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2014-06-12T15:04:00.001-07:00

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Stryker Chapter 1 - Stryker's Beginning

2014-06-10T15:01:00.003-07:00

Stryker’s Beginning

Stryker was a strong boy. He had not cried out at the ceremony. His hands still stung a little as he knelt beside the low table, soaking them in the wooden bowl filled with seawater. Three red lines, stretching from his wrists toward his fingers, slashed across the back of each hand. Soft sunlight came in through the window of the hut. The walls of mud and thinly woven reeds let in a breeze. With it came the smell of the ocean. The gentle wind calmed Stryker as it rustled the thatched palm leaves of the roof. His mother had gone to the garden, leaving him alone in the cool shade of the hut. Stryker felt a great calm, a relief he had not felt for some time. The ceremony marked his twelfth birthday and the last rite in his ascension from childhood. He was home again and with honor.

He was proud that he had not cried out at the ceremony and glad that his mother and father had seen his strength. He had not been afraid to enter the circle of torches on the beach. The drums and the ghostly chanting had not caused him fear. He had controlled his nerves as the old priest anointed his hands. He had not even flinched when the priest took the shell blade and cut the long slashes down the back of each hand, nor grimaced as the priest inserted a long black spine into each cut. He looked intently into the old man’s eyes as they pressed their hands together to seal the wounds over the spines. The old man’s face, as always, had remained hard but kind, ancient but strong. The priest, Master Taum, had been his teacher and closest companion over the last seven years of preparation for Ascension. Stryker had grown accustomed to the ancient face. He loved his master and knew the old man loved him.

The ceremony marked the end of his childhood training. He was now an Initiate. With the spines of the black scorpion fish in his hands, he was well on his way to becoming a full Cleat, a warrior of his people. Stryker’s father was a Cleat, as his mother’s mother had been. Even before he was born it was hoped that Stryker would undergo the training. Before he was three he was already showing signs that indeed he had inherited the talent. On his fifth birthday his mother left him in Master Taum’s care.

Now, seven years later, as he sat with his hands soaking, he could hear his mother singing in the garden. He could not make out all the words. It was a playful song, something about a whale hunt and a mermaid. The sound of her voice brought back vividly the day she had given him over to Master Taum for training.

That day he had cried, and so had she. He remembered how she had hugged him tightly and pressed their foreheads together, “Be strong my son, my little warrior son. Train hard and fight well. May Father Earth give you strength, and may Mother Moon touch you with her power.” The familiar prayer to Father Earth and Mother Moon brought even more tears to his eyes. They had said it together so many times, over meals or whenever his father left with the patrol ships.

The small training islands were not far away. As a boy, on clear days, Stryker had often looked out at them with his mother and father. He had even been excited to, one day, travel across the small channel. Still, when the day came to leave, he had not been excited. Though the islands were close, the trainees and their teachers were kept separate from the other islands. He would not see his parents, even once, during the seven years of training.

“You’ll have Taum,” his mother had told him, “and the other trainees. You’ll make friends.” She wiped his tears and added, “You know your father would not want us to cry.” As always, when she mentioned his father, he had felt braver and pulled away from her embrace. Yes, he would be strong. He then kissed her cheek, as he had often seen his father do. Against his lips, his mother’s cheek was salty with tears.

“You taste like the sea,” Stryker said, almost smiling.

His mother laughed through her tears, “Yes, like the sea.”

Stryker was surprised at how well he remembered his mother and father. It had been seven years and he had been so young when he left, still the hut felt familiar, and there was no awkwardness with his parents. As was the custom with his people, after the training, a child could call his parents by their given names, his father Jaden and his mother Mina.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on his hands in the water. The energy of the water was cool but strong. He focused on the flow. As he had been taught, he focused on the energy of the water and the energy of his hands. Pressing and pulling with his mind, he made the energy flow out of the water and into the cuts. He felt the wounds healing over the spines. As he focused, his thoughts returned to that first day on the training islands.

Master Taum had told him firmly, “do not cry for your parents, you will be with them again.” He had then knelt down and added more kindly, “Her Ra will remain with you, and if you learn to be patient, to sit still and to listen, you will sense her.”

Stryker had been aware of what the grown ups called Ra, or spirit energy, as long as he could remember. He could feel it flowing through his body. He felt how it changed when someone touched him. It was this awareness that qualified him for the training. Being able to sense Ra was common among his people, but only those who could control its flow were chosen to become Cleats.

Controlling Ra was what made their people so strong in battle. It was why, anciently, they had been separated as a warrior class. In the Great Wars following the fourth destruction they were used as human weapons, soldiers or assassins. Some Cleats, especially adept, became healers, but mostly they were used for violence. After three centuries of fighting, they withdrew to the islands in the great Middle Sea where, four hundred years later, Stryker was born. Seventeen main islands formed the archipelago. Each was a harsh desert, the earth dry and barren. The people went for months in the summer without rain, but during the wet months, hot storms beat against the rocky shores for days at a time.

The people survived by fishing, raising herds of thin goats, and hunting the great whales that migrated back and forth across the Middle Sea. The people stored water in cisterns, and no one lived in wealth or idleness. The wars continued across the continents, but the Cleats and their people no longer fought. They continued training warriors, but now only to protect their isolation. They had minimal contact with the mainland, only through the occasional fishermen, tradesmen or smugglers who crossed the sea from the Southern Kingdoms to the lands of the Empire. These strangers were allowed to pass through Cleat waters if they did so quickly without stopping or disturbing anyone. Stryker’s people loved peace and fought only to protect it. In four hundred years the Cleats had never lost a battle at sea, yet the Empire still sent ships to raid and pester the islands. It was for this purpose that Stryker’s father left for months at a time to patrol the open channels. It was for this reason that Stryker’s mother gave him to Taum.

Stryker flexed his fingers in the bowl. He felt the spines bend and flex with his hands. He was glad his mother had done it. He was proud to be an Initiate, though the path had not been easy. He closed his eyes and thought back on the training.

The first step was to learn to sit still, to watch, and to feel. During the first year of training, Stryker learned to wait for his food, to wait to sleep, to wait for pain to pass. He learned to sense the Ra around him, in the earth and the rocks, in the water. He learned to recognize the Ra of birds and plants, of the worms in the earth and fish in the water. At the end of the first year he had faced his first trial.

Stryker remembered the day clearly. Master Taum had given him few instructions. “This is your first trial and the only deadly task you will face in your training. The first task must be the hardest. If you pass, nothing will stop you from going on to become a Cleat. If you fail, then we will not have wasted much time on you.”

Stryker knew that when Master Taum spoke casually like this he was hiding his true feelings. He knew that the old man was afraid for him, and that added to his own fear.

“Sit here,” the old man went on, pointing to a straw mat in front of a small table in the middle of the hut. “You must sit perfectly still. Do not move.”

Then he left, closing the door behind him. Stryker was alone.

On top of the small table, there lay a black cloth. Stryker could see there was something beneath it, but he could not tell what it was. He closed his eyes and tried to sense its energy. It was too far away. Stryker almost reached out his hand to touch it but stopped.

“Don’t move!” Taum whispered through the door. “Under the cloth is a scarafa beetle.” Stryker froze, now he understood why Master Taum was afraid for him. Suddenly the cloth moved. Stryker nearly jumped back but caught himself. It was not the beetle moving but the cloth that covered it. A small thread trailed from the cloth, off the table, to the door, where on the other side, Master Taum held the end. Slowly and steadily, he pulled the string, revealing the beetle.

It was frightening but beautiful. Its translucent, milky shell glistened like sea foam in the soft light from the window. Stryker calmed his thoughts and studied the beetle. It was a female, about ten inches long. The shell along her back formed two curved wings, like claws, at the tip of each a slight brownish hue marked the venom. The wings did not move. From outside Master Taum whispered instructions.

“The beetle will not strike if you do not move. Listen for her breathing, feel the rhythm of her Ra. When you have sensed this rhythm, you must begin to gauge your timing. For a split second, when she breaths in, her energy will stop, she will be immobile, then you must strike.”

Then his master was gone. He was not staying to watch? What if something went wrong? Would Master Taum really let him die? If he were stung, Master Taum could counteract the poison, but only if he reached him in time, only if he watched closely. No, Master Taum was serious, he could die. A lump rose in his throat and a brassy taste came into his mouth. His breathing quickened. For a moment he thought of his mother, he wanted his father to come. The beetle flinched and Stryker froze.

Slowly, he calmed his breathing. He dared to blink. He forced himself to swallow the knot in his throat. Still, the beetle did not move. He began to focus his energy, probing out through his legs, into the ground and across to the table. It was too far. Against his will, his breathing quickened again. He was too far from the beetle to sense it and too close to run. For nearly an hour he pushed his Ra outward, reaching, listening for any sound, any small ripple of energy. His legs began to ache. His energy faltered. He tried to press it back out but could not. Finally, he stopped pushing. Perhaps he could just hold still and wait. When Taum realized he could not sense the beetle and could not strike, he would surely come back. Master Taum would realize he had failed, kill the beetle, and let Stryker go. If that happened, he would be sent home for sure. His mother would not care, she would be glad to see him and his father… but when Stryker thought of his father the knot came back to his throat. No, he could not fail and face his father again. He was trapped and alone. Too afraid to move, too afraid to strike, he could not even call for help. His eyes began to burn with hot salty tears. Stryker almost raised his hand to wipe them away. He could not cry. His father would not want him to cry. His father would want him to be strong. He shut his eyes, squeezing away the tears, and tried again to listen, to concentrate.

Stryker sat immobile for what seemed like an eternity. When he opened his eyes again the light in the hut had dimmed. As the sun went down outside, the beetle lost its shine and took on a pale, ghostly white.

In the darkness, he watched the beetle and listened. When the fear or the tears threatened to take him again, he thought of his father and forced himself to be calm. The hours passed excruciatingly slow. Finally, moonlight came in through the window. The soft glow was a welcome sight. Master Taum had taught him that the Moon first awakened the spirit energies. Ra in the Cleats, Shar in the Blade Maidens, Mune in the Empaths, and Syth in the Kingdoms of the South. She was the mother, and as her light moved slowly across the floor to where Stryker sat, he prayed to her, pleading for help. Why did the beetle not move? Why did it not crawl off or fly into the roof, or strike? He strained his ears listening for something, a step, a voice, for anything, but there was only the wind in the palm leaves overhead, and the distant crash of the waves on the beach. Stryker was exhausted, and still he stared at the beetle, still he pressed his mind toward it. Too far, it was just too far. Finally he withdrew his Ra and closed his eyes, defeated.

Then slowly, into his exhausted mind, came a clear memory. It was an old one, from before the training. His mother had been sick but they had not known why. Stryker could not remember everything, but he knew she had been sick for days. Healers came to see her, but nothing helped. In his memory Stryker saw his father kneeling over her with his hands on her arm. His eyes were closed, he was listening, waiting, and feeling her energy. Stryker had remembered this scene many times, but as he knelt alone in the dark hut, the memory was somehow different. This time he not only saw his father, but also felt his energy, the gentle steady Ra flowing from his father to his mother. The energy was strong and warm. It poured out of his memory and filled the room. He could actually feel it all around him.

He opened his eyes again. The moonlight had inched hour by hour across the floor of the hut, and now shown full on the beetle’s shell. In the moonlight the beetle glowed like a white flame. Then, all at once, Stryker felt it. He sensed her rhythm and heard her breath. Her energy raced, quickly and shallow. Of course, the beetle was barely ten inches long, she would not take deep breaths. Her energy would flow in tight fast circles.

He wanted to sing for joy, but stopped, he had lost the sound. He had it, but it was gone. No. Wait. There, short, shallow but distinct. He could strike, but he would have to be extremely fast. He silently thanked Mother Moon and asked Father Earth for strength.

Slowly, he forced himself to time his attack. In, out, in, out, in, out, in, now, no, wait. It was too hard. He kept losing the rhythm. A split second hesitation, a moment too late, and he would miss. In out, in out, in out, in…

“Now!” he cried aloud as his hand slashed forward and crashed down into the beetle. With his entire mind he forced his Ra out through three extended fingers and into the beetle. His Ra slashed through hers like a knife.

For a moment nothing moved. Stryker held his breath. The scarafa did not even twitch. It was dead. He closed his eyes. The breathing of the beetle was gone, her energy dispersed. She was dead. Stryker was alive. He tried to stand and turned to the door, but as blood rushed back into his legs, his head spun and his vision grew dark. He stumbled forward and fell down unconscious.

The poisonous tips of the wings were saved and grafted into the top of Stryker’s ears, pulling them into sharp points. The venom seeped slowly into his bloodstream, and thus administered, was not fatal. After a few weeks the skin and cartilage fused with the shell, and Stryker had his own venomous spikes. He had admired his reflection in the water. Though they made his ears look too large for his small head, he liked them. They were like his father’s, and they made him look like a Cleat. All Cleats had the spikes on their ears, though Stryker had never realized what they were, and he had never even asked. He wondered if he had asked, if anyone would have told him. It would have been an advantage to know of the test before he faced it, but perhaps that was why they had not told him.

After learning to wait and sense Ra, he learned to move and manipulate it, to use the flow of his own Ra to move faster, to jump higher. He learned to focus the Ra in certain spots to harden his skin, to heat his hands enough to boil water, or cool them enough to freeze it. He slept without blankets, heating the cool air around him. He touched fire and neutralized its energy. He could skim across water by hardening it against his feet, or climb a sheer rock wall by fusing the Ra in his hands to the Ra in the rock. This training lasted two years and made Stryker the master of his own energy. He had no trouble passing the second trial. It was easier than the first, and though the tasks were dangerous, they were not life threatening. None of the blades pressed against his skin had penetrated, the hot coals touched to his eyelids and tongue had not burned him, and he moved easily over the pits of fire, water, and shards of broken shell.

After his second trial, he spent three years learning combat. He was bested many times by the students of other masters. He had a hard time focusing his energy into attacks. Cleats use no weapons. They use their own Ra to disrupt the energy of their opponents. It was much easier to focus his Ra to turn the blade of a knife, or to neutralize the heat from a fire, than to block another fighter’s energy. He was fast, but the others were just as fast. One touch would disable his arm, or leg, a blow to the back, or a touch to his head could stun him entirely. Often he would strike and his Ra would backfire off the pooled energy of his opponent.

