Holy Days - Wednesday: An Easter Tale

Thirty years or so later…

The innkeeper hadn’t much paid attention, at the time, concerning the effect his decision to give a young couple some space to sleep for the night. He’d certainly noticed the effect of Herod’s decision, very soon after. So many innocents lost. He’d heard about the birth that happened in the stable, that to his shame almost hadn’t even noticed was imminent. The couple had been so humble, he’d felt shamed into helping them. The census had made everyone a little crazy. He’d thought, at the time, he’d done nothing to be proud of, giving them that, of all spaces. No dignity. They hadn’t seemed to mind. He had. It bothered him the rest of that night. Then he forgot all about it. Life went on as it always had, in Bethlehem. A quiet place. Certainly no Jerusalem. That was what he’d always treasured about it. Yet somehow he ended up in Jerusalem anyway.

Somehow. Right. He remembered their names. The husband had been a carpenter. The innkeeper remembered that. His line of business? He could always find value in such a trade. He obtained a variety of products from the man, over the years. In this way he learned about the son, the baby who had been born that night. Again, none of this was intentional. A coincidence. The son developed a reputation, over the years. Most of the time, he kept to himself, went about his father’s business. He spent much of his time ruminating, though. Not like a rabbi, although it was often said he ought to follow such a path, take up space in the temple in an official capacity. But he was always humble, exactly as his parents had been that night. 

The years progressed. The innkeeper heard how the son went out on his own, how he walked away from his father’s trade, found a group of friends who liked to listen to all that talk. On this day the innkeeper found himself talking with one of those friends. They said this man wanted to rent one of his rooms.

Passover was approaching. Space was once again at a premium. The innkeeper, all these years later, found he had a role to play in this family’s affairs, one more time. This time there was no hesitation. 

They needed it the next day. He’d heard about what’d happened a few days earlier. He imagined what it must’ve looked like. For a lot of men, for too many, it would’ve been too easy. Basking in the glory. Well, not the carpenter’s son. No, the innkeeper thought it probably felt embarrassing. This man would need someplace private. Strangely, the innkeeper, perhaps too aware of history, felt a certain foreboding. Something bad would happen in the days ahead. He made arrangements for the room to be fitted out in such a manner for a man who had merited such a welcome into town. Fit for a king, the innkeeper thought. In case it was his last chance for such treatment. 

There was another Herod, after all, and, the innkeeper found, names being collected all over again. Support, this time, for what he did not care to know, to be a part of. He was a humble man himself. Went about his work. Tried to believe he’d always done the right thing. He knew he hadn’t. 

The friend of the carpenter’s son gave him a shy kind of smile, upon completion of the deal. He wished he could be among them the next day.

Holy Days - Tuesday: An Easter Tale

Caspar, too, was old. They all were. That was how he saw the world, now. It’s easy to see everything the way you are. This is not a failing. Even wise men can suffer from such vanity.

When he was younger, he had traveled far, with his friends, to a humble place. He had presented frankincense to a baby.

Frankincense had particular significance to the Jews, as he’d gathered, a kind of offering to holy places, to sanctify them. So his gift was more of an acknowledgment. He’d done his research. He was paying his respects. Candidly, he thoughts his friends had been a little eccentric with theirs. But he didn’t have to understand. He let them carry on. They had different ideas, but united in their belief that the world held sacred mysteries. He didn’t pretend to understand the mysteries surrounding this baby. He didn’t need to, he’d decided.

Like all of them he tried to keep tabs on what followed. Not because he became a believer, once he’d learned just what kind of a life that baby grew into. Remember, in the early days it was a mission to the Jews, a matter for Jews. It didn’t expand until later, and by then Caspar was dead. But that’s later.

Now, on a Tuesday in the early days of a week that would change history, Caspar had a chat with his old friend Melchior, and that was when he found out what had happened that Sunday, and what his friend thought of that, the foreboding he felt, the certainty that far from portending good things, it singled the beginning of the end.

Or maybe not. These two certainly had a unique perspective on all of it, a scholarly one, and they were peering in from the outside. They were free to speculate.

So that was what they did.

