Christ let religion take him
to the spot where sinners staked him
and left him on a hill
to call down thunder from the sky. 

Heaven didn't rain them out.
Instead they talked about
if they killed the Christ
or some blasphemous rabbi. 

So a lesson that's worth knowing,
if it's the way of Christ you're going,
he warned about religion 
whose God is understood. 

The priests did not believe him.
The crowd that first received him
took the hand of their salvation
and nailed it to the wood. 

So it goes again, 
when God wears you like a skin, 
where you most resist
is where he takes you. 

It's not enough to choose
a God to keep or lose.
The undesirable God
must rise from where they stake you. 

on a bench

by a pond

in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus joins me,

saying nothing.

I will wait

for how the quiet feels

to know my judgment.

My prayer is

heaven has plenty

of flat rocks

that skip easily

and invite taking turns.

--

We can't soften the cruelty of God's request of Abraham or else the story loses shape. The shock isn't just about the request, but also when the request occurs in the timeline.

This is no longer the wandering Abraham waiting for a promise. Instead this is Abraham after the impossible son has arrived. His faithfulness is more than credible. It is by now tested, validated, and rewarded.

In short, Abraham has arrived at faith's destination.

Or so we think.

The uncomfortable lesson here is that faith, the body of many small disciplines, does not put us on any path other than where God assigns. And in Abraham's story, the path is the way of terror. God asks Abraham to take the promise up the mountain and put a knife to it.

So God's request seems especially cruel.

He does not ask for something Abraham built without him. He confronts our expectations, and in a moment appears to go back on what he promised. We can frown at God if this is Abraham's story, a common reading error, and one which Scripture is quick to correct.

The Bible is the account of God, and its little heroes are those whose little stories he has consumed.

The warning is clear if we consider first principles:

God is God of everything, or he is God of nothing.

And in the path to him, just when you think you have checked all the boxes, you discover his dominion has crept into all your far corners. God shows infinite appetite for the territories where our expectations of the world are staked.

The altar reveals the terror of this appetite. It is the place where what is given is returned.

Because eventually, if you remain in his presence, God is going to find what you most want to keep from him. And he is going to ask for it by name.

All the memory verses on the wall, the felt-board cutouts in Sunday School, will not spare you the crisis of decision: whether real and concrete loss will be redeemed by means that are distant, unseen, and very possibly empty.

The moment will come.

God will hand you the knife.

And you will discover that what you thought was yours was always on the altar.

There will be no creed to sustain you. No theology for your mantle. Your religion will have lost its consolation.

You will be asked:

Will you cling to the version of God you can live with, or will you step again into the arena of faith, yielding to him the right to reveal himself when the outcome is uncertain?

Because faith is not defining a world in which your version of God can fit.

It is waiting for the interruption.

Lots and lots of death.

They talked to me when they felt they had no choice.

But I don’t remember anyone talking about poetry.

Last night I visited my wife and children at church camp.

One of their cousins, who’s my daughter’s age, has had an especially difficult transition into her early teenage years. Her daddy, who was my first cousin and closest childhood friend, was killed in a car accident eleven years ago. The hazy scenes she’s carried of her father, together with the challenges of growing up, have made these years difficult for her, her mother, and her grandparents.

Though withdrawn, she’s always wanted a hug and kiss on the head from her cousin Marky.

Last night we talked about music she likes, shows she watches, and anything other than what’s been bothering the adults around her.

She had a folded notebook in her hand.

I asked her about it.

She went sheepish and said she’d been doodling and journaling.

Then she said faintly, “I kinda been thinking about poetry.”

“I love that. You know Marky writes poetry.”

She told me about a paperback of Edgar Allan Poe she’d found at school, and how she liked it when I told her and her sister silly stories when they were little.

She also told me she’d been scolded for writing in her journal during church services.

I wanted to tell her that sometimes I dream about sitting next to her daddy on a park bench, catching up about everything that’s happening with our kids.

And in the dream, I know he is proud of her.

Proud of who she is right now.

The dreams always end with him saying,

“I have to go now.”

“I know. I know you do.”

She had to leave for her cabin’s night activity.

So I hugged her again and said,

“Keep writing your poems. When you finish one, read it out loud, and I can promise that in what you write, you will most see yourself.”

She doesn’t have to explain that to anybody.

but I really believe this:

His love for you,

and his desire to be with you

are the same thing.

That can be difficult to feel sometimes,

which is why I think

choosing the idea every day

is enough,

because the possibility

of being with God forever

is so rich

and so beautiful

that one's life

is worth arranging

around it.

This is the closest thing to a gym selfie I’ll ever post because that ain’t me.

Five years ago I was coming off a life-changing disappointment when I watched my little boy climb onto his footstool and flex in the bathroom mirror.

I realized he was looking for an example of strength, and that, at his age, the example would almost certainly be linked to the physical.

