Writing From Prisons – Chapter 2

*Scene 01* 1:05:00 (The Beginning Marks)

Ancient Mesopotamia – 3,374 B.C.

Adam stood at the water’s edge watching the waves lap quietly along the red sand of the shore.  The clay of the land, from which he’d been created and had been given his name, was now cursed and was slowly being covered by the pale sun-bleached grains of sand pushed up from the dark bottom of the seafloor.

Since being banished from the orchards of Eden, he had noticed that the waters of the great salt sea were mingling with the freshwater of the river Pison that flowed out of the source within the Garden that was now forbidden to them.  The further away from Eden that he ranged, the more salty and bitter the waters became.

His grandson, young Hanokh, had come to him and had asked to be shown the place where he had given the animals their names, but he had to find it again to be able to take him there. He doted upon that child, and there was not much he wouldn’t do for the boy.

For two and a half days he had walked along the river’s shore seeking the place where he had been given the ability to know the names that should belong to each of the animals that crawled upon the ground and flew upon the winds in the sky.

But the river’s shape had changed and had altered its course and was swelling upon the banks with the rise and inland push of distant tides from the great sea.

The place should not have been this far, he thought to himself, but he had learned how painful departing from places he had once known could be.

Thinking of those times brought a mixture of feelings.

He sighed in a sudden wave of sadness and emotion that made his eyes wet.

Separation.

He remembered the night in which they had parted from the Presence of The One Who Gave Breath, and the immense sadness in the Words spoken to him, “Through blood, your offspring shall be born. Through blood, your body shall live and in the shedding of blood, your body shall be separated from the life breathed into you as it returns again to the ground from which I raised you, for your Life is in the Blood. Your body is but a seed, that when separated from the Vine, must fall again to the ground from which it rose and be planted and buried in death. Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust.”

Both he and the woman alone had been brought to awareness and life by the Power of The Breath.  He had not known the full meaning of the words spoken that night until the birth of his son, passing through the body of his bride. Such joy and pain that night. And much further understanding came with the death of his second son, at the hand of his first, and then it was only pain and grief.

Pondering these things again, he fell once more to his knees and wept bitterly.

“Through blood, you shall live and in the shedding of blood, your body shall be separated…” Adam whispered again the Words spoken by The One, who had loved them so greatly.

He remembered what further transpired that night of the parting. He had witnessed another separation that had clothed both he and the woman he called Havah, the mother of all living, in the death raiments of skin.

A Lamb had been slain.  Its body cut in half and separated in a pool of its draining blood.  The front half laid with its head towards the west and the back half lay to the east.

Both he and his wife were made to follow The One into the shallow red pool pouring out from the separated beast and stand as The Holy One fashioned for them the coverings of the lamb’s skin to hide their shame of being naked. They stood in and upon the blood that was shed for them.  They took the skin coverings of the Lamb that was slain because of their sin.

And from there they were taken out of the orchard of Eden to the eastern land beyond it and behind them, the way back to the ceremonial place was cut off from them in a swirl of holy fire.

Great creatures stood in charge of the fire, clothed in raiment of light, looking all about with a covering of swirling pools of eyes that flashed and spun, amid a flurry of six powerful wings.

A river of blinding fire rose up from the flashing of their limbs and the rods they bore before them blocked and forbade the way to the orchard and to the Tree of Life that overshadowed the ceremonial place where the Lamb had been slain for them and for their coverings.

They had walked along the grassy bank of the river Pishon flowing out of the Garden from a spring originating from beneath the Great Tree.

But now.  To see the fresh, sweet waters of the Pishon, mingling with the salt in the Great Sea was too much of a painful reminder of all that had been lost to them.

His third son, Seth, he’d let his wife name.  Seth was very much like him in stature and manner. He had grown so much and given him grandsons and daughters fair as their beautiful mothers.  But it was the seventh son that had given him the greatest delight.  The boy was so inquisitive and wanted to know everything that he could about what had gone before by talking with his fathers and their fathers.

But retelling the past, for Adam, was both bitter and sweet.  It was, to a mind as clear and vivid as Adam’s, essentially asking him to relive every nuanced and painful detail in stories.

But the child so loved the stories, and Adam, loving him as he did, could not deny him that delight, no matter how much personal pain might be involved.

He had told the stories to his children, and his children’s children, and as long as he walked upon the world, he knew he would continue to do so, so long as they would still listen.

And those days in which the children attentively listened had begun to change.

Adam’s own sons and daughters began to tire of hearing the stories. More and more of them failed to bring his grandchildren to see Havah and Adam because they did not want to endure hearing the tales over again.

Eventually, the attitudes of the children’s parents began to bear fruit in the attentiveness of their young. Whenever he tried to tell his grandchildren of the beginnings. The stories themselves began to be questioned and challenged.  The implications and significance of the stories began to be twisted and distorted.  More and more the children of his first son, Kayin, began to ask him, why The One had driven them all out of the Garden for merely eating a piece of fruit if all of the trees were given to them.

Adam had tried to explain to them that it wasn’t eating fruit, which caused them to have to leave, but because of choosing to eat the fruit of the tree that they had been commanded not to eat from.

But little Hanokh, delighted in the tales and would rebuke the other children for interrupting his grandfather.  He came often to see him and begged Adam to tell the tales again and again and to show him some of the places where they happened.

Upon the eighth year of the young boy’s awakening, he had asked Adam if he would take him to the places where he had named the animals and birds, and Adam had hesitantly agreed to do so if the area was still outside of the gates of fire.

The other children took Adam’s apparent reluctance to mean that Adam was not being fully honest with them about the story, and they went away laughing at little Hanokh, because he had believed the babblings of an aging old man.

When Adam heard of this, he was saddened by the cruelty of his other grandchildren and he went and found Hanokh, playing by himself.

He asked the boy why it was so important to him to see that place, and the boy had responded that he wanted to see the marks the animals had made in the ground when each had come up to him.

When asked why this was important, the boy said he wanted to know the marks that matched the names they were taught to be able to recognize each animal that had passed on the trails where he played.  He said he found that each animal had, not only a name by which it was called but a mark as well, made by its footprints.  He told Adam that he had made a game of being able to name each of his friends, who had passed him when his eyes were closed, simply by remembering their footmarks in the ground, and he wanted to be able to do that with the animals too.

