The Green Cathedral

by Kerry Mcdonald

  Then Abel described to Rimi everything he’d seen and heard on his four journeys to the island. He talked about the first time he’d listened to her strange song, seen nests in the trees, and found the remains of a dead human, and how the second time he’d explored the volcano, met the ocelots, and found caves filled with bats and many more human bones. He also told her about leaving his monocular that day near the entrance to the Green Cathedral, and how the next day he’d found a curious, holographic imitation of it there.

  “That was Bibi’s idea,” said Rimi with a laugh. “I brought it to him, and he decided to improve it rather than just duplicate it.”

  Abel continued, speaking of his fight with the monkeys over his river-crossing wire, and Rimi laughed.

  “That was the funniest thing! Those three are so silly. They were actually just playing with you, but I finally had to tell them to stop, or you were never going to be able to cross the river.”

  “I could have just swum across, but I was glad that I didn’t have to get wet—or kill some crocodile that might try and eat me in the middle of the river.”

  Rimi turned away. “I would have stopped them first if that had happened.”

  “I bet you would have,” replied Abel. After getting to know Rimi, he was quite confident that she’d spied on virtually everything he did on the island, but given what she said about all the others who had come and disappeared, who could blame her?

  Abel went on to tell of his first glimpses of Bibi after crossing the dead log field, and how odd and otherworldly it had looked to him at first sight, and finally the fourth day, when he’d found the strange instrument on the ground where he’d left his pen, how he’d taken his sniper rifle up the volcano and tested its range, and then come back to the Green Cathedral entrance, where he’d met a lovely, alien-looking woman who had both entranced and unnerved him, how he’d tripped as he’d fallen, and fired his gun.

  “And so, after all that, Mr. Warrior Soldier Abel, what is it that you think you have found here on my island?” asked Rimi. “Have you found this ‘evil presence’ that causes whoever comes to disappear and never return?”

  Abel was silent for a moment, then looked into Rimi’s enchanting green eyes.

  “Yeah, I think I have. The people that came here with bad intentions found a badass warrior princess and her animal allies, and so they never returned. I, on the other hand”—Abel looked down as if in thought or embarrassed, then looked back up, his voice quiet and his eyes meeting hers—“I found the most amazing, exciting, powerful, beautiful, fun person I’ve ever known, and I may just never return either.”

  Rimi looked into Abel’s gentle blue eyes and saw a man who meant every word he’d said. She threw her arms around him and held him tight to her.

  “You are a kind and caring man, Abel,” she whispered in his ear, “and you may stay on our island for as long as you wish.”

  They kissed, a long, gentle kiss that seemed to last much longer than it did.

  Then they both smiled at each other.

  “Damn, that was amazing. I haven’t done that for so long I can’t believe I remember how,” said Abel, even as his eyes now appeared tired and droopy.

  Rimi’s heart soared, but she could tell he was rapidly coming to the point of exhaustion as he had the day before.

  “I think we’d better get back,” he said. His words were slow and a bit slurred.

  She stooped and he mounted her back again, but this time, when she stood, she felt a slight buckle in her legs.

  No! she thought. Not now!

  She carried Abel into the trees and, with considerable effort this time, leaped up to the wires in the canopy and swung them back to Bibi. When she dropped to the ground with Abel, he nearly crushed her with his weight, but she didn’t allow him to fall. Carefully, and on unsteady legs, she took him to his hammock and laid him in it. He seemed to be already asleep.

  At that point, she collapsed to her knees then crawled to Bibi and, with some effort, went through his wall. Abel, who was nearly asleep, watched it all with great interest before his eyes could no longer stay open and his mind could no longer remain conscious.

  ***

  Inside, a tentacle with a delicate clutching instrument on its end extruded from Bibi’s side, snaked into a cupboard alongside the sphere, and pulled out a small jar. Another tentacle with an even more delicate grasping instrument on its end reached into the darkened jar and pulled out a fairly large capsule.

  The tentacle then floated back to Rimi, who was on her hands and knees on the floor, barely able to hold herself up. Rimi took the pill, then a glass of water another tentacle held, and gulped down the pill. She dragged herself up to a chair set against the wall of the sphere, completely spent, but now with more color and relaxation on her face.

  “How many more do I have, Bibi?” she asked.

  “Just three,” said Bibi. “Perhaps this man Abel can help us find what we need.”

  “Perhaps,” replied Rimi. “Perhaps he can.”

  And then she tipped the chair back, and it became a bed. She grabbed a blanket and pillow from a drawer underneath it and then was sound asleep.

  19

  —

  The next morning, with both Abel and Rimi now refreshed and reinvigorated, Abel felt like flying through the trees again, except this time he wanted to try to do at least a little on his own. Bibi produced some gloves for him just like Rimi’s, only larger, and the two set off down a path Rimi had made that went to one of her lookout nests she used to watch for boats coming from the mainland. As they walked, Abel asked her about what he’d seen the night before, how weak she had suddenly gotten.

  Rimi was silent for a moment, not sure what to say. Could she possibly tell him the truth without him deciding to leave rather than stay forever as he’d said the night before? And yet she knew she was not a good liar at all. Indeed, a warrior like Abel would see right through whatever she might make up, or if she just ignored his question.

