The boy arrived in the after-hours one evening in the season of the midnight winter. No chains or ropes to bind him or the others—boys old enough to walk, to be led away from where they’d been abandoned. Once every twelve moons anchorite emissaries left their monastery, took a wander of far outlying towns and villages, collected any urchins that had appeared there over the previous year. Boys and girls were separated into two lonely groups. The girls were sent to a nunnery to the west, the boys to a monastery south and east, where dry lands began and rarely ended. The boy had been found in the town of Yimis, sleeping in the shade of a fountain in its public square. Grubby, mute, unwelcome to touch or talk…the locals explained the boy’s parents had died quickly of a mysterious ailment earlier that spring. Nine months he’d survived on scraps cast into the town midden. He was a sad pest, reminder of how little help they’d been to he and his family, which of course they didn’t say, but which these anchorites could easily determine, for when they pointed to the boy from a distance they either lowered eyes or catered to the face that was listening. This was why the anchorites requested they wrestle the boy from the ground, bring him to the walking group by force with their own hands. If they sought to expel him, they should be made to do so intimately.
The boy bit and kicked and scratched. The anchorites watched and knew: a few days of starving would cure him of all resistance. Shame about the shoulders and aspects of the locals, as they pressed the boy to kneel before a tall, stark cortege of holy men.
You’re theirs now, one of the locals told him.
The boy spat at their feet, glared.
One of the anchorites bent to a knee, eye-level to the boy, told him: We have a place for you, far away from these people. Look what they’ve so far done for you. Eating their remains. Sleeping on the ground. They don’t deserve you.
Subject to such characterization, how could the locals interject or protest? There was a prick of truth to it—why else were they so compliant in getting rid of him? Besides, it would bring bad luck on their households to challenge or disparage exalted passengers who’d traveled far to free them of their consciences. It was all a matter of accepting the insult and understanding it. By sundown the boy would be no more; they would be free to forget they’d ever denied him charity.
The boy followed the anchorites to the far end of a field, to a foot-hardened road. Sitting crosslegged on the ground along either side of the road were boys by the dozen, standing in the road several other holy men. None of them raised a hand to greet the boy, either because his was not an arrival to be acknowledged or it was a given a boy was already welcome.
A tall, bearded anchorite reached into a satchel slung across his person and to each boy offered a gall-fruit. The boy from Yimis had never seen such fruit before. He held his and watched how the others ate theirs. Turn fruit on its side, hold it by either stem, aft and fore with pinched fingers, with teeth strip the tough flesh from it, spit this to ground before sucking juice from the bright pale meat. After juices were sucked free, they took greedy bites, rotating the fruit by twining the stems between fingers. After a time watching, noting none fell ill, the boy unchecked his hunger, freed it to eat its fill.
When the boys were finished, the anchorites instructed them to toss the remains into the grass ditch alongside the road. Having tossed these, they were called to stand. On their feet, they shuffled into a walking line two by two. The boy was the last to find a place, slightly rear of middle. His standing partner was a skinny orphan with hacked brown hair dangling in his eyes. All boys looked one way, forward. At head of the line facing them stood another tall lean anchorite bearded and robed. It was then, if the boy was one to notice, he might make note all anchorites tended to look the same, or at least those who roamed the countryside collecting children.
As they carried across the land, road to road, boys walking two by two, their chaperones striding along beside, sermons were delivered on the nature of their mission, the cosmology they brought into the world. As children of townspeople, they were told, they were given primitives. They were heathens without cause. Their mothers and fathers had not abandoned them, no, but had been taken early into the earth so they might blend with The Great One, thusly unheathening themselves. The Great One is but The Raining One. Every living man and woman not yet blessed with death knows it. Orphaned, it was forbidden townspeople take them in as niece or grandchild or nephew. That would have been grave apostasy; for children cast into only-ness have been freed by immanent design for adoption by clouds rolling overhead, by thunder, lightning, and rain. This is why for this moment forward they will call each anchorite Brother Cloud: being orphaned and so gathered, they have been entrusted to attendants of The Raining One. Each, the boys should know, were once like them, children undone from family-hood by mortal reversals. Each had been fearful and lost and unsure of their way toward survival, as they have been. Then a wandering group such as theirs had come along calling and they had been taken, or at least that’s how it had felt at the time—taken—until they’d arrived at their destination. Only then had they learned they were not cursed but blessed, lucky. That they were future clouds, holy men awaiting education.
The boy half-listened to this as he walked. The anchorites took turns lecturing. The other boys, walking in advance or behind him, showed no indication the words elucidated anything for them.
One by one they’d been found or given up by their people and had been gathered into a group their overseers insisted was family. So it was for the others who joined their company. When they entered a town, townspeople would slip away to watch from a distance. The anchorites would send a pair of emissaries to converse with them. An hour or so would pass before they returned with a child or two. No girls, only boys were wanted. A wandering group of girls had already passed through or would come later, attended to by a clutch of nuns.
Suns rose and fell, never quite the same sun. Moons surfaced in the sky when blue of daylight dimmed from it, each instance a different configuration of moon. Not once in weeks of travel had a cloud passed above. This the anchorites, the Brothers Cloud, explained, was an indication they were due home, to the dry place from which they came. Not soon after, the dirt of the roads feathered to silt of finest dust. The roads loosened and widened and grasses alongside them withered and flattened. Soon there were no roads nor fields, no difference between a walk-way and remaining-place, only an even never-ending stretch of parched ground. These, the Brothers explained, were salt flats. Into these they walked, no clear destination ahead of them.
They walked until feet and ankles and calves and soon their whole persons glistened with salt crystals, which they wiped clean with mere hands. Impossibly hot and parched by day, they switched to walking by dark. By day they laid beneath blankets propped under walking sticks to create shade. Sundown they’d were woken by a nudge, fed a walker’s ration, sipped from a water bladder. The anchorites, the boy noticed, never needed sleep. Though they ate sparingly and desired water like the rest, never once did they submit to tiredness. They were dreamless, it seemed, or, more likely, denial of replenishment was among their many disciplines. They were severe creatures and expressed this by rejecting the foremost of creature comforts, though perhaps, the boy considered, that need had been solved for them and their bodies no longer required it, much less desired it. Perhaps a lack of desire for sleep was a symptom of their holiness.
