the city on the hill

We had walked for many weeks before we saw, in the distance, the fabled city on the hill, its great walls gleaming in the late afternoon light. Beset in every step by the fear of those who pursued us, we journeyed across trackless wilderness with little to forage, crossed flooded and treacherous rivers, threaded steep mountain passes.

Seeing its white parapets was the first hopeful sign since we had fled our home with naught but the food carried upon our backs and our two small children in our arms. I wept with relief and Condee's eyes brimmed seeing me so moved by hope.

But between us and the great city was the wreckage left behind from the war of the Gigantes. Nothing had grown there in a hundred years, the ground poisoned by weapons beyond all human imagining.

Some say that their ghosts still wander in the noxious mists among the ruined heaps of manmade stone and iron branches that have never borne leaf nor fruit. Every footfall made treacherous by rubble that teetered and slid, we picked our way across it slower than our babes might have crawled.

Even the earth warned us to turn back, groaning and trembling as if remembering the terrible battle that laid waste to this place. We spent three days cautiously crossing the valley instead of the half a day we had hoped.

All that survived our ancestors once mighty nation was our destination, the city on the hill. When we finally approached its massive gates, a man in orange robes greeted us outside it's high walls.

Brother and sister have you travelled far?

Condee, holding our little boy tight in his arms, gave him a little poke to make him giggle, his sister joining his laughter in mine.

When we left our home, the moon was new, I answered tearfully, and in the twilight last it appeared full and shone so brightly that our shadows played across the ground in the darkness.

Come, the man gestured, refresh yourselves within our walls and rest from the weariness of your long journey.

The gates groaned, their timbers shuddering when they began to separate. Struck by awe, I wondered what enormous apparatus was hidden within the walls to open such gates as these!

The builders of the city had fashioned its roads from hammered gold and fretted them with precious stones shimmering like glass in the afternoon sunlight. Rubies, emeralds and diamonds were so plentiful here that they were scattered in little heaps on both sides of the roads and regarded by its citizens as no more valuable than worthless pebbles or bits of broken glass.

Within the sanctuary of the city, the groanings we had heard in the valley seemed distant and otherworldly in comparison to the humming wonders heard and witnessed within its walls.

Alive with the machinery of the world from before, light brightly shone absent of torches within the buildings and along the roads in the night, great ovens cooked food and baked bread without kindling, and water moved about the city for irrigation, quenching thirst and bathing without the power of windmills.

The man led us through the city chatting amiably while we gazed in wonder at the prim, white-washed buildings and tall towers within. On every home hanging vines fairly brimmed with fruits and vegetables within easy hand’s reach, our guide picking and passing to us luscious black grapes, strawberries and little golden tomatoes.

But although we saw many welcoming people when we toured the city on the hill, everyone we encountered was old, one man in brown robes so ancient that the light had long since gone out of his eyes. He walked hunched forward, the determination to live etched into the deep lines in his face and the grim set of his jaw.

We turned together to stare at the old one's back as he silently plodded down the golden walkway in the direction we ourselves had taken moments before.

Brother Gregory is the wisest of us, our guide explained with a smile, his thoughts are often bent on weighty matters. But he will want to meet and speak with you before long.

Walking beyond the great tower, we entered a domed building. At the top of its vault a small opening admitted a single column of light that shown in the room's center. Darkness lay like a cloak at the edges of the circular space, but just off center a bronze statue of nine children stared at the window to the sky, their figures draped in soft shadow.

Our guide wept, whispering reverently - The children are our future.

Where are the children? I asked quietly in return.

Turning, he looked at us with a mixture of grief and joy.

We are the children.

Then where are their parents? I asked in confusion.

But instead of answering, he exclaimed, You must be famished and exhausted, and led us out of the dome to a dining hall to arrange for our food and drink.

The cook brought us fresh bread, soup and roasted vegetables, a sumptuous feast after our stomachs had suffered weeks of poor forage on our journey.

We ate till we groaned with the pain of full bellies and then I nursed our children to sleep in my arms. Reclining later in our room, I whispered in Condee's ear, There are no children here and have not been in half an age. But pressing a finger silently to my lips, he shook his head slowly. Taking our rest, we did not communicate again that night.

In the morning when I awoke, the aches of the last weeks had fled my body. Do you feel restored? I whispered.

But Condee's face was pale when he struggled to sit up, and I stared at him in alarm. Smiling weakly, he gave me a reassuring smile.

Helplessly I wondered why a single night in the city would return my health and spirits and yet take his away. Was seeking sanctuary here a wise or foolish gamble?

Remembering with a shiver why we fled to this place, I asked Condee, Do you think the Grand Inquisitor will follow us here? But I could see the answer in his dark gaze.

