Encoded Vellum: Part 6

by Jeff Chapman

The Abbot paused his monologue, apparently lost in some winding corridor of thought. The older brothers shared this habit of stopping in the middle of discussions to think. Sebastian found these pauses annoying. A life of prayer and contemplation no doubt diminished one’s sense of urgency.

Sebastian could suppress his curiosity no longer. “And what was that extraordinary event?”

“Your question suggests that something turned the course of his life, like an unexpected comet cutting across a ship’s course. But wouldn’t you say deciphering the Lord’s message is a type of puzzle, the greatest of all puzzles?”

Sebastian paused to consider the wording of his response, how to disagree with the Abbot. “I suppose his messages are sometimes cryptic to the uninitiated, but I don’t believe the Lord wants to hide anything from us.”

“Not hide. Not conceal. But the Lord expects us to struggle to answers and the struggle, which might last a lifetime, may be more valuable than the answer, for it is in the struggle that we find and achieve our purpose.”

Sebastian nodded, considering his own life--Christchurch, Trinity University, seminary, all of which had fallen into place. He had moved from one phase to another with the ease and certainty of a confident student following a well-lit and well-marked hallway to an exam for which he knew all the answers.

“You look pensive,” said the Abbot.

“I don’t believe I’ve encountered any such struggles. Either, forgive me for my bluntness, you are wrong or I am treading the wrong road.”

“Be patient,” said the Abbot. “You haven’t lived long enough. Now, back to the story of Brother Septimus.”

The Abbot drank several gulps from his glass of water. Depression clouded Sebastian’s judgment and he found his life’s journey wanting. How could he minister to anyone, exercise any sense of understanding and empathy? Patience did not number among his virtues.

“Like most young men, Brother Septimus was restless for adventure, eager to be part of something new. Dax and Macbane were organizing the first expeditions to Eclectia at the time. What ambitious young man would not leap at such adventure? At seventeen he had no skills, other than a quick mind and a persuasive tongue. Somehow he talked his way into a position on Macbane’s third expedition.”

“The third,” said Sebastian. “Wasn’t that...”

“Yes, the ship crashed in the vicinity of Mount Olympus during a dust storm. Septimus was one of the three who walked out of the hinterland to the coast. You might say he was the only survivor. The other two died of ash lung within months. The trek was a remarkable achievement without maps and only rudimentary knowledge of the land. I believe they were the first to discover that the bugs are edible. When Septimus returned to the Avenir, he enrolled to study for the priesthood.”

“Was he religious before his ordeal?”

“Not at all. He numbered among the young atheists, I believe.”

“What happened to him out in the desert?”

“We don’t know. The official report was lost in a core collapse and Brother Septimus wrote nothing else about it.” The Abbot turned toward the patient and the cryptic manuscript on the bedside table. “As far as we know.”

Encoded Vellum: Part 5

by Jeff Chapman -

Brother Peter stopped in the doorway. “Would a glass of water refresh you, Brother Anthony? I’m afraid Brother Sebastian is in for a very long story.”

“Not as long as you think,” said the Abbot. “But, yes, a glass of water would be most kind.”

“I live to serve.” The director dipped his head in a bow so shallow and quick that only a member of the order would have remarked it. Displays of humility permeated the daily life of the order. One could tell a novice, the brothers joked, by the depth of his bow.

The Abbot lowered his head as he twisted his neck to look at the patient. The movement puffed out the Abbot’s jowls, adding another curve to the roundness of his corpulent form. The stubble from black and white whiskers peppered his chin and neck which sheened with sweat. His lips moved in silent prayer.

Much of the literature brought from Earth on the Avenir had been lost in the core collapses, with one particularly notable exception: a folder of English stories including Robinson Crusoe; Moll Flanders; A Journal of the Plague Year; King Lear; Macbeth; fragments of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and a number of other works. Sebastian had read them all again and again and marvelled that such an alien world had ever existed except in man’s fancy. Among those literary castaways survived the story of Robin Hood. Friar Tuck came to mind whenever Sebastian passed the Abbot clicking through the halls with his staff. Friar Tuck wielded his stout stick as a weapon. Could Abbot Anthony do the same? Sebastian grinned.

“You are amused, Brother Sebastian?”

“No.” The medico resumed the stony countenance he thought befitting a monk and physician. His work bore grave consequences, and the more serious his demeanour, the more confidence patients would place in his pronouncements.  “I was thinking of something else.”

“Hmm. We shall see.”