Switching their days for nights and days for nights disoriented the boys, the boy from Yimis included. At dawn while they prepared their makeshift tents for protection from the sun, the boy took a dazed survey of the infinity-lands around them. Here was a salt flat, something he’d never known existed until he’d been led to walk one. The ground was peculiar, composed of large jigsaw cells that fit together seamlessly, a shape mud takes when dried and hardened. These were frosted with salt crystals that lent them a wintery quality. On such cells a fresh footstep could uphold one’s full weight for a breath’s beat, before breaking and crunching, leaving the footstep immortalized as an impression. Fixing his shade-place the boy would gaze in the direction from which they came and notice a scribble of footsteps fade to a vanishing-point along the white horizon. How long would impressions of their passage last until they were crusted over, erased from the land’s memory?
Such thoughts didn’t last long, given the boy’s exhaustion. Once or twice, though, he felt the anchorites watching. The one boy who worked slowly, who took pause, eyes wandering, the dreamy look of contemplation, this they seemed to recognize, make note of.
Night and day and moon and sun. Blank of sky mirrored by a blank below, boys on a march, a sleepwalker’s parade, and staggered on either side their carrion adults. This lasted longer than two full counts of suns on a hand’s fingers, before, one evening, a sparkle-line appeared on the edge of darkness. Toward this they steered and through their walking enlarged gradually to a sight that could be tracked by daylight: a break in the levelness ahead, a rise from ground to sky, a mountain. A small mountain rendered colossal by contrast to its surroundings. Points of light decorated it through the dark hours, buildings and terraces of a sort detailed its shape by day. The closer they came, the more the mountain came alive. A hive of staircases and archways, doors and windows. Busy, intricate to the eye. Dots of dark that flowed ant-like along its course-ways: people. People moving every direction freely about its shape. What was this, one of the anchorites asked as they were told to refrain from tent-making one morning.. He was asking after their unsaid thoughts, wondering aloud for them. Home, he replied, an answer they couldn’t quite understand yet. Was he answering or was he telling them? Either way, they kept walking.
Barefoot, unkempt, exhausted, they reached the mountain past sundown. During their last mile they had watched it grow walls higher than ladders could climb. It had paled to the color of the flats around it and, in the late light of day glittered to beautify itself, but also to illustrate what it was made of: chiseled and carved, channeled from a mountain-sized slab of rock salt. The sun set behind them, lengthening their shadows toward it, shadows blending into a dark line that rose from ground to climb the height of a large wooden door. This, the anchorite told them, was Home. Here’s what it felt like, to stand outside Home, waiting for permission to enter. Outside Home, they were all orphans, undesirables, each of them, boy and anchorite alike. But by trial of search and passage, they had proven they were worthy of being found. Now it was time for them to submit to judgment by a door: would it remain closed, condemning them to homelessness, or would it open?
They did not have to wait long. After full sundown, mountain coming alive with lights above and around, the door let out a groan, the groan giving way to creaks and crackles. Splitting down the middle it opened its two halves inwards and at an anchorite’s signal they shuffled through the gateway into a large courtyard. The yard was empty except for torchlights and stars above. Behind them the doors groaned again, and turning the boy from Yimis was able to examine by what machinations they were summoned to open or close. A series of interlinking ropes and weights and counterweights and pulleys. Undirected by any visible operator.
Welcome Home, the boys were told. The first requirement of Home is to be reborn. In spirit of that sentiment, unclothe yourselves, be rid of your garments.
Without pause, he boys set about undressing. Not that there was much left to cast off, ragged as they were.
Among them there was one exception, a boy with blue-green eyes, intelligent eyes that took in what they beheld with a certain slant skepticism. Boys stood diminished by nakedness every side of him, so his merely remaining clothed elevated him slightly: a boy either deaf or unyielding to command.
The anchorites seemed unfazed by this gesture. Many times they’d left this place and wandered for months and gathered children, and led the children home, and once home, requested first that they disrobe. And perhaps in each instance there had been a boy who had silently refused, so this turn had been expected, and so they were prepared for such a moment, accustomed to small resistances.
One of their kind stepped to the boy and, to the boy’s surprise, thanked him. Yes, it’s true. It’s a request that requires some trust. And why should he trust them? There was a simple answer: because they have enabled his survival so far, and more importantly, because he is Home now and has no choice. Choice is the last of the earthly burdens that must cast off, the deepest of any mortal being’s delusions. To be reborn, he must be naked as he was when worked as a young helpless thing from his mother. This was also an origin he hadn’t chosen. So see? His clothes are afterbirth and he must be rid of them. Not to worry, he will be given other, more real clothes in a moment, to replace them.
The boy watched as the anchorite explained. What was spoken sounded like sense, but the boy’s expressionless gaze didn’t suggest he understood or favored what was being asked of him. Recognizing this, the anchorite offered something further, to help him. For one boy to be reborn, all his brothers must be reborn with him. Should one refuse, they all would be rejected in turn. Which means: so long as he remained dressed, the boys standing around him would be denied clothes and would be made to stand in the courtyard, no matter how cold the night became. And if the boy needs bear reminding: all this in the season of midnight winter.
Hearing this, the boys looked to one another, worried. How long would the boy from Yimis make them suffer?
As it turned out, not any longer than it took the boy to undo the rags hanging from his body. The rags dropped as if they’d only been upheld by thought, and so by thought had been granted permission. There he stood a skinny naked boy like the others. Malnourished but perfect as an apology. Soon after the anchorites brought them fresh garments. Tunics and breeches of rough itchy cloth. Sandals of wood and leather and rope belts that were difficult to knot. Many of the boys had to offer their waists to be tightened by one of the attendants, whose fingers moved with skill and swiftly, as if knots were their forte.
