The First Genesis
By Mark Macpherson
Copyright 2011 Mark Macpherson
Smashwords Edition
V1.0
Licence Notes
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Part I
Chapter I
The air was humid and, an hour after sunset, it remained uncomfortably hot within the Southern Mexican jungle. Thatched huts sat in irregular order within an area cleared of vegetation, their disarray a symptom of the KulWinik Mayan village’s unplanned, organic growth. A rectangular, white plastic table hosted two KulWinik villagers and five expectant Westerners. A single kerosene lamp burned on the table. Its light highlighted people’s faces like ill-formed masks but did not worry the darkness behind them. Moths and other insects gave the light source busy attention.
Yax K’in smoked a pungent, hand-made cigar seemingly oblivious to his audience of Westerners. His flat, almost-simian face showed the wear and care of only seventy of his more than one hundred years. Unkempt jet-black hair brushed the top of his shoulders. His cotton tunic covered him from his neck to his wrists to below his knees. It would have been white if washed but was a shade of grey from the smoke of cooking fires and the dirt and grime from laboring in the milpa, the field cleared from the jungle where the KulWinik grew their food.
Yax K’in peered through the pall of his own cigar smoke at his late-teenage daughter and then to the Westerners. His eyes finally came to rest on the lamp and the busy cloud of insects.
Arthur fidgeted as he glanced at his two friends, Michelle and Hamish and then at Hamish’s late-teenage twin grandsons, Jim and Harry, to make sure they were paying attention.
Yax K’in noticed Arthur drawing in the audience and smiled at his old friend. He hoped Arthur would not be too upset. Yax K’in had withheld hazardous information from Arthur during their forty year friendship.
Yax K’in began reciting the tales only one person, sometimes two, ever knew at one time. The stories had been passed from one generation to the next, for thousands of years. It was to be the first time, in all those generations, that someone other than a KulWinik leader had heard them.
Chapter 2
The Story of the Finder of Caves
“The greatest hunter from the time before Kings, the time before Scribes, the time before people lived in villages, travelled for many days through the ancient jungle searching, unsuccessfully, for game. She eventually cornered an ancient and dangerous animal. An animal that no longer exists, as large when it walked on its four legs as the shoulder of a standing hunter. She failed to kill it. Even the greatest hunters know failure. Even the gods make mistakes. The animal tore along the length of her leg with its tusks and teeth. The hunter’s injury was deep and to the bone. Her intended prey tore flesh from her arm and pierced her side. She was thrown into the air and landed violently. Her mouth filled with her own blood as her teeth pierced her tongue. She lost consciousness for a long time.
A pool of red surrounded her when she woke.
The hunter dragged her broken body through the jungle as she tried to return to her people. Her pain was intense, her agony extreme. She was disoriented and weak from loss of blood. She could not discern a common direction. She became lost. Eventually, she understood that her only hope for survival was to find help nearby or a source of easy food and shelter.
She traveled for many days, searching for assistance.
During the first nights of her ordeal she feared attack from large predators. Each night she found a place where an assault could only come from a single direction and she would prop herself watching and waiting in the blackness. As the days blurred into a single repeated one of agony and weakness she gave up her defense and each night she lay on the jungle floor wherever she fell and slept through the dark hours.
She weakened further. She knew life was leaving her. She lost clear vision, her waking world lacked distinction. She hallucinated. She believed she saw a stark white shape, sometimes appearing like a desiccated tree stump and sometimes as an ancient, white-robed man. It remained close to her, shouting its uniqueness in her blurred jungle of greens and browns. She would stare at it to make the vision disappear but the shape shadowed her like a companion until her strength was almost gone so that she no longer registered its presence.
Her leg, and her arm became infected and the poison spread through her body. She woke one morning and could not stand. She crawled through the jungle, dragging her useless leg and arm. She did not stop. Each morning, when she surprised herself that she was still alive, she continued her struggle.
On the last morning of her ordeal she woke and lifted her head from the earth where she lay prostrate. She crawled onwards until the jungle fell behind her. She collapsed and lay on the edge of a clearing. She assumed people must be nearby. She released tears of relief using the last moisture in her body. She let her head fall onto the earth. She slept again.
She woke in the same place. She heard a voice.
‘I’ve been watching you for some time.’
An old man sat with his back against the last tree of the jungle, staring out over the clearing. A white tunic covered him from his neck to his wrists and to his ankles. His feet were bare.
‘You will not give up, will you. Even as you are now. At the very end,’ he said. He turned his head to look at the hunter lying on the ground and then looked away again.
‘Why is that?’ he asked, not looking at her. ‘Why are you so strong? You are different from the others.’
