Chapter 18
Cain knew his wife, and as she was getting to know him, she asked the obvious question, “Husband, how did you come by this scar upon your head?” She asked this one night while brushing away a bit of his hair to kiss the very spot upon his forhead.
“Camphire, if there is anyone walking the Earth who deserves to know my life, of which I am deeply ashamed before I met you, certainly it is you who deserves to know her husband with whom she creates life.” And Cain told Camphire about the murder of his brother, and his exile from his parents home. He wept in shame as he bore himself naked before his wife, “My mother’s shrillness rages through me with every passing moment of my life. Where once I sacrificed the best of my labors to Existence which created me, now it is the sound of her response to my existence which humbles me and decides every action of my hand ever more. If any part of me is good, it is that I try ever to silence in me the sound of her cries to behold what she created together with the love of my father.”
Camphire reached her hands to Cain’s face and kissed him where his head had hit rock few years prior. “As you have shown me nothing but the work of your hands to create what is useful to share with others, and the tenderness of your touch, husband, from the time you arrived, every part of you creates in this land good. That I could silence the voice within you with my kiss, I would be happy to give to my husband what he has brought unto me.”
“Camphire, my shame is the blood of my brother on my hands. All I touch is stained with his good he can never share because of me. If any good come of my hands, it is only because, even in death, his blood makes good what my touch would profane.”
“Cain, do you think you’re the first man to kill another man?”
At this question the watch by their window glanced at each other as similar thoughts entered their heads.
“But your touch is inspired by the man you wish to be, not the man that your brother might have been.”
“I did think I was the first, Cami, but if others have spilled blood as I have, even they would not take the life their mother created after them. It was my job to keep my brother from harm Cami. I would ask another to strike me down if I thought I would not then curse the life of another as I have cursed myself! No, my existence is worth only what good I can create to replace the evils of my being. It is my mother and my brother that speak through me where Cain is exiled from my mind for good!”
Camphire shed a tear to hear her husband speak so, nonetheless she knew the laws of Nod, and knew that in interest of the life now growing inside her, she would have to teach her husband Nod’s law, and recommend setting out the sooner the better.
. . .
Under the direction of his wife, Cain first told Growvner privately of his past. Then with Growvner and Camphire beside him, he informed Camphire’s father about how he had come to find his way through the man’s doorway so many months prior.
“She has informed me of the laws of this town, sir, and before the rest of them find out, we thought it best if we honor the laws of this town and set out as soon as we can. While you may decide not to make this news public, we cannot conceive teaching our children to lie and further insult the Existence that created us and has thus far had mercy upon my own house, though I shame myself to continue living.”
“Cain, it would be a greater shame if you left my daughter to feed her child alone, and perhaps even a greater shame to take from her the light she seems to think you have brought to her life. Of course we will help you.”
A month later, the inn-keeper, Growvner, Cain, and his wife set out a full three days journey from Nod. With them came a boy apprentice of Growvner’s to tend Cain’s fields under Cain’s driection. Growvner arranged with the boy that in exchange for his continued apprenticeship with Cain, and indefinite work with him to supply food for a new center of being existence for Cain’s family and any who enjoyed that center of existence, the boy would be given choice of one of his beautiful daughters who came of age, provided of course there be no objection from her. He further agreed that should they all object, he would honor his arrangement by finding for him a wife who would not deny him the feeling of ease that is proper to a man and woman connecting to create together further life.
Upon arriving three days journey from Nod, they set to work building a dwelling at once.
“Despite your protestations, son-in-law, this place will be a magnet for those interested in growing crops and sharing in the wisdom of a man who has known pain, and strives with himself to cause the pain he has known no more. What will you call the city you found this day?”
“Sir, you like me too much for I to be able to consider you my father. But, your daughter and I were discussing possibilities along the way. We plan on naming our child ‘Dedicated’ when it is born. It will be dedicated to understanding why the work of its hands has the power to shape the vision of the life others see, and know the weight that that power carries with it. Our city, should it become such, will therefore be named after our child and as our child. It shall be called also ‘Dedicated’ that any who enter know that we strive always with the worst of what has come before that what comes after might somehow be better, and not make said profanities ever but a curse to all who behold them.”
The inn-keeper nodded his head and smiled, “Son-in-law, despite you, I think still my daughter made a wise choice in keeping you.”
A drop of tear fell down to the smile that emitted like a beam of sun from behind a cloud toward the man that had co-created the wife Cain knew and loved.
. . .
The angels, aware of the plan for Cain and Camphire to move in compliance with the laws of Nod that state that murderers may visit Nod, but must live a minimum three days journey from Nod’s very outskirts, they made arrangements to find a place where they could set a new camp where they would not be seen, but could ever observe. They decided that they would claim themselves as a city made under similar circumstance as Cain if they were ever encountered, and that they would take extra pains ever to keep Gendlebleth from Cain’s sight. Likewise, they also considered appropriate measures that Casarta’s red skin would not be seen by a wayward passer by.
As the angels were passing by Nod the morning after Cain and his family had left, Casarta, cloaked in hooded garments, was having a conversation with Telnaxson, “I am so very fond of those four legged pony beasts Telly. I do wish one morning I could wake up to find one standing outside my tent, ready to be ridden over to breakfast.”
Later in the day a young girl in Nod was surprised to find a pony standing outside of her bedroom. Thinking she must still be dreaming, she got onto its back and began riding it through her house. Her parents, eating breakfast at the table, stopped and stared as a pony being ridden to breakfast suddenly vanished, and the girl fell to the ground below, crying in pain as she hit the ground.
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