His friend seemed hopeful. Caspar wasn’t so sure. Anything could happen, right? And the world often seemed determined for the worst outcome, even when he claimed profusely otherwise. He didn’t want to call himself a cynic, but sometimes it seemed the only rational approach. And, well, he was an old man, now. He’d seen many things. They all knew what Herod had done, after all. 

He had to laugh. They had both been so hopeful, then. His friend gave the baby gold. Caspar had brought the incense. A part of him says he knew better than he knew. That part of him was faith. And it was right for him to struggle with it. That was what faith was all about. 

It was only when he had grown so old, that he allowed himself to admit such things.

Holy Days - Monday: An Easter Tale

Melchior was an old man, by then.

Someone told him about it. They told him about what had become of that baby they’d visited, all those years ago, those long decades. 

Each of them, all three, had agreed to bring gifts. He’d chosen gold. At the time he couldn’t really have explained, except the stories had said the baby would grow up to be a king, and so it had seemed appropriate.

But what he’d heard, since, not just what they all heard, later, about what Herod had done, not even to say how he’d tried to trick them, seemed to contradict that. He didn’t really understand it, hadn’t back then, either, not that it had mattered. A different culture, a different world. But in the final analysis, none of that had mattered. What he understood, then, was that he was simply paying homage. He saw no reason, now, to think otherwise.

No, that baby had not grown up to be a king. In that world, in that Roman world, after he’d thought about it, that had never really seemed likely anyway, or in any sense that would’ve been interpreted in that way, then, trivial. He’d heard all about the culture the baby grew into, its vision of the future. He listened as it was explained to him, what that baby grew up professing. He knew a thing or two about some of that, surely.

But he had never seen any of that in quite the manner he saw it from this new perspective.

And then he heard about what happened yesterday. Yesterday that baby truly had, for a moment, grown up to be a king. Melchior had to laugh. In a selfish moment he even wondered whatever had happened to that gold. Many men would have at least laced their attire in it. He didn’t see that as a possibility, here.

He would never see this man for himself. He saw him once, as a baby. He worried about him. He knew that culture, that world, everything that man had already struggled against. Such crusades were not meant long for the world. Or maybe.

He still could not escape this man’s story. Just perhaps, it was a story that would endure. Melchior had first read it before any of it had even happened. He followed a star to see its first fruits for himself.

He decided it wasn’t so hard to believe.

Holy Days - Palm Sunday: An Easter Tale

The angel Gabriel had almost literally seen it all.

Angels came forth sometime before the earthly realms. They were never God; they were never omniscient, omnipresent, certainly not omnipotent. But they were certainly privileged.

But they could observe. Gabriel had done a great deal of observing. He saw what humans got up to. He saw the many ways they envisioned faith. He saw the many varieties of religion, how they started, how they played out, the effect they had on humans. He knew God’s relationship with humanity was complicated. God didn’t just pop in for a visit with anyone. Most of the time it was completely a matter of faith, and believing what was said, and knowing what to believe.

Every now and then, Gabriel was sent to intervene. That was something he’d done, when Christ was born, into the world. None of any of that was a mystery to Gabriel. He knew from the moment of his announcement how it was all going to play out.

So on the Sunday before the end of that brief life on earth, he watched with some curiosity how Christ’s day progressed. He watched Christ’s friends procure the donkey. He saw the happy frenzy in the streets, as word spread. He may have watched humanity since its infancy but he honestly couldn’t say he understood it any better than he ever had. 

He simply allowed himself to get caught up in the moment, even knowing where it was leading. 

Humanity can be fickle. If the right people align, then it can be an organic miracle. That, he thought, was what Christ had always tried to say. If the wrong people align, it can be a disaster. That’s what he thought God had been trying to say since Eden., since the serpent, since Cain. Listen to the wrong people, get caught up in yourself…

But this moment, this perfect, impossible moment. For Gabriel it seemed to symbolize what Christ’s life was all about. Not what would happen in a handhold days, which again, even someone who doesn’t see all time all at once knew was coming, since for God, for Christ, was known from the beginning, and was an open understanding in Heaven. No. It was watching people be joyful. 

Which was really why he’d taken the assignment to announce Christ’s birth. It was indeed a privilege, getting to see these humans, who struggled so much, happy. They didn’t know what to expect. Gabriel knew and he was still happy. He didn’t know about this day, that this would happen, too. But he hadn’t needed to.

