Three Weeks Ago

“Pull out your diaries, and turn to the third paragraph of page twenty-seven. What is the author trying to say about the blood-giving? Don’t speak, think for a few minutes.”

Seth obediently reached into his satchel and pulled out a very thin book. On the front was a picture of the Pure Insignia. They didn’t use this text often. It was very religious, straightforward, and Headmaster Brown preferred his curriculum to argue with itself.

Seth opened it, but soon the words swam, and his eyes wandered away from the pages. His knee bounced agitatedly beneath the desk. Was it almost time?

A scurry crawled slowly up the window of the classroom. Its white, plated belly clinked softly on the glass. Long appendages furled and unfurled outward from its rockhide, grasping the window in the grip of mucus-covered hairs. These, along with its furry mouth, smeared Seth’s view as it travelled further upward. Probably, there was a pile of them forming at the top of the building. Eventually, the wriggling pile would get so big that some would topple off the roof and land with a crack and a thud by the classroom. It brought a sharp giggle from some of the younger students every time.

Seth glanced over his shoulder at the back left corner of the room. Sure enough, the three youngest kids, around the ages of five or six, were watching the scurry as it slimed its way up the window. They whispered to each other and giggled, practically in their own world. That’s how it always was with the younger kids. Only a few of them would be in school at a time, and even fewer would be in the same class together. Most parents waited longer before submitting their child to an education. Many families skipped school altogether, preferring to start their children in the family business right away. Some assigned their children to apprenticeships before they were old enough to walk.

Needless to say, the little ones stuck to each other like glue. Seth remembered how close he was with the two other boys that had been admitted alongside him. In their class, at least, they were never apart. It was terrifying, distinguishing their path through the myriad of stony hallways, priests in sweeping robes and teachers in black vests passing them by, barely glancing down. They stayed best friends for years, but eventually, things changed. Gitto, the oldest of the three, joined the priesthood when he was eight, and moved to the mountain range north-east of the city where a collection of chapels were scattered through the hills. He became Blameless.

The other boy, Jef, was still in the same class as Seth. The boy sat on the other side of the room, hair and eyes black as coal, occasionally glancing at Seth, wise to his schemes. Seth hadn’t shared his plans with Jef, but somehow the kid always knew when he was up to something. Seth crushed the advertisement in his pocket and swallowed, his attention fixed ahead. He was impatient.

Headmaster Brown, one of the few teachers in the school who wasn’t a priest, trod in front of his desk and held a pocket watch that connected to him by a long, delicate chain. Smoke puffed gently from the instrument’s valve in perfect time. One puff for every second. One, two, three...Master Brown watched it intently. He was either nervous, or agitated. Seth noticed he continually walked in front of the blackboard and fingered the hard, clay pencils resting beneath it as though he were about to break one.

Why, Seth couldn’t guess.

Seth looked down at his book and tried to focus on the correct passage. The words flowed in and through his brain without making an impression.

“On one side of me, standing in solidarity, were a row of boulders with their heads bowed forward over a creek. I was overcome, for I had never seen the earth so reverent. What reverence of itself could it have? If the earth is God.”

Seth yawned, his head, which had been painfully clear moments before, becoming fuzzy with the rhetoric. He hated this part of class, where they were instructed to read some text and discover the meaning behind it. As though it hadn’t been decided a long time ago. Besides, these books were ancient, passed down through the school and reprinted a dozen times over exactly the same as before. There was no discovery in it at all, at least for Seth. Some of the other kids seemed to enjoy it, debating over the finer points of mythology and history, sharing their own thoughts on the matter. Problem was, Seth didn’t have any thoughts on it. His mind was in his plans, always had been. It was his curse, to always be thinking ahead, to always have some goal he was obsessing over.

Dominic had thought it was important for Seth to get an education. He always talked about how much he regretted having to quit school when their parents died. He’d gotten a job right away, at the age of nine, as an apprentice to the fishermen in the village. He hadn’t had a say in his future, worrying only about how he would feed himself and his four year-old brother. Seth supposed that was why he emphasized education so greatly. He wanted Seth to have a wider range of options than he had, regarding his life-time occupation. The longer you stayed in school, the more judicial and well-paying your job would be. Dominic wanted Seth to go into something like administrative duties, or politics. (<---too much telling, not enough showing. Maybe discuss Dominic’s excitement on first day of school, or his insistence Seth complete homework)

Likely, Dominic would be a fisherman for the rest of his life. Once you started your “work” somewhere, that was where you would be. Most other places wouldn’t accept someone who had already been tainted by another occupation. It was seen as though you would be betraying the part of the earth you had started working on.