“You must attack when they do not expect, don’t give them time to build their Ra for defense.” His master was always kind but never allowed him to quit, or even sometimes, to rest. Slowly, Stryker learned. His speed gained accuracy, his energy gained strength and effectiveness. By his fifth year, he was winning more than losing. The third trial, at the end of the sixth year, was a tournament between all the sixth year trainees from the surrounding islands. He placed third of forty-eight. He was also awarded special marks for bravery and technique. None of the trainee’s parents could attend the tournament, but Stryker knew his mother and father would hear of his success and be proud.

His final year of training focused again inward. Stryker learned to control his internal energy to heal himself when wounded. He learned to examine and control his Ra’s delicate balance. By doing so he could neutralize poisons that entered his body. He learned to read the patterns of energy in order to recall memories with perfect clarity. He learned to calm his energy so he could sleep, but remain alert.

The Ascension was the last trial. The spines were taken from the dorsal fin of a black scorpion fish. They were hard, sharp, and poisonous. As they were pressed into his open wounds Stryker had to neutralize the venom and force his body to accept the spines. He had to make them part of his Ra. The pain made it hard to focus, and more than once Stryker felt the toxin clouding his thoughts, but he was able to push through, neutralize the poison, and seal the wounds. When his hands healed completely the spines would be invisible, but Master Taum assured him they would help to focus and amplify his Ra.

The training of the last seven years had been hard, and despite all his efforts to be strong for his father, at times Stryker had cried. Yes, many times he had cried like a child. Now that it was over, as the seawater burned around the cuts on his hands, Stryker remembered all those tears. He remembered hot burning tears, like the sea in a tropical storm, and he remembered soft, chilling, lonely tears, like the sea on a cold, cloudy morning. Stryker remembered all the pain and all of the trials. But now childhood was over. He had to put the tears behind him.

And with all the pain, he also remembered the times when Master Taum had smiled at him. It was a warm smile that his Master had sometimes tried to hide. Stryker recalled the evenings spent on the cliffs watching sunsets at his teacher’s side.

The years of training were a lifetime to Stryker. Now the future of his manhood stretched before him like a calm summer day. As an Initiate there would be more training, more to learn, but now he would be a young warrior of the tribe, Jaden and Mina would be at his side.

He would still see his old master. Taum had been chosen to continue with Stryker’s secondary lessons. It was not often that a pupil would have the same teacher before and after the Ascension, but there were no new pupils this year, and the younger teachers were spending more and more time away on patrol. Stryker was glad he would continue to see Master Taum, but he was glad to be home.

“Still soaking?” A voice called from the door of the hut. It was Jaden, Stryker’s father. Stryker closed his eyes and focused again on his hands, trying to heal the wounds over the spines.

“Thought you’d be all healed by now.”

Stryker looked down at his hands in the basin. The cuts were not bleeding, but they were still red, and his hands were swollen.

“I’m just kidding,” his father assured him and dropped down on the floor next to the table. “My hands were red for a month after my ascension, and I had trouble with the poison. I was in bed for three days.”

Stryker was reassured but kept looking down at his hands.

“I saw no pain in you,” Jaden assured him again, using the formal Cleat expression. “Here.” He placed his hand in the bowl with Stryker’s. The water began to heat, radiating out from Jaden’s hand. The heat soothed the sting.

After a moment Jaden withdrew his hand and stood up quickly.

“Master Taum will be coming over for your first Initiate lesson,” he said, trying to sound excited.

Stryker’s shoulders dropped. He knew the Ascension was not the end, but it had only been a day, and it did not seem like much of a rest.

“It should be interesting,” Jaden reassured him. This did not seem to help, so Jaden added, “You may be an Initiate, but you must learn about the outside world before you go out on the ships. Don’t worry, it’s not painful, and afterward your mother will have made dinner. Her squashes are ripe, and they’re delicious. I remember you always loved them.”

Stryker could not remember Mina’s squash, but he looked up and smiled at his father. Like Master Taum, Jaden was dressed like a Cleat. None of Stryker’s people wore much clothing. Jaden was bare-chested and wore only a keen, a square piece of cloth wrapped and tied around his waist, hanging down halfway to his knees. Everyone in Stryker’s tribe wore keens, but they differed depending on the person’s position. Stryker, being an Initiate, wore a brown keen made of thickly woven cloth. Jaden’s was much finer, whitish tan, and closely woven. Jaden also wore a belt made of polished baleen. Only Cleats who had personally killed a whale in the hunt could wear belts like that. Master Taum also had one. Besides his clothes, Jaden looked nothing like Taum. Jaden was much taller, leaner and stronger, and not at all old. In fact, Jaden was much younger than any of the teachers on the training islands. After years with Master Taum, it was hard to see his father as a grown up. His smooth hairless face looked more like the other boys’ faces, though much stronger. Both of Stryker’s parents were young, really not much older than he. They had both been fifteen when he was born. Jaden’s skin was tan like Stryker’s and they both had green eyes, but Jaden’s hair was dark and wavy, while Stryker had inherited his mother’s loose blond curls. Stryker did not think he would ever be as tall or as broad as his father, but still, there was definitely a resemblance.

Jaden also wore the Captain’s Band on his wrist. A solid band made of pearly white shell, it stood out against his tanned skin. Stryker did not know what shellfish it was from. In all the islands there were only three bands like it. When they first came to the islands, they were ruled by three captains. As their population grew and spread out over the islands, power shifted to local councils. The bands were passed down through the generations, always to the oldest child in the family. Two centuries later, the families, like Stryker’s, still kept the heirlooms, though they held no real power. It was strange, but not awkward, for Stryker to think of Jaden and Mina as his family. Though they hardly knew each other, Stryker could tell he would come to love his parents again. A shadow came into the doorway. It was Master Taum.

“Welcome,” Jaden said.

“Thank you,” answered Master Taum. “How is your son healing?”

“Well, very well. I think Mina could use some help in the garden, so I’ll leave you two alone.” He paused for a second and placed a hand on Stryker’s shoulder. For a moment he looked as if he wanted to say something more, but he just turned and left the hut.

“Master Taum,” Stryker said, standing up to bow.

“Oh! No more of that Master stuff,” Taum laughed. “You are an Initiate now, you must call me Taum, stand up straight when I come to visit, and shake my hand.” Stryker reached out his hand and Taum grasped it. Pain from the cuts shot up Stryker’s forearm. He winced but did not let go.

“That will get better in time,” Taum reassured him.

They moved the low table out of the way. Stryker sat down on the dirt floor hugging his knees. He curled the cool dirt up between his toes and watched Taum. The old man was smiling, and his eyes seemed more excited than usual. His teeth shone bright in the shade of the hut. The endless wrinkles on his face all lined up around an enormous smile. Stryker had never seen his Master, that is Taum, look like this. His eyes were sharp and alive. In the old face, they sparkled with youth.

Stryker decided that even on a beautiful day like this, when the other new initiates would be walking around the villages showing off their new powers and remaking friendships, he would be perfectly content to sit in the cool of the hut and listen to the old man.

He began with the story of “The Great Awakening.” Of course Stryker had heard the story before, but it was a good one.

“At the beginning of the Great Wars, during the fourth destruction, our mother, the Moon, nearly fell from the sky to destroy the earth. But, as she grew near, she sensed the spirits of the people and stopped. She decided to spare the spirits of the earth. The world was in chaos, so she decided to send her guardians to protect the people. She awakened four spirit energies.”

Stryker closed his eyes for a moment, and concentrated on the Ra all around him. It flowed through his body, the floor, and the hut. He could sense the insects in the roof above and he felt the constant radiating glow from his teacher.

“And they are? Stryker?”

Stryker opened his eyes. Master Taum had asked him a question.

“Uh…” Stryker stuttered a little.

Taum smiled. “The four spirit energies? The four spirit peoples? Who were they, and who are they now?” Taum asked again.

Stryker relaxed, he knew the answer. He had memorized the story during his first year of training. “The Shrouds, who feel Shar, motion energy, they became the Blade Maidens.” Taum nodded encouragingly. “Then the Cleats, like us, we feel Ra, the life energy, we became, well us.” Taum smiled. “Then the Reefs who feel Syth, the connection energy, they are scattered throughout the great forests and Southern Kingdoms, and the Empaths who feel Mune, the heart energy, they rule the Empire.”

“Why did the Moon call out these powers?” Taum asked softly.

Stryker sat up straighter, he knew the answer to this one too. “To protect the earth and to stop the wars.”

“But why was the earth in danger in the first place, why were the people at war for so long?”

Stryker thought for a moment. The answer seemed simple, but it could be a trick question.

“Well, because of the destructions.”

“Yes, but what caused the destructions?”

It was getting tricky. Stryker had heard of the destructions all his life but only in Taum’s stories. This was the first time he had been asked to think about them in this way.

“Each destruction had its own different cause.”

“Really?” Taum smiled, “What were they?”

“Well the first destruction was a war, the whole world fought over an artificial energy source, petrum, or parleo, or something,”

“Petroleum.”

“Yeah, it was like the whale blubber we use to burn in lamps but it was unnatural.”

“Unnatural? How?”

“Well the oil came from the earth, so I guess it was natural, but the people did not respect its energy. It is natural for oil to burn and we burn whale oil, but that’s all. They did not just burn the earth oil, they tried to force its energy to do other things, to run their machines and their factories, and to make weapons.”

“Good, so there was a war. And then?”

“Well the second destruction wasn’t a war, but they were still after another source of unnatural energy, in adams,”

“Atoms,” Taum corrected. “Yes the nuclear energy in atoms.”

“But they couldn’t control it. It caused a winter, right?”

“A nuclear winter, it lasted more than two hundred years, few survived.”

“Then they tried to get energy directly from the earth right?”

“Yes,” Taum said encouragingly. “They called it geothermal.”

“But that caused the earthquakes.”

“Three hundred years of accelerated plate tectonics.”

“What is a tectonic?”

“I’ll explain later, when we focus on the third destruction, for now just remember that the earth was reformed. The Middle Sea, that surrounds our island, used to be much smaller and used to connect with the ocean.”

“What’s the difference between an ocean and a sea?”

“The oceans are much larger, they cover most of the earth,”

“Really?”

“Yes, next time I come I’ll bring you a map. But for now, tell me about the fourth destruction. What caused it?”

“The fourth destruction was the biggest. Some people had moved to the Moon, they gathered energy from the sun and sent it back to earth, on micron waves.”

“Microwaves,” Taum corrected.

“Yeah, but some people thought the microwaves were dangerous, so they tried to stop them. They used one of those nuclear atom bombs to destroy the place where the microwaves came to earth, and that hurt the Moon somehow.”

“It set off a chain reaction that caused the Moon to degrade in its orbit.”

“Degrade?” Stryker asked.

“It began to fall from the sky.” Taum explained

“Right. People thought the Moon was going to hit the earth, but she stopped when she sensed the people. The moon decided to awaken the peoples’ spirit energy, so they wouldn’t have to look for or fight over artificial energy. They could create and control their own energy. The spirit people could protect the earth and keep the peace.”

“And why did it not work?”

Stryker did not understand the question. “What do you mean?”

“If the Moon gave us the power to keep peace, why are there still wars today?”

“Well, we’re not in any of them. We remember what the Mother did for us and maintain peace.”

Taum frowned. “Peace on the islands perhaps, but we are constantly fighting to protect it, and some raiding ships still make it past our patrols. Because we do not fight in the wars directly does not mean they do not exist or affect us. Our constant vigilance has created some measure of peace on our islands, for our people, but are not all living things our brothers? Are not we all children of Father Earth? Isn’t the Moon mother to us all? Don’t you think the spirit energies were meant to bring peace to the whole world?”

Stryker thought for a moment, but did not know how to answer.

“Why do you think,” Taum went on after a moment, “that there are wars at all. After the fourth destruction there is no lack of land, no one fights over energy, why are there still wars?”

Stryker still did not have an answer.

“If you are to patrol the open sea, to hold back the wars outside, you have to understand why the people are fighting.” Taum was not getting angry, but Stryker could tell he was displeased.

“After the fourth destruction,” Stryker began again, “The Empaths seized power, and the others didn’t like it.”

Taum nodded but did not smile, “Yes, but why did the other three, the Cleats, the Shrouds, and the Reefs, why did they not join together to stop the Empaths?”

Stryker tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. He hoped that if he waited long enough Taum would just give him the answer. Minutes passed and Taum did not speak.

“Well the Shrouds betrayed the others when they went into service for the Empaths. The Reefs were too weak, probably, and the Cleats…well…we don’t like war so we stayed out of it.”

“So the Empaths seized power because the Shrouds were traitors, the Reefs were weak, and the Cleats were afraid, is that what you’re saying?” Taum’s face looked serious, “Hmm,” he said frowning. “Pity, I guess the spirit peoples just handed… ”

“Well no,” Stryker interrupted, “we weren’t scared, not of dying or anything, but we didn’t want war, and the Reefs, well you can’t really fight with Syth, and I guess the Shrouds were traitors, but some people think they were tricked somehow.”

“This is too soon,” Taum interrupted him. He stood up straight and clasped his hands behind his back. “I want you to go out and play with your friends.”

Stryker was surprised. He must have said something wrong. “I’m sorry…” He began.

“You have done nothing.” Taum waved his hand. He looked as if he was about to say something more, then stopped and looked at the ceiling. After a moment he went on. “It was about choice. You have been under my control for some time now. I think before we continue learning about this subject you need some time to make some choices for yourself.” Without explaining further Taum turned and left the hut.

Stryker sat for a moment perplexed. He was sure he had offended Taum. What had he meant, choice? Why did he not just explain what he meant? Stryker got up to go after him, but Jaden stopped him in the doorway.

“Taum leave already?” he asked. “Well we’ve got time until dinner. Let’s go down to the lagoon. I’ll introduce, well reintroduce, you to some of your old friends, and you can show me if you’re really as good at water sliding as Taum tells me.”

Stryker smiled. He was about to ask Jaden what he thought of Taum’s words, but Jaden had already turned toward the trail to the lagoon. Stryker looked back into the hut, then down at his hands. It was okay. He would have time. He pushed thoughts of Taum and the lesson from his mind and followed Jaden.