I couldn’t bear the thought of him finding that example in someone else’s daddy.

So I changed the course of my life.

It wasn’t one big decision. Rather it was a commitment to making many small decisions over days, weeks, months, and years until they became a mode of being.

In short, I wore a new philosophy like a skin.

Strength training has improved my quality of life in ways I never expected. It’s taught me lessons about discipline, failure, patience, pride, aging, and fatherhood.

I think it’s time I started writing about some of those lessons.

Even if nobody’s reading.

I pressed the sun
between two fingers

until it split.

I spread its pulp
with a long dull knife,

licked the blade,

and set a lampshade
over my head.

The people I meet
can no longer
choose my light.

They must
cover their eyes

or burn.

I will raise yeast
in the flesh.

I will brown
the tops
of their ears.

I will slurp
the fallen gourd,

hang carrion
from a hook and chain,

dry sinew
to little cords,

set alight
your winter grain.

I will delight
at my children
dancing
in the dark woods,

while I chew

the way
behind them.

Put down your books.

'Cause when you're ready
for a lesson about God,
he'll give you children.

First,
he'll shoot you stone dead.

You'll enter heaven
in a hospital delivery room,
hear the salvation song,
and wonder why the world
ain't singing with you.

Outside,
every mouth's a serpent's.

You'll spread your skin
to cover the ground
beneath your child's feet.

And won't you know it,
God can never kill you once.

He'll shoot you
while you dream.

The child will become like you,

knowing little deaths.

"Daddy,

will you put my toys
in the garage?"

At the vitamin shop, 

an old woman
took your face in her hands, 
looked into your eyes, 
and named it. 

Saturday morning, 
I waited in the car. 

My grandmother 
came back
with a paper bag. 
Yellow onions, 
parsnips, 
mint, and sage. 

She said them
under her breath. 

At a stoplight
she lifted a hand 
to the mirror, 
set a strand of hair
in place. 

That night
she stood at the stove, 
water turning,
kitchen window open. 

She didn't measure. 

She poured, 
set the cup in front of her, 
and waited. 

When she drank
she closed her eyes. 

Someone should write a sermon
about spilling out of church
into a sunny afternoon. 

It's the eschaton of thumbs
loosing top buttons, 

when dads wear kids like tails,
their shadow knifing
between cars in gravel lots. 

Woe is a life
not seeing a No Running! sign
on a church door, 
facing out or in. 

My son couldn’t help it. 

Forty dollars won't stay
in torn envelopes. 

He asked if we could 
buy fishing gear after school. 

It was raining. 

The greys nipped at our elbows 
as we took side roads
around the traffic. 

At the sports shop
I followed him through the aisles. 

He said it would soon be
top-water season. 

I listened to him speak, 
with words I didn't know,
to something as near
as the photograph
in my wallet.  

He filled his hands,
smoothed folded bills,
asked if I had five. 

You can keep it. 

I picked a rod and reel
with a bobber in the package. 

“Quietness and value, the description applied to both.”
O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi”

No earth is more scorched by theological pedantry than social media, where the accredited and the inspired post unsolicited trivia meant either to disparage lay practices or to reprove readers of ostensibly errant opinion. Analog occasions, of course, inspire the same behavior, none so reliably as the yearly appearance of plastic Magi beside an equally plastic infant Jesus in the medley of holiday lawn ephemera. Those who dare to make this addition to their Nativity display should be forewarned: placing Magi figurines near the manger will surely set you at the end of someone’s nose, if not also their trails of wiki-strings about Epiphany and other concepts which, for the casual evangelical, might be foreign both in origin and significance.

The value of the Nativity scene lies not in historical precision but in its quiet power to draw us into the poetic and theological imagination. Modern Christians often negotiate the fantastic in the Bible through a crass rationalism designed for easy intellectual digestion. Accounts such as the Creation or Jonah narratives are so proximate to myth that some fear calling them literal or historical. The Nativity, however, has a recognizable historical form, with real rulers, places, and cultural markers. Because it is given temporal dimensions and explicit ties to history, the miraculous cannot be shifted into mere symbolism without dissolving the story. Its enchantment is not optional. Participation in its tradition is not merely an invitation; it is the affront of religion to a reality otherwise supposed and guarded by humanity’s illusions of control.

Implicit in the act of correcting the arrangement of figurines is the assumption that religion’s aesthetic has its judge in an ineffable something which, for convenience, might be called church tradition. Yet this phrase, like many fine religious terms, is so hedged by bias that any responsible discussion must first ask what it means. I suspect too that some would call this something biblical accuracy, especially in connection to the apparent chronology of Matthew’s Gospel. Accuracy, however, is the measure of closeness to a known value, and there are few details of the Magi’s visit whose values can be called known with any seriousness. To rationalize the arrival of the Magi is to flatten a scene that was never meant to be anatomized. The charm of the tradition lies in the way the Magi inhabit the border between history and meaning, which is precisely where the story’s wonder is strongest.

