Copyright B Purkayastha 2014
Friday, 11 April 2014
Thursday, 10 April 2014
A very, very slightly hopeful article, for a change
In 2002,
a wave of religious violence swept across the Indian state of Gujarat.
It wasn’t the first communal violence India
has ever faced – very far from that – but it was one of the worst single
episodes, simply because it was planned and directed by the state government in
all particulars.
Back in 2002, Gujarat was known as the “Hindutva*
laboratory”, where the nation’s largest Hindunazi[1] political
party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tried out its ideas on turning society
into a de facto Hindu theocracy where nobody else would have any rights whatsoever.
*The word, literally meaning “Hinduness”,
connotes Hindu radicalism.
In the capital, the ironically named
Gandhinagar, sat Narendrabhai Modi, whom I have written about elsewhere[2];
his government had recently not done well in local elections, and he needed
some way of hardening support for his party. One sure way of hardening support,
of course, is to get the people behind you in a religious crusade. This is
something which rulers have known since the start of recorded history.
The Hindunazis had already been trying
their damndest to marginalise the Christian and Muslim minorities in Gujarat.
However, merely making it almost impossible to convert away from Hinduism to those
religions wasn’t enough; something much more drastic was necessary.
A massive dose of communal bloodletting was
an obvious answer. All one had to do was to wait for an opportunity.
It came on the 27th of February 2002, when some carriages
of a train returning from Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state in North India caught
fire in a railway station in Godhra in Gujarat. This Ayodhya was the mythological
hometown of the mythical Hindu god-king Ram, and in 1991 had been the site of a
Hindunazi aggression in which an ancient Muslim mosque had been demolished on
the excuse that it had been built on the site of Ram’s alleged birth. For more
information on that, I’ve written about it here[3].
Ever since that date, Hindunazis had
organised pilgrimages to the makeshift temple they’d set up on the site of the
destroyed mosque. The train that was returning from Ayodhya had been loaded
with people returning from that “pilgrimage”, and had a substantial complement
of Hindunazi stormtroopers as well. According to reports, when the train
stopped at Godhra, these stormtroopers had an altercation with Muslim tea
sellers on the platform. They may or may not have attempted to abduct a Muslim
girl as well, according to whom you believe, but there seems to have been a
genuine quarrel.
Soon after leaving the station, the train
was stopped, and Muslim mobs from the nearby slums allegedly attacked the carriage
in which the Hindunazis were travelling. The carriage was burned, resulting in
the deaths of 58 or 59 of the passengers, most of whom were women and children.
[Later, a judicial commission[4]
proved conclusively that the carriages could not have been set on fire from outside, so that the Hindunazi fable
of Muslims flinging petrol from buckets could not have happened. The Hindunazis then modified their tale to claim
the Muslim mobs slashed the connectors between carriages with “swords”, entered
the carriage, splashed petrol on the floor and then set it on fire. The
commission, studying all the evidence, concluded that the fire was probably accidental.
(In fact accidental fires on Indian trains are quite common and kill people
virtually every year.) A citizen’s tribunal reached the same conclusion.]
Whether the fire was accidental or not, the
Modi government in the state declared that this was an act of terrorism, and
paraded the bodies of the dead to raise communal tensions. Another Hindunazi outfit
allied to the BJP, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), called a general strike,
and though these strike calls are both illegal and invariably incite violence,
the BJP did nothing at all to either stop it or take any measures to ensure
security. By the end of the day, Hindunazi mobs were going around the state,
often openly led by BJP politicians, systematically destroying Muslim
properties, killing, looting and raping.
The violence was not just systematic, it was very carefully organised. The Hindunazi stormtroopers had very
precise knowledge of just which businesses were owned by Muslims (which were
often camouflaged by Hindu-sounding names), where they lived, and so on –
knowledge which could only have been supplied by the state government. They
were trained and organised, too, in demolition and arson, and armed with
swords, explosives, and cylinders of cooking gas with which to carry out their campaign
of murder and demolition. According to police officers and politicians from the
BJP who later came out in the open, Modi declared that the people should be “allowed
to vent their natural anger” and sent ministers to sit in the police control
room to make sure the cops did nothing to quell the violence. Actually, the
police on the ground not only did nothing, they routinely joined in the
looting, destruction, murder and rape, so Modi’s precautions were likely
superfluous anyway.
