Reckoning
A Short Story by
Mark Paul Jacobs
Copyright © 2009 by Mark Paul Jacobs
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Cover design by Mark Paul Jacobs
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The Yaakmen of Tyrie (The complete 5 part novel)
Author’s note: I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. Please don’t be afraid to tell me what you think via reviews or my Facebook page. I’m eager to hear from you.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
RECKONING
Awash in a sea of mist, he lay, as he sometimes did on those long hot days when the long-necks grazed upon the wetland’s fringe, and the rippers and scrappers, kept a safe distance by Protector’s ring, waited patiently with stone-cold eyes and merciless teeth. He pushed away into the mire, his willowy scaled frame slithering between flat-pads and reeds; his adolescent mind churning countless thoughts.
Growing weary and bemused, he pulled himself upon a boulder and rolled to his back. He covered his ovals with the webs of his hands, soaking in remnants of the sinking sun’s bitter warmth.
“Teacher?”
“Teacher!” He leaned up suddenly, his heart beating wildly. Teacher never left me, he mused. No, not ever! He inhaled deeply through the slits in his face.
“Patient learner...” Teacher’s reply, although somewhat tardy, soothed him like no other— not even his mothers, or elders, or Tabernacle’s priests.
“I thought, you…” He exhaled calmly.
“Rest easy, I will never leave you.”
“I thought, perhaps, because the Reckoning draws ever near.”
“Nothing has changed, young student; you can always be assured of my presence.”
Comforted once more, he laid his head back to stone, gazing upon the tiny specks of distant suns emerging within the deepening sky. For a moment, his heart warmed, imagining the vastness of eternity and the endless possibilities it’d once offered all who could dream.... But his mood quickly dimmed to somberness, when his ovals fell upon the intruder’s escalating fury— a menacing beacon hovering over the golden horizon.
“A lesson?” Teacher asked.
Teacher’s voice danced in his brain, amusing him to the core. Although young, he knew irony. Teacher itself taught him well. “Now,” he replied incredulously. “Is it not a sliver too late?”
“Sentience,” Teacher said, ignoring his pupil’s feeble insolence.
He gurgled with resignation. “A consciousness all intelligent creatures possess.”
“All intelligent creatures?”
“All who perceive. All who feel suffering or joy.”
“Do the long-necks and leaf-eaters, or rippers or scrappers…?”
“Only those who are aware of themselves as a self-conscience being; those who can reason and communicate; those who perceive worlds outside our own—our moon, the sun, the red one, the gas orb, the ringed giant.” He gurgled with satisfaction at the answer he’d given.
“And the leaf-eaters?”
“Perhaps not.” He mused for a moment. “But they do feel pain. I’ve heard them wail woefully when then shatter a bone.” He smiled inwardly, asking. “Do you, Teacher, also feel pain?”
“I am a product of intelligent sentient beings, but not sentient. I cannot feel, or laugh, nor can I muse.”
“Ha! Then you cannot answer all?”
“As a sentient, you know better than I what you sense.”
He rolled off of the rock and into the marsh, content with this one superiority over the voice in his head. He felt no great joy in this, though; knowing that all before him shared the same dreadful fate— even Teacher.
He sloshed around, flipping and twisting amid the cool, dank marsh.
“You approach Protector’s ring,” Teacher’s voice issued the dry warning. He froze, treading water, eyeing angry teeth and glowing eyes lying in wait just beyond a patch of towering fuzz-heads.
“Over there,” Teacher advised.
His mind directed him towards dry land, an assumed safe haven. He swam forth confidently, knowing Teacher would never lead him into danger. Protector’s invisible barrier lay in the darkness beyond, he reasoned.
He crawled upon the shore and crept along the muck. He halted suddenly, sensing a great leaf-eater’s presence. He could feel tremors from its dawdling steps, and he heard it moan a deep, lonely drone. He saw the dim outline of its great neck reach for the trees and snatch a broad leaf. In his mind, he imagined it munching and swallowing— a vacuous stare and expressionless eyes. He smiled inwardly at the futileness of the leaf-eater’s endeavors. “By morning’s light, all will change; the creatures will likely never excrete what they’ve devoured tonight. Is that not correct, Teacher?”
“Perhaps,” Teacher replied. “Yet, do you suppose they comprehend Reckoning?”
“No,” he replied with conviction, turning his ovals to the sky once again. “I could easily hide their brain in the folds of my hand. They are more likely to worry about their next feast or next mate. They live pleasantly ignorant of the events to unfold.”
“Then how do you feel about what is to be?”
An odd question, he thought. Teacher usually posed queries requiring specific answers. Not trivial inquiries into one’s emotional status. “Am I afraid? Is that what you ask?”
“Do you feel fear?”
“Not fear, like being in a ripper’s grasp, or wondering beyond Protector’s shield. But a fear, nonetheless...”
“Elaborate.”
“A fear of emptiness, a fear of nothingness, a fear of—”
“What lies beyond life?”
“Yes.” He exhaled deeply, as if a great weight were shed.
“A conundrum.”
“An unanswerable question?”
“Yes,” Teacher replied. “A sentient creature will never know with certainty what death brings. Death is the great barrier all living beings must breach, yet never return. Death, by its very definition, is a linear journey.”
Through the darkness’ veil, he could sense the giant beast move onward. No longer could he see its shadowy outline, nor feel its footfalls, nor hear its groans. He was alone once again. “Then all will end for me tonight?”
“None can say with sureness, young sentient— even I cannot. I am merely a machine, programmed to entice you to muse, nothing more. Although I can calculate and predict with great accuracy.”
“And what of Reckoning can you predict with certainty?”
“No creature larger than the webs of your feet will survive the passing of three hundred earth-spins.”
Teacher’s dire words struck him like no other, although he had heard this all countless times during the last ten moon-spins. The scholars and elders all lectured repeatedly until it bored him to numbness. But Teacher had been his unseen companion since barely a hatchling, and his words bore great significance to him, especially on his last day on earth.
“Come, you must leave,” Teacher said. “Protector’s barrier will soon be deactivated. Predators will waste no time closing inward. ”
Suddenly, his mind cleared, and his thoughts focused. He stood erect, raising his head. Deep in his conscientious the message was clear: Summoning—