He spoke calmly as if he was chatting and passing the time, after a day of rest and an ample meal. She was angry and indignant, as well as in agony. She abhorred his indifference. She did not understand why he did not help her. She tried to swallow so that she could speak but it was impossible. Coherent words could not force their way through the coagulated blood in her mouth and the stricture of her throat. She wanted to make some sound of annoyance but she was also hindered by her swollen and infected tongue. She croaked an inarticulate sound.
‘Will you help me?’ was what she had hoped to say.
He slowly shifted his gaze so that he, again, stared at her. She lifted her head from the earth. She looked directly at him as if she could order him to provide her with assistance. However, she could not move from where she lay and if the old man did not help her she would die on that spot. His eyes were calm, he was without concern.
‘Will I help you?’ he repeated the question she had intended to ask but had not spoken.
‘I shouldn’t,’ he said.
She had no more words and no further thoughts. The strength holding her head from the ground failed and her face fell, again to rest on its side.
‘Maybe I will,’ he said as if he had convinced himself after a silent argument. ‘I can try again.’
He walked the few steps to where she lay. He examined her prostrate body like she was an exhibit.
‘You are strong willed. I will grant you that,’ he said.
Her head would not lift on its own again. Her eyes were the only sign of life and they blazed anger and pleaded pity. He smiled at her as he weighed the fateful, irrevocable and horrifying decision he was about to make. He would live with its consequences for thousands of years. Until the end of the world. Until the end of all worlds.
‘Yes. I will help you,’ he said softly.
She lost consciousness again.
Chapter 3
She woke inside a structure, unlike anything she had seen before. Her people lived in the open, occasionally making temporary habitations as they moved about their ancestral foraging grounds. The place she found herself in was made of jungle materials, she recognized all the elements of its construction, but it was many paces wide and the sky was hidden from her. She lay in a hammock, suspended from the trucks of trees used to hold the structure together. A smoldering cooking fire was in the centre of the hut, three-stones marking its perimeter. She tentatively moved her head to examine the hut’s interior, but her attention was distracted when she realized she was not in pain. She moved her hand and touched her chin and then poked out her tongue and touched it. She felt no pain. She examined her finger and there was no blood. She attempted to swallow. She swallowed easily. She was not thirsty, and she was not hungry. She felt down to her injured leg. She grimaced in anticipation of touching her wounds.
Her injured leg was whole. There was no pain. She raised her head and scanned the length of her naked body. She was as uninjured as the day she had begun her hunt. She swung to a sitting position in the hammock and felt no dizziness or discomfort. She placed her feet on the ground and then stood. She kept one hand firmly attached to the hammock, assuming that her legs would fail. She did not falter. She felt strong enough to start a hunt of many days. She walked to the entrance of the hut and looked outside. She saw the clearing where she had collapsed.
‘The old man must have saved me,’ she thought. She looked down at her body again and touched her mouth, again.
‘But, I am more than healed, I have been returned to how I was before,’ she thought.
She felt a little weak as she wondered, ‘Perhaps I have died. Perhaps I have not been healed. Perhaps I have not been returned to how I was before.’
She walked out of the hut into the clear area before it. She turned around and looked back. She breathed deeply. She could smell the smoke from the fire. She raised the back of her hand to her nose and smelt the familiar smell of her own skin. She felt the beginnings of a normal hunger. She felt stirrings in her bowels. She knew she must be alive. Those mundane parts of living would be wasted on the dead, she believed.
‘However,’ she thought, ‘I have been healed completely.’ She did not understand.
She walked further from the hut, stopped and stood. She slowly turned in a circle, on the spot. She called loudly, ‘Hello?’ to each of the four directions.
There was no answer. She heard insects, birds and monkeys in the trees in the surrounding jungle. There were no sounds of people.
She was unsure what to do next. She could wait. She could find food nearby, she knew. She had no weapons to hunt, but hunting was not necessary for survival. She assumed a source of water would be close to any human construction. There was the hut for shelter. She thought through her predicament. Someone had built the hut. Someone had set and lit the fire that still smoldered. Her thoughts returned to finding the old man, or someone else, and not of waiting.
She went back to the hut, after deciding what she would do. She would search for clothing, for weapons and for other signs of recent occupation, anything that may help her find a way to return to her people.
The old man sat next to the fire. She halted when she saw him. He made no sign that he had noticed her entrance. She was silent for a long time while she stared at him.
‘Did you heal me?’ she asked eventually, when she was sure he was not an apparition.
‘Yes.’
‘How long have I been here?’
‘It is the afternoon of the same day.’
‘How?’ she asked. She frowned. She was confused.
‘I said, I will help you. And, I have.’
She had too many questions and was unable to decide what to ask first.
‘Thank you,’ she said in gratitude using a soft voice.
