by Christian Aslan Overfelt.
There was once a man who traveled through this land. This was hundreds of years ago, now. He was a leader of men and women. He traveled with a retinue of servants and slaves, an army, too, of well stocked men and supplies. There were horses, hundreds of them, two for every man, that drew heavy wagons across this land, wagons so heavy their wheels bore down into the soil and rutted the earth.
And cannons, too, bulbous barrels of iron shot through with powder and lead that rolled with a dreadful silence. And when the land grew up around them in forests of birch and oak and vine, those hundreds of men swung and chopped and their heavy metal brought down what once stood before them.
It was this way that they moved, this way that saw them in a different place each night. But as they travelled, the land began to lose its sustenance. The forage for the animals dwindled and the meat for the men leaned into dry, tough strips.
There was heard at night talk of new directions, of phantom cities and places. And then the sky descended upon that caravan in a shattered ceiling of ice and rock that pierced equipment and spirit alike. And the men began to quake in their bones at that awful sight and they began, too, to wonder what other terrors this land might hold.
There were a people here, in this land, that had trained the water to bend into their fields and nourish their crops, and they had built bricks out of the hot mud and stacked them as shelter from the sun. And there was a man from the caravan who went ahead to meet these people, and his name was Francis. He wore a bright red cloth that signalled his importance and he spoke with gravity and decorum to those people.
He told them that there was a mighty army on its way to this land, and that they required grain for their horses and meat for the men. For a long time, the people were quiet as they listened to Francis speak. They sat in the shade of a sprawling juniper that stood in the public square, its long arms reaching out across the people.
We do not have enough grain in storage for your horses said one of the men from the group. His name was Na’abee. And our sheep are not yet ready for slaughter. You will have to find your feed elsewhere.
Francis took Na’abee’s message back to the caravan, and it was decided that the goods needed by the armed men would be appropriated from those people by force. Because if might cannot be used as an arbiter of god’s will, what, then, is there? Without that singular maxim in place to direct the ways of men and women, things fall apart.
Those men wore breastplates of iron that shone like beacons on that high plateau, and they carried long bored muskets, the barrels of which rested on pikes driven deep into the desert floor, and from those dazzling fuses and out of those thick clouds of smoke came hot metal flashing like a thousand copper suns, screaming, scalding, turning bone to dust, flesh to thread, blood to mist.
There was one among the people, a young man, a boy even, who had gone out with the war party to meet the caravan. His name was Cloud. He had lobbied the men with his trophies, the pelts of animals that he had slain and the men had clucked their tongues and shook their heads, because they had known war and the monsters it had made of them.
But Cloud followed them out onto the plateau because the will of a free person is no trifling matter, and the path from child to adult cannot be explained or foretold. And so, as he watched the limbs of those around him begin to separate and fall to the desert floor, and heads became empty sockets of scrabbled gore, and those hissing balls of copper trundled through rank upon rank of flesh, Cloud found himself standing in a puddle of urine, and then, before he could decide, his instincts decided for him, and he was running.
He spent that awful night in the depths of a canyon, and in that hollow rock there was no comfort to be found, no sounds of the night owl or the laugh of the jackal, as if all signs of life had been driven from that place. And he was filled with an anger, a hatred for that caravan that stole his breath and struck him blind.
And then, as the night grew deeper and the moon glow paled the sky, he was beset with cold and hunger and loneliness, and that hatred went out from his being and it turned like a snake back upon himself, injecting him with a venomous self loathing, a deep shame for his own cowardice and fear.
And he went up to the top of that canyon, and, in the bright moon light, looked over the edge into those depths and meant to throw himself over to smash his bones below. But when morning came, he came out of the canyon and he approached that caravan singly and alone. And he found the man of the cloth and he told Francis that he had something to say to the leader of men.
Francis laughed and he set his hand upon Cloud’s shoulder, because he was impressed with the boy’s seriousness of being. Ordinary boys do not talk to the leader of men and women said Francis.
But Cloud kept his bearing and he brushed that hand from his shoulder like so much dust and said I know what you are looking for and I know where it is.
And so, in the leader’s tent, Cloud explained how he had come to know of a metallic city, and how he had been taken to see it, even at a very young age. And now the leader, too, laughed at him, and, as he laughed, he turned a heavy ring upon a fat finger.
