them down, spun them around, and buried them in the ground. He had measured, weighed, and combined. He had observed their reactions to a plethora of stimuli and selected the most useful of them for his purposes. And finally, today, he was sure he had the combination just right.

  Kole continued to climb the fickle side of the mountain. Years ago he had taken the time to carve a sort of stair into the slope and attached guide ropes into the rock along the steeper areas, more for Jorel’s benefit than his own, but burdened down now with his roll of glider parts, he found himself using them periodically as well.

  The day had advanced well along, but a quick glance at the sun told Kole he was right on schedule. The air was breezy and light, the sun warm on his face. A profusion of mountain flowers filled the air with the heady scent of nose-twister, sweetbrier and pimpernels. Birds flew back and forth from secret nooks and rookeries in the rocks, encouraging Kole with their cheery twitters to hurry and join them in the air.

  Kole balanced his load of glider parts and pieces, wrapped in a thick hide, on his left shoulder as he climbed. The path was severe but walkable, and Kole enjoyed the out-of-breath feeling that came from the exercise. This close to the heavens, he felt a closeness to his Creator, one of physical proximity that mirrored his spiritual bond, much like the lake below mirrored the mountain he was climbing.

  Too often, Kole had witnessed, human beings were satisfied with artificial substitutes; a high mountain, a grove of trees, stones images, wooden idols, places and things that gave them a glimpse of the holy without ever truly seeking to attain it; finding a broad, well-traveled road paved by their fallible ancestors instead of putting forth the effort to follow the narrow, winding path that God had marked for them through the wilderness of sin.