Regardless of whether we imbue lawn ornaments or mantel figurines with historical or revisionist intent, these objects are fundamentally visible attempts to anchor the current scene in religious drama. As expressed in the art of Christmas, a kind of magic is imputed to seasonal elements. Snow invites play. The long and encroaching night shows no hostility. The usual bustle of commerce shifts into charity. For a month, religion feels like music again, and its form returns to fine literature. That the Nativity keeps its standing even in secular spaces is a reminder that the stories of the Bible are good enough. They can be read on their own terms and reach into that level called spirit, which, though frustratingly elusive, I would describe as the membrane around humanity’s most innermost crises.

In the Nativity story, the quiet of the scene is also its majesty. Here we are given rare visibility into the habitat of religion apart from its many creeds, councils, and scandals. There is, therefore, a worse seasonal sin than skewing gospel timelines. This sin is the church’s failure to observe that when God steps into the box of human activity, the written record becomes our best poetry: a light shines in the darkness, the announcement of reconciliation arrives as a song of angels to primitives on a hill, and the heavens beckon the wise among us into a journey by whose end understanding folds into awe.

And perhaps it is this view, that we are in small Christian ways drawing the current world scene into divine poetry, which offers the appropriate lens for standing before Nativity displays and marveling at the miracle. We the viewers become actors in the story, participants in the still frame, pausing to observe an event so perfect in its stillness that even a wise word in its favor is shushed before bringing interruption.

To pause before the scene is to step briefly in the space where history and miracle meet in a single, luminous instant, and to discover that its indifference to fact is the doorway of habitation.

I have this dream about Jesus.
He finds me in the park
while I’m feeding ducks
and watching my son
fish from the bank
of a small pond.

I talk about poetry
while tossing bread pieces,
about how strings of words
become capsules of crisis.
How questions about authors
are really questions of form.
“That’s how we pollute the text
with psychology,” I say,
and for once, saying the tay-ukst
in my mother’s drawl
sounds full and triumphant.

Then Jesus begins to read poetry.
His inflections flit like grouse
from the brush.
His conceits call to rock faces.
They shift, scratch their noses,
and watch with one great eye
as I feed the ducks,
to see if I give them
more than bread.

My son keeps fishing from the bank,
never turning from his line.
Meanwhile I toss the last crumbs,
watch them dapple the water,
until I hear Jesus reading still,
and realize,
to my surprise,
I’ve been waiting.

When driving my son
to school yesterday morning,
the sunrise was to our right,
and on the left our little town
pressed to meet the corners
of a blank page.

I started to speak
about our evening plans 
until I followed his gaze
to a glowing fog
over a field of wet shortgrass.

He said he liked our drives to school,
and so the scene ascended:
What's next is but distraction
while morning hasn’t ended.

This is how Daddy goes
through puddles on the streets
of some drab city,
not pausing too long
or else his feet will stick.

This is how I go
among strangers,
who I wish would ask
about my children.
I'd tell them about playing
basketball in the driveway,
or about your sister
playing with dolls
on the rug by her bed:
"Ain't she pretty, Daddy?"

I will tell them about grief,
how sunlight once kept
in a Barbie box after Christmas
got away like marbles
rolling under furniture.

And now that I am up,
I can tap the glass
of this great zoo exhibit
and miss you for who
you were this morning.
Royalty of this bright day,
maker of plush suns,
reader of copybooks
written for very little gods.

Imagine the grammar of rivers,
how their burbles and clicks,
taken together,
upend our plans.

Perhaps when we stop
at the banks of rivers,
streams inside us rage,
and if they could,
our organs would tie
all our little trophies
around our necks
and drown us.

And yet, the river passes,
leaving us with what we carry.

That's the quiet due water
that does not wait:
We fold our successes
like in envelopes,
drop them into the water
as it were a tithing plate.
We step in with bare ankles
and see our image is twisted,
that is to say, mocked. 

We follow rivers
to meet the big questions
then drift past them
without waiting.

He blinked, or so he thought. The act had no name. Not yet.

Then Mum’s voice came:

“It is unfortunate how we must begin. There is you. Here is me. There is death.”

In an instant, Jarek and Mum stood facing one another with the corpse of a creature between them. Jarek recognized its shape, which resembled Mum but grayed to ash, its arm blackened with rot. He stood near the feet, and Mum near the head.

And as if the act were now permitted, Mum’s eyes blinked left to right with the same faint sucking sound as Jarek had heard in the thicket: fiff-fiff.

"Does it have a name?" Jarek asked.

"I have called it by its name, which is Death," replied Mum, its voice pulsing through flickers under the skin.

Jarek glanced into the white, searching for horizon or floor. “Where is here?”

"We do not share a place. I am here. You are there.”

"Speak with your whole tongue!"