Duly dressed, the boys no longer resembled other boys but each other. They watched as old clothes were gathered off the ground, stacked in a pile in a far corner of the courtyard and burned. The fire-light cast large, woozy shadows against the far wall. Boys who looked to notice saw versions of themselves transformed, stretching down the wall and across the ground to be joined at their feet, which stood familiar enough in sandals.
Sit, the boys were told, so they sat.
From a lower vantage, they looked up and saw a line of figures emerge from a doorway up high, descend a zigzag of staircases. At the next-lowest story these were obscured by an archway and wall before emerging straight before them into the courtyard. More anchorites, but dressed in a fancier grade of rough cloth robe. These stepped alternately left or right and lined the walls of the yard, making way for the last of their line, a man of unremarkable height but serenely strict posture. His beard, unlike customary beards about the place, was shorn except for a thick mustache and pert goatee, fashioned to a point off his chin.
An anchorite who was attending to the boys explained: this was the salinastery’s high abbott, Father Bright. He has come to offer a few words to them, as way of a greeting.
Good morning, the abbott said, in contradiction to the dark around them.
I say good morning, of course, not because it’s morning but because you’ve just woken up. From the towns and villages and country-places where you were born and which didn’t want you, you’ve sleepwalked together into a fresh and wakeful life. All that came before, which you had to endure, was a dream. A useless dream small and foul as a fly. But good news: this is a new clean morning. You’ve just woken beneath a new kind of sky. Home.
In the coming weeks, they were told, they would each learn who they truly were and why they’d been brought there. They would gain an appreciation for their purpose, because yes, counter to what their old dream-life had shown them, they had one, and they were here to join it and embody it, share it with their fellow homelings.
Are you tired? he asked. The boys stood waiting, understanding already an abbott is someone who asks questions of others for the pleasure of answering them.
Very well, it’s early yet but it’s late. You’ve come a long way. Only a short last walk was ahead of them, he assured them, before they reached their sleep chambers. These Brothers Cloud would take them there now. There would be more to say tomorrow.
At that, the abbott excused himself and the anchorites led them out the courtyard down a narrow corridor. Along the corridor were a series of doorless passages that descended down staircases to a hive of chambers below. At each passage the line stopped and five boys were counted and told to follow an anchorite down its staircase. The boy from Yimis watched these exchanges carefully, until the number of boys diminished and it was his turn to be counted. From the top of the staircase he watched the boys before him descend, following their chosen anchorite, flickering of light and shadow around the corkscrewing channels below. A hand at his back pushed him and his feet took the stairs. At the bottom were more spare walls of chiseled salt-rock, doorless openings onto small rooms lit each by a single lantern. Along the walls of these were slabs cut from rock. These, their guide explained, were beds. This is where they would sleep. Seeing as they’d become accustomed to the habit of sleeping on hard ground, this would prove a luxury, maybe.
The boys each took a slab and laid on it. As way of a goodnight the anchorite lifted the lantern from its hook off the wall, leaving the room dark as the gaps between stars. The boy from Yimis lay a long while listening as the breaths of the other boys slowed into even rhythms. Quiet, calm. He lay there listening and breathing until something in him slipped and sleep came for him, another boy rendered unto nowhere.
*
The next day they were herded into groups for a tour of the monastery.
At dawn they were led into a large dining hall and were made to sit either side a series of long wooden tables. They were fed bowls of oatmeal and sliced gall-fruit. While they ate, an older anchorite introduced himself. He was the monastery’s vice abbott, tasked with the children’s education. In the coming weeks they would get to know each other well.
The first order of the day, he told them, would be to honor their rebirth by giving them each a new name. The names they’d brought with them were arbitrary, after all, attached to them by chance of birth. They were false, tainted. Better to amputate these and toss them beyond memory, and take on designations more particular them as they were now and that best reflected the earnestness of their venture.
At this a table of boys was asked to stand. Their attendants instructed them to form a line and walk towards the vice abbott, who stood in a doorway that lead out onto a sunlit portico. One by one the boys were made to step to the vice abbott, so he might examine them closely, head to foot, until a name appropriate to their person came to mind. Once a name occurred to them, he would speak it aloud, first softly, for the boy’s benefit, then again loudly, so the rest might hear it and commit it to memory. A secretary anchorite standing to the vice abbott’s left would then log the name in a large, leather-bound ledger.
This seemed strange and random to the boys left sitting at their tables, but to the boys asked to stand and wait, the method behind their naming became apparent. When the vice abbott looked them up and down, it wasn’t to appreciate the whole of their person, but to search for some defining characteristic to name them after. Not their finer traits, that they might be proud of or pleased with. A flaw, rather, that might embarrass them should it be made to exemplify them. Brother Smallteeth, Brother Squat, Brother Tub-O-Guts, Brother Stinkbreath… once named the boys were sent on their way, out of the dining hall into morning sunlight. It took the better part of an hour for the last table to be emptied, the boy from Yimis among them. When the boy and his blue-green eyes stepped before the vice abbott, the holy politician rocked back on his heels. Most of the faces that had appeared before him had been fearful, eyes lowered, but here was one who met his gaze cleanly, directly. For a fraction of a breath the eyes had narrowed, suggesting defiance, and the vice abbott had noticed. He paused in appreciation of the face before before naming it. Brother Squint. The boy walked on and the secretary wrote this new essence into his ledger.
Thusly named, the boys were divided into groups of ten and a guide led them about the place. They were shown the forge, where ironworks were smelted, and the smithy, where hot iron was hammered into every manner of implement. They were given tour of the Great Hall and the library, the kitchen and mill, balneary and infirmary. Up white staircases without railings they were led to stacked terraces leveled along the slopes of the mountain. On the terraces were gardens, orchards. Tending to these with trowels and rakes and pruning scissors were boys like them, selfsame in tunics and breeches. As the boy novitiates passed, laborers raised a hand to salute their arrival. To many, the crops they tended were alien, species of vegetable or fruit previously unseen. On a terrace at a higher level was an orchard of gall-fruit.
