Faith/Having Father
47 - Having Father
B’tuun looked around. The path ended here, but it wasn’t much of a path in any case. It was a trail where the undergrowth had been beaten flat by a few animals running along the same course. Maybe a leopard and its prey, speed being the only thing that mattered, so as soon as the prey was caught the big cat was free to move at its leisure, causing so much less damage to the plants. But it was notable because it was here that B’tuun had chosen to sleep last night. His hide tent was hanging from the lower branches of a kola tree, and now the dew had faded from the low grass, it was time to move on. He stowed his few possessions on a belt of criss-cross woven vines that was looped around his chest and waist, expertly folded the hide itself into six, and hung it on a cord about his neck.
A person from a more advanced civilisation might have said he looked primitive, with nothing but vines and a stiff cape to cover his body, but he didn’t think twice about his way of life. That was how people carry things, if they wanted their hands free for climbing. A man with no belt had no weapons, so you only went naked to show peaceful intent when the tribe leaders talked to each other. And wearing more, in the deep jungle where your sweat almost tried to compete with the bitter rain that dripped sporadically from above.
Above the trees was where the Traitor lived; trying to seduce people to his afterlife with warm water, and with flickering lights that made you wonder if there were campfires in the sky. But the Jungle had risen up to protect them, and spread its leaves to shield them so that the children of Father might not be deceived. B’tuun planted one foot on the branch that had so recently held up his shelter, and effortlessly shinned up the mighty tree to see where good hunting grounds might be found today. He never went up to the canopy, of course. He’d tried it once, and seen the beauty of those lights up above. But Father’s branches had thrown him down, saved him before he could be mesmerised by their enticing, deceptive light.
There was a bright light in the direction of the Iron Ravine now. The canopy had been torn apart by a massive fire, that some had taken to be a sign of the Traitor on the warpath. But then men had come from the sky in a great tent that glittered like the surface of a stream. They were men unlike any the People had seen before. Their skin was painted so thickly that you couldn’t tell if they were dark or light, and in colours brighter than any of those provided by the forest. Their skin moved oddly too, as if they were carrying an erect tent around over their shoulders. They knew of the ways of People, but had not got the details right. Like the patterns on their chests; instead of greens and browns to help them vanish in the jungle, one of the False Men had brilliant blue and red swirls like a butterfly or beautiful flower, and the edges were straight as a thrown stone. He would never go unseen in the jungle, would never survive the hunger of the leopards. Even the hunting clubs they carried were not right. Long enough to reach the ground from their hands, but straight and smooth, as if one had tried to create a weapon without ever having seen a real tree.
Now, the leaders of the People were meeting with one of the False, to see what insidious plans the Traitor had in mind to kill the faithful today. They strode into the jungle proudly, without their belts and knives. A couple of False met them coming the other way. Their faces and hands were dark, like the people from the Island Tribes, but they kept their whole bodies covered. Even when the leaders extended their hands in peace, the False kept their clubs over their shoulders, and the strange hides covering their bodies. B’tuun found that he could watch and listen easily from up here, so he remained silent. He didn’t want to be thought of as a branchtalker, but surely the normal rules need not apply when the conversation he oversaw was with the False, who were not men however much they tried to imitate them.
“Are you come from the Traitor to destroy us?” the leader of the Eçsader tribe spoke first. The False looked to each other, and then tried to speak. It was hard to make out the sounds they made, almost like the gibbering of an animal. B’tuun gasped, realising that these things were nothing like men. He wanted to believe that their sounds were a tongue, he knew the speech of other tribes could be different. It even sounded familiar, but to believe that would make him like the crazy women who heard speech in the chirping of the birds or the babbling of a stream. Anything could be a voice, if you listened hard enough, but a wise man soon learned that the voices of Father were not meant to be understood by the People.