Mum’s voice sharpened, bellowing. Its skin flashed as it spoke:

"My speech is plain. That is why you misinterpret. Your species cannot accept plain speech. Meaning and idea are incommensurable: units without fidelity to the fact they pretend to carry.”

Mum’s tone softened. “Your symbols fail. Language is but a pact to forget their meaning.”

Jarek’s eyes returned to the corpse. He wanted to feel grief, horror, anything. All feeling was blunted.

“Death between our kind has caused an error. Our difficulty is that only your order or mine can receive corrective action. One grammar must enthrone itself, and from that enthronement, a universe will unfold, forever faithful to its founding speech.”

Jarek felt the words as weight pressing on his ribs.

“What you will see next is the course of your world, organized by its preeminent terms and symbols. These are but utterances, intelligible only for their function, whether by repetition or by inheritance. And at their end…”

Mum turned toward the corpse.

“…these images will receive a judgment which is then codified into the cosmos.”

Then the visions began.

With a quick pulse along Mum’s skin, the first utterance came:

Salvation.

Names for the images entered Jarek’s mind like a hand passing corn husks through the lips of a basket.

He saw a man bleeding, carrying a large wooden beam down a stony path and up a hill outside a walled tribal ground. People along the path jeered and threw stones. At the hilltop, the man collapsed. Then strong men drove spikes through his limbs and into the wood, raising him before the crowd's delight.

The next utterance came from the dying man’s lips:

Forgiveness.

The image dissolved. In its place appeared a large room with high stone walls and a ceiling of many colors. At its center was a raised platform where a woman in fine clothing knelt before two men, one in magnificent white garb and the other in black with a hood covering his face.

The man in white held a staff, its head carved into the man nailed to wood.

The word forgiveness passed between the woman and the man in white.

Then the hooded man stepped forward, wielding an axe. The woman screamed and turned to run, but the man seized her wrist and began chopping at the backs of her legs and waist.

The man in white raised a hand toward the sky and shouted the next utterance:

Justice.

With that word, images flashed.

Jarek saw men and women drop from platforms, their necks caught by ropes. He saw thousands of men charging into a blackened field, its mud seemingly scorched by flashes from staffs pointed at one another.

Then he saw a market.

Children played with dolls in the street. Adults bartered, talked, exchanged.

At the horizon, a large cloud rose from the ground. The scene turned over to many shades of orange. The cloud crawled forward. As it reached the crowd, bodies disintegrated into ash.

One woman turned to embrace a child.

As the cloud took the woman, Jarek heard the next utterance in the child’s voice:

Mother.

Everything went black. But the black felt familiar.

A sticky heat pressed against his face. A heaviness settled across his head and shoulders. Then he saw the glow of his chest and smelled the rot of the pig’s head.

He had returned to the Crossing.

The glow from his chest and feet brightened. Mother’s heat licked his skin, then faded.

He remembered the youth’s fate.

Jarek lifted the mask and dropped it to the ground. He shouted, but no one seemed to hear. He watched the chief elder whisper into Chief Angar’s ear, nod, and then point at the doomed boy next to Jarek. The masked men stepped forward and threw their torches onto the pyre beneath the boy’s feet.

The screams pierced Jarek.

And then nothing.

Only Mum and the corpse.

A silence passed between them as Jarek fought back sobs and steadied his legs. He fought to raise his head, hearing Mum’s eyes blinking: fiff-fiff, fiff-fiff.

“Now that you see,” Mum pulsed softly, “I hope you understand. Your grammar must fall. Your language breeds deceit and sanctifies cruelty.”

Jarek could only nod.

He was accepting of the alternative. Any alternative.

Mum’s head tilted slowly. “Do you understand?”

“I see,” he said. “Everything.”

And as though he were a pelt falling from one’s hand, Jarek dropped into night and into the wilds. His back struck cold grass. He turned his head to find the knapsack beside him, now flat and empty of the creature’s hand.

He sat up, looking about. The blue light was gone. The soft burbling of the river filled him and loosened the tightness in his chest and shoulders.

Then he remembered Tanta’s words: meet at the resting stones near the fifth river bend.

He stood and hurried in the direction of the current. He walked the rest of the night. As sunlight began to slide its fingers over the lip of the horizon, he reached the canopy beneath which the five resting stones lay.

From a distance, he saw Tanta reclining on one of the stone faces. A pack and blade rested at her side. He called out to greet her, and when he did, she rose and waited for him to join her on the stone face.

Before he could speak again, she pulled Jarek close, wrapping her arms around his torso.

They paused together in an embrace. Jarek looked over the top of her head at the river, the canopy, and the night turning to day. He imagined pulling the whole scene by its chords into their shared space. If the world could animate from this feeling, it would surely leave behind death, for what he felt now could not permit any alternative but the two living forever.

He wanted all of it to stay, though something in the stillness hinted it could not.

