Of Gods and Wonder

 

 

1,984 steps to the edge of the cliff.

Their back door opened to the abyss.

It was impossible to know whether the risk or the view was more thrilling. They both hit you at once, simultaneously, making it feel like you were standing in a fairy tale instead of behind a modest house with overgrown grass.

If standing still long enough one could feel their mind travel; back into their thoughts for some, and for others, forward into what ifs. If standing longer still enough, wonder would melt into human yearning, and childlike marvel, and self-importance.

 

What could be on the other side? Other than a large tree with leaves that seemed to shine like silver the other side looked almost identical.

 

There are people over there, I heard them singing once.

How can that be? How would they even get there?

Maybe they can fly.

Yes! They can fly!

With large wings as wide as a whale!

I hear they shine!

Yes! They glisten like a fine metal because their skin is perfect, unblemished by toil and sun and labor.

They don’t farm? How do they eat?

The silver tree! Their holy village is built right beneath it. It bears fruit and vegetables that grow bigger than your head!

Just one tree! Bigger than your head!

And if you are good, maybe one of them will drop a basket off at your window while you sleep, and you will wake up to the offering for breakfast. The best food in the world! It will give you energy and make you live long, forever maybe!

 

Have you ever seen one?

 

And a million stories would tumble over each other;  

The time I saw one in the dark!

The time I saw one glistening in the forest as it gathered berries!

The time one flew over me and its shadow blocked out the sun!

Each story seemed like a unique fingerprint of the teller, revealing hidden hopes and dreams and fears. Sometimes people would fight over what was true, and sometimes they would compare stories with empathic hands and stretched expressions; you saw that? Me too!

That sounds magical!

 

Yes, this question always promised furious conversation.

 

These stories were being told for longer than anyone who was alive knew anymore, growing with every meeting at the market, and the gardens, and the roads. They soon became more intricate in nature, the minute details being debated loudly in the square, and so the most trusted among them thought to write the stories down on paper and bind them into a book that came to be revered almost instantly.

After a time the Book was owned by every family in the village on the cliff’s edge, with parents reading stories from them every night to their children;

The Bronze people are very kind, and if you are good, they will bring you baskets of fine food from places you have never heard of.

The Bronze people can fly even though they are six feet tall! The skin of a Bronze person is magic, just touching it will heal all disease in your body, and the ground they walk on will never be barren.

Their skin shines like the moon, so brightly that they don’t need its light. The place across the ravine is where the Bronze people live and can never die. It’s full of magical animals and grapes the size of melons! The weather is always warm and pleasant and the water cool and refreshing and never has any leaves or bugs in it. It is a perfect place, the most perfect of places.

Such wonderful stories, met with large eyes and round, open mouths.

 

1,984 steps from the cliff, a hunger began to grow.

From her bedroom window Hasana would wake up to the sight of it and the dream of being closer.

When it wasn’t in front her eyes it was in the back of her mind;

What if I could go there?

See these wonderful Bronze people? Touch their glistening skin? Be immortal!

How can I make this happen?

Has anyone survived the ravine before?

Have you seen it?

How do you know that it’s true?

What if I could jump farther than anyone ever has, or could fly like a bird? I bet I could make it!

Fly right over the edge, and see a giant grape with my own eyes!

You’ve never even thought of this? Will you help me try?

Questions that had been asked before, definitely, but this ferocity was new. Try as they might, her parents could not satisfy her with their practiced explanations, for every answer was met with five buts and three whys and seven hows. She ravenously studied the Book, making notes in the margins, writing in her journal, which lay open next to her, entranced in a planning fervor. Her parents ran out of answers and soon didn’t attempt anymore, and so Hasana’s incessant inquisitiveness now met dead silence.

Maybe she will give this up. Get frustrated and leave this be, then we will seem wise again.

 

Unanswered questions are funny things. They retreat into quietude, yes, but they do not rest. In fact they bubble and boil underneath the surface, collecting and stewing until they burst forth into a monstrous, dangerous idea;

What if I made wings and looked for myself?

The seed had sprouted.

Her insatiable curiosity turned into a mad obsession, which turned into a fervent quest for lightweight wood and feathers, twine and pastes; which turned into a glorious feat of engineering, two large wings that could glide just like the gods across the ravine, over the cliff, and towards heaven.

They were something to see.

Large and wide, as wide as a whale maybe. Clever in design, too.

There were twisted vines to go around her skinny arms and tiny waist, and footholds for her bare, shaking feet. She used oil on her face and shoulders so that they would agree with the wind better. There was a helmet too, one that she also slathered with oil and fat the night she decided she was ready.

The backdoor next to her window was her starting point, as it always had been.

1,984 steps.

1,484 steps.

1,000.

If the villagers had known, they would have certainly stopped her.

You don’t just invent wings and go to the gods! Who do you think you are? Who deemed you worthy, peasant? You stupid girl!

They will certainly kill you when you arrive, and then us for having let this happen!

All of the offerings of animals and food wasted!

 

Maybe they would have ripped her carefully crafted wings apart, thrown her into a prison, maybe tied her to a rock for wild beasts to devour.

But alas, she was now only five feet away from the edge and already lifting off of the ground. Hasana was too curious, too inventive, too quick. They could only watch her sail above them, screaming and throwing rocks from the ever distant ground. She sailed! Riding the air like a hawk, rising like smoke from a sacrifice, peering down at her village like a god.

Certainly she felt supernatural. Humbled, yet celestial. She was higher than anyone from her village had ever been. The houses were now a speck in her eye, and heaven was only a few hundred feet away. Who could blame her for feeling a bit holy?

A bit spiritual?

A bit immortal?

She was closing in on the other side quickly. The trees were glistening and the ground seemed lush and soft.

1000 feet away.

100 now.

Faster and faster.

She could almost touch the silver tree, the one nearly as ambitious as her in its quest to touch the sky. Just 50 feet now. Less than that!

If only she could have practiced a little more patience in her studies, or her construction, or even in her takeoff. Just a few more calculations. More oil or lighter wood. Twenty steps farther back and maybe she would have made the almost 50-something feet between her and her promised land.

If only she had watched weather patterns and tracked the strength of the wind, or exercised her legs to push her faster, she wouldn’t now be crashing into the side of the cliff of the gods, cracking her precious helmet and tearing her oily skin, and breaking her massive wings into 2, 6, and 10 pieces now.

Maybe more time would have made the difference between immortality and a smear down the rock wall, one that her village elders would use as a warning for impertinent children for centuries to follow.

Her remains, an emblem of caution.

Shut down your wonder.

Respect your elders’ knowledge.

Don’t. Ask. Questions.

But children will always ask questions.

And people will always wonder.

Some backwards into their thoughts, and some forward into what ifs. And some thoughts, if enough time passes, will melt into human yearning, and marvel, and self-importance.

 

What could be on the other side?

A village, just a few steps from the edge of the cliff, nestled  under a large tree with leaves so waxy and brilliant that they look like silver from afar

Simple and nearly identical to its neighbor across the way

Who worship the girl with the skin that shone like a fine metal and had wings as wide as a whale

A god, no doubt, what else could it be?

Who fell from the sky not 50 feet from here, before anyone who is still alive can remember.