So that was also why he so enjoyed watching Christ make his way through the streets, through the palms. This was Gabriel’s faith.

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 10 (Conclusion): "Centennial"

Sia might never have seen Night again, but that doesn’t mean Oliver didn’t.

     A hundred years later, someone else was calling themselves Oliver Row, but as had long been tradition, they liked to think the life of a previous one was more or less their own, too, and so their lingering memories (every one of them kept a journal of some kind), and so the current Oliver was interested to know as the Oliver at the time what had become of Night, whether she had, as Sia had supposed, departed Earth, before the war, before everything changed, again.

     Of course she hadn’t.

     Oliver never even considered it a possibility.  He waited patiently, as it happens, for Night to visit him, as he knew she would, in her fear, her trepidation, her anxiety, same as anyone, human or Danab, or another other alien race, wherever their origin, the impossible challenge of processing such things easily, as Sia seemed to have, but had really been a mask, as so many choose to wear, which Oliver, then, had allowed her to keep, but had kept tabs on her, when the Danab came, when the war came, as he watched her devote herself to preparing elaborate meals, which, he noted, had become quite the obsession around the world, in households that had never so much as cracked an egg, before.  Nervous tension, the creator.  Eventually. 

   Oliver wasn’t so lucky, and neither was Night.  He worried about her most of all, not because he feared her people would decide to execute her, but that she would harm herself, out of shame, embarrassment, any of the lies she’d be willing to tell herself, this ultimate sense of betrayal, of whole planets, that she had so willingly plunged herself into.

     All because of a little curiosity.

     Same as anyone.  That’s what he told her, when she finally did come to see him.

     “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

     “It certainly seems otherwise at the moment,” she said.

     “Forget the moment,” he said.  “You already did.  Your whole course of action defied all that.  Defied it because you knew it was going to happen.  You did think you were going to stop it.  You’re some kind of princess, aren’t you?  I bet you never told Sia that.”

     “I didn’t want to scare her,” she said.

     “Funny way of showing it,” he said.

     “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

     “Listen, we’re all in the same boat,” he said.  “We’re all blood.”

     “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

     “I know,” he said.

     “She needed to see at a level she could understand,” she said.  “She had a much different life than either of us.”

     “I appreciate your saying so,” he said.

     “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,” she said.

     “There’s that alarming forthrightness,” he said.”

     “Probably something to do with my upbringing,” she said.

     “Yeah,” he said.  “Probably.”

     “I don’t know my way forward, Oliver,” she said.  “I’m frightened.  I don’t have a role to play anymore.”

     “Narrative horror,” he said.  “I read a book about that, once.  The author was more concerned about the past, but it applies to the future, too, I guess.  That’s the problem.  That’s, really, always the problem.  Right now, there’s fighting going on all over the world.  Sia’s not a part of it.  I’m not a part of it.  You’re not.  You think you should be.  You think you should be.  You think you owe a debt or something.  You think you caused it.  You didn’t.  This was going to happen.  You have no blood on your hands.  Maybe it’s the Danab in you, but there’s humanity, too.  I know what the humanity says.  Maybe the Danab does, too.  I don’t know.  You have to trust me on this.  You’re not to blame.  That’s just how we are.  We were like this long before those aliens took your ancestors into space.  That’s why they were, because they were fighting anyway.  A lot of trouble has been put into thinking about why this is.  Some people think our most cherished beliefs about it.  I don’t agree.  I think it’s just nature.  We can’t control it.  We can only determine what we do in response.  How we view it.  How we learn from it.  It’s not about when the fighting ends, Night, because that always happens, just as inevitably as it starting up again.  I never agreed with the notion that someday it’ll just wipe us all out.  Nature is too indifferent.  It has no role for us to play.  We just need to forgive ourselves.  That’s what you’ve got to do.  You can’t stop this from happening, you never could, but you can help people understand.  You can start with yourself.  Like the rest of your people, it was simple curiosity.  That’s it.  And that’s fine!”

     “You make it sound so innocent,” she said.

     “Innocence is always the first victim,” he said, “but it’s never taken away.  It can’t be.  It can’t be a casualty.  We just need to fight to reclaim it.  Sounds impossible.  But it’s the only inevitable thing about it.  That’s nature, too.”