Mina waved at them from the garden. She wore a light brown keen and a thin shirt. Her loose blond curls, only a little longer than Stryker’s, shone in the sunlight.

“I’m just taking him down to the lagoon,” Jaden called to Mina.

“Okay,” she answered.

Stryker looked from Mina to Jaden and then back to Mina. They looked so different from each other. She was small and blond with gentle brown eyes, he was tall, dark and muscular. Though they were different from each other, Stryker resembled them both. He had his mother’s hair and his father’s green eyes. He had Jaden’s strong square jaw, and he hoped to be strong like his father, but his frame was slender like Mina’s. Stryker smiled. He liked that he resembled his parents.

“Come on Stryker,” Jaden called. Stryker looked away from the garden. The sun was bright on the dry grass that stretched from their hut down toward the sea.

“Stryker,” Jaden called. He was almost to the path that wound over the hill to the lagoon. Stryker smiled again and stepped from the doorway. His whole life stretched out before him.

Stryker Chapter 2 - John's Beginning

2014-06-10T15:00:00.003-07:00

John’s Beginning

John sat in the royal classroom slumped over his desk. His professor droned on at the front of the small room. Maps covered the walls, maps of their Empire, ancient maps of the Old World, and maps that charted the movement of the continents over the centuries. John was tracing the gray swirls on his desk. The desk was a gift from his father. Both his parents had given special attention to the decoration of all his rooms. When he first began his isolation in the west wing of the palace, the rooms had all seemed new and exciting. The side of the palace he would have all to himself seemed enormous. Now, after six years of living exclusively in the west wing, with no one for company but his professors, his parents, and occasionally his twin sister Jane, it had become dull and excruciatingly confined. In the beginning, his mother tried to make his isolation seem special, but for a long time John had still missed the other children.

When Peter, John’s younger brother, entered the military academy, some of his friends had come to the palace. John saw them once from a balcony. They were playing some sort of ball game; he could not capture the rules of it. He had almost allowed himself to want to play, but he held off the emotion. He knew his brother would sense it, and he did not want Peter mistaking it for envy. The eldest son of the supreme monarch could not be found, even by his brother, to envy any other position.

But that was a long time ago. Now John was seventeen and he saw things clearly. He understood his position and did not envy Peter’s friends. Besides, Peter was now fourteen and had been living full time at the academy for two years.

John was generally indifferent toward his teachers. Each had been picked by his mother, so they were constantly bowing and praising, but none of them showed any real interest in him. When the Empress came on her daily visits, they would fawn over him and tell her what an excellent pupil he was. “Destined to be a great leader,” they would smile, “just like his mother of course.” Destined… his destiny, his purpose, he had heard it since the day he was born. He was the heir to the Throne, destined to become the Supreme Monarch, the great mind and will of the people.

John understood his privileged position. Their abilities made Empaths the perfect rulers. He would absorb his people’s desires, fears, and concerns, temper them with his own education, training, and the wisdom of his lineage, and act in a way that would benefit all his subjects. If he failed to lead the Empire, they would fall to the rebels. The order of their society would fall into chaos. They would degenerate like the Kingdoms of the South. He accepted this position and was resolved to accept all the responsibility that came with it.

Now, he saw the necessity of his isolation, he was young when it began, only eleven, but his empathic capabilities had already developed. Until he had control he could not associate closely with anyone whose emotional energy patterns would disrupt or contaminate his own.

The desk was ugly. The swirls were random, almost chaotic. John abhorred disorder and would have preferred plain white. This desk looked so unorganized. It was typical of the things his father would pick out. The Emperor loved anything disorderly and studied the Ancients with an almost unhealthy interest. John sometimes sensed his father admiring the ancient days, before the great destructions, when countries where ruled by the ever changing whims of the uneducated masses, before the Empaths brought order to the world. John’s mother often tried to downplay her husband’s interest in the Ancients. She told people, and herself, that it was a hobby, that he merely thought the ancient ways were quaint and interesting. She kept him from talking too much about it at dinners or court balls. Still, she could not hide everything. John’s own name was of ancient origin, as were the names of his sister Jane and his brother Peter. John did not dislike his father, though he rarely saw him.

John did hate his name. He traced it out on the desk with his finger. The h was particularly annoying. It was superfluous. Sticking out of the middle of the otherwise concise and efficient word. Jon, would have been adequate, Jonh would at least have been symmetrical but John… It was a ridiculous name. The professor was droning on about the political lead up to the South Pacific nuclear conflicts of the early twenty-third century. John was utterly bored.

A sudden sensation of anger from the professor brought him out of his thoughts. He looked up at the fat, middle-aged historian. He was angry. Though the professor smiled calmly, John could sense the emotion. He asked John to repeat what he had just said.

John sat up straight and answered quickly, “The Asian Union defeated the Slavic rebellion, with the nuclear destruction of Novgorod.”

The professor’s anger turned to annoyance. They always hated it when he got the answer right, especially when they thought they had caught him not listening. “What year was that?” he asked, his annoyance showing in his voice.

John sighed, “2394, by the ancient calendar, 1932 before present. That is what led to the first lunar migrations, at the beginning of the twenty-fifth century.” John waited to see if this would diffuse the annoyance or cause it to shift back to anger.

“Very good,” the professor said, still smiling. He was angry again. John sat up straighter and asked, “But why were the Slavs in rebellion if they were tied so economically to the union? After all, didn’t they share the same land mass?”

“Well,” said the professor, his anger fading as he turned back to the board and began to outline, “the Slavs had cultural and national unity that clashed with the integration doctrine of…” John tuned him out again but reminded himself to watch out for further annoyance. If his mother heard he was distracted during class she would get the royal Empaths to suppress his curiosity again.

There were no more outbursts. The professor ended the lesson by assigning him to trace the lineages of the four southern despots to see which contributed genetically to the royal line. John already knew it was Geoffrey Leren, of the European confederation. His mother had a picture of him on the family wall. Some suspected he was an early Empath and that was why he was selected for the genetic conservation, and on and on. John would have Jane write the assignment. She would be glad to help.

He was excited to see Jane. She had been away for a month in the country. She had been back since that morning but she had to go through emotional decontamination with the royal Empaths before she could see him. She would bring him news of their father and the war.

The class ended with his daily lesson from the propaganda instructor. The propaganda lessons were all routine and memorized. Today’s was about the energies.

“What is energy?” The instructor asked.

“Energy is in everything, it is the force that holds atoms together, the gravity that holds the universe in balance, it is light, it is heat, it is love and happiness. The types of Energy are endless,” John answered.

“Which energies are given to humans to control?”

“All Humans can create and control heat energy in their bodies and kinetic energy in their muscles. Some humans are genetically superior and able to control higher energies, Shar, Ra and Mune. Some humans are corrupted with Syth, the degenerate energy.”

“What energy do you control?”

“Mune, the greatest of all energies. The governing energy.”

“Why is it the greatest?”

“Because all other energies are subordinate to it.”

“Why do you control it?”

“It is the natural order, energy creates its own strength, and the strong rule to protect the weak. Nature makes Mune, Mune makes an Empath, the Empath is ordained by Nature.

“Whom do you rule?”

“Those chosen by nature and infused with the Syth, the linking energy, the compliant energy. Those infused with the Syth are the body. Empaths, with their Mune, are the mind. It is Nature’s way.”

“And the other’s?”

“Ra to the Cleats, energy that can stall and freeze. Shar to the Blade Maidens, energy that can move and strike.”

“What is your duty as an Empath?”

“Mune is the ruling energy, we rule the masses infused with Syth, we direct the motion of the Blade Maiden’s Shar, and we use the Cleats’ Ra to hold the universe in balance.”

“But the universe is not in balance.”

“No, the Cleats and the masses deny their place, they deny nature. They are the diseased limbs of the body. As Empaths we must act as the immune system, destroy the diseased part and bring the limbs back to their natural order.”

“Which is?”

“Under our control.”

“Praise to John, son of the Emperor,”

“Praise to my instructor and gratitude,” John quickly pushed a feeling of gratitude at the instructor, who felt it, smiled and bowed.

With lessons over, John hurried down the stairs, unbuttoning his tight jacket and loosening his necktie as he went. He rarely got this excited. He decided to let the excitement stay. Jane would feel it and appreciate it. He turned down the long marble hallway that led away from his training rooms. He stopped by the door to his study, probed inside but did not feel his sister there. She must be outside. He stepped into the study, quickly took off his tie, vest, and jacket, folding them neatly on the chair, then continued down the hall and entered the gymnasium through large double doors. The lamp over the sparing rink was still lit. They were cleaning it before tomorrow’s lesson. He did get a lot of that kid’s blood on it last time. Really, when were they going to let him face someone his own age?

He went out through the double doors on the opposite side of the gym. They opened into the courtyard. The sun was low in the sky. Jane was sitting by the side of the swimming pool. She had not changed at all. In fact, she looked exactly as she always did. Her hair was thick, dark, and wavy like John’s. It had grown a little longer while she was away, but the country sun had done nothing to tan her pale skin. She always reminded John of Snow White from the ancient legends. She was tracing circles in the water with her finger. She was dressed in a white dress with silver trim, a simple dress, the kind their mother hated. The Empress was always frustrated that Jane would not wear extravagant gowns or jewelry.

Beside Jane stood her two bodyguards, dressed in simple chain-mail armor. Standing next to his sister they looked massive. They were Joined. As punishment for some crime or rebellion their emotional energies had been purged. Now they quite literally lived only to serve. Any skilled Empath could transfer any desire into their minds, and they would obey. They stared out blankly from pale faces. Their short hair was ghostly white. A dark blue V marked their foreheads, and there was a dark blue dot on their right temples. The whiteness was a side effect of the drug used in the joining process, and the blue marks were burned into their skin when their Mune was extracted. Frozen soldiers like these were a common sight around the palace. Most of the Empire’s army was made up of Joined.

As John came out into the courtyard, he sensed Jane’s emotions before she noticed him. She was nervous, hiding something she did not want to tell him. She looked up as he drew near.

“John!” She cried energetically, coming forward and hugging him. It was something bad. She was afraid to tell him.

“How are you?” She asked. “Silly question, I know, I can sense that you are well, I’m glad you’re excited to see me.”

John decided not to ask her what she was hiding right away. She knew he could sense it and would tell him soon. They sat down together on the grass at the edge of the pool.

“How was the country?” he asked.

“Oh, fine. We rode horses on the beach. You’d have loved it. The ocean air, it makes you feel so free, it’s like, well, I’ll show you.” She reached out her hand and touched John lightly above the eyebrows. John was instantly filled with a wonderful feeling of exhilaration and freedom. He could feel the wildness of the horse and the wind blowing in his hair. He pulled away from her touch.

“Feels great.” He told her.

She looked doubtful. He assured her with a burst of gratitude.

“We can take you there first thing when the isolation is up,” she said.

“Yeah,” he answered quietly.

“You’re coming along on your resistance training aren’t you?” she asked.

“Of course,” he answered. “It’s easy. I can block everything the royal Empaths can throw at me. I’m sure I could resist commoners.”

“So you’ll be ready when the test comes?”

John looked up at the guards. He pressed into them the desire to go to the gymnasium and wait. Without hesitation they walked quickly and mechanically toward the gymnasium doors.

He turned back to Jane, “I’ve been ready for the tests for months. Mother is just dragging it out. She says my combat training needs more time, but I beat everyone they put me up against.” He let her sense his surety. She relaxed.

“Well soon you’ll be out of this, and we can visit the whole Empire.” She smiled intently, pressing her excitement onto him.

“Yeah, it’ll be great.” He let her excitement take him for a moment. “It will be wonderful not to have to go to history classes anymore. I’ll bet Peter…” He stopped. It was Peter. There was something she did not want to tell him about Peter. “I bet he’ll be sick of the academy by then.” He hurried on, trying to cover that he sensed her apprehension. “We can all go to the country and ride horses on the beach.”

Jane smiled but did not answer.

“How is Peter?” John ventured after a moment. A faint sadness rose in his sister, but she masked it well under resolve.

“He’s doing well at the academy. His happiness is genuine and strong, even mom can sense it.” Jane did not respect their mother’s empathic abilities. “Only he…” She stopped.

“Only what?” John asked. Her sadness was rising again.

“He is less and less sad to go back to the academy after his holidays are over.”

“There’s something else,” John said questioningly. “Don’t try to protect me and don’t wonder if it’s best to tell me.”

After a moment she said softly, “He doesn’t miss you anymore.”

It was true, but there was still more. “You are afraid to tell me the rest.” John said simply. “Strange,” he went on, “but I’ll know when I see him.”

At this Jane became genuinely angry. John countered it with annoyance, followed by mild regret and then resolve. This brought her anger down, and she did not challenge his resolve. John was more skilled than his sister. He had much more control over his empathic sense. Still, her energy had always been stronger than his, her emotions much more intense. There were times when she almost overpowered him. No one else in the palace could affect John like Jane. If any other person had that kind of effect on him, he would fear them, but John could not fear Jane, and she did not envy him. She was his only real friend. She was the only one who understood him, the only one he could joke with about his parents. The only one who saw him as John, rather than the Ruling Prince. They both knew they genuinely loved each other.

He changed the subject. “How is father?”

“Good,” she answered. “The army should be moving again soon.”

“And the resistance?”

“Nothing to our armies.”

“Are we anywhere near Kaara,”

“The rebel stronghold? No, we’re spread too thin across the plains, and fighting in the jungle is almost impossible.”

She did not want to talk about the war, so John changed the subject back to the countryside. Then she asked him about school. They made fun of his professors, and she told him how Lady Mullen, her governess, was getting crabbier and crabbier. They were old conversations. Things they always talked about on her visits. Still, they talked until dark.

Later they meandered through the west wing. John showed her new pieces of art their father had commissioned, a painting of a quadratic expansion formula, a sculpture of two identical cubes, and a statue of their mother.

“She looks fat,” Jane laughed.

“I think father paid the sculptors extra to make her look that way,” John said smiling.

Finally, Jane called her guards back and returned to the main part of the house. John walked alone to his room. He shut the door, and after a few minutes, he sensed two of his own guards taking up their post at his bedroom door.

The room was large and nearly empty. The walls were bare and white, the decoration simple compared to the other richly furnished rooms in the palace. John liked it that way. Even Jane had tried to get him to decorate more, but he insisted that he should at least be able to choose the way his own room looked. His mother was upset by the design.