Essentially, abandoning one part of God’s body for another was like breaking a promise. Not heretical, necessarily, at least not in Bludair, where almost all jobs related in some way to the purfication of water, or the tending of the sea. But, it wasn’t a good reflection on anyone’s business to take someone in who had done something as suspicious as quit their job. (<---make this a stronger point. Maybe illegal to quit your job once you’ve started)

Seth jumped in his seat when Headmaster Brown spoke suddenly,

“We have a guest speaker today,” he said, surveying his classroom with the usual stern expression that had only been broken once or twice by a shrewd smile in the past two years he had been here, “As this is your last year of schooling, before you decide to continue your education or not, it’s time each of you began to work. It’s no longer acceptable for children of your age to go without contributing. Today, Blameless Matthaios will be joining our class to explain your next steps. You’ve grown up different than most children. This is going to be a transition.”

Seth swallowed, his palms growing hot in his pockets. He was starting to feel anxious. It didn’t follow. He hadn’t thought much about the presence of a priest in their classroom that morning. His mind had been so occupied with thoughts of his plans after lessons were over, that it didn’t seem to matter one way or another if the Blameless discovered them and declared Seth a heretic. But now, sitting in the dead silence of the classroom, sweating out his armpits from the sweltering heat, clutching a potentially blasphemous newspaper ad in his pocket, Seth felt a bit like a criminal. Like one that was about to be caught in the spotlight.

He jumped when the door finally opened, and Blameless Matthaios walked in. Seth stared, . He was young. Aggressively young. And he smiled when he came in, lighting up his youthful face in a way that made Seth realize he couldn’t be that much older than Dominic. He had a halo of golden curls that wrapped around his head in shiny tresses, and bright blue eyes. Strangest of all, he was still smiling as he surveyed the class, as though he were seeing a large group of his closest friends, not a room full of students.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Ah, Blameless. Welcome,” Headmaster Brown said, walking forward and easily shaking the man’s hand, as though he hadn’t been restlessly pacing and breaking chalk in his hands a few moments before.

“Thank you, Headmaster,” Matthaios replied, still smiling, “Apologies for my lateness. It’s my pleasure to join your classroom this morning. If you don’t mind, I’ll begin my sermon now.”

Headmaster Brown blinked, but then quickly hid his surprise. He smiled back, a little less enthusiastically,

“Of course.”

Seth scanned Matthaios for some sign of ill intent, something that would make Headmaster Brown, a usual rock of stoicism, so jumpy. But, his eyes were bright and unreadable as he turned to face the class, and spread his arms beneath a long, brown robe, which Seth thought marked him as the lowest ranking of priest.

“God is dead,” he began, and Seth could feel a comfortable weight settle over the room as everyone prepared themselves to hear things they already knew. That everybody already knew.

“God died giving his body to make the world. His blood and his bones to make the rocks and the sea. His skin to be the soil. His breath to be the wind and air. His heart to be the center. It beats at the core of the earth, giving life to all on the surface.”

Seth felt his eyebrows raise a little. He had heard this story a hundred times before. Almost in this exact language, and with the same abbreviation. But, he had never heard a priest talk of the heart before.

“On the sixth day, God was weak. His left eye had become sick as well, and died. His healthy eye became the sun. God gave his second eye to be the moon, and he declared that there would be the night, a time of Reverence, when all should remember his sacrifice and pain. The two eyes can never be near each other, or the sickness will spread from the moon into the sun. And so, the sun and moon roam opposite parts of the sky, the sun descending respectfully each night for the Reverence to take place.”

Seth already felt that this was a longer version of the story than he had heard before. There was something new about it. Something purposeful.

“On the seventh day, God finally died. His soul, the very last part of him, his essence, shattered. It shattered into innumerable pieces, billions upon billions of them. These parts of God’s soul, these pieces, became us. Humankind.”

“In each person, there was invested a certain number of these pieces, these souls. They are passed down through generations, through our children. And with each death, a piece of God’s soul is returned to him. This was God’s plan, his task, his final wish. That we rebuild his soul, with every life, with every death.”

A somber feeling had settled over the classroom. Seth couldn’t quite pinpoint it. The feeling. The sense of something ending. Their childhood. Their blamelessness.

“Our purpose now, as humans on this earth, as small investments of God’s own life, is to tend to his body. The earth is not in balance. God did not realize that without his soul, the perfectness of his being, the earth would be imperfect. Toxic waves crash against our shores. Trees grow into each other, against each other. An untended forest rots. The rocks shake and crumble, mountains fall. We must support them.”

The easy knowingness that had overcome the classroom had fallen away. Something about the way Matthaios spoke, the fiery light in his eyes, the new version of the story. It was powerful. It was frightening. Matthaios smiled again for the first time since he had started speaking. But, it was a different smile. Something about it was more confident, less young.

“The earth must be prepared, must survive for God’s return. When the day comes that the final part of his soul is restored, and he can reclaim his body, and balance can exist again.”

