nerd4hire
03-19-2006, 01:23 PM
Little Sparrow
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/JimJohn/little-sparrow5.jpg
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Art by EDB
I
The Magi
“Are they there Hopop?”
“Ermm?”
“The silken bundles. Are they there?”
Whispers in a cave. The cave cut into cliffs of sand and rock by the mind maddening sharav winds. A cave, a stable – it was both. The tawny hindquarters of two large camels protruded the length of a large boy's leg out the entrance. A ferret thin, dark face peeked from behind the sandstone facade which jutted outwards from the borders of the cave mouth. Narrow, abyss-dark eyes darted back and forth scanning the length of the sandstone dwelling which stood squat, thirty meters before the shadowed face.
“Tell me, he who's breath might fertilize the gardens of Babylon. Did you find the packages.”
“No tiny, dung beetle” snapped back a deep, but quieted voice, “there is nothing here, but what a wanderer might carry.”
“But I saw them”, spoke the smaller voice in whispered spit staccato, “We saw them. Three bundles. I saw their content. Gold from the north, forged to the design and charms of the Mage. Frankincense, the holy essence which casts wicked spirits from the temples of Judaea . Myrh to embalm the dead, and confound the spirits of the condemned.”
“The powder, the oil, the gold. None of that is here.”
“They must have the treasure with them”, mused the smaller man.
“What scoundrels these three be to hide such treasure from we their only companions in this wicked land.” spoke Hopop.
The face at the entrance to the cave nodded in silent agreement.
Soft wind blew in from the salty sea far to the west. Above them the night's moon was full, and large. The megenta sky was thick with starlight.
“Back!”, spat the ferret-faced man and the two retreated backwards into the shadows of the cave.
A man of Israel walked out into the night from the stone hovel. His face spoke of deep troubles, and dark times. Behind him a tall, thin older man followed. He wore robes of the wealthy traders to the North. The two spoke quietly. Finally the smaller man nodded in compliance, and the two returned into the dwelling.
“In truth Po”, continued the large, fat man pressed against the cave wall, “Did we not find them lost in the desert?”
“Perhaps, although another might say the stars are as a stoned path to those such as these.”
“And, did we not of good faith and nature offer to guide them to the gates of Jerusalem?”
“Ay, and for only 2 pieces of silver.”
They shared a smile and Hopop continued.
“But did we not introduce these ungrateful louse to the very King Herod of this land to which we at present serve?”
“True...and a great courtesy it was by us to do so without the restrictions of shackles”.
“And did we not all share their tale of the child of prophesy?”
“and with minimal torture, and little actual screaming.”
“King Herod in his grace, did he not suggest they seek out this child and offer invitation to his palace?”
“In truth, he did” spoke Po, a worried look now creeping onto his sharp visage.
“And how do they repay such fellowship? By befuddling our senses with magics, and fleeing.”
“It was Egyptian ale, but your point is taken.”
“We are the unfortunate and wronged here.”
“Ay...did you leave their carriage unspoiled as I asked?”
“Yes.”
“They must not know we are here, when they enter.”
“It is unspoiled. It is unspoiled as your wives would complain to, had the great Gods of Ur not graced them audience with the mighty Hopop”.
But Po did not hear him. His narrow eyes narrowed further to slits. His glance darted to one side of the cave, then the other.
Yes, yes he thought to himself.
They will enter through this side, closest to the dwelling. Hopop will hide his great girth best over on that side, behind where the walls form a false addition.
“But Po”, spoke Hopop, as if reading his fellow brigand's mind.
“Hm?” answered the other, attention snapped from his reverie.
“These men, are not as other men. They are of the order of the Mage.”
“Bah.” spat Po, and returned to his stratagem.
They will spend the night, or they will go. There is not room in the tiny home for such as they. If they stay they will do so here. They will pull their blankets, from their camels packs there. The small one will go to his donkey there to the rear. They will all lay there to the center. We will attack as they sleep.
“There are stories Po. It is said these are the descendants of the Mage who cast the demons from this land. What chance have we against the slayers of demons?”
“Bah, again. They are not but old men. Have I not once already laid my blade against their withered old throats.”
Yes thought Po his fat friend might prove a problem. He would hesitate to fall upon the three while they slept. Still Po knew the nature of his battlemate, and knew once Hopop saw the murder begin, he would roar into the fray bashing his giant club into flesh and bone with murderous rage...just as always. Murder lent him courage.
“Perhaps these two camels, and the ass there are the last men of business, such as ourselves who sought to separate these three wizards from their gold.”
They would kill the old men here, then fall upon the sleeping household. Even the great, bumbling Hopop could serve purpose in the simple slaughter of sleeping children and peasant farmers.
“In truth Po there is another thing of which I have yet to speak. In the desert night while we five wandered I felt upon my neck another set of eyes. I saw nothing, yet I felt it upon me like hot breath. These three are protected, I fear...by demons perhaps.”
He would have Hopop cleave the head of the boy who would be king from it's shoulders. That was no business for a gentle man of commerce such as himself...and while the fat one busied himself with that chore he would search about the home for the treasure of the Magi
Po returned his gaze to the large, frightened eyes of his massive companion.
“Listen brave Hopop”, spoke Po with unctuous confidence, “we will kill these three in the night while they sleep. We will plunder their bones, and later take the head of the child of prophecy. Herod has promised a reward of riches. We will live as kings.”
“But Po what if the three do not sleep here tonight?”
But that was not the larger problem. By Herod's command all who knew of the child must die. Did that not include himself and Hopop. Still...yes, yes...he would send the fat one alone to retrieve the bounty from the king.
“It matters not. That which we seek is in the dwelling. They may go. We will take the head. If the bundles are not within, we will follow the old ones later, and take them in the night.”
“But they will see us”.
“They will not. You will stand over there behind the rock. I will crouch down there.”
“But...”
“Sshhh...”
Voices and footsteps broke the quiet of the night outside the holy city of David.
“By the beard of the goat god” whispered Hopop.
But Po spoke nothing in return. He gasped. The two would-be assassins looked out of the darkness into the moonlit plain. Po's eyes widened to those of a normal mans. “Uh...” he gasped again.
“Friend Po”, said Hopop, but Po once more did not reply. Hopop looked down. Protruding from Po's chest just below his rib-cage was Po's own long, narrow blade. Po fell to the ground in a crumpled mass.
“Ahhh!!!” cried Hopop, all thought of stealth now evaporated from his mind with the sudden death of his companion. He lifted his club and aimed it outwards from the cave mouth, afraid to look backwards, not wanting to see what evil thing shared the space behind him.
The club vanished from Hopop's hands. Then the great brigand began to lean forward as if to run, yet being held there in place. He tottered there for a moment then suddenly spun about, and was hurtled back into the cave as if thrown there by some unseen force. A tremendous crack resounded in the hollow cavern. It was the breaking of bone.
“Great Baphomet protect me” spoke the huge jiggling mass of Hopop sitting now with his back to the far wall of the cave. One leg hung only by flesh at a right angle to the thigh. Something walked towards him. It was quiet and small.