     “Okay,” she said.
     “During the course of all this I acquired a nasty habit,” he said.  “Coffee.”

     “Anastassia introduced it to me,” she said.

     “The trick is, there’s always different ways to make it,” he said, “and you’ve got to find the one that makes sense to you.”

     “We don’t have coffee on Danab,” she said.

     “You already sound more civilized,” he said.

     “We have worse,” she said.

     “I’m sure you just haven’t figured that out, either,” he said.  “Don’t mean to be rude.”

     “I’m beginning to suspect that’s just nature, too,” she said.

     “Probably,” he said.  “Something like that.”

     They continued their little chat, and Night explained to Oliver what they did drink on Danab, something they’d developed long ago, on the spaceships of the aliens who took her people from Earth.  He suspected it sounded something like motor oil.  She laughed at that.

     She lived longer than he did.  That Oliver died decades after the peace was declared, after Earth was welcomed into a galactic alliance, full of wary members who had no idea what to make of these humans, who so quickly adapted to and then took over an existing space corps, despite even more begrudging acceptance into it.  Other Olivers followed, Olivia, sometimes Olive, Ollie, Ol, as it had always been, until a full century had passed.  Sometimes the current occupant merely retired.  It was another Oliver, from this vantage point.  Night had died, finally, not so long before.  Long life, along with all the other advantages, as he still chose to view them, as many jealous humans did.  Oliver’s wasn’t that choice, but rather admiration. 

     It had taken a great deal of courage.  Sometimes curiosity can produce wonders.  But it takes warriors, soldiers traveling along ancient seas, to brave such treacherous waters.  Sometimes we have the privilege to make the decision ourselves.  Of the three of them. It was Oliver’s opinion that it was Night who most closely matched that description.

     He tipped his cup at all three.  It takes all kinds.

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 9: "The Winds of Death"

When they met again, at the same coffee shop, Sia and Oliver each sat down with cups they intended to drink.  Sia noticed that Oliver didn’t add anything into his this time.  He seemed nervous, agitated, kept sipping at his cup.  He’d removed the lid.  She watched him with anticipation.  She held hers in her hands, and brought it up to her lips for steady swallows.  She didn’t much notice the temperature.  There was a single packet of sugar mixed in, a little creamer, which changed the color to a dark tan.

     “The whole point of all this is that there’s going to be a war,” he said finally.  “A war.  A full-on, all-out war.  A true world war.  It’s going to be all of us, all on the same team.  I’m not sure we have a chance.”

     “I actually don’t think that’s true,” she said.  “Why would she have even bothered.  Night.  Her name is Night.  In case you didn’t already know that.”

     “In fact I didn’t,” Oliver said.  “Feeling a little inadequate these days, thank you very much.  I was workshopping Danab Lady.  Or maybe Mad Lady.”

     “Night,” she said.  “She’s actually a very nice lady, when you stop worrying about all the horrible implications.”

     “I’m sure she is,” he said.

     “We had a little chat,” she said.

     “A lot of that going around, lately,” he said.

     “I’ve found them helpful,” she said.  “I mean, I don’t think we have to worry about it.  About the war.  I mean, there’s going to be a war, and it’s going to be worldwide, global, devastating, as wars go…but I don’t think it’s an extinction event.  I don’t think it’s about annihilation.   I don’t think it’s avoidable, no matter how you look at it, but that’s just how these things go.  That’s how humanity says hello.”

     “That’s awfully cynical,” he said.  “And also, since when were you the level head in all this.  I’m the one who was supposed to know what was going on.”

     “That’s awfully condescending,” she said.  “Since you asked…I guess I knew what this was all going to lead to, somewhere along the line.  At some point.  I kind of had to figure a secret as big as the one I’d stumbled onto was never going to be simple, not with that scrubbed from the historical record.  There had to be a reason, and…there was.  There absolutely was!  C’mon, you had to guess, too, at some point?  You know more than I did, for longer, and you’re going to tell me you honestly thought it was going to turn out any different?  That you thought it was really going to be like all those silly movies?  I mean, I’d love to see the movie, if I didn’t have to experience it, but I guess there’ll be a movie, eventually, anyway, humanity’s brush with its destiny!  From its past!  I’m sure it’s going to be horrible, but…Endurable.  They’re not going to just come wipe us out.  Weaponry has to exist on a scale that makes sense, if we’re essentially the same people.  And we are.  They can’t invent anything we wouldn’t be able to understand, or confront.  We already know this, Oliver.  Ollie.  Can I call you Ollie?”

