The vicar approached the altar to the right of the sun icon, and faced the congregation, with arms raised and bony fingers pointing toward the heavens.
"Dear friends," he intoned. "The Temple brings you greetings. Another season is upon us. Blessed be the light."
The congregation responded in a monotone. "Blessed be the light."
"The grand vicar is the human embodiment of the light in this world. He sees into your hearts and knows if darkness dwells therein." The vicar pivoted toward the icon and stared at its center. "Holiness, is this village worthy of receiving the blessing?"
Like the others, Nathaniel held his breath-not because the answer was in doubt, but because he was always inspired by the voice emanating from the sun icon. A crackling echoed from its metallic center. Children would later claim it glowed.
"People of Little Pond." The voice resounded though the square. "This past season, we have felt your love as you walk in the light. And so, you have been blessed with a fruitful autumn. We welcome three new children."
The disembodied voice went on, listing the names of newborns along with their parents. As each was mentioned, eyes turned. Heads nodded approval as if the births were not complete until acknowledged by the Temple. Afterwards, the chief clergyman recognized one marriage, a cousin of Orah's to elder Robert's daughter, and the death of elder John's wife. The people took it positively-their communal father dispensing approval and sympathy. The grand vicar finished with the usual blessing.
"May those newly arrived be welcomed, those departed be remembered, and all be embraced by the light."
With this cue, the vicar asked with a tremor in his voice, "Holiness, are they deserving of life?"
"The people of Little Pond are deserving."
The vicar turned to the audience. "Then let the elders approach."
The five elders, including Nathaniel's father, came forward, with the two oldest, John and Robert, bearing a sack that contained donations collected in the past week.
"What is it you bring?" the vicar said.
"We give what we can to support the Temple," Robert responded.
The vicar took the sack of medicine from his pack and handed it to the elders in a simultaneous exchange. The medicine was a gift from the Temple, enough to last until the next blessing. Like every child in Little Pond, Nathaniel remembered the magic in that sack, white tablets for headaches, pink powder for stomach ailments, and miraculous blue capsules that healed infections during cold winter nights. Its contents would be stored in the village pharmacy and dispensed freely according to need.
"Bless you, people of Little Pond. Through your generosity, the light shall thrive." The vicar stored the tithe in his pack and turned toward the icon. "Holiness, will you lead us in the precepts of faith?"
That was the signal for the crowd to rise. When the grand vicar began speaking, everyone recited the precepts with him.
"Blessed be the light. Blessed be the sun, the source of all light. Blessed be the moon, the stars and our own world which revolve around its light. The light is the giver of life, the darkness of chaos and death. Those who seek the darkness shall be doomed to darkness neverending. But those who embrace the light shall dwell in the light everlasting. While we believe and are true to the light, the darkness shall never return."
When the voice had died down, a sense of satisfaction settled over the villagers. All waited for the vicar to release them with the usual intonation "Go with the light."
But he delayed. The crowd grew restless.
Then the voice from the sun icon spoke again.
"The light is stronger than the darkness, but we must be vigilant. For hundreds of years, the Temple has armed a few to be soldiers of faith. Little Pond is honored this season to have one of its own chosen for a teaching. Come forward, Thomas Bradford of Little Pond."
The crowd went silent. Nathaniel turned to his friends. Orah bore a look he'd seen before, that of a grieving eight-year-old at her father's funeral. Thomas's face had gone ashen.
"Come forward, Thomas of Little Pond, and be taught the horror of the darkness, so you may keep the light shining in Little Pond."
Thomas stood and drifted forward on weakened knees. Orah lunged to touch him, but he'd moved beyond her reach.
The vicar spread his arms. "Welcome, Thomas. You shall accompany me to Temple City and return to your people wiser. And now, my friends, go with the light."
A subdued village repeated the benediction.
Orah squeezed Nathaniel's arm. "What will happen? Will he be all right? When will he be back?"
