Fallen. David Maine

out the sky, so they speak in darkness.

      —Are you there?

      —We’re here, Zoru says.

      —Attend me you two, the old man murmurs.—You both are suited to each other. The girl is past her youth and doesn’t have much childbearing left. But you, boy. Are you there?

      —Yes, says Cain.

      —You have some great sadness about you. I don’t know where it comes from or what form it takes but you must pass through it and leave it behind.

      —Some things are simpler to say than to do.

      —True. But do it you must, or you’ll be eaten away like a corpse.

      —It won’t be easy.

      —Do it anyway. For my daughter’s sake. For your wife.

      No one says anything. Outside, cicadas and frogs throw a chorus up at the sky, as if begging the moon to show her face.

      —So then, murmurs the old man.—Will you accept her?

      Cain clears his throat. He has often thought of this moment and is ready for it.—So I will, if she’ll have me.

      —And you, daughter?

      Cicadas and frogs. Frogs and cicadas.

      —Zoru? Daughter?

      Her voice is calm, a filament in the darkness like a spider depending from the ceiling.—Yes, Father, so I will.

      —So it’s settled. Splendid. Now I can die peacefully.

      —You’re going nowhere, Father.

      —You’ve never spoken truer. Son, bring your sleeping mat in alongside your wife’s. Starting tomorrow you’ll have this home to yourselves.

      The old man was right. In the morning he lay deflated and still on the ground, as cold and gray and dead as a fish.

      •

      Cain will wonder about that hesitation for a long time. When the old man had asked And you, daughter? and there sang that prolonged chorus of cicadas and frogs in lieu of her quick, breathy agreement.

      •

      The village grows. Families trickle in from the west, light-skinned and dark, large-familied and small. They bring with them strange accents or headgear, new tools, unfamiliar crops, startling ideas. Some, it is rumored, come from across the sea or south of the desert. Cain cannot imagine what all these people are doing here. When he was a child, he and his brother and his parents had been everybody in the world.

      One thing all the new arrivals share: an aversion to Cain. When they see the mark upon him they point, they stare, their jaws flap soundlessly, like mute senseless creatures. Season after season, it grates on him.

      Worse than that, it makes him restless. He says to Zoru, I need to leave soon.

      She nods. She’s seen the signs.—Where will we go?

      —East.

      The expression on her face suggests that she is struggling to align this idea with the expectations she had been holding for her future, and is finding the fit less than perfect.—How far?

      His hand flutters.—Far enough to get away from them. Till we come to a place where I am unknown and can live in peace.

      She nods as if this is reasonable. Cain suspects she thinks otherwise. Zoru is no child, and her husband’s fame has spread far past the horizon. They both know that searching for a place where Cain is unknown is likely to prove a fool’s errand.

      —Maybe we can delay our departure till spring, she says.

      His eyes cloud over.—But it’s only late summer now. Why delay? We’ll go right after the harvest, while we still have plenty of supplies to take with us.

      —The journey will be far more difficult for me in a few months’ time, she says.

      —And why is that?

      She smiles coyly and pats her belly.—Guess.

      34 the strangers

      The desert waits for him. There is no gate saying Abandon Hope, fool but there might as well be.

      He considers turning back but he knows what lies behind him and he wants no part of it. Just as it wants no part of him.

      He considers trying to find his way across the hellish sand, and thinks, Why not?

      He thinks, Other men have crossed it.

      He thinks, And other men yet have died in the attempt.

      He thinks, It might kill me too. I might collapse and provide a brief, noisy meal for a few vultures. Years from now, some camel may puzzle over my bones, half-buried in the dunes, while men wonder who I was and what brought me here to die. They might even pray for me. Imagine the irony of that. Then again they might not. Most likely, none of this will ever happen. I’ll be covered by the sands and lost forever.

      Then he thinks: There are worse fates than being forgotten.

      He waits for dusk and makes his way out onto the hard desert plain.

      •

      There are caravan tracks, so he follows them. Where they lead is a mystery but he reckons his likeliest route across is where other men have already been. He travels at night, by the light of the moon or stars, always east. The trails lead in this direction, and in any case it is easy to make sure. The sun sets at his back each dusk, casting his shadow before him like a net, while every dawn glows like a beacon on the horizon. In the silvery moonlight the caravan tracks glimmer like hope, but morning reveals them to be dry, rutted things, pocked with stones and sinkholes. He treads carefully and tries to breathe through his nose, not his mouth, to save water.

      As the sun climbs high he seeks shade. Most mornings he must create his own, draping his cloak over a dry shrub or a few sticks, then arranging himself in the miserly shadow. Once he comes across the bleached bones of some enormous creature with white ribs reaching toward the sky like beseeching fingers. He drapes his cloak across the top and sleeps inside, stretching his own tired bones alongside the vertebrae.

      Days wheel past. He feels himself drying, shrinking. The sun leaches moisture from his body and leaves something leathery in its place. When he wakes in the evenings his tongue has paradoxically shriveled and expanded and he must ration his water, sipping the warm mouthfuls to make them last. The drops seem to soak into his tongue before even reaching his throat. Absently he wonders how long he will manage to continue living.

      Still he wanders on.

      He feels the sun toughening him, transforming his clay into brick. One thing he is grateful for: his mind is not so burdened as it had been with anger and self-pity and doubt and guilt and rage. The voices that whisper in his ear from time to time have fallen silent. He has only so much energy in his body and right now, all is concentrated on staying alive. So in a way, he finds some measure of peace. Or if not peace exactly, then—stillness.

      •

      Birds hover far overhead. Vultures, he suspects, or hawks. He wonders if they are even hot-ter than he is, being closer to the sun. Or if they are in fact cooler, being far away from this burning plain of sand.

      He has brought a quantity of mutton and fish to sustain him. It has been salted down and the bite of this leaves his mouth, miraculously, salivating, while his cruel thirst grows even more relentless. But the dead flesh does succeed in rejuvenating his own, at least for a time.

      Scorpions jitter by, milky yellow. Ugly things like God’s mistakes. The sight of them chills his loins: he knows they would kill him without a thought.

      •

      One night a shadow looms up some distance away and he finds himself walking toward it. The shadow grows larger and blockier and suddenly