Smiling upon the memory and his own amazement of the child’s inquisitive reasoning, Adam,  at last, rounded a bend on the riverbank and saw the place.  The area was covered in tracks and impressions.  Amazingly each animal had come to a stopping place as he walked down the line of the river, leaving their distinctive prints in the dried mud of the riverbank.  From what he could tell, not one of them had obscured the final prints of the others.  The thoughts returned to him–images of that moment in time–as animals of all shapes and sizes came forward to see what they were to be called. Hanokh would be delighted by the sight of this place. He had spoken the names but had not looked down at their tracks at the time.  Carefully, he now studied each one as he walked down the edge of the shore committing them to his slowing and aged memory.  Death truly had entered both he and Havah, when they had eaten of the forbidden fruit. The threat of imminent memory loss and a fading of his clarity of mind was just one of the many signs of it.

He had believed, that if Evil continued its way further into the Hearts of Men, then the loss of their means of wielding authority and dominion should mercifully be stripped away by a dulling of the sharpness of their rebellious minds. Wickedness should not be rewarded with power. If aging alone, weakened both the mind and the flesh, then the maturing of evil and rebellion were being mercifully contained by that loss of functionality and diminishment. The weakened and frail could not wield so much power over the young and strong, so its season of darkness was shortened. There was power in knowing the names of each being, an authority to summon them, a way to foster an understanding of them.

But still, there was wisdom in preserving these authoritative utterances for an unborn generation that would realize them and employ that authority for good in service back to The Giver. Only those who revered The One, and feared His coming judgments could possibly be entrusted with such knowledge.

Hanokh was one of those. Or would be, if the measure of his maturing continued to show such reverence. He looked around at the printed ground, wondering at the wisdom of placing such a high degree of responsibility upon one so young. Yet, he could almost see the joy and wonder shining in young Hanokh eyes at the joy of seeing this.  The boy showed great promise and wisdom. Perhaps his children’s children held the promise of what he had once hoped and believed would be fulfilled through Kayin’s line.

He’d made so many mistakes with Kayin. He had told the lad of the Life-Giver’s promise, and both he and Havah had raised him to believe he would be the chosen one to fulfill the crushing of the serpent’s head. But that hope failed when he’d killed his younger brother, Havel.

Kayin had fled for a time. No one knew where he had gone until many years later.

When he’d finally returned and confessed to what he’d done, he was a much different man than before.

Fearful. Less head-strong and confident, irritable, and neglectful of his family. Even the birth of his own son, could not keep him from wandering for several seasons in the wilderness alone. He’d been granted forgiveness, but he’d never really given up his frustration and hatred of himself over what he’d done. The neglect of Kayin’s family and his long seasons of self-imposed solitude was bearing bitter fruit in the lives of his own children. They resented his absence, and they largely believed The One was responsible for it. They had seen The Mark that they were told that The One had placed upon his forehead to preserve his life. An ancient mark formed by two intersecting lines. A mark they believe represented a curse, rather than a blessing. A stain upon them as his children, and upon all their children who would follow after. So it was that they became resentful of the old stories and rebelled against the warnings given in each tale.

Even now, as Kayin’s rebellious children grew into adulthood, they were using the authority of the dominion given to all of Adam’s line, to abuse the land and cruelly manipulate the animals by their callings.

But the stroke of death would eventually work its way into their minds and steal the memory of those first callings from the unlearned, and unteachable. Their inattentiveness showed in their faltering ability to pronounce the names correctly. Adam had resolved to let the lessons and the names lapse, but Hanokh persisted in trying to persuade him that the distinctive marks should be joined to the sound of their names. And if such marks could bring thoughts to men’s minds that was a good thing indeed.  It was time that these sounds and marks be used for remembrance.

Deep down, Adam knew Hanokh was right in wanting to do this.  But the names themselves should also be kept secret. He would caution the boy in this.

Hanokh wanted to use the marks and sounds to preserve the legacy of the stories he had tried to share with his recalcitrant children. If memories would eventually fade, the marks would preserve their spoken utterances against such a loss. There would be no hope for mankind if they never returned as individuals to give all honor and fear due to The One. The separation would become an ever-widening gulf between The One and His creation and even the promised hope of a redeemer may eventually become lost, without memory of the stories.

If the rebellious ones would not learn early the lessons of their fathers by the cautions given, eventually the pain of their own experiences would drive them back to seek it again.

If the children of Kayin ceased to listen to the old stories and faithfully teach them to their own generations, then the histories and the lessons would be lost to all those coming after.

The stories must be preserved, and he would do everything in his power to help young Hanokh to make the signs to ensure they always would be.

The hidden stories of their old life with The Breath-Giver may one day prove to be the very key to unlock the dying minds of mankind. And eventually set them free from their own entombment within the prison halls of their covenant with death.

*Scene 2* 4:16 (The Old Hillside Cabin)

It took us longer than expected to work our way up from the beachfront. Two hours of traveling in the twilight, but we are beyond the reach of the sea fogs. I remember making the trip in much less time in my younger days, but then I was not the one leading a company. Jeremiah was.

Thinking of the days of journeying with him, I felt shamed for my prior arrogance in second-guessing his decisions when I was not the one bearing the responsibility of followers. My perspective now is much different from this side. Perhaps a lot of the suspicion in the group is only natural, but still, it feels threatening and like the payback I well deserve for my part in undermining him those many years ago.

After another hour or so, I recognize the route to the abandoned property I had once known well. It lay just off the silver road, about a quarter of a mile in, near the stream and among some of the low hills.  A series of rocky mounds, really. There had once been a small hamlet or village within walking distance, but back then it was only comprised of about four or five farming families. Their lands and fields bordered each other, but there is little to be seen of that now.

There is a stillness that lies like a shroud over the area. I hear only a huff of a mournful breeze and the slight gurgling noise of a nearby river or brook singing a quiet dirge into the night.

The dugout cabin I am interested in is just ahead. Always build near a clean water source, my father had said.

As we get closer, I can just make out a sod roof and a mossy stone chimney with what seems to be the slightest curl of silver smoke twining its way upwards.  Probably just rising river mists drifting along the hill creating the illusion. But it is still there.  Just where I remember it being.  A small, weathered stone and waddle cottage, built into the brow of a hillside. The hillside cabin in the valley is partially swallowed by embankments.  There may be two or three more dugout hovels huddled into the shoulder of the hillside. But it is hard to tell in the gloom.

