- BA: In April 1942 word arrived of Lt. Col. James Doolittle’s air raid on Tokyo after months of steady bad news following the attack of the Imperial Japanese Navy on Pearl Harbor. To celebrate, the Migdalel College Conservatory held a recital of patriotic John Philip Sousa marches at the Academy’s music hall out on Tin Pan Alley, attended by half of the town of Havilah. The band opened with ๐๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ด ๐๐ค๐ณ๐ฐ๐ด๐ด ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ฆ๐ข. This was followed with ๐๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ณ ๐๐ช๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ช๐ด, the official march of the US Marine Corps. ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ช๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ต๐บ ๐๐ฆ๐ญ๐ญ was light and playful, while ๐๐ญ ๐๐ข๐ฑ๐ช๐ต๐ข๐ฏ was flashy, a chance for the class to show off. ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ต๐ข๐ณ๐ด ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐๐ต๐ณ๐ช๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ด ๐๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ was the emotional high point, prompting the crowd of attendees to come to their feat where they were seated. ๐๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐๐ฐ๐ต๐ต๐ฐ๐ฏ was big and sweeping, with America Rises energy. ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ฉ๐ถ๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ณ was bold and declarative. For the finale the class wrapped things up with ๐๐ข๐ช๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ต ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ข๐ช๐ณ. Remiel danced near to her brother’s drum kit. Samael said, “I don’t see Mom or Dad out there,” and it was true.
- BB: Remiel searched all the faces in the audience and she didn’t see them. For an encore the class tore into a cover of the Duke Ellington standard ๐๐ต ๐๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ต ๐๐ฆ๐ข๐ฏ ๐ ๐๐ฉ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ (๐๐ง ๐๐ต ๐๐ช๐ฏ๐ต ๐๐ฐ๐ต ๐๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐๐ธ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ) with Remiel soloing on vocals and Elroy Shybear on sax. It was a tiny act of cultural rebellion disguised as entertainment, showing that even in isolation, Havilah wasnโt immune to the rhythms of Harlem and wartime radio. Some of the Stiffnecks were sorely offended that the class had injected ‘race music’ into their Sousa mood and stood up to leave in a huff, but the program was already over. What the older white residents of Havilah were calling “race musicโ shared the same brass and beat with marching music. They were nothing more than cousins quarreling over syncopated tempo as the country teetered between two worlds and two wars. Elroy and his sister thought they had closed the evening on a high note but for the Zinter kids it didn’t mean a thing if their own parents weren’t even there.
- BC: Havilah was small enough that most of the attendees had simply walked to the recital. By 9 PM it was apparent the parents of Remiel and Samael were never going to show up, so they left with their friends. Four blocks east they walked on Gran Via. Elroy and Sammy and Dory were chatting up how the show had gone but Remiel was stone quiet. She seemed to be distracted. Jump Street North went halfway up Treehouse Hill to the Shybear home and there at the foot of the hill they split up. Splitting up took a little time to accomplish, as by that time all four of them were on smooching terms. The Zinter place was another two blocks south. From a block away the kids could see the cars of strangers parked at their house and how the front door was propped open. Remiel began to cry before she even got home. Apostle Jashen Shybear was there with an older Kuwapi fellow the kids had sometimes seen together with their father before. Clara Zinter silently paced the room and when Samael saw her even he started crying.
- BD: It took a long time before Clara could look directly at her children and blurt it out: “Your father is gone!” Then they all cried until there was nothing more to give. Jashen and Wawokiya respectfully commiserated, for that was why they had come. Even when the eyes of the children were bone dry they were was still wracked by sobs that trailed off at great length to a quieter grief. Wawokiya took the pause as a signal to tell the children Erik was taken from them by an accident. Remiel raised her head and said, “Father never told us his work was so dangerous.” Jashen replied, “Even the Kuwapi men I sent to retrieve his body are doing so at great risk.” “Coal mining always means deadly gases,” Wawokiya said. “I carried a pole with a small cage on one end and a living canary. That was for the White Damp. If the canary died the shift was over. When that happened we quit digging and tried to get back out the way we came in. But your father was taken by the Black Damp after wet shale gave way under his feet.”