Nathaniel felt a vein in his forehead throb. "I don't know. No one ever talks about teachings. But it's three days to Temple City and three days back, so he'll be gone at least a week." When Orah remained disconsolate, he added: "But he should be home for festival."
As the villagers began to disperse, Nathaniel peered over their heads and caught sight of Thomas, hands held high in triumph, the mask of his face painted with a grin as if he'd just won a race. But Nathaniel knew him better. Even at that distance, he could see the glow in Thomas's eyes had gone dim.
The Darkness
Thomas stared out, trying to see to the opposite wall. It had to be close, because he could feel his boots pressing against it. But try as he would, he couldn't penetrate the darkness. There was no glimmer to help, only the darkest dark he'd ever known. No moon, no stars, no hint of light. A dark to haunt one's dreams.
He could only guess the size by touch. The floor was at most one pace square, enough to sit up straight with his legs bent The wooden hatch that formed the ceiling was well short of his height. When he tried to stand, he was so hunched over he could sustain it for only a few minutes before dropping back to the floor.
He'd given up trying to find a comfortable position. The room wasn't designed for comfort. The teaching was to be harsh. No way around it. So now he stared into the darkness with his knees to his chin.
The voices of the vicars echoed in his mind.
"Let us record the first teaching of Thomas Bradford of Little Pond, blessed be the light. Thomas of Little Pond, do you understand why you are here?"
"Yes, sir." He'd been awed by Temple City then. He'd felt privileged to be there.
"And why is that?"
"To learn to defend the light against the darkness." He'd been a fool.
The senior vicar leaned forward and glared. "And do you know what the darkness is?"
"Yes, sir," Thomas answered. "The darkness is the time before the light, a time of chaos and death." The standard answer learned in school.
The vicar's response was a slap in the face. "You know nothing of the darkness. You've never been taught. The darkness is too horrible to show children. But you're of age now, Thomas, a full child of light. You've been chosen for a teaching to learn the darkness, and thereafter guide your life to ensure it never returns."
They'd asked him to say the precepts, an easy test. With a grin, he recited what every child knew. "Blessed be the light. Blessed be the sun, the source of all light. Blessed be the moon, the stars and our own world which revolve around its light. The light is the giver of life... ."
When he finished, they told him he was "insufficiently sincere" and sent him to ponder the meaning of the darkness. Since then he'd lived in this room. Time had passed, but he had no sense of it.
At first, he was unafraid. The foundation of the Temple was to do no harm to others. Weapons, war and violence were of the darkness and forbidden. But gradually he understood. No harm was being done. The pain was self-inflicted. The constant dark allowed no sense of space. The constant night allowed no measure of time. He found himself afloat in a pond of nothingness, so large he couldn't see the shore in any direction. He longed for the light of a firefly, for news of which day it was. These thoughts gnawed at him like a physical pain.
He was brought food and water at intervals, but was unsure if it was enough. He always felt hungry and thirsty.
His legs began to throb. To escape the cramping, he imagined himself separate from his body, floating in the air above. But he kept looking down at the wretch that was him. In his imagination, he could see himself clearly, all but the eyes.
Exhaustion reigned above all. At first, he was too uncomfortable to sleep. But after a while, he'd drift in and out, his head nodding until his chin dropped to his chest and woke him.
Sometimes, he'd startle to the grating of the ceiling cover being removed. Light would pour into the room, flooding him with exhilaration. Such moments meant more to him that the scant food or water he was provided. He'd stand, stretch his stiff limbs and look into the plump faces of the vicars surrounding him, seniors all with their decorated hats. They, in turn, would look down on him sympathetically before beginning a litany of the horrors of the darkness.
In the darkness, they claimed, people spoke different languages and worshipped different gods. Their leaders used these differences to separate the people, one from another, and to rail against the others so they might focus on their enemies and not on their own shortcomings.
They fought these enemies, at first with simple weapons, similar to the pocketknife the vicars had taken from him. But then their wise men studied in schools and toiled for years to create bigger and better weapons to destroy their enemies in greater numbers. A tale to scare children, Thomas thought, and he was not a child.