I vaguely remember it in more pleasant times.  One might even imagine that we are approaching the peaceful village of Hobbiton, happily situated in the sunken green valley of The Shire until they get a little closer.

My heart sinks as the shadows of the moving clouds above, part to bathe it in a pale wash of ghostly moonlight.

The place is falling apart.  Barely liveable.  But twenty-one years of neglect will do that.

Weathered grass occludes the path to it, barely visible now under the lingering silvery moonlight. It was never more than a hermitage-sort of existence. Nothing fancy. But functional. Sturdily built. Kept the rain off and the cold out. Not much more than one might ask for.

I had not expected visitors and I was pretty sure none of this company would be impressed by it. The cabin was barely large enough for me, much less anyone else.

If we crowded, it might serve for two or three of the girls, but not much else. We’d mostly have to shelter in the grotto around the bend, or the old cruck house stable, but the latter was always prone to attract rats and other vermin. The grotto would have to do.

The window is caked with ages of dust, but there is an odd, but faint flickering light within. The light smoke curl I saw coming out of the chimney was more than mist.

I was stunned for a moment, but I guess I should have expected it though.

Some squatter must have taken up residence there in my absence.

“What are we doing here, Mr. Brian?” a voice asks, startling me.

“Coming home,” I mutter, “Sort of, anyway.”

*Scene 3* 8:27 (Haunted Occupant)

“What is this place?”

“Long ago, it was called Bacia. Now it has no name.”

Memories lingered of how the place used to be, before the event that finally drove me away from the Mid-World. Creeper vines now covered most of the cabin, sending their chute roots into the cracks within the stone and into fissures in the waddle of the walls. I had planted a grapevine and originally planned to cover the outerwall with a trellis to camouflage it from the distance, but what I had failed to accomplish in my design planning, nature accomplished in the space of time through my stalled neglect. The creeper vines, however were a mix of wild ivy, thornbriar and kudzo, neither of which bore any fruit.

“Is that a light inside that old shack?”

The light on the dusty pane suddenly brightened, casting a warm yellow glow out into the gloomy night. Whoever was inside had likely moved away from blocking the hearth fire, allowing it to cast is full radiance towards the cabin’s sole window.

“Shouldn’t we see who is inside? Maybe they can recommend a good hotel.”

A light chuckle followed, but I turned and urged the group to keep quiet.

“Let me check it out. Please keep quiet for all of our sakes. There are residents here in the Mid-World that one does not safely meet in the night.”

“What is this Mid-World place?  What’s it in the middle of?”

“Middle of nowhere is what I’d say,” someone muttered.

“Uh! Do you have to be such a tool?!” one of the girls turned on the speaker.

“Hey, get off my case!” the respondent shot back, “It’s the middle of the night and we are tired and cold, and this guy knows something and hasn’t given us any explanations for what we are all doing here and why.”

“All of this will be explained in time,” I said trying to placate them for a bit longer, “Give me a chance to see who’s in the cabin. It may be okay, but I need you all to wait right here and keep quiet so we don’t rouse him unnecessarily.”

One of the taller men of the group came to my aid.

“I’ll keep them quiet. Go check it out. We’ll all be right here. We’ve nowhere else to go anyway.”

I slightly grip his arm in gratitude, thankful for any offer of assistance.

Miray tugged my pant leg, and whined plaintively, “I want to go with you.”

“I know you do, Miray. But I need you to stay with the others right now. Let me make sure it’s safe first.”

“Awright,” she conceded grudgingly with a short pout on her face.

I then turned and stealthily approach the cabin window in an ambling crouch.

It may have been a mistake to build the window on the southside corner of the cabin, but that was the only place where one could see the trail through the hills from the inside. Enemies roved these lands,  so it was not good to be caught complete unaware. The stone construction of the cabin and its backing was rooted into the hillside. The door had been reinforced and was make of solid and thick oak, mounted on hammered metal hinges. Costly in these lands, but worth it. The beams holding the ceiling were of stout timber fitted into carved tongue and groove notches. The cabin appeared humble and impoverished from the outside, by design, but it was as stout a structure as I could make in these lands, and its smallness added to its hidden strength. The window was mullioned, but comprised of a thick-paned glass, forged, melted and molded from the fine-grained sands of the very same seashore we had just quitted earlier in the day.

In daylight, the sun’s light never glinted off the glass. But at night, the hearth fire shown like a lighthouse beacon into the misty night. I was never one for adding frills and décor, but at last, I realized the practicality of having curtains and shutters. An oversight on my part, that was moot now.

My new erstwhile tenant appears to live like a prisoner in the home.  The old yard appears overgrown with brush and weeds.  Neglected, but towards the end of my stay I did the same, so I couldn’t very well fault him for it. There is but the faint remnants of a garden growing wild with weeds and thorn bushes.  A rat scurries and forages furtively seeking the remnants of long rotted vegetables and fruits that the garden once yielded in more prosperous and safer times.  A broken gate and crumbling stone wall barely outline the property’s borders.  There is a flagstone path with dusty footprints leading down the embankment to the river.  No grass grows upon that patch of blighted soil, scattered with ash, and withered by heat and fire.

As I quietly approach the small window near the edge of the house and lean forward to peer inside, I notice I am not alone. Despite what the tall man had assured me, the others had broken ranks and followed behind me up to the edge of the house.  They crowded around me now as we leaned up to peer through the dusty window.

Inside, there is what appears to be a man.  I say that because not all appearances here are truly what them seem to be. His back is facing us.  He is sopping wet from head to foot.  His shoulders are wrapped in a tatter and moth-eaten blanket and he sits before a small fire in the hearth.  We can just see the flickering glow around his body and through a jagged hole in the blanket between his arms.  He shivers slightly for the night outside is cold.  It does not appear much warmer in the cabin for the fire in the stone hearth is small. The flickering firelight reflects in the wet puddles that trail from the hard-packed cabin floor stool where the man sits near the cabin door.  He must’ve just come in from a plunge in the nearby gurgling river we were hearing a moment ago.  It does not look like it was a deliberate swim for his clothes, what we can see of them, appear to be that of a day laborer.  His mud-caked boots lay crumpled next to the fireplace on the left in a slowly evaporating mirror of water.  Under such circumstances, I would think he would be miserable and disgusted with himself for foolishly falling in, but he is not.  He is humming quietly to himself.  The humming has a pleasant, magical quality about it.  It is rustic and pleasant but melancholy.  Reflective, as is the flickering firelight.

