I lay in the tent that night, unable to sleep, my mind overflowing with questions, perplexities, fears. It even occurred to me to wonder whether the spirit within the Ark had in reality spoken to me … if somehow it had communicated certain things which were beyond my comprehension and yet which I was expected to relate to the elders. Was it my appointed task to spread the Word? Had I to prepare the way for the greater glory that was to come? Would the mysterious purpose of the Ark be made plain to me, and through me to all our people?
I had never felt so alone in all my life. My family was close around me, father, mother, sisters, but their physical nearness brought no comfort. They were like the rest of the Tribe, normal people, while I was cut off by the sense that more was expected of me than blind obedience to a way of life that had hardly changed for twenty-eight generations. It was a feeling in my bones that something – I can only describe it as ‘glorious’ – was about to happen. Our eyes would be opened and we would be changed far beyond the dead drab ways of our forefathers and of the elders who sought to impose their narrow preconceptions on us – as if by virtue of their extreme old age.
Lying there, wide awake in the chill darkness, I had a vision of the future. It was as much an indefinable emotion as anything else: a powerful inner certainty that we were about to embark on a great adventure. In spite of my father’s foreboding I had no real fear. There would be momentous changes but we would survive them. The elders were the last of a dying species, without hope or faith, and in time would be swept aside by their own ignorance. Yet the audacity of these thoughts took my breath away – that a mere boy should question the wisdom handed down through generations. What if this inner certainty was nothing more than a derangement of the mind, a flight of youthful imagination? I had nothing to fall back on other than a fragile belief which flickered inside me like a naked candle flame in the wind. It wasn’t unknown for people of the Tribe to be cast out and left to die in the desert for incurring the displeasure of the elders; and if this was to be my fate could I rely on the spirit within the Ark to protect and deliver me from the wickedness in the hearts of men?
*
The hammer of the sun pounded down upon the camp. The horizon was a shimmering wave of heat, a fragmented and distorted line of unreality encircling us like a trap. We could not escape from it, even at the full gallop of the fastest camel; it was our eternal prison.
The second day of interrogation was well advanced and I was weary with the constant repetition of questions which never seemed to lead anywhere but went on and on until they reached the point where they had started from and began all over again. Our replies were always the same – as they had to be – given that we were speaking the truth as near as we could remember it. The slightest hesitation or discrepancy was pounced upon and flung back in our faces as though we had been caught out in a blatant lie, and on Hannah’s face I saw the blank bewilderment of a child wrongly accused of a crime of which it has no knowledge. Several times she said: ‘Tell me what I’ve done wrong. Was it wrong to enter the cavern? If it was I didn’t know, I was curious, there was nobody to warn me – if it was wrong I beg your forgiveness.’
The elders were nine in number. The chief elder was called Ocran. He rarely spoke, watching us with hooded eyes and leaving the endless tirade of questions to the others. I gained the impression that he was the self-appointed judge, weighing the ‘evidence’ and then eventually coming to a decision as to our ‘guilt’ or ‘innocence’. I had little faith that this would be done dispassionately and without bias.
I was asked why I had sought shelter in that particular cave. Didn’t it seem odd that out of all the caves available I should have chosen the only one that led to the inner cavern?
Such was the abysmal level of the questioning.
I answered that I had chosen that particular cave because I had chosen it and for no other reason. There was a storm, I reminded them, it was as dark as a moonless night and my only thought was to find a refuge until the storm had passed.
‘You and the girl-child Hannah were alone together for a long time,’ said the elder Pagiel.
I said yes, that was so.
‘And what did you do all this time?’
‘We talked, then we slept for a while; when we woke up we heard the noise.’
‘You talked and slept,’ said the elder Merari, twisting his mouth into an ugly shape. ‘Such innocence. No thought in your childish heads but to talk and sleep.’ He looked at the others.
‘Did you cohabit with the girl-child?’ Pagiel said. ‘Did you lay down upon her and introduce your semen into her womb?’
I answered that I had not.
‘All that time and you merely talked and slept,’ Merari said, shaking his head in mock wonder. ‘What a credit you both are to the Tribe. Not a single wicked thought in your heads. Well well. I am most impressed by your sobriety and self-discipline. Commendable!’