The gardens, their guide explained, were fed by the waters from the three wells. These were located in the lowermost chambers of the monastery’s main building. Without these, life would unsustainable, given the climate.
At conclusion of their tour the boys were assigned work-roles. Some were handed leather aprons and made blacksmith apprentices, others handed aprons of cloth and sent to the kitchen and bakery. Many were allocated to the gardens. The rest were designated as bucket-men, to help pass harvests of water up staircases from the basement. The boy from Yimis was put on the garden crew and that first day worked alongside a mentor a few years older, a Brother Hognose. Brother Hognose taught him how to tend to gall-fruit while they form and ripen. Mix a certain spice with water, baste onto skin of a fruit, he was instructed, and insects would leave it untroubled.
After their afternoon work and before dinner, they were led to the Great Hall for their first of many lectures. On long benches of carved salt they were made to sit and once settled were told to keep silent. Soon after Father Bright appeared at a lectern above them, a large light-proud window behind him.
The abbott stood a moment to scan the boys looking up at him. Words—they were waiting for more words from him. A faint tension in the waiting, then, since he withheld what they expected. Instead he lifted for them to see a novel object, clear perfect transparent cylinder. Light from the window passed through it, sparking glints of brilliance. Many boys leaned forward, angled for a better view of the object. What was it? What was it for? The abbott tipped it slightly and water spilled from it, splattering to the floor below. So the object served as a hand-held cistern of sorts, but unlike any they’d seen was composed of a limpid substance. Noting their confusion and wonder, the abbott smiled then lifted this to his lips for a sip.
An attendant then presented the abbott with a wooden tray. On the tray, a sizable pile of salt. Holding the water in one hand, with his other the abbott took up a spoon from the tray and scooped a spoonful of salt. This he poured into the glass and with the spoon stirred it. When finished, tapped the spoon against the rim of the glass, sounding it. A bright cheerful glinty tink tink.
Water, the abbott told them.
Water and salt.
It begin so very simply.
Mix the two, already we have the modest embryo of an ocean.
With that single unassuming gesture we have created the beginnings of something vast and deep, but long bereft of a place to settle.
The abbott lifted the glass higher, for emphasis: it was above him also.
But watch: if I were to take this out into the open air, place it among the elements, over the course of a few days the water would vanish from it, leaving behind only salt. Where does the water go?
With his free hand the abbott pointed to the ceiling and through the ceiling to the stark clear blue sky beyond.
Up there. Towards the sun. Into the sky water goes, where it then travels. Often across far distances, where elsewhere it is released as rain.
Maybe some of you remember rain, he said, scanning the boy-faces gazing up at him. It hasn’t been so long since you were brought here.
If you remember rain, then there’s good chance you remember what clouds are, how they appear. Time to time even here if you look up you might spot a wisp of cloud.
We too are made of salt and water.
We too are living ancestors of clouds.
If we ever return from whence we came, it will be as rain. The separating. The sorting. The changing from one form to another. This is the lesson. Take notice: it’s the story of where you are.
This great salt flat you crossed to arrive here, once had been the bottom of deep, unending water. An ocean or perhaps a sea. But a dry age fell upon it, left it barren. The ocean became angry for reasons none of our forebears could discern. So it evaporated into the sky and left for elsewhere, some far and better country. It is our aim here, it is our work to pay it tribute, charm it, convince it to return. To pay penance through steady work and unwavering belief and patience. In this cloudless place we wait: we are clouds and together, with effort and conviction, we will bring rain.
At that the abbott’s lecture concluded, leaving some confused and many in full acceptance of what they’d been told. The boy with the blue-green eyes, the boy once from Yimis, kept a neutral aspect, watching the others, the boys, anchorites standing at the ends of each bench. After the abbott left the lectern, the boys were filed from the Great Hall for dinner. Next to their places at the banquet tables were wooden cups and within each of these, a shining portion of water.
*
Soon they learned the language of the place, its habits and customs. Their days were organized around the rhythms of work and lecture. Their hours of sleep were filled with variations of the same. Dreams of laboring in the kitchen or mill or garden, dreams of a long-vanished ocean that would one day return.
They were taught proper names for each detail of their surroundings. The salt flat stretching in every direction was called The Crisp. The westerly wind that came rushing across the flats driving before it by turns small or massive salt-clouds was called The Hassinda. The season of their arrival was dubbed the “midnight winter” for the starkness of its cold and for the light snows of salt that sifted down from on high for months on end. The glitter and shine they each woke with in their hair and on their cheeks and crusted on the lashes of their eyelids, this was called the Glaze and was less a bother in other seasons, of which there were five. The names for each of these would be disclosed once a prior season had left and they’d arrived to a new one.
The monastery was not a monastery but a salinastery, and the salinastery known among peoples of the outlying regions as The Nest. Across the Crisp, in the direction from whence The Hassinda came, at a distance too far a wander without regular resupplies by water, was another mountain that, in the ocean days, had been an island. Built around that mountain was a salinastery for girls and women, a nunnery. There orphan girls were brought and there were initiated into a worship labor similar to their own. A daily round of tribute paid to an ocean waiting to return to the world, if only enough people believed, and concentrated that belief toward convincing it they were worthy of its return.
Nights were lonely those first weeks. In the dark among the bunks of the dormitories, now and then a boy could be heard crying. The others would listen and wonder if was themselves. If everything they’d brought with them as known was being broken down, recombined according to the interests of this place, perhaps something was recombining within them evening by evening, as they lay homesick before sleep—a painstaking renaming of the heart’s affections. No mother, no father. Their child-bond severed and released into the world to wander, until they were scooped up and saved, here channelled towards the abbott and his kin—their caretakers now. This was their world and these were their people. The Order was family. Those first lonely nights were birth-pains of a kind. Dabbing their eyes then dabbing their lips, it should’ve come as no surprise tears tasted like ocean.