The violence reached surreal dimensions.
Ordinary Hindus, not involved in the pogrom, pitched in the looting as well,
rushing to snatch goods from vandalised Muslim shops, often on live TV. Entire localities
populated by Muslims were cleared out, everyone either murdered or driven into
refugee camps. A former member of parliament, Ehsaan Jaafri, begged for help
when his locality was attacked. Not only did help not arrive, Jafri was
stripped, beheaded, and his corpse thrown into a fire; several members of his
family, including two young boys, were burned alive. The stormtroopers
displayed an almost perverse tendency to assault women, raping them and then
murdering them. If they were pregnant, the foetus was often ripped out of their
bodies, impaled on spears, and burned separately. Children were massacred in
identical sadistic fashion. Sometimes they were forced to drink petrol and then
set on fire, so that they burned from the inside. Even girls as young as eleven
were gang raped and murdered by the Hindunazi mobs.
I remember one incident reported by a Hindu
peace activist, Teesta Setalvad, who later visited the makeshift Muslim refugee
camps. She found Muslim children casually talking of “rape”, and, surprised,
asked if they knew what this word “rape” meant. One kid piped up in these
words: “Maĩ batāoon, didi, balātkār
ka matlab hai jab aurat ko nangha bana dete hai aue uské bad jalā dete haĩ.”
(“I’ll tell you, Elder Sister, rape means when they strip a woman naked and
then burn her.”) These were kids, you understand, ordinary children.
The looting was accompanied by a systematic
demolition of Muslim tombs and mosques; up to 230 of them were known to have
been destroyed. In one instance, not only was a mausoleum demolished, but the
local council paved over the site the very next day, displaying an alacrity
unheard of in India and quite impossible without direct orders from the
government.
Nobody knows how many people were actually
killed. The “official figure” is about 150000 Muslims displaced and
approximately 720 to 1000 killed; most credible estimates cite the dead as
about twice that. According to figures, some 200 to 250 Hindus were also
killed. How many of them were murdered by Muslims in retaliation is debatable.
It’s known that many Hindus went to great personal risk to save their Muslim
neighbours and friends, and that a lot of them were afraid of being mistaken
for Muslims, so it’s very likely that at least a substantial number of them
were killed deliberately or in error by the Hindunazi mobs.
It was only on the evening of the first of
March, three days after the pogrom started, that the state government finally
allowed the deployment of Central government forces, including the army, to impose
a semblance of order. The Central government of the time was also under the BJP,
and there are credible reports that the prime minister, the relatively liberal
Atal Behari Vajpayee, had wanted to use constitutional provisions to dismiss
Modi’s government and impose direct rule, but was dissuaded by his colleagues.
The violence continued for many days afterwards, by fits and starts, and it was
up to a month before it finally ebbed. What it left was a devastated society,
where ordinary middle class Muslims found themselves – even if not personally
bereaved – destitute and forced into Muslim ghettoes, where they were then
accused of isolating themselves in ghettoes.
Modi’s response to the backlash and
revulsion that broke out across the nation, from Hindus as well as others, was
absolutely typical of the man. He called it an intolerable assault on Gujarati
pride, rejected all criticism, and parlayed this into an “us versus them”
mentality which brought him rich electoral rewards. He was helped by the spineless
response of the alleged “secular” Congress party, which to this day has never
made the slightest move to bring him to book, either at the state or at the
centre.
And today, it is this Modi who is all set
to become the Prime Minister of the country after the current multi-phase
elections are over.
Great, isn’t it?
At this point, the reader is probably
recalling the title of this article, and asking, what on earth is hopeful about any of this? Has Bill lost
his mind?
No. Bill has not lost his mind.
There were two photos, of many, which defined
the Gujarat pogrom in popular consciousness. The first was of a Muslim tailor,
Qutubuddin Ansari, his face streaked with tears and dust as he desperately
begged for his life.
The second was of a Hindunazi stormtrooper,
fist clenched and an iron rod upraised in the other hand, as he shouted slogans
at the camera. He belonged to the Hindunazi outfit Bajrang Dal, and his name
was Ashok Mochi.
That was in 2002.
