God He Knew

Well now, that was pleasant.

Master Sheive, adjusting his tunic, reached out to give his young friend’s hair a toussel. He responded:

Just so, young Mitch, just so.

And he looked into his young charge’s glassy eyes, pulsating as they were with question, and delight. Sheive remembered his own “lessons” with his own masters, and suddenly found himself traveled back, spanning the years to his childhood. He smiled and gazed then, joining the lad in his reverie.

Master?

The lad spoke after moments of contemplative, breathy silence. The answer back:

Yes youngster.

Master, why is it we have to travel so far from town, and so far from the fields for our time together?

We strive for knowledge my boy, both for ourselves and for the ones we love, the ones we live amongst. And the reason we strive so, my sprout, is because ignorance is our lot. Fear. Misunderstanding of what we see, what we hear. Fear of what the unknown, what it can mean. Our time together, the things we say and do…The God I know would protect us from the treachery of others, but it is always good to be safe.

The older man stopped walking and looked into Mitch’s eyes, touching his elbow, concerned.

Our times together, they are for only we two boy. We cannot know what our business would mean to others, and it isn’t for us to know. Ever. Do you understand?

The boy looked back at the man, his head tilted at a great angle to meet the man’s gaze.

Yes Master Sheive. I understand.

Good my boy. Very good.

They walked on. Soon the desert became fields. On they trudged, both in service of an unspoken hunger generated partly by their secret meetings, but mostly by the long, steamy walk through desert and farmland. Seven hot miles both ways.

***

Before long, the walkers came to a series of dwellings and the lands that those living there would tend. The boy looked tired and drawn, and the man asked him:

Let us inquire in the biggest house, I know of a man who lives in these parts, and perhaps he can avail us of refreshment.

The youngster agreed, nodding.

I agree master, the walking is tiresome, and I ache and thirst. Do you think we might gain some water and a bite or two?

Lad I can make no promises, but let’s see what fortune we might find from the gentle farmers of Galilee.

The door did not open on the first knock, and it did not open on the second. The Older men turned
Off the step as if to leave, saying:

Well I fear, boy, we may have cast our lot with the wrong dwelling. Now we can risk no further dalliance. The sun is leaving us, and soon it won’t be safe on the road.

The boy knew the man was right, but his thirst was demanding it’s own justice.

Please master, please sir…We must find water and we must find it now. If we try to make our village without it I fear you’ll be carrying me most of the way, and be forced to enter the village gate as such…

The old man's face calculated and weighed for a moment, and then turned to knock once more. He had drawn breath to speak also, but was interrupted when the door suddenly flew open. There was a boy there. Not as young as the one traveling, but young just as well. He wasted no time in conversation:

Be gone BABKA! Ganasse Ganasse!! Babka Ganasse…

The thirsty boy understood what was being said, but wasn’t to be deterred. He spoke:

No No, my lord. We aren’t Babka. We come only to borrow a sip from your well, as we’ve got go make Galelli by nightfall. I…

…The boy interrupted him, yet again, using the vile low-words. He was wearing a black doublet and black pants. To the Sheive he looked like trouble.

Babka, Babka, Babka…Babka!

It was almost a chant now and getting louder. The thirsty boy froze there, still and flummoxed until Shieve grabbed him firmly by the arm and lifted/led him away from the door and the angry, vulgar youth.

Master how could he?

Hush now!

Came the reply, Sheive looking over his shoulder in the gloaming. Walking faster than before.

But Master…My lord. How could he…?

He must have seen….

Then old man stopped mid-stride and sentence, and turned back full:

Or been told by ones who have. We are found out my love!

The boy squinted into the dusk back at the house. They were a good hundred yards a away but the movement back there was plain to see. More boys, older boys, on the move now and shouting those words. Again the horrible words:

Hey Babkas! BabKAHS! Gonasse! Gonasses! Little one your father will hold your head tonight and we’ll feed the rest to the pigs! Little one come back with your old boyfriend. Come now Babka! Babka!

And then they were running and chanting. The boy saw torches being lit before he turned and ran as fast as he could.



***


The road was of no use to them in the dark. They could only hope to get lost in the hedges and greenway to the west. It would not be easy to shake the mob in the gathering darkness, but Shieve thought they had an advantage being only two. There were any number of places in the hedges for such a tiny body to hide. And he himself knew a path or too back to the village. If he could get the boy safe….Just then though, another idea occurred to him. As they ran into the trees of the first hedge, Sheive stopped, dropped down and grabbed the boy all in one motion. Before he could ask why, the answer had become obvious. His master spoke with a bowed head and low, but firm tones.

Blessed father, who is always with us, hear the words and meditations of your fearful and faithful subjects. Pity our dilemma. Have mercy on the acts of our hearts, and minds, and bodies Lord for we are all of you, and you all of us.