Another reproach or no? To Sebastian, the Abbot seemed to talk on some elevated plane within a context Sebastian only vaguely understood. He found the Abbot’s occasional homilies impossible to follow though others talked for days of their brilliant subtlety.

The Abbot inhaled three times, each breath deeper than the last, filling up his lungs, it appeared, as a balloon, in preparation for a long talk. His cheeks trembled with each exhalation. The younger brothers considered the Abbot’s longevity a miracle, and Sebastian tended to agree.

“What I know,” began the Abbot, “is only hearsay from brothers long dead.” He crossed himself, blessing their souls. Sebastian did likewise. “Our lives are not worthy of veneration except our works of charity and devotion in service to God and others. Even the portraits of the former abbots are cause for debate.”

Sebastian nodded in agreement.

“But I think some connection to the past is necessary or we are lost, adrift on a river of which we know not the source.”

Sebastian found himself again nodding, agreeing with the opposite view and feeling a fool.

Brother Peter entered bearing the Abbot’s water. “The meeting is arranged immediately prior to evening prayers. We may push back the start of dinner to accommodate.”

“Very good, Peter.”

“Abbot Anthony is a font of wisdom,” said the director to Sebastian. “Take note and listen carefully.” Brother Peter looked back and winked as he passed out of the room. Whether he winked at the Abbot or Sebastian, Sebastian could not tell.

“Brother Septimus was a very bright young man,” said the Abbot. “Extremely fond of puzzles. As a teenager he twice won the Avenir’s crossword competition and excelled at mathematics and cryptography. He might have been a so-called wizard. I see you nodding. Yes.” The Abbot glanced at the manuscript on the bedside table. “He has left us a puzzle to solve.”

“Something extraordinary must have happened to him,” said Sebastian. “To draw him to our life.”

“As with all of us,” answered the Abbot.

Encoded Vellum: Part 4

by Jeff Chapman -

“No one has ever lived two hundred Foundings, even artificially. The body breaks down. How could a man in a cave survive that long?”

“I know,” said the Abbot. “But it is him, or a clone. He has the bearing, the aura, of an abbot. Could that be replicated? If I could, I would swear on everything that is holy.”

“Forgive me for contradicting you,” said the medico, “but the man is in a coma. What bearing could he have?”

“I must agree with our young colleague, Brother Anthony. A remarkable resemblance, but it can be nothing more. Perhaps he fathered children after leaving the abbey? I cannot believe that even a former abbot would allow himself to be cloned, at least not voluntarily. You’ve had a shock. Let us walk you back to your chamber.”

“The time capsules,” blurted the Abbot.

The medico looked askance at the director.

“Of course,” said the director. “You haven’t been here long enough, Brother Sebastian. When a new abbot is consecrated, the cup used for his first communion as abbot and one or more personal possessions that he gives up in order to free his mind for service are sealed in a time capsule.”

“And a lock of hair,” added the Abbot.

“Even better,” said Brother Peter. “I had forgotten about the hair.”

“His capsule is not to be opened for at least two hundred more Foundings. The community must pray and decide as one on a course of action.”

“Why not open it and reseal it?” said Brother Sebastian.

“The community vows at the consecration to respect the date on the capsule,” said the Abbot.

“I will arrange a special gathering for tonight,” said Brother Peter.

“Why did the first Abbot leave the abbey?” said Brother Sebastian.

“Questions, questions.” The Abbot looked to the medico and nodded at the other chair. “Sit down, Brother Sebastian, and I will tell you all I know of the first Abbot.”

Encoded Vellum Part 3

by Jeff Chapman -

“There are no matches among Avenir records,” contended the medico, and regarded the old man in the bed.

“Perhaps they were not very thorough,” said Brother Peter. “Mistakes have occurred before. They give scant enough attention to our requests. You should ask them to look again, Brother Sebastian.”

The medico nodded.

“And if the Abbot will give us a name,” said the director.

“His records are no longer there,” said the Abbot. “They were lost in the core memory collapses.”

Sebastian calculated what that meant for the age of the patient, then recalculated. Impossible. Until now he had thought the Abbot’s mental capacity untouched by age. Perhaps senility came in bursts like solar flares lashing out into space. He looked to the director and wrinkled his brows.

The director shook his head and sighed with the exasperation one might show an errant child.

“I believe—” began the director.

“Do you not recognize the face?” The Abbot turned from one monk to the other. “Either of you?”

Brother Sebastian shook his head.