     “Actually, I’ve been workshopping,” he said.

     “Night came here like she’d road a bus, took a cab,” she said.  “I don’t know, drove a car.  If she had been, I don’t know, part of a vanguard, she really wouldn’t have just orchestrated our bumping into each other like that.  Think about it.  I know I have.  Very little else.  Actually, that’s a lie.  I’ve been distracting myself a lot.  You have no idea.  You’d think I would be able to think about anything else.  But I had to.  I think that’s really how all of this works.  Some of us are able to cut through the chatter.  I guess somehow I’m one of them.  I know you are, Ollie!  C’mon!  You can’t tell me otherwise!  I don’t know you at all.  Really!  But I know you better than anyone.  I know the type.  I know you, Ollie!  I know you understand this.  It’s going to be war.  And then it’ll be something else.  We’re just going to have to learn to deal with it.  That’s going to be a whole thing.  It’ll get complicated.  That’s how these things work.  That’s how it always works.  It’ll be okay.”

     “It’s really supposed to be me,” he said, “explaining all this.”

     “Don’t be crass,” she said.

     “Suppose we’ll have to invite her over for dinner.  Also, each other.”

     “I don’t think she’s here anymore,” she said.  “I think she went back home.  Or somewhere.  I don’t know.  I don’t really know her.  I mean, I know her.  But she went out of her way to clarify how little I could possibly understand her life.  But that’s life.  Biggest story in history, and that’s what it boils down to.  I guess it figures.”

     “It just needed someone capable of seeing it that way,” he said.

     “I have no idea how it ended up being me,” she said.

     “I think if you thought about it enough you would,” he said.  “Coffee’s awful.  I don’t mean coffee in general.  I’m drinking plenty these days.  I mean the coffee here.  Just awful.”

     “You know what?” she said.  “I think I agree.  It’s just awful.”

     “Let’s not come here again,” he said. 

     “Agreed,” she said.  “Easily.  See?  Something ordinary.  Simple.  That’s how these things really are.  Just ordinary life, regardless of the circumstances.”

     “You still curious about Duende?” he asked.

     “I think I learned enough,” she said.  “For now.”

     “I know what you mean,” he said.

     “I’m not finishing this cup,” she decided.

     “A wise decision,” he said.

     They slipped back into the night, together, and then went off in different directions.

     In the ensuing years, Sia never saw Oliver, much less Night, again.  It’s not worth summarizing her experiences, here.  That would be another story, and really, Sia wasn’t a part of the fighting, and her life wasn’t significantly impacted by it.  Not anymore than it had already been, before it had ever begun.

     So the rest is mere epilogue, as, too, this, as is everything, mere prologue.

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 8: "The Winds of Fortune"

Sia had been feeling pretty small, which had made it increasingly difficult to think outside of her home, and really, much more than outside of her bed.  There was a knock at the door, late at night, one day, and she had really wanted to believe it was someone at the wrong door, because that was how she really wanted to view everything she’d been trying to do, that idiot search through her ancestry, that had led to all of this, and she wasn’t going to answer, and then she found her body moving anyway, opening the door, and there was, of course, the lady, who had exploded everything, whose existence, even if Sia chose not to believe anything else, presented the last piece of the puzzle, either of Sia’s loss of sanity, as something that had occurred years earlier or that night, or nothing much short of an intimation of the apocalypse…

     No pressure!

     “I’m going to simplify things a little,” the woman said, walking past Sia.  “My name, or so I’m going to call myself, is Night, and I really wish all I had to do was sing a song, nothing more simple or pleasant than that, but all this has been…something of a trap, and it’s caught all of us, all three of us, and it’s only going to get worse from there.”

     “I can offer you water,” Sia said.  “From the tap.  I have a variety of novelty mugs to offer you as well.  I don’t use them.  I don’t know if you have mugs where you come from.  They’re cups.  We use them to drink hot beverages.  I don’t like hot beverages.  I don’t know why I have them.  It’s the custom.  It’s expected.  I guess I figured if I ever had a visitor, I’d need them.  I’m babbling.”

