The Year of the Flood

SAINT JULIAN AND ALL SOULS

YEAR TWENTY-FIVE.

OF THE FRAGILITY OF THE UNIVERSE.

SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

My dear Friends, those few that now remain:

Only a little time is left to us. We have used some of that time to make our way up here, to the site of our once-flourishing Edencliff Rooftop Garden, where in a more hopeful era we spent such happy days together.

Let us take this opportunity to dwell, for one final moment, on the Light.

For the new moon is rising, signalling the beginning of Saint Julian and All Souls. All Souls is not restricted to Human Souls: among us, it encompasses the Souls of all the living Creatures that have passed through Life, and have undergone the Great Transformation, and have entered that state sometimes called Death, but more rightly known as Renewed Life. For in this our World, and in the eye of God, not a single atom that has ever existed is truly lost.

Dear Diplodocus, dear Pterosaur, dear Trilobite; dear Mastodon, dear Dodo, dear Great Auk, dear Passenger Pigeon; dear Panda, dear Whooping Crane; and all you countless others who have played in this our shared Garden in your day: be with us at this time of trial, and strengthen our resolve. Like you, we have enjoyed the air and the sunlight and the moonlight on the water; like you, we have heard the call of the seasons and have answered them. Like you, we have replenished the Earth. And like you, we must now witness the end of our Species, and pass from Earthly view.

As always on this day, the words of Saint Julian of Norwich, that compassionate fourteenth-century Saint, remind us of the fragility of our Cosmos – a fragility affirmed anew by the physicists of the twentieth century, when Science discovered the vast spaces of emptiness that lie, not only within the atoms, but between the stars. What is our Cosmos but a snowflake? What is it but a piece of lace? As our dear Saint Julian so beautifully said, in words of tenderness that have echoed down through the centuries:

… He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand… as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, What may this be, and I was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last. For I thought it might fall suddenly to nothing, for little cause; and I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so has everything its being, through the love of God.

Do we deserve this Love by which God maintains our Cosmos? Do we deserve it as a Species? We have taken the World given to us and carelessly destroyed its fabric and its Creatures. Other religions have taught that this World is to be rolled up like a scroll and burnt to nothingness, and that a new Heaven and a new Earth will then appear. But why would God give us another Earth when we have mistreated this one so badly?

No, my Friends. It is not this Earth that is to be demolished: it is the Human Species. Perhaps God will create another, more compassionate race to take our place.

For the Waterless Flood has swept over us – not as a vast hurricane, not as a barrage of comets, not as a cloud of poisonous gasses. No: as we suspected for so long, it is a plague – a plague that infects no Species but our own, and that will leave all other Creatures untouched. Our cities are darkened, our lines of communication are no more. The blight and ruin of our Garden is now mirrored by the blight and ruin that have emptied the streets below. We need not fear discovery now: our old enemies cannot pursue us, occupied as they must be by the hideous torments of their own bodily dissolution, if they are not already dead.

We should not – indeed we cannot – rejoice at that. For yesterday the plague took three of us. Already I sense within myself those changes that I see reflected in your own eyes. We know only too well what awaits us.

But let our going out be brave and joyous! Let us end with a prayer for All Souls. Among these are the Souls of those who have persecuted us; those who have murdered God’s Creatures, and extinguished His Species; those who have tortured in the name of Law; who have worshipped nothing but riches; and who, to gain wealth and worldly power, have inflicted pain and death.

Let us forgive the killers of the Elephant, and the exterminators of the Tiger; and those who slaughtered the Bear for its gall bladder, and the Shark for its cartilage, and the Rhinoceros for its horn. May we forgive them freely, as we may hope to be forgiven by God, who holds our frail Cosmos in His hand, and keeps it safe through His endless Love.

This Forgiveness is the hardest task we shall ever be called upon to perform. Give us the strength for it.

I would like us all to join hands now.

Let us sing.

THE EARTH FORGIVES

From The God’s Gardeners Oral Hymnbook

77

The new moon’s rising now, out over the sea: Saint Julian and All Souls has begun.

I loved Saint Julian’s when I was little. Each of us kids would make our own Cosmos, out of stuff we’d gleaned. Then we’d stick glittery things onto it and hang it on a string. The Feast that night was round foods, like radishes and pumpkins, and the whole Garden would be decorated with our shining worlds. One year we made the Cosmos balls out of wire and put candle ends inside them: that was really pretty. Another year we tried to make Divine Hands for holding the Cosmos balls, but the yellow plastic housework gloves we came up with looked very strange, like zombie hands. Anyway you don’t picture God as wearing gloves.

We’re sitting around the fire – Toby and Amanda and me. And Jimmy. And the two Gold Team Painballers, I have to include them. The light flickers on all of us and makes us look softer and more beautiful than we really are. But sometimes it makes us darker and scarier too, when the faces go into shadow and you can’t see the eyes, only the eye sockets. Deep pools of blackness welling out of our heads.

My body hurts all over, but at the same time I feel so joyful. We’re lucky, I think. To be here. All of us, even the Painballers.

