That moment the scarred seal appeared, he was overcome by that most familiar sense that he should wake up any second, for this must have been a dream more real and more vexing than any other. But the hermit remained before him, still and silent. It was no dream.
Every chronometer across the martial world blinked back to 0000.
When the pale hand drew the collar back over the seal, he looked back up at the flashing blanks of the hermit’s eyes.
He was never disposed to fear, but he was, at that moment, overcome by something far more profound than mere terror, such that of his former interest as to who this mas was died away instantly, and in its place came a new, more fearful question:
“Why are we here?”
In keeping with his habit, a period of silence preceded his answer, which was another question:
“Do you know what Providence is?”
“… No.”
“It is not entirely unlike what you would call ‘fate.’”
“I do not believe in fate,” said Saul
“Why not?”
“Because it vindicates everything that people do.”
The hermit bowed his head.
“That’s right … Good.”
“What is good?”
“Ah … Now, that is the finest question of all.”
A sharp blow and rumble of thunder perturbed the still-burning flame ever so slightly.
“Providence,” the hermit continued, “is also a vindicator. With one crucial difference.”
“And what is that?”
“Fate preserves the strong. Providence preserves the good. Of course, that does not necessitate a bloodless path. No … To preserve one thing is to destroy another. That is the rule. You must know that by now.” The hermit leaned forward until his face was just over the flame and laid his hands flat on the table. “I believe that Providence is what brought Naomi to you. I believe it is the reason you and I are sitting here right now.”
“What reason?” he asked.
“That cannot be known until it has come to pass. It is the way of things.”
He found himself having to pause to decrypt the hermit’s words with each answer.
“What good is there believing in reasons you cannot know?”
“All the good in the world, of course,” the hermit answered with a transitory smile. “But I don’t expect you to understand that. No. Not yet…”
A number of theories flashed through Saul’s mind with regard to the hermit – not least among them; the theory that he was nothing more than a very lucid madman. However, the strongest possibility presently nurturing his misgiving was that he was, for some as yet unknown purpose, in collusion with the Commission. He grew restless. Who was this man and what did he want?
“You wanted to know why we are here.”
He affirmed the hermit’s statement with his silence.
“You are here because you see the truth,” said the hermit. “The truth is that the world is lost and does not know it. But you know it. How you know it, you cannot justify. It is like a sense to which the consciousness of the world has been dulled: That voice … that only you can hear. And, so, you are forced to watch them stumble in a blind stupor, chasing illusions, abolishing themselves from the inside out by gradual degrees until one day there will be nothing left in the world but the final culmination of the soul: an endless cycle of fire and ash, and that lone, wailing voice in the wilderness.” The hermit’s voice became lower and graver with each word. “You see it … don’t you? You see it every day.”
As the hermit spoke, he could hear the voices of his nightmares screaming.
“Yes,” he gasped.
“I see it too,” the hermit answered, drawing away from the candlelight. “You are here because you have felt that fire scorch for a long, long time. Even now, it burns you. I can see it in your eyes. You are here because she is the only thing that can take the pain away.”
“And why are you here?” Saul rumbled.
At this question, the hermit bowed his head and the shadows extended over his eyes.
“I am here to tell you that it is time … for you to let her go.”
All the suspicion that had been mounting flared up inside him at once, and the flash of sudden wrath bore itself in a fierce frown.
He got up from his seat, nearly sending the chair tumbling, and stepped up to the door while the hermit remained calmly seated. He pulled sideways on the handle but the door wouldn’t give. He pulled again, sharply, and again.
“Open this door.”
“Not until we are finished.”
He turned and drew the blade. The blade edge shook an inch from the hermit’s face.
“If you must kill me, then, so be it,” the hermit sighed, wearily. “But you should know that there is a very particular way to open that door, and it would be far more expedient for you to spare my life – at least, until we are done … The alternative, of course, is that we both die in this room.”
His fury had risen to the point where he would have certainly slashed the hermit’s throat. The shaking blade yielded to reason, and the terse, feral breaths stifled with his rage. He slowly put away the blade and lowered back into the seat, averting the hermit’s eyes for fear of having his indignation roused beyond control. “It does not matter who you are,” he said, after a long silence. “I will not let you take her.”
The hermit maintained his piercing gaze as he leaned forward into the candlelight.
“Do you love her?”
Saul looked up and was sucked back into the black holes of the hermit’s eyes.
“What?”
“Naomi … Do you love her?”
The question was abrupt and unexpected. It was a question he had only vaguely considered. And the more he’d considered it, the more he was convinced that he must have. Now that the question was being put to him in this way, and by this man, for some unknown reason he found himself unable to answer.
“I would die for her.”
“Of course, you would,” said the hermit. “Your life would be worth nothing without her. That is not what I asked.”
“Then I do not know how to answer your question.”
“Very well … then I shall ask you another question.” The hermit reclined again. “Suppose she was the one who wanted to leave you – to leave this place,” he said. “What would you do?”
The question brought him to the edge of the abyss. He dared not answer. He knew the answer. And that is exactly why he would not say it. He didn’t have to. The hermit knew. He could tell by that convicting look in his eyes that he knew that he would not allow it to happen.