Then the cover would close, and the darkness would return.
After a time, he'd awake, his mind confounded by sleep, and watch the air above his head glow. Visions of the darkness appeared. He saw ranks of people rushing toward each other with strange weapons in hand. And he heard them chanting the name of their god as they ran, each side in a different language.
It had to be a dream.
The vicars returned. They questioned why he carried the flute, and warned that music, taken to excess, might facilitate the return of the darkness. They told how, in the darkness, the young had hated their lives and gathered at night dancing to forbidden music.
Later, his cell was lit with visions once more, this time showing young people, tenfold all those of the Ponds, boys and girls, some not yet of age. They were crowded in the dark with strange lights flashing over them. On their shirts were skulls, and etched into their skin were symbols of death. Then another sensation, a sound so piercing it pained his ears. A kind of music, but played not with the sweet flute and drum of festival but by impossibly loud instruments. And the people swayed to the beat, unaware of each other's presence.
Another dream? He began to wonder.
The vicars told how scholars had created a liquid that melted flesh off bone, and the leaders allowed them to drop this liquid from the sky so they wouldn't hear the cries of their enemies. In their arrogance, they even created a false sun, and their leaders let them drop this too, so the heat would burn their enemies, leaving nothing but the outline of their bodies in ash on the ground. This time, when the vision startled him awake, he pressed his eyes shut to block out the light. But the flash of the false sun glowed through his eyelids.
Perhaps the horror had been real.
Again and again, the vicars told of the darkness. Again and again, the visions of the darkness appeared. And what the vicars described showed in the dreams.
The vicars came so many times he lost count. Each interview would start with a question.
"Do you know the darkness?"
"Yes, sir," he always replied.
Each time, he was asked to recite the precepts. Each time, he tried to be more sincere until he was sobbing and hardly able to get out the words.
And then, the interviews stopped. No more questions, no more visions of the darkness. He waited in silence.
His cracked lips measured the passage of time. With no taste, no smell, no sight, no sound, he groped at the walls to exercise the last of his senses. They had the feel of stone, rough-hewn by unskilled workers, but worn smooth by thousands of desperate fingertips. Like so many before him, he'd been abandoned. If light was the giver of life, his would soon end.
Then, as he was about to despair, a new vision appeared, no longer a nightmare from the past. On the wall before him was Little Pond in the spring, its sparkling waters, its hills strewn with apple trees, its granite mountains in the distance-and he was struck by the utter loneliness of his circumstance. He imagined Orah and Nathaniel strolling along the paths together, hand in hand, without him. No longer their burden, he was forgotten. His hand stretched out as far as possible, trying to touch his old life once more.
The vision vanished. The ceiling board slid open, and he looked up at the panel of vicars. He struggled to his feet.
This time, the question was different.
"Thomas, are you happy with your life in Little Pond?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you care for your family and friends?"
"Oh, yes sir."
"And would you like to go home?"
His throat seized up. He nodded.
The clerics leaned toward each other and whispered, before the senior vicar in the center spoke.
"And so you still may, Thomas of Little Pond. You've learned of the darkness. We believe you may become a faithful child of light."
Thomas waited, holding his breath.
"The Temple offers three teachings. The first is based on understanding, allegiance and proof. You must convince us you understand the darkness. Once you've done so, you'll be asked to swear allegiance to the Temple, then prove your loyalty. But know this. If you go back on your oath, you'll be sent for the second teaching, a hundred times worse than the first, and you'll dwell in the darkness to the depths of your being. After that, if you stray, you'll be deemed an apostate.
"Then the people of your village will know what to do, as is written in the book of light:
If there comes among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or a wonder, saying 'Let us return to the darkness,' you shall not hearken to the words. If your brother, or your son or daughter, or your wife, or your friend, who may be as your own soul, entice you saying, 'Let us abandon the light and serve the darkness,' you shall not consent to him; But you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first upon him, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And you shall stone him with stones, that he die; because he has sought to thrust you away from the light.