He Who Cannot Die

by Dan Pearce

  “Why do you say that?”

  He looked at me with strange pity. “I believe she wanted any cursed person who found me to know that the answers are there, if they will only look in the right places.”

  “I have looked most of my life. I have found no answers. It makes no sense to me that you somehow were able.”

  Osman leaned back onto his hands. “Ah, you looked. I also looked. But ask yourself what is different between your search and mine.”

  I put sincere thought into it, but only became more frustrated. “Your search should have been impossible,” I finally said.

  “No. The difference is simple, and this is what you must somehow come to understand.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You have always searched knowing why your journey was leading you where it was, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you always have searched based on knowledge you carried with you from the day before, yes?”

  “Yes,” I replied as I began to see where he was going with his thoughts.

  He shifted forward again. “That is the difference, Cain. I never knew why I was where I was when I awoke, or why the events of the past had taken me to that place on that day.”

  “Could you not write things down and leave yourself messages?” I asked. “Reminders to yourself of why you followed the course that you did?”

  “I had no skill to write or record before my curse, so even if I tried to learn, I certainly would not have remembered the skill.” He refilled my cup. “That is not important. What is important is that you understand how different your search was compared with mine.”

  “I agree that our searches were very different.”

  “Then understand this. Each day I was forced to take myself only as far as the information of that day could take me.” He paused to let me absorb for a moment. “Each day I was forced to start fresh from where I found myself, never from where I had been.”

  “But how…”

  “Cain, don’t you see?” he said, cutting me off. “I somehow found the answer because the answer never has existed in what happened yesterday or in what I hope will happen tomorrow. The answer always exists only in what happens today.”

  I scratched my face as I pondered Osman’s words. “How can you know any of this if you are able to remember none of it?”

  “It is the only logical explanation I have been able to construe after what seems an eternity to ponder it now.”

  In some backwards way, I understood that.

  “Carry my words with you, Cain. You will comprehend them more fully with time.”

  “Where do I start?” I asked him.

  “Only you can decide that. But may I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  He leaned in so close that our faces touched for the briefest of moments. “Start by finding happiness with your current situation.”

  I immediately leaned away and laughed as I scoffed at the idea. “Happiness. Where would I even begin to find that?”

  “Knowledge,” he immediately replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Or should I say, the pursuit of knowledge.”

  “Knowledge? How can that make me happy?”

  He laughed this time, as if I was a naïve child. “When everything falls to pieces, and life crumbles around you, and you feel that things are impossible…”

  “You are explaining my life fully,” I said with a laugh.

  “It is in those moments that pursuing knowledge is the only thing that will sink its claws into happiness and force it back into your vision.”

  “How does it do that?”

  “I was not prepared to meet you and teach you today, Cain. I have much to do and we will discuss much with time so long as you can actually open your mind to new ways of thinking. If I answer you this last question, then you must leave the remainder of my day to me.”

  I didn’t expect to be pushed from his home so abruptly, but I realized that my fascination with him didn’t necessarily equate to the same fascination with me. “This is fair, and I will open my mind” I promised. “Now tell me why seeking knowledge brings happiness when all things fail?”

  “All things fail because we assume what we see is what we know.”

  “Explain,” I said, unsatisfied with his answer. His smile returned and I knew he loved whatever it was he was about to tell me.

  “The more knowledge we seek, the more we come to understand that we actually know very little all. The more we are able to understand that, the more quickly we understand that things fail because we have leaned too heavily on what we thought we knew.” He jumped to his feet with excitement. “And the more we understand that, the quicker we can let go of the belief of how things should be. And the more we understand that, the more we see that nothing can be controlled. And that, Cain, is obviously how seeking out new knowledge always somehow brings happiness back to us! Happiness only exists when we accept that all things are beyond our knowledge, and thereby are also beyond our control. I believe this to be true more than any other thing.”

  I lifted myself from the ground and stood for a moment, letting his words seep into me. His philosophy had never before been explained to me in such a way, but his words made so much sense.

  “I don’t remember anything from my time under Tashibag’s curse,” he said as he finished his thoughts. “Except one thing. I remember just how miserable life was without any new knowledge. If you at least believe it when I tell you that everything has its opposite, then you must believe my words now. If it is misery to not have knowledge, then it must be happiness to have it.”

  “I understand how that would be. I desire to hear many more of your words. May I seek you out tomorrow, Osman?”

  He laughed and motioned me to the door. “Of course, but go now. I have tasks that must be accomplished before this day is done.”