The domestic tableau appears strikingly familiar to me. Only the perspective is radically different. Then I noticed that the edges of the room inside the cabin seemed to have a liquid ripple and I draw in a gasping breath.

Oh no. Not now! Not now! Not now! My mind races.

I suddenly wished none of the others had followed. That the tall man had been able to keep them all back. But I realized that to do so, they would have to gain a little more trust in my good intentions for them than I taken the time to show.

They were about to be thrust into their second shocking immersion of this day, without warning or explanation, and I was not ready to explain it even on a good day.

A rude and disturbing quirk of the mysterious nature of the Mid-World. A fracture in the linear sequencing, or even moreso, a bending curl in it, compliments of The Marker Stone.

It had come as quite a shock to us on our first experience of it, but at least we had been warned what to expect.

Jeremiah and many of the others had called the effect a glimpse or a temporal projection.

It only happened with Surface Worlders. Or I should say, Surface Worlders who had committed to the calling of the Stone Quests by voluntarily giving their own names to it.

I simply called the phenomenon…a ripple in the time pool.

*Scene 4* 14:01 (The Man Under the River)

Something that felt like an invisible rogue wave passed through the glass and engulfed us and washed over us. Lifting and shifting us into a kind of mental connection with the cabin’s occupant.

With in any other place but the Mid-World reach, that was not possible.  I say that with no degree of certainty, but I cannot exclude the strong possibility that it is more prone to happen within the legendary country of Excavatia, The Hidden Kingdom.  It is even probable that it happens here because the effect comes from the hidden connections with and flowing influence from that mysterious kingdom.

It is rare to experience it in the Surface World at such strength as it occurs in the Mid-World. And if the wave comes from Excavatia, it is liable to be that much more stronger felt there. There is an acient Greek word that approximates it:

κοινωνία – pronounced /koi – non- eeuh/ koinonia.

As the wave and the mental ties that bind us together form, my companions and I look at each other in shock.  We can hear the man’s thought, speaking through his experience in memory as if he is the defacto narrator.

It comes into us as a first-person narrative as if we are there with him in that recently past series of moments leading up to this time we are observing through the panes of glass.

He seems strangely disconnected from the experience like he is recounting a dream as both participant and observer.  Yet we are immersed in it, experiencing it with him as vicarious and unwitting captives within his own body.

His story begins thus…

The Man Under the River – Story #1

I am chained to a boulder at the bottom of a deep river.  With each convulsing spasm I take in a little more of the river, and watch yet a little more of my failing breath escape my lips and nostrils;  Fleeing away from me in ascending bubbles to the marbled ceiling of water in motion under twinkling twilight.  I feel compelled that I must breathe in the river and let go, but I cannot.  I panic as death’s enshrouded hand beckons me, through the wavering waves.  Surrender to the inevitable.  Succumb to the silence and the deep.  You will never be found.  Sleep.  Sleep and all will be quiet soon.  The pearling water above soothes me, entices me to close my eyes against the grainy wet sanding my skin.  To let my own tears mingle with the water unnoticed, and fade to oblivion…Elysium.  So close to it.  Minutes and seconds away.  I relax against the chains, feeling slightly buoyant against the river’s tugging.  Then I see the slight glimmer of the golden key, inches from my manacled hand.  Grains of sand swirl around it.  Trying to obscure its sheen from catching the purling light on the water’s surface several feet above.  Had my eyes closed I would never have seen it.  That chance gleaming.  That whisper of light among settling silts and feathered green.  I stretch and reach where it might have been, feeling only the wet muck, and moss, and liquid sound of muffled stones scraping against others.  I grope blindly among wet clicks and chinks of current driven stones, and rising swirls of silt but…Nothing.

All is lost, all is…wait.  A flat surface, grooved ridges and a short set of teeth with no bite.   The key is in my fingers, in my hand.  I carefully cup and close my hand around it.  My fist tightens, my breath escapes a little more.  Seconds to the final dark and cool silence.  I feel along my manacles searching for the pad lock.  What if the key is only a mere twig or stick, teasing my oxygen starved mind with false hope?  What if it is a key, but it does not belong to this family of locks.  Angered to energy I think, then I shall MAKE this fit.  My fingers ache around this key, I have fisted them into numbness, and I shall never be able to find the key hole, much less turn the locking mechanism with this darkness closing in.  My other hand finds the metal knuckle holding me in chains with its own iron fisted grip.  Carefully I unclasp my aching hand.  Darkness outlines my watery vision.  The palm is in shadow, I cannot see if my treasured hope is golden or wooden.  Cold.  My fingers feel numbed and cold.  The currents begin to lift the thing from my hand to bury this treasure once again beyond my reach.  I close and clasp it between two parts of me that I believe to be my fingers, yet I can no longer feel them.  I am dizzy from this swirling, wet grainy darkness engulfing me.  I draw my hands together with weak spasms.  The water enters my lung, and my ears pound and throb.  The promise of quiet is a lie.  By some miracle the blind fumbling hands clasp the hope of the key and the ominous lock together into a last prayer…that is answered.  The piece I hold in my fingers finds peace.  It enters the tomb of the lock.  It turns the insides of sure death out of its once sure resting place.  Each groove disturbs its smug metal confidence that its hold upon my chains are forever and certain.  Its grasp upon them is wrenched free with a muffled pop, though silent to anyone near, has the effect of a watery explosion in my throbbing temples.  The bolt turns and the first link drops free.  I cough in water.  Light flares behind my eyelids.  Water fills my nostrils.  My sinuses ignite with inner unseen fire.  Death no longer tempts or beckons.  It seizes me with bony hands to flow down into its stygian crossing.  The faint sounds of metal links rattling against the rocks, give a staccato to my dance with death.  At last surrender compels me and I drift toward it.  Down…up?  I’ve lost all sensation of direction.  My limbs trail my torso, and I join the flotsam of the river.  I feel its cold clasp.  My body spins listlessly.  The water’s skin separates.  The night of my death is cold and windy…and so like that of my birth.  The wind…is…cold.  The wind.  The Ruach stirs me.  My head and my body land upon the Rock.  I am where I wasn’t.  Where I couldn’t have been.  The river leaves me in a series of wet grainy coughs that both hurt and heal.  In the light of the moon I begin to feel the clasp of my hands and fingers and toes again.  The wind is warming the wet away.  The river flows down to trickling brooks and springs from my hair and clothes.  The reflective light of the lunar surface shines silver upon me, and my eyes blink tears, salt and silt, as I stare at the silver cross pen clasped between my cold fingers and I know at last what I am meant to do.