A tiny feminine face broke into the faint light of the cave. Even chiaroscuro in a single beam of moon-light Hopop's immediate impression of the girl was one of poverty and dirt. A faded red shawl of the bedouin wrapped her head. Long greasy, amorphous lengths of dark brown hair with reddish tinge fell from the head scarf attached to the shawl. Grime caked into the young face. Her robes were tattered. Holes were torn by time and wear in either shoulder. She stepped one step closer. She dragged something. Her eyes were of an emerald green remarkable even in the moonlight.
“By the prophets little one. I thought you were the demon. Yes girl. Demons! Five cast me here, leaving me for dead. But the great warrior Hopop has spoiled their play. Ten I cast to this side, and ten to t'other. Quickly run to your people girl. Tell them bold Hopop of Herod's personal guard has once more championed their cause, this time scattering a hundred demons from their noble town. Go. Huzzah. Tell your kin to bring their finest medicians, and their strongest ale. Hopop has arrived.”
The bedouin girl stepped one step closer more. Hopop saw what it was she dragged by her side. It was his own great club. Effortlessly she lifted it one-handed so it extended along her dirty cheek and stretched until it blurred into the dark above her head. The girl smiled. Her teeth contrasting – bright, white, clean and straight.
“S'beard” gasped Hopop.
She took the club in both hands before her, then raised it high above her head.
“Noooo...” pleaded Hopop.
The club sped downward with merciless certainty, bashing into the beefy forehead, crashing through the thick skull...and Hopop spoke no more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
II
The Slayer
She stared outward from the cave which functioned as stable. The three fathers all stood now on the dusty, level surface between her, and the hovel. Gaspar the smallest of the three moved to the front, drawing a jawbone shaped club from it's harness on his back. His skin was blacker than the night. He wore a cape of fur skinned from the giant cat of his home to the south. The head of the beast gazed upwards, with it's great mouth opened, black lips drawn back from teeth in an eternal roar.
Gaspar held the club in cautious grip, and took another step towards the cave.
She was small when she killed her first man. Her first man had been a woman. She did not know what an adulteress was, but she knew Mamo had been one. The woman and children of the village had attacked her with stones and sticks on command from the elders of the band. Mamo had prostrated herself on the desert floor extending her hand in appeal for mercy.
She had taken a rock many were surprised to see her lift, and bashed continuously into Mamo's head. Finally when the woman lay dead and still, with her last life's blood spilling out onto the sand, the old woman who was her guardian pulled her from the body, and led her from the spot by her little hand with soft hushing praises. There would be extra goat in her dinner bowl that night.
Other killings would follow. The ones beneath the attention of the warriors of the village – the raiders, the blasphemers, the breakers of laws - these would be offered up to the women, and she would join screaming alongside the throng of crazed village women, with great hunger in her heart for blood.
Melchior of the West strode up alongside Gaspar. He withdrew his two, long, curved blades from the sheaths of camel-calf leather at his hip. The father spoke a strange tongue she did not understand. He was old however, and therefore deserving of respect.
These other two in the cave had died much easier she thought. Po lay at her feet, a useless sack of wasteful meat. The fat one lay on his back in the cave, brains sliding from the shattered skull, tongue protruding comically from his lips, black blood gushing down his fat face.
Yes, these two died much quicker than the others, but she had the strength now – the strength of the slayer.
Balthazar came up alongside the other two fathers, and placed his long slender hand on Gaspar's shoulder, bidding him stop. Balthazar was the tallest of the three. He was the teacher, and spoke the language of the desert as if native to it.
“Little Sparrow”, he called out, “is all well?”
“Yes” she called back, “all is well”.
The others of the home were huddled in a group at the entrance. She saw the mother pull the child indoors. He was young, of no more than eight seasons. He was only a tiny shadow to her now. What was the importance of such a small thing? Why had Balthazar spoken of him as he would a village elder? She would ask the wise father of the north.
Balthazar turned to the frightened folk at the hovel doorway, and gestured them inside. He then turned, and walked towards the cave. Gaspar and Melchior followed.
The northern father strode quicker towards the cave with each long step, as his eyes focused on her work. She smiled. A deed such as this would be cause for much praise she thought, and perhaps he would offer her one of the dried dates in his pack. Her mouth watered at the thought of the sweet fruit.
Balthazar grabbed her briskly by the arm and yanked her with surprising force from the cave.
“What is this thing you have done demon child?”
Gaspar and Melchior stood over the body of Po. Melchior nodded towards Hopop's great reclining shadow, and Gaspar walked silently towards it.
“Great father Balthazar”, she spoke, “I heard them speak. They spoke the language of the raiders to the north. They sought to murder you as you slept.”
“There are ways to deal with such as these. This was not the way.”
“Am I not meant to slay. Is this not the art you yourself have taught this undeserving student.”
Confusion ruled the expression of her face. Her voice cracked as she spoke. Never had she seen the father so upset. Never had he laid hands upon her.
Melchior lend down and grasped the corpse of Po by the shoulders, then dragged it into the cave, and towards the center.
“Slayer...It is not the purpose of your art to play in the affairs of men. This is a great crime, and an affront to the Gods who have blessed thee. Yours is a darker craft. Yours is the power to slay the demon. To slay men for you is as Gaspar to slay a child.”
She looked into the cave and watched as Gaspar dragged the behemoth body of Hopop towards the center of the cave. To another it might seem unfair of Melchior to assign the greater burden to the smaller man, but the girl knew the great strength of her southern father. His arms, his chest were thick, and powerful. She had watched him lift his recalcitrant jackass into the air, and onto it's feet.
“Do you not see the slyness of purpose here, child?” continued Balthazar. “Who in this world or the other would expect such great power in one so small.”
“In Gaspar?” she asked.
“No little fool. In you. This power was called from a place that would seek a small one such as yourself. A girl-child. It lives here”. He touched the center of her chest.
“But why?”
“To slay the demon, silly child.”
“There are only demons such as these,” she gestured to the two bodies now at the cave's center, a look of defiance crawling to lips.
“Oh you will see another soon. Perhaps then you will understand.”
He nodded towards the camel closest to him, Melchior walked over wordlessly and reached into the bundle of blankets strapped to the beasts back. He withdrew a leather pouch, and walked back to where the two bodies lay. Tipping the pouch, a stream of blue sand poured from it. Melchior walked around the bodies spilling the sand to form a circle around them.
“What are you doing father?” the girl asked.
“We must hide this deed. No-one must know.”
--------
Gaspar looked towards Balthazar, and nodded. The smaller man adorned in the leopard skin cape stepped into the circle of blue sand with the reclining bodies. Balthazar placed his hand on the girl's shoulder, and nudged her softly into the cave.
“Here is a magick for you child. Perhaps by it's end you will understand what the slayer is.”
“Will Gaspar make these two vanish, Father?”
“Gaspar is not the magick. He is it's messenger. He will call the power forward. He will form a force to speak with it. He will interpret it, and make a trade of flesh.
The short, powerful, old African, sat in the center of the circle. He lifted his arms upwards to the rock roof, and bowed his head, muttering in a language unknown to the girl.
“What does he do, Father?”
“Sshhh...”
The muttering continued. Sparks pushed from the air grouping themselves in sporadic clumps, gathering steadily into small streams of blue energy.
“It is lightning on the floor.”
Streams of blue energy serpentined from the center of the circle to it's perimeter, were blocked there, and hissed off to either side forming a brilliant, solid ring of bluish-white light.
“Sshhh...”