“I’m afraid we do not,” said Brother Peter.

“Surely you do,” said the Abbot to the director. “You’ve passed his portrait many times.”

Brother Peter stared at the man in the bed, cocking his head from one side to the other to regard the face from different angles.

“I pass him every day,” said the Abbot.

“Yes, yes,” said the director. “I see it now. Uncanny. Remarkable, but utterly impossible.”

“Who is it I should recognize?” asked Brother Sebastian.

“The first Abbot, Brother Septimus. His dark eyes pierce me every morning and night. His is the first portrait outside my chamber.”

The medico gaped. “But—but—that would make him over two hundred Foundings.” 

Encoded Vellum: Part 2

by Jeff Chapman -

Brother Sebastian and Brother Peter each held one of the Abbot’s arms as they guided the gasping man into a chair. The Abbot’s face was blanched despite his rapid breathing and his eyes remained fixed on the patient quietly sleeping through the turmoil.

“Are you in pain?” asked the medico. “Any palpitations?”

The Abbot instinctively pressed a hand to his chest, but the veteran of three heart attacks shook his head. “No, no,” he told Brother Sebastian. “I am quite recovered. I have had a shock, that is all. But my nerves....”

The director frowned at Brother Sebastian. “You should lie down, Anthony. Let our able medico examine you. It may seem nothing but turn deadly serious without warning.”

“I am fine, Peter. If you lie down at my age, you may never get back up.” The Abbot smiled at Brother Sebastian. “You are frightening our young medico. He doesn’t want the first patient he loses to be the Abbot.”

“I assure you my medical reputation is the furthest....”

The Abbot raised his hand to silence Brother Sebastian. “I am certain your heart is where it should be. I was only teasing, one of my vices. Now, as to our patient here. Have you checked the DNA archives?”

“Of course,” answered the medico with a force that surprised even him. Whether spoken in jest or not, he still chafed at the previous remark questioning his charity and professionalism. Brother Sebastian was young and ardent and the abbey had not yet washed his soul of pride. He glanced at the director, who was busy taking the Abbot’s pulse, and consciously checked his tone. “We queried all the standard repositories. The results were negative, not even a close match for a relative.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said the Abbot.

“Most births in the land villages, among the miners and hunters and of course the nomads, go unrecorded,” said the director.

“This man was not born on Eclectia but on the Avenir.”

“You know this man?” asked Brother Peter.

The Abbot took a deep breath. “I believe I do.”

Firebug

by Jeff Chapman -

“The way I see it,” said the young, bearded man, “that old crone owed me a favor.” He rotated his spear, turning the mammothbug steak skewered on the end, cauterizing the edge of the meat in the flames of a lavabush fire.

The other man sharing the campfire raised his eyebrows. He was older. His brown hair was receding to gray and he boasted a scar that began at his forehead and crossed his nose before wrapping around his cheek. “I guess you’d have to see it that way, Jack.”

“That bug came within a few meters of smashing her,” said Jack.

“But you both made the kill. You’re lucky she didn’t ambush you.”

“I thought of that.” Jack leaned over and poked his companion in the ribs. “You don’t get to be old without thinking like a hunter, right, old man?”

Jack’s harsh cackle grated on the older man’s ears.

“I took the long way out,” said Jack. “Never saw her again.”

“You weren’t really gonna shoot her were you?”

Jack Shadrow touched his steak to test its warmth then thrust it back in the flames. “Don’t know. A scythegun would have made quite a mess of her.”

Carl Bonhom rotated his steak a quarter turn. The fire snapped, leaping to snatch the dripping grease. He wondered how far he could trust Jack. Should have let the woman have the legs. Hunters needed friends, not enemies.

The two men rested in a shallow recess below a lava rock outcropping, their backs to rock, their faces to fire. Parked to their left was a biodiesel lava-rover with a trailer hitched to the back. Ropes secured a pile of neatly wrapped bundles--the edible parts of two mammothbugs. The pile swelled higher than the roof of the rover. Jack and Carl had done well.

Beyond the fire’s halo loomed the cold blackness of a winter night. Neither hunter had ever trekked out this far, but the abundance of an untapped hunting ground justified the expense of the truck and the fuel and the risk. Tomorrow they would start home, a three-day journey over rock, through drifts of ash-stained black sand, and around crevices to the Palmer Trading Company camp at Adagio, where they would trade the squishy meat for solid coins. Jack would get drunk on his earnings at Maddie’s—if she would let him—and Carl would get tipsy and they would point at landmarks on a map as they planned their next foray. At least that’s what Carl expected to happen. He chewed the cooked edges of his meat while he pretended to listen to Jack prattle on about his exploits in an Adagio brothel.