Then the leader of the Teim’matey tribe spoke, and B’tuun cursed himself for not realising what the old man had seen in an instant. It was speech, and it was not the strange noise he had thought. As soon as the Teim’matey responded in the Espieran Tongue – the speech that the People had all used before the Traitor scared them into splitting into tribes – he realised that was the sound the False had been trying to imitate.
“Greeting, barbarian man. I am האר טוב and this skin is with my counterpart קעז דאָקטער.” It wasn’t perfect, but with a little imagination, you might understand what he was trying to say. For creatures that were not the People, it was impressive that they came so close to being understood. Though without Father’s nature, there was no way they could have thought behind their words.
“Are you of the people of the Traitor?” the Eçsader leader repeated, this time growling in the ancient language. His patience was short, but then they had long been the most volatile of the twelve tribes.
“Taiter?” the False seemed genuinely confused, “No, we are from the עדה. We come to save barbarian people of mission.”
He went on to explain. It took hours, repeating and changing his words. Again and again he used words that none among the People present knew, but eventually his story was clear.
“A long time ago, men of the People and the False both travelled among the stars in great סטאַרשיפּ פון גאָט. Some came to a world and called it Faith. But though they were great men of faith and believed in the support of עדה with all their hearts, they were leaders not planners, and they did not know how to make crops grow or make the air ready to breathe. Many died, and eventually there was a coup. The men who believed that עדה would provide everything for them were cast out by the true priests who knew that it is the duty of all men to strive, and provide themselves worthy of עדה’s love and protection. So they took to the black sky, and left Faith to be empty forever.”
“But that is not the end of this story. Because many, many years passed. Nearly a hundred generations, for the good men who sought a new ground to set their שיך on. The plants that had been left untended in the desert grew, without any man to cut and harvest them. The bugs grew too, unchecked by any men, and the bugs fed the plants and the plants decomposed and made more food for the next generation. And then there was a jungle there on Faith, and we have returned to see if there were any men who survived as well as the beasts that live in that jungle. So we are here! And I think you may be the descendants of some man left behind, because you understand our עספּעראַנטאָ, our words.”
The leaders all nodded. They understood the story. And then they responded almost as one; “Your ‘church’ is too primitive to be welcome here, False men, but do not lose hope because you may yet evolve towards the true, honourable nature to which all People strive. You speak like men, and you can think like men, and maybe you are the children of the People who were stolen from this place by the Traitor. So I ask you to return to your tribe or your village, and think on what you have told us. You are confused, you try to be People but there are mistakes in everything you do. Your words are right, but the stories they tell are confused and mistaken. Your belts are well made, but you wear too many until they cover your whole body. Your bodies are the shape of ours when seen from a distance, but your face shows disgust when you look at me this close, so I know that the bodies you hide are not like mine. Go, and return when you are wiser. The name of this place is Father, not Faith, and so many other things you have misheard or misunderstood.”
The first leader banged his club on the trunk of a hollow tree twice, with resonant thuds, and then they marched away. The False, too, returned to their own camp. By now it was dark, so only the firebugs and the area where the False had ravaged the canopy gave any light to see by. B’tuun returned to the tribe by memory, no longer having any desire to hunt. And when he was there, he asked his own father about the strange things the False had said.
“Don’t worry, son,” the old man spoke with a cracked voice. His body was weak, and his breath barely audible, but B’tuun leaned closer to hear in silence, because his father’s words were not to be forgotten, “They are simply creatures that want to be men. Maybe, with our help, they can get there. When we have spoken to them before, we learned a little of their village. For example, they know some of the stories of the History, though they get the names wrong and confuse the lessons with the tale. They even have something they call ‘bible’, where they make marks on leaves to help them remember the stories in the way a hunter counts his kills, because their minds are not advanced enough to pass the tales from old man to young man through the years.”
“You must recognise the source of the story they told you,” father winked, “although it has more errors than most of what they say. Shall I tell you?”
