A Just Farewell (2 page)

Abraham’s mother refused to peer away from
her work, even if to only encourage her youngest son, and her final
child, to climb that ladder as the clerics’ horn commanded of him.
Her face, covered in the dark, tattoo swirls that adorned the
features of every woman among the tribes, conveyed no indication of
noticing Abraham at all. Dark, thick glasses shrouded his mother’s
eyes, so that no one could tell Abraham’s mother apart from any
other woman on account of her eye color. Her hair, chemically
treated until it was the same silver hue that the Holy Book
preached pleased the Maker and was worn by all pious women, didn’t
so much as sway as Abraham’s mother kept her focus locked upon her
work.

“The Maker reserves the most terrible level
of Hell for cowards, brother!” Ishmael’s face appeared a second
before his hand stretched into the hole and clutched Abraham’s hair
to painfully pull his younger brother onto the ladder’s higher
rungs. “I’ll drag you all the way across the dirt if I must.”

“But what if the unbelievers hurl their fire
upon us from their castles in the sky?”

Ishmael grinned “Then they will make martyrs
of us all, and you will find yourself pleasured by virgins in
heaven, brother, though you never passed through the year of your
man-making.”

The sun had just dipped below the horizon,
but the dusk air remained humid and hot, so that Abraham pined to
return to the crisper and cooler confines of his underground home.
He resisted that urge and hurried to keep up with his brother as
they ran towards the source of that blaring horn, a difficult
challenge for a younger brother whose older brother was so quick
and athletic. Ishmael’s athleticism always pleased their father,
and such strengths had allowed Ishmael to quickly heal from the
cleric’s final ritual that marked the final passage of a tribal boy
into a tribal man. Thus Abraham’s lungs burned for the effort to
stay within Ishmael’s reach as they ran to answer the clerics’
summoning horn.

Abraham wanted to fall to his knees when
they reached the metal scaffolding, upon which stood the seven,
bearded clerics of their tribe. But Ishmael again clutched
Abraham’s hair and forced his younger brother to stand.

“You’re lucky we arrived before the clerics
silenced their horn, little brother. You’ll not feel father’s belt
tonight, and you’ll be able to feast with the rest of us. But I’ll
not let you crumble onto the ground, no matter how your heart
thunders, and no matter how your lungs burn. I’ll make sure you
stand like a proud warrior.”

Abraham gasped to recover his breath as
Ishmael gripped his shoulder. The moon was already full and bright,
and night would offer very little cover from the eyes of the
unbelievers in the castle that seemed to hover directly over their
village of subterranean tunnels and chambers. The castles moved
overhead like a clockwork, and it was easy to gauge the time of day
by the position of those fortresses in the sky. The clerics taught
Abraham that those castles were leagues above the ground, and that
the Maker trapped them in a dark, cold and killing void that was
set neither in mankind’s Earth nor in the Maker’s heaven. Abraham’s
mind trembled to consider the immensity of those castles, for their
shadows covered so much ground though they were floated so far
away. Pinpoints of blue and pearl lights blinked upon the castle
overhead, whose ramparts bristled with gun barrels and antennae,
and Abraham shuddered to think that each blinking light was a
window through which the unbelievers regarded him.

“Why have we been called out of the ground
when a castle is directly overhead?” Abraham whispered to
Ishmael.

Ishmael suddenly slapped Abraham across the
face, and none of the men assembled in the crowd before the
clerics’ scaffold tower appeared to notice the sound of Ishmael’s
palm across Abraham’s cheek.

“Shut your mouth and be quiet. The clerics
will tell you soon enough all you need to know.”