“You should join me,” said Jack. “There’s a couple mature ladies there that I’m sure you would enjoy.”

Carl grunted. Jack was such an idiot, but he handled a scythegun and power saw with such consummate skill that Carl would be more of an idiot not to partner with him. “My daughter’s tuition at Trinity is due soon. I can’t afford to waste any money.”

“As much as we’re going to make on these hauls, you could send a few of the brothel girls to university. Give your daughter some company.”

Carl scowled at the association.

Jack cackled but a moaning somewhere out in the blackness cut the laughter short. A punctuating shriek brought both men to their feet.

“What was that?” said Jack.

Carl absently allowed his steak to sink into the fire where the edges of the meat bubbled and blackened. His chest tightened and every experienced nerve in his aging body told him something was wrong, that there was something to fear.

“Sounded like a mammothbug,” said Carl.

“Can’t be. They’re diurnal.”

“I know.” Carl sensed movement to his right. “Aaiiieee!” A biscorpiabug--the length and thickness of a man’s thigh--scurried toward the fire. The red, venomous stringers on the ends of its bifurcated tail arched over its body. Carl slammed his spear down on the intruder, scalding it with the hot meat. The bug stung the steak as it writhed to escape until Carl skewered its abdomen with the spear point, putting an end to it.

“So much for that dinner,” said Jack. “Those things are afraid of fire.”

Carl stared at the dead bug. Dark yellow juice oozed from its splintered carapace. He’d heard that these bugs added a new segment to their length as they grew. This one had lots of segments, an old mature one, kind of like him, and you didn’t get to be old doing stupid things like running toward a fire.

“They are,” answered Carl. Sweat slicked his skin which stuck to his clothes. “Or should be. Something’s wrong, Jack.”

The shriek sounded again, but closer, streaking through the darkness like the bolt from a crossbow. Both men grabbed their scytheguns.

Encoded Vellum

by Jeff Chapman

Brother Sebastian Norwich observed the rise and fall of the thermal blanket covering the old man’s torso and legs. That something made from minerals hacked out of rock could be soft and comforting never ceased to amaze the young medico. A monitor mounted on the white wall above the bed displayed the man’s vitals—stable but weak. A cyclops scanner—so named for its single, pulsing, blue eye—whirred and clicked as its gaze travelled up and down the length of the man’s body.

Brother Sebastian had removed the oxygen mask an hour ago. Tubes for feeding, hydration, and disposal disappeared beneath the blanket. Rising hues of tan and ochre had beaten back the man’s initial pallor. One might think him simply asleep, not locked in a coma. Considering the man was a day from death when he arrived at Lazarus House a fortnight ago, Sebastian was much pleased with his patient’s progress, but only prayers could help him now.

Sebastian turned his attention to the curious manuscript that arrived with the old man, strapped to his chest like an instruction manual. The pages were stiff but malleable and crinkled as Sebastian turned them, like nothing he had ever handled before. The unfamiliar sound, deafening in this wing of the House reserved for the sickest patients, set him ill at ease, so he tried to be quiet as if he delved where he should not be trespassing. Row after row of uniform characters in some dark yellow ink packed the pages. Stray Greek and Hebrew letters stood out amidst the scribbles like rubies and sapphires in a bowl of white marbles. The man must be a priest or a scholar of ancient languages, he surmised, but he wagered only a priest would trust Greek and Hebrew.

He translated the familiar letters, recording them on the touchscreen of his notepad to test his theory that the scribe embedded meaning in the white noise of the unrecognizable scribbles. When he finished a page, he scanned the string of letters, expecting them to snap into words, a message to shout at him, but all he heard was a noise of random sounds. Simple letter shifts up and down yielded nothing more. Perhaps the Greek and Hebrew was the noise or the old man was simply insane.

“How is our mystery patient?”

Sebastian dropped his notepad, which bounced once on the tile floor. Its shock resistant rubberized case absorbed the impact.

“Brother Peter.”

The director of the infirmary, Brother Peter An Loc Maria, stepped into the sickroom which now seemed very crowded. Peter smiled at Sebastian, whose hand still rested on the open manuscript, and raised his eyebrows.

