by Joel Varty
But I notice that he doesn’t attack me again right away, and he doesn’t take advantage of the higher ground, but leaps directly over me. I roll away from him and he swats at my hand, trying to knock the knife away. The pain is excruciating as his claws dig like nails though the flesh on the back of my hand and the knife is bashed out of my grip, landing a few feet away at the foot of an old rotted tree trunk. The thick and dead tree is bare of limbs and alone, standing straight up; all of its branches have long ago fallen away and left it, as an empty husk, to linger there. To watch us struggle.
I scramble for the knife, but Lucifer is too quick for me, and I am forced to roll to my right, sideways along the hill to escape the vicious claws. I grab a large rock about twice the size of my fist and, stopping my roll, whip my body back to the left, bringing the rock down with all of my weight on Lucifer’s great bear paw as it plants down beside me. With a mighty roar that is filled with a lifetime of unannounced hurt and loneliness, he nearly collapses, but then recoils away from me and slips down the hill a step, landing on his back. I am quick to press the advantage, and in a burst of pent-up anger, I pick up the knife and leap down the hill towards the great bear.
I land right on him, sliding inside the swing of his long legs and just catching few scratches as I struggle to gain access to his belly. We roll like that, twisting and turning in a furious tangle of blows, biting and scratching as I try to drive the knife into him, and I’m not sure why, only that I feel I must.
Before we know it, we’ve rolled and slid the whole way down the hill, and I realize with a start that the howling of the great beast has turned into the grunts and gasps of a man, and the fur in my face is actually his hair, and I push him away, both of us jumbling to our feet, wheezing and bent over with pain.
We don’t speak. We stand there looking around, trying to catch our breath.
We are covered in ash and soot, and we can’t see back to where we’ve come from. Everywhere I look there is darkness, and with a moment of despair, I fear that I have fought with my friend for my life when I should have given it quicker to the earth. I take the knife in my left hand, since my right is too broken and battered to hold on to it with, and bring it slowly up level with my heart. I can hear Lucifer call out from where he is laying on the ground and he swings his hands out towards me, calling “No! No!” at the top of his voice. But he sounds far away, and this non-world at the end of the world has gone quiet, with only the sound of my pounding heart to remind me that I am not quite not-alive yet.
I look down as I feel the tip of the blade, black and awful, pierce the skin of my chest. I can’t bear the sight, then, and with agonizing slowness I turn my head back and away from Lucifer to hide my anguish, my last tears flinging out across the acrid greyness and seeming to sizzle with the heat of the place.
I see shadows in the distance as I waver between life and death with the blade not quite deep enough yet, but I can’t seem to find the strength to drive it home, and I wonder how long it will take me to fall.
I see shadows that are in the shapes of people. Some of them I recognise. Some of them I’ve loved.
My parents.
Ruben.
Others.
They’re not far from me now, almost more than shadows, but hidden by the veil that I can’t yet cross. For a moment it seems like they’re reaching out to me, but then I see that they are waving and shouting something, shaking their heads. They don’t understand.
I hear a familiar voice behind me, strong and firm. It says, “Jonah, turn around.” It’s Michael, standing there behind me, just before the veil that holds the shadows, and it seems he is holding the veil back, as it has circled around from all directions now, another layer of darkness that is waiting for me when I fall.
Michael looks angry. Or is it sadness? I can’t tell. He is shaking his head too. His eyes look like they should have tears in them, but he doesn’t cry, and that seems strange just now. Why doesn’t he cry for me, for this world?
I turn back to Lucifer, and see Gabriel standing over him, helping him to his feet, and Lucifer, weak and injured, is openly weeping. Gabriel looks irritated, too, but it might not be at me. I can’t tell. It’s all wrong, in a world of wrongness and I know now that only one thing can stop it.
Only one thing left to do.
But I can’t seem to fall forward and finish the job. Rachel, the kids, my friends, the people, this world – am I damning them or saving by doing this? Or does it matter at all? Are we all doomed no matter what I do?
And with a massive cry of anguish and the last of my breath and the last my tears and all of my sorrow blown into cinders… I tip forward and fall.
The veil evaporates and the darkness implodes to become a glow from everywhere and nowhere, and it is too bright for me to behold, and then my vision fails me.
I fall.
Chapter Eight – The Ones Left Behind
Rachel
They come back without him. More people than I could have ever imagined, a long line of sorry-looking, wet, dirty, hungry people. But not him, not my Jonah.
Is this it? Is this the feeling I get when he is gone – truly gone?
A man calling himself Bill, who I guess is the very same Sergeant Thomas that Jonah told me about, and a few others, all come up to me, tears in their eyes. And then I know. I know everything – even what they don’t tell me. Oh God, even the horses look sorry to see me, hanging their heads as they walk past me and right into the barn.
The storm that finally broke and wailed on us for three days and nights is over now. It was dark all day and bright all night with lightning, and some of the neighbours spoke of fires that lit up off in the distance and burned despite the incessant rain. I wonder if that was a sign of Jonah dying – but no, it was probably just a early summer storm brought on by all the hot, dry weather. Maybe. His passing is not a surprise, in a way. But, as I turn back to the kids, who have Where’s Daddy? written all over their faces in blind innocence, I have only a shred of breath to hold myself back from breaking down.
