by Dan Kemp
So he chose a village and, one night, after the fire had died down and all was quiet, he crept into the midst of their wood and reed huts. There he left a pile of spears and clothing which he crafted for the occasion, before sneaking unnoticed back out of the village. The next morning he watched as the men of the village discovered the gifts he had left. They tested the garments and weapons, their reaction one of confusion and joy at discovering how much more sturdy and effective they were. When these began to dull and wear over time, they worked to replicate his techniques.
James went about like this for a while, moving from village to village and leaving gifts. Usually he gave them similar gifts of tools, weapons, or clothing. On occasion, when a particular tribe seemed especially lacking, he would hunt a deer or boar and drag it into the village in the early hours of morning. Most of the time his gifts were met with the same baffled appreciation. Often the men of the village would strike out into the woods searching for the source of their boon, or begin to post guards late into the night. Thus he would rarely return to the same village more than once or twice and when he did, it would only be after a long period of time.
On one or two occasions, the tribesmen rejected his gifts, burning them or simply tossing them back into the woods. Once, the men set out immediately after him with spears and bows in hand. Another time, they cowered in their huts while a village shaman set the forest around them on fire. At that time, he understood enough of their particular speech to realize they thought the gifts offered up by an evil spirit. Though these incidents were very rare, they were no less disappointing to him.
The inevitable finally happened one winter night. James had spent several months living near this village, one of the largest he had seen and housing at least a hundred men, women, and children. In his arms he carried a stack of fur and skin clothing. Strapped across his back was a bow, arrows, and several spears. This was the third time he'd returned to this place with gifts. The air was cold and his breath puffed out in front of him like a mist as he moved through the trees. A full moon hung in the sky above, its blue-white light sneaking through the treetops in rays. The frosted grass crunched underfoot and the ground looked as if it was strewn with a million tiny diamonds.
The village came into sight just ahead and James slowed his pace, quieting his footsteps as much as he could. The only sound was that of a man's snoring and the crackling embers of the dying fire as he unloaded his gifts at the fireside. Just as he finished, there was a crunch behind him.
James turned to see an old man standing outside the hut right in front of him. The other man seemed just as shocked as James, and the two stood staring at each other for a long moment. Then James began to run.
He tore out of the village, his feet kicking up bits of frost as he went. Behind him he could hear shouts as the man raised the rest of the tribe. He ran until he was out of sight and then clambered up a tall tree. There he hid through the rest of the night, watching the men of the village searching the forest below, flaming torches in their hands. By morning, they had all given up and returned to their huts.
James remained there for a while, watching from afar, but he didn't return. The people of the village now went out into the forest regularly, not only for hunting or foraging as they always had, but searching. He stayed out of sight, whether hidden in the tall brush or in the tops of the trees. Over time, they began to work on a new structure in the center of their village, a rickety creation of logs and reeds. It was a crude approximation, but its intent was clear. It was a man, with two green gemstones for eyes. It was him.
The elders of the village spent a great deal of time there, and soon a large new hut was built around the thing, which at least hid the statue from his sight. James couldn't understand what the meaning of all this was, but it was troubling to him. So it was this that led him to finally swallow his fear and his regret—over what had happened last time he interacted with humanity—and walk into the middle of the village one day.
They saw him coming from afar, a few children at first, who had been playing when he emerged from the trees. They jumped in place and shouted, one running off to alert someone else. He was anxious, his heart racing, and fearful of what would happen next. Soon enough he was surrounded by the men and women of the village, and they ushered him forward into the building that housed his statue.
Some elders sat there, the joyful look of anticipation on their faces making clear they had been told of his arrival. He stood before them and the crowd fell silent.
"Hello," he said, in their language. There was an excited murmur from the crowd behind him.
"Hello," one of the elders replied, also using another word he didn't quite recognize. It was similar to their word for 'father.' "It was you who brought gifts to us?"
"Yes," he answered.
The elders smiled and looked at each other before rising and beginning a ritual dance, singing rhythmic chants which he couldn't understand. There was a commotion in the crowd behind him now and, as he turned to see, hands grasped him under the arms and pulled him to the front of the room. The elders finished their dance and then bowed before him, foreheads to the dirt.
Some men in the crowd came forward, a young girl ahead of them. She was nude and timid, moving forward with prods from the men behind. The men pushed her to the ground in front of him and then bowed themselves. And now there was the angry snorting of a bull being led into the center of the room. Its handler held a sharp stone dagger, which he placed to the beast's throat.
No. I don't want any of this.
"No!"
He stepped forward. The shout rippled through the crowd like a physical force, some of them actually taking a step back. Just a half second after his shout there was the sharp, deafening crack of lightning striking somewhere nearby. Rain began to patter on the roof.