Sebastian reached to close the book but stayed his hand. He stood to answer the director. He felt less like a child caught sinning when he looked across at his superior rather than up. “He’s stable but very weak. To be expected. I’ve been watching after I removed the oxygen mask. He’s a tough one.”

Peter nodded. “Any hope?”

“He’s in God’s hands now. Always was, I should say.”

Peter smiled, his almond-shaped eyes nearly squinting shut, and slapped Sebastian’s shoulder. “We are but humble instruments. I’ve arranged a mass to be said for him tomorrow morning.”

Sebastian nodded.

“And what of his manuscript?”

“It’s like a puzzle.”

“We must learn what we can about a patient. If he cannot talk, we must read what he has written.”

Sebastian summarized his investigation and theory that the man was a priest. “He must be at least seventy Foundings.”

Peter nodded. “Interesting. We should check the chronicles for missing priests.” He turned a page and scanned the text. “This must be how vellum felt to the scribes working in the monasteries of the ancient past. Fitting that as we race into the future, we find the past.”

“And can’t understand it,” added Sebastian.

Peter grunted.

“Do you think it’s important?” said Sebastian.

“Very much. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble. The Abbot should be along shortly. If he agrees, we can put all the students to work on it. Give them something challenging and new.”

They discussed the other patients under Sebastian’s care as they waited. Then the Abbot’s staff clicked on the tile in the hall as he approached. The staff, a gift from an old hunter, was carved from the carapace of some giant beetle and adorned with a simple cross on top.

“Brother Peter. Brother Sebastian.” The Abbot, Brother Anthony Mary de Guadalcanal, leaned against the door frame, gripping his staff with both hands, and panted from the exertion of his walk. “Blessings.” The director and medico echoed the greeting. The Abbot was the last of his generation and joked that what he lacked in skill and knowledge the Lord had compensated him with longevity. “So this is our mystery patient?”

Peter and Sebastian parted as the Abbot took a heavy step forward to look at the old man.

The Abbot’s eyes grew wide and his staff clattered on the floor. “Mother of God.”

The Hermit's Cache

By Jeff Chapman

Elihu’s eyes darted from the blanket hanging across the cave’s entrance to the hearth. That groan didn’t sound like the wind. He sat perfectly still, holding his breath, listening. He knew he should grab his spear and prepare to fight whatever might be coming, but after finding some comfort from the storm, the last thing he wanted to do was fight. The struggle to keep his family alive weighed on his soul and the addition of his congregation’s troubles nearly crushed it. He’d stumbled into a black pit with no bottom and no rope. Every day he fought the good fight and every time he coughed and saw the ash in his phlegm, the circle of light at the top of the pit contracted, but somehow he held everyone up.

Strength swelled in his core, as it always did, thank God. His fingers curled around his spear.

The pile of blankets stirred, a faint ripple, but enough to trip his tightly strung senses. Another groan. He saw it now--the feet, the bent knees, the torso--a human form curled beneath the blankets. He folded back the top edge of the covers. White hair streaked with gray crowned an old man’s head and brushed his shoulders. A white beard covered his face and neck, trailing down to his chest. Something hard and cylindrical rolled beneath Elihu’s knee, the old man’s spear. Of course, he would sleep with it, thought Elihu. There was no more need to worry if someone would come back.

Elihu gently shook the man’s shoulder. The old man groaned. Some kind of hermit, Elihu thought.

“Hello? Are you sick?”

The old man’s forehead felt hot and dry. Elihu poured some water from his canteen into a bowl. Cradling the hermit’s head in the crook of his arm, he dripped water on the man’s cracked lips. The hermit licked the moisture. Elihu persisted in dripping water until the old man opened his mouth enough to drink in short sips.

“I don’t have much water,” said Elihu, “but you’re welcome to what I have.”

The hermit’s eyelids fluttered across steel-gray irises. He nodded then sank back into sleep.

Elihu sighed. He possessed the will to help without the means. He decided to make a travois with the two spears and the blankets and drag the hermit to Tube Hill when the storm passed. Not that they could do much for him there, but he couldn’t leave him here. Elihu folded a blanket into a pillow and placed it underneath the wadded blanket on which the old man’s head rested.

Elihu’s eyebrows knitted in surprise when his fingers brushed a bag of metal pieces that moved and clinked under his touch, coins. “What’s this,” he whispered. He pulled two items out from beneath the old man’s pillow. A drawstring cinched the pouch whose bottom bulged with the coin’s weight. He pulled it open. Gold, silver, and platinum coins--more money than he had ever seen, more than would pass through his hands in a lifetime--winked at him in the lamp’s dancing light.