B’tuun nodded, though every child knew the story of how they had come to this place. It calmed his heart to hear the old man’s version of the tale, his voice rich and deep, and the cadence of each word perfectly chosen.
“In the beginning was nothing, the sky empty and black and the ground was bare. And the men came in twelve tribes, that flew in the sky like giant bees, each carrying a hundred men in its belly like eggs ready to be laid. And they set the men down on the earth, and the men learned from the ground how to stand upright, and the men taught the ground to put forth seeds. One man, Fahma, opened his arm and his heart and poured blood, sweat, and tears alike on the rock. And where he walked, the ground opened up and rivers came forth. And so we know that out of sympathy, the rivers that nourish us are the blood and sweat of the earth itself.”
“Fahma named the ground beneath his feet Fath, meaning ‘nourish’, because he knew it would nourish his children for the rest of time. With every generation that comes to an end, we pour the blood of those who have died and the tears of those who remain back into Fath’s heart, and he puts forth the streams of clear water to cleanse the newborn and to give us new strength. But the Traitor came down, with the darkness of the skies hidden deep inside him, and convinced many fools that we deserve more than a land we have to love, that the land should serve us unconditionally because it is beneath our feet. In the doctrine of the Traitor, his lands in the sky were superior, and so we should obey him, and the ground should obey us without compensation.”
“Our ancestors were no fools, and sent the Traitor away. They saw that his eyes were as dark and malignant as the black clouds of the sky from which he was born, and they said ‘Though life is hard, we will earn our rights. We will not come away with you, because we have Fath to guard us.’”
“The Traitor went, and Fath started to send up trees to shield us, so that he could never come down to threaten us again without burning the canopy. The Traitor could not sneak among us, nor trick us, nor cast lies about his person because no lie will pierce the canopy. And our ancestors would know that any man who uses fire on a living tree is an agent of the Traitor, to be burned in his turn. But trees take time to grow, and even Fath must show patience. So as he saw the trees grow, the Traitor drew aside his home of clouds, and showed the people the darkness and stars he had wrought in secrecy. ‘Look, People,’ he spoke from the skies, ‘I have made such beautiful things, and I have no need to invest my blood, and sweat, and tears in the earth. Come to the skies, and be free from starvation.’ When the People awoke the next day, they found that the lights in the sky had stolen away many of them, to be slaves of the Traitor, and we vowed that until the sky was covered by his glorious canopy, we would not expose our bodies to the skies. We would sleep under hide, to keep out both the Traitor and the bugs of the air. And then in time, the trees grew and the world was complete; Fath became greater, became Father, and has saved us every day since.”
“So,” B’tuun’s young brow furrowed in confusion, “These False men are come from the Traitor, and they have burned the canopy, so we must destroy them. Why do we talk still?”
“No, war is not the solution. You know that war was the Traitor’s gift to us before he was sent away, don’t you child? Because now we must await the return of our brothers who were stolen away by the Traitor to become stars, and these False men may be them. Their ways are like those of the People, but the details differ. They remember imperfectly, and need their ‘bible’ and their leaves of markings to pass on a story to their children, which can be misunderstood, while among the People every child remembers what his father has told him of the great Father, and the legends kept true unto the hundredth generation. But those who were lost remember still, and in fire is the only way they could return to us, because Father made the canopy proof against any blade but fire.”
“So these False men who come from the stars may be our brothers, and we must teach them how to once again be People. You can see that, because they know the story of creation even though their leaf-marks have added many mistakes to its retelling. We must be wary, and watch for the Traitor now that the canopy is open. But we cannot turn away those who might be our brothers.”
B’tuun just nodded. He could see the echoes of the truth in the strangers’ story, and he knew he had seen how they were almost, but not quite, like People. Whether they could return to the fold he did not know, but there was one thing he could be certain of: it would be his generation who suffered the foretold age of troubles, and his people who would have to choose whether to accept or to slay the False men from the sky.