“You need her,” the hermit murmured, lowering his eyes, “but you do not love her. As soon as she causes you pain, you will hate her more than anything else in the world. It is in your nature.”
“You do not know me.”
“I don’t have to,” the hermit replied, slowly shaking his head. “Do you realise where you are?”
His eyes wandered uncertainly about the surrounding darkness while the hermit’s gaze was straight, true and unwavering.
“I know that you have asked yourself the question before: What kind of man could possibly choose a place like this? But, we did. You did. And every day you wonder why. The answer which you do not know haunts you even now.”
“It does not matter,” he replied sharply.
“The past does not matter?”
“The past is dead,” he averred.
“To your mind, perhaps,” said the hermit, shaking his head once more. “The soul never forgets. Never. And until your mind remembers, your soul will never find respite. The nightmare will not stop. It is the same for everyone who chooses this place.”
“You chose this place,” he rejoined.
The hermit nodded. “I have been here since the beginning.”
“So what makes you any different than me?”
“I know where your path with her ends.”
The he
rmit lifted his sullen gaze again and the candle flames dilated to sparkles.
“Naomi loves you, Saul … She loves you in a way that neither you nor I can truly understand – in a way that only someone like her is capable of loving. But because of who she is, a world like ours can only destroy her. And because of what you are, her love will cause you pain unlike anything you have ever felt before, leaving only two possibilities: Either she will destroy you … or you will destroy her.”
The warning was one he had heard before – though not in quite the same words. He had not believed it then, but now the horrid doubt started to creep in, through the omniscient eyes of this strange old hermit.
“Why are you telling me this?” he murmured.
The hermit held a sombre silence which went uninterrupted.
When the silence endured to a point that it became clear that the conversation was over, the hermit took the candle, stood from his chair and stepped up to the door. He drew a finger over the door seam and stopped just before the middle, then dragged the finger two inches to the right and pulled his hand back in a fist. With one sharp thump, the lock clicked and the door slid open.
“Come,” he beckoned, floating through the door.
After a moment’s hesitation, he stood up and followed back through the narrow, candlelit corridor and up the stairs.
The hermit stopped outside the closed door at the top, opened it and stepped aside, candle in hand. Inside, the pale street lights shone in through the window onto a bed with a small bulge in the middle. He held out the candle, and Saul regarded him skeptically as he took it.
He edged across the threshold into the room.
As he came nearer to the bed, tassels of blonde locks came within the reaches of the candlelight.
“Naomi…”
“You should not wake her.”
Ignoring the hermit’s warning, he inaudibly approached the head of the bed.
The little head appeared over the line of the quilt and he knelt down and brought the candlelight closer. It was her. The first sight of her kindled the long lost warmth in his soul.
“Naomi.”
Her eyes were closed. Her breaths were long and wheezing and more strained than usual and her skin became sallower and sallower under the candlelight. He brushed the hair from over her eyes and cupped his palm over the side of her face. Her skin was cold, her eyes strained to see, and for a while she was silent; breathing long, heavy breaths.
“I am here, little one.” he said.
A narrow slit appeared between the dreary little eyelids, and the little moonstones peered through. A whisper effervesced off the small, pale lips.
“S … Sa…”
Naomi’s voice suddenly broke and her eyes widened. She began to cough, loud rasping, guttering coughs, turning her face to the side and burying her face into the sheets. He almost dropped the candle as he moved to cradle her jerking little head.
She coughed more harshly than ever before. After a while, the coughs tempered to a strained, lung-shot wheeze and when the little head leaned back onto the pillow, he saw the rust-coloured stain on her lips, and the same stain was on his fingers. He lifted back the sheet to reveal a wide patch of crimson.
Naomi’s eyes shut again. She reclined and passed out.
“What have you done to her?” he snarled, turning menacingly toward the hermit.
“I have not done anything.”
He rushed forward and seizing the hermit by the collar of his robe and thrusting him up with a bang against the door, snarled: “WHAT HAPPENED TO HER!” His shaking fists pressed against the hermit’s chest and his eyes bulged madly from their sockets.
The hermit stared back into the mad, persecuted eyes, and with an air of sincerest sorrow, muttered:
“It’s cancer.”
Saul’s chest stopped heaving mid-breath.
He searched the depths of the hermit’s gaze for any glimmer of a lie. It had to be a lie.
“… Cancer?”
The hermit lowered his eyes. “It is in her lungs.”
Then, the memories summoned up; nights when he would wake with her coughs and shivers, the chronic illness, her loss of colour. His fists allayed.
“No…”
He staggered back to the bedside and fell to his knees.
“She took a turn for the worse a few days ago,” said the hermit
“Treatment,” he mumbled. “She can get treatment…”
“Treatment costs money. Money I don’t have.”
He fell silent again and looked away.
“Do you…?”
“No,” he muttered. “They took everything.”
The hail beat against the windows and the thunder broke the heavens again. The defenceless little head trembled in his arms. “She is… dying.”
“Yes.”
“No,” his voice trembled. He touched his forehead against hers.
“She doesn’t have much time.”
He felt her skin cold in the palms of his hands as he cupped them around her pale face, trying to imbibe his own life into her. “… Not like this.”
He would give his own life. He would give anything – do anything. Any pain but this. It could not end like this.