Abraham didn’t wish to invite a second slap
from his brother, and thus he didn’t rub at the stinging side of
his face. Instead, he let his eyes drift upon the capes of his
neighbors who gathered at the foot of cleric’s tower of
scaffolding. Each man wore a cape that was carefully woven in the
patterns and markings that told histories and stories to those
versed in the tribe’s language of thread and symbols. Abraham’s
study of that expression beneath the tutelage of the clerics had
only just begun, and so the boy allowed his eyes to consider the
design that was unique to each cape. The capes told Abraham which
men were fathers, and among those fathers those who were proud to
have had sons who sacrificed themselves to the Maker’s will. The
capes told Abraham which men possessed multiple wives in their
home, and which still looked to marry off daughters before the end
of the calendar year. The capes told Abraham which men had waged
war against the unbelievers, and they told the boy who he might
visit to receive a medicine to heal a sick cow or goat. And Abraham
recognized the men who wore capes that marked them as guilty of
striking a neighbor, or of taking the Maker’s name in vain. Abraham
was proud of his ability to decipher the language expressed on
those capes, and he was pleased to think that such information
would remain unknown to whatever eyes looked upon them from that
castle hovering above their community of holes and homes.

“My sons will not forget this day. Abraham,
you please me by not being the last to arrive at the clerics’
summons.”

Abraham’s father, Rahbin, materialized from
the crowd of men, and Abraham cringed as Rahbin extended a hand
towards his head. But Abraham soon smiled as his father patted his
shoulder. Abraham was thankful that his father was in a good mood,
for Rahbin rarely smiled anywhere near the presence of the
clerics.

“This is going to be a glorious occasion.”
Rahbin playfully punched Ishmael’s arm. “Tonight, we will please
the Maker by killing thousands of unbelievers. My sons, you should
feel blessed and proud, for many of your cousins will soon be
delivered to the Maker as martyrs.”

The clerics waited for the last of the
village men to arrive at their tower before silencing their blaring
horn, an indication that the night was to be one of celebration
rather than of condemnation. The Maker’s divine law, as expressed
within the Holy Book, allowed only a tribe’s clerics to grow
beards, symbols of their spiritual strength. The Maker demanded
that no cleric’s beard could grow any longer than that sported by
the high cleric, and the high cleric who stepped to the front of
the scaffold and stretched a hand towards the gathering possessed a
beard that stretched to his chest, a proud and gray beard worn by a
high cleric who had served a long tenure overlooking the souls of
his flock.

“Praise be to the Maker!”

“Praise be to the Maker!” The men returned
the cleric’s mantra in a booming shout.

“There are no stars, no planets and no
moons!” The cleric’s voice lifted high into the darkening sky to
challenge the castle that hovered above. “There is only the Maker,
and all that glimmers in the heavens are but the Maker’s
possessions and treasures!”

“Praise be to the Maker!” The crowd shouted
in reply.

The high cleric pointed towards the
darkening, Eastern sky. “Our tribes have served as the Maker’s
tools since his breath imparted life to mankind. The Maker has
looked through our ancestors’ eyes and has judged the world.
Through our hands, the Maker has punished the great devil and his
legion of unbelievers to protect the glory of his creation. Tonight
marks a momentous occasion in our service to our Maker, for we will
carry the Maker’s retribution into the great devil’s purgatory and
punish the unbelievers, who foolishly think they might hide from
our Maker. We shall burn the unbelievers from the sky just as we
have eradicated them from the Earth, and those who refuse the
creator’s will shall learn there is no world the glorious Maker
cannot reach.”

A great rumble floated upon the wind, and
Abraham turned towards the eastern sky and watched a dozen long,
orange plumes of fire rise towards the night’s twinkling stars,
blinking in the brilliance of the bright arcs of light and fire
that streaked across the sky. Abraham had never seen the rockets
rise in such numbers. The unbelievers from the last of the
blasphemous cities rode atop those trails of fire in their metallic
craft to escape the Maker’s creation and law. They had lost the
war, and the clerics preached that their great city was only ruin,
and that the population of the unbelievers so dwindled upon the
Earth that the tribes, when counted together, possessed far more
souls. Abraham never doubted the clerics when they told him the
time was coming when the tribes would ultimately eradicate the
unbelievers from the Maker’s creation, regardless of the furious
weapons the great devil supplied to his arrogant people. Abraham’s
heart thrilled to watch the trails of fire rising against the dark
sky, for a dozen fingers of fire said that the unbelievers were
desperate to escape the Maker’s world, that the unbelievers
realized they could never usurp the Maker’s throne.

