Prologue: Myth of the Maker
Father said: “Let me tell you a story:
There is a creation myth, one of many about our Makers, that persists in Paradise. For it does not contradict the stories that came before or after. It is simply ‘truth’—as told us by our fathers, while remaining true to our sons who live it every day.
There once was an island where our forefathers lived as many warring tribes. An island so lush with green that they gave it the name Paradise. This island and all who lived there knew nothing of the outside world beyond the wine-like sea that encircled it.
Then, one day, the Makers came.
They brought with them contraptions never before seen. Weaponry that spoiled the greenery. They took one man and one woman from each tribe, and departed the island quicker than they arrived. They left ruin in their wake.
…And something else: a lone apple, and a strange contraption of their make.
The tribes split the apple into pieces, and in a ceremony of peace, each man took a bite. They cast aside their grievances for a common plight.
Now bound together, they eventually recovered as one tribe. Their minds were unified, welded together by the shared dream of reuniting with their stolen loved ones, and they unmade the strange contraption the Makers had left behind.
Generations later, they finally put the device back together again. Once, twice, three times. At last they understood its nature. They then duplicated it, and every man came to own one of their own.
The device was a vehicle. One that would allow them to leave Paradise behind for a new Homeland.
Soon after, a grand fleet departed the island, carrying a united tribe seeking what had long since been reduced to a haunting generational memory of something precious lost to time.
When the fleet touched the shores of the New World they were surprised to find their Makers in ruin, ravaged by the genetic experiments they had carelessly created out of the slaves they had stolen from Paradise.
The fleet, led by the Great Conqueror Alexander and aided by his wise scholars, encountered one of the surviving Makers: the Oracle of Siwa. The Oracle bestowed on Alexander a final gift with which to lay waste to the monsters that had usurped their makers—the twin horns of the First Dragon, stolen from its head in an ancient war long ago.
Now Alexander had reptilian blood in his veins, a monstrous power tamed only by his elevated human brain, that he promised one day to bestow upon an inheritor worthy of his name.
Thus, Alexander set the tone of the world to come. A world of Matadors in constant pursuit of the fleeting power of the Dragon. And in contrast, the Nordic Coven; the failed experiments of the Makers to recreate the First Dragon, consumed by their machinations and manipulations, scheming in the shadows forevermore.
A brilliant burst. A sickly glow. One for a fleeting moment, the other on and on. United by one mantra:
To the strongest.”
Part I: A Quarter to Paradise
Chapter 1: And Tomorrow…
1993
I run my fingers through white sands. Today, I’m a Hound.
Hunched on all fours, I roar with as much menace as my three-year-old larynx can muster. My eye catches something; a blur of movement.
It’s a lizard, smaller than my thumb. A muddy, thorny thing indistinguishable from a tumbleweed, it scurries off down the dune. I know better. I know it’s my prey.
To my young mind, it is a Dragon.
I peek over the dune’s edge. Endless rolling waves of sand eventually meet the sky in the distance. Clouds hover above me like cotton candy.
Distractions. I watch the tumbleweed fade away. My sense of self-preservation is still developing—so I throw myself after it without inhibition.
Falling…
…gnillaF
The tumbleweed scampers while I—mighty Hound—tumble. I bite down and taste salt.
I have many futures, and in one of them Mother will remind me of today. The truth, I will learn, is that I’d chased the lizard at a truck stop on our way to the white wasteland. My parents hadn’t been able to peel their little Hound away. We’d never made it to the sands at all.
Many futures, many pasts… each as true or false as the last. It’s all just a matter of scale.
Today, I am a Hound.
Yesterday, a three-year-old boy.
And tomorrow…
Chapter 2: The Cycle of Glory
1997
father moved us to Paradise. Before the move, I’d seen Paradise in my dreams many times. father had seeded those dreams with stories of Prophets and Kings. On breezy afternoon cruises in his rustic sailboat, he’d sometimes hint at his own dreams—of what he wanted to become. Only attainable in Paradise.
father once dreamed of a simple life, sailing off the shores of the Homeland. He had been forced to make a choice…
“Here you will be trained, and separated into Matadors and Hounds.”