- BE: “It’s heavy. It displaced all the breathable air in the pit. I don’t know if the Black Damp carried your father off before Shahar Haruach did, but either way I can tell you he did not feel any pain. And I can also tell you there was nothing I could do to save him without joining him in eternity. I’m so very sorry.” Samael wanted Wakokiyah to go back to the part about Shahar Haruach. Jashen weighed in here. “Shahar Haruach is Hebrew, it’s translated Windgate. It was Lailah’s weapon in the Green Book. Your mother grew angry when I told her that because she always thought the Windgate was just a literary device to hurry the plot along, like the whale in the book of Jonah, but no, it was and is very, very real. I am telling you these things because I respected your father very much. A great burden was laid on him. I assure you Erik simply fell asleep and never again woke. I will always praise his memory. What he and Wawokiyah did allowed all the people of Havilah to thrive for years through a very dark time.”
- BF: Wawokiyah told Jashen the Kuwapi retrieving Erik’s body were also trusted men, and they would most certainly return the Windgate to him, but he warned the secret would still get out. There was no avoiding that. Jashen said, “I know. And some in the Church will say lending the artifact 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 Windgate 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 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 Elroy 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.
- BG: 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 Jashen she wanted his children to be with Remiel and Samae;l for Erik’s funeral. But Dory had caught her breath by then. “My father says the Last Rite actually destroys faith,” she said. “You believe because you see it, and it is a great comfort and blessing. But our Lord Yeshua said more blessed are those with the pure faith of a child, those who believe without having seen.” And Elroy nodded in reluctant agreement with his sister. But Clara said, “We have no family here in Havilah. All my people are back east, and my in-laws…” She chuckled ruefully. “My in-laws are Stiffneck Incarnate. They always held me at arm’s length and I never knew why. Remy and Sammy 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 a real family to them!
- BH: After Clara said her piece it became a gentle negotiation. In the end, Jashen 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. Now the town of Havilah, true to its name, is where the Pison 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 east of Havilah 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 (just a creek really) 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. Havilah was essentially a one-church town. Services were on Sunday as usual, but Wednesdays were given over to the Last Rite.
- BI: It would have been unseemly to run around playing while the body of their father was sent to his long home, so Remiel and Samael sat with Dory in the Temple basement, looking very bored, while volunteers prepared dinner for the families of the dead. Elroy joined them after breaking away from his group of Kuwapi boys smoking outside and pulled out a set of keys. “Benefits of being the preacher’s kid.” With these keys he unlocked the door to a supply room. The other three kids tagged along because there was nothing else to do. There was no electric light in the room, only a window with blinds and it was a typical gloomy Havilah day outside. There was an old piano which was probably broken. Remiel avoided the urge to play it. No need to call the Deacon down on them. There was a map of Havilah posted on a wall and there were the usual church odds and ends. They found unused hymnals, stacks of old temple bulletins, empty mason jars, and dozens of stacked folding chairs. Elroy suddenly froze and looked worried.
- BJ: “Shhh! What’s that?” Everyone froze but the only thing they heard was organ music and the choir bleeding through the ceiling from the main sanctuary upstairs. “Very funny.” Samael gave Elroy a friendly shove. “I’ve got a strange feeling,” said Remiel staring at the back wall. “I’ve been in here before.” The paint on that wall was unfinished. Elroy moved aside a piece of plywood that concealed another dark space beyond. It was so black inside it drank their vision like a sponge. He asked Dory, “Do we show them now, sis?” She nodded her head. “They had to find out sooner or later, so it might as well be now.” Elroy nodded in return and led the way. After ducking to enter the hole that had been covered by the pine board Remiel found she could stand straight up. Dory hit a switch by muscle memory and a string of lights came on in a twisting passage that was roughly carved in solid rock. It was tall enough to walk upright but very narrow. “We’re under the hill now,” Elroy said. “We’re inside Migdalel Butte.”
- BK: “Now I’m sure I’ve been here before,” Remiel said. “Don’t you remember, Sammy? We were little but we walked through here every day with Mom and Pop.” “That’s probably why I don’t remember,” Samael said. “You only remember things when you do something different. Like our trip to Mt. Rushmore.” Remiel frowned, but she had no retort. So they walked on until the tunnel flared out into a cave with a pool of water that was the very source of the Pison River. The stream poured out through a blue daylit hole. Elroy stood on a ledge over the pool. “Here, exactly here, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “is where Adamu and Hava first went to Kemen. Straight out of Second Covenants in the Green Book.” Samael was incredulous. “That’s what you wanted to show us?” “Isn’t it enough?” “In a museum in Havana are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,” said Remiel, quoting Mark Twain, “one when he was a boy and one when he was a man.” “Brother mine,” said Dory, “it really sounds like we have a pair of unbelievers on our hands.”