She decided on a question. She was bold with her request. She asked firmly, ‘Can you also help me return to my people?’
‘No,’ he said quickly.
‘No?’
The old man said nothing in reply. She became annoyed at his inattention.
‘No? You won’t help me?’ she asked again.
‘I have helped you,’ the old man said quietly.
‘I know. I am thankful. I was asking for more help,’ she said.
He turned his head and looked at her like she was, again, a child asking permission. She was a hunter, some called her the greatest hunter. She was unused to being stared at like that. She was exasperated.
The old man felt her exasperation. He explained, ‘You cannot return to your people. Those people no longer exist.’
She was shocked. Her hands moved to her face. ‘Are they dead? How do you know?’ she asked quickly. The ends of her fingers covered her mouth.
‘No.’
‘No, what?’ She became angry. She was frustrated with the old man’s answers.
The old man turned away from her to again gaze at the smoke rising from the fire. ‘No, they are not dead,’ he said slowly as if he was explaining the obvious.
She did not know what to ask him next. She was not asking specific enough questions, she realized. She stared at him.
‘I have re-made you,’ he said as if that answer should satisfy all her doubts and should answer all her questions.
She sighed, she gave up expecting sense from the old man. ‘I’m sorry old man. I appreciate what you have done. You do not make sense. I do not understand you.’
‘Of course you don’t.’ The old man smiled, with compassion. ‘I re-made you. This world has a new beginning. I created a new world. The world begins with you. It exists because of you. It is for you,’ he said. ‘It had reached a point where I was,’ he thought for a moment, ‘dissatisfied. Without your suffering, without your strength, this would no longer exist,’ he gently extended his hand. She did not know if he meant the whole world, the contents of the hut or simply his hand.
His smile remained on his face. ‘I am grateful. I am fond of this place, if not its people. I have not believed my creation was a complete failure. As I have been told,’ he said wistfully. ‘You are the proof of that, although you were an amazing exception. With you as the template, this time it will be better. I am sure,’ he spoke carefully, methodically, as if he had forgotten the hunter and was justifying his actions to some absent audience.
The old man continued staring at the fire. He said, as if it was not something that would interest her, ‘I re-made your people. But not in the same way as I re-made you. They do not remember.’
She stared in silence at the old man as if he had spoken a language she did not know. She decided to not ask for further explanation. She was the greatest of all hunters and she knew there was a time to give up on a quarry and start the hunt again.
‘When can I return to these re-made people, as you say?’ she asked. Her voice was firm and there was no confusion. Her question was unequivocal.
The old man turned and stared into her eyes. She had a strange sensation of approval.
‘Now,’ he replied softly.
‘Right now or soon? What do you mean?’
‘Now,’ he repeated.
The hunter turned away from the old man by the fire and walked outside the hut. She hoped her action would force him to follow, so that he could lead her back to her people. Or wherever he understood she was to go.
She stopped immediately outside. She stood next to the rock shelter her people stayed near at that time of year. The setting sun was shining in her eyes. She turned around but here was no sign of the old man or the hut.
Chapter 4
Many years passed since the world was re-made. The people of that creation aged and died, however, the hunter remained unchanged from the moment she had been re-made. She thought often of the old man. The few words he had said to her became clearer as the years passed and her wisdom increased. She often searched for the place where she had been healed but over countless hunts, over countless years, she never found it. She provided for her people. She was the first ruler of all people.
Years passed that counted the end of many lives. The seasons repeated over a thousand times.
The hunter had been on a hunt of many days, and she was alone in the jungle, when she failed to kill an ancient animal, like a peccary, and its tusks had gored her leg. In the long years of her life it was one of the few times she had known failure while hunting. She provided for her people.
She lost a lot of blood and her leg was painful but she continued to track the injured peccary. She cornered it against a rock wall. She allowed herself a moment of triumph before she killed her prey. Although she was weaker with her loss of blood, her skill would prevent her prey from a second escape. However, before she could make the killing blow the peccary turned and disappeared. She waited, anticipating its return, but it did not rush at her from out of the rock. She approached the rock wall and saw that it was not whole. There was an opening through which the peccary had vanished.
She did not hesitate, her people depended on her.
She crawled through the opening with her weapons ready in her hands. The aperture was wide enough to crawl unimpeded but not high enough to stand. It sloped gently down. The light dimmed quickly as she crawled along the passageway. She decided to give up her hunt for the injured peccary, and start a new hunt, but then the passageway dipped sharply. The rock surface was slippery. She lost her grip and began to slide. Her hands were full of her hunting weapons. She reluctantly let them go as she slipped further. She tried to grab hold of the rock floor but it was too slippery. She grasped frantically at the rock above her. The rock vanished from beneath her. She was suspended in a dark space. Her skin shivered with the undisturbed cold of a large enclosed area. She was falling but could feel and see nothing.
