He carefully oiled the tractor and put it into its shed.
He closed the headgate of the ditch and shoveled earth into place behind it, so that in the spring the water would not flow onto his fallow fields and be wasted.
He filled a bottle with water and put it into his scrip, which he slung over his shoulder. This is all I take, he said. And even that felt like more of a burden than he wanted to bear.
The butterflies swarmed around him, and tried to draw him off toward the road into the desert, but he did not go at once. He looked at his fields, stubbled after the harvest. Just beyond them was the tumble of weeds that throve in the dregs of water that his grain had not used. And beyond the weeds was the Desert of Machaerus, the place where those who love water die. The ground was stone: rocky outcroppings, gravel; even the soil was sand. And yet there were ruins there. Wooden skeletons of buildings that had once housed farmers. Some people thought that this was a sign that the desert was growing, pushing in to take over formerly habitable land, but Amasa knew better. Rather the wooden ruins were the last remnants of the woeful Sebasti, those wandering people who, like the weeds at the end of the field, lived on the dregs of life. Once there had been a slight surplus of water flowing down the canals. The Sebasti heard about it in hours; in days they had come in their ramshackle trucks; in weeks they had built their scrappy buildings and plowed their stony fields, and for that year they had a harvest because that year the ditches ran a few inches deeper than usual. The next year the ditches were back to normal, and in a few hours one night the houses were stripped, the trucks were loaded, and the Sebasti were gone.
I am a Sebastit, too, Amasa thought. I have taken my life from an unwilling desert; I give it back to the sand when I am through.
Come, said the butterflies alighting on his face. Come, they said, fanning him and fluttering off toward the Hierusalem road.
Don’t get pushy, Amasa answered, feeling stubborn. But all the same he surrendered, and followed them out into the land of the dead.
The only breeze was the wind on his face as he walked, and the heat drew water from him as if from a copious well. He took water from his bottle only a mouthful at a time, but it was going too quickly even at that rate.
Worse, though: his guides were leaving him. Now that he was on the road to Hierusalem, they apparently had other errands to run. He first noticed their numbers diminishing about noon, and by three there were only a few hundred butterflies left. As long as he watched a particular butterfly, it stayed; but when he looked away for a moment, it was gone. At last he set his gaze on one butterfly and did not look away at all, just watched and watched. Soon it was the last one left, and he knew that it, too, wanted to leave. But Amasa would have none of that. If I can come at your bidding, he said silently, you can stay at mine. And so he walked until the sun was ruddy in the west. He did not drink; he did not study his road; and the butterfly stayed. It was a little victory. I rule you with my eyes.
“You might as well stop here, friend.”
Startled to hear a human voice on this desolate road, Amasa looked up, knowing in that moment that his last butterfly was lost. He was ready to hate the man who spoke.
“I say, friend, since you’re going nowhere anyway, you might as well stop.”
It was an old-looking man, black from sunlight and naked. He sat in the lee of a large stone, where the sun’s northern tilt would keep him in shadow all day.
“If I wanted conversation,” Amasa said, “I would have brought a friend.”
“If you think those butterflies are your friends, you’re an ass.”
Amasa was surprised that the man knew about the butterflies.
“Oh, I know more than you think,” said the man. “I lived at Hierusalem, you know. And now I’m the sentinel of the Hierusalem Road.”
“No one leaves Hierusalem,” said Amasa.
“I did,” the old man said. “And now I sit on the road and teach travelers the keys that will let them in. Few of them pay me much attention, but if you don’t do as I say, you’ll never reach Hierusalem, and your bones will join a very large collection that the sun and wind gradually turn back into sand.”
“I’ll follow the road where it leads,” Amasa said. “I don’t need any directions.”
“Oh, yes, you’d rather follow the dead guidance of the makers of the road than trust a living man.”
Amasa regarded him for a moment. “Tell me, then.”
“Give me all your water.”
Amasa laughed—a feeble enough sound, coming through splitting lips that he dared not move more than necessary.
“It’s the first key to entering Hierusalem.” The old man shrugged. “I see that you don’t believe me. But it’s true. A man with water or food can’t get into the city. You see, the city is hidden. If you had miraculous eyes, stranger, you could see the city even now. It’s not far off. But the city is forever hidden from a man who is not desperate. The city can only be found by those who are very near to death. Unfortunately, if you once pass the entrance to the city without seeing it because you had water with you, then you can wander on as long as you like, you can run out of water and cry out in a whisper for the city to unveil itself to you, but it will avail you nothing. The entrance, once passed, can never be found again. You see, you have to know the taste of death in your mouth before Hierusalem will open to you.”
“It sounds,” Amasa said, “like religion. I’ve done religion.”
“Religion? What is religion in a world with a dragon at its heart?”
Amasa hesitated. A part of him, the rational part, told him to ignore the man and pass on. But the rational part of him had long since become weak. In his definition of man, “featherless biped” held more truth than “rational animal.” Besides, his head ached, his feet throbbed, his lips stung. He handed his bottle of water to the old man, and then for good measure gave him his scrip as well.