The boy hadn’t heard this prayer and - through even the confusion and stress of their flight, he wondered at it. Was it an older thing? A psalm he’d never studied? The new texts that only the Pharisees knew? His master continued, repeated he thing as the mob approached. The boy could see them now, a hundred yards away and bellowing. He heard children, adults, dogs. He was going to die.

***

I’m telling you, this shit has got to stop.

Lu spoke as if he were trying muffle his words and make them inaudible to prying ears. God wondered why. The girls they’d been orgying with were both passed-out and would remain so. Maybe forever, God mused, all the wine they’d drunk…

It had been an unusual time for the world they’d created. Humans, as they’d designed them, were showing the beginnings of some fairly vital personality defects. There was war on the land, and blood. His creations, suddenly possessed of a what seemed an infinite capacity for violence, were destroying themselves faster than they, or he, could reproduce. Lu and God had been prepared for a period of becoming, of growing pains, but the latest events betrayed flaws, in both design and performance, that ran deep. Things - God thought - that might only be fixable by a house-cleaning. He and Lu had been fucking these women for a few days now, trying to think it all through. Lu had been sleeping a few minutes ago, but he was awake now. God fiddled absently with the girl’s nipples. And listened to his friend worry:

It has to stop! do you hear man! We fucked up here. Our thing is not going to make it. How many ways do you have to be shown we can’t win? Let’s scrap this place. Make other plans. These rodents we’ve thought up are little more than dogs who can, and sometimes do, wipe their own asses. We’d do well to get shut of them. Find a new hobby.

God was starting to feel like fucking this girl again, but Lu was killing it and it was making him irritated.

My friend you worry. It is a bane. We’ve been at this for no long years, and already I see results hinting at greater rewards. We need patience. We need to guide them. Like a garden.

We do NOT need to listen to them. If we are going to go ahead, and believe me, I think it’s foolish. But if we are, then involvement with the cockroaches on a daily basis has got to end, we cannot handle them in numbers. If they find us acting on this one’s behalf in in order to fell this one’s plans, then everything dies don’t you see? It’s only a matter of time before they figure out their true purpose, and then you won’t have to puzzle over weather or not to destroy them. They’ll take that chore for themselves. Quickly.

God now fully engaged in the conversation, the girls by him fell asleep. One of them, a blonde, began to snore.

I understand your point, but I’m not going to abandon the ones who refuse to abandon me. I think rewards for faith are coin of the realm, if there’s to be a realm, so let’s be just when we can afford it and make sure the good guys win sometimes.

You’re soft. And you’re wrong. But since this was all your idea anyway I’ll play along. Just mark my words for the record so we can hash all this out before starting whatever it is we do next.

Due-ly noted.

OK. Oh yeah so that means the two poofters in the woods here?

Yes. Save them.

You are such a pussy. OK, saved they’ll be…

***

There are no bears in the holy lands. There never had been. In fact, at the moment when Shiev offered up his mysterious prayer, there hadn’t been bears anywhere on earth. Not one. The closest relatives of bears were not to show themselves in the eco-signature of planet Earth for a thousand years. Nevertheless, as the villagers prepared to fall upon their quarry, it was a pair of huge, brown Grizzly bears that came out of the hedge to meet them. The boy and Shieve had never seen bears either, but they got an eyeful that evening and then some. The grizzlies came roaring out of the hedge like twin locomotives with teeth. The mob didn’t even have time to stop running, much less to turn and escape.

The boy looked from ten feet away as the animals collided with his would-be assailants. He saw the one on the right stand back on two legs, drawing himself to a height of nearly 15 feet and screaming like a demon. His claw, in sillouette relief against the dusky sky, looked like a tree with five swords sticking from one end. His, shockingly fast, slash sent heads to the ground bouncing and rolling like cord-wood spilled from the bundle. Shreive saw one man rent in two, the legs and midsection running off into the night while the head and body stayed and died. The boy looked on in horror, as the other bear took a woman’s head and upper torso in his amazing jaws, and bit down. He saw the remains fall, twisting and twitching. Another man had drawn a sword and was now standing as if to face off with one of the groaning, wailing beasts. While he was staring in the bears eyes though, the other came from behind and smashed the man’s head off, knocking it a good 50 yards away. The two animals made quick work of the 12 provacateurs. They ate most of what was left including the bones, before moving off towards the village and newer meat.

***

When it was over and the bears had gone, Sheive sent the boy scurrying ahead, telling him to make up a story for his father, about having bathed in the cisterns on the mountainside. Shrieve suspected that anybody who’d known, or witnessed the boys meeting’s true purpose, were dead or soon to be He spent the night in a cave he knew well away from road. The next morning on the way back to the village, he'd a smile on his face, and only grateful prayers for the God he knew.