The puddles on the floor are drying now as the story-teller leans forward to add more kindling to the fire.  He is holding something small in his hands.  Turning it over and over, but we cannot clearly see what it is, because his body blocks us.  His clothes are drying slowly but measurably and it won’t be but a moment before he turns and sees the collection of voyeurs peering in at him through the dusty window.  Quickly but stealthily we retreat from the cabin to resume our nightly journey.  We do not want to scare the man after his ordeal in the river, but we do need to know and remember his brief account for consideration.

When we reach a far enough distance, the tall woman who had gone back and walked with the little dark-haired girl, asked me, “What just happened to us, back there?!  How is it even possible to see what that man experienced?  Shouldn’t we help him in some way?”

“There is a lot of experiences you will find to be different here.  This place has its own rules about what is possible, and rules for what we Surface Worlders can and cannot do.  He is exactly in the place he needs to be right now, without our interference.”

“Interference?! What…I don’t know how you can even say that?!  Don’t you even care what he’s been through?”

“More than you could possibly even know.  And what I know…from experience…is that the timing of any help we may be able to offer him is just as critical as anything we could say or do for him.  Sometimes you just have to leave them be and let them work things out for themselves.  You cannot be a substitute savior for everyone you encounter.  There is wisdom in the waiting.”

“I don’t understand you…  Brian, is it?”

“Yes,” I responded quietly.

“You will in time.  Be patient.”

She sighed, shaking her head.

I then turned to the group, “We’ve all had a long tiring walk.  It’s cold and we are still wet from being in the surf.  I imagine we could all use some rest, but we needed to get this far to be beyond the reach of the sea fogs.  The night wind pushes over the grade and this declivity is a little warmer under the brow of that crest.  There is a short gulley around the garden—a place where we can shelter for a bit and a hidden cache of supplies we will need for the journey ahead.  Follow me, and I will tell you what the man’s story means in context, while we catch a breather.  Perhaps we can get some warmer clothes and get a small fire going.  It’s not much further now.”

Miray had lagged back a little when we approached the cabin, but she came forward and took my hand now, signifying again her readiness to brave the journey and support my leadership in it.  I whispered a silent prayer of thanks to The One for giving me such a comfort in the unpretentious trust of this precious little red-haired angel.

*Scene 5* 7:06 (The Buried Beast Below)

The subliminal wave, thought only to have been localized within the vicinity of the hillside cabin, descended downward through layers of dirt, granite and limestone, penetrating the Mid-World substrata like a seismic tremor in the aftershock of an earthquake. The digging Beast, far below, felt its effect slam into its form and disorient its senses until it could no longer feel the pull towards the called one. Its ice-blue eye blinked into the darkness. Its mental view of the landscape above darkled, and dimmed, as its connection with its walking agent lost power.

It recognized the cause.

Koinonia. The divine fellowship of knowing another, even as one is known.

Only the presence of Surface Worlders, walking upon the Mid-World grounds above could have inadvertently brought and evoked such stressors with them. They did not belong here. They did not know what power might flow through them at any given moment from the far land of Excavatia and from The Throne of The One.

Their awareness of this middle-ground place was unwanted and dangerous. Insight and introspection were anathema, to the dark kingdoms who ruled here. Better to be left alone to allow the natural parasitic influence to grow and gain strength. This was the ceded right of dominion given to all Princes of The Fallen. They gave it away to The Shining One ages ago.

Surface Worlders were unwitting and meddling agents of a potential Parallax in this place.

Parallax – A word derived from the Ancient Greek παράλλαξις (parallaxis), meaning ‘alternation’. A shift in viewpoint. A tearing away from the worldviews of the natural state, which would secure them to their certain damnation, toward the risk of an illumined and elevated view tinted by the shine of Hope in the promise of that Hidden country, Excavatia.

A worldview that, if truly grasped, would upend all of the Kingdoms of The Dark.

So mankind, and all like him should always be cowed into silence and ignorance. From time’s beginning, that had been the one primal directive.

Darken the minds of men. Turn them away from the light, and so darken their lives until they could be swallowed up by him and the Princes like him. All creatures who collectively bore the name of Sheol-The Waiting Grave.

The wave had left the Beast in shock and weakened. It could no longer dig forward, without first gaining strength from sustenance. What was given to it in the cave upon the beach was sweet and invigorating, but it was only a small morsel considering its relative bulk and size.

It needed human blood. Lots of it. For the life of The Breath was infused within the blood of mankind and very few of them even recognized it. Their tiny, frail, and insignificant bodies bore the myriad touches of The Breath of The One. Their blood was rich in the effects of It. Each pin-pricked drop was imbued with sacred power that beckoned the Heart of The One who gave them its infusion. And that infusion gave Life that resisted Death’s war campaign within them, so long as those creatures breathed and did not consciously close the doors of opportunity to find Excavatia.

Excavatia, that land from which they had been banished, these ungrateful flesh-creatures still had a connection to and, if they were willing, they had a path back towards Hope. Its resentment of this fueled its hatred of them, and its growing hunger.

It lifted it’s thorn-spired head, raking the ceiling of its tunnel, shifting its muscular neck from side to side, allowing sand and rock to fall down and shear off either side of its razor-edged scales, and bony spine.

Its senses slightly sharpened.

It was feeling other sensations from the surface ground not connected with the group it had been pursuing.

It’s rock-rimmed nostrils, behind its plow-curved and hooked beak, flared, sensing the salts of human sweat and could hear the vibrations of the furtive movements of others far above it. Quite footfalls, rustling through dried grass. Of humankind but not those of the Surface World.