Creeping upward above the ring of sand, the light rose higher still, being pushed at the same time by an unseen force steadily inward. It was gravity turned upside down with the light falling upward to a single point high above Gaspar's head, and just below the cave ceiling. Upon completion a cone of blue translucent light sat in the center of the cave engulfing the black wizard, and the two corpses.
The body of Gaspar lurched, and spasmed violently backwards. His arms and hands, leaned backwards aiming towards the three watching the scene. Forks of blue lightning charged from his fingertips firing through the blue cone first into Little Sparrow, then Balthazar then Melchior.
The old sea captain Melchior fell instantly to the stone floor. Balthazar dropped in confusion to one knee placing his long staff upon it with both hands tightly clenching either side. The girl stood, and swayed drunkenly as if trying to maintain balance on a rocky boat.
All breath left her body. There was pain, over-ridden by intense excitation, as if every tiny bit of herself vibrated insanely outwards, yet at the same time inwards.
Blue light emanated upwards from Gaspar, through the point of the cone, through the solid rock and out into an invisible nothingness. A low-pitched buzz filled the cave as the blue light turned suddenly blood red. Before it at the center of the cone a brilliant plate of warped energy shimmered instantly into view before Gaspar. The fingers of light connecting the three outside to the interior of the cone vanished, and those imprisoned by the connection recollected their balance.
“Now Gaspar”, shouted Balthazar.
The arms of Gaspar fell to his sides, and he slumped forwards gasping for breath.
“Now!”, screamed Balthazar once more, this time with added urgency.
Buzzing became a hum, humming gathering frequency began to squeal.
Gaspar lowered one arm to the floor, and using it to balance pushed himself groggily to an unwieldy stance. He stood there gathering his senses, gradually becoming aware of Balthazar's screams behind the high pitched squeal.
Hunching down he grasped the body of Hopop by the shoulders, dragged it to the shimmering plate of energy, lifted the great mass of dead flesh and flopped it halfway into the window of light.
The body lay half in, half out, then slowly, was somehow sucked into what was now a portal to nowhere. Gaspar turned and repeated the procedure with the much lighter Po.
Little Sparrow's green eyes widened. Her dirty, brown face was now clear and visible in the tremulous light of the cave. It was known amongst her people these were powerful men. She had heard this in whispers outside the elders' tent those many months ago as Balthazar and the Sheik bartered price for her. She had heard of their power, but only now did she see it. However, it was not over.
Another window of light snapped into existence on the far side of the cave. Two shapes were visible within - dark, and wavering formless shapes, like two fish in a shallow, muddy pond.
----------
Brown. Behind the shimmering light of the two dimensional plate hovering in the cave, they appeared to be brown. A muscled, brown, anthropomorphic leg stepped out into the cave.
“Get out, Gaspar!” cried Balthazar. “There is only need of one”.
The creature stepped farther out, then finally emerged. It was brown in body, yet blue and yellow gills vibrated desperately along what appeared to be a neck. The shape was a shape distorted, yet almost human. Apish arms dragged to the rock floor. Talons scraped the hard surface to find purchase. It was animal, but with some sophistication. Hair had been shaved at the sides, grown at the center, and tied into one long braid raising from an egg-shaped head, then falling backwards between the shoulder-blades. It's ears pointed like those of a goat. A ventless, raptor's beak sat where it's nose should have been. It was clad only in a blue cod-piece, and silver arm-bracelets. The eyes were dark – void of color.
“Now!” called Balthazar to the groggy Gaspar once more, “Withdraw.”
The naked, brown leg of a second creature began to step out from the inter-dimensional window. On the other side of the cave Gaspar took two uncoordinated paces forward, then fell out from the blue energy cone. It instantly vanished, as did the two shimmering portals, leaving the cave more or less as it was before the magicians' spells. Evidence of the metaphysical was a memory, except in front of where the second portal had once hovered, the demon still stood.
Balthazar bent to the unconscious Melchior and withdrew the long curved blade from the sheath at the body's side. He rose with it, then slipped it into the tiny hand of the girl before him.
“We cheat the Gods to teach you this final lesson Little Sparrow. Learn it well”.
So recently alive with prismatic light, the cave dimmed to star and moonlit normality. Balthazar side-stepped to the cave entrance quietly muttering in the unknown tongue.
At the entrance he raised his staff. Once more blue, light shone from the cave mouth, this time in both directions from a glowing sheet of light emitting outwards from Balthazar's outreached staff.
Turning suddenly to the sprung trap at the exit, the creature crouched and cackled like a hen. Leaping half the breadth of the cave it targeted the throat of the tall wizard Balthazar, but was repelled before contact by the blue shield of light.
It turned, and faced the three human forms now trapped with it, made a low vibrating sound almost like a purr.
Melchior was now gaining wakefulness. He observed the scene before him and somehow instantly grasped it's relevance. He raised an arm from his laying position, pointing to the brown thing at cave center, aware the girl was peripherally alert to his form.
She knew. She didn't have to ask She knew what she had to do. She advanced slowly moving outwards, and to the side of the demon before her. It watched the tiny figure circle about it, turning to face her as she did. A long, forked, blue tongue darted out from behind the black beak, and twirled about the ripping point of it.
Eventually she positioned herself before where Balthazar stood sentry at the cave mouth. The demon was the size of Gaspar, who now fully awake and alert, snuck cautiously behind the beast. Although of similar height it was strikingly larger in the chest and arms than the short, yet impressive African wizard. It stunk of defecation and rot.
A sudden “thwack” echoed in the stable. Spinning about the creature found Gaspar facing it with his jawbone club arced to land a second blow.
“No!” called Balthazar, “she must do this alone”.
If Gaspar heard him, he gave no evidence, advancing with a great shout, weapon raised for the next mighty blow as he rushed forward.
The demon thing flicked out one of it's great simian arms striking Gaspar in the chest with one clawed hand, sending him tumbling backward like a child.
Something flew through the air behind it. The creature sensed this with battle-hardened instinct, but upon spinning to face the new attack found nothing, only sensing a new, noticeably light weight upon it's massive, muscular back.
Little Sparrow had landed there like a tick. She grasped the braid of demon hair, and wrapped her legs around the body trunk, locking herself there. The creature leaped, and tumbled to escape, but there was no release of this burden. Her long, ragged robe flew rippling in the breeze as the creature bashed and smashed about the cave struggling frantically to escape the human tick pinned on it's back. Her head shawl fell to her shoulders releasing all strands of greasy, dark hair.
Arcing her body back, still clinging to the demon braid, she slowly pulled the head back towards her, at the same time reaching forward with the hand holding the knife. Soon the blade found the tender front of the thing's throat. Now she began methodically sawing with Melchior's honed instrument of pirate death. Black Ichor sprayed from the wound. In bizarre display the thick body thrashed as would that of any butchered beast, but to no avail. Quietly, stubbornly, and with certainty, the slayer plied her craft, slicing into meat, pulling back flesh from flesh, first a quarter slice through the neck, then a half, then with a surprising, spastic tug she pulled the entire head free of the body, as a fountain of the black liquid erupted from what was now an empty hole on the creature's shoulders.
She fell back, unlocked from the trunk, landed in sitting position with a cushioned crunch, then rose with the head still in hand, stepping away from the body as it spasmed in death, holding the large beaked head by the braid-lock of hair. A hand found it's way softly to her shoulder from behind. It was the hand of Balthazar.