“Like a commoner’s room,” she had complained.

His father had been amused at this. “I think John’s bed alone cost more than most commoner’s homes.”

But John loved simplicity. The world outside his room was always full of energy and noise. He loved to sit in the dark with nothing to do, nothing to learn or fight, no one to sense or evaluate.

He undressed and got into bed, slipping between the smooth cool sheets. Pale moonlight came in through the window. He wrapped himself in the familiar sadness that was always left when Jane’s visits were over. As he lay in his bed, he let himself feel longing, an emotion he rarely let himself feel. He was not longing for the old days, the days Jane hoped would return when his isolation was over. He longed for those days he could barely remember. Days before his emphatic sense had begun to reach outward. Jane had always been connected to him, he felt her emotions as long as he could remember, but for years she was the only one in his head. They were alone together.

He longed for those days before other energies had invaded his mind, before his mother feared him, before Peter envied him. He let these feelings flow around him for a time. He felt remorse, sadness, even a taste of fear. He did not let it go on for long, however. After some minutes, he gathered the emotions together in his mind and sharply repressed them. They disappeared instantly. John smiled at this. Repression was the first technique he had learned as part of his resistance training, and he was pleased to see that it worked so well on such strong emotions. It meant his isolation would soon be over. He put his hands under his head and gazed up at the ceiling. His whole life stretched out before him.

Stryker Chapter 3 - Lilah's Beginning

2014-06-10T14:59:00.003-07:00

Lilah’s Beginning

In the city beneath the shadow of the great marble palace, down a small forgotten alley, behind an old, thick, black door, Lilah was in training. She stood in the dark smoky room, with her back against thick, satin drapes. The room was dimly lit and full of rich looking clutter. Her thin charcoal hair was tied in a tight bun. She stood, narrow and sharp, small and blade-like in every way. She was slim and light as the wisps of blue smoke that circled about the room. Lilah had always been small, but like Stryker and John, she was strong.

The night of Stryker’s ascension, the night John met his sister by the pool, Lilah, as she had so many times, stood against the curtained wall in the stifling hot air of the room. She was also being tested. Her dark eyes stared blankly out of her pale face.

Across the room in a pillowy, faded pink chair sat a very large, very ancient woman. Her hair was dark and pulled back like Lilah’s. Her face was pale, the skin almost translucent. Like Lilah, her eyes were charcoal black. Yet in form, she was the exact opposite of Lilah’s sharp thinness. She spilled over her chair. Her back dress clung to the bulging folds of her chest and stomach. In her fat painted lips she held a long metallic pipe. From it rose the blue wisps of smoke that hung heavy in the room. The burnt smell of the smoke, mixed with stifling perfume and an oily heat from a fire in the hearth, made the air in the room thick, nauseating.

On an end table beside the chair, sat a small, jeweled box, filled with shiny metal shards, each a different size and shape. Almost carelessly the woman reached into the box and drew out a shard. Then with a remarkably quick flick of the wrist she sent it flying directly at Lilah on the opposite wall. With an equally quick motion Lilah caught the shard, trapping it tightly before her face, between two extended fingers. Then just as carelessly, she dropped the shard into a matching jeweled box at her side. It was a strange, deadly game of catch. To the rhythm of the throwing and catching the old woman asked Lilah questions. Lilah, having been asked the questions countless times, recited the answers mechanically.

“Who are you?” A shard thrown.

“DeLilah,” catch, “called Lilah, named for the ancient mother of deceit.”

“What are you?” A shard.

“I am trained as a Blade Maiden,” catch, “of the ancient order. I feel and control the Shar like those before me, yet I am a traitor to my sisters.”

“What is your purpose?” A shard.

“To destroy you,” catch “and bring down the sisterhood.”

“Why must you do this?”

“Because, you have chosen destruction over bondage.”

“What are your weapons?” Two shards in quick succession.

“In my hands all things are weapons,” a sweep of both hands, a catch, another catch.

“What is your method?”

“To lie and deceive, destroy when possible, to undermine and control when necessary.”

A shard, “Who are your allies?”

Catch, “No one, I am alone.”

“What made your dissension possible?”

“Love.”

“Why,” shard, “do you,” shard, “fight?” shard.

Catch, catch, catch. “To liberate that love.”

At this last answer the old woman let fly the last shard and slumped heavily back into her chair. Her eyes closed, and she drew in a long breath of blue smoke. Lilah dropped the last shard into the box, bent down, closed the lid carefully, and carried it to the old woman’s chair.

“You have done well, the time will soon come,” the woman whispered, heavy smoke drifting from her lips and nostrils. “Your mother was right. They will not see you coming. You will succeed. You will destroy us all.” The old woman coughed. “ You will liberate us.”

They sat for a moment in silence. Then the old woman held out a fat hand. Lilah came forward, bowed her head, and kissed it coldly. The woman stretched out her fingers and brushed the side of Lilah’s face. There was a hint of real tenderness in her touch. “Your mother would be proud, ” the old woman said with a half smile. Lilah blinked slowly but did not look directly at the woman. “And your father…” The woman started to say, but stopped, closing her eyes again. Then, after a moment, changing the subject, she went on, “Go to the dressing rooms, help the girls with their makeup. Make sure Ani is not pestering the others.”

Lilah looked down at the old woman in the chair. Her ancient face was thickly lined and pale. She bore the mark of a Blade Maiden, a thin strip of black metal, less than a quarter inch wide, grafted into the skin above each eyebrow. The strips curved above her eyes and then back upward toward her temples. On the left side, four diamonds were inset in the metal, identifying the woman as a Master Instructor.

Lilah was her granddaughter. Lilah’s mother had been her daughter. No one, except the two of them, knew this. If it had not been for the extraordinary circumstances of her birth, Lilah would have grown up to be a Blade Maiden like her mother and grandmother. She would also have the metal grafted into her brow. She would also be addicted to the sule drug and smoke it from a long metal pipe. All Blade Maidens smoked sule. It was the addiction that kept them in servitude to the Empaths who provided it. The secret of the sule, how it was produced, how it was able to dominate the will, was the Empire’s greatest and most powerful secret.

Lilah often looked at her Grandmother when she was like this and tried to imagine how her own mother must have looked. Lilah could not remember her mother at all, but she must have looked at least a little like the fat woman in the chair. Lilah knew her mother had been a Blade Maiden, but she could not remember anything else. Lilah was taken from her mother a few minutes after she was born, and a few days later, her mother was executed for treason.

It was her mother’s treachery that had led to their present circumstances. Lilah’s grandmother had been the most respected trainer of Blade Maiden’s in the Empire. Her girls trained specifically to serve the royal entourage. When Lilah’s mother’s deceit was discovered, she was executed, Lilah’s grandmother was derated, and Lilah’s father disappeared, surely captured and killed by the Empire. Most of her students’ families pulled their daughters from the school when it lost its royal commission. Had Lilah been discovered, however, had the palace known that Lilah’s mother had actually borne a child before she died, they would all have been killed. Fortunately Lilah’s birth was kept a secret. The school was permitted to continue, though now it had only twelve students, only one with any real talent. They earned only minor positions as bodyguards for lesser nobles or rich businessmen.

They were also forced to perform exhibitions of their talents. The shows brought in a little money and once in a while they led to commissions, but Lilah knew her grandmother hated them. She hated people gawking at her girls as if they were circus performers.

Without opening her eyes the old woman took another long breath from her pipe. Lilah turned and left the room.

When she had gone, her grandmother sat up and stared into the fire. Her eyes were dark and hard. She did care for Lilah, but that did not change what they were, or what had to be done.

Lilah went down a few stairs and into a narrow hallway that led behind the stage. The old floorboards creaked as she moved down the hall. The air was still heavy with the scent of perfume and sule smoke. At the end of the hall Lilah entered the dressing room through a thick black curtain. The room was dimly lit with oil lamps. Several girls, all bearing the mark of Blade Maidens, crowded around three mirrors, most were blotting their faces with a thin white powder or arranging their hair in tight buns. Others were outlining their eyes in dark liner or pasting on fake eyelashes. One was using a small white cloth to polish the metal above her eyebrows. At the moment none were smoking, but smoke from their pipes still hung in the air. They were dressed in identical metallic-black uniforms, sleeveless with short skirts and high black boots. In the center of the room two girls where arguing. One was tall, nearly six feet, thin but muscular. Cowering before her, a smaller, plainer girl clasped a blue glass bottle.

“My mother sent this to me, and there is not much left,” the smaller girl said almost pleading.

The taller girl smiled, almost a smirk, “Look we’re sisters, that cream makes my hair look so nice, it’s selfish of you to keep it all.” Dropping her smile she added, “Especially because I am the only one here who has any chance of getting a position anyway, it’s wasted on someone as plain and untalented as you.” With that she grabbed at the bottle. The smaller girl twisted away from her, lost her footing, and fell. The taller girl towered above her.

“Give it to me now,” she said, with forced calmness in her voice.

“Ani,” Lilah said quietly but firmly. “Madam Saara told me to make sure you weren’t pestering the other girls.”

The taller girl, Ani, turned scowling to Lilah.

“And what will you do if I don’t stop pestering them?” she asked.

“Nothing Ani, but you wouldn’t want to be pulled from the show, word is a scout from the palace is here.”

Ani pressed her lips, looked down at the girl on the floor, then back at Lilah.

“Fine, keep your cream. As if I need it anyway.”

The girl on the floor scrambled up and scurried back toward a mirror. Ani walked slowly to a mirror at the other side of the room. The girls there moved away as she came.

“Anyone need help?” Lilah asked, “there are only about five minutes left.” At this, many of the girls began to file out through a curtain on the far side of the room. Lilah helped a few girls finish pinning their hair or adjusting their uniforms. Ani sat and admired herself in front of the mirror for another moment then rose and left through the curtain.

On the other side of the stage, in the gallery, the guests where taking their seats. Several tables, set with lamps and wine, where arranged around the low stage. Off to one side, a man dressed in black sat alone. He was the royal scout. He had never visited this school before. He had been sent because word had reached the Empress that there was one girl in the show, called Ani, who might be worth considering. He had tried the wine but it was cheap. Instead he smoked a short cigar and waited for the show to begin.

The scout was an Empath, and as he waited, he scanned the room. Only mild anticipation, most of these people had probably seen these shows before. After a few minutes music began. Two drums beat slowly together, and the eerie sound of a wooden flute floated around the room. Four girls came on stage. They were small and almost identical in their small dark-metallic dresses. They all wore heavy makeup. Each held four long knives, two in each hand. The drums quickened, and the girls began a sort of choreographed duel. Slowly at first, the daggers clinked against each other, but soon the pace quickened. The girls began to twirl around each other. The blades met with more intensity letting off small blue sparks. The show was interesting, and obviously well practiced, but barely average for a Blade Maiden exhibition. When the first dance was over, the girls exited left and a large woman entered.

“Welcome to our school,” the woman said, addressing the audience. “I am Master Saaranna called Saara.”

So this was Saara. The scout had heard of the old woman but had never seen her. She was even fatter than he had imagined. Her long black gown did nothing to cover her bulbous form. But for the mark on her brow, she hardly looked like a Blade Maiden. It was hard for him to match the stories he had heard of her power and skill with the pathetic looking woman on stage. Still, he scanned her Mune and realized she still had a fighting spirit.

“We are grateful for your attendance today,” Saara continued. Our girls have been training hard and are all exceptionally talented. We hope you will be pleased with their performance. Also, any of you who are here tonight seeking the services of a trained Blade Maiden, three of our girls are at the appropriate level, and I would be happy to meet with you after the show.” With this she glanced briefly at the Imperial scout. He gave a slight nod.

“Now, before we continue,” she went on, “let me explain a little about our specific talent. Blade Maidens come from an ancient order. Our talent was the first to be recognized, the order dates back to before the Second Destruction. The talent of a Blade Maiden is very specific, we cannot feel or control emotional energy like the Empaths, we are nowhere near that powerful, still our talent is far more useful than the absorption energy that the Degenerates use in the South. Our talent is closely related to the talent of the Cleats. A Cleat, as many of you know, can control internal energy called Ra; we on the other hand, control external energy called Shar. Anything in motion has external energy. As long as an object is in motion, be it a flying arrow, or a sword, or another person for that matter, a trained Blade Maiden can control its energy, its Shar. We can also drain the Shar from any object in motion. You will soon see the benefit of such a talent. What you will see is not an illusion nor work of stage trickery. With a touch, the girls can control the energy of any object in motion. The blades we use are real, the arrows are sharp, the girls wear no armor. They have only their skill to protect them. I present to you my Blade Maidens.”

With that Master Saara bowed low, the curtain opened, and there was polite applause as the music began again. Three girls emerged from each side. Each carried long knives, like before, but this time they were tossing them into the air, juggling the deadly weapons. As they moved forward, they began to throw the knives across the stage to each other. The blades flew straight without spinning. The girls were not catching the blades, they were deflecting them. As a blade flew toward a girl, her hand would flash, and with a whip-like motion, she would tap the blade with her fingertips, deflecting its energy in another direction.

With each deflection the blades flew faster and faster. Soon they were a blur. The music quickened. Tension built up in the room. Some in the crowd began to hold their breaths in anticipation. Suddenly, with a loud sound from the drums, a single girl broke through the curtain at the back of the stage. She flew through the air as light and fast as the daggers around her. With a few quick motions she snatched the blades from the air and dropped them to the floor so that they fanned away from her. The audience clapped. Saara came out on stage.

“This,” she said motioning to the girl who had caught the knives, “Is Ariani, called Ani. She is our star pupil.” The royal scout leaned forward, so this was Ani. She did have some talent, and she seemed strong, but he needed to see more before he made his decision.

“ Our next demonstration,” Saara went on, “will be with stellars. Blade Maidens work well with knives and swords, but their true weapon is the stellar, a long metal ribbon attached to a short handle. The ribbons, about two inches wide, are five to six feet long. A Blade Maiden in service always wears a stellar coiled at her waist. The weapon is as light as silk, quick as a whip, and razor sharp, perfect for a Blade Maiden who can move the external energy down the ribbon and strike with deadly accuracy, or freeze the energy, making the ribbon as hard and inflexible as a sword.”