‘Are you able to conceive, child?’ Ocran demanded of Hannah. His eyes were as heavy as stones. ‘Has your body prepared itself to bear children?’
Hannah answered shyly that she was of an age when this was possible. ‘Though what Kish says is true,’ she added. ‘Nothing happened between us. We didn’t do anything.’
‘Then time will confirm your story,’ Ocran said, smiling bleakly. ‘Or it will not.’
I said, ‘Is this why we’re being questioned? Are we being accused of unlawful cohabitation?’ I could feel my face burning.
‘You are not accused of anything,’ Pagiel said quietly. ‘However, that tone of disrespect is enough in itself to demand chastisement. You are before the elders, a fact you should keep well in mind.’
‘I do not accept—’ I started to say, and checked myself: They were baiting me and it was perverse foolishness to go along with it.
‘You have told us that the object in the cavern spoke to you,’ Merari said.
‘I have said that it made a noise. It did not speak. It made the same noise you yourselves heard, like the low moaning of the wind.’
‘And yet you were not afraid. You went directly into the cavern and stood before the object – the Ark as you describe it.’
‘We were both afraid.’ I replied. ‘But the sight of it was so miraculous that our fear was set aside. We didn’t think—’
‘So it appeared before you as in a divine miracle?’ one of the elders interjected. ‘The Lord of Heaven made it suddenly appear in front of your eyes and you knew it to be an instrument of God.’
‘Do you believe you have been chosen to witness this divine miracle?’ Pagiel said.
‘Why should the Prophet have selected you of all the Tribe?’ Merari said.
‘I don’t know if it was a miracle. I never claimed—’
‘Did you not say it was miraculous? Have you not said that the spirit within the instrument of God made you unafraid and you were able to approach it in complete serenity?’
‘Did the spirit say why you had been chosen above all others? Did it speak your name and instruct you to inform the Tribe of its miraculous appearance?’
‘It did not speak,’ I asserted. ‘It was exactly as you saw it, glowing with light and making the same sound.’
‘And what of its purpose?’ Ocran said, his eyes hard and unyielding. ‘Did this miraculous apparition inform you why it had been delivered into our midst?’
‘I don’t know how it came to be locked inside the cavern or why it should fall to us to discover it there. Perhaps in time these things will be revealed, by a sign or an omen we can understand.’
‘It told you to expect a sign?’ Merari said.
‘Did the spirit tell you what this sign would be?’ Pagiel asked. ‘Or where we should look for it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No—’ The frustration of this was wearing my tolerance to a fine edge. They were wilfully misunderstanding every word I uttered. They had it fixed in their minds that the presence of the Ark was due solely to my finding it there; nothing, it seemed, would dislodge the notion. And then I thought I understood: it was envy that drove them, for they were the elders, and divine manifestations had to come through them and no one else. They had not been ‘chosen’ to discover the instrument of God and therefore it was necessary to discredit me in the eyes of the Tribe. They were jealous.
Pagiel said, ‘This object – is it a power for good or evil?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You seem to know that we should await a sign,’ Merari said dryly. ‘This glowing droning object, whatever it is, has warned you to expect a further revelation. Are its powers infinite? Has it been sent to serve our people or to harm them?’
‘It has not harmed us so far.’
‘That is not an answer to the question,’ Ocran said impassively. His eyes were cold and dead from within.
‘What other answer can I give?’ Something occurred to me. ‘The legend written on the hard shiny surface – doesn’t that tell us something?’
‘Does it?’ Merari said silkily. ‘As you seem to possess the greater knowledge perhaps you will decipher it for us.’
‘I haven’t been taught to read.’
‘Yet you knew it was writing of some kind.’
‘That was obvious.’
Merari twisted his mouth downwards. ‘But not its meaning.’ He glanced at the others.
I looked from Merari to Pagiel and from him to Ocran. ‘Is it not written in our tongue?’
‘Such innocence,’ Pagiel said. ‘It is not written in any language known to any tribe of the desert. The object comes from some distant place, far beyond the desert lands.’
‘And you do not understand what is written,’ Merari said, his voice softly insinuating.
I looked at each of them in turn. ‘Your minds are closed to the truth. In your hearts you believe that the object is the true instrument of God but your ignorance makes you afraid. The Tribe looks to you for wisdom and guidance and you cannot fulfil that responsibility.’