“Step away child. This world will not have sacrilege such as this upon it's soil.”
As if upon invocation a black, jagged crevice of darkness opened below, and around the headless thing at their feet sucking it away like a vision. As suddenly as it appeared the body was gone. Little Sparrow felt the hand of her northern father pulling the demon head from her grasping fist. She released, and Balthazar withdrew the head, then tossed it into the crevice of darkness which upon swallowing the last vestige of demon meat faded from existence.
All was once more still and quiet in the stable cave.
The Cross
III
Like a dream...
In the aftermath, the feel was the sensation in the mind of awakening from nightmare. Had it only been illusion?
Her blood pumped heat to her surface skin. Her heart thumped. Breath came to her only in laboured gasps. The protective numbing shield of sensation one feels in battle abandoned her. Pain seeped into the new confinements of the girl's flesh and bone. Cuts and scratches burned. Bruising pounded the warning thumps of throbbing pain. Little Sparrow tasted the blood trickling inwards from her scarred lips and loosened teeth. She smelled the sulphuric resonance of the other world, watched the dust settle quietly in the cave, heard the clatter as the three wizard scuttered about in the courtyard retrieving their camels, and donkey which had unknowing to her fled before the battle had begun. This had been no dream.
“Little Sparrow”, called Balthazar, “Quickly. Come. You will accompany us to the crossroads.”
Worlds crashing in upon worlds. The cycle of two moons earlier she lived in the world of the desert wanderers. It was merciless cruel, but it was her world. She became comfortable with it's rules. The three fathers had brought her another world – a world of ideas and purpose. In the cities of the Israelites she discovered a world of confusion, and now this. What was this new world – the crossroads?
Balthazar, Gaspar, and Melchior had their pack animals under control now. They led them single file, out, and away from the sandstone home, into the hilly countryside of Ephrath. She watched as the beasts clopped, and the three old men shuffled off into the translucent night.
“Wait”, she suddenly called, and rushed back into the cave where she gathered up her own small bundle, then hurried after her three wizard godfathers.
“Wait!” she called scrambling to catch up. But they did not wait. They plodded forward silently, with steady purpose.
She ran up past Melchior, past Gaspar, alongside Balthazar who led his large camel at the head of the caravan of three, then slowed along side him.
“Father of the North...had you forgotten me?”
“No, Little Sparrow.”
“Where do we go now, Father?”
“Alas we must part child”.
“What? But why? No”.
“The false king will seek us soon. I fear his intentions are not of those hospitality.”
“I will kill him for you father. I will kill them all.”
“No! Little fool, have you learned nothing?!”
“Yes. Yes father. I have learned.”
“What have you learned?”
“I am the slayer, chosen to slay the demons who wander still on this earth.”
“And?...”
“And I can find time to slay a fat Bedouin puppet king, and his Roman guard.”
“This is not the path set out for you in the book of life child. The stars have written a different story for you to tell. Yours is a path of purpose”.
“What path? What purpose? My purpose is to be with you. The three fathers.”
“Alas, no. Gaspar will return to his people to the South, Melchior to his ship to the west, and I will wander to my homeland north.”
“I will go north with you then.”
“Your path lies behind us to the East. You will follow the child and his family. You must protect the child.”
“The child? What child? But why? I will not.”
“You will. It is written in the book of life.”
“I do not read.”
Balthazar chuckled. His long fingers reached forward and brushed through the girls greasy hair.
“Listen to me Little Sparrow. I will give you now my final gift. It is all I have left to give.
Some see little. It is all they can see. It is their path. Others see much. Once seen it is the path they must follow. Other see what they choose to see, and call their path, the path they have chosen. Then there are the few – the true chosen. Those such as yourself, and the boy behind us. They must see all. It is the path thrust upon them. There is no choice. They are chosen. This last is the loneliest of all roads. You have blundered into fortune, for there is one who will walk before you.”
“Yes. You. You will walk before me. I will follow you.”
Laughing once more Balthazar hugged the girl to his side as he walked, and continued his cryptic dissertation. The girl looked upwards with love, and pretended to understand.
“The boy. He will walk before you. A guardian spirit has delivered his father a message. It sends him from this land. You will follow. They must not see you. The path of the child must be alone amongst his people. Yours however is not the path of men. Your path is to separate our world – the world of demons – from the world of men. In this way will he have comfort to discover the path to his power. It is our hope one day his power will be our power to share.”
“I will not protect the boy – not from demons, or from fat Herod. Let the demons eat him. I will go with you.”
“He is protected for now. We have performed the spell. We have left with him the charms. All this will protect him, but only for a short time. The power of our sacred symbols is brief in this time. They will gain power in the time to follow. The child will gather power unto him through the path he follows, and he will return it outwards unto us through the sacred geometry. At this time the symbols of our order are without true power. Through the child they will have power once more...and the demons will burn.”
“Let them burn. Let them not burn. I do not care. I will follow you. I will protect you from the demons.”
“I have no importance. Look about you. See the stories written in the sky. Smell the sweetness in the air. Listen to the tales told by the wind in the cedars on the hills. This is the story of life. This has importance. This is what you must protect.”
“I will not.”
“You will!” Shouted Balthazar, stopping suddenly, pulling mightily on the halter rope, jerking the camel's head about, and bringing it to a stop.
Balthazar pounded his staff down, and a puff of dust splooshed upwards from the dusty road.
“You will return to the caves. You will wait for the family to leave. You follow them. You will protect the boy from the demons. You will never allow the world of men to know your business.'
“I will not!”
“You will!!”
“I will follow you!!!”
“You will not!!!”
Balthazar released the girl from his embrace. She jerked her shoulder violently backwards, in a gesture to say this was my decision. She stared up into the angry eyes of the tall wizard, refusing to look away. Their wrestling stares vied for dominance. The girl blinked, then looked quickly away as if to say “I have no interest in this”. Suddenly though, she saw where they were.
The road behind her led to the east, before her was the west and the sea. Another road crossed, south to Jerusalem, and north to the green fields of ancient Babylon. She looked behind her. Melchior strode up leading his camel.
“Father”, she said, “Take me with you. I will work hard. I will learn the ways of the sea.”
Melchior looked away, and lifted one hand upwards to mock ignorance of her words, and request. He continued walking to the West.
Gaspar arrived from the rear, pulling his donkey behind him.
“Father”, said Little Sparrow, “Take me with you. I will slay the giant cats for you, and sew for you a pair of fine pantaloons from their skins.”
The old African looked down at the road, and walked past, then turned to the south.
Little Sparrow, and Balthazar stood watching their shapes fade into the night.
Tears began to roll in streams down her dirty cheeks. She sobbed and convulsed. Balthazar gripped the halter rope, and led his camel away up the road to north.
“I will follow you”, the girl called out sobbing.
“You will not”, returned the wizard, and leaned down to pick up a stone, which he cast at her upon rising, catching her in the shoulder.
“I will”, she cried ignoring the blow.
“Bah...” answered Balthazar and turned to continue on his path to the north.
The girl remained, standing there bleating loud pitiful sobs. It was dawn when the sobbing stopped. The three shapes had disappeared from view down the three roads.
Little sparrow looked upwards. Overhead flew a white dove. The girl looked up at the bird. The bird looked down at the girl – a tiny red shape at the center of a crossed path.