  CHAPTER 24

  I remained in Du a few months more, under what became the daily tutelage of Osman. That man’s understanding of existence, and of life, and of happiness went far deeper than I knew human thought could take a person. The more I learned from Osman, the more I desired to hear. He gave of his mind and thoughts freely to me, but never allowed me to stay longer than an hour or so. I made the most of those hours and learned to ask only the questions that would take me deeper into my own understanding of all that was and all that had been. Before meeting the man, I felt I had a good grasp on the long life I had already lived. Osman taught me that having too firm a grasp on life could only choke the breath from it, and that I had to loosen that grasp in order for life to breathe more freely.

  It was Osman who first helped me come to my own conclusion that, above all else, my true curse was loneliness. He helped me understand loneliness and what dwells and grows below the surface for loneliness to exist. He helped me accept more fully the goodness in me by helping me accept the darkness more freely, as well. Perhaps more than anything, Osman helped me more fully understand my relationship with love and the loss of it. Even now, some thousands of years after we met, his words and ideas still greatly drive many of my perspectives on life and love.

  Though we spent much time together, I never became great friends with Osman. He looked upon me with the same eyes through which he saw all others. In his mind, he existed to impart and to give to all, but never to take or to give one person more than he gave another. Eventually the day came that I went to his home to be taught and would ask the last questions Osman was willing to answer. When the session ended, I was informed that my time with him had come to an end, and that I should soon leave to search for all the answers and knowledge the city of Du did not hold for me.

  It was only when I departed Du that I realized just how free my mind had become while I was there. Each time my foot connected to the earth below me was a step that felt lighter, more determined, and more focused than the steps I took leading me to that city. When I met Osman, I was in need of a great escape from life. Instead, he freely gave me s
mall escapes, day after day, and let my mind untangle itself more gradually. I left Du excited for new adventures and knowledge. I left with a great appreciation for the wonderful parts of my past and also for the hardest moments. I left with a renewed desire to one day take a journey and find the answers for my curse, and to do so while caring only about whatever information existed at that moment. I left with the desire to find Tashibag, but not the need. I also left with a heart that had opened itself up to the idea that it could love again and should love again.

  Over the next sixteen years, my journey led me a thousand miles or so Northeast of Du to the city of Shedet. Along the way, I learned many different languages and customs. I picked up trades and developed working relationships with a vast array of people, as I was increasingly hungry to learn as much as possible of any new dynamic to life or of evolving commerce or of culture. I didn’t really mean to become rich before ending up in Shedet, but it happened as the use and trade of money and things was so natural and easy for me due to my deep understanding of how it worked.

  Shedet was claimed to be the oldest city in existence and was home to a much larger population than I had before experienced. A great divide already existed in Shedet between the wealthy and poor, and so once I was welcomed to the city, that economic divide naturally pushed my decent riches to quickly become great wealth. In just seven years, I had a seat at any table where only the wealthiest were welcome.

  I knew I had been in that city too long already. During one of my final teaching sessions with Osman, he cautioned me should I find myself in such a situation. “Never remain in any one place too long, lest your mind cloud and you begin to actually believe you are more important than those who surround you.” Those were words I carried with me on that sixteen-year journey to Shedet. The longer I remained in Shedet, the more loudly those words spoke to me, and the more the thought of what transpired in Vim compelled me to not repeat my own history. I awoke one morning and realized that I had no questions left to ask in the place that I currently was, and so I made preparations to leave the city behind.

  Osman had never been able to give me more answers of how to break myself free of Tashibag’s curse, but I left his tutelage with the desire to one day follow his advice and find the answer for myself, never having a strategy for the morrow and never letting the events of the prior day drive the path of today. I understood the basic concept of that teaching, but it was nearly impossible to wrap my mind fully around it. I knew I would one day just have to take a gulp and do it if I were to learn what it meant or how it could work.

  I used a small portion of my new wealth to purchase additional camels and hire a caravan to accompany me on my journey. Recruiting willing travelers to assist me was easy enough. Explaining to them that I had no plan of where to go, of how long it would take, or even of what I was seeking proved more difficult. I eventually did find what I considered to be the perfect team of seven young men. I sold those possessions which I had no desire to carry with me, and we loaded our supplies and my wealth onto a train of twenty-two camels as we prepared for our departure.

  I resisted all urge to make any plan for the upcoming journey. My only plan when we finally mounted our camels and began moving through the streets of Shedet, quite literally was to make it to the borders of the city, take that first step into the wilderness beyond, and make a decision of where to go from there. If Osman was correct, this is how I would finally find the answers I had been seeking for so long.

  I truly hoped that he was correct, as I desired to somehow have for myself that which the teacher Osman had. He was a free man. He gave me so much in the way of perspective, but he also gave me a deep desire to one day find whatever it was he somehow was able to find, so that I could be just as free as he now was. The dark parts of his curse no longer haunted him. He was able to choose just how he spent his own existence, and he wasn’t burdened with the fears of his curse’s magic stripping him of whatever goodness existed in his life or of his actions bringing pain and death to others. The thought of that freedom alone was enough to make me mount my camel and begin our caravan moving to embark on what I assumed would be a very long journey away from the city of Shedet.