*
While the boys worked, they were instructed to keep quiet, uphold a communal speechlessness. On the high terraces of the mountain gardens where the boy from Yimis watered gall-fruit trees and weeded shade-plants, the silence between workers was almost its own form of gossip, highlighting by contrast all they were not allowed to discuss. They had been informed early of the reason for this rule: that the cultivation of silence was also a sort of gardening, conjured the acoustics necessary for their daily lectures to resonate within their hearts and minds.
As a workaround to this restriction, a makeshift argot of hand signals had developed among the boys. It was older than any boy currently living at the salinastery. The eldest boys had learned it from their elders, and those elders had learned it in turn from boys no longer in their company. Once a boy reached an age where his body changed, hair in armpits, voice deepening, he was marked as a novitiate. After four years as a novitiate, he became an anchorite and was moved to anchorite quarters.
This is why the boys signed among each other sparingly when under watch by an anchorite: the latter could understand what they were signing.
When unobserved, and especially in the gardens, the boys would discuss with hand gestures rumors about the place. The boy from Yimis’ work-partner, Brother Hognose, was particularly curious, particularly verbose with his fingers.
Right hand curled into fist, left hand flat slapping top of the fist crisply: Listen to this.
Two pointer fingers touching tips: I’ve heard something.
What followed would usually be some faint attempt at humor. Since laughter was forbidden, deemed a vulgar indulgence, the boys often tried to provoke one another. Brother Hognose was the worst of these offenders.
The boy from Yimis was a difficult one to amuse and often would sarcastically laugh with his hands (both fists extended before a person, opening and closing rapidly). Brother Hognose and the other gardeners found it impossible to break him. They’d joke about the vice abbott or the kitchen-master Brother Obese, stifling hard genuine laughter into choked-off snorts and giggles, while the boy from Yimis looked on, raking rocks from a plot of freshly tilled earth. This they took not so much as a snubbing but a comment on the requirements of their silence. During his short time among them he’d proven decent and generous, the first to step to help should one of them need it.
The boy from Yimi’s discipline before their provocations, his fellow boy-gardeners would later come to believe, was possibly practice for what came after—the great debates between the boy and his honorary fathers.
Had it happened? It had, and it did not end well, that much they know. They were witnesses but look, even now their hands find it difficult to talk about.
*
It was sometime during that first year, during one of many morning lectures by a junior abbott. Seeing as most lectures were variations on a limited number of similar themes—clouds, sky, rain, ocean, the foresakeness of their humble condition—there had been nothing unusual about the morning. The boys sat on benches in the Great Hall listening or pretending to listen. The junior abbott addressed the room as if it were irrelevant whether what he described was accepted or believed. His tone habitually an odd blend of boredom and wonder.
The junior abbott droning on, the boys displaying obeisance, sitting upright facing him—when suddenly, without warning, a voice spoke up among them: How had they known?
The question was both brash and casual and left the junior abbott tripping over words, stunned. Boys turned to find where the voice came from.
What was that? the junior abbott asked, not a genuine question to be answered but as means of finding who the voice belonged to.
How had they known? the voice asked again, this time louder. Among rows of heads looking its way was one gazing straight ahead, up at the abbott. The boy from Yimis, Brother Squint, the boy with blue-green eyes.
Until then few could discern what the junior abbott was telling them; but soon as the boy interrupted, they remembered: the terms of the ocean’s return. Long ago it had elected to evaporate and wander elsewhere, leaving them dry and stranded. But it was waiting somewhere, observing their mortal maunderings, gauging their level of need for it and faith in the possibility of its homecoming.
Who told them? the boy asked.
The junior abbott was disoriented enough to answer.
Our Forefather, first to this place. When he first arrived here at this mountain, in a dream the Ocean came and spoke to him. In the dream all this was described, the originating prophecy on which their order was founded.
Had the junior abbott known him?
Who? the abbott asked.
This Forefather.
No, the abbott said, with a pinch of irritation. This is common knowledge and was told to him.
The boy said nothing further. Taking the silence as admission of defeat, the abbott primly cleared his throat and continued his lecture. Doing so, he was unaware the room had changed. What remained was a lasting impression of his faltering.
*
An interjection, the posing of a pointed question. Then an unsureness, a faltering. This became a regular occurrence, so much so the junior abbott came to dread his lectures. Fearful of being made a fool by a boy’s seemingly unassuming but ruthless queries, he took the lectern each morning with less and less confidence.
The interruptions were frequent and had an effect on the other children, emboldened them. While the junior abbott spoke on the topic of this or that bit of arcana, they began to talk among themselves, first in hand gestures then whispers, openly displaying their boredom. Some went so far as to yawn behind cupped hands, which by turns progressed to their yawning boldly and wide-mouthed in the open.
Word must have spread around the salinastery, for one day the vice abbott sat in on one such lecture. The topic of the day’s address was a mainstay, “How The Ocean Shall Return.” Through a yearlong rain, prophecy told them, water would fall onto the plains and absorb their salts and accumulate into a vast body of water, rendering their mountain an island again.
The junior abbott delivered his address haltingly, with much fidgeting. In the rear of the Great Hall, the vice abbott, Father Wash, sat listening. None of the boys had seen him enter, as they were already seated. After they’d settled onto their benches and the junior abbott had begun his lecture, he had slipped into the room from a subtle doorway. Only the junior abbott saw; since few of the boys were truly listening, none noticed the surprised look come over his face. Over the previous weeks, after the boy’s first interjection, the junior abbott had made an effort to deliberately ignore him. He kept from scanning the benches for sight of the boy. This method, based on the premise that if he did not take notice of the boy, the boy would not be granted courage to contradict him, had proven faulty. The boy would not be ignored. And it was no different that morning.
In the middle of his lecture, a hand was raised. The junior abbott, hoping to evade embarrassment, didn’t acknowledge it. The hand remained raised nonetheless while the abbott continued talking. Gradually many boys turned, leaned to look and so forced the abbott to notice as well: there, to the left in the middle distance, sat the boy from Yimis with a hand raised. Something about the manner in which the hand was raised and remained in the air conveyed an attitude of challenge, merely asking for permission to speak.