THE END
]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/JimJohn/little-sparrow1.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/JimJohn/little-sparrow5.jpg
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Art by EDB
I
The Magi
“Are they there Hopop?”
“Ermm?”
“The silken bundles. Are they there?”
Whispers in a cave. The cave cut into cliffs of sand and rock by the mind maddening sharav winds. A cave, a stable – it was both. The tawny hindquarters of two large camels protruded the length of a large boy's leg out the entrance. A ferret thin, dark face peeked from behind the sandstone facade which jutted outwards from the borders of the cave mouth. Narrow, abyss-dark eyes darted back and forth scanning the length of the sandstone dwelling which stood squat, thirty meters before the shadowed face.
“Tell me, he who's breath might fertilize the gardens of Babylon. Did you find the packages.”
“No tiny, dung beetle” snapped back a deep, but quieted voice, “there is nothing here, but what a wanderer might carry.”
“But I saw them”, spoke the smaller voice in whispered spit staccato, “We saw them. Three bundles. I saw their content. Gold from the north, forged to the design and charms of the Mage. Frankincense, the holy essence which casts wicked spirits from the temples of Judaea . Myrh to embalm the dead, and confound the spirits of the condemned.”
“The powder, the oil, the gold. None of that is here.”
“They must have the treasure with them”, mused the smaller man.
“What scoundrels these three be to hide such treasure from we their only companions in this wicked land.” spoke Hopop.
The face at the entrance to the cave nodded in silent agreement.
Soft wind blew in from the salty sea far to the west. Above them the night's moon was full, and large. The megenta sky was thick with starlight.
“Back!”, spat the ferret-faced man and the two retreated backwards into the shadows of the cave.
A man of Israel walked out into the night from the stone hovel. His face spoke of deep troubles, and dark times. Behind him a tall, thin older man followed. He wore robes of the wealthy traders to the North. The two spoke quietly. Finally the smaller man nodded in compliance, and the two returned into the dwelling.
“In truth Po”, continued the large, fat man pressed against the cave wall, “Did we not find them lost in the desert?”
“Perhaps, although another might say the stars are as a stoned path to those such as these.”
“And, did we not of good faith and nature offer to guide them to the gates of Jerusalem?”
“Ay, and for only 2 pieces of silver.”
They shared a smile and Hopop continued.
“But did we not introduce these ungrateful louse to the very King Herod of this land to which we at present serve?”
“True...and a great courtesy it was by us to do so without the restrictions of shackles”.
“And did we not all share their tale of the child of prophesy?”
“and with minimal torture, and little actual screaming.”
“King Herod in his grace, did he not suggest they seek out this child and offer invitation to his palace?”
“In truth, he did” spoke Po, a worried look now creeping onto his sharp visage.
“And how do they repay such fellowship? By befuddling our senses with magics, and fleeing.”
“It was Egyptian ale, but your point is taken.”
“We are the unfortunate and wronged here.”
“Ay...did you leave their carriage unspoiled as I asked?”
“Yes.”
“They must not know we are here, when they enter.”
“It is unspoiled. It is unspoiled as your wives would complain to, had the great Gods of Ur not graced them audience with the mighty Hopop”.
But Po did not hear him. His narrow eyes narrowed further to slits. His glance darted to one side of the cave, then the other.
Yes, yes he thought to himself.
They will enter through this side, closest to the dwelling. Hopop will hide his great girth best over on that side, behind where the walls form a false addition.
“But Po”, spoke Hopop, as if reading his fellow brigand's mind.
“Hm?” answered the other, attention snapped from his reverie.
“These men, are not as other men. They are of the order of the Mage.”
“Bah.” spat Po, and returned to his stratagem.
They will spend the night, or they will go. There is not room in the tiny home for such as they. If they stay they will do so here. They will pull their blankets, from their camels packs there. The small one will go to his donkey there to the rear. They will all lay there to the center. We will attack as they sleep.
“There are stories Po. It is said these are the descendants of the Mage who cast the demons from this land. What chance have we against the slayers of demons?”
“Bah, again. They are not but old men. Have I not once already laid my blade against their withered old throats.”
Yes thought Po his fat friend might prove a problem. He would hesitate to fall upon the three while they slept. Still Po knew the nature of his battlemate, and knew once Hopop saw the murder begin, he would roar into the fray bashing his giant club into flesh and bone with murderous rage...just as always. Murder lent him courage.
“Perhaps these two camels, and the ass there are the last men of business, such as ourselves who sought to separate these three wizards from their gold.”
They would kill the old men here, then fall upon the sleeping household. Even the great, bumbling Hopop could serve purpose in the simple slaughter of sleeping children and peasant farmers.
“In truth Po there is another thing of which I have yet to speak. In the desert night while we five wandered I felt upon my neck another set of eyes. I saw nothing, yet I felt it upon me like hot breath. These three are protected, I fear...by demons perhaps.”
He would have Hopop cleave the head of the boy who would be king from it's shoulders. That was no business for a gentle man of commerce such as himself...and while the fat one busied himself with that chore he would search about the home for the treasure of the Magi
Po returned his gaze to the large, frightened eyes of his massive companion.
“Listen brave Hopop”, spoke Po with unctuous confidence, “we will kill these three in the night while they sleep. We will plunder their bones, and later take the head of the child of prophecy. Herod has promised a reward of riches. We will live as kings.”
“But Po what if the three do not sleep here tonight?”
But that was not the larger problem. By Herod's command all who knew of the child must die. Did that not include himself and Hopop. Still...yes, yes...he would send the fat one alone to retrieve the bounty from the king.
“It matters not. That which we seek is in the dwelling. They may go. We will take the head. If the bundles are not within, we will follow the old ones later, and take them in the night.”
“But they will see us”.
“They will not. You will stand over there behind the rock. I will crouch down there.”
“But...”
“Sshhh...”
Voices and footsteps broke the quiet of the night outside the holy city of David.
“By the beard of the goat god” whispered Hopop.
But Po spoke nothing in return. He gasped. The two would-be assassins looked out of the darkness into the moonlit plain. Po's eyes widened to those of a normal mans. “Uh...” he gasped again.
“Friend Po”, said Hopop, but Po once more did not reply. Hopop looked down. Protruding from Po's chest just below his rib-cage was Po's own long, narrow blade. Po fell to the ground in a crumpled mass.
“Ahhh!!!” cried Hopop, all thought of stealth now evaporated from his mind with the sudden death of his companion. He lifted his club and aimed it outwards from the cave mouth, afraid to look backwards, not wanting to see what evil thing shared the space behind him.
The club vanished from Hopop's hands. Then the great brigand began to lean forward as if to run, yet being held there in place. He tottered there for a moment then suddenly spun about, and was hurtled back into the cave as if thrown there by some unseen force. A tremendous crack resounded in the hollow cavern. It was the breaking of bone.
“Great Baphomet protect me” spoke the huge jiggling mass of Hopop sitting now with his back to the far wall of the cave. One leg hung only by flesh at a right angle to the thigh. Something walked towards him. It was quiet and small.
A tiny feminine face broke into the faint light of the cave. Even chiaroscuro in a single beam of moon-light Hopop's immediate impression of the girl was one of poverty and dirt. A faded red shawl of the bedouin wrapped her head. Long greasy, amorphous lengths of dark brown hair with reddish tinge fell from the head scarf attached to the shawl. Grime caked into the young face. Her robes were tattered. Holes were torn by time and wear in either shoulder. She stepped one step closer. She dragged something. Her eyes were of an emerald green remarkable even in the moonlight.