She struck the bottom of the cave and lost consciousness.
Chapter 5
She woke and did not know how much time had passed. There was a dim light inside the cave as the daylight outside beamed through the narrow entrance like a beacon, far above where she lay. Her leg shivered in silver that she knew was blood that had flowed from the re-opened wound. Her other leg rested at an unnatural angle. It was painful. She had broken it. An arm caused a similar pain. It was broken also. She lifted her head. An intense pain shot through her mouth. She felt warm blood stream and eddy over her chin. She saw its sticky shine on the rock underneath her. She knew that pain. It was same pain she had endured during a prior unsuccessful hunt. She had, once again, pierced her tongue with her teeth.
She saw the form of the dead peccary. It had fallen further into the cave, carried there by its greater speed. She tried to move, to gather it, to return with it to her people. Her pain was too great. She could not move. It was only then that she thought of her plight. She could not climb to the entrance with a broken leg and arm. She was weak from loss of blood. She would die next to the peccary. Her pain and suffering was great. She hoped her death would be quick. She lay her head back on the rock floor and waited to die.
She had fallen into a sacred place. What separates our world from the world of Xibalba, the abode of the gods, is thin there. Her suffering called to Xibalba.
She was answered.
The dim cave light coagulated, it formed around a single point, then it extended into a sinuous stream of smoke. It expanded into the shape of a serpent. She lifted her head, although her pain was intense, when she was aware of the change in the cave.
The shape moved and grew. A serpent’s head formed on the changing stream and its mouth split and opened until the open mouth filled her vision. She watched with fascination as if she saw her approaching death. She was not afraid to die. She was the greatest hunter, of any creation.
She saw movement within the mouth of the Vision Serpent. A shape approached. A young man stepped out of the mouth of the serpent and into the cave. She stared at him. He held himself like a king although the days of the Story of the Finder of Caves were before kings. She lifted her head further as he approached. He stopped next to the dead peccary.
She knew him.
She tried to speak. Her voice garbled with the blood that pooled in her mouth. Each word she used, each breath, added to her pain. She fought the words like they were adversaries.
‘Where have you come from? Why are you here?’ Her breath failed on the last word. She was braver than any person had been or would be, she could suffer agony in silence but she was afraid in the presence of great power. She, also, knew his compassion was arbitrary. He had watched her suffer before. He could do nothing and have no concern as to consequences.
His answer surprised her. ‘You brought me here,’ he said softly.
She struggled with another word but it came out of her mouth easily. ‘How?’ she asked. She tried to speak more words. ‘How could I have brought you here?’ she said clearly.
‘Your suffering summoned me,’ he said quietly.
‘Why are you so interested in watching my suffering?’ She exploded with anger. ‘You have no compassion!’ Her fear made her angry. She was familiar with fear and she had learned how to overcome it. When she hunted dangerous prey she attacked. She did that with him.
‘You’ve watched me suffer,’ she said with explosive wrath. ‘That’s twice now. You only helped me, reluctantly, after I pleaded. I am a hunter, I do not accept help easily. It is demeaning to ask for help. You changed everything. You explained nothing. Not in a meaningful way. Not with any sense.’ She listed her grievances.
‘Then,’ she continued. ‘You say, I have been re-made. What’s that? No-one knew me but they all knew my name. My new name. You disappear. You leave me like that.’ Tears formed in her eyes as her anger was overcome by sadness and loneliness. She went on in a softer voice. ‘You left me like that for years and years and years. Everyone aged and died. Over and over. Then, you turn up again.’ She lifted her arm and pointed it at him, clenching her fist as if she might strike him.
She looked at her hand that hovered in front of her face. She then realized she had stood up while she was angrily arguing. She was no longer lying on the rock floor of the cave. She had no pain in her legs, her voice was clear, her mouth was clean and whole and her arm moved as if it had never been broken. She gazed at his face in wonder. He had not moved from next to the peccary. In the gloom of the cave she saw a serious look on his face.
‘Compassion was not required,’ he said. ‘Not on my part and not at that time. I re-made you. I re-made your people. That was the first day of this creation. The time of the world is counted from that day. And it was because of you. This world is yours. I did tell you that. We shall see what happens this time.’
‘This time? What does that mean?’ she asked. She was less angry now that her pain had gone.
‘I’ve done this before. A long time ago and with methods that were,’ he hesitated and she thought she saw a bitter smile on his face. ‘They were catastrophic and crude. I caused quite an upheaval. Perhaps, because of you, this time will be better. More acceptable to others,’ he said.