Ani and two other girls came back on stage, each with a stellar coiled at her waist. Ani stood in the middle. Slowly several strips of white cloth were lowered from above until they hung down around the girls. The music began and Ani led the dance. At first the stellars floated around the girls lightly and slowly, as if the girls were underwater. Then, as the music quickened, they began to flash out. The stellars moved in, out, and around the girls as they danced. The white strips of cloth moved, touched by gentle air currents, from the ribbons. For a demonstration of such a deadly weapon, the dance was remarkably elegant. The music stopped and the girls stood with their heads bowed. The audience began to applaud when suddenly, all together, the girls moved. Their stellars shot out in a blur and, in an instant, the white strips of cloth were shredded. Dozens of pieces floated down like large snowflakes. The audience was delighted. Even the scout set down his cigar and gave a few loud, slow claps.

The next demonstration revealed how even weight was irrelevant to a talented Blade Maiden. Several metal balls were rolled onto the stage. They were about two feet in diameter, solid iron and extremely heavy. Three girls came forward. Each placed a foot on a ball and started it rolling. Once the ball was in motion the girls reached down and scooped them up as lightly as if they had been soap bubbles. They rolled them down their arms and around their backs, tossing them from hand to hand, and from girl to girl. The flute played its ghostly song. The dance was graceful, the scout had to admit that it was well done. Master Saara must have spent a great deal of time training the girls. They may not be very talented students, but Master Saara was an excellent teacher. It was such a shame about her daughter all those years ago.

The flute stopped. The three girls each raised a ball in one hand. As soon as the balls stopped moving they fell to the ground, three heavy thuds against the wooden stage. The girls bowed and exited.

Soon Saara, followed by all twelve girls, came out onto stage. As the girls lined up side by side at the back of the stage, Saara nodded to the scout. He sat up and concentrated, pressing his Mune toward the door. From the shadows at the back of the room came two Joined archers. Each had a bow and a quiver of arrows. Their faces were white and completely blank. They were dressed in gray robes, with gray leather gloves.

An almost imperceptible tremor went through the crowd, but on stage, the girls stood calmly with their feet slightly apart, heads back, hands behind their backs. In the center stood Ani, much taller than the others and holding her head with a unique pride. You could see the tension in the faces of the other girls, yet Ani looked calm, a smile, almost a smirk, stood conspicuously on her lips. Saara came forward and addressed the audience again.

“These, as I am sure you must recognize from their uniforms, are Joined Royal Archers,” Master Saara announced. The two men did not move as she spoke. “They have been brought here today by our honored guest from the palace.” She looked toward the scout, and a spotlight was turned toward him. He raised a hand in acknowledgement.

“This demonstration,” Master Saara went on, “is usually performed with my own girls shooting the bows. Tonight, however, my girls will face the arrows of these two deadly archers. They have not practiced together, and the girls have no idea when or where the archers will fire.”

Master Saara stepped to the side and the archers mounted the stairs to the stage. As before, the music began slowly. The archers, however, did not. They moved with amazing speed. In a flash two arrows flew toward the girls. With the same whip-like motion they had used on the knives, two girls snatched the arrows out of the air, dropped them, and returned back to position. The crowd clapped. The archers waited a moment, then began again. This time it was a barrage of arrows. The girls’ hands blurred as they snatched them out of the air. Ani stood in a fighting stance with her hands swirling before her. As instructed, the archers were firing most of their arrows at her. The smirk never left her face as she defended herself. After a few moments, in a sudden motion, Ani spun around with her hand extended. Two arrows shot out from her hand, each landing, with a sharp twang into the wood of the royal archer’s bows. The arrows stopped, the crowd cheered. The other girls looked quickly from Ani to the archers and back. It had not been part of the show to return fire. The archers looked at each other, then at the scout. He nodded slowly, draining them of their desire to shoot, and ordering them to stand still. The audience held their breath. The scout concentrated again, and without a word, the archers bowed stiffly to the girls, then to the audience, and left the stage. The crowd burst into applause.

The scout rubbed his chin, so Ani was a show-off. That was okay. The palace trainers would soon cure her of that. Still, there was one demonstration he had to see before he made his decision.

The girls filed off stage as Saara came forward. “Now for our last demonstration. We are the only school in the Empire that performs this amazing feat. I’m sure many of you have heard of it. Through great effort, and with special permission from the Emperor himself, we have obtained a replica of one of the ancients’ projectile weapons. ”

The scout leaned forward. He had seen the weapons the ancients called guns before. They were strictly forbidden by taboo throughout the world. The Emperor had a collection of replicas, but they were non-functioning, so the scout had never seen one fired.

A small girl, not a Blade Maiden, walked to the center of the stage. It was Lilah. She was dressed simply in black. She carried the long metal tube with its wooden stock, a rifle.

“This ancient weapon,” Saara explained, “uses a form of stored energy called gun powder. When ignited, it creates an explosion that propels this tiny ball, called a bullet,” Master Saara held up a shiny silver ball. “This bullet is propelled toward the victim at an incredible rate, much faster than any arrow. It is a weapon easy enough to be handled by this small girl, yet powerful enough to pierce metal armor. But, can it defeat a Blade Maiden of the ancient order?”

Ani came on stage and stood, as before, with her head high and her hands clasped behind her back. This time, however, her face was hard and focused. The scout leaned forward again. This was the part of the show he had come to see.

A drum roll began. Dramatically Lilah raised the barrel. Ani took a fighting stance, with her feet apart and one hand raised. The scout smiled, Ani was not afraid, only focused. She nodded to Lilah. There was a loud bang, a flash of light and smoke. Some of the ladies screamed. Ani spun and fell to one knee. Everyone in the gallery held their breath. Then, slowly, Ani rose and turned back to the audience. In one outstretched hand she held the small metal ball. The audience breathed again, and cheered.

Even the scout clapped. He had seen enough. He put out his cigar on the tablecloth and stood up. Saara looked over at him anxiously. He nodded to her stiffly. She smiled and bowed. He looked toward the archers, and they came to him immediately.

“We would like to thank the royal messenger for honoring our school tonight,” Saara called as they moved toward the door. There was polite applause. Saara was still speaking as the scout and his archers left the room. There was no need to see the rest of the show. This girl would do. The Empress would be pleased.

Johnny Bounty Application.

2013-05-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

My cousin Gabe and I made this video for Johnny's sponsorship application to Bounty paper towels. It's a bit melodramatic, sure, and the bounty stuff is tacked on at the end, but it does remind me of how much I love gymnastics and what an awesome kid Johnny is.

Poems by my Mother

2013-02-03T18:23:00.002-08:00

Limerick

There once was a little goldfish
who liked to swim in a blue dish
that way he could be
like a fish in the sea
which was his greatest desirish

Stryker Maps

2012-11-24T16:20:00.000-08:00

Campbell Condensed Soup - Vegetable

2012-11-11T19:23:00.002-08:00

Sun orange carrots - mushy
Tomatoes like gums - fleshy
Beans, green but dull - mossy
Bathed together in water

Sleeping Eros: Oil on Canvas

2012-11-07T14:40:00.001-08:00

She jerked back her hand in surprise. With the last brush stroke, the oil and charcoal had burst to life. The painting was finished. She leaned her face in close to breathe in the canvas. Sweet abomination. It was not what she had set out to paint. She had planned a chubby cherub with soft white wings and a heart-shaped arrow poised in a golden bow. But the God trapped in the canvas now was as frightening as he was beautiful. Not Cupid at all, but Eros. He was asleep on a jumbled stack of papers, sonnets, poems, pages torn from her own diary, but his sleep was not the quiet sleep of childhood nor the exhausted sleep of maturity. She had painted him in the wild and restless sleep of youth, his head thrown back, his breath fluttering at his throat, his mouth open like a fish’s.

His skin, which she had planned to make a soft ivory with a gentle rosy blush at the cheeks, was a golden crimson, the color of sunburn on virgin skin, the color of cinnamon swirling in a bowl of spiced wine. His lips were stained with the blood of berries from the mountains, and his wings, spread wide beneath him, burned orange and yellow. His chestnut hair hung in loose curls around his face. He was young, but not a child. His arms were strong, his shoulders broad, his waist lean and firm, and although he was small, his size did not make him seem young, only far away.

His golden bow lay loosely in his hand. His quiver was where he had dropped it, and the arrows spilled over the ground. She had expected to paint the arrows with short shafts and large heart shaped tips. But these arrows, with dark barbs and gleaming edges, were undoubtedly weapons. She could see names written on the shafts, names of doomed princes, lonely widows, warrior kings, and school girls, lover after lover, martyr after martyr, names she knew though she could not explain how she knew.

She reached out and ran her fingers down one dark shaft. The name etched in gold appeared beneath her fingertips. Mother.

“Mother?” The child at her side tugged on her pant leg. “Mom, who did you paint? Is he naked?”

She pulled away from the canvas.

“What? No?” she stammered and stood up. She looked around at the cluttered apartment. Toys were scattered across the floor, laundry piled high on the couch, her husband’s robe draped over the La-Z-Boy™. Puppets danced on the TV screen.

“Mom. I’m hungry. I wanna tuna sandwich. Mom?”

“Sure, clean up your toys, while I get it ready.”

“But…”

“No buts, clean up your toys.”

In the kitchen she reached over the cluttered dishes and took hold of the Clorox High Efficiency Bleach Gel™. She went back to the TV room and, without the slightest hesitation, soaked the canvas. The colors ran together and bled off the canvas onto the carpet.

The New Eden Trailer Park at Rapture

2012-11-07T14:07:00.000-08:00

“You a gay Angel?” Jason asked the stranger.

The stranger raised his eyebrows. “Why do you ask that?”

“Well I know you’re an Angel, cuz your wings. Mrs. Jenkins got a picture of Angels hung over her trailer door and they all got wings. Bucept their wings is white and yours is black. And I know you’re a gay cuz your muscles. Carl says only gays, queers, and fighters got muscles”

“Did Carl give you that?” The Angel touched the bruise below Jason’s eye.

“Ya.” Jason pulled away. “I asked for it. Mom said I asked for it. Cuz we don’t got money for a new bike, but Mom bought it with her own money and you’re only seven once, and he should mind his own business and he shouts at Mom and… I asked for it.”

“It will be alright now Jason. That is why I have come to take you away.”

Jason scrunched up his face and looked down at the dirt. “I know you say you’re gonna take me away, but what if I don’t wanna go?”

“You would rather stay here?” The Angel waved his hand at the piles of rusting junk and clumps of dusty yellow grass.

Jason leaned against the hot trailer, put his hands in his pockets, and kicked at the dirt. The grasshoppers screeched and the air shimmered in the heat.

“We do not have much time,” the Angel said, “the Rapture is upon us.”

“I know, Mrs. Jenkins told me all about Rapture, but why can’t Mom come.”

The Angel did not answer but stood up straight and held out his hand.

“Mom’s not that bad,” Jason said.

“She let Carl hit you.”

“Is it cuz she’s a harlot?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Mrs. Jenkins said Mom’s a harlot and I’m a bustard.”

“A bastard,” the Angel corrected, “but that is not your fault, and Mrs. Jenkins is not being saved either.”

“Who’s being saved?”

“The pure in heart. The innocent like yourself.”

Jason dug his toe deeper into the dirt and smiled. “I’m not all that innocent. Me and Jorge killed a cat. Jorge shot it with his pellet gun and I smashed its head with a shovel. All kinds a brains come out.”

“Still, you felt remorse. You buried the cat by the creek and even cried over it.”

“Who told you I cried! I wouldn’t cry bout no dumb cat.”

“Jason. It is alright. Here,” The Angel reach out his hand again.

Jason kept his hands in his pockets.

A rush and a crack. Jason pushed away from the trailer. A ball of fire split across the sky. Jason stood, mouth open, as it tore into the trees beyond the creek.

“Jason!” his mother yelled from inside the trailer. “Jason what you doing out there?”

“Come Jason,” the Angel said.

Jason looked from the Angel’s hand, to the burning woods, to the trailer door.

His mother looked out. “Jason! ”

“Jason,” the Angel said quietly.

Stryker Illustrations

2012-10-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

Here are some illustrations my beautiful and talented sister-in-law has done of the characters from Stryker. Lemme know what you think. Are they how you imagined the characters?

Jaden Mina

Stryker

Trey

Taum

Lilah

Jane

John

Peej

Scraps and Patches

Notes from English 6240; Literary Criticism

2011-01-11T18:34:00.000-08:00

Notes from English 6240; Literary Criticism.

Laboratory Lit

I'd rather be Jane Goodall

Just live with the Chimps.

Women of the Favela Part 6; Rose Angela

2010-12-04T11:16:00.000-08:00

Rose Angela's daughter Jackaline and her son Arnaldo

The women of Perus spend everyday fighting for a living. Maria has a son and a Grandson, Josette cares for her bother, Ann has four kids and twenty-seven orphans, Eliane and Aliane look after themselves, but Rose Angela…Rose Angela is mother to the whole town.

She moved with her husband Rico from the Amazon basin in 1990. They built a home on the outer rim of the legitimate neighborhood and for several years lived well. Rico worked in the city and Rose Angela sold homemade goods. They had a daughter, Jakaline, and then a son Arnaldo. As the Favela expanded, many of their neighbors fought against it, calling in political favors, making threats. But Rose Angela decided to become a community advocate, fighting for the people in the favela, not against them.

As the head of our congregation’s Relief Society, she became a prominent figure in the community. She organized aid for children suffering from malnutrition, parasites, or other treatable diseases. She led vaccination drives, blanket drives, brick drives, and blood drives. When a mudslide buried the western edge of the Recanto she was the first on the scene, with a shovel in her hand and a hymn on her lips. She was an ideal, the kind of person I had always imagined working in the favelas. As her name implied, Rose Angela was an angel.

One day in the Recanto, we were preaching door to door. We banged on a particularly large gate and a woman answered. She was young, made up, and scantly dressed. When we told her who we were, she cocked her head sideways and asked, “You from Rose Angela’s Church?”

“Yeah,” we answered excited that she knew of us.

“She works with my husband.”

“Yeah, who’s your husband?”

“Buchexa.”

We stood eyes wide, mouths open. Neither of us had ever met the man nicknamed Buchexa, but we knew who he was. He was the local drug lord. This woman must have been one of his several “wives.”