     “That’s okay,” Night said.  “I guess I needed to talk to someone who would understand.”

     “Lady, you came to the wrong house,” Sia said.

     “You don’t understand,” Night said.  “You’re exactly who I need to talk to.  You’re the only person in this universe who could possibly understand.  A long time ago, when I was a little girl, I was told a bedtime story.”

     “Oh,” Sia said.  “If you don’t want a hot beverage, in a mug, I can at least offer you a seat.  You can see for yourself the options.  They’re sparse.  I’m sorry.  You’re my first guest.”

     “Nothing I don’t recognize,” Night said.  “The bedtime story consisted of a family tradition that had been passed down by every generation, and it was about a man named Duende, who had fallen into possession of a book, which itself had been lost, the Book of Danab.  I suppose it was a kind of testament, as close to a religion my people could formulate for themselves.  They’d seen too much of the universe, even at that very early point, to worry too much about such things.  They otherwise maintained the old traditions, from here, from Earth.  We’re really not as different as you might think.”

     “I think if you and I approached the same guy for a date, the guy would find it pretty easy to distinguish,” Sia said. 

     “Don’t be so petty,” Night said.  “Or so small.”

     “Easy for you to say,” Sia said.  “Actually, that’s kind of insulting.  Proves my point, too.”

     “You’re being provincial,” Night said.

     “Hey, you’re the one who came here,” Sia said.  “Only planet I’ve ever known.”

     “Not your fault,” Night said.  “Actually, I think that’s really the problem, here, why I had to come.  I worry about the future, Anastassia.”

     “We all do,” Sia said.

     “I think you’ve already talked about this with Oliver Row,” Night said.

     “You eavesdrop on top of everything else,” Sia said.  “Not cool.”

     “It was at least logical to assume you had,” Night said.  “You can’t just ignore everything you’ve learned.  I couldn’t.”

      “I could certainly try!” Sia said.  “In fact, that’s exactly what I was trying to do tonight, besides sleeping! when you knocked at my chamber door.”

     “I don’t understand the reference,” Night said.

     “I lend you a copy,” Sia said.  “Actually, you know what?  We could make all this a lot easier if you gave me a book.  Bridge the gap.  Know what I mean?”

     “That’s not why I’m here,” Night said.

     “You worry too much,” Sia said.

     “You have no idea what’s coming,” Night said.

     “That’s the point,” Sia said.  “That’s what I began to realize.  I’m kind of comfortable in my ignorance.  It’s actually better that way.”

     “You won’t have the luxury for such foolishness,” Night said.

     “Nothing I can do about it,” Sia said.

     “That’s…actually pretty accurate,” Night said.  “I came because…I had to see.  I had to see what was going to be lost.”

     “That sounds horrible,” Sia said.

     “Nothing so provincial,” Night said.  “I mean, what humanity is now.  Not what I can see on the surface, not the mere facts.  What it is.”

     “I guess that makes sense,” Sia said.

     “To put a human face on it,” Night said.

     “Likewise,” Sia said.  “I guess.”

     “I feel truly sorry for you,” Night said.  “I apologize.  You can’t possibly know.  I can’t show you.  I wish I could.  I can describe details, I can show you images.  You wanted answers.  I have them.  I wish I didn’t.  Not because I’m ashamed, but because the world is going to interpret all of it very differently.  I think you will, too.”

     “I think I crossed that threshold years ago,” Sia said.  “I have a face, too.  I see you.  That’s enough.”

     “It won’t be for everyone,” Night said.

     “That’s the way the world works,” Sia said.  “Your existence doesn’t change that.”

     “I wish I had met you earlier,” Night said.

     “Why?” Sia said.  “You said it yourself.  It wouldn’t change anything.”

     “It would’ve changed me,” Night said.

     “Ah,” Sia said.

     “I feared so much,” Night said.  “Looking at this, from the other side, I…never expected to find someone like you.”

     “Sometimes there are small miracles,” Sia said.  “I guess those are the only ones that really exist.  Why they’re so hard to see.”

     “I think I’ll take one of those…hot beverages,” Night said.  “In a mug.  I would like to…see your collection.”

     They sat in silence, after a while, drinking.