Tanta spoke into his chest, “I was afraid. The dark is so dark anymore.”

Jarek gently pushed her shoulders to meet her eyes. “The dark is honest,” he said. “The light only shows what it chooses.”

Tanta pressed her head into his chest again, wrapping her arms tighter around his shoulders.

“I’ll plan our course,” Jarek said.

He tried to free his arm, but her grip tightened.

“Tanta,” he protested softly. “I am with you. The sun is rising and—”

She cut him off, her voice trembling. “Forgive me. Even love must obey.”

Her eyes showed grief as she whispered into his ear: “Mother will make it right.”

He struggled. Her grip became iron. His breath thinned.

Then movement: Zothma came charging, blade high, eyes set to kill. Jarek braced and kicked off, sending himself and Tanta tumbling down the rock face. They hit the ground hard. Her grip broke.

He scrambled to his feet to locate Zothma.

But Tanta leapt again, wrapping herself around his legs, pulling him back.

“I have him!” she shouted. “Come! I have him!”

The Dirt.

Their eyes met. Hers carried both apology and resolve.

It happened in only a few beats.

Jarek saw the blade. The twisted smile. The arms bearing down.

He lunged, turned. Tanta’s arms slipped from his legs. The blade sang past his ear. He heard the tear of skin. A gurgle was cut short.

Then he saw it. Tanta’s dark hair tumbled down the hill, her body landing between two of the stones.

There was blood. Twitching. Her neck torn open.

Zothma stumbled back, her blade lowered. Blood slicked her fingers. She blinked at him, tried to speak, and then her knees buckled. Her body folded into the dirt, the breath leaving her in a long, weak whimper.

Jarek stared. The world narrowed to her sounds.

Then came more movement from behind. She left the blade near him and sprawled backward, collapsing against a tree. She buried her face in her hands and wailed.

Two protectors stepped into the clearing. Broad-shouldered, blades drawn. They scanned the scene in silence until one asked: “Who has done this?”

Jarek looked down at Zothma’s blade within reach. Then up.

Zothma’s eyes, red and shining, stared back at him. The twisted smile returned, sharper now in the red light of dawn.

“The Dirt did this,” she said, and the words coiled in the air.

The hand was an omen the tribe couldn’t keep. Nor would they keep Jarek. He was kicked into the dirt before the cold embers where Mother once roared.

When he woke, his limbs ached. He blinked into the chill. The hand, partially buried but still unblemished, lay next to him.

He coughed, eyes shut, trying to block out what had happened.

That was until he felt a warm hide cover him. He opened his eyes to see Tanta kneeling, her black hair covering part of her face, while one soft eye looked about his wounds.

“Chief Angar wants you out before morning,” she said.

“I know.” Speaking brought a sharp pain to Jarek’s ribs. “I remember the elder’s words.”

He groaned as Tanta helped him up. He remembered Zothma’s smile. Then the crack of her heel. Then nothing.

“I’ve prepared rations.” Tanta pressed a second knapsack and a water bladder to his chest and helped secure them.

Their eyes fell on the hand still in the dirt. Jarek reached for it, knowing it must go with him.

“But how will I get back?”

She tightened the straps on his pack. “We won’t.”

Jarek froze, absorbing the shape of the answer.

“Give me two nights. I will join you at the river where it meets the five resting stones.”

He knew the place. At the fifth river bend were five stones whose faces never saw the sun, cloaked always by the canopy. It had been a meeting place for protectors if they were split during a hunt.

He had to ask: “How can I trust you?”

Tanta looked back at the place where Mother’s fire had vanished.

“Trust is a funny word these days. I don’t think it means what it used to.”

They continued to the edge of the camp. Once there, they exchanged slow looks. Jarek raised a hand and limped forward.

His gait gave him trouble where he had to feel his way between trees and over roots. Sweat itched beneath the hide. Eventually, the forest gave way to a canopy of stars.

He observed the scene in the moonlight, which was bright enough now to illuminate the ground. The river burbled. He opened the hide, letting the cold breeze strike his chest. The five resting stones lay downriver.

He continued walking, his mind drifting back to the tribal grounds, always alive with sound: elders speaking, children playing, Mother’s fire crackling. Life in the noise had offered him nothing, yet the quiet ahead didn’t feel empty.

While following the river, he looked at the tops of the distant ridge. At one of the peaks appeared the blue light, pulsing, but causing him no alarm.

Then it drifted to the next peak.

That’s when Jarek felt the blue hand start to twist. The skin became so cold that it stung him through the cloth.

He looked back to the second peak. The blue light was gone.

He quickened his pace. Then as suddenly as his earth mother broke the neck of the dove, blue light appeared all around him. He could see nothing beyond it.

Then night swallowed him. He rubbed the dark from his eyes. He stumbled forward and fell. And when he did, he saw a soft glow pass before him from left to right. He raised himself to look. Another glow flashed at the corner of his eye, and he turned to follow.

