Holy City: Chapter Twenty-Five
The sun was beginning to rise and V had not seen the King. He was in a dungeon cell. V wondered how many men and women had been tortured in this cell. He did not stay in there long. Men came in and chained his wrists and ankles. He was dragged out of the cell and led upstairs and into a courtyard where a van with no windows was waiting. It was the same make and model of the van that had taken him and six other men from the nation of Vitesia and into the desert. The van wasn’t the only thing that was the same. One of the men was the same as well.
That man was seated in the back of the van and watched with his green eyes as V was thrown in. V’s feet and wrists were chained to the bench so he could not move. Green eyes sat on the bench across from V. Two other guards sat down on each side of V. There were two more men in the front. Green eyes was now looking at something on the floor. He was not looking at V as V watched him. The van started driving. Green eyes did not say anything. He looked up from the floor. Their eyes met for a brief moment and green eyes looked away from V. V continued to watch green eyes. The truck kept driving. It drove for several hours until they were outside the border of Lyonesse and V was once again in the Aten desert.
The van stopped. Green eyes looked at his wristwatch as if time was a map. He nodded to the other guards in the back of the van and the door was opened and the chains on V’s wrists and ankles were unlocked. V, surprised at having the chains removed, looked at green eyes, green eyes would still not look back. He nodded a second time to the guards and one of them pulled on V’s shirt as they led him out of the van. The two guards from the front of the van had also exited and the four guards, all with guns drawn, marched V several steps over the sand.
One of the guards told V to stop and turn around. This V did. That same guard put his gun back in his holster. He withdrew a long thin blade from the other side of his belt. He had a wicked smile on his face. V found this smile to be curious. The guard slowly, very slowly, as if to cause pain and to make the pain last longer, slid the long thin blade into V’s abdomen. He held the blade there. V did not react. The guard slowly removed the blade, smile still on his face, and a small patch of red began to grow on V’s shirt. V looked down at the red as it continued to grow. He looked up away from the blood and over the van far in the distance to where there was a city of millions of people, where there were many cities of millions of people, where there were civilizations and societies and nations of all kinds.
Distance in his eyes, V did not look at any of the guards again. The patch of red was still growing. V felt a knock on the head that knocked him to the ground. He felt pain in his left leg and then in his right as they each were deliberately broken by the guards. V was on his back laying down on the floor of the desert looking up. He waited for the inevitable sound of the discharge of a firearm. This he heard. But the shot did not go into his body. The shot went off to the side into the desert. V heard a voice he knew.
“No, don’t shoot him. Leave him to the desert.” Green eyes said.
V did not look up to that voice.
“The vultures will come soon. He won’t last long.” One of the guards said.
“Let the vultures have him, then he will know his worth,” another of the guards said.
The soldiers laughed in unison, a pack going back to their van. Green-eyes didn’t say anything. V heard the doors of the van open and close. He turned his head. He could see the black tires of the white van driving away over the brown sand.
He rested in the desert. The sand was the most comfortable bed. The soft breeze the most pleasing fan. The air of the desert danced against his skin. He closed his eyes and fell asleep for the first time in his life. When he opened them again, he looked up at the sky. There were no clouds.
He lifted his arm and held the sun in the palm of his hand. He focused on his hand. He admired the sun and the skin. His fingers began to char. Transforming from one form of life to another. He looked down past the blood on his shirt, to his broken legs, both bent at right angles, bone sticking through sinew, tendons, blood. He bent down and used his left hand to rearrange his legs as best he could, trying lighten the unbearable pain that was attached to this body.
He fell back into the sand and stared up at the sky. The soldiers were right. The vultures were already circling. How did they know to come so quickly, he wondered, marveling at the efficiency of nature. Slowly he lifted his neck, his upper torso and looked down at his broken legs now straightened. His head dropped back into the sand and he looked up to the vultures again. There was something beautiful about the way they circled above him. He admired that beauty. The man wondered if he should heal his legs.
If he healed his legs, the man decided, he’d go back off into the Avaris Valley. He’d make friends with the pebbles in the sand. He’d work miracles on the rocks in the caves. He would wait a very long time before he returned to any of the three nations.
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As his body burned, the man stood. He walked back into the desert.
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