He glanced at the old man whose chest rose and fell with the shallowest of breaths. Was this the cache of a lonely bug hunter? His gaze passed over the glittering walls and what at first escaped his notice, the gouges of a chisel, shouted at him. “What have you found out here?” he said to the old man.

Elihu remembered Elsa begging for scraps at his doorstep. With these coins he could feed his family and Elsa’s family, his congregation, his entire village for years. He could move his family to Zirconia, buy his children hope, and rekindle the sparkle in his wife’s eyes.

What sort of man sleeps on a hoard like this in the midst of such suffering? Stories of dragons came to mind. If the old man died, he thought. And then he recalled what happened to those who coveted a dragon’s hoard and took the dragon’s place atop its pile of shiny things. Elihu cinched the pouch and flung it against the rock wall. It landed on the second item from beneath the old miser’s pillow.

He picked up a sheaf of stiffened bristle fabric cut into rectangles and knotted together with twine along the left edge, a homemade book. The beige cover, splotched with darker shades of brown was blank. Elihu turned back the cover. Small squiggles in a dark-yellow ink--bug blood, he well knew that stain--sprawled across the pages. Thumbing through the book, he found page after page of tightly packed markings. The last three pages were blank. He laid the open book on the cavern floor in front of the hearth and knelt over it, puzzling over the characters which flowed across the page in an unbroken stream, line after line. The script could be very ancient or very new, he thought, or nothing. Someone at the university or the monasteries might know.

Elihu studied the old man, wondering what sort of man creates a book that no one can read. One of the traveling ministers could arrange passage to the Abbey of Francis. And what would become of the rest of those coins, barring a miraculous recovery? He knew better than to hope for a windfall for Tube Hill. Brother Trollope might direct some back to Elihu’s congregation, but not the others. The whiskers on the old man’s lip trembled with his breathing.

Elihu bit his lip in anger. “Perhaps I should throw lots to see who gets your money and possessions?” Better to remove temptation than struggle to fight it. That’s what his father always used to say. He tucked the coin pouch under the hermit’s pillow, to remind himself of its owner.

Shelter from the Storm

by Jeff Chapman -

Elihu poked the oval shadow with his spear, but unlike the other shadows, which had been indentions or shallow fissures, this one swallowed his spear head and all the shaft he fed it. The cave entrance rose from the crevice floor to his waist. Maybe it ballooned farther in or tapered to a crack. He couldn’t tell without crawling inside. Much too small for a mammothbug, but he had once seen a black spider with orange splotches dotting its abdomen lunge from one of these holes to snatch a powderbug that he had been stalking.

The pastor-turned-hunter swallowed hard, jabbed his spear into the hole twice and then jumped back to a crouch, holding his breath, listening, his spear poised to skewer anything that emerged. Nothing came. Only the soughing wind overhead and the settling ash pecking against the dried lavabushes disturbed the quiet. No skittering legs or clicking pincers against rock.

He broke three of the thickest branches from a lavabush and then stripped the lower branches until he could hold the three together like a bouquet. Taking a lighter from the inside pocket of his coat, he clicked the trigger, igniting a mixture of burnweed and fish oil that flamed yellow and blue. Burnweed grew in the ocean shallows and, in bulbs that studded the long olive-colored leaves, held an oil that was toxic to eat but highly flammable. Strange, he reflected, that sources of fire came from the sea.

The dried bush caught and crackled, bathing his face with heat and yellow light. The smoke scent and flames reminded him of drinking tea with Sarah after supper. She would nurse the baby and he would talk and when he stopped to sip his tea he would ponder his child’s future. Sarah would worry, but he had been gone overnight before. He thrust the torch into the cave. Bugs feared fire.

He expected smooth walls fading to blackness or a pair of eyes the size of his head retreating from the flames that glittered and repeated across purple and yellow compound eyes. A bristle blanket, or something like it, hung across the tunnel no more than two meters in. Could be spider silk, he thought, some sort of trapdoor or cocoon. He lit another torch, laid it on the tunnel floor and prodded the flaming bush into the tube with his spear, following behind on his hands and knees. The weave in the cloth stood out, a beacon of friendship or at least common species. He sighed, letting go the tension. “Thank you, Lord,” he muttered. “Thank you.”

“Hello?” The flames collapsed to orange embers. “Anybody in there?” He listened. Nothing. “This is Elihu Simmons, pastor at Tube Hill. Just need some shelter for a bit, from the storm. Hello?”