Balance. The ultimate goal. It sounded nice. The world finally absorbed back into the sky, becoming God again. All of them existing in his soul, empty of thought, feeling. No more war, no more pain. No more love, no more obligation. Just a perfect existence.

But, Seth was having trouble paying attention now. With the mention of the ocean and its toxins, he was now thinking of the filters and being beneath the waves, glimpsing those dark reservoirs where water was pure and untainted. Massive lakes, guarded by huge scuttlefish. How could there be so much water there? So much to supply a whole country with enough to drink, water their crops and animals. Did it replenish? Did it have something to do with God’s heart, like Matthaios said? Just like it supposedly gave life to all the animals and plants on the surface, could it also fill the reservoirs with fresh water? Many people were against the filters, saying that pulling such enormous amounts of water from the reservoirs would eventually dry them out. But, when? They had already been running for almost a decade, how much water could there possibly be?

Seth wanted to know. He wanted to know everything. Where it all came from. How much there was. Why it came so quickly.

And he wanted to help. People needed water. They needed it badly. He could still remember the days when he and Dominic were first alone, after the fire. His brother had struggled each day to find them fresh water. Eventually, they got ahold of a little filter fish. It was an old thing, cost them a maid and a half. It took its sweet time, at least three days to sluggishly clean a small bucketful of water, and then Seth and Dominic used it up so quickly, they had to fill the bucket back up again. The animal never got a break, and the boys could barely afford to spare any of their food, so it died within a month.

It was a constant struggle. But, with the invention of the Filters, water was now being shipped and spread throughout the country in plentiful amounts. More families were surviving, more crops were being grown, more people were eating, more babies were being born. And more and more water was needed.

Seth realized that Blameless Matthaios had still been talking the whole time Seth was daydreaming.

“-and so, it is important that you find a way to tend the body. To live and die is not enough. We must all condition ourselves, our soul, to be worthy of reentering God’s being. Of course, here in Belud, it’s easy to find a way to tend to the blood. The sea cushions two sides of the city. Fishermen are always needed.”

Seth felt a flash of anger. Of course, the priest wouldn’t mention the hundreds of jobs currently being supplied by the Filters, and the hundreds more provided through the transport of water throughout the whole country. Trains that had once been laden with swarms of filter fish were now lined with tanks full of water. The Filters weren’t approved by the church. Far from it. The newspapers lately had been filled with stories of the riots up north, where small, more conservative communities in the hills were protesting the use of filters to supply water. They believed it was heretical, an aversion from God’s plan, an assault on his body. The intricate, metal machinery that was dug into the earth to create the Filters was viewed, by many, as a violation.

“Of course, not everyone has to work directly on the body. People must be taken care of, as well. If we aren’t taken care of, the earth can’t be taken care of. Cobblers and seamstresses and bakers, these people are all contributing, indirectly, to the preservation of God’s body. In a city, especially, these jobs are essential. Don’t be ashamed to find something that you are genuinely good at. Each of us is a piece of God’s soul. We are all meant for something different. But, ultimately, we are meant to achieve the same goal: to bring God back.”

The clock struck 12:00 pm. A muffled, groaning noise shook the wall, and steam blew from a valve on top of the clock, producing a high, whistling sound. Headmaster Brown, who had been sitting behind his desk, looking incredibly preoccupied with boredom, raised his head, and smiled amicably at the classroom.

“Blameless Matthaios will be staying in the dorms above the library if any of you would like to consult him on your plans for the future, your spiritual fitness, etc.”

Seth couldn’t be sure, but Matthaios seemed to stiffen a little bit at Headmaster Brown’s tone, which was deceptively congenial.

“Your last assignment-and this one is required by heads much higher up than mine, so don’t slack-is to get back in touch with Matthaios a month after you’ve started your new job, preferably before October. He’ll assess how you’re doing, and then you’ll be on your way.”

Seth frowned. He hadn’t heard of anyone having to do this before. Since when had the school required the students evaluate their jobs with a priest? Things like that didn’t usually happen in Belud. Religion wasn’t enforced in people’s daily lives, there was too much to do, too many people to feed.

Matthaios smiled once again and nodded at the class. And again, he looked incredibly young. Something about the sermon had aged him, made him seem wiser, more learned and confident, rather than simply young and cocky.

“Of course. I was glad to come,” he said, and grinned widely. It was a genuine expression. Seth was finding it difficult to dislike the priest, even if he was going to have find Matthaios in a month and tell him all about his job at the Filters. Would he call Seth a heretic? Could Matthaios do anything to get his job taken away?

Seth took a deep breath. It was too early to worry about that. He hadn’t even gotten the job yet.

“Blameless Matthaios will be glad to hear any questions you have after class. Thank you.”

Unceremoniously, Headmaster Brown returned to his desk, and began rifling through some papers on the top.