WHAT THE VULTURE SAW

Many a tale has been written (by me) of the waste of human life in service to gods.

“Oh my dear Lord, guide me to your kingdom,” breathed the black-cowled novice as he struggled across a parched landscape on his pilgrimage. “I am yours to abuse,” he added in a whispered monotone, “yours to torment as you will, yours to breathe life into or yours to destroy...”

His Lord, if he did anything, merged with the blistering sun and scorched down. The bleached world reflected the hazy heat from his lordly gaze and the world stood still.

A desert scorpion raced past, casting a despairing glance at the novice, and lurked under a searing stone, doubtless waiting for the meat it had just spied to become baked and lifeless. Somewhere a fly buzzed, pre-empting the inevitable.

“Dear Lord,” mourned the novice, “I have loved you all my life. I have fasted when your ancient word ordered me to fast, I have thirsted when it seemed appropriate, and all out of love for you. I have woken in the darkest hour for prayer, have remained silent in contemplation even though there were matters of great human weight to discuss with my fellows... I have had friends, even, friends other than you … but you have been my noblest comrade, the guide before me during dark nights and misted days, the one true light in this wretched world of shadows...”

In the distance, both near and far, an oasis hovered in mid air, a great pool of moisture in the hazing sun. The scorpion didn't see it, but then scorpions are canny creatures and rarely notice what isn't there. The buzzing fly ignored it, too. Both were waiting for their meat to lose its life and become still and tasty.

And overhead, circling on a column of superheated air, a vulture gazed down with unbelievable malevolence. But the novice ignored its beady eyes and scruffy plumage. The novice was walking towards the seat of his Lord, was being guided by a voice within his own head, a mighty voice that rumbled with little meaning and no sense.

“My dearest Lord, I'm coming,” he gasped. “I hear you calling me, I can feel your hand on my heart, pulling me ever closer to your mighty seat. For yours is the power, dear Lord, and yours the glory … I have worshipped you all my days. I have learned, by heart, the words in your sacred texts. I have prayed until the thoughts in my head lost all meaning and sense, and still prayed more. Our Father, which art in Heaven … hallowed...”

He stumbled and almost fell. The scorpion scurried to catch up with him and the old fly buzzed. Maybe, they thought, our time is here. Maybe, at last, we can feast on fresh commons. Maybe, they hoped, this is the hour...

“Dear Lord, I thirst...” he gasped. “Send me thy sign...”

But he recovered. He found strength from somewhere and paused in his struggle across the parched and yellow land. With precise movements he forced one foot in front of the other, and dragged himself along. His mouth had been dry forever … he had consecrated water in a bottle but his Lord had yet to give him permission to use it, and without that permission he would no more think of quenching his thirst than of flying to the moon. So his tongue was swollen in his mouth, and dry with the hot air and dusty sands.

If the scorpion wondered at that �" it could smell the water, the fresh beauty of fresh water �" it showed no sign. But then, its turn would come, and when it did that bottle would yield its moisture to him, somehow, and that novice his blood and flesh, and maybe a scrap of black cowl for a nest.

“Blesséd Lord,” stammered the novice, his strength all but sapped by the searing eye of the sun. And what a sun it was, how powerful, how unforgiving. “Blesséd Lord, give me a sign, a permission, that I may sip a little of my water … I have followed you all my life, I have trusted with every breath in my body your sacred wisdom as written on stone and parchment by the ancients of old, those great and noble warriors who saw you in visions and understood your glory, who trod this very path when it was young, who thirsted like I thirst and hungered like I hunger and held true to your word, given them on mountain tops for all mankind to follow...”

But all the sun did was bore down, and anyway it was too late.

The novice collapsed to to the greedy dehydrated sandy desert and that was that. It had to be. He could do no more, his strength was gone, dried out by the heat of a wretched, scorching day, his black cowl covering a drawn and haggard face. Yet, for a few moments, he lived.

His Lord wasn't done with him. Not yet. His Lord, his blesséd Lord, needed to hear more agony from a soul in torment.

“My dearest Lord,” he stammered, “My dearest, most darling Lord, I am on your path and my hour is upon me. Take me now, in honour and hope and truth, for I have been yours always. If you curse me I will swoon. If you damn me I will fall. For I have followed the words inscribed by your ancient servants on their stone tablets … you visited them in visions, you guided the hands that chiselled the words of light and love … why can't you visit me?”

And at that moment his Lord did come. In a shaft of golden light the dying novice beheld a vision and saw that deity, smiling through a craggy beard at him. Then his Lord whispered something in his ears, and he groaned his way to death.

For his Lord had called him a fool for walking a path to death when he might live. His Lord had said he was a cretin for thirsting when he might drink.

And his Lord had implied, in that shallow whisper into a shallow mind, that after all the pain, ancient words were just what they seemed to be, no more and no less than the mushroom dreams of crazy men leading fools to a nowhere paradise and sans any sensible meaning.

The scorpion licked its lips and the fly buzzed closer. The vulture nodded its head, and swooped.