He crawled backwards out of the tunnel. The gloaming weighed on him with its uncompromising edict, the doom of darkness when the biscorpiabugs woke and unfurled their bifurcated tail and stingers, and all the other bugs he couldn’t see pushed out of their holes. The ash-gray sky had faded to charcoal overhead and black along the eastern horizon. This tunnel had to be the one, he told himself. Might still be a spider or bug inside--only the cautious survived in this world--but already he was thinking how this ordeal might complement a Bible story. David found refuge in caves.

He entered the tube with a larger torch clutched in his left hand and in his right gripped his spear together with two more unlit torches. Heat singed his face and smoke stung his eyes in the cramped tunnel  He poked the blanket with his spear tip and lifted the edge. Minerals glittered in the rock wall opposite the entrance. A cavern. He might be able to stand up. He thrust the torch past the threshold into the chamber, following close behind.

A domed ceiling sparkled with flecks of minerals embedded in black rock, stars in a night sky, as the Milky Way galaxy would shine down on Eclectia if the curtains of ash fell aside. The lava here held riches of minerals the likes of which he had never seen. Elihu shook his head to clear his thoughts.

The stars dimmed as the flaming bush starved for fuel. He stuck the other torches into the embers of the first and they roared orange and red. To his left a lone table fashioned from fist-sized chunks of dolerite and a slab of stone held a lamp and a hodgepodge of bowls and to his right a pile of blankets covered the floor and a niche in the wall appeared to serve as a hearth.

Liquid sloshed inside the lamp when he picked it up and held his torch over the wick, which caught and burned at the center of an orange halo, the same halo that lit his wife’s face when she checked on the baby long after dark. Her face would be creased with worry tonight. Hunting was no job for a family man and no work for a pastor.

He stuffed what remained of the torches inside the hearth. A crack the width of two fingers snaked up the wall from the hearth and disappeared into the ceiling. He gathered more bushes from outside. The woody stems at the base of the plants, some as thick as Elihu’s wrist, burned slowly, and in the light from the lamp and hearth fire, he plucked seeds from the lavabush branches, dropping the kernels into a blackened carapace bowl for roasting. A hymn of thanksgiving thrummed at the back of his throat and the repetitive picking and hulling lulled his mind.

A groan snapped his senses awake.

A Fortuitous Stumble

by Jeff Chapman -


Another gust pelted Elihu Simmons’s goggles with ash grit, each tiny speck clicking against the translucent saucers of scuttlebug shell and gouging a new pit that he would have to polish away. He thanked the good Lord that Sarah had chased after him with the goggles he had forgotten. He made a mental note to thank her--passionate kisses or watching the baby--when he got home, if he got home. He hadn’t seen this storm coming. It might exhaust itself in an hour or expel its fury for days.

The gray dust cut his vision to a few steps. The scuttlebug shell blurred what remained, reducing his perception to shapes and shadows. Got to find shelter, he told himself, before you’re hopelessly lost.

A bandanna woven from powderbug bristles wrapped his mouth and nose. Dust clogged the fabric where the moisture from his breath dampened the cloth. Grit stung his left ear. Another blast scratched the sliver of cheek exposed above the bandanna. He cursed creation and then asked forgiveness before he’d sucked another bitter-tasting breath through the bristle cloth. Struggle, curse, and beg forgiveness, his daily mantra and all for what: to keep Sarah and the baby alive and offer a few souls a grain of hope. If this was the Lord’s gift, He could have it back. Elihu begged forgiveness. “Service and humility over pride. With humility comes wisdom,” he repeated. “The Lord sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground.”

Elihu held his spear in the crook of his arm and reached behind his head to adjust the knot and raise the cloth to shield his cheeks. The next gust caught him standing straight and off balance, punching him in the chest. He stumbled backwards and to his right and then took an extra step to regain his balance, but the ground he sought was not there. He tumbled over, thinking his appointed day had come. Sharp rocks, a cluster of beetles. He saw them both in his mind’s eye and both would tear him to shreds.

Twigs snapped as they poked his hands and arms. He landed in a prickly bed of lavabushes, on his stomach. The impact knocked the wind out of him. Perhaps the Lord had more for him to do. Something moved beneath him. He ripped off his goggles to see a horde of scuttlebugs burrowing into the ash beneath the bushes, kicking up plumes of dust as their wriggling bodies disappeared. About the size of his palm, the critters lived off lavabush seeds near the bottom of the food chain.

