Chapter 3

Jim woke up shivering and turned his head. Then he opened his eyes a second time. Why couldn’t he see? Had… had he lost his sight? His heart thundered in his chest and he pushed himself to his feet. Jim stumbled forward, hands outstretched, until his fingers touched the rough and cold stone. But the stone wasn’t the only cold. Actually, he was cold, too. In a panic, he patted his hands over his body, and the beige robes pushed the cold over patches of his skin. He touched the bumps spreading over his arms. No, he wasn’t made of stone, and he wasn’t about to turn into one, either. Unless the bumps were a sign. He couldn’t make sure without his vision.

Jim swallowed hard and put a hand against the cliff, and stumbled his way upward. The plateau couldn’t be far.

As he exited the path, he breathed a sigh of relief, but it got instantly replaced by a gasp. The whole east side of the city had turned into several suns, and warmth came with a gust of wind. Jim snapped his head up to look at the sky. No giant hand. How was wind possible without God causing it? The sky was less light than it had ever had been, but a kind of blue-ish light shone from it, like another light source that came far away, and which didn’t give any warmth. The gray mass he’d seen before rose toward the light. Maybe, just maybe, it was the sun reforming itself. But what would it leave behind?

Jim coughed and looked at the suns in the city. They crackled and popped, and multiple tongues stretched toward the sky, like they wanted to reach it. Was is because the city had nothing else left to offer? Had his whole town turned into suns? Jim took a step back. Even though he wanted to run away, he didn’t want to be as cold as the stone again. A quick glance under his sleeves confirmed that he wasn’t turning into one.

God… it was true. God wanted to kill them all with the sun. Not knowing better, most had gone willingly. The almighty had grown tired of them and sent the sun to eat its way through them. It and God likely hadn’t noticed Jim’s disobedience, so he was still alive. For how much longer?

Jim felt a chill in the wind again, and the tongues of the sunlit buildings shrank before they towered back up.

Another blast of wind made him turn around, and though he didn’t want to become a sun, it might be better than to turn into stone. With that thought, he made his way to the passageway leading down to the city.

*******

“Mom, we can’t leave!” A young girl said.

Jim rounded the last bend in the passageway, and warmth streamed toward him. Too much, almost, even though the last building before the cliffs was a good distance away. A mother in a green dress pulled on the daughter’s arm, toward the stones.

“Come! God loves us, but not right now.”

The girl in a yellow dress pulled at her arm, straining toward the street and the lit buildings. “Everyone has become suns! I want to be one, too!”

The mother pulled the daughter away. “Well, we aren’t. God doesn’t want to hurt us. The sun hurts. You feel that, don’t you?”

“Mom, you don’t make sense. You told me I look like the sun in this dress, but you won’t let me join it!”

Jim’s foot slipped on a stone, and the mother looked behind her shoulder. Then she turned to her child again. “See? Even a monk is here. They know God better than anyone.”

The child stopped struggling, and the sudden lack of force made the mother step back.

The child walked forward and frowned at Jim. “Why don’t you want to be a sun?”

Jim cleared his throat, wishing he’d stayed up there. “Well, I… I just don’t think that’s what God wants. Becoming a sun sounds like it hurts.”

“See?” the mother said, putting an arm around her girl’s shoulders. “Even the holy man says so.”

The girl didn’t move, but furrowed her brow deeper. “Why?”

“I… I don’t—”

The mom gave him a desperate glance.

Jim coughed. “God just wanted to change the city a little. That’s it. This wasn’t meant for us. He doesn’t want us to die. Maybe he just didn’t know the sun would kill us.”

“Kill?” The girl looked up at her mother, whose mouth was agape.

She pressed her hands over her child’s ears. “God is all-knowing! Doesn’t God want us anymore? He must have known that sending us the sun would…” Her sentence trailed off, and tears trickled down her face. ”We’re going to go. Thank you.”

Jim pulled off his food bag and stretched forward a few pieces of bread. “Here. But… it’s cold as stone up there, even when you’re not touching it. And there’s no light.”

The woman spat. “It’s away from the sun! And God! He wanted to kill my little… I can’t believe…”

Without a second glance at the bread, the woman pushed her daughter up the slope. As they disappeared behind the bend, Jim bent and put the food next to the wall, just in case they would come down again. Then he walked toward the intense warmth, and only stopped when it got a little too much. He sat on the stone road, with the most eastern cliff on his side, and waited.

*******

As the sun lost most of its power in the building closest to him, Jim said goodbye to the eleventh small group of people headed toward the cliff and walked down the street he’d known all his life. His mouth was dry, and he badly wished for a drop of the flood God had released on them during the last Birthing festival. It hadn’t been much and hadn’t lasted long, but a single drop each had refreshed them all. Except the one who took too much and melted, but such things happened with old age.