Let me see your ring said Cloud, holding his hand out to the leader as if he would command the mighty to do his will.
And the leader, there, stopped laughing and he glanced around the retinue of men at his side before sliding the band from his hand and tossing it to the boy. Cloud let the ring fall into the dirt at his feet, and then he produced a precious rock from his own person and let it, too, fall into the dirt like so much rubbish.
At this, the leader stood and looked out at that glinting ore, and it is true that he knelt down at that boy’s feet to take those stones into his own possession. And so the caravan left those people in their earthen shelters and came down off of that high plateau. And at the plateau’s edge, atop a high bluff, the caravan stopped and looked over the flat land that carried on uninterruptedly before them, and there were no small doubts in the minds of those men.
What is this? asked the leader, standing before that vast plain.
This is the great sea said Cloud. A shoreless body that has no end upon this earth.
And what is that carpet that shags the ground without spot or break?
Cloud led them down from that high bluff and took them into the unending folds of bison, and the men held their rifles and hatchets at the ready, but the animals took no notice, dividing only enough to let them pass, and then closing around them again.
For days, they travelled through that herd, and they could not find a place to rest their gaze where there were no bison. At night, Francis came to sit with Cloud beneath a sky so brilliant it seemed to droop with its own weight and lie like a blanket upon them.
These moons and stars are foreign to me said Francis. I can make no map or constellation of them.
Why are you here? asked Cloud.
I came here from a place across the world said Francis. It was a place filled with sickness, corruption, and greed. I grew up blind to its disease, because I was sick with it, too. And then I found something, and it showed me what it was to live a life of freedom. They were letters written on a page, dead ink and pulp that were endowed with a creative force that shook me to my core.
And I knew, then, that the ways of men and women were flawed, and that I could not escape them, because, indeed, I am a man, too. But this land is different. This land is a new beginning for flawed humankind, and the world that will be established here will be ordained by God, and it will be beautiful.
I am just a child said Cloud, and even I can hear the hypocrisy in your words.
You are referring to the leader of men said Francis. His ways are the old ways. The way of violence and power, of corruption and greed. It is true that we have brought our flawed ways with us to this land. But there is another leader of men and women, of civilized and savage, who is different, and who will teach us, here, on this new land, how to live in peace and humility and forgiveness.
These ideas you preach said Cloud, are not foreign to this land, or to its people. We know corruption and greed, and we know love and forgiveness. And your culture does not run any deeper than ours. What then, is the cost you are willing to pay for this shiny new kingdom? And how much are you willing to compromise to nestle into the arms of power?
As they travelled through those weeks and months, Francis showed Cloud the pages on which those letters were scrawled with ink, and Cloud could not deny the power of the written word, the beauty of the letters and the enchantment of the pages. He became familiar with their shapes and he began to crave their meaning, dreaming of lean lines of ink marking an endless page.
But the men soon grew weary of that changeless plain, and there were calls for the death of the boy and the return of the caravan to more hospitable lands. The plain began to tilt and warp beneath them, and paths once thought straight were proved anything but, and, at night, when the coyotes cried, the men believed it to be a demonic laughter. And truly, it was.
Pikes were driven into the land and marked for reference, and, weeks later, when they came upon those same pikes, panic struck the camp. Beneath the stars, Francis again came to sit with Cloud, and he placed his hand on the boys shoulder and he said it is time to tell the leader the truth. If you do it now, he might spare your life.
My life is already forfeit said Cloud.
Yes but he might spare you the torture said Francis. I can lobby for your quick and painless death. It will be easier that way. I’ve been thinking about your words, Cloud, and they have cut me to the quick of my being. What you have done here, to draw this army away from your people and into confusion, is a story that will be told as long as there are people on this plain. Your name will be carried in reverence by your people.
But there will be another story told, and it, too, will live on in this land. It will take root in the soil and it will change the color of this grass to a blood red. And the cities of men and women that are built upon this plain will take the name of the leader of men, and he, too, will be held in reverence.
And these two narratives will coexist on this plain, one among your people, and one among mine. One is a narrative of the subversion of power, and the other speaks of its triumph. There will be a hundred years, two hundred years, three hundred years, four hundred years, five hundred years, and while the narrative of power blooms like a thousand flowers in the sun, the narrative of its subversion will lie seeded in the soil, awaiting its time to flourish.