Now let’s take a time jump to March, 2014.
The place is Kerala, in South India. Two men take the stage at a function,
united in reconciliation, and pledge to fight Hindunazism and Modi together[5].
One of these men is Qutubuddin Ansari. The other is Ashok Mochi.
 |
| Mochi (left) and Ansari |
And this is what gives me a faint,
flickering, glimmer of hope. I don’t know if Mochi personally killed or injured
anyone. I don’t know his personal journey over the years. But I do know that
instead of retreating into the safe confines of Hindunazi radicalism, he went forth and begged forgiveness from
his victims, and turned against the culture of hate which had used him and
those like him as a weapon.
Nobody
is irredeemable. If they have the faintest,
slightest trace of humanity left in them, they can still turn around from the brink
of the abyss.
If that
isn’t hopeful, I don’t know what is.
Sources:
Further
reading:
Note: A lot of Hindunazi supporters to this day attempt to deny all the facts of the Gujarat pogrom, even though Modi himself has now distanced himself from his former fellow-conspirators, and has had several of them prosecuted and jailed in an effort to reinvent himself as an innocent.
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
Badlands II: God of Wrath
This story is dedicated to
Benni Jones
and
Charlie Ehlen
Friends, and readers
Who asked.
All day
he had toiled up the pass, the beast’s horned head nodding heavily as it trod
the stones. But now at last he was over the top of it, and had begun the long
descent into the valley.
He had been here before. How many years
that had been, he could not tell. But then the valley had been lush and green
with vegetation and the river that ran through it had sparkled like molten
silver in the sun.
There was no woodland, and no river, now.
The dry brown bed was bare, the rocks sinking into the dust, and the earth of
the banks was cracked like the hide of an ancient monster, too gigantic to move
the weight of its body. On the far side of the valley, the mountains that had
once been capped with snow were desiccated humps of stone.
“Demon,” he said, “why did you bring me
back here?”
He had expected no answer, and received
none. He hadn’t seen the demon in days, hadn’t even sensed her around. At times
he wondered if she had finally left him for good, and then he’d wondered if he
should be happy or sad about that.
“Demon,” he still asked, aloud into the
silence. “What happened here? Why is it so badly changed?”
Nothing came back except the noise of the
beast’s hooves on the track.
Somewhere down in the valley, he knew, he
had once found a home for a while. The memories of that time had become so hazy
that he had a hard time remembering, but he had faint memories of a woman who
had lived there, who had taken him in and loved him for a little time. She had
wanted him to remain forever, and he would have been glad to, for she was warm
and human and had slaked for a bit his thirst for company. But then he had been
forced to move on, and had left her standing at the door to her hut, weeping.
Try as he might, he could not even remember
her face, let alone her name.
Dusk lay thick on the valley when he
finally reached the river bank. In the near darkness, the way was treacherous,
each step into shadow so deep that it would be impossible to know what lay
beneath. But the beast went on without a pause, not even bending its head to
look where its hooves were falling. He let it have its way; long experience had
taught him that when he did not know where he was going, the beast knew.
Sitting on the creature’s back, he let
himself doze. And he dreamed.
In his dream it was high noon. The sun
shone down on the valley, which was thick with flower and fruit, and the water
of the river was as clear as the air. And the woman was there, running beside
him through the grass, racing until both of them collapsed helpless with laughter,
holding on to each other till suddenly the laughter drained away. So they kissed
and held each other, and made gentle love until the sun went behind a cloud and
the grass withered away, the trees vanished and the water of the river turned
the colour of blood. And he lay there with a skeleton in his arms.
He started awake, shivering. The beast had
halted. The light of the stars outlined something angular and artificial, and
he knew he had come to the hut.
Only it was no longer a hut, but a roofless
ruin.
Stiffly, he dropped from the creature’s
back to the ground. The hut was smaller than he remembered, the broken walls
lower, the windows gaping holes letting in the darkness. When he stepped up to the
door, the starlight glimmered faintly on rubble scattered across the floor.