After the mid-day heat and the thunderstorm I went back to the beach for our packsacks and brought them to the clearing, along with some wild mustard greens I’d found along the way. Toby took out her cooking pot, and the cups, and her knife, and her big spoon. Then she made soup with the leftovers from the rakunk and the rest of Rebecca’s meat, some of her dried botanicals. When she put the bones of the rakunk into the water she spoke the words of apology and asked for its pardon.

“But you didn’t kill it,” I said to her.

“I know,” she said. “But I wouldn’t feel right unless somebody did this.”

The Painballers are tied to a nearby tree with the rope and also some braided strips torn from Toby’s once-pink top-to-toe. I did the braiding: if there’s one thing the Gardeners taught you, it was craft uses for recycled materials.

The Painballers aren’t saying much. They can’t be feeling great, not after being pounded by Amanda. They must also be feeling stupid. I would be if I were them. Dumb as a box of hair – as Zeb would say – for letting us creep up on them like that.

Amanda must be still in shock. She’s crying gently, off and on, and twisting the raggedy ends of her hair. The first thing Toby did – once the Painballers were safely roped up – was to give her a cup of warm water with honey, for dehydration, with some of her lamb’s-quarters powder stirred in.

“Don’t drink it all at once,” she said. “Just little sips.” Once Amanda’s electrolyte levels were back up, said Toby, she could start to deal with whatever else about Amanda needed fixing. The cuts and bruises, to begin with.

Jimmy’s in bad shape. He has a high fever, and a festering sore on his foot. Toby says that if only we can get him back to the cobb house, she can use maggots – those might work in the long run. But Jimmy may not have the long run.

Earlier she spread some honey on his foot, and fed him a spoonful of it, as well. She can’t give him any Willow or Poppy, because she left those back at the cobb house. We wrapped him up in Toby’s top-to-toe, but he keeps unwrapping himself. “We need to find him a bedsheet or something,” Toby says. “For tomorrow. And figure some way of keeping it on him or he’ll broil to death in the sun.”

Jimmy doesn’t recognize me at all, or Amanda either. He keeps talking to some other woman, who appears to be standing by the fire. “Owl music. Don’t fly away,” he says to her. There’s such longing in his voice. I feel jealous, but how can I be jealous of some woman who isn’t there?

“Who are you talking to?” I ask him.

“There’s an owl,” he says. “Calling. Right up there.” But I don’t hear any owl.

“Look at me, Jimmy,” I say.

“The music’s built in,” he says. “No matter what.” He’s gazing up into the trees.

Oh Jimmy, I think. Where have you gone?

The moon’s moved westward. Toby says the bone soup has boiled enough. She adds the mustard greens I collected, waits a minute, then ladles out. We’ve got only two cups – we’ll have to take turns, she says.

“Not them too?” said Amanda. She won’t look at the Painballers.

“Yes,” said Toby. “Them too. This is Saint Julian and All Souls.”

“What happens to them?” says Amanda. “Tomorrow?” At least she’s taking an interest in something.

“You can’t just let them loose,” I say. “They’ll kill us. They murdered Oates. And look what they did to Amanda!”

“I’ll consider that problem,” says Toby, “later. Tonight is a Feast night.” She dips the soup into the cups, then looks around the firelight circle. “Some feast,” she says in her dry-witch voice. She laughs a little. “But we’re not finished yet! Are we?” She says this last thing to Amanda.

“Kaputt,” says Amanda. Her voice is so small.

“Don’t think about it,” I say, but she begins to cry again, softly: she’s in a Fallow state. I put my arms around her. “I’m here, you’re here, it’s okay,” I whisper.

“What is the point?” says Amanda, not to me but to Toby.

“This is not the time,” says Toby in her old Eve voice, “for dwelling on ultimate purposes. I would like us all to forget the past, the worst parts of it. Let us be grateful for this food that has been given to us. Amanda. Ren. Jimmy. You, too, if you can manage it.” This to the two Painballers.

One of them mutters something like Fuck off, but he doesn’t say it very loudly. He wants some of the soup.

Toby continues on as if she hasn’t heard. “And I would like us to remember those who are gone, throughout the world but most especially our absent friends. Dear Adams, dear Eves, dear Fellow Mammals and Fellow Creatures, all those now in Spirit – keep us in your view and lend us your strength, because we are surely going to need it.”

Then she takes a sip from the cup and passes it to Amanda. The other cup she gives to Jimmy, but he can’t hold it right and he spills half of the soup into the sand. I crouch down beside him to help him drink. Maybe he’s dying, I think. Maybe in the morning he’ll be dead.

“I knew you’d come back,” he says, this time to me. “I knew it. Don’t turn into an owl.”

“I’m not an owl,” I say. “You’re out of your mind. I’m Ren – remember? I just want you to know that you broke my heart; but anyway, I’m happy you’re still alive.” Now that I’ve said it, something heavy and smothering lifts away from me, and I truly do feel happy.

He smiles at me, or at whoever he thinks I am. A blistery little grin. “Here we go again,” he says to his sick foot. “Listen to the music.” He tilts his head to the side; his expression is rapturous. “You can’t kill the music,” he says. “You can’t!”

“What music?” I say, because I don’t hear anything.

“Quiet,” says Toby.

We listen. Jimmy’s right, there is music. It’s faint and far away, but moving closer. It’s the sound of many people singing. Now we can see the flickering of their torches, winding towards us through the darkness of the trees.