  Our caravan never made it out of the city, and neither did my wealth.

  As first we began moving, I couldn’t help but notice just how much jingle and clang could be heard coming from our camels as they took their awkward, yet methodical steps. Deep and bulging satchels filled with coins and shiny objects that I would be able to sell or trade on the journey heavily bounced against the rib cages of the animals, creating a rhythm of sounds. It was a rhythm that only ever accompanied the traveling rich. I wasn’t attached to all that money. If anything, it scared me. I knew the power money had over most people. I knew what dark things it made some of them do. I knew what dark things it once made me do. I turned my gaze back to my hired men whom I admittedly barely knew and wondered if all this money would ever make one of them do something dangerous or dark in an attempt to take it from me. It was possible. I looked at the line of cargo-carrying camels tethered between my men and wondered how I had possibly accumulated so much of it so quickly. Why was wealth so easy for me to obtain while others struggled so greatly to earn even enough to survive?

  While I didn’t really care to have all that wealth, I had collected it for a reason. Ever since leaving Du, I knew that the day would come when I would start my great unplanned and unrouted journey, and I knew that money, even if I had no plans of how it might be used, would make the journey easier. I knew that stubborn information could be purchased for money or things. I knew that the thoughts from many minds were better than just my own, and I knew money and possessions were the only things that would keep those minds that accompanied me determined and loyal. I knew wealth was the only way I could more or less guarantee the continued well-being of my men, and I knew that keeping their well-being as a priority, no matter where our journey took us, would be crucial. And so, I grew my wealth as I prepared for this journey which could possibly take them all the rest of their lives.

  I had come up with a list of three rules for myself, which I planned to memorize and recite at the beginning of each day as I searched the world for answers. Exactly three rules seemed like the perfect number. I needed a few rules to always remind myself of the type of journey I must keep, but too many rules would defeat the ideology behind the journey completely.

  The first rule was that each day I must find a way to forget yesterday. I still had no idea how I might achieve this, but it was the principle thing I wanted to learn.

  The second rule was that I must never let my ultimate goal blind me to any present detail, no matter how seemingly unimportant. I knew that if I was to depend on only what I knew and had and could feel that day, I must be open to any possibility as a source to guide my next actions.

  My third rule was that I must always learn and always seek new knowledge, in every situation and place I encounter. My thirst for knowledge and my love for philosophy had only grown since I saw Osman last, and I understood much more what he meant by it sometimes being the only thing that could sink its claws into distant happiness and drag it back to a person.

  Those were my three rules. I made no rules surrounding the use of my money, the distance we must travel in any day, the time we would limit our stay in any one place, the relationships I would let be formed, or even whether I would let myself love again should love somehow find me. While I did have a general unappeasable anxiety at the thought of an unplanned future, I also had a great peace that came with the knowledge that there was no plan that could somehow be derailed any time our greater course and perceived destination, quite inevitably, became altered.

  These are the thoughts which consumed me, as I first noticed the jingle and clang of my bouncing wealth while we walked through the streets of Shedet.

  I breathed-in the warm Egyptian air of the city and closed my eyes. In that moment, I just needed to make it to the borders of the city.
I would not decide where to go next until I reached that point. I did not want to know ahead of time. I only had here. I only had now. I opened my eyes, realizing that I already was maneuvering in a mental place that wasn’t where I currently was. My mind was already at the borders, but I was there in the streets of the city. Was there anything around me that might alter the course of my journey, even in those first exciting moments? What clues might I pick-up right then and there?

  I passed a man selling trinkets from beneath the shade of his canopy. The distant sound of prayers rose from the nearby temple from those looking to the god Sobek for protection on the Nile or for fertility in their beds. A small group of animated and laughing children skipped across the road some distance in front of us. The call of two sand partridges could distantly be heard as they chirped to one another. A battered woman sat against an old torn basket near the side of the road. A small girl’s head lay in her lap. A slightly older boy sat cross-legged beside them.

  The woman was emaciated, bruised, and silent. Her children were both skinny and also were silent. She had no muscle to move or energy to speak as I approached, and so her eyes were all that could beg. An old broken cup containing a single coin – worth less than a penny is valued today – rested in the powdery dirt in front of her. Those eyes of hers. They cried out to me to please give anything that might help her save her dying children. The girl in her lap breathed heavily, an activity which seemed to pain her. The also starving boy and I looked at each other, and he then looked at the cup.