  “Seems like you’re having a little problem. Hard to talk about the idea you might be dying?” asked Abel.

  Rimi responded defiantly. “I’m not dying! Look at me. I’m perfectly strong and healthy!”

  She jumped high in the air, so high that she disappeared through the canopy of the jungle before descending and landing as lightly as a feather back on the path with Abel.

  “Great!” replied Abel. “You’re fresh from a great night’s sleep, got a good breakfast in you, and probably took some medicine or had Bibs do something to you that got you going again. So how long’s it going to be before you crash and burn again like you did last night, because I don’t want it to be when we’re out in the middle of nowhere and I’m not strong enough to get you back to Bibs, or you’re carrying me around like you were yesterday, and we both end up crashing and getting really hurt.”

  Rimi walked along, stubbornly refusing to look at Abel. Finally, Abel stopped her.

  “Look,” he said. “If we’re going to be a team and spend time together, we’ve got to be honest about these kinds of things. We can’t just pretend we’re fine when we’re not, because we’ll be depending on each other, and one of us can’t hide something that might put the other person at risk.”

  Rimi still wouldn’t look up.

  “I told you that I was a soldier—a warrior. Well, I was, but not all alone. I was part of a team of other warriors. We each had our own jobs and our own roles to play, and we each had to depend on the others to do their roles and come through when we needed them. And if one of them knew they couldn’t do their job, or they couldn’t do it like they normally could, their job was to tell us so we could have someone else take up the slack. That’s just how teams work. We’ve got to be honest!”

  Rimi looked up. “So, we’re a team, then?”

  “I sure hope so!” he cried. Damn, he thought.

&nb
sp; He hated conversations like this. Now he would have to spill some beans, too, just to get her to tell him what was up. “I’ve been looking for a team ever since I couldn’t stay with my last one. The only person I ever really respected since then got himself killed, and the other one I’ll probably never see again. But you’re this awesome, amazing, totally out-of-this-world cool person, and a woman, which makes it about six thousand times better, and goddammit, we better be a team.” He paced angrily back and forth. “There’s nobody like you anywhere, and I’m the goddamn luckiest person in the whole world to know you, so tell me what the hell’s wrong with you so we can figure out how to fix it!”

  He stared down at her with a look that he suddenly thought must look awfully angry, but Rimi just walked up to him and put her arms around him. Sniffles in his ear told him she was crying.

  “Aw, jeez, baby, it’s okay. I’m not angry or anything—”

  Rimi talked into his ear. “I’m dying.”

  Abel loosened his hold on her and stared directly into those amazing green eyes, which now looked very sad.

  Rimi looked straight back at him. “You’re right. There is a substance, like a vitamin, I guess you’d say, Xilinium, that my body needs and is very common on my planet, but it is nowhere to be found on this one. Because of this, my body naturally stores this vitamin, enough for years if necessary, but not enough for how long I have been here. My body ran out long ago. That’s why we always carry large supplies with us on intergalactic trips—in case our natural stores run out. Bibi also had a store of this vitamin in him, and for many years, I’ve been slowly using that up. I’ve extended my supply by only using them after I’m nearly to the point of complete exhaustion, but we always knew that at some point—well, now I have only three pills left.”

  Abel stood, stunned. “How long will that give you?”

  “Two weeks, maybe three,” Rimi said simply.

  Abel was so stunned at the thought of losing Rimi so soon after finally finding her that one part of his mind went numb, and another was simply angry, raging against the unfairness of it all. But it was his SEAL mindset that cancelled out all the others—having been ingrained in him for twelve wonderful, harrowing years—and suddenly, quite surprisingly, he realized that he now had a trigger, and it was time to pull it.

  “So what’s your plan?” he asked.

  Rimi stood, confused. “Plan for what?”

  “Not dying, dammit. You and Bibs knew this time would come. You must have thought of something besides just waiting for the bitter end.”

  Rimi now nodded but almost couldn’t bring herself to say it, since it sounded so impossible to her. After all, she and Bibi had been working on it for years with no result.

  “We need to find where my parents’ cruiser crashed,” she said. “There were enough pills on it to keep an entire crew alive for many years. If we could find where it is, maybe there would be some left. We’ve searched and searched around here for years and found nothing, and we have no idea where else to look or how to get there even if I knew. We’ve had no one who could offer us any real help.”

  “Well, you do now,” said Abel. “We’ll talk to Bibs when we get back, but right now, I want to enjoy life with my new friend instead of talking about dying. Let’s do some flying instead.”

  Rimi smiled. She and Abel ran down the jungle path to the lookout post in the trees. She leaped up to it with him, and for the rest of the day, they flew from one end of the island to the other, stopping at various points, eating some snacks they’d brought along, and enjoying each other’s friendship as neither had for longer than they could remember.

  ***

  It was at their last stop, on the side of the volcano, that Rimi asked Abel about his former team. “You said that your team was a team of warriors. Who did you fight for?”

  “My country. It’s a lot farther north from here, the United States of America,” said Abel.