The Master drones on while I tie my shoelaces. My dream is to escape Paradise and go back to the Homeland.
“…Determined by your genetics as being incapable of Draconian Transfiguration, most of you are destined to become Hounds from birth. A fine thing to aspire to nonetheless! Hounds assist their Matadors in defeating the Dragons, and have the privilege of dining upon them upon their vanquishing!”
Paradise is a Hound’s den.
They say Hounds are like ghouls who feast on the remains of the deceased. It’s true. They prey on my dreams, and my dreams are dead. I’ve only met one Hound that I can bear: a stubborn one, whose name is Richard Holdfast. He’s from the Homeland too.
A Hound swoops by while I tie my shoe. Grabs me by my hair. Yanks as hard as he can.
I yell. He scurries off.
I’m faster. I have Draconian blood in my veins. I hurl myself forward and catch him by the shirt. Normally I don’t fight when the Hounds gnash… There are too many of them. But this one is alone, and a little smaller than the rest.
I throw him against the wall. His head bashes into it, and he collapses. The Master is oblivious, consumed by his monologue.
The wall is smeared with the ghoul’s blood. He clutches his head in pain.
I wince. What have I done?
“…Those of you who successfully become Matadors will dedicate your lives to fighting Dragons until you have amassed enough victories to initiate the Transfiguration. Dragons, as you well know, are often called Bulls. A coveted form to achieve. The strongest Bull reigns as The Alpha, the Champion, until he is inevitably defeated by a worthy Matador—thereby repeating the cycle of Glory.”
Staring at the red-smeared wall, blood gushing from the ghoul’s head onto his wrinkled uniform, all I see is red on white.
I feel terrible. I also feel powerful.
Chapter 3: A Rival for a Friend
1994
Holdfast has taken my dress again.
I glare at him. We dominate the space. No one in our preschool class dares get in the way.
He’s a well-kept child, the waves in his ginger hair stubbornly resisting his freshly-combed side-part (probably brushed into place by his Mother).
I’d claimed the purple dress the moment I’d laid eyes on it. He’d seen its value to me and started arriving to class early, just to get his paws on it first. He never had anything to say. He thought he owned the place, and that he could put me in my place.
He thinks he can beat me.
We scuffle. We’re both four. It’s not much of a spectacle.
Calpurnia, the teacher’s assistant, breaks it up and pulls us aside. Or maybe it was Mr. Julius, the teacher. Either way, the issue is settled. We each will have to take turns wearing the purple dress. No more fighting.
Holdfast nods. It’s a reasonable compromise.
From that day on, Holdfast and I will have a tense truce, based on (grudging) mutual respect. We honour the compromise.
I’ll gladly trade in a thousand friends for a rival like Holdfast.
Chapter 4: The Pack Always Wins
2003
Bakor and his pack are huddled around a shiny cell phone. They’re dancing to some flavour of the day pop tune blaring out the phone’s tiny speakers.
We’re on the training grounds. Bakor and I were friends until earlier today, until he and some others grouped to form a pack of Hounds, leaving me behind.
They taunt me from across the field. I don’t speak their language. I don’t howl.
They lurk on the outskirts, contented by a future in which they’ll only eat remains. The Bullfighting season is coming, and they’re hungry.
I want to be a Matador.
They think that’s funny. In their minds, if I’m weaker than they are, and all they aspire to is to be one Hound in a pack of many, then what hope do I have of being more?
“You hold your sword like a girl,” I taunt back. I see I’ve tapped into something that enrages Bakor.
“Shut up,” he says, closing the distance between us. “Little bitch like you thinks he can do better?”
Undeterred, I point at his sword. “You’ll never do any stabbing with it. Might as well get used to getting stabbed. They’ll make you a part of the Bull’s harem. To ‘relax’ him before his fights.”
Vulgar. It’s the only way.
Worse still, he has been emasculated in front of his friends.
He grabs my shirt. I grab his throat. I throw him to the ground.
My heart punches at the inside of my ribcage as I punch down at Bakor.
His friends watch, mouths agape. I notice the front pocket of my shirt has been torn open. Bakor clawed at it as he fell. I want to curb stomp him. Finish him.
Instead, I walk away.
