WANDERING ETERNAL
CHAPTER 1 - A STROLL FROM THE EAST OF EDEN TO THE LAND OF NOD; EAST OF EDEN
And just like that he was snapped out of the field and wound up at the foot of a range of several interconnected mountain peaks and valleys, at a point from where he couldn’t quite be sure whether he was on one of the former or the latter. So he set his eyes upon the highest peak he could find and decided he would scale it. It didn’t matter, anyway. Why would it? In the matter of a second he had been cast away from everything he had ever known, had ever loved. He had best cast away from Aklima.
And he thought, well, good riddance, then.
I am a man of a hundred years, how dare father presume to tell me who I should marry and who I shouldn’t marry. She was /my/ sister. We shared our mother’s womb. Abel should have just relented and married Azura. She was /his/ sister. They were both 50 years; they were half my age.
And now, brother, you are fifty years forever.
I was the first to be born, and now you are the first to be dead. The youngest a human has ever been.
He hardened his facade on the journey up the mountain, unconscious to himself, as a reflex, to keep him from considering the ramifications of his actions and its secondary effects and its third effects. He didn’t want to think about what God told him about his curse, or what God then told him about his mark, or what he had done to the soil, what he had done in the field that cursed the soil, where the soil soaked up the spilling of his transgressions. He was a farmer, he knew the soil better than his father and better than his brother and better than God.
How dare God presume to take the fertility of the land from my till? Does he truly think he has that power? I, who discovered how to plant one fruit and grow two, neither of which was good enough for him, yet, evidently good enough for him to use their absence as a lash to brandish against me?
“Where is your brother Abel?” Cain heard in his mind, echoing from one ear to the other, in the thunderous kind of speaking without speaking that God had accustomed them to hearing.
More the fool of him to follow me to the field. I told him it would happen, should he go forward with father’s request and wed my duplicate. I had told him and he still followed me into the field like the stupid little boy he was.
“Should you raise your hand to kill me, I will not raise mine to kill you. I fear God, the Lord of all worlds, and I would rather you were burdened with my sins as well as yours and became an inhabitant of the Fire: such is the evildoers' reward.”
Cain almost believed him, until he slew him, anyway. He found a location outside of God’s bosom, his brother in tow, strapped across his back slapshodily, until Cain came upon a recess in the mountain foot where he dropped Abel dispassionately and nudged him into rolling into this recess, and a crow came forth as he did so, making its presence known to Cain abruptly and startling him. Cain just committed the first murder in history, and wasn’t quite aware of its finer points. After a series of diagonal spins, the crow landed beside Cain and started scratching at the ground, teaching Cain how to make a grave. This was how Cain realized that God knew of Abel’s murder.
“Where is your brother Abel?”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“Why are you angry? Why has your countenance fallen?”
It’s all father’s fault, anyway. Instead of letting us have the partners we were born with, they wanted to marry me off to a child of fifty.
He wondered if he had actually inherited all of his brother’s sins, and how long he would have to stay in this purgatory of wandering with the combined sins of himself, his brother, and their parents.
It all started with them, anyway. I shouldn’t even be here in the first place. Or, maybe it started with God. How am I to know what is right and what is wrong? My mother ate the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and you called it wrong. You told them they couldn’t know what was good and what was evil and they produced children who would never know what was what. You banished them from paradise, and still, Father insisted that my marriage to Aklima had to have your blessing; and even that you couldn’t give. Why does he expect all of this from us? Why are they so loyal to him?
“Cain, you will marry your brother’s twin sister Azura. Aklima will wed Abel; together, you will populate this world we have been sentenced to. And, eventually, we will all eat in paradise together.”
“I will not, father. I won’t marry Azura. Aklima loves me and I love her. Abel is but a child, as is Azura.”
“Why should I marry Azura? I, too, wish to wed Aklima. Why should you decide? Because you were born first?”
“I was. I was the first born of any person. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Boys; if you will not listen to me, then you have forced my hand. Give to God a sacrifice, whoever’s is most worthy can marry who they like.”
The further Cain climbed the mountain’s face, the more convinced he became that he was climbing the highest mountain peak in the entire world. He looked out over the expanses around him, which broke away to valleys in every direction except for directly ahead, where it began to grow at a sharp incline. He looked up, and saw a great lashing of fire plumes sweep into view from one side of the mountaintop and out of view on the other, then again, and so on. His apprehension sweltered, having just become aware of mortality and death and murder and hurt not only as concepts but also as material inevitabilities of reality.
“Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” The booming echo of God’s voice came back into his mind, and for the second time he experienced the excruciating pain of the mark God placed upon him; it was like it had ripped his heart out and then replaced it with a solid bronze ball that extended throughout the inside of his body and had sent him squirming in ripples of pain.
He climbed on. The steeper it became the less he looked at the ground.
“God only accepts the sacrifice of those that are righteous in their doings.”
More like self-righteous, Cain thought.
“God only accepts the sacrifice of those that are righteous in their doings.”
I can still hear how it bleated. The first of his flock. The oldest; fat from love and care. And he skinned it, like it had never meant anything to him the last six years. Sacrifice of the righteous? More like of the heartless. We all loved that sheep. He was only going to use it for its wool, until he thought it was his ticket to my Aklima. Then he happily broke open its backbone and separated its ribs, the way God had with Father, and pulled off its feet to nubs, which God intends to happen to me, and crushed open the plate between its head and spine, the way- well..
I offered him a weaving of grain; of oats, three bushels of wheats, chickpeas, whole cups of lentils, the sweetest, finest figs I could produce. It took me an entire year of my life to make sure the offering was just right. So fit for a God that even his own children wouldn’t have been fit to feast from it. Then, when Abel came to the field, holding under his arms three huge clothwrapped and distinct portions, fresh and tenderized from cooling in the tigris, it was like I didn’t exist. He /actually/ tossed my basket on the ground; slackjawed like a mule waiting for his dinner, slobbering.