- BL: Elroy rolled up his sleeves and approached Remiel, flipping both hands over a few times to show they were empty. He said, “Hold out your hand.” And she did. Elroy clasped her hand and left there a stack of silver half-dollars. “Explain that, if you can.” Remiel shrugged and put the fifty-cent pieces in her purse because money was money and if Elroy wanted to give her ten bucks she had no absolutely objection at all. Remy said, “Magic tricks, just like they’re showing Momma upstairs right now. Why can’t people be amazed at the world for the way it really is?” Dory threw up her hands in mock despair at her heathen friend and muttered something about White Wingers under her breath. “So where does that tunnel go?” Samael asked, pointing to a second passage that seemed to lead back the way they came. “It goes to the Temple storeroom upstairs, but it also goes six days up the timeline. Or at least it did when we were all younger.” “What do you mean up the timeline?” asked a thoroughly confused Remiel.
- BM: “I mean when you come out of the tunnel it will be next Tuesday.” Samael stared at her for a moment, then decided to play along. “So if we came down here through that tunnel we’d be six days down the timeline, right? I could warn my dad and keep him from dying in the mine.” “The door’s locked at the top,” said Elroy, jangling his carabiner. “I’d need my father to sign off on it, and he’d need orders from Mikaela. I don’t think the orders will come because they haven’t already come. And that’s why we’re here at his funeral.” “Why wouldn’t Mikael let us do it?” demanded Samael. “Isn’t Davar good? Don’t they tell us every Sunday how Ayat and Avrah and Davar are so good?” “Davar is good,” said Dory, “so if she lets your foster father remain dead for the time being, there must be a good reason why.” “For the time being?” Now Remiel was getting annoyed. “You sound just like my daddy’s kin who came to the house telling us his passing was all part of God’s plan, as though it would make me feel better about it.”
- BN: Elroy decided it was time for extreme measures, so he stripped out of his clothes and waded out into the pool. No body modesty at all. They were all good friends and nobody else was there, but the Zinter kids could hardly believe their eyes. “Am I really seeing this, Sammy? Is my Kuwapi friend skinny-dipping during our father’s funeral?” Leroy said, “I’m about to prove to you what we already know and you refuse to believe. Everything in the Green Book is absolutely true.” Answered that way, Remiel and Samael both fell silent. They were unprepared and unwilling to actually call their friends liars. “We are cousins, you know,” Dory told them. “The two of you and the two of us. You are both cherished members of House Haivri but circumstances put you in the hands of the Stiffnecks, and what we’re dealing with now says more about the Stiffnecks then it does about you. We all have the same great-grandmother: Lailah. And before you ask, yes, she is the same Lailah from the Green Book. Sarah from the Bible.”
- BO: “I know we were adopted,” said Remiel. “Twice. But Sar Lailah? Sarah? She lived some four thousand years ago.” “Sister mine,” said Elroy, “I really think they need one more push.” He jumped into the warm water at the source of the Pison River and dove out of view. “I’ll give him less than one minute,” said Samael. But when that minute passed he started to worry and at four minutes he was stripping off his own clothes off to go after him. Dory just splayed her fingers out of boredom. Remiel decided to stay behind and remain dry. If there was anything to it Sammy would give a full report. Ten minutes after Leroy had gone in, and five minutes after Samael went after him, they both rose together to the surface of the pool. When Sammy saw his sister standing there he asked, “You’re still here?” “Why not? It’s only been a few minutes.” “It’s been few weeks!” “Bolshevek!” “I saw our real dad. I helped dig him out of a collapsed church.” “Cute! You re-enacted the very story that inspired him to name you Samael.”
- BP: “What story?” “Sammy, how can you not know the one part of the Green Book that has your name in it? It’s not like your name is very common! I know that always bugged you.” Samael looked at Leroy and asked, “Do you know what my sister is talking about?” Leroy said, “Maybe. I’ll need to read it again, now that we’re back.” He directed Sammy’s attention to a rack of clean linen towels that was kept fully stocked for any travelers between Earth and Kemen. It was, after all, one of the reasons his father had given him the key to the storeroom. When the kids were fully dressed they backtracked through the tunnel and scrambled out of the supply room. They sat together in the temple basement speaking no words. Remiel wanted answers but her brother didn’t even know where to begin. And just then the attendees began to filter in from upstairs. During the shared meal after the Final Rite Remiel and Samael both thought their foster mother seemed very different. Her grief was gone, but something else was gone too.