It perceived them with a supernatural smell not limited to the miasma of fragrances bore along upon the air currents.  It could recognize the characteristic stink of humans even through the black vacuum of space. The taste of rotted, worm-ridden human flesh, it had savored and salivated over long ago, when it had been given its leave to burst from beneath and seize the families of Korah, Dathan and Abiram below the layered sediment track of the Negev desert in the Amorite wilderness of Zin, near Hormah, when it had dwelling in the Surface World.

The called leader and his brother then had been off-limits, then to. When it had tried to rise and take the Holy incense, the Breath of The One had resisted it and scorched it with Holy Fire, banishing it into the Void between worlds.  (See Nu. 16:23-35)

With a rumbling growl, boiling out from the bellows of its inner fires, it shifted in frustration. Its senses were growing acute and agitated. Its massive, fang-rigged jaws thrust and sawed upward. Its pulsing hide suppurated an oily substance from between its countless, glistening scales that would soften the ground, and ease its massive passage through the tunnel it was boring towards the insufferable sound of the amplified footsteps, and the pulsing sounds of pumping human blood and beating hearts growing louder, taunting its tastes for it. There was only one way to make the noises cease and slake its raging hungers–and it determined to do something about that.

*Scene 6* 17:35 (Parallax at the Grotto)

I lead them to a small grotto and produce an old key from my pocket, that I had secretly palmed from along the window sill while we were watching the man within.  Along the edge of the shallow grotto cupola cave, there was a gathering of dried tumbleweed-like plants, appearing as if they had been blown there and collected in the notch.  I thrust my hand into the dried brush and found a lever-release within and lifted an old wooden panel, with the brush affixed to it.  Inside the alcove was a padlocked strongbox, with rope handles that I had the stouter boys and men help me drag out into the open.  With some effort, I unlocked the rusty padlock and sprung the catch.

Inside the box were thirty dusty packs, sort of rucksacks, that could be carried by a strap over a person’s shoulder.  I handed them out to the group one by one, leaving some remaining within the box for another time and purpose.  With those distributed, I directed them to an area in the center of the grotto cupola and we lifted a large flat slate-stone that had been buried by dust over time.  Beneath the stone was a shallow-dug bowl pale white with dried ash and coals long dead.

When we had all settled down and a campfire had been coaxed into the dug bowl out of dead sticks and hastily gathered, dried scrub-grass, I began to connect the man’s experience with a much more ancient tale.

“Long ago there was a man named Paul.  He was given the name Saul by his parents which he wore into manhood and into prominence as a member of the highly educated and respected group of leaders in the community called Pharisees.  Something would happen to him on a dark, lonely road to Damascus that would forever change his life.  He would be blinded and then have his sight miraculously restored by one of a heretical sect whom he had sworn to expose and bring to justice.  Throughout the course of his ministry, he would be placed under house-arrest for 2 years, beaten repeatedly by opposing groups, dragged outside of the city and stoned and left for dead after which he rose up, dusted himself off and continued with his mission.  He would be dragged into courts with a death sentence of heresy hanging over his head.  He would be hauled before a Roman court as a seditionist.  He would be shipwrecked, swim to an island only to be bitten by a poisonous serpent.  He would be repeatedly thrown into dark stone prisons under both Jewish and Roman guards.  He would be flogged with whips just stopping short of killing him.  He would be mocked, ridiculed, falsely accused, betrayed by trusted friends, disappointed and abandoned by fellow ministers, spat on and called on to become his own defense attorney against a stacked court and a king hostile to his cause.  He would travel far from his homeland and suffer harsh weather conditions and scorching heat and thirst and ultimately beheaded for his new and radical calling.  Modern scholars pontificating on his writing ignorantly scoff at him as a sexist, bigot, advocate of slavery.  They smugly do not investigate the context of his society nor the radical manner of elevating others (man, woman, Jew and Gentile) to equal status before a Holy, Creator God who gave each person significance.  They fail to see his radical arc of change from a person rooted in myopic tradition and slavish follower of “holy” men to the Divine perspective that all have fallen short of the glory and standards of God.  That there is only One who has been and forever will be holy and pure and blameless and without error.  And that by virtue of His sacrifice for our terminal state we can have that exchanged to a new life where we receive payment for our death sentence.  His qualities can then be imbued upon us when we let Him live through us.  A radical departure from the hubris of believing that by self-effort we can become holy.

“It strikes me, however, that much of the writings we have surviving antiquity that has become part of the canon of Scripture were penned during Paul’s incarceration in a badly lit, prison cell, smelling of decaying straw, human sweat, excrement and piss.  Clearly, not an ideal setting for writing anything or conducive to positively impacting others living in relative freedom many miles away.  It is ironic that Paul’s attitude was continually thinking of others and the furtherance of his calling to act as an ambassador to Christ.  He certainly had enough causes, humanly, for us to understand feeling sorry for himself and unenthusiastic about his effectiveness.  But he didn’t.  He sang praise songs in the darkness of his cold prison cell of sub-human conditions.  Though shackled by cold metal chains, hand, and feet to a cold prison floor, he was a man whose soul had become free of his former chains of self-importance.  Despite the outward appearance and the abuse he suffered, he was a man whom no human could completely contain, silence or imprison again.

“So, the thought comes to me, considering both stories of these men, what is my own calling.  What is yours?  Do you feel like you are drowning at the bottom of a passing river of time, chained to a figuratively submerged boulder of your own circumstances?  What is it that weighs you down, that keeps you from expressing your voice or lending your talents to your calling?  Are the conditions not ideal for you or the timing just not right for your pursuit of the dream that calls you to act?  To take that first step of obedience?  Do you feel overwhelmed by the thoughts and wonder if you should just surrender yourself to the river?  To meekly open your mouth and swallow and be swallowed by oblivion and a life lived with no purpose?  I don’t.  I will not surrender to the surroundings of my encroaching circumstances.  I will not let the river of time steal my last few gulps of air or let the smell and stench of the prison cell so diminish my hopes that I can never see outside of the stone walls that presently confine me.  I do have a gift and am given talents that are tools to be used for a higher calling.  I must learn to see outside of my confinement.  Learn to write under the smallest beam of moonlight that somehow made its way through the small open-air window at the top of my prison cell.  Most of the Apostle Paul’s writings of Scripture were done under much more abysmal conditions than I could ever imagine.  Each person here has been given a gift, a skill, an aptitude, and a talent to do something well.  You were entrusted with that gift as an equipping for your life’s calling.  If you are not using that gift, you may feel that you are imprisoned and bound under a rapidly moving river of time passing all around you.  You may feel close to surrendering hope of ever expressing yourself through that gift and feel compelled to just be drowned by the river around you.  Don’t.  Resist it.  Conditions will never be ideal as long as you continue to use them as an excuse for inaction.  There are enemies and monsters in this world and in the surface world who have a stake in your failure.  Don’t let them win.  This is just one of the many battles you need to fight.  The war is not limited only to the battles you have lost so far.  It is time for you to take up your armor.  To strap on each piece with a fierce determination to not let those creatures of impediment win this day.  Your gift was given to help set you free.  To be expressed.  To be honed and polished and sharpened into a razor’s edge.  Your gift was meant to be used under your calling from the Highest Authority.  You are equipped by your willingness and your obedience to that calling.  The One who gave you that gift has a purpose for you in doing so.