"Stop this," he said. "Stop it all. I only wanted to help you. I am nothing more than a man, like you."
There was silence now, other than the falling of rain.
"Our offerings displease him," one elder finally said. "We must bring more."
James let out a wordless scream and ran, out of the shrine and out of the village, through the pounding rain and back into the forest. He knew that he should just keep running, far away from this village and its deranged people. But something inside him told him he had to see what happened next. And things only got worse from there.
For a long time, tribes had been so far removed from each other that they rarely interacted much. Over time it became more common, mostly brief and tense encounters and sometimes exchanging of supplies or tools. On a few occasions he had seen minor violence erupt, but nothing more than isolated incidents. What he saw during this time was much more troubling.
The village didn’t slow in their devotion to him. They continued to expand, and as they did, they sent men to nearby villages. James watched as they spread the message of the god who lived in the woods and protected them.
Many of these other villages were ones he had also visited, and some were eager to listen to their message. Others, he observed with horror, had devised their own concept of who he was, and what he wanted them to do. Brawls erupted, men were chased from villages with rocks and arrows flying after them. Conflict rapidly came to a boil as each of several groups, using the techniques he had taught them, armed themselves.
A hundred men met in a wide field one spring morning. The chill of the night was still in the air and the grass was wet with dew. Men of three different tribes stood in awkward gaggles, each staring at the others. The men held spears and clubs, a handful of them with bows and arrows. James crouched out of sight in the crook of a thick tree branch.
Finally the tension broke and the men ran at each other. They swung their clubs and jabbed with their spears with little concern for where they went. Men's heads cracked like eggs and spilled on the grass. Skin ripped and bones splintered.
Soon the morning air was filled with the murderous screams of the living and the angui
shed cries of the dying. For a few long moments, James could only watch in horror as the scene played out in front of him. Then he leapt down from the tree and sprinted out into the clearing.
"Stop!"
No one noticed his coming, so he screamed and stomped his foot on the ground. The earth rumbled and shook, shockwaves traveling in all directions and sending men stumbling and falling as the ground beneath them rippled and cracked. Some men fell away into gaping chasms which opened beneath them, and their cries grew distant as they fell. Those who still lived rose, confused, to their feet before immediately returning to their savage business.
The men went on killing each other as if James weren't there at all. His attempt at stopping the chaos had only made things worse. So he stood there, paralyzed, as the battle raged and came to an end, one tattered tribe rising victorious from the blood and grime. It was only then that they saw him standing there. They raised their weapons overhead, hooting and yelling in celebration. A rage began to build within him. This wasn't what he wanted. This wasn't his fault. But could he even fix it?
He let out a bellow and felt the fires of the earth moving through him. With one extended hand, he burned them all. And when they had all gone still and quiet on the broken ground, he left. Tears fell down his cheeks and he walked as a melancholy rain began to fall. James walked far, far away, like he had done in the days when he was alone, wishing he were alone once again.
Of course, this was not meant to be. Though he wandered far and wide, humanity continued its spread. Tiny villages grew large. They grew crops and raised animals, the efficiency of farming letting them grow even larger and faster. Flimsy huts became sturdy wooden houses. Towns became cities where mankind congregated, and for a while James wondered if they might have learned to live together after all.
This hope didn't last long. With greater numbers and greater technology came only the potential for more horrible warfare. And though he had learned long ago that interfering in the affairs of mankind was destined for failure, he tried again and again. And invariably his intervention would lead to more tragedy. Any display of his strange powers would lead either to devotion or fear of him. In either case, more violence was the sole outcome. Before long he became doubtful of his ability to stop them at all. Soon war became nothing more than a fact of life, and his own acceptance of it angered him more than anything else.
Their progress accelerated at dizzying rates. Cities grew massive, with impressive works of construction and engineering rising up on the horizon as he watched from afar. And now these busy cities, with people coming and going at all times, finally allowed James to travel without suspicion. He could wander these places unnoticed and soon began to see that humanity was, at least, capable of great good as well. Peaceful men and women in the cities spent their days creating art. Painting, sculpture, and music—these concepts were, to him, beyond belief. Their languages grew and adapted, and James learned them all over time.
Parents worked and provided for their children, who soon grew and made families of their own. Friends laughed together and lovers doted on one another. It was seeing all of this, the entire complex spectrum of human behavior, that made him finally understand. However different they might be from him, they shared the same emotions, the same desires and fears.
And it was in these early days of civilization that he finally found a purpose. On the city streets there were starving families. He could feed them. In the darker depths of the city there were men who sought to rob others of the products of their hard work. He could stop them.