Ocran said, ‘You speak rashly, even for a youth.’ There was a note of warning in his voice. ‘We have been patient with you, because of your age, but there is a limit to our forebearance and understanding.’
‘I have seen neither forebearance nor understanding. I had hoped to respect you as the leaders of our people but you are merely old tired men looking backwards into the past. The future is a blank wall to you, one that you will never scale. You tell the people to expect the coming of the Prophet and yet the words are like dead thorns in your mouths, signifying nothing but your own lack of faith. Nothing on this earth will shift you from your cringing bigotry.’
The words flowed out of me even as I recognized the folly of them and knew they would invoke the wrath of those who sat in judgment. The desire to outrage them was perverse – I knew full well – but I could not stop myself from saying what I truly felt. My father had warned me what the consequences might be but this had only strengthened my resolve and filled me with obstinate determination. We could not continue to be ruled by those whose vision had failed: this was a new beginning, a new era, and it could not be founded on cowardly deception and craven lies.
Hannah and I stood side by side, calmly awaiting our fate. There was a curious sense of detachment as though the decision, whatever it was, would not affect us. We felt strangely free of their influence (I speak for Hannah as confidently as I speak for myself) and it didn’t seem to matter that they had, quite literally, the power of life or death over us. There was a greater arbiter in the land, one whose judgment would be final and binding, ultimate and eternal.
‘We are not a cruel people,’ Ocran began, his eyes hooded and dead above the flared nostrils. ‘We do not seek to chastise out of malice; but it is our duty as elders to protect the Tribe and ensure its survival from generation to generation. Anything or anyone which threatens that survival must be dealt with swiftly and surely, and you, by your deeds and words, have shown yourselves to be unworthy of our trust and protection.’
‘By which you mean that you’re afraid for your position as head of the Tribe,’ I said.
‘Childish bravado is out of place here,’ Ocran continued blandly. ‘It will not deter us from our loyalty to duty. The elders, without exception, commit you, Kish, son of Nethan, and you, Hannah, daughter of Elud, to be cast out into the wasteland without food or drink and to be gone from our sight. The elders of the Tribe, and all its people, disown you of your birthright and henceforth your names will not be recounted in the annals of our history, neither will any memory of you outlive your passing. This is the judgment of our Tribe, agreed by the elders in your presence and delivered to you by Ocran, son of Raphu.’
The final word had barely left his lips when there was a sudden commotion outside the tent – the sound of many voices raised in alarm – and one of the men set to guard the entrance rushed in and started babbling and waving his arms about. Some of the elders had risen and were looking uncertainly from the man to the chief elder and then at each other, bewildered and not a little alarmed by the unexpected intrusion.
Ocran remained in his seat and told the man to calm himself, asking him to explain in a coherent fashion. The man stammered and began:
‘A sign from heaven’ – pointing upwards as though we could see through the roof of the tent – ‘In the sky to the east … a pillar of smoke and fire. It falls slowly to the ground, billowing forth in clouds, a column of flame taller than a mountain. It’s a sign, a sign from heaven!’
Ocran stood up. His eyes moved slowly from the man and came to rest on Hannah and me. The elders waited, fixed in position like wax images.
‘Come and see, come and see!’ the man cried. ‘The spirit within the Ark has commanded the sign to appear – see for yourselves!’
Ocran said, ‘Bind them securely,’ and our arms and legs were tied with leather thongs and we were placed side by side on the floor. When they had gone, led by the chief elder, I said to Hannah, ‘Don’t be afraid. They won’t dare cast us out now that a sign has appeared. The people won’t allow it.’
‘I am not afraid,’ Hannah said quietly, and I knew that she spoke honestly.
From the noise I judged that the people were in a frenzy of excitement mingled with fear. Some were praying at the tops of their voices, begging mercy and forgiveness for their sins, and through the tumult, faintly at first but becoming louder we could hear the sound of a great rushing wind which quickly grew to a tremendous roaring and the walls of the tent strained and whipped wildly as under the onslaught of a violent sandstorm. At this the people cried out with one voice, women screaming and children wailing, and we heard them running past the tent, away from the source of the turmoil and whatever was causing it.