He felt something wrap around his neck and squeeze. He was lifted, turned, then stilled. Breath left him as he was twisted and brought to the face of large glowing eyes like he’d seen in the thicket.

Its face was flat but for the eyes. Its skin was flawless and smooth, like a polished stone draped in raven-like sheen. Dough-like arms jutted from its shoulders, ending in large, gripping hands. Its skin gave no hint of the force at his throat.

The head turned, as though observing him. The other arm reached downward and pulled the disk he had seen in the thicket. The creature raised the disk to where its lip met Jarek’s eyes.

He saw the symbols again. The light behind them pulsed once, twice, and then became as sharp as a protector’s blade, piercing into Jarek’s eyes, which were wide with fear. Then the light stopped, and Jarek was blinded again in the difference.

That’s when it spoke: “Language rules acquired. Your communications are peculiar.”

Jarek was dropped to the ground.

“The vessel of an idea also walls it in.”

Still blind, Jarek lifted his hands to shield himself.

“You misinterpret.”

Jarek did not understand. As his vision returned, his eyes went first to its limbs—both there, no wound—then to the large, glowing head. He searched for a mouth but found none. The words jumped from its skin like thuds through the head of a drum.

“I will express my name.” The creature straightened. Its skin shimmered, pulsing in three tones: low, high, and something felt, not heard.

Jarek felt it waiting. He mimicked the sounds: “Mm-muh-mm.”

“Our native communications share neither rules nor structure.”

“Mm... muh... mm,” Jarek repeated, slower this time.

The creature dimmed, as if thoughtful. “You may call me Mum. And how are you called?”

“I am Jarek.”

“Your tribe has excommunicated you.”

Strange words. Jarek waited.

“I mean, you are exiled on account of your loss of deity. The one named Mother.”

Jarek jolted at the name. He turned his eyes away.

He recalled his earth mother singing the psalms. Psalms of how, by Mother’s light, they saw the world as she intended. But it was a jealous light. By her light, the stars were lost, and the moon could not win its quarrel.

Jarek wondered: Had her light revealed the world, or only the world within her limits?

“You no longer trust Mother,” Mum said.

Jarek snapped. “But I do trust Mother.”

Mum’s blue eye pulsed. “You misinterpret, always.”

Jarek felt the dismissive tone. “I say the words,” he muttered. “Isn’t that trust?”

Mum pulsed again. “You repeat, but do not dwell. That word is but an exit.”

Jarek felt pierced by a very fine blade. The word held nothing. Trust sounded like a child clapping a dry cicada shell.

Mum leaned forward, humming.

“You no longer fear the dark. You’ve exceeded the boundaries of your religion.”

Jarek repeated, weakly. “I do trust Mother.”

Mum paused. “Your speech diverges from belief. Its form allows for deception and pretense.”

Jarek was silent.

Mum’s skin glowed brighter. Its head turned, eyeing Jarek’s knapsack holding the blue hand. “The universe must be repaired. Whose universe remains undecided. We must find stable ground between your order and mine.”

In an instant, Jarek looked away from Mum and toward the valley, but the valley was no longer land. It had become a suggestion, a draped scrim of space that folded if stared at too long. If he stepped forward, he would snag his feet in its cloth and tumble upward through water stitched with stars.

His jaw ached. He felt the impulse to separate upper from lower, to tack his lips against the sky and the soil, then inhale the calico mist once called the world. There was a name for this now:

Mur’nax.

The break in world-flesh. Not a word, but a pressure. A grunt and a gulp, repeated until the sounds piled enough to touch.

And if he repeated the word enough, he could make a universe that mistook him for its god.

“Are you sent by her? The universe?” Jarek wanted to try the word. It felt new but ancient.

“I am sent by what’s left.”

Jarek didn’t understand, only that he was to be taken, as the blue light bloomed around him. Everything became bright, brighter than he had ever experienced. And the blue soon gave way to a blanket white.

And nothing, not even his feet, could find purchase in the absence of color.

The bird had been struck by a stone from another youth’s sling. Jarek tried to hide the dove beneath a woven basket, but its fluttering alerted his earth mother. She promptly broke the neck of the small bird and prepared it for their supper.

She patted Jarek’s head as he cried into her chest. For many months, he felt shame for having eaten the meat so unceremoniously.

After walking through the dark forest and emerging at dawn at the edge of a large clearing, Jarek mustered the courage to look at the dead blue hand hanging from his wrist. The cut was now dry and blackened. Its surface, if it could be called skin, was smooth to the touch, hard, and unblemished. It was like a hardened shell but with the give of soft clay. He pulled the hand and pressed in his thumbs to move its three large, finger-like extensions.

Soon his curiosity gave way to fear. He placed the hand in his knapsack and looked out at the expanse ahead, searching for a distraction.