Suddenly, with a shock like physical pain,
he remembered where everything had been. In this corner, below the window, she
had had a small table at which she’d done sewing during the afternoons and sat
by candlelight reading from the tattered scrolls she had found in the hills. On
the far side, there had been the pallet where they had slept together, limbs
tangled, in the warmth that came after love. And there, on the far wall, there
had been her shelves, full of bottles and tiny pots filled with unguents and
potions, which she made from crushed herbs and perfumed oils. It had been a
lovely little place, once, filled with life for all that it had been so far
away from everywhere.
Now, there was nothing left, nothing at
all, except broken plaster and cracked stone.
He would have called her name, if he could
remember it. But he opened his mouth, and nothing came.
“She isn’t here.” The voice was at his
shoulder. “She hasn’t been here in a very long time.”
He didn’t turn round. “How long?”
“A long time. It’s been longer than you
think since you were last here, Man. Much, much longer.”
“I thought you’d left me and gone away,” he
said then.
There was no reply to this. He still didn’t
want to turn around.
“Where is she?” he asked at last.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.” He could see the demon out of the
corner of his eye now, a red glowing shadow. “Is she dead?”
The demon laughed, a low chuckle. “Why
don’t you look at me, Man? What makes you so shy?”
“Where is she?” he repeated. “Is she dead?”
The demon laughed again. “No, she is not so
lucky. Do you want to find her? Really?”
“Is that why you brought me here?”
“Why should I bring you here, Man? You
brought yourself.” The demon touched him lightly on the shoulder, a touch like
mist, but one he felt right through his chain mail. “Weren’t you thinking I’d
left you and gone away?”
He turned his head to look at her. She
formed out of the darkness, her eyes glowing amber in the shadow, her hair
dancing like flames. She grinned, her teeth sharp and white.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
The demon crossed her arms under her
bulging breasts and pretended to think. “Well,” she said judiciously, “if you want to find her, you might
follow this river bed along till the night turns over towards dawn. Then,
perhaps, you might find an entrance carved in the rock.” She paused, her eyes
glinting mockingly. “And once you go through the gate, then...”
“Then?”
“Then, Man,” she said, her eyes staring
into his, her smile disappearing, “you are going to wish you had left well
enough alone.”
“But if I want to go,” he said, after a
pause, “you won’t stop me?”
“I won’t, Man.” She sighed, her breasts
rising and falling. “I could, and perhaps I should, but I won’t.”
“Then,” he said, “I’ll go.”
**************************
The sky
was pinkening with dawn over the bare hills when he saw the entrance.
It was a doorway carved in the rock, with
pillars on either side, and stairs leading up from the dry bed of the river. He
was sure he’d come this far along before, all those years ago, but he’d never
seen it then. It must have been completely submerged under the water.
“Who made this?” he asked the demon. The
intensely grim look was still on her face, and she made no attempt to answer.
Instead, she motioned at him to dismount.
“Leave the beast here,” she said. “It can’t
go inside there.”
Reluctantly, because he had come to think
of the beast almost as a home, he complied. The creature showed no reaction,
its eyes merely turning once towards him for a moment. He did not, of course,
need to hobble it in any way; it would wait for him to return.
Forever, if need be.
The stairs and pillars were very old, so
polished by time that the stone had become polished enough to gleam in the dawn
light. There had been carvings, once, but they had been almost completely
effaced. What little was left of them made him obscurely glad he could not see
them any more clearly.
The dawn light faded rapidly as he walked
up the stairs and through the doorway. Inside there was a long, low tunnel,
which sloped rapidly down into darkness. He could see the stumps of brackets on
the walls which might once have been holders for torches, but there was nothing
there now.
The light filtering in from the entrance
quickly faded, giving way to pressing shadows. He stubbed his toe on something
and stumbled, almost falling. His helmet clanged against the wall.
“Follow me,” said the demon, pushing past
him. “Watch my feet and step exactly
where I tread. Don’t put a toe out of line. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he said. Where her bare feet touched
the stone, they left prints which glowed orange-red for a while before fading,
so he could see where to walk. “How far must we go before we find her?”
“You
can’t express it in terms of distance. Come along.”
He was so intent on watching her feet that he
never realised just when his surroundings began to change. The first he noticed
was that her footprints seemed to be glowing less brightly, and fading quicker.
Then he realised that it wasn’t the footprints which were fading faster, but
the fact that the darkness around them was decreasing. A reddish light was
seeping into the tunnel.