“Buchexa? Your husband is Buchexa? And he works with Rose Angela, the woman who does all the community work?”

“Yeah,”

“I think you must be confused. The Rose Angela from our church does charity work she…”

“I know who she is. She feeds the poor, tends to the sick and all that. Yeah, who do you think gets her the medicine? Who do you think gets the concrete for building, the money for school uniforms? No one does anything in Perus without my husband.”

I didn’t say anything. I just stood there with my pale blank face.

She smiled.

“Buchexa likes Rose Angela, and he doesn’t mind you guys working the Recanto, but he better not see you talking to me. Give me one of your pamphlets and I’ll stop by your church sometime.”

Later, at church, Rose Angela just laughed. “Of course I work with Buchexa. How could I not?”

“But he sells drugs, and extorts, and he feeds off the suffering of the people.”

“No more than the police do, or the government officials. He extorts money for protection but so do the police. I’ll bet government workers make at least half of Buchexa’s clientele. Elder, who would I work with if I refused to talk to criminals? I work with corrupt people and good people on both sides of the system.”

“But,”

“Look, Buchexa is a bad man. He only helps me in order to buy the people’s loyalty, their protection, their silence. But someday he’ll be killed. An underling, or a wife, will murder him. Or maybe he’ll finally lose influence with the police and they’ll take him down. But the good we do, the children we save or educate, the mothers we help, the homes we build, they’ll be here long after.”

I shook my head. She touched my arm.

“I like you,” she smiled, her constant motherly smile, “but you are still very much a child.”

Rose Angela’s greatest efforts were to improve public health care, a difficult cause. The government had built Postos de Saude (Health Outposts) and they were open twenty-four hours a day, but the clinics are not locally controlled. They were built and supplied based on the town’s official population. No one in the Recanto counted. Rose Angela told us she had sympathizers in the government but it was impossible to convince them that Perus’s problems were more pressing than any other slum’s.

Rose Angela herself was waiting for a kidney operation, and when her son fell off a bridge crossing the river and cut his head, the system was not there to help her. The ambulance could not navigate over the Recanto’s muddy, unpaved roads. My companion and I took turns carrying the boy over the tracks to the outpost. The nurse called us to the front of the line, because Arnaldo’s head was still bleeding. They had run out of bandages, so we tied a cloth to his head, securing it with my companion’s necktie. He needed stitches but not badly enough. A doctor could not be spared.

Rose Angela held her son, and sang to him. An old woman at the front of the line was being turned away.

“But my body hurts, I can’t sleep at night, I…”

“I’m sorry but we’ve been through this before. The doctor says you’re not sick. It’s just old age, all in your head.”

“But,”

“Please there are other people in line.”

“Mrs. Gonzales,” Rose Angela called, motioning to the old woman.

“Oh, Rose Angela they won’t…”

“It’s okay, I’ll come by tomorrow morning and we’ll work it out…”

The night after the raid, when Rose Angela arrived at the church covered in dirt and soot, and gathered the women together to sing, she picked an interesting Hymn. I had heard it several times as a child but never expected to hear it in Perus. The hymn is called “Come, Come Ye Saints.” Mormon pioneers, a century earlier, and a world away, sang this song as they pressed across the plains toward their new home in the wilderness. I sat quietly, listening to the women sing.

I was from another world, a boy, a dumbstruck American teenager, yet the hymn connected us. The toil, the pain, the love, the charity, it was all part of the human story, the human experience. The hymn calls to pioneers both ancient and modern, to those who travel physically or spiritually, to Brazilian mothers and American teenagers:

Come, come ye saints, no toil nor labor fear;

But with joy wend your way.

Though hard to you this journey may appear,

grace shall be as your day.

‘Tis better far for us to strive,

our useless cares from us to drive;

Do this and joy your hearts will swell—All is well! All is well!

Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?

‘Tis not so; all is right.

Why should we think to earn a great reward,

if we now shun the fight?

Gird up your loins, fresh courage take.

Our God will never us forsake;

And soon we’ll have this tale to tell—All is well! All is well!”

Two weeks after the raid, I was transferred to the country and soon returned to Utah. Our house seemed massive and luxurious. So many rooms filled with so much stuff. It made me feel sick to my stomach. I had trouble going to the supermarket, so much food, so much excess. I still can’t set foot in a shopping mall without feeling woozy.

The world in Utah was so different from São Paulo that, at times, my memories of Brazil seemed unreal. As if they are part of a book I had read or a movie I had seen. But when the speaker in my church asked our congregation, “Can you imagine what our pioneer ancestors must have gone through? What they must have endured to lay the foundation for our happiness today?”

I shake my head and whisper. “Yes, yes I can.”

I returned to Perus four years ago. I had been home from the mission field for three years and I was returning to attend school at a university in Rio de Janeiro. One Friday, I took the ten-hour bus ride down to São Paulo. I could only stay a few hours in Perus and I wanted to spend them visiting Rose Angela. I stopped on my way up the hill in front of the church. It was fenced off, under construction. As I stood back, just remembering, a man walked by. I didn’t know him but he recognized me. He stopped and asked if I were a missionary. I told him I had been. He introduced himself as Pedro, Eliane and Aliane’s father.

He told me his daughters had moved to a neighboring town to live with their aunt. He had given up drinking and was going to church. In fact, he was the youth-group leader and saw Luã almost every day. He could tell me about all the members of the congregation. Maria still lived in the old Favela. Claudio had lost his legs to the elephantiasis, but he still sold flowers. Their son had bought them a shop near the train station. Josette was going to school to be an English teacher. Ann still worked at the orphanage. He didn’t know anything specific about the orphans. His daughters were doing well. They didn’t wash clothes anymore; they were too focused on school and boys.

After the Policia cleared the Recanto, the government stepped in to improve conditions in the old favela. They were covering up the river. Soon it would be a proper sewer. And they were expanding the school.

“Rose Angela will be glad about the river,” I smiled. “She always said it bred disease. Do you think she’d be at home? I’d like to see if…”

“Elder,” he interrupted.

“My name’s not Elder anymore you can call me…”

“Elder,” he shook his head. “The surgery didn’t go right.”

After almost a year and a half of waiting for kidney surgery Rose Angela, the champion of the people, the angel to the sick and downtrodden, died on the operating table.

Later on the train, as it twisted through the green hills back towards the city, I sat quietly looking out the window. I thought of the favela. I was trying to press the image into my mind, trying to make it real, to keep it with me.

“I like you,” Rose Angela told me, “but you are still very much a child.”

To the humming of the electric train I whispered the last verse of Rose Angela’s favorite hymn:


This is the only photo I have of Rose Angela

And should we die before our journey’s through

Happy day! All is well!

We then are free from toil and sorrow, too;

With the just we shall dwell!

But if our lives are spared again

To see the saints their rest obtain,

Oh, how we’ll make this chorus swell—All is well!

All is well.

The Forest of Yellow Fingers

2010-12-03T15:12:00.000-08:00

I thought this was hilarious. It made me miss the Allen boys, you both made great pages. I would only recommend watching this if you have some time to waste. Here

Or at Youtube

Cowboy Bebop vs. Ernest Hemingway; Harry dies, Spike Lives.

2010-11-28T21:19:00.000-08:00

The children sing of the Messiah as our Hero lies motionless on the steps. Friends and enemies alike stand in reverent silence. Doves fly heavenward. But wait, can’t you see? Spike is not dead!

Many people were disappointed, even saddened, by the abrupt ending to the 1998 Anime series Cowboy Bebop. The finality in Spike’s last gesture to the camera, the sense of a family lost just as it was solidified, a hero destroyed just as he defeats his enemy, finally freeing himself from the past, to many it was crushing. But I maintain that to assume Spike died at the end of the series is not only unwarranted but absurd.

Spike’s death would go against his character, the presented story line, and the very essence of Bebop as a post-modern Japanese masterpiece. Now, I know that all literary interpretation is biased by the attitudes and preconceived ideas of the reader. I do not pretend that my analysis is any different and I do not claim to understand the “truth” of what happened at the end of the series, but my interpretation is supported. Here’s how:

First, Spike’s character:

Many who interpret the last episode of Bebop as a death scene point to Spike’s melancholy, recklessly-pessimistic attitude about life and fate, claiming that he somehow desires death. When he charges Vicious’s fortress, they assume he is acting on that desire. They believe he is on a suicide mission, bent on bringing the world down with him, but this assumption is false, as is this characterization of Spike. Remember that in Bebop every character is multidimensional. Each lives behind a mask.

Jet – On the outside he appears disillusioned, an x-cop, a fallen public defender. Through the first few episodes, it is easy to assume that he quit the police force because he no longer cared about justice or issues of right and wrong. He handed in his badge and became a hired gun. But, as the series progresses, we learn that his sense of justice is what made him leave the police force. He quit the corrupt system to continue fighting. He claims to act only for himself, yet he faithfully serves and protects his crew, cooking the food, fixing ships and acting as a general father figure to Spike, Faye, Ed and even Ein. He claims to hunt bounty heads for the money, but he does not, we know his intentions are noble.

Faye –She pretends to be completely self-absorbed, untrusting and deceitful, alone in time and independent in space. Yet, we know she craves companionship. She joined Bebop on her own, without any invitation, and her frequent runaway acts are a desperate attempt to get Spike and Jet to chase her. She’s the oldest and least connected character in the show, yet acts like a child in her desperate plea for a family.

Ed – Her split character is the easiest to identify. She appears idiotic yet she is really a genius.

Ein – Even the dog has two sides, a worthless animal, not even strong or fierce, yet somehow he’s intelligent, he can identify criminals, understands computer systems and even plays chess.

Spike – If we recognize that all the characters are double layered, why would we assume Spike’s character is flat? He seems reckless but he’s careful, he seems to care about nothing but he does care, deeply. It would be a shallow interpretation to take Spike at his word when he says he wants to die. When Jet asks him if he’s going to meet Vicious “for the girl,” and Spike replies simply, “she’s dead there’s nothing I can do for her,” he’s lying. He is doing it for her, but dying does not serve her memory. He must avenge her and go on living. He is not committing suicide, he is destroying the path fate has outlined for him, deigning his death, and improvising his own ending to the song. We catch glimpses of the true Spike throughout the series but he shows himself completely only once, in the final episode, when he speaks to Faye of his eyes. (Faye and Spike)

In this scene his façade falls, he explains that one part of him lives in the past, one part lives in the present, but the dream of the past is over, the costumes are off, for the first time, he opens up and tells Faye the truth, he is NOT going to die; he is going to see if he is truly alive.

Some argue that Spike must die because he’s a parallel to Vicious. Vicious also claims this parallel but it is false. Spike is not Vicious. Spike quit the syndicate, he is not hungry for power, or thirsty for blood. Vicious thinks they are reflections of each other, but they are not.

If you think Spike is Vicious, you don't know what Vicious is.

Second the story itself;

Many still insist that Spike dies, because he gets cut with a sword and falls face down on the steps. That is the cheapest interpretation of what happened. I submit the following Clips;

Spike’s chest is torn open, he is strangled, crashed through a window, shot through the chest and drops a hundred feet or more out of the train but he doesn’t die. We can tell from his sarcastic remark to Vincent, that Spike thinks the whole “dying and going into an endless dream” thing is cliché. So do I. Jet is also wrong, Vincent doesn’t die in this scene and neither does Spike. They are not “dead from the beginning.”

In this next clip Spike denies that he is destined to die and explains to Vicious why they are not the same.

Spike is shot, stabbed and falls from a window onto the asphalt yet doesn’t die. Vicious can't understand why Spike is still alive but we do. It's because of Bebop. Compare this scene to the first clip. It is only reasonable to assume that, in both cases, Spike will wake up to Faye’s off key singing, bandaged from head to toe by Jet.

Faye’s words to him are also important. First that he’s been asleep for three days( resurrection symbolism, underlining Spike’s immortal nature) Second that he should be “Glad she came back.” Faye puts up a front that she doesn’t care but she came back, Spike puts up a front that he needs to die but he doesn’t. They both escape their fate.

The various plots in Bebop all focus around the same timeless theme; can a person escape his or her fate? Jet alludes to this theme when he recounts Ernest Hemingway's “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

But Jet hates that story. He has a hurt leg, he is flying over the desert, but he isn’t dying. He escapes his fate, Bebop saves him.

Faye also feels destined to return to her home on earth, to “find where she belongs,” but she turns away from that path. She finds herself at home on Bebop.

Spike’s destiny may be to die at the hands of Vicious but, for the story to be truly Bebop, he has to break free from that fate.

In the final episode Spike tells the story of “The Tiger Striped Cat,”

But Spike hates the story. He is not the cat any more than Jets is Harry in Kilimanjaro. Spike is not trapped in the past any more than Faye is. Neither Jet or Spike die. Faye comes back to Bebop and so will Spike. They all overcome their destiny.

Third the essence of Bebop;

Some may be surprised at my insistence that that Spike lives and by invocation of “Bebop,” as a type of story, but let me explain. I, like Jet, hate the story of Kilimanjaro. I have grown tiered of the entire twentieth-century modernist pattern of stories. There is nothing more typical to modern literature, than a doomed hero fighting tooth and nail against fate, but dying all the same. Hemingway rehashes it over and over again, from Harry in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, to Catherine in A Farewell to Arms, to Cantwell in Across the River and Into the Trees. Jack London plays on the old storyline in, To Build a Fire, and Faulkner in, Barn Burning. Many a university student has spent semesters reading about men sealing their fate in their own blood.

Bebop sprang from the modernist movement but transcends it. After World War II, modernism became central to Japanese literature and film. The "film cowboy" of the twentieth century was a mixture of Western folklore and Japanese Samurai tales. (Bebop nods at this in episode #22 Cowboy Funk.) The first Japanese Nobel Laureate, Yasunari Kawabata, wrote several notable books during this period. All his characters live under an ever-present, looming death. A terrible and inescapable, “Sound of the Mountain.” This Japanese/Modernist mix produced countless characters in Japanese literature, cinema and television, all marching on toward the inevitable and extremely predictable death. Hemingway and Kawabata were so obsessed with the inevitability of death that they both committed suicide.

But Bebop is a post-modern creation. The way it blends traditional music, art and theme, with pop culture; the way it plays with and challenges archetypes; the vivacity and humor, the color and eccentric forms are all post-modern. Just as post modern art and architecture broke free of the bleak modernist conformity, Bebop spares its character’s from a modern fate. Bebop gives us a Cowboy who likes Jazz, who doesn’t follow the same tune but improvises, who writes his own story.