Why? Why, oh why did you go back?
But so many people…
Look at all the people you brought back...
“I’m so sorry, Rachel,” says the one calling himself Bill, now. “I tried to stop him…”
“But I’m glad you didn’t,” Angie says quickly from behind me. She is standing tall and has that tougher-than-nails look she sometimes gets when she is absolutely convinced of something. I find it oddly comforting. “He did what he had to do to bring you all here safely.”
“Is that what we’re going to tell everyone, Angie?” asks a younger man, obviously distraught; probably the one called Steven. “We’re going to tell them we’re all safe now? That we should just sit in a field and eat grass or something? We haven’t even thought of eating properly for days. These people are staving.”
Herb, who has quietly walked up and placed himself in our little circle, says in his most reassuring voice, “We have plenty of food, Steven. We’ve been stocking up and doing everything we can to make sure whoever finds their way here will have food and shelter. People from all around the area have been writing down what they’re willing to share, and we should able to help you look after everyone with you.”
Lucia comes up beside me and puts her arm around my waist. It is a gesture she has never done before, at least in recent memory, and it isn’t lost on Herb, who, after speaking, peaks over at us and raises an eyebrow. “It’s everyone from the tunnel,” she says. “I think the ones who walked through that tunnel are the only ones left.”
“And us,” I hear myself say. “Everyone who came here is still here.”
Except him. He never walked out. He was carried out. That’s what they told me.
“I think he meant to save us,” says the woman standing beside Bill. “He told me that ‘everyone who made it out can get back in again.’” Then she looks at me, “What do you think he meant by that?”
“I don’t
know,” I answer, but for a moment, seeing a few of the lives that he gave his up for, losing him doesn’t feel as bad as it might.
I turn away from the group and back to the kids, Jewel and Gwyn, and take them in my arms, struggling a bit with the weight. They’ve grown so much even in the last little while. I look right at Gwyn and try to keep my face straight, for his eyes are a complete mirror of Jonah’s and he’s got that funny look on his face that always made Jonah laugh. For a moment, he’s right there with us.
…
Aeron
I lose track of all the people coming in. Neighbours show up and people are divided up between all the various houses and farms around. It still leaves a pretty large group who don’t have anywhere to go, and a bunch of teenaged kids who have decided to sleep in the barn, like me and Courteney have started doing.
They are all pretty wide-eyed and wondrous at this new place they’ve found themselves in, but they love the horses and we sit around the paddocks and eat fresh-baked bread with honey on it. They eat like they haven’t tasted real food before. Then they all start talking about where they’re from, and how they’ve never been on a farm before, and how it’s not too bad and doesn’t smell as bad as they thought it might.
I feel bad for Uncle Jonah. It doesn’t seem right that he should have to give up everything just for these people to come back – and they don’t even know what he did, and nobody’s saying anything about it. They all seem to know something about it – but nobody really knows why.
Courteney and I steal glances at each other, and I think she knows what I’m thinking: the end of the world isn’t so bad when you have someone to love.
She’s a different sort of girl than the kind I imagined I would meet. She knows more about horses than anyone has a right to – and she makes sure I know it. She looks me in the eye and tells me I’m wrong when even I know that I am, and still I don’t get mad. In fact, I’ve stopped being angry since she’s started telling me, almost indifferently, how wrong my perspective has been.
I wonder if this is what a soul-mate feels like. I wonder if it even matters, really, or if it’s only her and me that need to think so. We go about our work, and Herb seems to arrange it so that we’re always working together with the animals. Courteney has been giving me glances today, though, and I can tell she feels uncomfortable with something.
“What is it, what’s the matter?” I ask when we are both out pulling long-rooted pig-weeds out of the garden. We carry the prickly plant, root and all, in baskets back to our little cart that we have hooked onto Merry to pull back to the barn.
She waits a long time before answering. We get a whole load of the stuff. Apparently it’s actually from a family of plants called Amaranth, and can be threshed like any grain and ground into flour. We’ve been eating it mixed into our oatmeal and our bread-flour, since at this time of year we aren’t harvesting anything else.
Others, the new kids who’ve just arrived, see us working and join in, fussing over the mare and asking about “that big horse” in the barn.
“Let’s get out of here for a bit,” Courteney says finally, as we get the massive pile of weeds stacked to finish drying out in the old corn bin. She gestures to Merry and we unhook the horse from the cart. Then she jumps on bareback, surprising me.
“We can’t ride like that!”
“Don’t be a chicken,” she calls out, laughing, holding on with her knees, and the mare lets out a shrill whinny, taking off with Courteney struggling to stay on.
“Damn it,” I whisper under my breath as they fly off across the fields towards the woods – not knowing whether to be afraid for her or the horse. I turn to go down to the stables to get another horse tacked up, but the big stallion Ernest is already bursting through the door, having broken out of his stall.
