Alii's Sickness

Ofi’ara was the first to notice Al’iisheae’s sickness – because she was the first to see him distantly walking along the floor of the sandy canyon, returning to the village after three weeks.

A smile had relaxed her cheeks, before they stretched with a mild tension at the realization that he was wavering like the hot air surrounding him, and that the mashk slung across his back was drained of all its water. Still, he was home. He’d made it through the vision quest.

The people of the village came alive around Ofi’ara as they began to each make out Al’iisheae’s form. He disappeared behind a line of scrub, but soon he was back in view and climbing the footholds in the bottom half of the cliff, up towards the great cavity in the canyon wall where their village had lived for more generations than any of them could count.

As Al’iisheae pulled himself across the bluff’s edge and onto the sandstone floor, Ofi’ara could see that his tan skin had become somehow more… red. If the other villagers noticed this, they didn’t show it. A vibrant homecoming crowd had formed, and its front now stepped back to make room for Al’iisheae. He beamed at them through tired eyes, which searched the crowd with customary acknowledgement of all his family, and lit up just a bit when they found Ofi’ara.

An ancient pine of a man stepped out from amidst the villagers – unhurriedly composed in a tapestried robe – and stopped in front of Al’iisheae.

“I… have… have gone, and I have returned, Elder,” the former boy grinned through exhaustion, as the ceremonial words returned to his mind.

“And did you find communion with the spirits of the Gods, my child?”

“Yes Elder, I have.”

“As was done by my father and his father before him, you shall recount their teachings to your tribe tonight – but no longer as a boy.” He paused with force. “You are now wicasa, Al’iisheae.”

As the headman gave the gentle command to prepare feast, the crowd crashed around their newest man, relief dampening his mother’s eyes as she hugged him closely – pride similarly welling in his father’s. Ofi’ara stood back, quiet with the knowledge that Al’iisheae would find her as soon as he could.

Find her he did, after the crowd had scattered for the night’s festivities. Ofi’ara was lying on their slope, just beyond the canyon’s curve from the main part of the village, where prying eyes rarely wandered. Al’iisheae’s pace quickened when he saw her, and she stood up to embrace him. Their bodies closed tight, his face in her hair, her lips open in laughter. “Alii, I missed you so much!” She pulled back and looked at his ruddy face. “What happened to you out there?”

“It’s… it’s nothing, I think just sunstroke,” he spoke hesitantly, looking away. “I’m already feeling… much better than I was…better than yesterday.” He lifted his face, meeting her eyes with uncharacteristic boldness. “Ofi, I found something. And I want you to have it.”

“On your hanbleceya? So it’s from the Gods,” she laughed, and then she noticed the intensity in his expression.

“They’re… they’re real, Ofi. They were here once, and I have proof.” His reddened palm unrolled before her. In it lay the smoothest stone she’d ever seen, its two rounded halves reflecting the cliffs around them into waterfalls. The halves came together at the stone’s base and widened apart across its length, forming two round bumps at the top. From between these breasts flowed a rope of the same kind of liquid stone, or rather dozens of ringed stones delicately interlinked. Ofi’ara’s mouth went slack.

“It’s… it’s the ancient rune for love, I think. I found a chamber of the Gods, Ofi, after the great earthquake… it opened it, I think. I… I want you. To have it.” He gingerly pulled the stone rope apart between his fingers, and draped it across her head, and about her neck. She felt a warm tingle glowing from it.

“It’s a type of necklace, I think. But it was… it was worn only by the Gods before. And now you.” He looked into her eyes as she lifted her gaze from the stones up to his face. She caught her breath, and smiled. And then, for the first time, she kissed him.

- - -

“So it was a vision in the Garden of Edges,” said the headman, in guidance more than in question. Across him, cross-legged, sat Al’iisheae – the ebbing firelight painting their forms as the tribe gathered around them in the kiva. Some faces, unable to fit in the small circular room, peered in from outside.

“Not a vision, Elder. We all felt… the earth move. It… it was before I even left, but we knew its significance,” recalled Al’iisheae haltingly. “It opened a line in the ground, right through the Garden. As if the Gods had intended it… for me. For us.”

“Wicasa, think deeply of what you speak. The Garden is a mere four days’ walk from here, and if your experience was physical, not of the dream-world… others will want to see.”

“They can see. Right there, right below the… rocks, those sharp rocks pointing into the sky, there was… the crack. And it… beckoned me down and down, until only at high noon was there light enough to see where I was going.”

“And then? You carried no torch.”

“I didn’t have to. As I went lower, I began to see… see a heavenly glow. Indigo, the glow of the sky, but beneath me. And then… I slipped, and I fell, and I landed in an unending temple of water… with runes, runes inscribed on all the walls. And half in the water, great urns of stone… some cracked, and from the water beneath these… the glow. The sky-glow.”

“Al’iisheae, this is…”

The headman faltered – the room simmering, then erupting with whispers of doubt.

“This is all true,” said Ofi’ara as she stepped into the circle. Firelight glinted off the halved stone on her chest.