In the end we never see Spike wake up, so I suppose you can believe him dead, if you want, but if Spike dies, then his dynamic character deflates into a cliché tragic hero, the intricate story loses all its innovative forms and plot lines, and Cowboy Bebop turns from a artful, humorous, and deeply complex Anime masterpiece, to one more tiered example the modernist fascination with death and the inevitable. I say Spike lives.

Sister Selma

2010-11-25T21:07:00.000-08:00

Really funny Brazilian Nun. (I did the sub titles)

She tells a joke...and then you laugh...got it?

Watch here

Or on Youtube

Today's Haiku

2010-11-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

Oct 22, 2012
Ima take my head off
just pop it like a ken doll's
Ima breathing torso

Jan 9 2012
Sitting with a pen
the writing is strange tonight
just too much star trek?

Jan 3 2012

The first day of class
just the same old chairs
with no back support

Jan 2 2012

The Facts are just a
Lack of imagination
so face the fiction

Aug 23, 2011 Sunset

Summer sweet summer
inevitably ends

and so it grows cold

Jan 19, 2011 Girl and Boy

When she was a girl

Her hair smelled like red fruit loops

and I was a boy

Jan 12, 2011; To Sherylee-

Surgely magurg

Uncle Harold, Grandpa Joe

Well whats in a name

Jan 10, 2011; Notes from English 6240; Literary Criticism.

Laboratory Lit

I'd rather be Jane Goodall

Just live with the Chimps.

Jan 9, 2011

So it's a new year

and so it's back to the books

and back to Haiku

November 29, 2010 Ani Difranco Adaptaion

Laughed until we cried

because the world is absurd

beautiful and small

November 28, 2010 Just some Bebop

Time spent with cartoons

when there's homework to be done

never been so sweet

November 27, 2010 - For her

Just some cheap flowers

But the best that I could do

and so she thanked me

November 26, 2010 - Holidays

It's far too early

Uncle Shaun will you wake up?

Lego Starwars? Yeah

November 25, 2010 - Thanks Giving

Grandma bakes all day

to see her son hold his son

as she once held him.

November 24, 2010 - Computer Age

Why is this marked spam?

Why's it all in Japanese

Writers should write books.

November 23, 2001 - Winter Again

Bus driver reaches
out to close the door again

"Got to save the heat."

November 22, 2010 Wild Open Skies

Body scanners...So?

Who gives a crap? Just strip down.

We'll all fly naked

Women of the Favela Part 5; Eliane and Aliane

2010-11-24T09:45:00.000-08:00

The orphans were not the only children in Perus without parents. The twins, Eliane and Aliane, are not orphans by the strict definition. Technically they have a father, but in all my months in Perus I never met him. We always talked to the girls on their front patio.

“Dad doesn’t want religion in the house,” Aliane smiled, nodding her head toward the dark front window. The girls told me their father is not a bad man, just lazy. He is not cruel, but not kind, he doesn’t work, but he doesn’t bother them. He doesn’t scold or forbid or shout. He stays indoors watching their small T.V.

“And he drinks?” I asked them.

“Yeah,” they giggled together. “He drinks a lot.”

“What about your mom?”

“I’m Eliane’s mom,” Aliane answered quickly.

“And I’m Aliane’s,” Eliane added smiling. The answer was rehearsed. They must have given it many times.

The girls, since age ten, looked after themselves. For three years they’d run a small laundry business out of their home. The picture shows the twins standing surrounded by their day’s work. They washed clothes by hand for a year before they saved enough to buy a basic washing machine. Daily, they lug bags back and forth over the railroad and across the highway. They work everyday except Sunday and they never miss church. They’re mothers to each other.

“It’s not so bad, we make good money.”

“Except for our hands, the water dries them out.”

“Yeah but Rose Angela gets us this medicated lotion, it helps a lot.”

I nod my head. Of course Rose Angela would help.

November 22, 2010 Wild Open Skies

2010-11-22T17:14:00.000-08:00

Body scanners...So?

Who gives a crap? Just strip down.

We'll all fly naked

Her Twilight Years; Tales of a Granny Vampire. Part 3, "Friends and Enemies"

2010-11-21T14:47:00.000-08:00

“Back already? Are you sure you plugged all the leaks?”

“Yes, I spoke with Sergeant Dawkins myself, he was the first to arrive on the scene. He suspected paranormal activity immediately, quarantined the area and confiscated the security tapes. The copy you’ve been watching is the only one left.”

“What about the witnesses.”

“Taken care of.”

“Memory spell?”

“Yes, by one of our top mystics.”

“Zula?”

“No, Zula couldn’t come, we sent Astron.”

“Zula would have been better.”

“Yes sir.”

“What about the other cops?”

“Astron got them all. Dawkins is the only one outside of the Bureau of Paranormal Investigation who has any knowledge of the incident.”

Commissioner Walters nodded, put his pen down on his desk and leaned back in his chair.

“Have a seat Parker,” he said, as he hit rewind on the old VCR.

Parker pulled a chair around the desk, so he could see the T.V. better and sat down next to Walters.

Walters looked over at his Parker. He was so young just a kid really. He’d been with the bureau for almost six months but he was still green. Walters still resented being assigned such a young partner. The kid had no experience, he’d only been a cop for four years, but the bosses insisted. They hadn’t told Walters the whole story but there was something in Parker’s past that qualified him for service into the Bureau. Probably some tragic encounter with the supernatural, vampires got his parents or something like that. Parker never talked about it and Walters never asked. In his twenty-five years with the Bureau he’d heard enough horror stories, he didn’t need to know the details of Parker’s.

He hit play, the monitor flashed white for a second, then the bank scene appeared.

“There are robbers,” Walters narrated, “the guy at the front of the line, the one next to the guard and the one by the door.”

“They are human?”

“They are the victims.”

Walters hit fast forward, the man went to the teller and took out his gun, the second man moved in to cover the guard.

“There,” Walters said, hitting pause, “see he turns there, something behind him drew his attention.”

“But none of the hostages moved.”

“You gotta follow his line of sight. Ghouls don’t show up on tape.”

“He’s looking toward the back of the line. You mean there’s something there?”

“Just watch.”

He hit play. The man covering the door moved forward and spoke to the air at the end of the line. Then suddenly drew his gun then began struggling. The gun flashed and he stepped back.

“Poltergeist?” Parker asked.

Walters grunted, “maybe, but keep watching.”

The shot had upset the other two. The man at the teller started shoving money into his pockets. The one who fired the shot took off out the door. The other two moved to follow but, as the man with the money passed the end of the line, he fell, tripped over something.

As the rest of the video played Walters watch Parker’s eyes grow wide and his face grow pale. The kid was still too green.

“It went for their necks,” Parker said when the tape snapped to an end. “a Vampire.”

“Probably, but this was in broad daylight, Vamps tend to be more discrete, it could be a poltergeist tearing out their necks to throw us off course.”

“Maybe a malevolent spirit, someone who was killed in a robbery and is taking his revenge post mortem.”

“It’s possible but I’m still leaning toward Vampire. The guy who fired the shot thought he was firing at someone.”

“But people often shoot at ghosts and why would a Vampire be killing bank robbers?”

“I’ve seen it before. Some Vampire thinks that just because he’s a demon doesn’t mean he’s gotta be all bad and takes to killing criminals.”

“Like some kind of super hero,”

“Yeah but remember that the Vamp still has to feed. Whoever it is isn’t going to wait for due process. We’re talking about a crusader, monster on a righteous mission. Have you any idea how bloody the crusades were.”

Parker nodded slowly, “it’s a pity if a Vampire really could be turned, if we had one on our side…”

“It’s impossible,” Walters interrupted, “a demon is a demon.”

“Okay. So what do we do now?”

“What descriptions did we get before Astro wiped their memories?”

“Nothing solid. A female maybe, the witnesses were freaking out. Two said the robbers just started sooting. On said they were killed by an old lady.”

“People have trouble processing this stuff, I don’t think we can trust the eye witness accounts. Go downstairs, pull up everything that could be linked to vampire activity in the area and put out an APB on the third bank robber, the one that got away. My guess is that our ghoul will be hunting him. We’ve got to get to him first.”

“Right.”

Walters watched Parker go, then stood up and walked toward the monitor.

“A crusader,” he said into the monitor, “I’m getting to old for this.”

Margery sat in her living room with her grandson and his girlfriend. They were sipping glasses of fresh blood and laughing. Margery smiled over at Lilly. At first she hadn’t like Billy’s girlfriend, she was a banshee after all and had piercing all over her face, but Margery had recently began to embrace her own demonic nature and, as she did, she began to enjoy the company of other monsters. She played bridge twice a week with a couple of hags from the witch’s coven and Bloody Mary, from the graveyard, had introduced her to some fascinating ghosts. One of them, shrieking Tom, had known her father during the war. Best of all, since she had begun acting more like a vampire, Billy had been lest embarrassed by her. Yes, if Lilly made her grandson happy then she could get used to the piercings and the shrieking and the floating around the room. Margery still didn’t care for her Zombie friends but she tried to be pleasant and keep some brains in the fridge for them

For the past three weeks, since incident at the bank, Lilly came by nearly every day and gone hunting with them twice. They’d taken out that mugger and that man who lived near the park. Everyone knew he murdered he wife several years back but the cops had never been able to pin in on him. Well, he’d finally got his comeuppance, thanks to Grany Vamp and her righteous grandson.

“So what’s our next plan?” Billy asked.

“Well,” Margery said setting down her glass, “the girls from the coven say their seer has predicted a string of muggings in the city, a couple of women...street walkers…have turned up dead.”

“Great so we should start there,” Lilly said, “I’ll talk to some of the sectors I know from the city see if they’ve seen anything and I can start haunting some alleyways tomorrow night.”

“That would be great dear,” Margery smiled at Lilly again, “and you know I’ve been looking at patterns, if your still not against it, I really could sew us some outfits, I mean if we’re going to be evil fighting evil we should dress the part.”

“Grandma,” Billy sighed.
“Besides you always wear your nice sweaters and the bloodstains are terrible, if you had something in a washable polyester…”

“Grandma,” Billy cut her off but after a pause added, “if it means that much to you I guess we could look into it.”

“Great!”

“But nothing fancy.”

“Oh and you’ll have to get the coven to enchant anything you make for me,” Lilly added, “otherwise I won’t be able to pass through walls with it on.”

“Of course dear.”

They went on talking and drinking for another half an hour. Then Margery excused herself. The sun was coming up and she really did need to get some sleep but if Lilly wanted to stay a little longer that was fine as long as they kept the volume on the T.V. down.

“Thanks Grandma,” Billy said as she went to her room.

From the window two green eyes also watched her go. The charchol black cat, sitting in the windowsill, had been watching them for some time. When the old woman was gone to her room the cat jumped down, slunk across the yard and disappeared into a storm drain. Like a shadow it slipped through the endless maze of tunnels until it came out into a large cavernous chamber, a crypt directly beneath the cemetery.

The enormous room was dimply lit by a hundred melting candles. An old crone sat in a high backed silver chair gazing off into nothingness. A dark figure, dressed in a long cape and top hat, paced back and forth across the wet floor. The cat dropped down and slipped over to the old woman’s chair.

“Back so soon,” the woman creaked as the cat jumped into her lap, “we’ll tell me what you saw.”

The dark figure stopped pacing, “we’ll what is it? Did she find her?”

“Yes,” the old woman said stroking the cat’s dark fur, “she found her. The one we’re looking for. You were right they’re planning to take down some human criminals in the city.”

The figure turned away from the old woman. Then it was true, they had another righteous vampire on their hands. Why couldn’t they just feed discretely, embrace their nature, hero types like these invariably brought down the hunters. That d*@# Bureau was probably on their scent already. Why couldn’t these stupid vampire’s see that their flashy “heroics” were bad for all ghouls.

“Call the boys,” the figure ordered without turning back to the chair, “we’ll put a stop to this before it gets out of hand.”

The old woman smiled and the cat in her lap purred deeply.

Women of the Favela Part 4: Ann and the Orphanage

2010-11-16T15:28:00.000-08:00

After a few weeks in Perus, my companion and I decided to volunteer at a local orphanage. Ann, a member of our congregation, worked part time as an orphanage administrator. The first time we visited we schemed up a surprise party. Without telling Ann we went door to door on the east hill gathering used toys. We wrapped them and bought the ingredients to make a huge birthday cake. As we opened the door to the orphanage, I realized our mistake. The large house overflowed with toys. Toys lined the tiled halls and clumped in corners. The metal cupboards were bursting with bags of beans, rice, and sweets.

“Everyone sends toys,” Ann explained, “Everyone gives food and candy to orphans. We’re funded by three separate American charities. You can bake your cake, but do it with the kids. That’s what they need. Someone to be with them, to talk to them, to ask them their names.”

She was right. The kids didn’t look twice at the toys we’d brought. Instead they grabbed our ties and made us chase them around the house. My companion stood on his head. I did a cartwheel and banged my foot on a windowsill. The children were hard to understand, they talked so quickly, but I tried to listen and catch their names. The tall girl with short hair is Marilyn. Tiago and his brother Rico are the oldest. The three little boys are all named José so they go by Ninja, Cotóco, and Pequeno. The little girls giggled too much to tell me their names. The serious one, in the red tank top, the one who only laughed when I banged my foot and only smiled for the picture is João. (Photo 5 Orphanage)

As the cake baked, Ann leaned against the old sink and told us about the problems facing the orphanage.

“We have enough funding,” she explained, “what we don’t have is someone who can do the work, who can actually care for the children. There are six of us working here, I come almost every day, but no one lives here full-time. I try to be a Mom to the kids as much as I can, but I have four children at home that need mothering.

“The children come to us at different times, for different reasons, mostly without any documentation. We think João was five when he came, but were not sure how old he really is. He came alone, with nothing but the clothes on his back, he wouldn’t tell us where he came from, or who his parents were. He just showed up. Seven years later all we really know about him is that his name is João and his favorite color is red.”

The administrators have a hard time finding openings for the orphans at school. A child from a wealthier family, or with connections like Luã, could enter school at five. But the orphanage lacked organization and connections. Of the twenty-seven children, twelve were school age but only seven attended. The others waited.

