This is my December contribution to the Alchera Project. I interpreted the definition of "family" very loosely.
Merry Christmas,
Chris
Three Wise Men
By Chris Halverson
The grand monarch looked down from his throne, his left hand, rough and etched with scars which would have looked more appropriate on a farmer or soldier, held tightly onto his sword. There they were, bowed before him, the three keys to his success, his Magi.
There was Gaspar, long locks of white hair trailed down his head, kneeling down in violent submission before him. He brought Herod into the presence of Anthony and Octavian. Herod had no idea how old the man was, he seemed to be of an age long passed.
There was Melchior, the youth of the three, so young; he hardly looked old enough to be called a man. Yet when one looked into his dark Mongolian eyes, there was something much older there. He had blessed Herod before his many battles and it was he who had seen the star.
There was Balthasar, thick lipped and dark with a giant clot of matted beard swarming across his face. His body was twisted, a hunch erupted from his back and his hands always trembled. The cripple had healed Herod after the Sacarii attack.
"Go then, find this boy for me. I will treat him as my own son," he said, thinking of Alexander and Aristobulus. Doris had loved them, they weres ambitious, too ambitious.
"We serve you still and always," they said to him, taking their leave only after kneeling time and time again before him. A brief unsettled dis-ease came over Herod, a slight shutter. Maybe it was only the presence of all three men in the same room. Never before had they been together. Or maybe it was that none of them would make eye contact with the King.
--
Gaspar sat near his Persian steed, Zoroaster. He was as pale as the sickly white moon clinging to the black blanket of night and as sure footed as a camel. Gaspar cooed at the horse, mumbling chants. He didn’t know what the nomad boy had seen, but he had felt something too. This age of darkness was reaching its final phase; the struggle was about to reach a point where the tides of darkness would begin to ebb, the pattern would begin again. He could feel it in his heavy bones entombed in his ancient body. How he yearned for the light. Until the Hebrews had came to Babylon all had been well it had been a previous age.
He sighed, patting Zoroaster’s nose and looking deeply into the dark. The other two were sitting at a fire; the African was heating a kettle filled with medicine and the boy was lying back playing a reed flute. Neither were looking at him. He carefully took out the gold statue. It had previously belonged to King Nebuchadnezzar. It depicted Atar, son of the High God Ahura Mazdah, chaining the dragon Azhi Dahaka, it’s three heads raging and gnashing. Gaspar had received the object from Daniel after the King went mad. Another King, That’s what I’m going to find. I am the last of a long line of King servers. We have bowed to every man since Vistaspa. Now here would be another.
"So long, O man, hath I served thee in darkness
"Living deeper, deeper into woe
"Is there not a joy, deeper than grief can be?
"Go! Go lightly forward to find a king. To serve
"That is the eternal pattern, serving," he sung quietly to Zoroaster.
--
"Seeth still the star shepherd?" Gaspar asked, nudging Zoroaster along.
"Yes," said Melchior, his face tilted up, his eyes focused on an empty patch of sky. His Canyon Donkey kept up with the white steed surprisingly well.
The third chuckled and then coughed holding his chest in pain. His African Gumdrop beast bounced along, "The star is in your eyes boy," he coughed out.
"What matters that? The shepherd sees what he sees." Gaspar chided.
"He’s not a shepherd. We are three kings."
Melchior cleared his throat, "Gaspar is right though. I am a shepherd. I am King of Nomads."
"Then you are not a shepherd, but a king," corrected Balthasar.
"I am not a king because I have thrown away my crown."
"Do tell," said Gaspar, looking at the boy again.
"I tossed it to the ground and followed a greater path."
Balthasar slapped the lizard’s haunches; its tail whipped up in annoyance, "Tell me more Melchior. Tell me of your calling."
"Yes. The calling. When I was but a young child of six a voice, still and small, came unto me," his donkey brayed, and fell silent, and the Mongolian king continued, "and this voice said to me ‘feed my sheep.’ I first assumed it simply meant I had to lead my people, so I took the Kingship from my uncle."
"And what did you do?" asked Gaspar, genuinely curious.
"I," he said, his donkey circling back and forth between horse and lizard, "took my people from oasis to oasis, conquering land after land, that they could eat. Yet food was not enough for my sheep."
"Quite a quandary," said Gaspar."
"Quite," agreed the first king patting his steed.
"At the age of 9 I lead a raid of a Bookseller from Greece, and learned their ways. I practiced medicines and science; I brought the philosophers to my people. I taught them to think. I taught them to know things for themselves. Still this too was folly, for what if the voice had meant more than my own people were the sheep? How could I feed the world?
"You would need to spread knowledge throughout the world," Gaspar said.
"Or at least have knowledge of the larger world, of Plato’s Edos."
"Yes. I needed to be united with the world," Melchior continued, "and I found a man from the East who taught me the things of his people. I found the voice of Om. I touched the still small voice, and so I went out to the people and told them the things I know. I could knit bones together through the harmonic convergence of the inner voice."
At that Balthasar nodded.
"I could see the patterns of life emanating from the… as you said Gaspar, Edos. I could see the future. And yet that too was folly," Melchior said.
Gaspar nodded.
"So I threw all of that away too. I picked up this staff," he indicated a smooth staff sticking out of his saddlebag, "and found sheep to tend. Out on the plains I would feed them."
"And that is where you saw this star, am I correct?"
"Yes."
"And yet it is not in the sky? It is not visible at all!"
"And yet," agreed the shepherd, "I go to find this thing."
"It is in your eyes."