“Nothing in there you want to keep?” asked the old man, surprised.
“I’ll spend the night.”
The old man nodded.
They slept in the darkness until the moon rose in the east, bright with its thin promise of a sunrise only a few hours away. It was Amasa who awoke. His stirring roused the old man.
“Already?” he asked. “In such a hurry?”
“Tell me about Hierusalem.”
“What do you want, friend? History? Myth? Current events? The price of public transportation?”
“Why is the city hidden?”
“So it can’t be found.”
“Then why is there a key for some to enter?”
“So it can be found. Must you ask such puerile questions?”
“Who built the city?”
“Men.”
“Why did they build it?”
“To keep man alive on this world.”
Amasa nodded at the first answer that hinted at significance. “And what enemy is it, then, that Hierusalem means to keep out?”
“Oh, my friend, you don’t understand. Hierusalem was built to keep the enemy in. The old Hierusalem, the new Hierusalem, built to contain the dragon at the heart of the world.”
A story-telling voice was on the old man now, and Amasa lay back on the sand and listened as the moon rose higher at his left hand.
“Men came here in ships across the void of the night,” the old man said.
Amasa sighed.
“Oh, you know all that?”
“Don’t be an ass. Tell me about Hierusalem.”
“Did your books or your teachers tell you that this world was not unpopulated when our forefathers came?”
“Tell me your story, old man, but tell it plain. No myth, no magic. The truth.”
“What a simple faith you have,” the old man said. “The truth. Here’s the truth, much good may it do you. This world was filled with forest, and in the forest were beings who mated with the trees, and drew their strength from the trees. They became very treelike.”
“One wo
uld suppose.”
“Our forefathers came, and the beings who dwelt among the trees smelt death in the fires of the ships. They did things—things that looked like magic to our ancestors, things that looked like miracles. These beings, these dragons who hid among the leaves of the trees, they had science we know little of. But one science we had that they had never learned, for they had no use for it. We knew how to defoliate a forest.”
“So the trees were killed.”
“All the forests of the world now have grown up since that time. Some places, where the forest had not been lush, were able to recover, and we live in those lands now. But here, in the Desert of Machaera—this was climax forest, trees so tall and dense that no underbrush could grow at all. When the leaves died, there was nothing to hold the soil, and it was washed onto the plain of Esdraelon. Which is why that plain is so fertile, and why nothing but sand survives here.”
“Hierusalem.”
“At first Hierusalem was built as an outpost for students to learn about the dragons, pathetic little brown woody creatures who knew death when they saw it, and died of despair by the thousands. Only a few survived among the rocks, where we couldn’t reach them. Then Hierusalem became a city of pleasure, far from any other place, where sins could be committed that God could not see.”
“I said truth.”
“I say listen. One day the few remaining students of the science of the dragons wandered among the rocks, and there found that the dragons were not all dead. One was left, a tough little creature that lived among the grey rocks. But it had changed. It was not woody brown now. It was grey as stone, with stony outcroppings. They brought it back to study it. And in only a few hours it escaped. They never recaptured it. But the murders began, every night a murder. And every murder was of a couple who were coupling, neatly vivisected in the act. Within a year the pleasure seekers were gone, and Hierusalem had changed again.”
“To what it is now.”
“What little of the science of the dragons they had learned, they used to seal the city as it is now sealed. They devoted it to holiness, to beauty, to faith—and the murders stopped. Yet the dragon was not gone. It was glimpsed now and then, grey on the stone buildings of the city, like a moving gargoyle. So they kept their city closed to keep the dragon from escaping to the rest of the world, where men were not holy and would compel the dragon to kill again.”
“So Hierusalem is dedicated to keeping the world safe for sin.”
“Safe from retribution. Giving the world time to repent.”
“The world is doing little in that direction.”
“But some are. And the butterflies are calling the repentant out of the world, and bringing them to me.”
Amasa sat in silence as the sun rose behind his back. It had not fully passed the mountains of the east before it started to burn him.
“Here,” said the old man, “are the laws of Hierusalem:
“Once you see the city, don’t step back or you will lose it.
“Don’t look down into holes that glow red in the streets, or your eyes will fall out and your skin will slide off you as you walk along, and your bones will crumble into dust before you fully die.
“The man who breaks a butterfly will live forever.
“Do not stare at a small grey shadow that moves along the granite walls of the palace of the King and Queen, or he will learn the way to your bed.
“The Road to Dalmanutha leads to the sign you seek. Never find it.”
Then the old man smiled.
“Why are you smiling?” asked Amasa.
“Because you’re such a holy man, Saint Amasa, and Hierusalem is waiting for you to come.”
“What’s your name, old man?”
The old man cocked his head. “Contemplation.”
“That’s not a name.”
He smiled again. “I’m not a man.”
For a moment Amasa believed him, and reached out to see if he was real. But his finger met the old man’s flesh, and it did not crumble.
“You have so much faith,” said the old man again. “You cast away your scrip because you valued nothing that it contained. What do you value?”
In answer, Amasa removed all his clothing and cast it at the old man’s feet.