‘They’re leaving us,’ Hannah said. ‘They’re running away.’
I struggled to sit up so that I could see through the madly flapping awning across the entrance but I was bound too tightly to move. Sand flew about, stinging our faces and legs, and the roaring noise reached a crescendo, so loud that it was impossible to think.
Lying on my back and staring at the roof of the tent I could see the blurred orb of an intense white light, bright as a miniature sun, advancing across the sky. From it came a single beam of light which swept in an arc as though searching the landscape, and in my imagination I thought I felt the heat of a great searing flame: a tongue of fire licking out across the desert. Hannah saw it too and her body went rigid.
I said, ‘Have faith. We will not be harmed if we truly believe.’
From outside there came a universal cry … and then, in an instant, the deepest and most profound silence. Deeper than any other silence because it seemed to contain the dying echo of a thousand voices. The beam disappeared and the orb of light moved away. We could hear nothing: not a human voice, not the cry of a child, not the faintest coughing bray of a camel. The desert was perfectly silent.
*
The Tribe had been turned to stone.
It was several hours before Hannah and I managed to break free, and when we emerged from the tent we found a landscape littered with the solidified remains of our people. They had fallen as they ran, every man, woman and child, struck down instantaneously and transformed into grey effigies which lay stiffly in the sand. Their limbs had the appearance of lava-rock and yet when we touched them they crumbled away to grey powder beneath our fingers, leaving their robes like empty sacks billowing gently in the desert breeze. Flesh to rock and rock to dust, trickling away to be lost forever in the wastes of sand. In time nothing would remain except for a few tattered rags caught in the thorn bushes, and perhaps the odd trinket of amber or bronze plucked from the sand by nomadic tribes on their ceaseless wanderings.
The sun was almost on the horizon. Distantly I heard the sound of the rushing wind and looking towards the east I saw the pillar of fire and cloud ascending to the sky, the hard brilliance of light so intense that it was hurtful to behold. We watched it disappear into the heavens: a vivid moving star which grew fainter until it merged with the starry constellations and was lost in the deepening twilight.
Hannah looked at me, her eyes strangely luminous. She said, ‘We have been spared. Is it the will of God?’
I said, ‘There is a purpose. I don’t know what is expected of us but one day it will be revealed. Trust in the Lord.’
She sought my hand and held it tightly. ‘Kish, are you the Prophet? Did the spirit within the Ark speak to you as the elders believed? I must ask these questions because I am frightened and confused; the gift of divine inspiration has not been given to me. Inside I am still Hannah, daughter of Elud, not chosen or blessed in the sight of the Lord.’
‘I sense a greater glory,’ I told her, ‘but I am unsure, like you. The ways of God are not made plain to mortal men. But I’m not afraid: we have been spared the vengeance of the Lord for a reason, Hannah, and one day it will be shown to us.’
We looked towards the jagged heap of lava-rock fringed by palms where the Tribe had sought shelter from the storm; it was an inky black silhouette against the fading sunset. Hannah pulled at my arm and said:
‘Do you see it – the globe of light? Do you see?’
As we got nearer we could see that a vast fissure had been opened up, directly into the heart of the rock, and the Ark was visible, its light now glowing steadily and evenly, shining out into the desert.
‘This is a holy place,’ I said to Hannah. ‘It has been chosen by God for the new beginning.’
‘Our Tribe have always been wanderers,’ Hannah said. ‘We have never stayed in any one place.’
‘We have been seeking a home for many generations. My father Nethan said that one day we would find it. God has built a temple to house the Ark and we must stay here and attend to it. It is in our keeping for future generations. There is water here. We can cultivate the land and raise animals. We have been led to this place; God has found a home for us.’
Standing before the Ark and gazing up at it all doubt was swept out of my heart. I had been given a sacred mission to prepare the way of the Lord. Hannah and I together would bring forth a new tribe and it would prosper and grow strong and spread the Word throughout the land …
She said, ‘How can this be? I have cohabited with no man and yet I know I am with child.’ She held my hand firmly. ‘How can this be?’
I said, ‘It is the will of God. His spirit has entered into your womb through His Holy Instrument.’
The Ark continued to shine into the darkness with a steady serene light.