Suddenly, everything feels wrong, strange somehow, and the light is different. The horse stands there in the doorway looking at me, almost as if he knows what he needs to do and where he needs to go. He doesn’t like me, though, and I’ve never liked riding him, so I try to push him back through into the stable and get him back in his stall where he is supposed to be resting. He pushes back at me with his head and starts trotting across the yard where Merry has just taken Courteney.
I shake my head. Horses and women, they belong together!
Without thinking about it, I run after the big horse and he lets me grab him by the mane and fling myself up. And then it’s a ride the likes of which I have never known. He runs with a heavy pounding of hooves, but for a big horse he seems to fly over the ground, throwing up chunks of dirt and turf as he twists and turns through the yard. Then it’s over the fences and across the field after Merry, who has already disappeared into the woods with Courteney.
It’s nice weather, and at any other time I would be enjoying the ride, provided I had a saddle and reins and a quieter mount, but I can’t quite pin down the weirdness of the day. And with all the things that have happened in the last while, that’s saying a lot.
We break through the line of trees at the edge of the woods and follow the paths that Aunt Rachel took me through last week when she was telling me about my dad and my grandparents. There are branches sticking out everywhere and slapping me in the face, so I stop trying to find Merry and Courteney and just bury my head in Ernest’s mane for a bit, trying to get into the rhythm of his running. Eventually, whether by my urging or not, he slows up and stops. I slide down to the ground.
Courteney is there, standing and petting Merry with a little boy who looks like he has been crying. He must have wandered back here on his own and gotten lost. I don’t think that a horse could have a sense of smell enough to follow a child all this way, but they’ve surprised me before. I walk over to join them, and the two horses nicker at each other in their odd little way of displaying companionship.
And then I notice where exactly we are, standing under a great old oak tree with letters carved into it:
Here lie Bruce and Cybil Truth.
Beloved to each other and to all of us.
Courteney looks at me and smiles. “He says his name is Gabriel, isn’t that a nice name?”
I smile back and look at the kid for a minute. “He must have come in with everyone yesterday. Someone’s probably missing him. We should get back.” I look at the tree for a second. “Those are my grandparents, you know. And my mom and dad are buried not far from here. I guess Uncle Jonah will get his own tree, too.”
“Not yet, he shouldn’t, though,” says a voice just out of sight. It sounds like an old man, and a chill runs down my spine. This is where all the feelings of strangeness have come from: this place, right now. “He ain’t dead yet.”
Courteney looks at me then with wide eyes, and the little boy plants a big kiss on Merry’s nose, and I can’t help but laugh out loud. He calls out in a strident, little boy voice, “I missed you, Merry!”
And then I see something that changes me, way down deep inside where the sun seldom shines. It humbles me and makes me wonder how I could have ever thought that I know anything about this world, when it is all such a mystery. There, in the presence of ghosts and God, I see an old black man feel his way through the trees and take the little boy Gabriel by the hand. Then he turns and walks back into the underbrush. I can’t tell if the branches swing back to hide him, or if he just dissolves into thin air, but I know I hear the old man say to me just before I lose sight of him, “He ain’t dead and he ain’t here. You might’s well go look for him someplace else.”
Chapter Nine – To Linger a Little Longer in this Place
Jonah
I awaken with the chill of cold water running over my hands outstretched above my head. I roll off my back and onto my side. It’s still as dark as the blackest night, but the sounds of birds chirping make it seem like early morning. There is a warm breeze tickling my cheek that feels nice, almost like the soft breath of a baby. I stretch out my face towards to the water and take a long drink. The water is good and cold; mo
untain water usually is. Instantly, I know just where I am – or at least I know which mountain’s foothills I am in – for I have been wandering up here since I was a small child and the water always tastes the same.
I scramble to my hands and knees. It’s blacker than I have ever known it to be up here at night. Usually there is some sort of starlight, or moonlight, but this blackness is complete, and utterly lightless. My left hand bumps into something – it feels like an animal. It is cold. I feel around a bit more and discover claws and toes and a huge paw. I know what it is then, but I keep on feeling around, touching the dead animal all over and trying to hold in my emotions. I feel the tears drop down from my eyes and onto my hands as I kneel there over the body of the bear.
I know, in my mind, that it is indeed my friend, whom I must have killed.
But how, how could I have done this? The knife was pressed over my heart and I fell on it – I am the one who ought to be dead, and though this blackness feels awful, it is certainly not death – I am most definitely alive and this bear is most definitely dead by my hand.
By my hand!
“No Jonah,” says a familiar voice from behind me. “Not by your hand did the bear die, but by mine.”
Lucifer!
I turn around blindly, “But how can you say that! You are the bear! If it’s dead than you must be, too!”
“No, not quite,” he says calmly, with relief. “And that has made a great deal of difference, then and now.”
I feel a pair of hands pull me off the bear and set me on my feet.
“And yet I fear you are not without injury, my friend, and for that there is no turning back. You are alive and yet you are as blind as all my best friends seem to turn out becoming.”
I don’t respond for a moment. Blind!