“They’re running away,” Abraham whispered.
“They know they’re weak, and they’re desperate to retreat into
their sky castles.”

Ishmael spat upon the ground. “The Maker
will butcher them even behind those walls.”

Rahbin smiled at his sons. “The Maker is far
from delivering his final stroke.”

A searing light filled the eastern sky and
blinded Abraham’s vision as a roar rolled in his ears. The ground
trembled as the brilliant light faded and allowed Abraham’s eyes to
see five of those rising plumes explode and expand into blossoms of
red, orange and yellow just as a warm wind clapped against his
face. The men shouted and cheered as secondary explosions continued
to erupt as those five trails of fire tumbled back to the
Earth.

“Praise be to the Maker!

The high cleric spoke from his tower. “Our
holy warriors now fight the unbelievers in the sky. We will soon
destroy those foul castles hovering overhead so that our Maker
might rebuild according to his vision.”

“Praise be to the Maker!”

Ishmael embraced Abraham. “Our cousins bring
us glory by giving themselves to bring those rockets down, brother.
Pray that it’s not too late for us to play a part in shaping the
Maker’s design.”

Rahbin gripped his sons’ hands. “Don’t fear,
Ishmael. Listen closer to what the high cleric says. This is only a
new beginning of our war against the unfaithful. It is not an end.
We’ve only cleansed the unbelievers from the Earth, and now we must
erase them from the purgatory they inhabit between the Maker’s
heaven and our ground. My sons will fight in the heavens like
winged angels.”

“Praise be to the Maker!”

The men of the village continued to chant as
the surviving plumes of fire lifted higher into the heavens on
their journey to those castles in the sky. After the last plume
faded, the clerics again blared their horn, and the men descended
their ladders to return back beneath the Earth. No one locked their
home that night to their neighbors, and the men moved freely from
one chamber to another to taste the dishes other men’s wives
prepared for their tribe’s celebratory feast. Many men sang, and
many complimented their peers on the quality of craftsmanship
expressed in their women’s looms. The clerics passed silently from
one underground home to another throughout the night, where they
meekly smiled and expressed their gratitude for the fine tea the
man of each household served to them. And those clerics observed,
and those clerics noted. Their war against the unbelievers remained
young, and those bearded leaders suspected they needed to temper
their flock before they might deliver their war to its next
theater.

Abraham didn’t follow his brother and father
into the chambers of his neighbors, and he instead retreated into
his small chamber in his family’s underground home, where he coaxed
his burrowing cockroach friend to return with a trail of sugar
water.

“It’s a glorious night, Oscar.” The bug
didn’t flinch as Abraham held it within his palm. “I’m going to
finish painting your shell in swirls, and I’ll pray my that brush
pleases the Maker.”

The rest of his burrowing cockroach
companions soon appeared from his chamber’s shadows, and Abraham
was pleased as he set his freshly-painted friend down so that the
bug mingled with its insect family, all of them sporting shells
painted in fresh decorations that glistened in the lantern’s flame.
Abraham traced the shape of an oval with sugar water upon the
floor, and he smiled as he watched his painted shells race around
the circle.

* * * * *

Chapter 3 – The Ultimate Answer

Governor Praxis sighed as General Thomas
Harrison finished presenting his recommendation.

“Are there truly no better options, General?
We’re talking about destruction on an unprecedented level.”

Governor Aldrich nodded. “We’re supposed to
be the civilized ones, General. We’re supposed to be the ones
evolved beyond this violence. But your proposal makes any atrocity
ever committed by the tribes pale in comparison.”

Governor Spencer nervously tapped his finger
upon his digital notepad. “Why not put all the castles’ laser
batteries back into play and rain fire down on the tribes like we
once did? Why not respond with that type of firepower?”