- BQ: Clara said, “Remy! Sammy! It’s all true. Everything in the Green Book is really true!” “I know, Momma,” said Samael. He had come to the same place by a very different route. But there was a feeling of melancholy lurking behind everything now. Dory had been justified when she warned against this. There was a kind of mundanity pervading everything now. Belief was no longer on the table. Thursday and Friday still seemed too soon for the Zinter kids to return to school. On Saturday morning Remiel and Samael went to the top of the high knoll adorned with Dory’s treehouse. To the north they could see Lake Taijitu lying behind the dam. Samael was well aware now that the real source of the Pison River lay in an entirely different world. West was the business center of Havilah, to the extent there still was business in wartime Havilah. To the south over the roof of the Shybear house he and Remiel could see the bulk of the town platted out south of the river, and they spotted their own little house down there.
- BR: In Dory’s treehouse Elroy was pouring over the Green Book with his sister looking over his shoulder. When Remiel and Samael came in the Shybear kids smiled. Elroy turned the book around on the table so they could have a look. “Tell me if this looks familiar,” he said. Samael read an account of Joshua Lange becoming a casualty of the shelling during the battle of Sharpsburg, and how Raphael called upon a boy named Samael to shift the fallen timber around to reach Lange. In the passage Raphael praised Samael and said, “You weren’t here last time and poor Joshua suffered immeasurably more.” Samael started completely over and read the passage again, aloud, so his sister was entirely on board with the rest of them, but there was no need. She had read the same story many times over the years. With Samael, no less. Her brother said, “This is familiar in the sense that it captures exactly what happened to me in Kemen after I dove in after Elroy, yet I’ve never read that passage in the Green Book until just now.”
- BS: “That’s crazy,” Remiel said. “I’m not making a mistake here, Sammy. I’m telling the truth: this is your favorite part of the Green Book. You were always a little embarrassed about your name, because nobody else is named Samael, except that one strong kid in the Book of Pilgrims.” Samael turned to his two cousins and asked, “Have any of you ever read this stuff before?” “I have,” said Dory. “I have to take Remy’s side here. Yeah, I remember this part. This is my own Green Book and can you see how it’s all marked up with my notes. But Sammy is siding with my brother.” “Sammy and Elroy don’t remember reading this story,” said Remiel, “and only Sammy and Elroy jumped into the Mikvah.” “There’s no great mystique behind what’s going on here,” Elroy said. “Eternal Wednesday. We always went up the timeline in six day jumps. And so did you two, with your own parents, Eternal Sunday, but clearly they never told you what was happening. And we never went downstream before. But this one time Mikaela let us do it.”
- BT: “And here’s the punch line,” said Samael. “I can do exactly what that kid in the Green Book did, now. All I need to do is touch something and I can move it, no matter how big it is. I can flip your daddy’s station wagon.” “Can you fix my daddy’s station wagon?” asked Elroy, but Sammy had to shake his head no. And Dory was staring in an odd way at Remiel, trying to gather her reaction at what Samael had just claimed he could do. Dory said, “And you, Remy, you don’t have any trouble believing what Sammy just said?” Remiel replied, “My brother is no liar.” Dory narrowed her eyes at her and said, “So what did that make me and Elroy in the cave when you were laying that stupid Mark Twain quote on us?” Remiel turned her head away sharply and said, “Sorry.” “What do you think it all means?” Samael asked. Elroy said, “Mikaela made damn sure to send us back to right after we left, and a good thing she did, too, otherwise Remy would have had to explain to Clara how you and I drowned during her husband’s funeral.”
- BU: Dory had not taken her eyes from Remiel since her sharp rebuke and now she interrupted the boys to bring their attention to her. Remiel had been quietly sobbing and they missed it. Sammy went over to embrace the sister he had always adored. “Remy, what did we say?” She said, “We used to be so close but now I feel like we’ve grown apart. It was weeks for you but just minutes for me and you came back and now you talk just like these two!” Sammy drew her in tighter and said, “Remy! No, no no, no…” Dory drew near and gently took Sammy’s place. She took Remy’s hands in her hands and said, “This is war. Someone is going to catch hell for running a Prank inside the Family.” “A Prank?” blurted Remiel. She was incredulous. “I know,” Dory said. “It sounds funny when you’re out on one, not so funny to be the victim of one. You and Sammy were deliberately kept in the dark growing up. Mikaela, Lailah, I don’t care who it was, or why they did it, they should know better than to treat family members this way.”