Her anger had gone. She said in a soft, contrite voice that still managed to transfer blame to him. ‘I could have died. I expected to die. Again.’ She wondered how his apparent plan for creation could proceed if she had died in the cave.
To her surprise, he laughed. His laugh forced on her an ecstatic joy, as if the world was wonderful despite everything to the contrary. She had no choice but to share his happiness. It was not a contagious laughter, quite the opposite. It felt inappropriate, sacrilegious even, to add to the sound he was making. His laughter was a gift but not to be shared on equal terms. In the many years that followed, his laugh erupted at unexpected times and she rarely anticipated its arrival.
‘No,’ he said when his laughter had subsided. ‘Well, yes. You could have died the first time and the fact that you didn’t is the reason for, well,’ he hesitated to find the right word as if his vocabulary was newly learned. He said, ‘everything. However, this time?’ He appeared ready to laugh again. ‘No. You can’t die.’
‘You mean you won’t let me? You’re protecting me? I do not need anyone’s protection.’ She was upset again. She did not like how lightly he took her injuries, her pain and her suffering. Twice.
‘Your current situation suggests the opposite, I would have thought,’ he said clearly but with kindness. ‘I created this world because of you. For you. You cannot die. Not by accident, disease and not from aging. You are the ruler of this creation. Perhaps I did not make that clear enough. This world is yours. I created this world but I do not own it.’
He waited for his words to be understood. He was surprised to see that she did understand. Amazing, he thought. He knew for certain, then, he had made the correct choice. He also knew that he had made a mistake in leaving her alone.
‘However, it is, perhaps,’ he said, ‘time I stayed with you.’
Part II
Chapter 1
The Story of the First Day
The air in the cave had shimmered and they had immediately appeared back with her people. The dead peccary was taken away by others, who prepared it to be eaten by the group. The hunter stood a short distance away and warily watched the man dressed in a white tunic seated next to a smoldering cooking fire. The rest of her people had left her alone with him, fearful after her re-appearance. She looked over his body as if his appearance was unusual but he looked like any other man except for his dominant dark, red-tinged hair and a large regal nose that drew attention to itself. She liked how he looked, strong and also gentle. His physical age seemed to be near to hers although she knew well how deceptive that was. She had stopped counting the years of her life.
‘Do you have a name?’ she asked. She kept her distance like he was dangerous prey. She spoke strongly as if she was not afraid.
‘Yes,’ he said.
She waited for him to say more. She sighed when he didn’t.
She spoke clearly and succinctly, asking a question with one possible answer, ‘What is your name?’
‘I have many names.’
She sighed with frustration. His conversation was impossible.
‘I prefer to be called Hachakyum,’ he eventually said.
‘You chose my name?’ she asked. ‘Are you the one who put K’ul Kelem into their heads?’ she asked as she waved her arm in the direction of the people preparing the peccary.
‘Yes. It is a powerful name. It suggests strength, wisdom and authority. Do you not like the name I gave you?’ He smiled.
Her fear and consequently her anger subsided. She said in a soft voice, ‘It’s a good name.’
She had questions. Her voice hardened, as if preparing for a battle with him.
‘I am no older,’ she said. She lifted her hand so it was in front of her face. She examined the back of it as if it was not hers. She held it before her eyes and marveled at the thing that had remained unchanged for years. Her eyes slipped off her hand and fell across the space between them to meet his eyes. She felt as if her gaze met an unyielding force mid-way between them. She did not flinch.
She waited but he said nothing. She returned his silence like it was a game of strength.
‘I still feel pain,’ she said after waiting a long time for him to reply. ‘I injure, I tire, I am sad, I am happy, I am hungry, I’m sick. I’m exactly the same as before I first met you.’
She waited again. He said and did nothing but watch her eyes.
‘But, I am no older,’ she repeated. She lowered her hand to her side.
She waited again.
‘My family did not remember me,’ she said. ‘They had never known me as one of them. I had never existed to anyone I knew or,’ her voice faltered. ‘Or cared for.’
He made no sound. She watched him watching her.
‘They all aged and died. Babies aged and died. I had no-one. During all those lifetimes, I was alone,’ she said. She remembered loved ones dying while her old life, before meeting Hachakyum, remained unknown to them. She became angry again as she remembered those lonely years. It was his fault. She raised her hand again and examined it. This time she rotated it backwards and forwards to examine all sides of it.
‘Do you own me?’ she asked firmly. She switched her eyes immediately from her hand to him as if trying to catch him unawares. She said with anger, ‘Is this yours? Have I no choice?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘No?’ she queried his answer. ‘Are you sure? I’m not so sure that I do have a choice.’
‘No,’ he repeated. He spoke clearly and firmly, ‘I do not own you. No-one owns you. No-one is owned.’