  Rimi nodded with recognition. “Bibi has told me of this country, and my friend also has. They say that it was once the greatest country on this planet, but now not so much. Is that why you left your team?”

  “Hell, no!” Abel roared but instantly calmed himself. She had no idea what she was saying. “I mean, no. Leaving my team had nothing to do with my country or how great or not great it was. I loved the guys on my team, and I thought what we did for our country was right, at least most of the time. You don’t have a choice, though. You do what the commanders say, even if they’re just some idiots don’t know what they’re talking about. Warriors follow orders. That’s how it always is.”

  “So were you and your team ordered to kill people?” asked Rimi.

  “Sure. That’s kind of what soldiers do. We killed the enemy before they came to our country and tried to kill our people.”

  “We killed our enemies before they could kill us,” said Rimi. “It would have been nice if we could have done it before they came to the island. Who was your enemy?”

  “Whoever the leaders told us they were. We went all over the world—the planet, you know. Most of the time, I had no idea who I was killing, and only sometimes why. But we didn’t think about that. We just went, did our job, watched out for each other, and made sure that none of us got killed.” Abel talked robotically. Every job had its downside, and for him, it was killing people—the enemy—whom he didn’t know and sometimes didn’t even understand. He was proud that he served his country, but it sucked that he was such a proficient long-range killer.

  “So why did you leave them?” Rimi asked.

  “I got shot—with bullets, you know, projectiles. They tore up my knee and my elbow,” said Abel. Rimi examined his elbow and ran her finger along the scar that could still be seen from his surgery. “We have doctors that can fix our bodies if they get damaged.”

  “Like Bibi?” asked Rimi.

  “Not nearly as good as Bibi, but they try,” replied Abel. “They put my elbow and my knee back together, but they don’t work the same. To be on my team, you’ve got to be really strong, and even though I worked and worked, I wasn’t strong enough anymore. So I had to leave.”

  “But you are strong! This was not fair,” complained Rimi.

  “No, it was,” said Abel. “I wouldn’t have been able to do my job for the team well enough. It’s like we talked about. I’d be too weak, and someone would have to pick up the slack. They can’t keep doing that all the time, not for the long haul, anyway. It’s better for them just to find a new team member.”

  “So did you go back to your country with your parents or your girlfriend?” asked Rimi. It was a nagging question that she had. Why was this fine man so far from home and not with his wife and children or his parents? Had they cast him out also? Or was he, for all he said about honesty, not being honest with her?

  “No,” said Abel flatly. “My parents got killed in a car crash while I was away with my team, and the only real girlfriend I ever had dumped me while I was gone—that means she left me, broke things off, whatever—so there was no family or anything to go back to. I got a job with this police force called the DEA. They look for criminals—bad guys, you know—in other countries so they won’t hurt people in our country. That’s what brought me here: working for them. But there’s no team, and I get bored, and it doesn’t pay as much. It’s just not the same as being with my team.”

  Rimi cuddled close to Abel. “You’ll never be too weak to be on my team. I’m glad you’re not on that team anymore.”

  Abel held Rimi close and looked out over the beautiful island with its grand Green Cathedral rainforest. He never thought he’d say it, but all things considered, he was glad that he wasn’t on a SEAL team anymore too.

  Then he remembered something.

  “Hey, Rimi, get up. Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  She did as he asked, and he led her to the small cave where he’d cac
hed his M107 sniper rifle. He took it out of hiding and showed it to her.

  “This is a weapon like I used to use on my team,” he told her. Rimi was amazed at its size, and at how big its projectiles were. “And here’s the really cool thing,” he said. He set the rifle down outside the cave, and he asked Rimi to lie down with him on her stomach. She did. Then he showed her how to look through the sniper scope. She was amazed at all she could see.

  “It’s just like the thing you left here when you first came, only it makes things seem even closer,” she exclaimed. “I can even see Fat Monti in his chair!”

  She smiled over at Abel, but he had a more serious look on his face.

  “And you could shoot him from here, too,” he said. Rimi looked at him, startled. “Or anyone else over there, or anywhere in between.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” she asked, confused.

  “You wouldn’t if it were just him and the people on the beach,” replied Abel. “But if an enemy came from over there, someone that wanted to hurt us here, we could, if we had to, kill them before they came here.”

  “Just like your team would do for your country,” she said, again amazed. “Do you think we’ll ever have to use it?”

  “I hope not, but I don’t know. If we have to, we damn sure will.”

  They got up, and Abel took the M107 and returned it to its hiding place.

  “I’m starting to get tired again,” he said. “Let’s go home. Tomorrow we’ll ask Bibi about helping us find where your parents’ cruiser crashed.”

  ***

  Later, after enjoying a wonderful steak dinner that Bibi produced from something in his secret storage of ooze, Abel and Rimi went out to the hammock to say their good-nights. Rimi wanted to sleep with him there, and Abel wanted her to as well but knew he was still not strong enough to enjoy that kind of activity, at least not for another day or two. Rimi promised him a night he’d never forget once he was back up to snuff, and then, after a very long, deep kiss goodnight, she retired to her own sleeping chair inside of Bibi.