- BV: By the following Monday Remiel and Samael had worked through their bereavement sufficiently to go back to school, but in the weeks that followed Remy started growing two hard bumps on her back to balance the larger and softer pair on her chest. They were impossible to hide from a mother who was a nurse by trade. Clara suspected a reaction to tick bites at first. When she looked closely at Samael he had nothing like them. At the little hospital where Clara worked Dr. Miriam Wahkan insisted the bumps were a harmless genetic aberration that became visible in late puberty among certain girls of the Haivri clan. She said the Family called it the Change. Samael found a description of the bumps in the Green Book and showed the passage to her mother, but after the Last Rite Clara’s new ardor for such things seemed to have faded somewhat. Perhaps her maternal instincts rose to outweigh religious devotion. Certainly when the bumps grew what appeared to be bony fingers Clara was is no mood to wait any longer.
- BW: Clara wanted a second opinion but Dr. Wahkan was the only doctor in Havilah, which thing alone was a strange fact. Even with a fair fraction of the men away during wartime Havilah had nine hundred souls. Dr. Wahkan said, “Clara, my sincere advice to you is don’t make a big fuss out of this. Otherwise there may come a day when you are no longer allowed to see your daughter.” But the bony fingers in Remiel’s back grew into what looked like drooping hands. Clara took Remy to the equally microscopic town of Lusk, Wyoming some 35 miles away but that was no more a beacon of civilization than Havilah. The doctors there had never seen the like. They could do little more than send a detailed report back East, which thing Dr. Wahkan adamantly refused to do. More doctors were brought in. The “hands” grew a fine gray down. More photographs and test results were sent to Washington. Remiel was transferred to an isolation ward at the hospital in Casper and surprise of surprises Clara wasn’t allowed to see her anymore.
- BX: Clara had exactly one more card to play. Her father in Hagerstown was good friends with a Maryland congressman. Clara wasn’t asking for much, she just wanted the visitation rights that were her due as Remiel’s adoptive mother. But her phone call back home led nowhere. Two days prior Remiel had been transferred from Casper to an unknown location and even her father’s DC heavy hitter couldn’t get any traction. Only then did Clara trundle back to the Havilah hospital looking sad. Dr. Wahkan said, “Don’t worry, Clara, you won’t hear it from me. There’s no grace in saying, ‘I told you so’. Remiel wasn’t emancipated so you were well within your rights. I can tell you the Family is already working to get Remiel back to you but for now you need to think about Samael. He doesn’t have the bumps you were so worried about, but he’s already experienced the Change just like his sister. There are certain internal signs he hasn’t mentioned to you. Eventually the men holding Remiel will come looking for Samael too.”
- BY: “I’m taking Sammy with me back to Maryland,” said Clara. “If someone comes looking for him like you say, maybe that will hold them off.” The doctor said, “That it might, and the Academy can help things along. We’ll send a little team to the state capital to make your marriage record disappear. There will be nothing to tie you back to your hometown.” Hearing this, Clara shook her head. “Nothing but Erik’s side of the family and their big mouths.” But at this Dr. Wahkan offered a wry grin. “Clara, it’s no secret your husband’s family kept you at arm’s length. Do I not speak the truth? The Zinters all know you were from back East, and maybe a few of them know your maiden name was Hurst, but that’s not enough to go on. So yes, take your son and go home to Maryland. He will be safe, I assure you, and soon enough Remiel will join you and we’ll find another way to keep you from being noticed. I’m not saying your lives will be the same way they were before, but the Academy does this sort of thing all the time.”
- BZ: At first Clara seemed to accept the plan but something Miriam said brought a sudden dark cloud of bitterness to her face. “So the black sheep thing is common knowledge, is it? Why do you think Erik’s family treated us that way?” “Oh, it’s all about the custom of mandatory cousin marriage in the Church. You know: that way none of the Kuwapi boys ever marry Stiffneck girls. Erik Zinter married a pretty second cousin from out of town rather than a homely first cousin from right here in Havilah. Never mind that he also happened to be in love with ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ, why, any heathen could do as much!” And this actually made Clara smile despite everything else. She said, “That’s such a purely Stiffneck move, that’s so unutterably stupid it simply has to be true.” And looking at the doctor Clara had a glimmer why she wore a gold chain and jewel-encrusted headdress. Seeing it one instantly tagged Miriam as a native woman, and having done so, the layer of red feathers stowed under her lab coat was simply part of the whole set.
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