CHAPTER 7
The time with the Nephi elevates Frak to a dimension of knowing and sensing which bringst with it a high degree of self-awareness. However, if it wasn’t for the copy of the Nephi map which he holds in his hands right now, he himself might not have believed that all that happened has actually occurred. Brok seems to have some inkling that something profoundly amazing did happen, yet Frak senses that Brok is only remembering what he knows about the Nephi through the secret whispers of his clan wizards and fathers. A bit unnerving, since their return to the ship, it is clear to Frak that Brok has been eyeing him in a odd manner...cagey sideway glances, ones that seem to be not simply acts of observation but of detection—glances that spy upon. Aha! Brok as a spy...watching him as if Frak has something he wants not just to share but to steal. Is Brok waiting for me to slip up?
Frak is not affected by the crew’s collective forgetfulness, its ignorance, its emptiness. No, he knows that they will be sailing back. Just like that, Frak hears sailing back! as he taps into their collective thinking...draws a map detailing the route. This happens in the same manner as he drew the map once the bay of the Nephi had appeared in a flash—like a mirage and then a mirage turning into reality.
Frak is mildly amused as he realizes that only he and Brok yet know that the world they live in is round, like a goblet, and that they are sailing back simply and only because they are sailing forward. Forward is backwards! a gem of High Priest wisdom Frak does not share with the crew. So, on this day, he clearly grasps that this voyage—Brok’s voyage—is ending...that he and the crew are sailing back to the exact spot where Frak had been picked up.
What is Brok trying to find? The Nephi map? Something else?
It is just pass the first moon since they left the enchanted bay, maybe a day more, maybe three, when Frak discerns and uncovers what Brok’s furtive eyes have sought—sought to hide, conceal—the two Nephi women!
“Come out!” Frak commands.
The crew stops in mid-breath upon the command.
Thereis not another command, just the thump of a sudden silence.
Upon his ledge, Brok sits, eyes closed, like the Sphinx in the land of camels.
Frak finally knows what Brok is blindly seeking to know—whether Frak can peer inside his soul! He does!
“Come out!” Echoing.
This time, as if conjured, two immaculately snow-skinned and bright-blue-eye-stunning beauties appear on the threshold of Brok’s room. Raven hair loose upon the air like soaring crows. Eyes whose fiery glances couch the depthlessness of the azure dazzle sparkling from their eyes...whose flesh was the fragrance, here, of betrayal. These so diaphanously dressed that even Frak has to look twice to believe his own eyes.
Each steps forward a pace and places a hand upon Brok’s shoulder.
A collective gasp—audible and seething with bewilderment and flashing lust—rushes amok, loosed by the crew.
Frak’s arm—extending into a commanding gesture, mid-finger pointing—motions them to stand aside from Brok. Each steps back and moves sideways as Frak directs.
If Frak has expected otherwise—which he hasn’t—he might have been stupefied by how these creatures—who clearly have not seen the light of day for some time—do not blink or shield their eyes from the midday sun, no, he is not stupefied because he knows who they are, knows what power they possess—only he sightsthe telltale cerulean glint in their eyes, that clear sign of a Nephi. Alas! Here are two of the younger wives of King Benjamin.
“Look!” Frak commands and Brok opens his eyes... bolts open and are immediately stabbed by Frak’s.
Wizard and warrior that he is, Brok stands up proudly and regally, to all eyes fearless before Frak.
“It is my right!”
Frak knows that there is nothing else to be heard. He judges and sentences as only a High Priest has right and authority to do.
What would the crew remember? Nothing. Nothing in terms of what would actually happen. Theirs will be but the collective dream memory which Frak lets them have. They will not remember in image but only recall as to presence...recall when with women, when with them in the moment of their deepest lust, recall the feeling...the repulsive, disgusting, vomiting feeling which binds all of them on this day, at this moment.
Brok draws himself most tall...pushes and pulls himself up on tiptoe while raising his arms, arcing them through half circles until they meet and press atop and amid his head—hands joined with arms pointing to the clouded realm of their Mighty Father—this the initiatory gesture with which Brok has always begun his incantations, his prayers, and his orations, benign and baleful.
“O, Our Father Almighty! I, your humble son, bring before you these treasures which I have bravely stolen from your enemy...the evil god of the Nephi. I pray you take them and make them your own.”
