This time when Carter opened his eyes, it was from sleep - not a blink of the eyes, but a
gradual realization that he still existed. It felt just like it had every other time he had
woken up.
He was lying in a small bed, six inches longer than he was and just wide enough to roll
over one full time. Carter blinked his eyes, and shook his head as he sat up - he woke up
this time, hell or not, the same as he always woke up - with his body wanting to take a nap
before he even sat all the way up, and his mind pushing and hungry.
“What hell is this?” Carter wondered aloud, just to see if he could hear his voice. He held
his hands out in front of him, and flexed them. The same hands he was used to, as far as
he could tell, with the same wrinkles and the nail missing off of his left pinky. His voice,
unfortunately, sounded exactly the same as it always did.
The house was small, utilitarian. There was a closet and a bathroom, a small sink and a
fireplace. The bed folded into a couch. Carter tried to stop the trembling in his hands,
tried to pretend that what he saw around him was not real. There was a small stack of
wood next to the neat little fireplace, but he could tell from looking at it that it had never
been used.
No matter what, no matter how he took this, the bible had promised specific things. It was
quite specific about what should happen - you either went to heaven or you were damned
to hell; either one for eternity.
Waking up in some house made of log and stone was not what he had expected and was
as far from either scenario as he could imagine - and as the dazzle of the situation wore
off, as his eyes began to really see what he was standing in he realized it was exactly that,
or close to it. He wondered who had built the thing, and why - or if it had been built
specifically for him.
What was it doing here?
For that matter, where was here?
He walked outside, and there was another building, a long, low barnlike structure. When
he grasped the handle the door swung open easily.
Inside, more to confuse him; there was an odd looking machine, perhaps two feet taller
than he with four crablike legs and a tall, spiky central body. There were some boxes
stacked against the walls, and as he wandered, he saw other small rudimentary machinery;
there was an old fashioned blacksmith with a crank bellows; there was what seemed to
him a large collection of hammers of many different sizes, and stacks of stock metal. There
were also several different anvils.
He saw all types of hand tools, with other sets in boxes; there were a dozen different
types of seed and about a dozen boxes of foodstuffs in odd looking wrapping that looked
like brown paper from the bags he had known as a child; but there the similarity ended. He
ripped one open and nibbled at the wafer, then ate it in big bites as he reached the end of
the barn.
That was it, but there was a surprising amount of potential in the few tools the barn was
equipped with. Still in a daze, he poked around for an hour or so. Then he munched
another of the wafers, and went outside to wait.
It looked just like outdoors in the wilderness should look, with a serene blue sky glimpsed
through the branches of the thick woods; their branches were already heavy with leaves,
and the other smaller bushes and ferns and plants that were growing told him it was late
spring or early summer - that and the temperature, of course.
***********
He heard the long halloo, and went stumbling out of the small cabin. It was more of a hut,
really, but he had come to think of it as a cabin. It was nestled at the end of a small, tree
filled gorge that ended in a sharp point halfway up the huge mountain behind him; there
was a tiny, energetic river twenty yards from his front door, but the cabin, he saw as he
looked about this small piece of land that he found himself on, was on a miniature plateau
three quarters of the way up the gorge.
If the house ever flooded, then everything would be flooded. Whoever had placed this
site had had a good eye for the details that made a successful homestead. Carter did not
see this immediately (in fact, it was years before he began calling it a homestead), but in
the days following his sudden appearance here he had explored the little cut in the
mountain completely. He had not set foot outside of the narrow mouth of the cut, but he
had walked every nook and cranny inside of it; he had, after a day of walking up and down,
began clearing some of the dead brush, carrying it back to his cabin to add to the small
pile of wood there.
He did not venture beyond the gorge’s walls. He slowly realized the cunningness of the
placement of the buildings he lived in and used. They were invisible approaching from the
end of the gorge until you almost literally stumbled upon the cabin. My cabin, Carter
realized with a sense of growing despair and hopelessness.
“My cabin; my cabin in hell,” he said, and fell to his knees, the armload of thick branches
and brush scraping into his skin, bringing with it pain and blood. The tears streamed down
his face. There was no need of flames or torment - for the greatest torment lie in the fact
that he was separated from his family; that he would never know of Bianca’s fate; that he
would never again hold his wife. That life, which he had expected to last for an eternity,
was as gone as the dream he was having the next morning when the long halloooo rang
through the walls of the cabin.
Most of all, that he would never know the Lord.
So Carter sat bolt upright when he heard the sound of another voice, and was out the
front door before you could begin to think about counting one. He cursed before he could
stop himself, and sent a prayer outward asking God to forgive him the curse. He did not
know if God listened to his prayers anymore - it pained Carter to think that He didn’t - but it
made him feel better, in any case.
He thought he had reason to curse. There was a small figure sitting on the back of one of
the huge animals that was standing between the cabin and the barn; the horse stood feet
above Carter’s head, it’s great neck curved with thick muscle. Behind them they towed a
large wagon.