‘Hmm,’ she readied herself to argue with him. ‘But, you made me. You named me.’
When he did not reply, she moved the hand she had been examining so that it pointed to the other people.
‘They knew my name,’ she said. ‘The name you gave me, but they did not know me.’ She placed her other hand on her chest as if to make sure he knew which “me” she meant. She stood in a confrontational attitude, with one hand pointing and the other on her chest. She wanted him to understand her fear and her loneliness. She wanted compassion. She did not know what he felt, if anything.
‘I do not own you,’ he said forcefully. He was unused to being questioned and his answers not believed. He thought of his mistake, leaving her alone for so long, and he tried to show some of the compassion he knew she hoped for. ‘I did not make you or anyone else. I can’t do that. No-one can create life from nothing. I re-made you. I re-made your people. I own you less than a parent owns a grown child.’
She let her hands drop to her sides. A question burned to be asked.
She asked softly, as if scared of the answer, ‘I can’t die?’
He faltered. He recovered and then, quickly, gave her an answer she could understand. ‘No, you can’t die,’ he said.
‘I’m immortal? I’m one of the gods?’ She began to raise her arms but then let them fall. They hung limply pointing to the ground.
He remembered her intelligence and her willingness to accept after critical examination. He had chosen her for those reasons as well as her determination and physical strength. He resolved to not underestimate her again.
‘No. You are not one of the gods. That is not something you can become. You will not die by accident, disease or by aging. However, never, is too long to speak of with certainty,’ he said. ‘Everything dies. Everything comes to an end. Even my life will end. Even the lives of my race will end.’ He spoke succinctly as he gauged how much she could understand.
She sighed and looked away. She attempted to understand. She did, a little.
Her soft exhaled breath merged into words, ‘I am alone. It has been lonely.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I left you for too long. Away from here, time is not,’ he hesitated. ‘It is not as linear as it appears. I made a mistake.’ He walked to her.
She did not flinch at his approach, knowing his power was beyond her comprehension. She did not stop examining his face as he approached her. He stopped before her and lightly, gently, picked up one of her hands that hung by her side. He delicately lifted it by holding on to just a few of her fingers. He examined the skin on the back of her hand as if he too was surprised that she had not aged. He looked from her hand to her eyes. He saw in them her strength, her wisdom and her sadness. He re-lived the time he had been aware of her struggle for life in the jungle. He remembered the instant when he decided that world would end. He held the reason for a new world, lightly and gently by a few fingers of one hand. He looked at eyes that, with no fear, returned his gaze. Amazing, he thought, after all she now knew and understood.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m staying now.’
Chapter 2
The Story of the First Night
She watched him acutely, critically, as he walked towards her. She lay, naked, on animal skins. Animals she had hunted and killed. It was night but she saw him clearly. He was illuminated by the glow from the smoldering fire and moonlight.
Her eyes fell over his approaching body. He looked the same as all other men and, for a moment, she thought she may have been tricked. She may have been drugged so that the long years of her life were an hallucination. He might be taking advantage of her, for simple male pleasure. She was, momentarily, unsure of her life as the man approached. However, she wanted him even if he was taking advantage of her. It had been too many generations since she had shared herself.
He lay down next to her. He brushed her lips with his and then drew away. He gently captured her hand and brought that to his lips. He held her, barely, by the ends of a few of her fingers. She let him play with her hand and fingers as if they were things of great beauty and delicacy that could be easily damaged if careful attention was not paid to them.
He smoothed the skin on her hand although it remained perfect, it was unchanged by years of hunting and hard work. His touch was gentle, his skin had not been roughed by labour. She was aroused by his playful stroking of her hand and was surprised how gentle a male could be. But then, she thought with anticipation mixed with fear, he was not simply a male.
He seemed to know of her fear and calmed her by brushing his lips across her hand. He returned her hand to her side like he was replacing an instrument back into its proper and safe place. He willed her legs apart by soft pressure applied to her knee. He traced a downwards line with his finger, beginning on the flat of her stomach and ending when he confirmed the line of separation between her labia. The same finger probed deeper as it began back along the same path and her inner lips parted and drowned.
He lifted himself over her and on top. He entered her, sliding easily inside her body. He stopped when she felt the end of him and she could not have accommodated a drop further of human flesh inside her. She looked for his eyes and found them watching her. He did not move inside her, he remained perfectly still as he watched her face.
She felt a calming sensation twist and wind up her spine. She felt a part of that stream split off and wrap and cradle her heart, which slowed but was made stronger. The main stream pooled at the base of her skull. She shuddered, opened her eyes widely and stared at his face as she felt a breach inside her. He was inside her head like he was another observer in her own mind. He knew what she knew. He felt what she felt. He was as much a part of her as she was herself. He slowly moved inside her. He touched her exactly where and when she needed to be touched. He shared her pleasure through to the final shudder and the satisfying, cleansed emptiness afterwards.