"My eyes, yes. But more than that. Out there on the high plains it became my truth, my context, my existence."
The lizard hissed, the donkey brayed, the stallion shuttered. The star, to Melchior, had become so much. The only accurate metaphor he could think of was that of smell. You couldn’t really see the star, not in any conventional sense, but it was there, pungent and sweet, like the frankincense packed along with his shepherd’s staff.
--
In the night Balthasar was barely visible to his two companions, his beaming white smile hung in the air as he limped away from his Gumdrop Beast to the fire. He slumped down on the sand, reclining like he was on a Roman sofa. The three of them sat at the fire. Melchior had said the star was close, hardly more than a day away. He took out his flute and played. It was a beautiful, eerie, noise, perfect for the darkness they were in. It was the music of a mystic, full of longing, pain, and hope. As it continued Balthasar began to pound out a beat upon his thighs. Then he began to sing in a deep, rhythmic voice. It curved through the air along with the voice of the flute.
"I once was a mighty king
"Swordsman and warrior too
"Led my tribe off to battle
"The world was mine to subdue"
"I’ve seen the blood of those I love, felt the wrath from heaven above."
Balthasar had led the Dinka to expand to the North. It was his arrogance that made them continue on into the Janj Valley. They’d won of course, Balthasar had seen to that.
"Then one day I met a woman so fine
"Then came marriage, the kids, and ease
"Sensibility, love, respect, a putting away of the sword
"Calm loving became my expertise"
"I’ve seen the blood of those I love, felt the wrath from heaven above."
Hola had changed things. She had loved him, he thought more about cultivating the land and less about killing the enemy.
"But things are never quite that simple
"My enemies came a calling
"Slaughtering all my tribe, my wife, my children
"Death everywhere, appalling
"I’ve seen the blood of those I love, felt the wrath from heaven above."
Omar had returned looking for revenge. And he had found it.
"Anger, an orgy of hate filled me
"A man found me, and said ‘life and death are before you’
"And gave me a sword and a legion
"And went I to kill and subdue."
"I’ve seen the blood of those I love, felt the wrath from heaven above."
Herod was looking for strong men to keep order in Jerusalem during the Passover pilgrimage. The King was well pleased with Balthasar and gave him the means to avenge himself upon the Janj
"So we went, and killed and slaughtered
"We broke families, shattered cities, with total power and force
"And when I found the man who killed my wife
"I pierced him through, and then felt the emptiness of remorse"
And once last time he sang out with a raw power, "I’ve seen the blood of those I love/Felt the wrath from heaven above," as the flute trailed off.
After he had killed Omar his life had changed, he changed. Pain filled his body, he grew to look old, he became tired, sickly, weak, and grotesque. He suffered from epilepsy and many other demons. All he had known since that moment was the impermanence of life, so he carried with him burial ointment, Myrrh.
--
"There it is!" the Shepherd said, pointing in the sky. His two companions saw nothing.
It was late, very late, but they all knew this was the night so they rode on.
"It descends over that stable."
They went forward at a gallop; claw and hoof pounding upon the sand. The unseen light descended into the structure itself. They dismounted and each rummaged through their bags and each hid their gift from the other. They came to the stable door.
"Do we just knock?" asked Melchior
"I don’t know," Balthasar said, leaning heavily against the slivery wooden wall.
"We open up the door and bow in the presence of the King," replied Gaspar.
The other two wise men shrugged and Melchior pulled open the door. They all dove to the hay filled floor. Melchior’s eyes closed in pain; the brightness was very great. He looked up, the star sat perched upon the head of a baby folded in the arms of a young woman.
"Who are you?" asked a man, knife in hand, standing between the mother and child, ready to die for them.
Gaspar was the first to speak, "We come to see the child."
The man, the husband Gaspar realized, reluctantly put down his knife, burying it in the side of a manger.
Gaspar, still kneeling, drug his old body, the darkness of flesh surrounding his white ancient bones, enflamed with arthritic pain, across the ground.
"My King," he said, producing the golden idol, which he set before the boy.
The husband frowned at the gift, but said nothing, but it was obvious to Gaspar that the Hebrew didn’t approve of it, he supposed it was because of those commandments.
Gaspar got up, looking, really looking, at the child. The eyes were his own, the eyes of a servant, yet still a king. He was, as it was written in the Gathas, "a man who is better than a good man." He was the Saoshyant; the new age had finally come.
The light from the star was intense as Melchior came forward. The closer he got, the brighter it blazed. The flames that crackled against the surrounding world were the patters he had seen. Each crackle made a distinct flute-like, Om-like, sound, "My God," he said, overwhelmed by the intense fire from the infant’s eyes. He set down his frankincense, the fragrance filtered into the air, and Melchior knew the sheep would be fed.
The husband looked at the young shepherd blankly; his sense of monotheism had been violated. Balthasar came forward, shaking; the fits were upon him, pain in his feet, hands, and head, yet he came forward, falling to his knees next to the manger, clutching it tight for support.
The mother shared a look of worry with the man, then faced Balthasar, holding tight to her child.
"Tomorrow will be the eighth day," Balthasar said to the child, "you will be circumcised. You will wail and cry; your blood will spill. That too is part of life. My," he said with effort. His hand came up, as did the baby’s. They touched, and the pain and shaking, and demons came out of him, "My Savior."
He looked into the boy’s eyes, there was pain, sorrow, suffering, yet there was calm within that, all wrath was gone.
The husband scowled, at the morbid gift of Myrrh.
The three bowed again, and left by another way.
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