Later, one of Bakor’s pack—I think Yousef—tells anyone who’ll listen that Bakor beat me up. He points at my torn shirt as proof.
The pack always wins, no matter how weak. A valuable lesson.
From now on, I plan to end all my fights with a curb stomp. With permanence.
Chapter 5: Victory is Yours
1995
I stare up at the monitor. My eyes glitter with neon gore.
I reach up––slam my fingers down on the buttons.
A Warrior clad in red armour triumphantly blasts flames into the air from cyber-enhanced gauntlets.
“Round 2––Fight.”
Behind mirrored shades and a Hollywood grin, the Warrior’s challengerfights back.
CREDIT 0 – PLEASE INSERT COIN
CREDIT 0 – PLEASE INSERT COIN
CREDIT 0 – PLEASE INSERT COIN
…flashes at the top of the screen. I don’t understand what it means. I keep smacking at the controls.
The Warrior lands an uppercut. With a brutal CRACK, his challenger is decapitated.
Blood showers down on the Warrior. Red on Red.
My eyes are filled to the brim with red. Little glittering rubies, wedged into my five-year-old head. On the screen, the following words fade in and burn their essence into my spirit where they will haunt me forever:
“VICTORY IS YOURS.”
Chapter 6: With Permanence
2029
My leather-laced gauntlet grips The Pendragon’s curled horn—its ivory milkiness glazed pink from when he nicked me.
I yank his head back. In my other hand I brandish my sword, and with it, I ram the blade through his gullet—spraying his blood across the tan sands.
Red on beige.
The dusty coliseum creaks as everyone erupts with sweet adulation. It’s a full house today.
I yank the sword out of my prey’s throat and give it a casual flick, etching a red ribbon in the sand around me.
My signature.
I sheath my weapon and release the horn of my enemy. He collapses. His beady, glazed-over eyes reflect wispy clouds lost in the grainy sky above us.
Beige against being—a world in sepia.
His fall shakes the ground. He was a big one.
Careful not to peek at my audience, I break my gaze from his corpse and assess my wound. Just a scratch.
Back to the Bull. His tongue hangs limply from an open mouth. No one will leave this place mouthing off that he bested me.
Curb stomp.
Finally, I allow myself a look at my adoring fans. My growing cult.
“You liked that?”
They roar back at me. I nod.
“Of course you do, you stupid savages.”
This time, they respond with furious buzzing. A swarm of wasps. Their true selves.
The Hounds are already crawling into view to drag the Bull’s body away. Meanwhile, the wasps continue to bzzzzz with hive-mind rage.
I grin from behind my ornamental mask, feeding off their energy. It’s beautiful.
I point the tip of my sword at some random fat man in the crowd. “The pincushions are out in droves today.”
This gets some laughs. The fat one seethes.
As I scan the crowd, grinning at the wasps, I spot Holdfast sitting in the bleachers, his expression blank.
I remember the rage I felt when we were children and the others would call him names.
My heart sinks.
What am I becoming?
Chapter 7: Red Tailed
2001
It’s summer. I’m eleven years old, and these have been the best days of my life.
Mother and I left Paradise so that I could continue my training in the Homeland for the summer. I’ve missed home so much. The Paradisian box I spend my days in—a prison cell in all but name—has become a blur, bleached of colour.
Where has my childhood gone? How long have I been away?
*
I look up, spot a shimmer—brown, triangular—high above. The Masters here call it a Red Tail. Although it seems fixed in place, no matter where I stand, it always seems to hover above me.
I point it out to Holdfast. He squints, shielding his freckled eyes from the summer sun.
“That’s pretty cool,” he says.
Holdfast crossed the ocean with me to train in the Homeland for the summer. Holdfast always goes wherever I go.
Looking ahead, I spot the hill where the other trainees have gone. It’s large, and covered in swathes of liquorice (which I’ve been snacking on, even though I was told not to). A single, towering tree has conquered the top of the hill. At the base of the tree trunk: a fort, built by the girl trainees when they came by earlier in the morning.
“C’mon let’s go!” I shout.
Holdfast is slower than I am, and it takes the two of us some time to reach the hill (he sits around playing video games more than I do, it makes him less agile), but he makes up for it by knowing more about the world than I do.