With the whole room bending towards the boy, no longer was it an option to ignore him. With unconvincing authoritarian forcefulness, the junior abbott called on him: Yes?
Apologies, sir, for interrupting, the boy said. Something you’d said has left me confused. I was hoping you might clarify it for me.
And what, pray tell, was that? the junior abbott asked, anger on his voice.
For weeks now you’ve described the rain. How, for waters to return to their world, they would have to conjure rain. Which implies they aspire to have some control over it. That they could through good acts summon clouds, and inspire these to cast down water upon them.
Yes, the junior abbott said, proudly. Indeed this is our work.
Then came a question that stirred the room: But has that ever worked?
Murmurs among the boys, even small sprigs of laughter.
Stunned, the junior abbott stood embarrassed before the boys and his superior, who sat expressionless and awaiting his parry on the matter.
The voice left him no time to gather himself, continued on. As far as it could see, it said, there was only one rainy season about the place. It lasted about a week, fairly brief as far as rainy seasons go. For one week and one only the salt flat appeared a legitimate body of water; but soon as the rain stopped, it drained into the ground or evaporated, leaving the land barren and famished again. No matter how much the Order might will it to arrive and remain, it petered out reliably after a week. Many of the boys who had lived here for years have corroborated this.
Because we have not yet proven ourselves worthy, the junior abbott interrupted, visibly glad words had returned to him.
His confident moment didn’t last long.
And how do we know how to become worthy, the voice rejoindered.
When it rains, the junior abbott replied.
So we’re worthy only briefly, once a year?
At this the junior abbott’s face reddened. Enough! he shouted. Enough enough enough! He ordered attendants seize the boy and take him to the courtyard. There the boy would be whipped, ten lashes for every question asked.
Witnessing this, Father Wash excused himself from the room. If the boy were whipped before word of his disruptions reached the abbott superior, the junior abbott hoped, he would be praised, not disciplined for how he handled the matter.
All boys were filed from the Great Hall into the courtyard and were made to stand as spectators to his punishment. As punishment for their own sins of listening with implicit approval to the boy’s queries, they were made to count each lash aloud as he was whipped. Tied to his post, the boy hung half-conscious, his back flush with blood. One by one the boys were made to walk past and scoop a handful of salt from a tray held before them by the junior abbott himself: a handful from each, to rub into the boy’s wounds.
*
Father Bright was intelligent enough to understand how insurrections began. Why would they make a martyr of the boy, later in his chambers he asked the junior abbott. Why that, instead of discrediting him? To punish by violence was a show of weakness, he told the junior abbott, but also the others present, both vice abbotts, Father Wash and Father Brineman, along with four deacons and senior anchorites of distinction. Soon after vice abbott Wash had brought word of the incident in the Great Hall and the boy’s subsequent punishment, he had called a meeting. Never in his term as abbott had there been a disruption of a lecture, so there had never been cause to consider how he might prefer they respond.
The junior abbott apologized profusely for the misstep, asked how they might go about doing so—discrediting him.
Before his term, Father Bright said, there had been others who were slow to accept their new life. Boys who had brought a natural defiance with them from the towns and villages that birthed them. He hadn’t seen for himself how they were handled, but knew from consultation with order fathers who came before him, they were changed not through a breaking of the body but through a direct humbling of the mind. The body was an innocent plaything of the mind’s arrogance, besides. Why punish a go-between?
The Order has a functionary for just this sort of concern, he explained. One man to serve the needs of all branches of the Order, a lawyer trained in the art of sophistry, an Inquisitor.
A stir all around, at mention of the Inquisitor—abbotts and deacons and anchorites of informal distinction. Yes, they’d heard of him. Never had they had the opportunity to view him under the same sun, meet his acquaintance.
Good news, then, Father Bright said. I’ve sent for him. He should arrive in a moon’s time. In the meanwhile separate the boy from his familiars but allow him to share meals in the same hall, at his own table but in view of them. Treat him well. And apologize for this indiscretion we committed against him—whipping him. If need be, offer him the option to whip the junior abbott in return, as means of making amends.
The junior abbott, terrified, asked if Father Bright was serious, if this was really necessary.
Father Bright replied: would he prefer to be whipped by his fellow anchorites instead? Offering the boy revenge is the first step to righting things, evening the balance. To change out defiance, which others might rate highly, for pettiness, which unfortunately has now been made their ken and method. If the junior abbott refused to comply, it would embarrass the Order, whole tradition, not merely the abbott who was standing now before him, humbling asking.
The junior agreed, yes, it was only right he should be offered up to be whipped. He could see the aptness of Father Bright’s decision. It had been arrogant of him to punish the boy before consulting his superiors, so this would be a fitting way to undo the problem he’d created, martyring the boy slightly for his disrespect.
*
To their surprise, the boy declined. More clever than we’d estimated, Father Bright thought, when the vice abbott came knocking to inform him.
They’d brought the boy to the southern yard, where the junior abbott knelt waiting. A whip was presented, and a pile of salt in a wheelbarrow. An attendant stood by with handfuls of rope with which to tie the junior abbott to a thick wooden whipping post. It was explained to the boy why he’d been brought before his persecutor—would he prefer to do as was done unto him? Deliver ten lashes for every question he’d asked during the lecture, for which he was un-rightly punished?
Why? the boy asked. Perhaps in sarcasm: answering their offer with a question.
Neither yes nor no: why?
When told he must choose, for it was a decision given for him to make by Father Bright himself, the boy squinted, reinforcing his namesake.
For that also he replied: why?
It was like dialoguing with a two-year-old the vice abbott told his superior. Pressed for instructions on how to minster the junior abbott’s fate, the boy opted for neither retribution or clemency. This they took as an insult not only to their generosity but to the abbott’s authority, and so sent word to vice abbott Wash, who in turn brought description of their predicament to the abbott. Very clever, Father Bright thought to himself, before pausing to say different: Very well then. Send the boy back to his cell. But before doing so, impel the junior abbott to thank him.