A few steps further, and she led him round
a bend held out a hand to bar his way, so suddenly that he almost bumped into
her.
“Look.”
He bit back a gasp. At their feet the
ground fell away in a near vertical slope of red, glowing rock to a distant
plain, in which red and orange glowing rivers flowed between black humps of
stone. On both sides, the wall of glowing rock spread out, into the far
distance, until they faded into darkness. And on the far side of the plain, so
far away that he could barely see it, there was another diffuse glow of red.
They were standing on the lip of a gigantic
crater, so huge that he could not imagine its size.
“Is she down there?” he asked, his mouth
dry.
“Yes, indeed. If you want, we can go back.
I won’t think any less of you if you do.”
He swallowed, painfully, and deliberately
brought to mind his dream and the shattered hut.”We’ll go on.”
“Fine. Follow me, and step where I do.”
He followed her. The slope was so steep that
it felt as though he were stepping down a vertical wall. But he had no time to
think about that; his eyes were fixed on her feet, which always somehow seemed
to find the dark cool spaces between the glowing rocks.
“Hold on to my tail,” she called over her
shoulder, when the way had got so steep that he could no longer balance on his
legs properly. “Be careful not to fall.”
With the desperation of a drowning man
clutching at a piece of driftwood, he clutched the barbed tip. It hummed in his
gauntlets, buzzing as though filled with energy that was barely held back, so
that he almost let go again. But she grunted impatiently, so he held on tight
to it. After that it wasn’t quite so difficult to climb down, except for the
strain in his back, calves and thighs.
“We can’t stop for a break,” she said,
though he hadn’t suggested anything of the sort. “This place would fry you to a
crisp.”
Trying to keep his trembling legs from
collapsing under him, he followed her down to the plain.
**************************
From
close up, the river was like a snake made of molten rock. It hissed and spat
and bubbled, and the heat and light were so intense that he squeezed his eyes
almost shut and flinched.
“How do we get across that?” he asked.
“We’ll have to look for a bridge across.
The flow tunnels under the rock here and there. We’ll find a way.”
“You could get across if you wanted,
couldn’t you?”
The demon glanced at him. “If it were up to
what I wanted, Man,” she said drily, “I’d never have come down here at all.”
“And she’s down here?” he asked
incredulously, gesturing around. “She’s down here in this?”
“That, I can assure you.” The demon paused
a moment. “Of course, you may find her a little...changed.” Without another
word, she turned and began striding along the flow of liquid rock, and he had
to hurry behind in order to put his feet down where hers had rested a moment
before.
As they went, he noticed some things. None
of these made any sense to him, but increased his disquiet. There were
movements out on the plain beyond the river, as if slow heavy bodies of titanic
size were dragging themselves slowly through the darkness. And once or twice he
was certain that things twitched and moved in the incandescent liquid itself,
things with long necks and huge teeth, but the light was too bright for him to
be sure.
At last they found a bridge, It was just
wide enough for one foot to go before the other, but the demon tested it and
said it was fine. Holding her tail, he followed her across it, trying not to
look at the inferno beneath.
“What is this place?” he asked, once they
had finally reached the far side. “Have you been here before?”
The demon laughed. “You don’t have words to
explain what it is, Man. Just be content that it is, and that you’ve got me to
help you.
And,” she added, casually, “I think that is
your friend now.”
**************************
When he had
first seen her, all those years ago, she’d been sitting on a boulder by the
river, looking down at the flow of the water. In an ironic echo, she was
sitting on an outcrop of stone by the molten river of rock, looking down into
it, in the exact same attitude, her head between her hunched shoulders, her
hands pressing on the ground by her side.
When he was still several paces away, she
spoke, without turning her head. “Why have you come?”
He was astonished that she’d noticed him at
all. “Looking for you,” he said finally.
“Did you have to come?” She still hadn’t
turned around. “I did not ask you to.”
“You didn’t,” he agreed, and took a few
steps closer. “But all the same, I felt the need. I’d come to the old house,
and when I found it that way...”
She laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. “You
thought it was because you’d left me and gone so many years ago, and if you
only came back, things would be all right for me. Is that so?”
He swallowed. “I suppose you’re right in
one way, but...”
“Don’t
come any closer!” She threw out a hand at him, finger pointing. “Stop where
you are.”