He moved off and lay next to her but he was still inside her head. In her mind he was standing next to her, experiencing and watching. She turned her head, just a little, to look at him. She did not want to move too much, she wanted to preserve the fading feeling. He was in two places. She smiled at him, both with her lips and inside her head.
He laughed. She remembered his laugh in the cave and she experienced again that unbridled contagion of his joy. She knew she had yet to touch the perimeter of possible pleasure with him.
Chapter 3
When K’ul Kelem woke the next morning after the sun had barely risen. She was alone, wrapped among the coverings she had slept on. She opened her eyes but she did not move. She remained on her side facing the rock wall of the shelter. She examined its surface without concentration while she thought about the previous day and night. For some moments her night dreams merged with her waking hours. She could not differentiate between what was real and what was not. She felt an absence as if normality was disappointing.
She was surprised out of her reverie, as if she was surprised that any other person existed, when she heard a voice behind her.
‘Good morning.’
She rolled over and stared, continuing her lack of awareness. Hachakyum sat next to the fire. He was dressed in his white tunic. His face towards her. His words echoed in her head as if they had originated from within her. With an effort she understood that his words had come from outside her, that she had heard them and she was expected to reply.
‘Good morning,’ she said quietly.
He smiled, which caused her to smile as if he had applied pressure to her face.
‘Did you sleep? Do you sleep?’ she asked. She watched him.
‘Yes.’
He remembered that she expected more than specific answers to exact questions.
‘I don’t need to sleep,’ he said. ‘But while I am like this,’ he indicated his body. ‘Why not enjoy it?’
‘Can you change how you look?’ she asked. She moved her forearm so that it propped underneath her head.
‘It’s not a process to be performed at a whim. Why? Do you not like this shape?’ he asked.
He waited without concern.
‘It’s a good shape,’ she said eventually.
‘Can you do that anytime?’ she asked. ‘Be inside me? Can you always know what I’m thinking?’
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘I like it. I was thinking more about day to day. Whether I have privacy.’
‘No. You have no privacy other than what I decide. Would you like privacy? Would you like me to not know what you’re thinking?’ The thought had not occurred to him.
‘Can I do the same with you?’ she asked.
‘No. Unless I decide.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘No, then. Not to start with. Can you do that? Not listen to my thoughts?’
‘Of course.’
She waited for him to say more. He didn’t.
‘What should I do now?’ she asked. ‘What can I do now?’ It was as if she was asking how to live the rest of her life.
He smiled. ‘Whatever you want to do. Nothing has changed. The only difference is that I’m here.’
A young man interrupted them. He was breathless from running.
‘K’ul Kelem, K’ul Kelem,’ he cried loudly. His voice was shrill. ‘Please come. The elders must see you.’
The young man had never before seen a man dressed in a white tunic. He had never seen K’ul Kelem with a companion. His face registered incomprehension, his mouth wide open.
Hachakyum had been surprised and was angry with his lack of attention. He reacted. He raised his arm and as he said angrily, ‘Go away,’ the young man was lifted off his feet and thrown on his back, ten paces away.
K’ul Kelem frowned with annoyance. She walked quickly to the young man and crouched next to him. He was shaking with fear as he stared at where he had been standing.
‘You will need to be careful, in future,’ she said to the young man as she brushed dust off his back, soothing him like he was her child. She left her hand on the man’s shoulder, to reassure him, to quieten his fear. He made a childlike whimper and backed away from her, dragging himself along the ground. He was petrified as Hachakyum walked towards the two of them. The young man scrambled to his feet and tried to run. However, he froze in place, unable to move. He had control only over his eyes, which flicked from side to side in panic. He could not breath. The young man’s body was turned to face Hachakyum. The force that held him was released and he stumbled forward as if a trace of the momentum of his escape remained. He fell onto his hands and knees and took deep breaths. The ground at Hachakyum’s feet took all his attention.
‘Forgive me,’ Hachakyum said to the back of the panting young man. ‘You startled me. I am,’ he searched for the word to use, ‘unused to being startled. I will try to not do that again.’ Hachakyum placed his hand under the shoulder of the young man and lifted him to his feet. The young man blubbered like a child afraid of monsters in the night. Hachakyum smiled and the young man’s face broke into a forced, quiet surrender.
Hachakyum returned to sit next to the fire.
Inarticulate sounds came from the young man’s throat as he took shallow breaths. His fear swamped and overpowered the exaltation that had been forced on him by Hachakyum’s smile. He shivered with shock while K’ul Kelem patiently waited for him to come to his senses.