“Faithful [is] He that calleth you, who also will do [it].”  [1Thessalonians 5:24]

“Did you get that?  Do not look at yourself as the one who by their own efforts must make your gift lead to success in your calling.  The “Writer from Prison”, St. Paul, wrote:

“12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;” [1Ti 1:12 KJV]

“Who hath saved us, and called [us] with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,” [2Ti 1:9 KJV]

“17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” [2 Timothy 3:17 NLT]

“21 may He equip you with all you need for doing his will. May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him. All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.” [Hebrews 13:21 NLT]

“29 That’s why I work and struggle so hard, depending on Christ’s mighty power that works within me.” [Colossians 1:29 NLT]

“Did you catch a recurring theme here?  God equips those He calls.  God empowers those who actualize those gifts by being obedient to that calling for which they were given.

“If you are reconciled to Christ, you are then given what no person, on their own efforts, can achieve.

“19 For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, 20 and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross. 21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.”  [Col 1:19-22, NLT]

“You are made perfect, righteous and holy.  You are called, equipped, gifted and prepared for the journey ahead of you.  Actualize it by taking the first step.

“13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” [Philippians 4:13 KJV]

“Do not be surprised, though when in taking that first bold step, you are challenged by opposition.  There are people in your life that might resent your calling.  They will falsely accuse you of being selfish.  Not faithfully attending to their needs, wants and desires because you dare to do something, they did not give you permission or encouragement for.  The hardest part of that challenge will be if you suddenly discover that the very people you thought would be supportive of you and cheer you in courageously pursuing your calling, instead view it as foolishness.  But remember Who it was that gave you your gifts and consequently the calling that goes with it.  The choice is yours.  Do you obey the One ready to equip you, or do you let others stand in your way and consign you back to the boulder you were once chained to under the river of your life experiences?  You can only please and serve one master.  There is only one capable of empowering you and sustaining you.  The next step on the journey will require courage and define what you will be. Listen again to the “Writer from Prison”:

“10 But you, Timothy, certainly know what I teach, and how I live, and what my purpose in life is. You know my faith, my patience, my love, and my endurance. 11 You know how much persecution and suffering I have endured. You know all about how I was persecuted in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra–but the Lord rescued me from all of it. 12 Yes, and everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. 13 But evil people and impostors will flourish. They will deceive others and will themselves be deceived. 14 But you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you.” [2 Timothy 3:10-14 NLT]

The group pondered these words silently, each thinking about them in a personal way.

One raised his hand tentatively, a little less of the bravado showing than that he’d demonstrated on the road.

“Mister Brian, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but is this what we are to expect going forward?  Some sort of Bible study devotional kind of thing as we go on this quest you tell us about?”

One of the others cast the young man an annoyed look, but I nodded and spoke softly, “It’s a fair question.  I do that from time to time.  I do beg your patience with me.  I’m new to this kind of helping in these quests.  I tend to see connections with things I cannot pass up.  This quest is as much a challenge to who I am and how I perceive myself as it will be to any of you choosing to go further.  My worldview and perspective come from my faith in God, and I’ve found that this view is the only one that grounds me while walking through this Mid-World place.   You all are welcome to have a different view, but I would hope you would allow whichever one you arrive at, at the end of the journey, to be seasoned by open-mindedness and experience.   I do have experience here.  A history of being part of another quest many years ago.  I was just as new to this world as you are now and a lot of it did not make any more sense to me then as I may be making to you now.  If you will indulge me, though, I will try to help all of you as I can.  I do not view myself as any better than any of you, but what I do have here is history.  Fair enough?”

The young man nodded and said, “Fair enough,” and the others nodded their assent as well.  It wasn’t a full-on commitment, but at that point, I was willing to take the concession gratefully.

They each began to explore the rucksacks I had given them, and many pulled out a thick, rolled blanket-like cloak from inside.  With the chill seeping over the hillside and adding a bite in the air, they were grateful for the warmth its thick woolen weave provided, even though it had taken on a bit of a musty smell in storage.  They found a short torch within the sack, with wrapped oiled-rags on one end and a smooth shaft rounded at the bottom on the other.  Other sundry items were provided, but many had degraded over time and had to be discarded.

“Do the people here in this place eat much?” another young man asked me after rummaging around in his sack, finding nothing he could hope to munch on.

“They do,” I assured him, “but there is not much out here in the wilds of the coastal lands.  There is a place I hope to take you all to tomorrow.  We can get more supplies there and perhaps a very good meal and a few beds.  The man is a friend of mine.”  Then I muttered something that I perhaps should have kept to myself, “At least, I still hope he is.”

I caught him staring at me and I shrugged.

He leaned back with a sigh, “Great.  Just great.”

*Scene 7* 8:57 (The Sound and Fury)

The trip overland had taken a toll on the group. They were hungry, confused and exhausted. I couldn’t blame them. Not a good combination for beginning any lengthy and grueling endeavor, but I had no choice but to hold the revelations that would need to be made until I could bring them first to The Marker Stone. The place and the circumstances we found ourselves in together all seemed to make more sense there, standing before its massive stone face and seeing the living words written in it.

We slept for a few hours.

The campfire, at last gaining enough of the fed fuel to warm up the inner circle of our younger travelers, while the older ones lay in the outer ring, still chilled but warmed enough by the cloaks we had unpacked.

