Absolute

Part 3

***

My journey to the Congo was long but direct. Not like the route my father had taken. I had no desire to explore the region like he did, only to barrel ahead until we reached the coordinates he'd afforded no steps to hide.

It cost less than I imagined. Most of my funds went toward securing a guide willing to escort me into the forest without knowing where I planned to go and why. I spent most of the hike reflecting on what Mardea had said about my father being a good man. It seemed like a mere deflection then. Why did it feel relevant now?

When we fell within a mile of the coordinates, I ordered the guide to stay back and mind the supplies while I continued on with a single backpack. There was a fear in me as I pushed through the brush of finding the cave and of not finding it, and that duality charged my steps until I came to a halt.

I was staring into the gaping maw of a cave that swallowed the sunlight, boots settled in dirt as if sinking into impressions my father had made. I pulled a flashlight from the backpack and went in. The air was cool and wet, and there was sweetness to it. Something fresh and alive. I wasn't sure how deep I'd gone or had to go. It didn't matter. I would walk as long as I could.

Soon, I came to a cavern where moonlight seemed to shine in spite of day. And as I ventured inside, I saw it all at once; chains draped from the walls like curtains blown free, twirling through the gloom to wrap around a stone—no—stalagmite reaching up to cup a slender form.

The woman was still, head bowed, not fallen, and my lungs filled with fire. Was this the absolute truth? A dead body my father left behind? An ageless beauty I couldn't explain confined to the blackness alone?

The reality I'd known went silent as the new world sang. It had called to me when I was a boy, and again when I planted my feet in the African soil. I reached into the backpack, removing a pair of bolt cutters I'd bought the day my father passed away. Perhaps a part of me knew this day was coming.

I took to the chains like a wild man, thrashing and cutting, a victim feverishly wrenching off the bandages hiding his wounds. The clang of links crashing against the ground as each chain fell echoed throughout the cavern, stirring an ecstasy in me that pumped through my veins and drove my breath.

With the last chain in sight, I gripped the cutters and fed a link into its mouth, pressing down with the force of a hundred men, watching the metal warp and give way. As it fell, the final bandage, the lifted veil, the cavern was hushed.

The bolt cutters slipped from my hands. I could no longer carry them. I turned and fell to my knees, raising my eyes to the stone and the woman that sat upon it. Her head was lifted now, her gaze bleeding into me like ink.

"Why have you broken my chains?"

The woman spoke with such unearthly power that the air in the cavern trembled. She never left the stone, but I could feel her all around me, blanketing me in awe. I exhaled, unsure of an answer.

"Do you know who I am?" she asked. I knelt there, fraught with emotions devoid of rhyme or reason, and shook my head as hers tilted upward, moving the air in the cavern again.

"Are you an angel?"

The woman was unmoved. She gaped up at the ceiling of the cave as if peering through its cracks, far beyond the forest and the sky to some place unknowable. When her gaze failed to return to mine, I grew concerned.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

She lowered her eyes to me and smiled. Her lips hadn't curved. I simply knew she was smiling. "Are you a good man?"

"No."

The word burst from me without pause, yet I had no answer before that moment, and no cause to believe that should be my reply except that I wasn't my father.

I was sitting closer to the woman now. Had I moved? No. She had moved me. I reached out to touch the carvings on the stone. She looked down at me, and the shifting of the air was stronger then, pushing hard enough to lower my arm. "What are you?" I muttered.

The smiling ceased.

"I am judgment. A bridge between the Great One and the First One."

"What does that mean?" I croaked, cupping my head in my hands. "You were dead!"

"Neither asleep nor dead. I was deciding."

The woman peered over me into the blackness coiling around the cavern's entrance like something was there only she could see. I wondered if any of it was real. Was I there in that cave? Had I left home at all? "I don't understand," I moaned. "Do you mean God? The devil?"

She scoffed.

"Please! I need to know!"

The ground rumbled beneath me like thunder trapped in the earth as the woman stood, an unyielding frost seizing her eyes—or perhaps it had always been there. I knew then why my father was frightened. Why he'd left the woman in chains. I was too curious to be afraid. Too foolish to let stories die with him.

The hidden moon lighting the cavern flickered like a bulb. The woman paused. Then, with an all-consuming tenderness, she spoke. "The Great One and the First One are equals of different minds. I settle their quarrels, and my decision is law."

She reached out to me, cuffs falling away from her wrists and crumbling to dust, along with the broken chains that littered her path. Her hand came to rest on my shoulder. Her touch was gentle, yet heaviness weighed me down as if gravity built in my gut.

"You said you were deciding," I mused.

"Yes. A timeless dispute. Have you earned your existence? Do humans deserve life?" I could barely muster a reaction before she continued. "This is not a question for a good man," she said. "It is a question for a man who will answer truthfully."

She paused, waiting for my reply, and it came as swiftly from me as the one before it, only this time, with a gesture of the head. She pressed her hand against my cheek and smiled.

"I have decided in favor of the Great One."

She was gone as quickly as the words faded from my ears, and my body was thrust through the tunnels, crashing at the mouth of the cave. I struggled to my feet, bruised, head aching, blinded by the sun. The air was dry and thin, and something raw scratched at the back of my throat. I swallowed, convinced it was nothing more than the pricking of dread.

I stumbled through the bush in the direction I'd come from, wondering how long I'd been gone, if my guide was still waiting for me. When I found him, he was sitting on the ground, legs crossed, drinking from his canteen. He had a fire going, crackling and spitting smoke.

I slumped down beside it, consoled by its warmth, and the guide held out his canteen. From the smell, I could tell it wasn't water. I shook my head. I didn't want to dull myself with drink. Not when my mind was already reeling. I wanted to sit there in the daylight in silence.