She felt weary although she had just woken. She anticipated the questions her people would ask but she had few answers. She had worked hard to appear normal. She hunted and provided for them. She decided their disputes. She made peace with nearby groups of hunter-gatherers. She occasionally provided for all those other people as well. She had spread her influence in many directions. Her old workload would be easy compared to the new expectations, with Hachakyum as her companion. However, her years of loneliness were over and Hachakyum had to stay, whatever the consequences.
‘That is Hachakyum,’ she said quietly to the young man. ‘Your god lives among you.’
Chapter 4
The young messenger hurried off, glad to get away. He ran at first but then slowed. K’ul Kelem must be a god herself, he thought. He wondered why she had not shown her power as obviously as Hachakyum. His fear returned and his body shook as he remembered the familiar way he had spoken to her before Hachakyum’s arrival. He stumbled as he remembered one time he had playfully pushed her shoulder when she had said something amusing. He would not do that again. He was momentarily angry with K’ul Kelem for not showing her strength, for allowing friendly intimacies as if she was one of them. His anger dissolved into a cold fear as he wondered if K’ul Kelem could read his thoughts and her anger would grow out of his anger with her. He had slowed his pace after he had stumbled but at his renewed fear he raced off hoping his thoughts could not be read as his separation from her increased.
K’ul Kelem watched the young man run away. She was angry at Hachakyum for his unrestrained violence but, she thought, at least the young man lived. And Hachakyum had apologized, of sorts. What had been proved was his lack of omnipotence and a certain vulnerability. He suffered anger, embarrassment and contrition, at least. He was not emotionally aloof and he was not unaffected by the plight of others. Her anger gave way to joy. He was more human-like than she had imagined. She had believed him callous and uncaring to watch her suffering. Perhaps, she thought, he also suffered from indecision.
‘I have to go,’ K’ul Kelem said to Hachakyum.
He watched the flame flicker as if he was unaware of K’ul Kelem’s presence.
She turned to leave but stopped when he spoke to her.
‘Why do you go to them? Why do they not come to you?’ he asked.
She turned back, surprised that he had asked her a question. Her heart thumped strongly, just for a few beats. Perhaps his humanness was true, she thought, and their lives together would not be so one sided. Perhaps she had things to offer that he did not already have.
‘That is my way,’ she said. ‘Although I am older than their first ancestors, my appearance is like a daughter.’ She tried to explain her wish to appear normal to others of her community. ‘Do you understand?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he replied quickly. ‘Among equals, yes, it is correct behavior but the difference between you and them is immense. No, I do not understand. Perhaps you don’t understand your own power.’
‘Perhaps.’ She went back to the fireside. ‘Even if I had your power over them I would not act differently. There’s no point in forcing my will onto them.’
‘There is respect to be considered,’ he said. He knew she was criticizing his behavior with the young man. His face grew dark. She became cold. The world lost confidence. She doubted her abilities.
‘Respect works both ways,’ she said, forcing the contradictory words out of her mouth by force of will.
‘Yes, it does,’ he said and smiled. The world lightened and she became herself again. She returned his smile and their discussion was over.
She had lived her long companionless life as one of a kind, unable to share personal concerns, but her solitariness had been dismissed by his re-appearance. She was unreasonably happy as she left him and dreamed of a relationship with the god where she made some, at least, small contributions.
However, her greatest wish, if she was to have any power in the world, was that she had his power to force happiness onto others.
Chapter 5
The elders waited at the far end of the rock shelter. They stood quickly when K’ul Kelem approached. She saw the fear on their faces. The news of Hachakyum’s anger had travelled quickly. She had already been elevated to god status and she could not do anything about it.
She sat down and waited for them to also sit. The braver ones sat quickly, not greatly fearing K’ul Kelem’s newly uncovered powers by association. The wary ones waited, as if they were less vulnerable if they remained standing.
She waited. Slowly, everyone sat down. The last few did so quickly once they realized they may be the last to remain standing and did not want to anger, by disrespect, the newly confirmed god among them.
There was a nervous, shifting silence until an older woman in the group spoke.
‘K’ul Kelem,’ she asked softly. ‘We have heard you have a companion.’
‘Yes,’ K’ul Kelem said. She did want to explain herself or Hachakyum. ‘Is that the only reason you asked to see me?’
‘No,’ the woman hesitated. She, and the men, wanted reassurances for their safety but did not wish to anger K’ul Kelem by pestering her. ‘No, it isn’t.’
One of the men spoke. ‘Chak K’an has been killed.’
‘I’m sorry for that,’ K’ul Kelem said. She did not understand why she had to be told of another death. Death was regular.