Jim stopped outside what had been house forty-eight, but which glowed with flickering sunlight and spewed the putrid black-gray mass. He wondered if the man had got his wish fulfilled or not. God would have his hands full when he cleaned up the city. Jim sighed, his lungs cramped, and he coughed. God had always provided for them. He would never put them through something like this, would he? And why had he given them the extra food just to burn it a couple of turns later?

The buildings had all broken down, and dull, flickering remnants of sun glowed inside the wooden houses as he passed them. Sweat beaded all over his body, and his acolyte robes clung to his skin.

Jim rubbed his head, wishing he’d spent more time on meditation. Maybe he would have been able to give an answer to all these questions.

Something caught at his leg, and he looked down, heart in his throat. But what grabbed him wasn’t the sun coming to claim him. It was a blackened figure that looked broken in places, almost like a cracked shadow. Did it… did it say something?

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Jim bent his knees and pushed his hands onto the ground, then leaned in.

“I…” the hoarse voice whispered. “… was worthy.”

Jim threw his head up to look at the house. No number, but he was sure. “That’s….” Jim cleared his throat and closed his eyes. “That’s great.”

There was no response. Not from the woman on the ground, not from God. God wasn’t there. He couldn’t be.

Jim coughed and continued toward the city plaza, forcing himself to not look back. He stumbled a few times, but he wouldn’t look at what. The only time he did, he did it because it was clearly larger than a person. The green heirloom sat on the ground, and as Jim pulled his foot back, a stringy part came with it.

A shiver went down Jim’s spine. He’d destroyed an heirloom! What would God do against—Jim stared down at his shoe, and then at the previously sun-blessed house. Not even the green brick had survived the heat. Heirlooms were supposed to be indestructible, and God would never have allowed one to be handled like this.

Unless… unless God wasn’t here at all. Jim looked at the molten lump before him. Though, if God was behind all this, he had no reason to save the heirloom. But what if it was an accident? Could God make mistakes? Or had he simply abandoned them to their fate?

Jim continued into the plaza. The sun had almost gone out in those buildings, and he looked at the tricklers, which had fallen off their daises, and laid partly shattered on the ground. Beside them laid blackened shapes, and Jim looked into the sky, hoping not to tread on any of them. His world… was gone.

What was the next step? It depended on God’s intent, for sure. Was the sun exploding a test of their faith? Was God tired of his creation? Or was it an… accident?

He’d heard that the sun had disappeared for the duration of a small turn three generations ago, but then it had come back, brighter than ever. Even then, it hadn’t shattered. Just left them in blackness for a short while.

Jim rubbed his arms, suddenly cold, even though flickers of sun still came from some buildings. He wanted to believe it was an accident. So why hadn’t God corrected the mistake? But God didn’t make mistakes… Jim rubbed his knuckles on his temples. He wasn’t cut out for this sort of deep-think. That was for monks, not acolytes. Oh, yes. The monks! They would know!

Jim quickened his steps through the blackened stone street and had to stop a few times to breathe. The further out to the edge of the city he got, the harder the air came to him. The sun had spread from the plaza and outward, leaving some buildings closest to the cliffs still sunlit. He stopped for a short while as his lungs cramped up, and he burst out coughing.

The gray mass hovering in the air wasn’t good for his body, that much was clear. But what could he do about it? Jim sat on the street, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. He’d move, soon.

“Hey you! Are you going to God’s mountain?” A sharp voice said behind him.

He turned his head toward the source. A bearded middle-aged man came out from a nearby street, together with a group of ten others of various ages.

Jim got up on his feet. “Yes, that’s my goal. But it’s still too warm to pass through right now.”

The bearded man nodded. “Then we will come with you.”

A woman stepped forth and pushed a long blond braid behind her shoulder. Tears shone in her eyes. “God… God hasn’t abandoned us? I thought he’d abandoned us.”

A few of the group nodded.

The man pushed her shoulder. “No, this was on purpose, and I want a word with Him.”

Jim frowned as the second half of the group nodded at what the man said. “God loves us.”

The man snorted. “Ah, yes, that’s why he kills us.”

“You don’t know God.” Jim crossed his arms. “I think this was an accident.”

“Then why hasn’t he corrected the accident? My wife became a sun, just when we’d decided to go to the birth house to pick a child!”

“My son became a sun!” An old woman chimed in.

“My daughter!” Another.

“My mom!”

Jim held out his hands. “I’m sure he’ll listen to you. It was an accident, and he’s going to fix it for us. I… I can take it up with him, if you don’t want to yourselves.”

“No.” The woman with the braid stepped forward. “You’re God’s acolyte, and you and the monks always say that God hears everything. Why would he listen better if we went up the mountain? He’s abandoned us.”

“Why do you want to climb the mountain, then?” Jim asked. “If you think he won’t be there?”

An old woman stepped forward and put an arm around the younger one’s shoulders. “To see if we’re right. If God shows, Pult is right, and we should be angry with God. If He doesn’t, we’re right, and we have to do what we can to survive God’s wrath from now.”