“By the prophets little one. I thought you were the demon. Yes girl. Demons! Five cast me here, leaving me for dead. But the great warrior Hopop has spoiled their play. Ten I cast to this side, and ten to t'other. Quickly run to your people girl. Tell them bold Hopop of Herod's personal guard has once more championed their cause, this time scattering a hundred demons from their noble town. Go. Huzzah. Tell your kin to bring their finest medicians, and their strongest ale. Hopop has arrived.”
The bedouin girl stepped one step closer more. Hopop saw what it was she dragged by her side. It was his own great club. Effortlessly she lifted it one-handed so it extended along her dirty cheek and stretched until it blurred into the dark above her head. The girl smiled. Her teeth contrasting – bright, white, clean and straight.
“S'beard” gasped Hopop.
She took the club in both hands before her, then raised it high above her head.
“Noooo...” pleaded Hopop.
The club sped downward with merciless certainty, bashing into the beefy forehead, crashing through the thick skull...and Hopop spoke no more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
II
The Slayer
She stared outward from the cave which functioned as stable. The three fathers all stood now on the dusty, level surface between her, and the hovel. Gaspar the smallest of the three moved to the front, drawing a jawbone shaped club from it's harness on his back. His skin was blacker than the night. He wore a cape of fur skinned from the giant cat of his home to the south. The head of the beast gazed upwards, with it's great mouth opened, black lips drawn back from teeth in an eternal roar.
Gaspar held the club in cautious grip, and took another step towards the cave.
She was small when she killed her first man. Her first man had been a woman. She did not know what an adulteress was, but she knew Mamo had been one. The woman and children of the village had attacked her with stones and sticks on command from the elders of the band. Mamo had prostrated herself on the desert floor extending her hand in appeal for mercy.
She had taken a rock many were surprised to see her lift, and bashed continuously into Mamo's head. Finally when the woman lay dead and still, with her last life's blood spilling out onto the sand, the old woman who was her guardian pulled her from the body, and led her from the spot by her little hand with soft hushing praises. There would be extra goat in her dinner bowl that night.
Other killings would follow. The ones beneath the attention of the warriors of the village – the raiders, the blasphemers, the breakers of laws - these would be offered up to the women, and she would join screaming alongside the throng of crazed village women, with great hunger in her heart for blood.
Melchior of the West strode up alongside Gaspar. He withdrew his two, long, curved blades from the sheaths of camel-calf leather at his hip. The father spoke a strange tongue she did not understand. He was old however, and therefore deserving of respect.
These other two in the cave had died much easier she thought. Po lay at her feet, a useless sack of wasteful meat. The fat one lay on his back in the cave, brains sliding from the shattered skull, tongue protruding comically from his lips, black blood gushing down his fat face.
Yes, these two died much quicker than the others, but she had the strength now – the strength of the slayer.
Balthazar came up alongside the other two fathers, and placed his long slender hand on Gaspar's shoulder, bidding him stop. Balthazar was the tallest of the three. He was the teacher, and spoke the language of the desert as if native to it.
“Little Sparrow”, he called out, “is all well?”
“Yes” she called back, “all is well”.
The others of the home were huddled in a group at the entrance. She saw the mother pull the child indoors. He was young, of no more than eight seasons. He was only a tiny shadow to her now. What was the importance of such a small thing? Why had Balthazar spoken of him as he would a village elder? She would ask the wise father of the north.
Balthazar turned to the frightened folk at the hovel doorway, and gestured them inside. He then turned, and walked towards the cave. Gaspar and Melchior followed.
The northern father strode quicker towards the cave with each long step, as his eyes focused on her work. She smiled. A deed such as this would be cause for much praise she thought, and perhaps he would offer her one of the dried dates in his pack. Her mouth watered at the thought of the sweet fruit.
Balthazar grabbed her briskly by the arm and yanked her with surprising force from the cave.
“What is this thing you have done demon child?”
Gaspar and Melchior stood over the body of Po. Melchior nodded towards Hopop's great reclining shadow, and Gaspar walked silently towards it.
“Great father Balthazar”, she spoke, “I heard them speak. They spoke the language of the raiders to the north. They sought to murder you as you slept.”
“There are ways to deal with such as these. This was not the way.”
“Am I not meant to slay. Is this not the art you yourself have taught this undeserving student.”
Confusion ruled the expression of her face. Her voice cracked as she spoke. Never had she seen the father so upset. Never had he laid hands upon her.
Melchior lend down and grasped the corpse of Po by the shoulders, then dragged it into the cave, and towards the center.
“Slayer...It is not the purpose of your art to play in the affairs of men. This is a great crime, and an affront to the Gods who have blessed thee. Yours is a darker craft. Yours is the power to slay the demon. To slay men for you is as Gaspar to slay a child.”
She looked into the cave and watched as Gaspar dragged the behemoth body of Hopop towards the center of the cave. To another it might seem unfair of Melchior to assign the greater burden to the smaller man, but the girl knew the great strength of her southern father. His arms, his chest were thick, and powerful. She had watched him lift his recalcitrant jackass into the air, and onto it's feet.
“Do you not see the slyness of purpose here, child?” continued Balthazar. “Who in this world or the other would expect such great power in one so small.”
“In Gaspar?” she asked.
“No little fool. In you. This power was called from a place that would seek a small one such as yourself. A girl-child. It lives here”. He touched the center of her chest.
“But why?”
“To slay the demon, silly child.”
“There are only demons such as these,” she gestured to the two bodies now at the cave's center, a look of defiance crawling to lips.
“Oh you will see another soon. Perhaps then you will understand.”
He nodded towards the camel closest to him, Melchior walked over wordlessly and reached into the bundle of blankets strapped to the beasts back. He withdrew a leather pouch, and walked back to where the two bodies lay. Tipping the pouch, a stream of blue sand poured from it. Melchior walked around the bodies spilling the sand to form a circle around them.
“What are you doing father?” the girl asked.
“We must hide this deed. No-one must know.”
--------
Gaspar looked towards Balthazar, and nodded. The smaller man adorned in the leopard skin cape stepped into the circle of blue sand with the reclining bodies. Balthazar placed his hand on the girl's shoulder, and nudged her softly into the cave.
“Here is a magick for you child. Perhaps by it's end you will understand what the slayer is.”
“Will Gaspar make these two vanish, Father?”
“Gaspar is not the magick. He is it's messenger. He will call the power forward. He will form a force to speak with it. He will interpret it, and make a trade of flesh.
The short, powerful, old African, sat in the center of the circle. He lifted his arms upwards to the rock roof, and bowed his head, muttering in a language unknown to the girl.
“What does he do, Father?”
“Sshhh...”
The muttering continued. Sparks pushed from the air grouping themselves in sporadic clumps, gathering steadily into small streams of blue energy.
“It is lightning on the floor.”
Streams of blue energy serpentined from the center of the circle to it's perimeter, were blocked there, and hissed off to either side forming a brilliant, solid ring of bluish-white light.
“Sshhh...”