As she spoke, Cotóco came crying into the kitchen. Ann picked him up and explained; “Each year we put the kids on a waiting list. If there are no openings then they move up in priority for the next year, but some of them are set to enter first grade at age eight or even nine. They won’t graduate until they are nineteen or twenty.”

But graduation is an unlikely dream. Since the orphans have to leave the orphanage at eighteen, they will inevitably have to quit school and seek work.

“But these kids are lucky,” Ann almost laughed, “there are a lot worse places a kid could end up. There are…”

I held up my hand to stop her. I wasn’t ready to hear details about inner-city child trafficking. The orphanage was disturbing enough.

We ate the cake, João smiled for the picture, and then we left. We went back almost every week trying to give each child as much attention as we could. I was always expected to do cartwheels.

Front row left to right; Cotóco, Giggling girls 1,2,3,4. Elder Conner(Me), Ninja

Second row left to right; Pequeno, Elder Jarvis

Third row left to right; Tiago, Rico, João, Marilyn

Top row left to right; Beatrice, Elder Glover, Elder Stayner, Cintia, Ann

After...

2010-11-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

“The present is infinitely fleeting. We live our lives in the moments after.”

-Lia Rae Markins

Two hours

He lay naked in his mother’s arms, on the damp hospital bed

Surrounded by smiling faces

His breath came in gasps

Tiny mouth open like a fish’s

His skin was warm, wrinkled, and red.

She raised his head

The light shone on his closed eyelids

His arms twitched uncontrollably

His skin hanging off his thin arms

His navy, not baby, blue eyes opened briefly

The light reflected off his eyes, tiny golden dots

He stretched out on his back

Arms open fingers spread, he soaked in the warmth of his mother’s arms

His whole life stretched out before him

He was young, fragile, innocent

Everything was new, fragile, wonderful

Seventeen years

He lay naked on the cold wooden dock, on the deep glacier lake

Surrounded by vast green forests

His breath came in gasps

His mouth open like a fish’s

His skin was icy cold, rigid, and red

He raised his head

The sun shone on his closed eyelids

His arms shivered uncontrollably

His skin tight on his strong arms

His navy, not baby, blue eyes opened for a moment

The sun reflected off the lake, a long golden stream

He stretched out on his back

Arms open, fingers spread, he soaked up the warmth of the summer sun

His whole life stretched out before him

He was young, restless, innocent

Everything was new, restless, wonderful

Her

He lay naked in her arms on the soft warm sheets

Surrounded by her sweet smell

His breath came easy and slow

His mouth open like a fish’s

Her skin was soft, smooth, and pink

He lifted her head, kissed her closed eyelids

She trembled slightly

His hand on the skin of her arm

His navy, not baby, blue eyes held her for a moment

Light burned between them, a soft gentle passion

He stretched out on his back

Arms open, fingers spread, he soaked up the her warmth

Their whole life stretched out before them

They were young, dreaming, together

Everything was new, hopeful, wonderful

A lifetime

He lay naked in his patient gown, on the hard hospital bed

Surrounded by sobbing faces

His breath came in gasps

His mouth open like a fish’s

His skin was, clammy, wrinkled, and pale

He raised his head, the light shone on his closed eyelids

His arms trembled uncontrollably

The skin was thick on his tired arms

His navy, not baby, blue eyes opened for a moment

A light shone from his eyes, a fading golden glow

He stretched out on his back

Arms open fingers spread, he soaked up the warmth of the loved ones around him

His whole life stretched out before him

For a moment he was young, peaceful, innocent

Everything was wonderful, peaceful, finished.

Photos by DB www.connerstudio.blogspot.com

Women of the Favela Part 3; Josette and her Grandmother

2010-11-11T12:27:00.000-08:00

In the favelas rural and urban lifestyles often clash. In the photo above a boy, Luã, stands near the river. Behind him a herd of stray horses grazes. No one knows who brought them, but they must have been too costly to keep and were set loose. They roam the town eating out of dumpsters and blocking traffic.

Stray livestock was a common sight even in the most industrialized quarters of the city. The two other pictures show a herd loitering in front of a used car lot and two horses chomping at a garbage sack.Ironically the horses adapted better to city life than many Northerners.

Josette and Luã’s grandmother, the woman slumped in the pew, never adjusted to city life. She moved with her two grandchildren from Natal soon after Luã was born. (None of them ever told me what happened to Luã and Josette’s parents.) From the beginning their Grandma hated city life. She tried to farm but people trampled and built on her garden. She tried to keep chickens but the neighbors stole them or they fell prey to stray dogs. Over the years she gave up everything but five beehives she kept on their small patio, and the drums of animal lard she boiled down into soap. Eventually she took to watching T.V. and mumbling quietly to herself about the old days. Josette was left to keep her family afloat.

Luã would follow us as we worked in the neighborhoods. He taught me to build and fly my first kite. He always talked about his older sister, but after a month in Perus I still hadn’t met her. When she finally came to church one Sunday, she explained to me why she was never home. She was a substitute teacher. The schools in Perus are free, and a major draw for emigrants, but they are dangerous, under funded, and desperately overcrowded. (Not forty-students-in-a-single-classroom-overcrowded, like I’d seen in Utah, but too-many-students-to-fit-in-the-building-overcrowded.) The schools run in four shifts. From six to ten in the morning, then from ten to two, two to six, and finally from six to ten at night. Most teachers work two or three shifts but Josette, as often as she could, taught all four, a fourteen-hour day.

When I was in high school in Utah, the whole country reeled to see the school shootings at Columbine. In the few months I was in Perus, there were two shootings at the school, each was reported only once in the local news.

Josette’s situation was rough but hopeful. She could use her job to study, she spoke English well, and she was applying for a scholarship funded through our Church’s “Perpetual Education Fund.” As a substitute, she could also use her connections to help Luã. She could get him textbooks, notepads, pencils, even a calculator. Luã is a good boy and, like his sister, he works hard. They’ll survive. But many children in the system don’t have their advantages.

Cutter Scout Reservation 2011; Call for Staff Applications, in Haiku.

2010-11-10T11:41:00.000-08:00

Redwoods by the Sea
Change lives including your own
Click here to apply

http://www.pacsky.org/Camping/Cutter.aspx

Women of the Favela Part 2; Maria

2010-11-04T14:09:00.000-07:00

Maria and her Granddaughter Lauren

The first day I saw the Recanto I wasn’t scared at all. The old electric train wound its way through green hills. Shantytowns lined the tracks. Shacks clumped together in the low valleys. Despite the crowded train, the incessant heat, the unfamiliar Portuguese babble all around me, I burned with excited. My first assignment in the city, just what I’d been praying for. The Recanto dos Humildes clings to the edge of Perus, a town fifty miles or so north of São Paulo. It would be wrong to call Perus a suburb, though it may have started that way. Rather, Perus is a microcosm of the city, a mini São Paulo, facing all of the major challenges of the metropolis, only on a smaller scale.

At the train station I met my new companion. (Our missionaries always work in pairs.) He came from California and had been in Perus for six weeks. He helped carry my bags and led me into the town. I followed close behind him as we tunneled through the crowed alleyways. People pushed passed us. Chickens squawked in cages and vendors shouted over each other. Above our heads, clotheslines crisscrossed from window to window. Murky, pungent water trickled over the uneven asphalt.

“We’re going to Maria’s house for lunch,” my companion told me, looking back over his shoulder. “She’s a good cook but after, we’ll have to help her husband Claudio wash his legs. Try not to stare.”

“Stare at what?” I asked but he didn’t answer. We stopped in front of a large gate. It was solid metal, ten feet tall, with spikes on top, not at all inviting. My companion clapped loudly and called,

“Maria! It’s the missionaries.”

The gate swung inward and Maria answered, her smile shining, her granddaughter in her arms. Maria was as warm and inviting as the gate was ominous.

Maria and Claudio have been members of our congregation since they trekked down from Piauí, a state in Northern Brazil. When she met me she cried. I was surprised and sorry, not knowing what I’d done. But my companion laughed, and then Maria laughed.

“Don’t worry about it Elder, (all the missionaries are called Elder) I always cry.”

“It’s true,” my companion agreed, “Everyone calls her Irmã Chorona, (Sister Cryer).”

“Yes, Irmã Chorona,” she smiled, “I always cry, but never because I’m sad.”

She told me she didn’t cry the day they left the North with all their possessions on their backs, but she cried the day they arrived in their new home. She said she didn’t cry when her husband couldn’t find work, but she cried when he bought a wheelbarrow, filled it with wildflowers to sell, and returned home with his first day’s earnings. She said she didn’t cry when her husband’s legs started to swell and crack, and he could no longer push his wheelbarrow, but she cried the day he gave up drinking and started going to church. She didn’t cry at funerals, or at hospitals, but she cried every time a new missionary came to visit.

Slowly, over black beans and rice, interrupted many times by tears, Maria told me the history of their own little metropolis.

Perus is one of many favela-towns surrounding São Paulo and provides a textbook example of the country’s social stratification. The World Bank rates Latin America as, “the most (economically) unequal region in the world, and Brazil is the most unequal country in the region.”

In most areas the slums flood over the wealthy neighborhoods. The shacks fill every open space, built up against skyscrapers, in parks, or freeway medians. But Perus provides such an interesting example because the areas of rich, poor, poorer and poorest are clearly defined and divided. The highway, the river, and the train tracks, run together for twenty miles or so, out of São Paulo. At Perus they part, dividing the town into four distinct sections. Panning the town from East to West you pass through the entire spectrum, from rich multi-storied brick houses on the hill, to tiny slanted plywood shacks on the muddy riverbank.

The rich, legitimate part of town covers the hillside east of the highway. A poorer neighborhood fills the area between the highway and the railroad tracks. From the tracks to the river the town tumbles into the old favela, a jumbled conglomerate of houses, shops, narrow alleyways and twisted roads. Beyond the river sits the Recanto.

According to Maria, the legitimate Perus was built in the 1970’s. Businessmen came, looking to get out of the city, and the highway was built to give them a speedy commute. Poor workers came as domestic servants or shopkeepers, and the government built them the railroad.

“No one built on this side of the tracks until the nineties. We were some of the first. When we got here it was a dump.”

“Literally,” my companion smiled and Maria nodded.

In fact all the land west of the tracks and east of the river was government owned and designated as a landfill. The land beyond the river belonged to an absent, and essentially faceless owner who, everyone assumed, lived in the city.

In the early nineties, slum populations in São Paulo exploded, overflowing into areas like Perus. The people carved a neighborhood right out of the landfill, building their homes with anything they could find.

“You’d be surprised what those richies throw away,” Maria says gesturing to the corrugated steel roof. “We dug this out of a mound down by the river. I insisted on real clay brick for the walls, but the Oliveiras down the alley, they built that house out of blue water barrels. Every month they cover up one or two with concrete. Whenever they can afford the cement. ”

Originally lines and pipes crossed over the tracks bringing pirated water and electricity. The Favela itself was graded from poor to poorer, with the poorest families living closest to the river.

“The river became an open sewer,” Maria said shaking her head, “drugs, violence, disease and death, they were everywhere.”

Government officials in every major city in the South faced the same dilemma. They could barely estimate how many people lived in the favelas, let alone provide for them. By 1995, Perus’ actual population was at least ten times the official head count. Half the town stole electricity and water. Children flooded the schools, and there was absolutely nowhere to send the people.

“What about the government housing?” I asked. On train rides through the city I’d seen the massive concrete apartment complexes, lined one after another like wasps nests. Called COHAB’s (co-habitation units), they must have been a massive undertaking.

“The COHAB’s,” Maria snorted. “They’re so much worse than the favelas.”

Despite the scale of the COHAB project, it fell desperately short of its goal.

“I’ve been to see them,” she went on. “My cousin lived in a COHAB for three years. Horrible, Elder, just horrible.”

She told us how large families from the North are crammed into one-room apartments. How the housing complexes breed organized crime, and are often the most dangerous parts of the city.

“People only move to the COHAB’s if they have to, if they get in trouble with the government or something. They move in, get in debt to the drug lords and the cops, and can’t leave.” She told us that many of the people in the Perus had fled the COHAB’s, often leaving behind all their possessions and bolting in the middle of the night.

“It’s true,” my companion added. “There were COHAB’s in my last area and we weren’t allowed anywhere near them after dark.”

When the COHAB’s began to fail the government tried to entice people to move back to the countryside. Brazil built a new capitol city, Brasilia, built in 1960, as an early effort to draw people into the country and away from the urban coast. In the 1990’s the government granted enormous subsidies to Northern ranchers in hopes of bolstering the agricultural economy. Today Brazil has one of the largest beef industries in the world with over190 million cattle. But cattle tycoons and foreign investors dominate the industry. The grants helped Americans get 39-cent hamburgers but gave few opportunities to farm workers. With no schools, no hospitals, no infrastructure of any kind, for families like Maria’s there was no going back North.

In the mid 1990’s, the government tried land reform; giving the favelas to their inhabitants. In Perus, they paved a few roads, built power lines, basic sewage systems, and even a primary school. The neighborhood was laid out poorly, and hastily built, but it was a neighborhood.

These land reforms, meant to ease the favela problem, only exacerbated it, causing a new major internal migration.

“At first the flow of newcomers was steady,” Maria told us, “but word reached the North that the government was giving away land. For a sharecropper or a plantation worker that’s like saying they discovered a gateway straight to heaven. The people flooded down.

“ But the government could hardly be surprised,” Maria, laughed. “The promise of free land always brings waves of people.”

These people came in the same way Europeans flooded through Ellis Island, or American pioneers pushed through the west. Many Northerners actually came to São Paulo in wagons, trailing livestock.

Maria and Claudio were both born from a long line of sharecroppers and plantation workers. São Paulo was going to be their ticket out, their “better life for their children.” For fifteen years they dug a living out of the old garbage dump. They raised their son Paulo and built a life, all on the money Claudio brought in from selling flowers. Every day for fifteen years he wheeled his barrow down to the train station, and every night he brought back beans and rice to his wife.

They succeeded. Paulo went to school, got a job in the city, married, had a daughter, and built a small brick home in the Recanto, just west of the river. But not every emigrant would succeed and as the years went by it became more and more difficult for newcomers.