“You have earned my blessing on this day, Abel. The blood you let over the dirt will soak into its core, and turn to loam for the rest of your flock to graze,” he stuffed his mouth full. Chewing wide-jawed on his cud.
That was that, Cain had thought, he couldn’t help but drop his face in visceral disappointment.
The love of my life for the last hundred years; one of three women in the world, gone to little Abel. All there is left is my mother and Abel’s twin, in birth and in visage.
“Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” He prophesied to me, mouth full of mutton, disposition full of righteous superiority.
How could he preach down to me about desire, while dripping in his bloodthirsty fetish for cartilage and sinew, slurping fat from the bone.
Father was overjoyed; he too was so sanctimonious, so proud to see that what he thought would be best would come to pass. Again; I say good riddance to all of them; even you, Abel. You couldn’t leave well enough alone. Now, where are you? Ripped apart at the head like the first of your flock - at least I had the heart to use a stone and end it quick, feeling whatever is the opposite of revenant.
“Where is your brother Abel?” God asked; he had run out of red-blood meat, and Cain thought he wanted another plate.
“I do not know; am I to be my brother’s keeper?”
“Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth."
"Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me." Later Cain would admit that he hammed it up, thinking that if God could pity him, anyone would be able to.
He had submitted, though, and with a snap of mighty fingers, Cain was transported from his parent’s home at the foot of one mountain to the foot of another.
The encircling flame over the mountain was starting to make him sweat as he closed in on the top. He tried to judge the height at which it stood over the mountain top, so that it couldn’t hit him. Once he finally crawled onto the mountainhead, he remained ducked until it was perfectly and assuredly safe, not wanting to take any chance of getting ensnared in the circle of fire.
In front of him, now, he realized he had stumbled onto a massive, lush, widely populated forest - atop a frozen mountain situated by two historically drought stricken basins on either side? How could this be possible? He looked through the thick brush and bracket and canopies of the trees that turned the inside of the forests dark just past where it started. All the while, the fire swung around overhead grindingly, the heat and smoke from it seemingly leaving the fertile and full greenery below it unaffected from its presence. Just as he made to take a step into this oasis, two cherubim flew down from the ceiling of the canopies up, their wings only moving once or twice, retracting in on themselves then opening and using the force to propel them over Cain and baring his entrance, standing just in front of the crouched fratricidist.
The cherubim on his left had the legs of a deer, the torso of a giant owl, with a lion’s head, a bull’s head, and an infant human’s head, in that order. The cherubim on his right had the haunches of a cat, the torso of a man, with a dog’s head, a jaguar’s head, and a caribou’s head, in that order. Both adorned the wings of a dove. They were both half of Cain’s size, and they both had Cain’s hands and arms.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The lion head opened its mouth and spoke to Cain, the noises it made weren’t that of a lion’s roar or the human tongue, even though Cain heard both, it was more like a sonically reverberating length of exhalation.
“Aren’t you Adam’s son?” The Caribou asked, in caribou, human, and a piercing whang.
Cain closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his head in pain at the cherubim’s divinely arcane sirening, then opened them at length, having expected a strike, though neither made a move against him yet. He looked up at the cherubim just as the arcing fire swept over them, sending their various sets of furs and feathers and manes and looser ears swinging against the wind. Only now did he notice that the fire circling around the mountain’s head wasn’t just a fire, but a sword that was set on fire.
“Yes, I am the son of Adam, I am just looking for the Land of Nod. I mean you no harm.”
The dog chuckled at this, obviously trying to hold it in as much as possible, to keep from bursting Cain’s eardrums, “You mean us no harm.”
“Is- is this Eden? Is this the paradise my parents lost?”
Neither of them answered.
“Please, you don’t have to tell me, I’m sorry. It’s just, I was told by God to travel to the Land of Nod; East of Eden.”
“Do you not come from East of Eden?” The bull bellowed down at him.
“Gahh– yes. I guess- I don’t know. Please, just point me in the direction of Nod and I will leave, and I won’t return to you, ever.”
“Be still, son of Adam,” now the infant head spoke with the voice and intonation of one much older than his face, “stand up.
“You have been going west, turn, look, you mightn’t have seen it from your location below. Over those mountains; look - that expanse behind the far left peak, that is The Land of Nod; Duidain, a wasteland wild, with very little to sustain oneself on but plenty to be eaten by. It is the infinite dwelling of the chaos beast of the land, the Behemoth, until the end of days upon this earth. Why in 5th Heaven would God send you to such a place?”
“I don’t know, I think he’s mad at me.”
The six angel-heads looked between each other, then over the country below the mountain, then up at the sword defending it. One said, “Yeah, he has a pension for drama.”
“How far is the land of Nod from this place?” Cain asked, turning around and stretching his neck in any direction that might work.
“Many kilometers, days forward. The Duidain is not always visible; you may arrive just to find it has been moved momentarily. But it is the land of the chaos beast, he likely will not take well to your presence.”
“It is where I have been expelled, the path that will lead to my redemption and acceptance into paradise. I have the Mark of Cain in my heart; even the great chaos beast cannot enact his vengeance upon me.”
“Then go, Cain, Son of Adam. Be steadfast in your determination. Tread upon the will to return to God’s light. Find his workings, remember the benevolent path he hath willed.”
Cain nodded curtly, and turned to look upon Duidain in the distant expanse, his future, or the first flag of it. He made to descend from Eden, but stopped just as he sat down to lower himself and turned to the winged cherubim. “Um, it seems the Land of Nod is vast in its distance, do you mind?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Can I get a lift?”
“Oh, yeah, of course.”