Creeping upward above the ring of sand, the light rose higher still, being pushed at the same time by an unseen force steadily inward. It was gravity turned upside down with the light falling upward to a single point high above Gaspar's head, and just below the cave ceiling. Upon completion a cone of blue translucent light sat in the center of the cave engulfing the black wizard, and the two corpses.
The body of Gaspar lurched, and spasmed violently backwards. His arms and hands, leaned backwards aiming towards the three watching the scene. Forks of blue lightning charged from his fingertips firing through the blue cone first into Little Sparrow, then Balthazar then Melchior.
The old sea captain Melchior fell instantly to the stone floor. Balthazar dropped in confusion to one knee placing his long staff upon it with both hands tightly clenching either side. The girl stood, and swayed drunkenly as if trying to maintain balance on a rocky boat.
All breath left her body. There was pain, over-ridden by intense excitation, as if every tiny bit of herself vibrated insanely outwards, yet at the same time inwards.
Blue light emanated upwards from Gaspar, through the point of the cone, through the solid rock and out into an invisible nothingness. A low-pitched buzz filled the cave as the blue light turned suddenly blood red. Before it at the center of the cone a brilliant plate of warped energy shimmered instantly into view before Gaspar. The fingers of light connecting the three outside to the interior of the cone vanished, and those imprisoned by the connection recollected their balance.
“Now Gaspar”, shouted Balthazar.
The arms of Gaspar fell to his sides, and he slumped forwards gasping for breath.
“Now!”, screamed Balthazar once more, this time with added urgency.
Buzzing became a hum, humming gathering frequency began to squeal.
Gaspar lowered one arm to the floor, and using it to balance pushed himself groggily to an unwieldy stance. He stood there gathering his senses, gradually becoming aware of Balthazar's screams behind the high pitched squeal.
Hunching down he grasped the body of Hopop by the shoulders, dragged it to the shimmering plate of energy, lifted the great mass of dead flesh and flopped it halfway into the window of light.
The body lay half in, half out, then slowly, was somehow sucked into what was now a portal to nowhere. Gaspar turned and repeated the procedure with the much lighter Po.
Little Sparrow's green eyes widened. Her dirty, brown face was now clear and visible in the tremulous light of the cave. It was known amongst her people these were powerful men. She had heard this in whispers outside the elders' tent those many months ago as Balthazar and the Sheik bartered price for her. She had heard of their power, but only now did she see it. However, it was not over.
Another window of light snapped into existence on the far side of the cave. Two shapes were visible within - dark, and wavering formless shapes, like two fish in a shallow, muddy pond.
----------
Brown. Behind the shimmering light of the two dimensional plate hovering in the cave, they appeared to be brown. A muscled, brown, anthropomorphic leg stepped out into the cave.
“Get out, Gaspar!” cried Balthazar. “There is only need of one”.
The creature stepped farther out, then finally emerged. It was brown in body, yet blue and yellow gills vibrated desperately along what appeared to be a neck. The shape was a shape distorted, yet almost human. Apish arms dragged to the rock floor. Talons scraped the hard surface to find purchase. It was animal, but with some sophistication. Hair had been shaved at the sides, grown at the center, and tied into one long braid raising from an egg-shaped head, then falling backwards between the shoulder-blades. It's ears pointed like those of a goat. A ventless, raptor's beak sat where it's nose should have been. It was clad only in a blue cod-piece, and silver arm-bracelets. The eyes were dark – void of color.
“Now!” called Balthazar to the groggy Gaspar once more, “Withdraw.”
The naked, brown leg of a second creature began to step out from the inter-dimensional window. On the other side of the cave Gaspar took two uncoordinated paces forward, then fell out from the blue energy cone. It instantly vanished, as did the two shimmering portals, leaving the cave more or less as it was before the magicians' spells. Evidence of the metaphysical was a memory, except in front of where the second portal had once hovered, the demon still stood.
Balthazar bent to the unconscious Melchior and withdrew the long curved blade from the sheath at the body's side. He rose with it, then slipped it into the tiny hand of the girl before him.
“We cheat the Gods to teach you this final lesson Little Sparrow. Learn it well”.
So recently alive with prismatic light, the cave dimmed to star and moonlit normality. Balthazar side-stepped to the cave entrance quietly muttering in the unknown tongue.
At the entrance he raised his staff. Once more blue, light shone from the cave mouth, this time in both directions from a glowing sheet of light emitting outwards from Balthazar's outreached staff.
Turning suddenly to the sprung trap at the exit, the creature crouched and cackled like a hen. Leaping half the breadth of the cave it targeted the throat of the tall wizard Balthazar, but was repelled before contact by the blue shield of light.
It turned, and faced the three human forms now trapped with it, made a low vibrating sound almost like a purr.
Melchior was now gaining wakefulness. He observed the scene before him and somehow instantly grasped it's relevance. He raised an arm from his laying position, pointing to the brown thing at cave center, aware the girl was peripherally alert to his form.
She knew. She didn't have to ask She knew what she had to do. She advanced slowly moving outwards, and to the side of the demon before her. It watched the tiny figure circle about it, turning to face her as she did. A long, forked, blue tongue darted out from behind the black beak, and twirled about the ripping point of it.
Eventually she positioned herself before where Balthazar stood sentry at the cave mouth. The demon was the size of Gaspar, who now fully awake and alert, snuck cautiously behind the beast. Although of similar height it was strikingly larger in the chest and arms than the short, yet impressive African wizard. It stunk of defecation and rot.
A sudden “thwack” echoed in the stable. Spinning about the creature found Gaspar facing it with his jawbone club arced to land a second blow.
“No!” called Balthazar, “she must do this alone”.
If Gaspar heard him, he gave no evidence, advancing with a great shout, weapon raised for the next mighty blow as he rushed forward.
The demon thing flicked out one of it's great simian arms striking Gaspar in the chest with one clawed hand, sending him tumbling backward like a child.
Something flew through the air behind it. The creature sensed this with battle-hardened instinct, but upon spinning to face the new attack found nothing, only sensing a new, noticeably light weight upon it's massive, muscular back.
Little Sparrow had landed there like a tick. She grasped the braid of demon hair, and wrapped her legs around the body trunk, locking herself there. The creature leaped, and tumbled to escape, but there was no release of this burden. Her long, ragged robe flew rippling in the breeze as the creature bashed and smashed about the cave struggling frantically to escape the human tick pinned on it's back. Her head shawl fell to her shoulders releasing all strands of greasy, dark hair.
Arcing her body back, still clinging to the demon braid, she slowly pulled the head back towards her, at the same time reaching forward with the hand holding the knife. Soon the blade found the tender front of the thing's throat. Now she began methodically sawing with Melchior's honed instrument of pirate death. Black Ichor sprayed from the wound. In bizarre display the thick body thrashed as would that of any butchered beast, but to no avail. Quietly, stubbornly, and with certainty, the slayer plied her craft, slicing into meat, pulling back flesh from flesh, first a quarter slice through the neck, then a half, then with a surprising, spastic tug she pulled the entire head free of the body, as a fountain of the black liquid erupted from what was now an empty hole on the creature's shoulders.
She fell back, unlocked from the trunk, landed in sitting position with a cushioned crunch, then rose with the head still in hand, stepping away from the body as it spasmed in death, holding the large beaked head by the braid-lock of hair. A hand found it's way softly to her shoulder from behind. It was the hand of Balthazar.