Carter noted with bemusement the wagon had usual metal rimmed tires that one would
expect to see in a western movie. It also occurred to him that everything here could be
made by the tools in the barn. He stood, calming his breath, and there stole over him a
thick, honeyed feeling - the sky to his back and left, across the valley, was aflame with the
setting sun and the cloud structures piling into the blue sky.
That light reflected through floating motes in the air, and shown on the golden coats of
the horses, and as the woman removed her hat her hair glowed in a halo that surrounded
her head; she glowed just as the horses, and over her right shoulder he saw the moon,
full and swollen and a pale, orange gray in the still strong light of the dying day.
He recognized the woman, but she looked a decade older - a decade older but even more
beautiful. There was something about her, now - something that cried to his heart and
soul, but he could not figure out what it was. He realized with dismay that he could not feel
himself breathing, and gazed into her wide eyes as he keeled over onto his face.
This time he was not out for long; he awoke at first thinking that once again he was
somewhere else. Then he realized that he was simply lying in his bed in the cabin. Right
after that he realized he could smell soup - and soup such as he had not smelled for what
seemed like an eternity. Despite himself, his stomach lurched and made a loud grinding
sound.
ShiaT’han turned and smiled at him. “You can call me Shahhan now - I chose it myself; it is
the first name that I have done so.”
He could tell she was excited.
“You can choose your own name, if you want to.” She stirred the soup, and did not look at
him.
“John Carter is good enough for me - it always has been.”
“I envy you such a life as you had, John Carter,” she said, looking at him with her wide
eyes. He thought again that she was actually holding them open more than normal, but
realized that she was not. They had seemed to big for her elfish face at first, her mouth to
wide. Now he realized that she was beautiful because of that, not in spite of it.
The realization made him sad; sad that he could feel she was beautiful - perfect almost.
Sad that he had hurt her the last time they had seen each other. Sad that her face was -
older. More experienced. He sensed, rightly, that he would not be able to hurt her again.
Most of all, sad that he was not with his wife
As though reading his mind, she set the black enamel spoon down in the hollow back of a
porcelain frog.
“You can be hurt, you know - if you haven’t found that out yet.” Her voice was slow and
sure, with an odd accent in it that Carter could not place.
“Shahhan is a beautiful name,” he replied.
She blushed, and turned away to stir the soup again. There was silence, but Carter
realized with no small wonder that he felt perfectly at home in the silence - that he wore it
like a pair of favorite old pajamas. She was looking out the window; when she spoke her
voice was loud enough to hear, but soft enough to keep that lazy feeling. He could hear
the emotion in it though, an undercurrent of anger that surprised him. He realized with
dismay that the sharp featured man had been right - he had hurt this woman, and hurt her
badly the last time they had spoken.
“I want you to know something,” she said, stirring the soup with the same lazy arc. The
motion of her wrist twisting the spoon was one of the most beautiful things Carter had
ever seen, but it completely belied her voice: “I am not in Hell. You may be, I do not know
and will not speak for you in any way at all. But I will tell you this; I am not in Hell. I don’t
know this heaven you speak of, but it does not sound like a real place to me.
“Where I came from it was - it was hell, perhaps. Here it is different. Here I can help
people. I have the power to do that, and so will you.”
“What people?” Carter asked, startled in spite of himself. Had he really thought he was to
be stuck here forever, completely alone? He did not know what he thought. He could
barely keep track of his thoughts long enough to eat, and that shamed him as he sat there.
He had never liked being taken care of, and yet he was sitting here letting it happen.
“I will get some water,” he said, and stepped outside. His hands were shaking. He had
gradually been getting used to this small homestead - there was little other way to think
about it than that.
The appearance of Shahhan had shaken Carter to his core. He filled the bucket with water
from the pump well, recognizing that he had similar, rough cast well heads in the large
storage shed.
People? Where had that thought come from? Had he even thought about what lay beyond
this little valley? He could not remember doing so, and now it seemed odd that that had
been the case, but he had to admit that Shahhan would know more than he. Good god, she
looked as though she had seen worlds since he had seen her last.
He realized, with the suddenness of a bucket of water thrown upon him that he was alive;
that the world around him was alive. The trees, reaching upwards towards a sun; the small
ant crawling across his fingers as he squatted there beside the water; the skimmer bugs
that flitted over the surface of the puddle from last nights rain, and the small silver fishes
that flashed just beneath the surface of the small stream, jetting to the top occasionally to
snatch the quick little bugs.
And he, looking at his reflection in the mirror of the barely rippling water - there were
wrinkles around his eyes he had not noticed before, and his hair was turning white around
the edges; he didn’t think he was old enough for that to happen, but he had not even
thought he was really alive at all, it seemed, until just a few minutes ago.
Carter managed not to cry, somehow, but the deep emptiness in his chest felt as though it
would overwhelm him. He stared at his face, narrow with pale blue eyes, and more lines
around his eyes and mouth than he remembered - more white hair to, for that matter, but
Carter found the slight change in his appearance the least of what he was concerned
about.
He got up from the waterside, and walked back into the house.
Dinner was delicious.
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| Chapter Three |