Jim kneaded his eyebrows. How had they lost their faith so quickly? God had given them everything. They couldn’t do much on their own. But the climb up the mountain would be a hard one, and company would be appreciated. Then, when they got to the monks, they could help their troubled minds.

“I can go up there to find out for you. The square and the monks were on their way up the mountain as the sun blessed us, so they should have witnessed it all.”

“No, we need to go up there ourselves.” The bearded man, Pult, sighed. “And you will lead the way. There’s nothing left except heat and cold down here, anyway.”

“Um… okay.” Jim coughed and nodded. “Then we all go. After the sun has left the forest.”

The group nodded, and they all sat down on the stone street, looking at the sunlit community houses around them. Well, not really buildings anymore. There wasn’t enough left to call them that.

Jim thought of Don as he stared at the sunlit forest. He wondered why his teacher hadn’t come down the mountain with any information yet, before the sun blessed the trees. Maybe the monks sat in meditation, praising God’s gift of the sun? In that case, they didn’t know the devastation the sun had caused, leaving Jim the learned one. Jim sucked in a breath. That was a blasphemous thought, wasn’t it? Well, he was going up the mountain anyway, so he could ask for forgiveness for his lacking faith while he was up there. Would God forgive him this time, though? Would He forgive him for bringing this group with him? Jim hoped so.

He didn’t know how many turns it took for the sun to go out in the nearby buildings, but it was enough for two people to fall asleep.

“Do you people have any food with you?” Jim asked, pulling out a piece of bread from his pack.

They all shook their heads.

“The sun took it all,” Pult said.

Jim looked at the bread in his hand. Should he share it with them, even though they went against God? He shook his head. God provided for everyone. He couldn’t put himself above that standard, could he? He opened the flap to the pack and pushed it toward the man.

He opened it, took a piece, and passed it on to the next one. The braided woman shook the two sleeping ones’ shoulders, but they were too tired to even stir.

Wind swept past them, and Jim and the others looked up. No, God’s hand hadn’t created the gust this time, either.

“It’s weird,” Pult said, staring up into the almost black sky. “The sun goes out, and suddenly, God creates wind without showing himself.”

Jim nodded. “Yes. And it’s cold. I was up at the cliffs, and I thought I’d turn into stone. It was so cold, and the sun from the town didn’t reach.”

“So you fled the sun?” Pult chuckled. “That doesn’t sound like a good acolyte. Not when the sun was supposed to be a gift.”

“I’m sure it was an accident. God wouldn’t destroy heirlooms. He’s always done well by us, and there’s no sense in giving us such an enormous amount of food if he planned to kill us.”

Pult scratched at his beard. “I suppose that makes sense.” He pointed at the woman with the braid. “Frinda, maybe you have a point.”

She nodded, but didn’t respond.

“It’s getting less warm.” Jim stood and brushed off the back of his robe. “We better get going. The sooner we can alert God of what has happened, the sooner he can fix it.”

“So, you think it was an accident, but also that he abandoned us?” Pult also got up and helped a few others to their feet.

“I think it was an accident, but I don’t know. God has never behaved this way before.”

The old woman who supported Frinda before frowned. “Is it possible God abandoned us for a limited time, then? That he intended to leave, and gave us extra food because he didn’t want to look after us for a while?”

Jim gaped at her. How did she possess such knowledge? Why hadn’t he made that connection? He cleared his throat and straightened his expression. “My thoughts, exactly.”

“Hey, acolyte,” Pult said, approaching the sleepers. “Didn’t you just say that you didn’t know?” He shook their shoulders.

“Well, I…” Jim frowned. “Are they okay?”

Pult stood up and put his hands on his hips. “I don’t know how it happened, but… I think they are dead.”

The whole group stiffened, and a few of the others bent by the unmoving bodies, poking at them with their fingers. Jim also approached and shook their shoulders. Their bodies were completely limp. Why had they died without a sound?

Jim coughed. Maybe the gray mass had done something to them. “We need to get away from here. Let’s go.”

“Are we just going to leave them here?” Frinda looked at Jim as she straightened up.

“Well, God takes care of all our bodies when we pass. Everyone knows that.”

“Then why are the sunlit people still in the streets?” Frinda crossed her arms. “I didn’t really know them. I don’t think any of us did, but can we really abandon them as God has abandoned us?”

“God will come back,” Jim said. He shortened his breaths. “But I think the sun killed them in a different way. The gray from the sun hurts my lungs. Maybe it was enough to kill them.”

Frinda and the rest of the group took steps back from the bodies, as if they held something that could be transmitted and kill them, too. They then quickened their steps toward the mountain pass that had started to clear now that the sun had begun leaving the trees. Well, what had been trees.

Jim and Pult followed them, only glancing at the lost ones before hurrying to catch up with the others.