I wish the others wouldn’t tease him so much.
By the time we reach the hill, the hawk has flown away.
“What took you so long, Ginger Spice?” One of the trainees. An older boy, called David. His eyebrows are arched—glaring at Holdfast.
I hate David.
His companions are already tearing down the fort. Revenge. There had never been girl Bullfighters before. Things were changing, and this camp was the first to allow girl trainees.
That’s why the other boys are destroying their fort. Jealousy, and rage. I’m doing it because of Hera.
She’s eleven, like I am, and she’s the prettiest girl at training. She is also my ‘betrothed’… although I still don’t fully understand what that means.
Yesterday I worked up the courage to finally say something to her. We were in the lodge; the Masters had decided it was too hot to train outside, so they let us watch TV and play billiards. Hera had been sitting on the couch by herself, and I knew it might be my only chance to speak with her alone.
“Hi,” I said, “can I sit here?”
“Sure.” She’d sneered when she’d said it. As I approached to sit beside her, she rose to her feet and walked away.
I break out of my reverie and look at the gnarled stick I hold in my fist—feeling its weight in my palm. The fort is waiting.
The conquering tree is larger up close, protecting me from the sun with its shade. I hadn’t noticed how cool the ocean breeze is today. Without the sun, it’s ice against my skin.
“Satan’s Spawn and the other one: get on with it!” David.
There is rage in my heart, but it doesn’t beat for Hera, or any of the other girls.
I swing my stick like a baseball bat at David… as fast and as hard as I can.
*
I’m back in my box. Back with the Hounds, in Paradise.
It doesn’t feel like Paradise. It never did.
There’s been a catastrophe in the Homeland. Another senseless atrocity on a long list of atrocities committed by broken men.
It won’t be the last.
Suddenly my bright summer memories of hawks, ocean breezes, and attempting to court Hera are no longer as sweet. Thousands have died. The Homeland is mobilising to retaliate, and thousands more will die. For reasons I can’t understand, the Hounds blame something called the Nordic Coven.
Chapter 8: Her Name…
1996
“From now on,” the girl says, “I am yours, and you are mine, together against the evils of the Nordic Coven.”
She glares at me with icy blue marbles. Polished ones, set in a bronze face. She stands far taller than I. “…I am a Queen. and you would do well to conduct yourself in a way that pleases me!”
It’s warm today. We’re in her Mother’s garden. A beautiful place, with a pebble walkway that weaves through meticulously maintained desert shrub, leading to a patio. We’re standing on the patio, in the sunshine.
Sky is clear.
Gold set in blue.
Our eyes orbit the sun.
“Drink,” she says. There are plastic cups for us, laid out on a little table.
I comply. She grins at me. A toothy thing. “Do you adore your Queen?”
I say nothing. Her domineering facade fades.
“We are betrothed, Mauricius, that means we’re basically married and we need to start acting like it!” she says.
She’s pretty. But I don’t know her to adore her.
Her name is Hera. We are betrothed. I don’t know what that means.
Chapter 9: Colours in the Void in Colours
2015
“Her name is Hera?”
The General stares at me from across the pool table. A blonde strand of hair dangles across her face.
“Yes Ma’me.” I lean in to take my shot. The velvet surface glows fluorescent green under the bar’s black lights.
SMACK.
The neon ball glides across the table. It misses the black hole.
The General laughs. Her fangs glow as though she bit into a piece of radioactive fruit.
The sound of tinkling glass swirls around us. The sickly smell of old booze stuffs our noses. There’s movement, but little chatter. Dark figures do dark deeds and take their poisons in different doses.
Rolling up the plaid sleeves of her jacket, The General moves in for her turn. “And your marriage was arranged… when you were a kid?”
“Yeah, that’s basically it.”
She takes her shot. Pockets it. Game.
Setting the spear down she beckons me over. “Another drink. Come on.”
We order another round. She’s in her own head. Then: “I remember meeting my first love.”
“Really? Tell me about it.”
She leans in. “He was a Nordic. I didn’t realise I was dealing with one until I’d been brought into the folds of the Coven. I realised too late. You’re lucky, friend.”