*
Waiting doth accelerate the native slowness within things, a scribe of the Order had once written. The scriptures and logbooks of anchorites are stippled with such antiquities, as the flesh of pox-sufferers are dotted with sores. This passage, excerpted from The Book of Floods, prefaced the abbott’s address the following week. The eldest of the boys sitting in the Great Hall had heard this before, in earlier, similar addresses, and in each instance the sentiment it expressed seemed colder and colder to the ear and persistently less convincing.
In a moon’s time, the monastery would welcome an esteemed visitor, the abbott told them. A Father Inquisitor. There would be a gathering over several days, of which all present would be witnesses. As they know, one of their kind had interrupted a lecture and had been punished unjustly; for this the abbott would like to apologize; this had been the incorrect course of action. As he had told his fellow abbotts, it was yet unclear the boy’s interjections had been inspired by a will to commit hearsay or merely a desire to disrupt for its own sake. Perhaps the boy was unwell. Perhaps he was simply impatient. What was clear was the boy expressed his resistance through questions. It could be his questions were ones they themselves might ask one another. In that case they should be taken seriously. For this reason the abbott had sent for a trained asker and answerer of questions, to stand with the boy in debate. They of course would sit as audience for the proceedings, so any doubts they might have could be settled.
The boys sat still and showed no indication they felt any particular way about what they were being told. The abbott’s insinuations weren’t subtle: they were under suspicion.
Did they understand? It was difficult to tell. These were boys who showed faces they’d been taught to cultivate, who talked with their hands since voices were disallowed. Manners of the faithful or the merely compliant. Yes, Father Bright could appreciate the ambiguity in their self-presentation, that silence could be devious, an expressionless face ironic and doubtful, so as a precaution he made one small request of them at his address’ conclusion. Until the moon fed itself back from starvation, slim to full, then starved itself to a sliver again, they would show respect to their caretakers by keeping their hands quiet also. No talking nor signing among each other. No sharing expressions between faces, even. A fast from all forms of communication, he advised, required, until the Inquisitor arrived and they were called to gather. Would they mind this slight sacrifice? Channeling the extinction of their voices he responded: thank you. Then stepped from his lectern refreshed.
*
What is an Inquisitor? He is an investigator of where people hide within themselves, for a man often lies to himself in hiding to feed a lie strength, to nourish it, before sending it out into the world. From there it will grow persuasive, charismatic to belief as to hunger, so the defensive and vulnerable alike might eat from the trough-lines of its hand.
The boys waited in line outside the balneary’s entrance. It was monthly shave-time. Stand in line, shuffle forward. Step to one of three shaves-men. Bucket of water on the stone floor, razor in hand. Kneel on the stones, bow forward. Swiftly the shaves-men rake and slip the blade across their scalps and their hair flutters to the stones.
In the Great Hall they’d been told the debate would be held that day. To look well for the occasion, they would had their heads shaved.
What is an Inquisitor? the vice abbott had asked them, in a brief address after breakfast. Having asked the question he ventured an answer for them. Then afterwards, rocking back on his heels, as if surveying them for the first time, expressed surprise at how long their hair had grown. Not a good thing, he told them, affecting a fatherly jollity. Leave the hair to grow as a youngster and it can cause differences from your kind, so soon you look too unlike to share a mind. Shaved heads, as with tunics and breeches, undermine chaos and re-establish harmony. When old enough to grow a beard, you can join your superiors, such as he, in tending another sort of likeness. Shaved heads for the young, full beards for the elderly. Until then, they must attend to their hygiene.
After their shaving, they were taken to the bathhouse. A similar routine awaited for them there. Undress at the door. Fold tunic and breeches, carry them. Once at the front of the line, hand them to an attendant. Step to the bath, a small wooden tub. There a baths-man stands with a jug and a brush and brick of lye. Kneel, bow head. Water is poured from the jug over head and back, lye is rubbed over wet skin. Brush scrubs neck and arms and back and legs and chest until lye makes a milky paste. Then the jug pours water again. Rinsed, step from the tub to another attendant waiting with a towel. Scrubbed dry, the boy is handed his clothes to dress. From there he’s led out a rear exit back into sunlight.
Washed and shaven, the boys were then gathered into the Great Hall for the debate. Filing into the benches they noticed two chairs on the stage before them, the lectern removed. Many adults about the place stood back to the walls, shoulder to shoulder. Had they been ordered to attend or had they elected to? A room lined with grown men but containing children. Maybe there not as spectators but as handlers, to scan the group for possible dissenters and pull them from their seat, if needed.
Once the room was settled, a hierarchy of holy men entered through the main door—the junior abbots followed by the two vice abbotts, and lastly Father Bright. Chairs waited for them at the edge of the stage, angled in a way to provide them view of the crowd of boy-faces and the two empty chairs before them. Throughout their entrance and seating the room had honored them with stainless quiet. In the quiet they all sat a while, until Father Wash stood and ascended the stage.
We’re assembled today as audience to a debate, Father Wash told them. As you know, one moon ago in this very hall, a boy among you disrupted a sacred lecture and made a mockery of it. For this he’d been unjustly punished. Acknowledging our wrong, we monastery fathers had offered to punish in return the one who’d punished him. He declined. Quite wisely, too, I might add, for when has righteousness ever sought to regain its balance through revenge? His issue had not been with physical contest but with words. He had disrupted a holy lecture with words. Perhaps he had something to say, too much to say, and words needed to be let out of him before he could rejoin us in confidence to sit and listen. We offer him now, and by proxy offer you, an opportunity to converse with an Inquisitor, to vent any objections he may hold, but also to parry with an intelligent representative of our faith. We hope by the end of it any sprigs of doubt will be uprooted. We are confident that, should we all follow a road of words together these next few afternoons, we will arrive back where we came from, as brothers and fathers in perfect alignment with divine prophecy. Let the debate begin.
