TC62

Jashen said, “I know. And some in the Fellowship will say lending the Windgate to Erik was more than I had the authority to grant.” He faced Erik’s widow. “Clara, I will not ask you to accept on my simple word that the relic is real and the Green Book is true in every sense. When you bid your husband farewell at the Temple you will see the wisdom of the Final Rite. But for now I ask that you and your children be strong. In the days to follow some will say to your face that God punished your husband with death for putting his holy gift to profane use. They will dare to tell you this even though they themselves received the benefit of his labors.”

Dory and Gabe came to the Zinter house just then, completely out of breath. They had started running over as soon as they heard the terrible news from their mother. When they embraced their friends Clara saw how their arrival elevated her children from their grief a tiny bit. After pondering that fact for a moment Clara told Seer Jashen she wanted his children to be with Ariel and Jael for Erik’s funeral.

But Dory had caught her breath by then. “My father says the Last Rite actually destroys faith. You believe because you see it, and it is a great comfort and blessing. But Lord Yeshua said more blessed are those with the pure faith of a child, those who believe without having seen.”

Gabriel nodded in reluctant agreement with his sister.

Clara said, “We have no family here in Headwater. All my people are back east, and my in-laws…” She chuckled ruefully. “My in-laws are Bunner Incarnate. They always held me at arm’s length and I never knew why. Ariel and Jael are taking the death of Erik very hard. Then you kids came over just now and they both brightened, just a little. I could see it. I know you saw it too. You’re like a family to them, more than any of their aunts and uncles and cousins on Erik’s side could ever be. And in the end this is all about Ariel and Jael anyway.”

After she said her piece it became a gentle negotiation. In the end, Jashen Shybear agreed that the children could be together at the Temple, but he did persuade Clara to have them wait in Temple basement while Erik was sent to his eternal destiny.

The town of Headwater, true to its name, is where the New River begins, but it’s also where the railroad and pavement end. Other than a few dirt roads and old wagon tracks the land north, west and south of town is the biggest void in the lower forty-eight United States.

A little to the northeast of Headwater is a pillar of rock carved by wind to look like an Indian woman carrying a papoose in her papoose. West of town the river, really just a big creek at that point, poured out from an underground cistern of warm water. Vapor was visible in winter. The spring was an anomalous thermal feature of the high plains that properly belonged, perhaps, one state over in Wyoming.

The upper vale of the New River was a steep gorge that flared out into a four acre flat piece of land near the source. This had been the bed of a lake in ages past. The river road skirted the periphery of this lake bed and rejoined itself after making a complete circuit. Inside the ring road, which doubled as a parking lot, was the whitewashed temple of the Headwater Fellowship.

Headwater was a one-church town. Services were on Sunday as usual, but Wednesdays were given over to the Last Rite. But it would have been unseemly to run around playing while the body of the twins’ father was sent to his long home along with three other Greendomites from around the country, so Ariel and Jael and Dory sat in the Temple basement, very bored, while volunteers prepared dinner for the families of the dead.