He remembers that once he had another name, but he cannot remember what it was. His name now is Gray, and he lives among the stones, which are also grey. Sometimes he forgets where stone leaves off and he begins. Sometimes, when he has been motionless for hours, he has to search for his toes that spread in a fan, each holding to stone so firmly that when at last he moves them, he is surprised at where they were. Gray is motionless all day, and motionless all night. But in the hours before and after the sun, then he moves, skittering sure and rapid as a spider among the hewn stones of the palace walls, stopping only to drink in the fly-strewn standing water that remains from the last storm.
These days, however, he must move more slowly, more clumsily than he used to, for his stamen has at last grown huge, and it drags painfully along the vertical stones, and now and then he steps on it. It has been this way for weeks. Worse every day, and Gray feels it as a constant pain that he must ease, must ease, must ease; but in his small mind he does not know what easement there might be. So far as he knows, there are no others of his kind; in all his life he has met no other climber of walls, no other hanger from stone ceilings. He remembers that once he sought out couplers in the night, but he cannot remember what he did with them. Now he again finds himself drawn to windows, searching for easement, though not sure at all, holding in his mind no image of what he hopes to see in the dark rooms within the palace. It is dusk, and Gray is hunting, and is not sure whether he will find mate or prey.
I have passed the gate of Hierusalem, thought Amasa, and I was not near enough to death. Or worse, sometimes he thought, there is no Hierusalem, and I have come this way in vain. Yet this last fear was not a fear at all, for he did not think of it with despair. He thought of it with hope, and looked for death as the welcome end of his journey, looked for death which comes with its tongue thick in its mouth, death which waits in caves during the cool of the day and hunts for prey in the last and first light, death which is made of dust. Amasa watched for death to come in a wind that would carry him away, in a stone that would catch his foot in midstep and crumble him into a pile of bone on the road.
And then in a single footfall Amasa saw it all. The sun was framed, not by a haze of white light, but by thick and heavy clouds. The orchards were also heavy, and dripped with recent rain. Bees hummed around his head. And now he could see the city rising, green and grey and monumental just beyond the trees; all around him was the sound of running water. Not the tentative water that struggled to stay alive in the thirsty dirt of the irrigation ditch, but the lusty sound of water that is superfluous, water that can be tossed in the air as fountains and no one thinks to gather up the drops.
For a moment he was so surprised that he thought he must step backward, just one step, and see if it wouldn’t all disappear, for Amasa did not come upon this gradually, and he doubted that it was real. But he remembered the first warning of the old man, and he didn’t take that backward step. Hierusalem was a miracle, and in this place he would test no miracles.
The ground was resilient under his feet, mossy where the path ran over stone, grassy where the stones made way for earth. He drank at an untended stream that ran pure and overhung with flowers. And then he passed through a small gate in a terraced wall, climbed stairs, found another gate, and another, each more graceful than the last. The first gate was rusty and hard to open; the second was overgrown with climbing roses. But each gate was better tended than the last, and he kept expecting to find someone working a garden or picnicking, for surely someone must be passing often through the better-kept gates. Finally he reached to open a gate and it opened before he could touch it.
It was a man in the dirty brown robe of a pilgrim. He seemed startled to see Amasa. He immediately enfolde
d his arms around something and turned away. Amasa tried to see—yes, it was a baby. But the infant’s hands dripped with fresh blood, it was obviously blood, and Amasa looked back at the pilgrim to see if this was a murderer who had opened the gate for him.
“It’s not what you think,” the palmer said quickly. “I found the babe, and he has no one to take care of him.”
“But the blood.”
“He was the child of pleasure seekers, and the prophecy was fulfilled, for he was washing his hands in the blood of his father’s belly.” Then the pilgrim got a hopeful look. “There is an enemy who must be fought. You wouldn’t—”
A passing butterfly caught the pilgrim’s eye. The fluttering wings circled Amasa’s head only once, but that was sign enough.
“It is you,” the pilgrim said.
“Do I know you?”
“To think that it will be in my time.”
“What will be?”
“The slaying of the dragon.” The pilgrim ducked his head and, freeing one arm by perching the child precariously on the other, he held the gate open for Amasa to enter. “God has surely called you.”
Amasa stepped inside, puzzled at what the pilgrim thought he was, and what his coming portended. Behind him he could hear the pilgrim mutter, “It is time. It is time.”
It was the last gate. He was in the city, passing between the walled gardens of monasteries and nunneries, down streets lined with shrines and shops, temples and houses, gardens and dunghills. It was green to the point of blindness, alive and holy and smelly and choked with business wherever it wasn’t thick with meditation. What am I here for? Amasa wondered. Why did the butterflies call?
He did not look down into the red-glowing holes in the middles of streets. And when he passed the grey labyrinth of the palace, he did not look up to try to find a shadow sliding by. He would live by the laws of the place, and perhaps his journey would end here.
The Queen of Hierusalem was lonely. For a month she had been lost in the palace. She had strayed into a never-used portion of the labyrinth, where no one had lived for generations, and now, search as she might, she could find only rooms that were deeper and deeper in dust.
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