Condee was the finest tracker in Malcome's army. When we left the village, we cut through the noxious swamp south of the village rather than north toward the city of the hill, walking through its waist deep waters throughout the long day to eliminate any scent trail.

Those trying to follow us would have lost our trail before they even started. Condee made sure of that. But we both knew it would not stop Malcome. He was the father of our tribe for a reason. He would surely know that the city was always our true destination.

The next day our guide took us underground to show us the machinery that ran the city. But when I asked how it worked or how often it needs repair, he answered, No one knows how it works, and it never needs repair. It functioned for hundreds of years before brother Gregory first stepped through its gates and it will continue to do the same for hundred's of years into the future.

I don't understand.

The city is alive as you or I. The whitewashed plaster covering each building is its skin and the bricks and iron girders within its walls are its bones. It grows our food, harvests our wheat and grinds it to bake our bread. All this it does and more for great is its love for its children!

His words weighed heavily on our minds and hearts like a shadow we could not shake. As each new day passed, Condee was weaker than the one before and my initial fear gradually transitioned to alarm. On our fourth night in the city, I whispered, I'm frightened Condee, this place is killing you. We need to leave before you're too weak even to walk. But he simply smiled, shook his head and pulled me into his embrace.

We slept in one another's arms like we had before our precious twins were born. The comfort of skin on skin and the feel of his breath on my cheek restored a little of the joy we had known before the inquisitor came to take our children from us.

Once upon a time childbirth was a common and everyday thing. But these days that seems too strange to be true. Before the birth of our children, not a single child was born in our village for the last twenty years.

Nothing is more precious than a newly born baby. By law, the leader of the tribe claims fatherhood of every new child. We all, every one of us, call Malcome father.

And the Grand Inquisitor is the Father of Fathers. If he claims a child, he claims it for God to serve in God's army. This is something Condee knows better than any of us.

In the morning Condee had a little color in his cheeks, and I could not help but wonder if he drew a little strength from my body pressed so closely to his.

But whatever small hope was born when I caressed his brow and kissed him good morning was soon shattered after breaking the fast. Our usually sunny guide looked mortified when he finally took us to meet with brother Gregory.

He waited for us in a parapet atop the outer wall where we saw the gathering of both Malcome and the Grand Inquisitor's armies. We could hear the felling of timbers in a nearby woodland, the ground shaking as they fell. When Brother Gregory turned toward Condee, his face flushed with anger, he demanded - What are they doing?

Building siege engines, I replied stiffly.

I didn't ask you, he said angrily, daggers appearing in Condee's eyes with his answering stare.

My husband is mute. If you want to converse, it will be with me or we'll bid you a good day.

Still gazing accusingly at Condee, Brother Gregory said disparagingly, Open your mouth, boy.

Condee leaned threateningly toward him and opened it with a tongueless and deafening brae, Gregory stepping backward in sudden fright.

Where is that idiot priest? he yelled once he regained his composure. This man bear's the mark of the inquisitor and should die with his brother's outside the gates.

You think that hidden in your ivory tower you know us? I asked angrily. Where are your soldiers, priest?

I don't need soldiers. The city will do my work for me. It will not allow a man whose has spilled blood to live. Your mute is already dying. Watch and learn, he said pointing to the great tower in the city's center.

From our view point in the parapet, we could see a pair of catapults atop the tower poised for firing, first one and then the second bucking as their arms sprung forward, their baskets releasing clouds of gems that gleamed like tiny flames in the bright sunlight.

The little stones tore through the ranks of the assembled soldiers, felling many. Those not killed in the first volley soon began to kill one another for a mere handful of those precious gems. But more volleys continued till their bloody assaults were beyond any counting.

The city that loved and jealously nourished and guarded the innocent ruthlessly slayed Malcome's and the Inquisitor's armies like a small boy might casually crush a line of ants in the sand.

I knew then that if we stayed that Condee would die, but men, however gentled their hearts, did not control the gates. Men did not control any of the machinery in the city.

I believe with all my heart that the city would have let both Condee and I out of its gates, but not with our children. How could we leave our babes here without us, however desirable the haven?

Twenty years have passed since the fateful day we entered the city. But in all the time that followed, no other young ones journeyed here to experience its welcoming beauty or dread its remorseless judgement. I sometimes wonder if our twins were the last children born on the earth.

Now that they are grown, they do not remember the small village where they were born. They do not remember their father though I have told them many times how his courage and skill made their lives possible in this place.

Its towers still shine as brightly as the day we first beheld them. Like everything inside its mighty walls, its whitewash needs no additional application nor cleaning. It removes every blemish that dares to mar its beauty.

I fear the city on the hill will outlive us all.