And before Frak can respond—but Frak knowing what Brok is about to do—so does Brok turn with a stealthily unsheathed dagger, one drawn craftily from a forearm scabbard, unsheathes and strikes at the women—on his right he slashes through her neck, blood spurting on all about...to his left, a thrust into a heart—no words, no gasps, no shrieks...they fall and die like bleatless lambs.
Brok pivots ocean-side and majestically intones, “Praise the Almighty Father”
“Praise the Almighty Father,” automatically and forcefully erupts from the crew’s collective heart.
Frak is unmoved; unbowed. Silent. A deathless silence.
A silence which is like a door. One which Frak opens with a passing of his High Priest right hand across his face—a motion which draws Brok to far-sight through this door.
Behold! Brok is in chains before the throne of King Benjamin. All about are the Nephi. Before Brok lay the slashed and stabbed bodies of the King’s two youngest wives...dotted with crimson, a spotting which curiously appears to all as a cruciform swath.
Woe! Unto the murderer who deliberately kills, for he shall die.
The High Priest is there. He bows to King Benjamin, directing him to proceed.
King Benjamin rises upon a great voice, intoning: “And Joshua said, Why did you bring trouble upon us? The Lord brings trouble on you today.”
With a sharp clap and crack of the High Priest’s hands so does the room shiver and quake and a great light—the brilliance, the bright of the deeply coiled Urim and Thummim room—this lustrous light floods the throne room, ebbs and flows through the eyes of all about, and in this puissant light so do the murdered victims rise—soar as if small birds rousted by the hunting hounds...quickly do they rise and stand beside Brok.
The High Priest nods...the King continues.
Woe! Unto them who commit whoredoms, for they shall be thrust down into hell.
With fingers that are now razor sharp blades the women slice Brok’s clothes such that he is naked.
With hands which are sizzling, searing red hot coals they grasp—one his chest upon his heart...the other cups his genitals.
With mouths which glitter with diamonded teeth they kiss him—drill deeply...one cores upon his nape...the other shreds upon his lips and cheeks.
All this in one flared moment releases the devouring fire of Brok’s transformation...he is now all which he never wanted to be—he is their booty, he is their captive, he is the pleasure to be wantonly discarded after he is ravaged by these women—she devils, demons, Dev!—who with every thought and desire of perverse pleasure start upon him...his eyes are sucked out through his mouth...his heart is cut loose from his chest...his cock and balls are culled and roasted till burnt embers—all and each act delivers to him all the dark pleasures those he has slain have felt, all the perverse pleasures of those who have felt his sword up their anus, of their cunts crammed with pitchblende sticks set afire...for these two women make real within his being all that he has sought to give to his God, to Our Father through Thanksgiving and Sacrifice. “It is fitting and just!” so the High Priest intones and adjudges—it is fitting and just that all which Brok has imagined pleasur
es Our Father, so is he pleasured with.
Languorously, it ends...his bodily parts are strewn all around...his sucked out eyes, his burnt genitals, his flaccid and shriveling heart...lying about and covered with slices and gouges of flesh—bone and skin, muscle and sinew, which these women of his once booty continue to slice and gouge—this a ritual cutting, a liturgical enactment...the breaking of his bones, the grinding of flesh and blood and bone—a commingling...so it ends...all of which they thrust up into the air, the gore of which they dab upon sticks and bless Brok’s remains...these sacred actions are like unto those Brok had revealed to the crew that Our Father cherishes as blessings upon Him.
Thus does it end—And all stoned him with stones; they burned him with fire, and stoned him with stones. Then the Lord turned from His burning anger.
It ends but it is the beginning...Frak grasps that the Nephi have yet to reveal to him all that is to be revealed. That, truly, he is to return but to yet wait...patiently wait for a Latter Day, a later time of fuller revelation.
Ascension. It is all but a flash and an enchantment—this is how the crew tells the tale of Brok’s blissful ascension to be with Our Father. A story about how Brok suddenly stands bolt upright and in the grasp of a rapture...of a moment of sublime ecstasy and visitation by Our Father... he, Brok, Wizard, chosen son, Servant...is drawn up into the clouds...ascending, evaporating in a flash of blinding light...within a crash and a boom like waves battering the ship in a fierce typhoon...so is how they remember Brok...so does Frak sanction this version of the telling—for it is not for them to remember, nor to understand. Only his...only the High Priest’s.
Only Frak’s to voyage back—to return home.
Only the High Priest’s duty to bear and guard, secure the fantastic map of the Nephi—their sacred map of Restored to Perfection—guard the unimaginable...only his to offer this map and their vision to the greater world...which he now knows from his world-circling voyage is all around him.