As the vice abbott took his seat, a hooded figure was led onto to the stage by a pair of attendants. Before their hands pressed his shoulders to sit, the hood was removed, revealing the face they’d been waiting for, the blue-green eyes of the boy from Yimis squinting, blinking. To the boys he appeared dazed but unharmed. Neither his ankles or wrists were bound, but his hair, they noticed, had grown since they’d last saw him, shagged and oily and unwashed. As his attendants left the stage, a lean figure in black robes ascended. This man introduced himself as Father Parlus, gardener of discourse, the Order’s Honorary Inquisitor.
There is no call for a long preamble, he told them. The texture of his voice surprised them: not a booming or a growling but a high nasal reediness, formal in its diction.
Weeks ago in this very room an argument had started. It had been interrupted, denied the opportunity for resolution. They were here to pick up where the argument left off. The boy, he’d been told, had questioned the correlation between good works and the sky’s will to rain. He had doubted there was an ocean elsewhere waiting to return. And surely, for someone recent to this place as this boy was, it was understandable: how could be trust what he had not witnessed first-hand in his short life? Let us revisit this concern. Let us talk of it.
The Inquisitor invited the boy to stand and speak. The boy remained seated.
Yes, of course, non-compliance was a reply, the Inquisitor said, but a poor sort.
The boy mumbled.
What’s this? the Inquisitor asked. A retort too soft to be heard is weak, cowardly. If he has something contrary to share, be more generous with it, more brave.
If I were wrong, the boy said, audible to the Inquisitor and the room.
Yes? If you were wrong what?
If I were wrong, then why would you whip me?
*
Three days the boys were brought from their cells for breakfast and after breakfast to the Great Hall. From midmorning until late afternoon they sat as audience for long discussions on cosmology, eschatology, and the like. Hours of sitting with only two brief breaks during which they might relieve themselves—no yawning allowed, no talking, no sleeping. One boy, a Brother Dimwit, was caught cracking his knuckles; at the first audible popping, one hand cracking knuckles of the other, attendants from all sides set upon him, led him from the hall. Seeing this, the others weighted their options: relief from boredom, courting punishment, or continued suffering under monotony of unending dialogue.
Each day the dialogue began the same way. The Inquisitor would pose a question, the boy would pose one in turn. Neither would concede to answer the other simply or directly. Question would link to question and compose a weave of colloquy that obscured more than it revealed, and satisfied no one. Along each line of inquiry they would reach a moment which required tangible proof of a claim, at which point the Inquisitor would say, Because it is so.
Why would the world end if they ceased their good works?
Why would the ocean not return unless they believed it was elsewhere waiting?
Valid questions all: because it is so.
And why was it so?
Why was descriptive of their mortal insufficiencies. Why was the boundary, the vanishing point beyond which human reason could not pass, the Inquisitor explained.
Says who?
Annoyed, the Inquisitor sucked his teeth and eyed the boy.
As he had already implied, he said, the Who was beyond them and therefore beyond question.
Across the span of three days the boys had been made to follow such fruitless wandering. When the proceedings began, they had appeared afraid. But gradually, as the Inquisitor’s attempts to catch his opponent in a contradiction or flimsy counterargument had failed, repeatedly, they had become emboldened enough to show subtle signs of amusement—a smirk, a raising of eyebrows. As required, they remained quiet. They each kept to themselves. But by the afternoon of the third day it seemed clear to the monastery fathers present their lack of cheering or nods of approval were evidence enough they were unconvinced. Somehow their silence had been rendered ironic, mischievous.
The Inquisitor, sensing their favor toward the boy, invited the boy to explain then, What did he believe? It was fine and easy enough to question what others believed, but at a certain point one had to present a position of their own. What was his, then?
The boys heard in this an admonition: What did they stand for, besides this boy? Soon they’d grow into adults, after all, and where would that leave them?
The boy from Yimis stood to take his turn. Facing the Inquisitor and beyond the stage, the row of holy men gazing at him, he began: If everyone here believes in the same direction, this place has meaning. What he believed was this: it could easily be otherwise. Being an orphan, he had intimate knowledge of didn’t exist: a mother and father. Two people he would never have a chance to know had laid down with one another then stood up again. Months later he was born. Together they walked away from him. This, he’d been told, had certified him homeless. Orphaned thereafter, he could trust only what he could see or touch. This place, for instance…
Yes, what of it? the Inquisitor interjected, sensing a damning admission was about to break.
The boy from Yimis took a pause.
This place, you were saying?
The boy let go of his pause, summoned a moment the room would long remember: Thing is, this place is full of orphans. Generations of strays, supposedly. Each gathered then raised in the family of this place, then sent once a year through the surrounding countryside, to gather more of their kind. Who here wasn’t one at one time? So who here isn’t one still? But notice how a few seem to enjoy privileges of belief more than others, even at expense of the others? Abbotts do no work the gardens nor repair staircases. Nor do they sit to listen to endless lectures instead of delivering them. But what difference are they from the rest of us, except older?
The Inquisitor turned to the row of holy men, the boys leaned forward in their benches. A stunned quiet followed, a long moment when all present waited for time to return to the room again, to continue aging them: the adults further into death, the boys further towards middle age. Having chosen his fate, the boy from Yimis took his seat and waited.
*
The decision was made in private and swiftly: since the boy questioned the verity of vanished things, he would join their company. Father Bright knew anything less would make a martyr of him.
Do it by dark, in the evening, while the other boys slept, he advised.
Take the heretic from his cell, walk him to the lower chambers, where the wells were. Throw him down the deepest, middle of the three. Death by a long fall and drowning would be most appropriate, given the boy’s doubts about rain.
This was done. Only three eyewitnesses were present: the vice abbott and two guards. Later after the vice abbott reported the boy’s dispatch to his senior, the latter lifted a hand and said it was no more use to speak of it. For the next twelve moons no water was to be drawn from the central well. Give it time to digest the heretic’s body. From that evening forward there was to be no more mention of him. Should the others ask, tell them the boy had been sent on a journey to the very ocean he did not believe in, so he might view it first-hand, a refutation of his argument against its existence. If the boys would like to meet him again, instruct them to devote themselves passionately to good works. When the ocean returns, it will bring the boy with it. A sailor on the waves of their good fortune.