So now James joined with the rest of humanity. He would work in one place for as long as he could. Farmer, blacksmith, hunter, tailor, physician. Every conceivable job he tried at some time or another. He would work and earn money, a way to pay for food and shelter. The rest of it he could give away to those who needed it. He made friends and rivals. Yet invariably he would have to move on, when suspicion about him began to brew. He had, after all, not aged a day in the many years people had known him. So he would move to another city and start again.
These were the halcyon days of his life. James kept on the move, concealing his powers and otherwise living what seemed to be a normal life. Though he never lost his desire for female companionship, he rarely pursued it. It was clear enough to him that he would merely have to leave whenever his distinct lack of aging became a problem. And having seen what happened when he revealed his powers to other humans, he was hesitant to do so. Fortunately at this time, and all others, his purely physical urges were easily enough satisfied by perfectly willing professionals.
It was in these times, when kings called pharaohs ruled in one part of the world, that things began to change once again. Religion returned in force, though he was thankful it at least didn’t focus on him anymore. Yet it brought the same violence and unrest it always had before. And for him, it no longer felt as though he were passing unnoticed from one place to another. Whether it was disease, famine, fire, or natural disaster, tragedy followed him. He found himself moving from city to city more often than he had needed to in the past.
That constant, nagging thrum in the back of his mind actually had grown louder too, though he was very skilled at suppressing it by now. He had always felt the ever-present pull on his attention from every part, every cell of his body. And he had always felt the earth calling out to him. It all required him to pay it some small amount of care. What would happen if he ignored it, he didn’t know.
But for a while now he had felt something else, another presence pulling at the back of his mind. This one was hateful, destructive, resentful. He could feel it growing in strength the longer he remained in one place. When he ran, it would fade for a while before eventually returning.
So James ran, and the contented life he had only just begun to enjoy was no more.
Dorian
"Careful, shit! Bring it up easy!"
The construction worker's shouts echoed along the walkway to Dorian, who stood atop the wall. He watched as another worker on the ground below operated a small crane, swinging an iron frame upward which banged loudly off the wall at the feet of the first worker.
The men tried again, the crane operator this time carefully raising the large hunk of metal up before sliding it sideways to rest on the wall. The worker, garbed in a jumpsuit and hard hat, guided the thing into position before securing it in place.
Further down along the wall, another team was at work doing the same task. Behind him, the metal frames and posts were already positioned at intervals along the wall. This framework, when combined with the tall metal poles already raised inside the town, would support his overhead net.
On the other side of the town, he could see some of the work was already complete. In the end it would be nearly three quarters of a square mile of patchwork leather straps. Suspended from above, they would protect the town from any more attacks from the sky.
Below, a few townspeople shielded their eyes against the early morning sun, which was just beginning to slip behind the clouds, as they looked up in interest. Dorian smiled to himself as he watched the men work. He had done a great deal of charity in his past life, but what he had accomplished here was something he was truly proud of.
Thunderclouds were rolling in overhead as he climbed down the ladder back onto the street. The storm looked to be a big one.
Shit.
He jogged back to his house as the first rain began to fall. Thick, heavy raindrops bounced off the sidewalk and flooded the street. Sudden torrential downpours weren't uncommon these days. It could last for a minute or for days at a time. Dorian hoped for the former.
A man ran past, jacket held over his head, as thunder boomed and rolled. Dorian slipped through the gate and onto the shelter of his porch. Water dripped down off his clothes and pooled at his feet while he unlocked the door.
The air inside was cold on his wet skin, but pleasant nonetheless. He slipped his shoes off near the door and headed for the master bathroom. Dorian retrie
ved a towel and ran it across his head as he walked back into his bedroom.
The bedsheets were in disarray and the comforter lay halfway off the bed. He tossed his towel across the room into a laundry basket before pulling the blanket back onto the bed. On the floor beneath where it had been was a small black pair of women's panties, a sudden reminder of the previous night, otherwise not well remembered. He picked them up, smirking, before bunching them up and tossing them in the trash.
Dorian slid out of the rest of his damp clothes, adding them to the clothing pile. These he replaced with a tight long sleeved shirt, tan cargo pants, and a leather jacket. He was just finishing dressing, zipping up his jacket, when he heard the radio in the other room crackle.
"Go ahead," he said into the receiver.
Kristof's voice. "It's time. Ready?"
"Always," Dorian replied. "Meet you at the gate."
He kept his guns in a chest near the front door. A six-shooter revolver went to his left hip, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol at his right. An M4 automatic rifle he slung across his chest on a strap. Dorian checked himself in the mirror and smiled.