Startled, he stopped. She continued looking
out over the molten river. Something raised its long neck from the surface, a
cluster of heads writhing. She threw something, the heads snatched it out of
the air, and the neck plunged back beneath the surface. She laughed again.
“Well, you were wrong.” In one smooth move, she jumped to her feet and turned to
face him. The grey cloak she wore whipped round her body, outlining it for a
moment. She had grown shockingly thin, as though her body wasn’t really there
any longer.
But her face was still the same. As soon as
he glimpsed it, he remembered it as it had been, and with that her name came
back to him. “Listen, Mara –“
“No, you
listen. You don’t have to do a thing for me. You don’t matter any longer, do
you understand? I’m not interested in you any longer, or in the place you came
from.”
He looked around helplessly, but the demon
had disappeared. He could feel her, though, somewhere close, keeping just out
of sight. “What are you doing here, then?”
“That’s not your problem.” She walked up to
him, gliding over the stone as though her feet didn’t quite touch the ground.
Her eyes blazed with fury. “It’s you who have no business here.”
“In that case,” he said, “I’ll go away. But
just tell me one thing. Can you answer one little question? After I’ve come all
this way, you owe me that at least.”
“I owe you nothing. But ask.” Her upper lip
lifted a moment in a snarl. “I don’t promise I will answer.”
“All right.” His eyes were smarting, and he
fought down the urge to rub them. “Are you happy?”
“Happy?” It was as though a mask had fallen
away at that word, and he saw her suddenly as she really was, her face full of
sadness and despair. “What does that word mean, happy?”
“Is something wrong, Mara?”
“No, nothing.” She tried to smile, but her
lip trembled where earlier it had snarled. “Everything’s fine. I’ve answered
your question. Now go.”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong. I
could never live with myself if I went away and left you here, knowing that you
can’t even remember the meaning of the word happy,
and not having done anything to help you.”
She looked at him a long time, and blinked
furiously. “Damn it,” she said absently, “I can’t even cry any longer. I think
I’ve forgotten how to cry.”
“Mara?”
“Oh, all right,” she said. “Come with me,
and I’ll show you.”
**************************
“I’d not got over you leaving, when he came,” Mara said. “It took years,
you know? Years and years. I would lie awake half the night crying for you, and
when I’d fall asleep finally, I’d wake up and begin looking for you by my side.
And when I didn’t find you I’d start crying again.”
There was a long pause. They kept walking
along the plain, rivers of molten rock on either side. In the distance before
them, the a cliff of rock glowed dull red.
“And then he came,” she said at last. “I remember
waking up one night to see fire flickering on the walls, and the ground was
shaking. I jumped up and ran to the window to see what was happening.
“The river and the hills were burning. This
may be hard to believe, but the water, and even the air over the river, was on
fire. Even as I watched, the trees disappeared in flame. And then the roof
above my head erupted.
“I think I screamed. I know I rushed out,
past all the things that had meant anything to me, my scrolls and potions and
the clothes I’d sewed. The door was already on fire as I ran out, and I think
something fell on me. I recall a heavy blow to my back. And then I must have
blacked out.”
She paused, her thin-fingered hands running
through the grey folds of her cloak like frightened spiders. “Perhaps it would
have been better if I’d burned to death then. But I didn’t, because he was
there, and he found me.
“When I came to, I was here, in a cave in
the hills. And he was there, too, in the cave. He was there, bending over me,
and when I saw him I passed out again.”
“He? Who’s he?”
“You’ll see.” Mara glanced back over her
shoulder. “I’m taking you to him now.”
“Why?”
She ignored the question. “At first, I was
terrified. You can’t believe how terrified I was. But I learned not to be
afraid, over time. Over time, I learned not to shrink back with fear of him.
“But he was a fugitive. I did not know it
then, but he was in hiding, too, and there were – forces – he’d offended, and
who would not forgive. And then, one day, they came for him.
“He’d known, I think, that they would come,
that he could not run forever. But if it had not been for me, he would not have
lingered so long in this place. He would have moved on, and perhaps it would
have been much longer before they found him.
“But they did find him,” she said. Her hand
rose, pointing. “And when they found him, they did this.”