Walls of black lava rock, rippled with vertical crests and troughs, towered on either side of him at least seven meters and tapered until they met five meters ahead of him like the prow of a boat, an ark of shelter. Ash swirled into the crevice, but the deep, narrow crack offered protection from the blasting wind. Behind him, the crevice extended as far as he could see. In a cave here he might wait out the storm, protected from the wind with plenty of lavabush to fuel a fire and its seeds to roast and eat. If he conserved his water, he figured he could last for days.

Elihu found his spear lying atop the tangle of lavabushes that had been tumbling across the waste into this crack for tens of years. Already a layer of dust coated the shaft and blade of his spear. He strapped his goggles across his forehead. He needed all his vision to watch for signs of a cave. With his spear thrust forward, he crunched through the knee-deep lavabushes, which stuck to his pants, requiring him to stop every few meters to knock the bushes loose. He crept forward, listening and studying the walls. “Though I walk through the darkest valley,” he whispered, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” If he ever needed to believe those words, it was now. An occupied cave could be worse than none at all.

A Creature of Words

by Jeff Chapman -

A rocksnout slithered over the rocks on the eastern lip of the Zircon trench, a rift in the ocean floor that plunged for kilometers and yawned to a kilometer at its widest point as it zagged along the edge of the continental shelf. Four legs on the rocksnout’s underside ended in four-fingered feet that gripped the rocks on which the female rested while she pumped water through her mouth and over her gills. Her mottled black and brown body tapered for two meters from a wide, flat snout, one meter across, to a forked tail only centimeters wide. Three dorsal fins rose from her back and a pair of pectoral fins jutted from her sides. Bony crenellations that mimicked lichen-encrusted stone covered the top of her snout and at its tip three luminescent tendrils wiggled with the current.

The eyes on either side of her snout took in the smallest specks of light and tiny holes arranged across the underside of her snout picked up the electrical impulses of beating hearts. She was ninety seasons old and ready to mate for the first time. She heard the low thrumming of a male somewhere in the deep ocean night. She picked out the subtle variations of tone and rhythm in his thrum, a rocksnout’s version of speech. She responded. She called herself Thrawto.

With a swish of her tail, she glided over the ocean floor. It seemed odd to swim, to fly over unbroken fields of sediment. She spent most of her life crawling over rocks on the wall of the trench, searching for caves and crevices that afforded a lair to wait for prey to investigate the glowing tendrils at the tip of her snout. There was no room to swim in the caves and it was not wise to swim in the depths of the trench.

Thrawto swam for hours until hunger gnawed at her stomach. Something glowed on the horizon to her left, a gathering of the bright, winged ones, she assumed. Their accumulated light would blind her and she would not eat them. They passed their thoughts and meant no harm.

She sank to the bottom behind an outcropping of rock encrusted with the browns and greens of sea lichen, a favorite of the grazing fish on which rocksnouts thrived. Thrawto nestled in the silt to wait.

A heartbeat, large and strong with an unfamiliar rhythm, approached. Thrawto tensed, ready to attack or flee or hide. Tremors rippled through the silt. This creature crawled over the ocean floor, a lumbering target.

It emerged from behind the rocks in front of her. An odd creature, she thought. A pulsing stream of bubbles rose from its bulbous head. A single, glowing eye stabbed the night. A hump protruded from the creature’s back and a limb emerged from each corner of its body. No wings, no webbing, no fins or tail. Thrawto readied to strike. She had eaten stranger animals in the trench.

The creature leaned toward her, peering at Thrawto’s worm-like appendages with its single eye that emitted a shaft of blinding light. Her eyes squeezed shut on impulse. In perfect coordination, her legs pushed and her tail snapped. She shot forward, grabbing a lower appendage near the body, hoping to sever the limb and immobilize the creature before it fought or fled. Her jaws worked from side to side and her rows of serrated teeth cut like a double-edged saw. The flesh tasted strange and no sweet blood flooded her mouth. It grunted and thrashed and slapped her bony snout, but amid the screams, she heard sounds and rhythms repeated.

“Kazzeee. Kazzeee.”

Words?

Thrawto relaxed her jaws and the creature fell away, flailing its arms, trying to swim most ineffectually. No blood fumed from the jagged wounds in its hide. How curious. A storm of silt enveloped the struggling animal and snuffed its light. Thrawto gave a kick with her tail and left the odd creature to its fate in the deep ocean night.