To quiet his nerves, he recalled an old story.

When Mother made Mall-untz, the first horse, her flame brushed his hindquarters and sent him thundering into the fields. He trampled the flowers in excitement, wild and unaware.

Seeing that beauty had been broken, Mother, out of devotion to order, gave every living thing a share in the flowers’ fate. To prevent further foolishness, she gave man dominion over the horse, placing him upon the creature’s back.

Jarek imagined kinder alternatives: wooden teeth for lions, cloth hooves for horses. He forced a smile. If only he, not Mother, had made the world. If only she were also trapped in the order.

Jarek found his reference points by the direction of the sun, by the moss on trees, and by the distant ridge down which he must have fallen during the night. Before him stretched a great valley of varied terrain, through which ran a narrow river. He could see these were vibrant grounds for hunting, and he maneuvered parallel to the river, walking upstream with cautious steps through the tall grass.

Stepping out of the grass on the opposite bank was a bull elk. Jarek had overheard the elder protectors warn about approaching large game too carelessly. He looked at the staff in his hand. The distance between him and the elk was too great to throw a stone, and the elk’s movements already showed alarm. Jarek would have to close the distance with great care, and in a roundabout way, to approach it from behind.

He retreated to a distance where only the antlers were visible, then moved right, downwind, keeping his shoulders square to the creature in case he needed to charge. Each footfall was as soft as an elder mother laying thin cakes in a child’s palm.

He realized the soreness in his grip and switched the staff to his other hand. The elk moved only a few feet as it crossed the river without trouble. As he neared the animal’s backside, confidence filled him, and he charged. After a few hard steps, the elk cleared a safe distance with ease, dipped behind a knoll, and vanished into a small wood.

Jarek paused and looked again at the vast hunting grounds, now full of snares. He cursed beneath his breath. Mother must have surely sent him here to mock him. He allowed himself to feel helplessness for a moment before shaking his head and pushing forward, rounding a few mounds and stopping at a blackberry thicket near a small body of water, where he ate, drank, and fell asleep.

He awoke to the late afternoon sun warming his chest. Coming to his senses, he sobbed. Hunting with his staff was no use.

But soon, he found his resolve. He would enjoy what little time remained.

And so he did.

He swam in the river, ate wild berries, and lay in the tall grass at night to watch the stars, now bright and overwhelming away from Mother’s light.

And despite what was coming, he enjoyed his time. And he felt as if he had lived.

When evening came on the third night, Jarek pulled his knapsack over his shoulder, tightened his grip on his earth mother’s staff, and walked with high steps back into the forest. The dark began to swallow him, and soon he saw Mother’s glow.

Then limbs shook overhead. At first, he saw nothing. But he knew that whatever moves secretly in the dark wants to be seen from inside its stomach.

So he ran. As he did, he heard bark falling from a tree he passed while sprinting toward Mother’s light, which grew nearer through the thinning trees.

Then he heard the screech of ich-than-han, the jaguar, followed by a large paw that fell across his face from left to right.

Jarek fell, stunned. Blood filled his mouth from a split that ran from the corner to the middle of his cheek.

His ears rang. His vision throbbed. He fell and rolled once, blindly.

He scrambled upright but caught his foot on a root and stumbled.

Ich-than-han streaked past in a blur of muscle and sleek fur.

Jarek ducked, veering left, grunting as he pushed through the undergrowth.

Then, behind him, a paw swept low, grazing his hip and catching the strap of his knapsack.

The force yanked him backward. His feet skidded.

And now, face to face with the jaguar, they stood with the knapsack stretched taut between them.

The jaguar anchored into the dark forest bed and screeched, its fangs bared.

Jarek looked at his mother’s staff in his hand.

A heaviness welled in him.

He whispered her name into the night.

The jaguar lunged with its mouth open, and Jarek jabbed the staff down its throat.

The jaguar choked and recoiled. It tried to flee, but Jarek kept pressing the staff down, twisting it and growling in return. Excitement filled him. He felt he could have his kill.

Then he saw it: the jaguar’s eyes caught Mother’s light. They were wide, trembling. No longer those of the fire-eater, but of prey.

The creature was now caught in the order, fated to fall like the first flowers. Mother’s flame devoured without favor.

Jarek decided, at that moment, to cloak himself in her power. He would become the alternative.

He began to pull the staff from the jaguar’s throat. The beast froze.

But before Jarek could retrieve it, the jaws snapped shut, missing Jarek’s hand by inches.

The jaguar adjusted the staff between its teeth, stepped back, and raised its gaze. For a moment, it seemed to see him. Then it turned and slipped into the dark.

Jarek spat blood. He turned and saw Mother’s light calling. It grew brighter as he moved through the reeds toward the tribal grounds. A terrible dread chewed at the cords of his stomach, chest, and limbs. He imagined how it would feel when Zothma’s blade divided him.