At first he didn’t realise what she meant. They
had arrived at the wall of rock he’d noticed earlier, which rose red and
glowing. He looked up at it, blinking in confusion. And then he saw it.
The giant was so huge that his body seemed
part of the rock itself. His back was arched against it, arms and legs drawn
back, gigantic granite bands holding them back against the glowing stone. His
head was thrown back, looking up into the darkness, so that his face couldn’t
be seen, but the tendons in his neck stood out as though tensed with agony. He
moaned, the noise vibrating through the ground.
“What...”
“Can you see what they did to him?” Mara clutched the knight’s hand. “And that
isn’t all. They’ve staked him out here to burn on the rock, but that wasn’t
enough. No.” Her voice shook. “Soon enough, the monsters of the air will come
down to dine.”
“Monsters of the air? Dine on what?”
“What do you think? He hardly has any eyes
left, or even a face. He suffers endlessly, and he can’t even die. He’d give anything to be able to
just die.” Her voice shook. “You want to know why I’ve forgotten what happy means? Look at him.”
“Who is he?”
“He was a god once.” The demon’s voice was
in his ear. He turned quickly, but he couldn’t see her. “He was a god, and
sinned greatly against the other gods – sinned by their lights, of course.” Her
voice was cool and ironic. “I told you that you’d find your friend changed.”
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Could you help him die?” Mara asked. “Kill
him. Please just kill him, if you can. That would set him free.”
“How can I kill him? Is it even possible?”
“They put him up there to suffer, and they
made it so that he couldn’t die of the suffering. But they didn’t make it so
that he can’t die.” Mara’s voice broke on a sob. “I’ve tried. I’ve tried to
kill him. Can you imagine how I felt to have to kill him, and then how I felt
when I couldn’t even do that with what I can put my hands on?”
“And what about you? If he died, what would
you do afterwards?”
Mara shrugged. “What about me? How do I
matter? If he can die, I’ll be at peace.” She looked at him. “Maybe I could
even go with you again.”
There was a brief silence. Something flickered
in the darkness high above, circling, drifting lower towards the upturned face.
He saw wings, and red eyes.
“Here they come.” Mara’s voice was filled
with hopeless despair. “Will you kill him, please? If not, then kill me.”
He reached for the sword in the scabbard on
his back. It leaped into his hand, black as the gulfs between the stars, always
ready. His arm rose and fell, once, twice, four times.
Mere granite could never hold on against
the nameless metal. With a crack, the first shackle parted.
“What are you doing?” the demon hissed in
his ear.
He ignored her. His arm rose and fell,
again and again. The fourth shackle splintered and fell.
With a noise like the earth cracking apart,
the giant stumbled away from the cliff. Slowly, unbelievingly, he took one step
forward, and another. His arms rose, and snatched at something in the air,
something which chittered and twisted and died. Again and again, his hands rose
and fell, snatching and slapping, until there nothing left to destroy. Turning
away, he staggered off into the darkness.
“Wait for me,” Mara screamed, running after
him. “Wait for me.”
**************************
“Did you really expect me to bring her back with me?”
The
demon did not reply for a while. Her hand absently stroked the beast’s neck.
“Let me ask you,” she said at last, “why
you didn’t kill him, as she wanted you to. After all, if you had killed him,
you could have brought her back with you. You realise that.”
It was his turn now to pause. “Yes. I could
have. But I didn’t, did I?”
The demon chuckled. “No, Man, you didn’t.
And I did not think you would.”
“She...” He looked at the beast’s horned
head, and he looked at the demon’s hand. He reached out and touched the hand. “She’s
going to be happy now, you think?”
The demon laughed. “What does that word
really mean, happy? Oh, Man, I thought you knew better than that.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I don’t.” He gestured
back over his shoulder at the valley with the dried river and the burned hills.
“Do you know, I have not the slightest desire now to ever see this place again?”
“There will be other places to see, Man. I
think we both know that.”
“I suppose,” he said. His hand stayed on
the demon’s hand, and she made no move to pull it away.
Stolidly as ever, the beast plodded up the
pass.
Swooping from the east, cloaked in stars
and shadow, night was coming.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2014
In keeping with the theme of the earlier story, this is the (partial) inspiration: Gods of Wrath by Metal Church.
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