“Step away child. This world will not have sacrilege such as this upon it's soil.”
As if upon invocation a black, jagged crevice of darkness opened below, and around the headless thing at their feet sucking it away like a vision. As suddenly as it appeared the body was gone. Little Sparrow felt the hand of her northern father pulling the demon head from her grasping fist. She released, and Balthazar withdrew the head, then tossed it into the crevice of darkness which upon swallowing the last vestige of demon meat faded from existence.
All was once more still and quiet in the stable cave.
The Cross
III
Like a dream...
In the aftermath, the feel was the sensation in the mind of awakening from nightmare. Had it only been illusion?
Her blood pumped heat to her surface skin. Her heart thumped. Breath came to her only in laboured gasps. The protective numbing shield of sensation one feels in battle abandoned her. Pain seeped into the new confinements of the girl's flesh and bone. Cuts and scratches burned. Bruising pounded the warning thumps of throbbing pain. Little Sparrow tasted the blood trickling inwards from her scarred lips and loosened teeth. She smelled the sulphuric resonance of the other world, watched the dust settle quietly in the cave, heard the clatter as the three wizard scuttered about in the courtyard retrieving their camels, and donkey which had unknowing to her fled before the battle had begun. This had been no dream.
“Little Sparrow”, called Balthazar, “Quickly. Come. You will accompany us to the crossroads.”
Worlds crashing in upon worlds. The cycle of two moons earlier she lived in the world of the desert wanderers. It was merciless cruel, but it was her world. She became comfortable with it's rules. The three fathers had brought her another world – a world of ideas and purpose. In the cities of the Israelites she discovered a world of confusion, and now this. What was this new world – the crossroads?
Balthazar, Gaspar, and Melchior had their pack animals under control now. They led them single file, out, and away from the sandstone home, into the hilly countryside of Ephrath. She watched as the beasts clopped, and the three old men shuffled off into the translucent night.
“Wait”, she suddenly called, and rushed back into the cave where she gathered up her own small bundle, then hurried after her three wizard godfathers.
“Wait!” she called scrambling to catch up. But they did not wait. They plodded forward silently, with steady purpose.
She ran up past Melchior, past Gaspar, alongside Balthazar who led his large camel at the head of the caravan of three, then slowed along side him.
“Father of the North...had you forgotten me?”
“No, Little Sparrow.”
“Where do we go now, Father?”
“Alas we must part child”.
“What? But why? No”.
“The false king will seek us soon. I fear his intentions are not of those hospitality.”
“I will kill him for you father. I will kill them all.”
“No! Little fool, have you learned nothing?!”
“Yes. Yes father. I have learned.”
“What have you learned?”
“I am the slayer, chosen to slay the demons who wander still on this earth.”
“And?...”
“And I can find time to slay a fat Bedouin puppet king, and his Roman guard.”
“This is not the path set out for you in the book of life child. The stars have written a different story for you to tell. Yours is a path of purpose”.
“What path? What purpose? My purpose is to be with you. The three fathers.”
“Alas, no. Gaspar will return to his people to the South, Melchior to his ship to the west, and I will wander to my homeland north.”
“I will go north with you then.”
“Your path lies behind us to the East. You will follow the child and his family. You must protect the child.”
“The child? What child? But why? I will not.”
“You will. It is written in the book of life.”
“I do not read.”
Balthazar chuckled. His long fingers reached forward and brushed through the girls greasy hair.
“Listen to me Little Sparrow. I will give you now my final gift. It is all I have left to give.
Some see little. It is all they can see. It is their path. Others see much. Once seen it is the path they must follow. Other see what they choose to see, and call their path, the path they have chosen. Then there are the few – the true chosen. Those such as yourself, and the boy behind us. They must see all. It is the path thrust upon them. There is no choice. They are chosen. This last is the loneliest of all roads. You have blundered into fortune, for there is one who will walk before you.”
“Yes. You. You will walk before me. I will follow you.”
Laughing once more Balthazar hugged the girl to his side as he walked, and continued his cryptic dissertation. The girl looked upwards with love, and pretended to understand.
“The boy. He will walk before you. A guardian spirit has delivered his father a message. It sends him from this land. You will follow. They must not see you. The path of the child must be alone amongst his people. Yours however is not the path of men. Your path is to separate our world – the world of demons – from the world of men. In this way will he have comfort to discover the path to his power. It is our hope one day his power will be our power to share.”
“I will not protect the boy – not from demons, or from fat Herod. Let the demons eat him. I will go with you.”
“He is protected for now. We have performed the spell. We have left with him the charms. All this will protect him, but only for a short time. The power of our sacred symbols is brief in this time. They will gain power in the time to follow. The child will gather power unto him through the path he follows, and he will return it outwards unto us through the sacred geometry. At this time the symbols of our order are without true power. Through the child they will have power once more...and the demons will burn.”
“Let them burn. Let them not burn. I do not care. I will follow you. I will protect you from the demons.”
“I have no importance. Look about you. See the stories written in the sky. Smell the sweetness in the air. Listen to the tales told by the wind in the cedars on the hills. This is the story of life. This has importance. This is what you must protect.”
“I will not.”
“You will!” Shouted Balthazar, stopping suddenly, pulling mightily on the halter rope, jerking the camel's head about, and bringing it to a stop.
Balthazar pounded his staff down, and a puff of dust splooshed upwards from the dusty road.
“You will return to the caves. You will wait for the family to leave. You follow them. You will protect the boy from the demons. You will never allow the world of men to know your business.'
“I will not!”
“You will!!”
“I will follow you!!!”
“You will not!!!”
Balthazar released the girl from his embrace. She jerked her shoulder violently backwards, in a gesture to say this was my decision. She stared up into the angry eyes of the tall wizard, refusing to look away. Their wrestling stares vied for dominance. The girl blinked, then looked quickly away as if to say “I have no interest in this”. Suddenly though, she saw where they were.
The road behind her led to the east, before her was the west and the sea. Another road crossed, south to Jerusalem, and north to the green fields of ancient Babylon. She looked behind her. Melchior strode up leading his camel.
“Father”, she said, “Take me with you. I will work hard. I will learn the ways of the sea.”
Melchior looked away, and lifted one hand upwards to mock ignorance of her words, and request. He continued walking to the West.
Gaspar arrived from the rear, pulling his donkey behind him.
“Father”, said Little Sparrow, “Take me with you. I will slay the giant cats for you, and sew for you a pair of fine pantaloons from their skins.”
The old African looked down at the road, and walked past, then turned to the south.
Little Sparrow, and Balthazar stood watching their shapes fade into the night.
Tears began to roll in streams down her dirty cheeks. She sobbed and convulsed. Balthazar gripped the halter rope, and led his camel away up the road to north.
“I will follow you”, the girl called out sobbing.
“You will not”, returned the wizard, and leaned down to pick up a stone, which he cast at her upon rising, catching her in the shoulder.
“I will”, she cried ignoring the blow.
“Bah...” answered Balthazar and turned to continue on his path to the north.
The girl remained, standing there bleating loud pitiful sobs. It was dawn when the sobbing stopped. The three shapes had disappeared from view down the three roads.
Little sparrow looked upwards. Overhead flew a white dove. The girl looked up at the bird. The bird looked down at the girl – a tiny red shape at the center of a crossed path.
THE END
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