“Behold, our young heroes return to us!” announced the elder, his voice steady, carrying both pride and a measured calm.

The tribe had assembled as before, with Tanta and Zothma standing proudly before two carts. Before the elder’s announcement, Zothma stood at her tallest, her fingers tightening around the grip of her blade. Her eyes flicked to Jarek, and something bitter and dark flashed across her face, veiled at once by a smile.

Chief Angar sat poised as before, surrounded by the inner court. His eyes showed briefly, unreadable and deep.

Tanta stepped forward from the cart behind her. She bowed and dipped her chin to her chest. “Chief Angar, my kill is the trophy of my people, to whom I bring three ach-gnach and their eggs for our health and nourishment.”

The ach-gnach, or war bird, was an elusive creature with a thick neck and powerful legs. Tanta motioned to the cart where three feathered corpses lay in a mound. Around the cart stood several young tribe members holding large eggs.

Jarek winced as voices pierced the air with shouts and hisses. The elder motioned. “The tribe accepts your gift, little dove.”

All the noise abated. Jarek felt their anticipation for what Zothma would reveal.

“Chief Angar!” Zothma announced, stepping forward with exaggerated gestures. Her voice bellowed like a conch. “Chief Angar, my kill is the trophy of my people, to whom I bring…”

She turned her shoulder and swept her hand in a half circle.

“The mighty enchnah.”

Gasps followed. The smilodon’s body exceeded the space of the cart. Its great and majestic head dipped over the side. Zothma grabbed it by its thick fur behind the ears and turned the animal’s head to reveal its toothed smile, now frozen in death.

Jarek pressed his palms against his head as many cheers and chants rose. Tribal members crowded around Zothma, throwing their arms around her and shouting her name.

The celebration halted when Chief Angar raised his hammer and struck the war drum beside him. Its single, thunderous beat silenced the gathering.

The elder’s gaze hardened as it settled on Jarek. “And what of you, Dirt?”

Jarek felt all eyes upon him. His legs trembled as he stood apart from the celebrations. He swallowed hard and spoke, “Great Angar, holder of fire, he who speaks to the roots and the rain, I bend your ear to my sorrow.”

He raised his voice, “Hear me in my plight. Show mercy to your child as I have shown mercy to the great and powerful ich-than-han.”

A flicker of uncertainty passed through the crowd, and the elder raised his hand gently, signaling for silence.

Before Jarek could speak again, strong hands seized his shoulders and pushed him to his knees. The elder’s face appeared calm, though conflicted, as he watched.

All eyes turned toward the chief and the elder. Angar remained silent, the elder’s presence growing heavier.

“Give him to Mother!” the elder pronounced, but his tone held an echo of hesitation, as if invoking obligation. “She will sanctify us of this blot.”

As more hands reached for Jarek, he felt a brief spark of hope amid despair. When Mother’s heat drew near, and she reached to pull him by the heels, Jarek looked down and saw the knapsack wrapped about his legs.

The hand peeked between the slips, with silent appeal for his defiance.

“I have slain a creature of the blue flame!” he shouted with all the fight left in him.

A pause followed. The elder’s voice came behind him: “What did you say, Dirt?”

Jarek panted, swallowed, and shouted again. “I have slain a creature of the blue flame. The wound on my face bears his fire.”

“Release him,” Angar called. “Gently.”

They placed Jarek’s feet on the hard ground only a few steps from Mother. He shook off their grips, turned, reached into his knapsack, and pulled out the hand with its blackened wound. He held it high over his head.

Jarek spoke between hard breaths. “Chief Angar, my kill is the trophy of my people.”

He watched shock give way to awe. Glances were exchanged. All awaited the great chief’s response.

Angar motioned to the elder, whispered in his ear. The elder looked at Jarek, then back at Angar, and nodded.

The elder spoke: “Bring us your offering, child.”

Jarek took a step forward. But as he moved, a force struck him from the side and knocked him to the ground. He felt the hand ripped from his grip.

He looked up to see Zothma striding toward the inner court, her voice urgent, her gestures sharp with protest.

“This Dirt speaks lies! He attacked me beyond the reeds! That wound is from my defense. This?” she held up the hand. “This is a child’s toy!”

Jarek lunged toward her but was struck down again. Before he could speak, he saw Zothma draw back the hand and hurl it toward Mother.

The hand sailed through the air in a slow arc, end over end. Jarek could only watch. He dropped his chin and began to sob as the hand disappeared into Mother’s chest.

He closed his eyes. The hands would surely seize him now.

But then, Mother’s heat vanished from his skin.

He felt a sharp, cool breeze lift him.

And when he opened his eyes, Mother’s flame was gone.

What remained were embers. And atop them, the unblemished blue hand.

There was a gasp, sharp and collective, as though their breaths were permitted all at once.

At last, Jarek saw fear.

And it was not his own.