It had been no more than six hours give or take when, in the distance, we hear a terrible noise echoing in the foothills beyond us.

I assumed that one of the legendary monsters known to lurk in these wild lands must have captured another victim.

The plaintive cries are pitiable and the savage roars were terrible. The hauntingly resound over the hillsides, rebounding in canyons and arroyos and through the streets of abandoned homesteads and ghostly townships, over dried and weedy fields and through vacant crumbling and weather-worn stone structures. Despite who the victims may be or the terrible deeds they might have done in life, hearing those sounds of such brutality and the dying screams of the victims are almost too horrible to bear.

This journey to through the Mid-World to find the gates of Excavatia is not one for the faint of heart.

I start to rouse the others, but a quick survey showed that they had been awakened by the terrible noises too. Anxious glances were cast from side to side, seeking the source of the conflict, but the echoes of it came from all around us.

Miray scampered across from her sleeping place and hung fiercely to me, burying her head in to my shoulder as I took her up into my arms.

“What IS that?!” asked one, twisting her head from side to side, trying to discover which direction the sounds were coming from.

“What’s going on?!” asked another bolting upright.

Some of the younger men and girls gathered some of the stowed firewood, and brandished them as makeshift weapons, ready to ward off whatever was making such terrible noises.

“Did something hurt that man from last night?!” the tall, blonde woman asked, throwing an accusing look my way.

I gave her a measured look, and said, “He’s quite safe for now. Don’t worry about him. I am more concerned that something may have followed inland us from the shore.”

I could not tell them more than that. My speculation was mere conjecture at this point, though not an unprecedented occurrence. Just a nagging feeling I had, from the past experiences. In either case, it was an strong indicator that we needed to get moving and quickly.

If what I suspected was over that rise, I had encountered something of its kind before, and this crew of travelers was not ready for it. I hadn’t been either, but that tale is for another time.

There was no way to tell them that beasts they would encounter here were not what they might expect to find back in the Surface World.  There were many dangerous fiends to choose from. Some of which were not entirely animal, and that distinction made them even more dangerous than just that of any man-killing brute beast.  The half-animal in them did not behave in a predictable nature, nor did the deadly intelligence behind their bestial visage.

This thing was not some wild creature protecting its territory or driven to confront man because of the mere hunger for meat and blood, of that I was certain. These things fed on fear and I could not give in to that now, or I knew I would be drawing it right to us. We had to get moving. We had to get to the place that would make what I had to tell them clearer. Those who followed me needed a miraculous sign to compel them to consider the possibility of something beyond their human experience. They need to see The Marker.

“What are we gonna do?” one of the men asked, “Can we stand together and fight it?”

“We need to stay calm and get moving,” I said, “This is no place to make that kind of stand. We need to get the young ones to safety.”

“Where are we going?!” one asked.

“I cannot tell you that just yet. You’ll have to follow me. I have an old friend that lives in a small village just beyond the valley, I mentioned him last night. We should make it there before mid-day, sooner if we can avoid the Xarmnian patrols and the others.”

I began to quickly gather and stow the items I had pulled from the rucksack I had taken for myself.

“Others?!  What ARE these others?!  Why are you being so mysterious?”

“Please, I need you to pack quickly. Gather anything you have pulled out of the rucksacks I gave you. You can either follow me or find your way back to the beach. It’s your choice. But staying here is not an option, I would recommend.”

“You must be out of your mind!!” an older man spat angrily, “Go back?! Where can we go? We left the beach and whatever it was that brought us here. I am staying right here until we figure out what that noise is?”

I sighed, exasperated, and trying hard to rein in my temper, knowing that each minute wasted in argument and rising tension would draw the creatures we heard in the distance right to us.

I set Miray down on her feet and said, “Go get your pack. Hurry!”

“Brian, we need answers! We need them right now!”

I stood and turned, facing the man, “The sea fog has passed. They never stay too long in the daylight hours. The road we took in is just over the rise there. If anyone told you that it would be safe coming here, that being part of a quest would be all adventure and thrills. They were or are lying to you. These are dangerous lands. What is happening here is difficult to explain with giving you more context and evidence for what this place truly is. I myself am terrified too. But I am committed to seeing this quest through.”

“Seriously dude, we just want to know what’s going on back there.”

“You will have to trust me. It is too soon. If it sees you, locks eyes with you, that could be the last nightmare image you see before your mind shuts down.”

“You are welcome to stay the course with me, as I value your company. But you must be up for it. I will tell you all that is at stake at the appropriate time and place, but right here and right now is neither. In a crunch situation, I need to know now whether I can count on you or if you will turn and run to save your own skin. The start of this journey was not that long ago, so if you choose you should be able to find your way back. But as for me, I’m pressing on. The main road is that way,” I pointed towards the south which would join the road heading back to the eastern sea and the oculus gate.

“But I will be headed that way,” I pointed forcibly to the northwest and the sloped hill rising up to the highlands, “Come with me now…or you will soon see what is causing that noise, and by then it will be too late to decide.”

They were stunned by my sudden loss of patience, but I could not help it. I was angry with myself for what I was unable to tell them and frustrated by their understandable lack of trust. But I knew we could delay no longer.

I came over and helped Miray with her sack and cinched up the top and placed it over her shoulder, crossing the leather ties in front, hoping it would not be too heavy for her to carry and move quickly.

The others finally followed suit and we snuffed out the campfire, moved the slate stone back over the fire-pit and scattered dust and sand over it as quickly as we could.

We’d pushed the strongbox back into the alcove and pulled and lock the bush camouflaged panel back down in the evening, so it was one less thing we had to do before resuming our journey.  A light wind was blowing down the slope and the loose dust and gravel around our hastily exited campsite would hopefully be erased in short order.  There were many of both mankind and beast here in the Mid-World who would not be very happy to know that Surface Worlders had returned to walk their lands.  For reasons not clear to me, our kind in transit through the oculus portals often unwittingly unleashed some dangerous, supernatural guests from a kind of inter-dimensional prison as well.

When we were all geared up and ready, two of the young men stood with folded arms in my path.

“You need to tell us what is out there before we go any further.”

I headed between them, holding Miray’s hand as she followed looking with large eyes at both of them as we passed.

“I will.  But not here.”