Silence fell upon the kiva, as all eyes locked onto the alien necklace.

“I… I found it in the water,” explained Al’iisheae. “Elder, it is of the Gods. They left it here before they rode… their… their fire into the sky.”

The headman was silent, but his face was grim. “Wicasa, these are not merely legends. Do not blaspheme.”

“I know what I saw, Elder,” Al’iisheae said, trying not to stumble. “It is a temple of the Gods, unlike… unlike anything our tribe has ever seen. The… the Garden, too… as our legends say… must be of the Gods.”

“The Gods were real, Al’iisheae,” the headman stood from his seat quietly, his gaze a mountain against the uncertainty of the young man. “And far more powerful than we could imagine. If you truly entered their hallowed grounds…”

The room was still but for the crackle of fire, each villager waiting for the word that would pierce the air.

Finally, it was Ofi’ara who spoke.

“The Gods were good, Elder. If they have opened their grounds to us, they want us to see within.” The tingle around the necklace had been growing stronger since Al’iisheae had given her the gift, and she felt it as holiness.

“We must see this temple!” implored Al’iisheae’s uncle from the crowd, echoed by murmurs of agreement from its remainder.

The headman paused and considered Al’iisheae for a long minute. He had never known this boy to lie. “The runes you mention – did you understand any of them?”

“Perhaps… perhaps the first one… it was… WE… this means, 'us', right Elder? This means the Gods.”

A tired and careful smile slowly spread across the headman’s face. “Yes, wicasa. This means the Gods.”

- - -

On the third day of their trek, the seven villagers hid their first, empty mashks amidst the desert scrub, and carried on with only their second waterbags towards the yet-unseen Garden of Edges.

The headman did not carry his own mashk. He was an elder in each sense of the word, and so the trek was longest of all for him – but his unmatched knowledge of the ancient runes urged a spot within the party. Ofi’ara was an unlikely member herself, having joined at the headman's imploring.

The necklace, too, seemed to indicate the Gods were partial to Ofi’ara’s presence. Her skin around its stones had reddened over time, with even some small blisters of heat beginning to form.

Ofi’ara carried two mashk’s – her own and Al’iisheae’s. The young man marched bravely on, not wanting to slow down the group – but his sickness had returned, and seemed to grow worse with each day. It was only his connection to their holy destination that kept the group from demanding he turn home… this, and his impossible insistence that the illness was coincidence.

That night was difficult for Al’iisheae, but by the rays of morning sun, he felt a bit better, and knew that they had little travel left to the Garden. A few hours later, its sky-reaching rocks began to break up the horizon, and soon, the group was walking amidst them.

“Right… right up here, the crack…begins,” whispered Al’iisheae, his usual timidness further weighed by the burden of delirium. The fever was leaving him like a man without water. But the party followed his gesture, and soon they were resting in the shade of the crevice – shallow where they sat, yet descending into darkness mere feet beyond.

“We know nothing of this place,” spoke the headman, “beyond what Al’iisheae has seen. I will go down with him alone.”

Ofi’ara and two others in the party protested, but the headman’s word was final. The group’s keeper produced a torch for Al’iisheae, and one for the headman, and upon lighting them, the two men began their descent down the hairline ravine.

Soon they were out of sight of the group.

“Elder, I fear… I fear that I’m wrong.”

“How so, Al’iisheae?”

“My sickness… it must…must have something to do with this place.”

“This is true, wicasa,” laughed the headman. “Why do you think I am alone here with you?”

The young man stopped in his slide between two rocks and stared at his leader. “But… you’d choose this danger? If you know it to be… that?”

“This is the way of the wicasa, Al’iisheae. I am not long for this world, and I fear you may not be either, but in our brief, strange existence, we may have discovered something truly holy. We may have discovered a remnant of the Gods.”

“I… I do think… I think I’m going to die, Elder.”

“I know this, Al’iisheae. This is why you are here, to complete your journey. Before our companions, and before Ofi’ara, so that your story may live on through them. Because in the end, all of us leave only memory.”

Al’iisheae was silent, but his eyes met the headman's with peace.

“We leave only memory, Al’iisheae. And perhaps, if we’re lucky, some small artifact for those who come next.”

And at these words, the pair continued their descent past the next yielding turn, and into the glow of the indigo light, and into the splendor of the forgotten room so long buried.

As Al’iisheae had witnessed, there was the long forever of stone urns, and all around them, midway up the wall, a simple string of rune. And the headman, drawing on his father’s teachings, and those of his father before him, began to read…

WE ARE GOING TO TELL YOU WHY THIS PLACE IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR. NOTHING VALUED IS HERE.

WHAT IS HERE WAS DANGEROUS AND REPULSIVE TO US. THIS MESSAGE IS A WARNING ABOUT DANGER.

THE DANGER IS STILL PRESENT, IN YOUR TIME, AS IT WAS IN OURS.

THIS PLACE IS A BURIAL PLACE FOR RADIOACTIVE WASTES.