I raise an eyebrow.
She takes another sip of her drink. “I’ve learned a lot in my line of work.”
“Like what?” I had met The General only just this evening. We had struck up a conversation over a drink she had poisoned to discreetly assassinate me before getting cold feet. Her confession then turned a confrontation into something more confessional than I could have anticipated.
It had been a year since I abandoned Bullfighting for a new life in England, where I settled in the hamlet of Bisterne. Yet, even here, reminders of my past followed me wherever I went. Including becoming a target of the Nordic Coven—who had great reach in England—for my deeds as a former Bullfighter.
Earlier in the evening I had attended a play, a retelling of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus— set in the world of Bullfighting:
‘This Martius is grown
from man to dragon: he has wings; he’s more than a
creeping thing.’
I fled to England, avoiding my obligation to marry, and so have not grown from man to dragon. I will die before I grow wings.
Whereas this General is fleeing a sworn duty to her masters to kill my kind. Will she kill me after all?
Is she a creeping thing?
The General finishes her drink. She’s sweating. Takes off her jacket, and folds it across her lap with tattooed arms. “It seems the longer I go on, the fewer reasons I have to keep going. I’ve lost friends, my family. Sometimes it’s too much to take, but I must soldier on anyway, because there’s no escape.”
“Why are you telling me this?” My anxiety around her hasn’t been fully calmed. Part of me expects a knife to the back the next time I turn around.
She stands up. “Go back to your Paradise, Mauricius. The winters are lonely in England. Better to live a few sweet days as rich as several lifetimes—and be immortalised as the Bull—rather than become near immortal and lifeless… like a Nordic. Stick to a short life of purpose. I wish I had.”
I say nothing.
She smiles at me, then asks: “Hera huh? She must be quite the Goddess.”
I can’t help but laugh. “She certainly has the gravitas of one.”
The General looks at the pool table. Each ball glows with a different colour.
“What could my legacy have been?” she mutters, “if I had chosen another path? If not as a Bull, then at least as the bravest of Hounds, falling in a blaze of glory, to be celebrated for all time in myth?”
One ball is blue and green with white wisps. Another has golden rings. The big one has a Great Red Spot.
Colours in the Void in Colours.
Orbiting. Eternal.
Chapter Ten: The Last Day of Cetus
3001
The thick layers of debris on either side of me are beginning to thin the further along the road my carriage takes me. I squint ahead at the magnificent skyline of my New Paradise, the marble surfaces of its monuments providing a shining outline that grows larger as the puttering footsteps of a thousand pairs of feet scuttle onwards, dragging my carriage into the future.
From within the depths of cool shade, I survey the swarm of slaves before me—innumerable and faceless—and lament the escape of the Nordic Coven to the colder planets swirling along the fringes of my solar system. Their servitude would have expedited the cleansing of Earth into my New Paradise.
…A pang, as I remember an old friend. I believe his name was… Holdfast?
I rid myself of doubt and refocus on the matter at hand, the Nordics, and set myself an affirmation that their supposed salvation will be short lived.
I glance upward at the source of my shade—the blimp-like outline of The Whale, the last of its kind, encased within a pearlescent bubble of my own creation. It floats above my procession, shielding my fair skin from the sun. It is my confidant in a world devoid of wonder. How long I shall maintain its company remains uncertain… eventually all must cross the threshold for my Singularity to be achieved.
Singular. In a distracting sea of blemishes that I will treat, one by one, until only I remain. For I am ḏū’l-Qarnayn.
The mottled skin of the blue whale is beginning to decay. It will need to be rejuvenated soon if I intend to keep its consul for the foreseeable future.
“My blue friend, how would you advise me to reach the Nordics now that they have left this world behind?” I ask.
It sighs, an ancient grumble that despite myself I am awed by.
“Your Greatness,” it reverberates, “Your flames cannot cross the distances of space, and the waste of time it takes for you to make the journey renders the effort a mistake.”
“I will not let them escape,” I say. “Surely there is a way.”
It thinks. Says: “Your current path is akin to a cosmic Russian Doll. You must become the vessel instead. The All-Encompassing. Use the entity within you as a template for how you should proceed.”
Curious. I had thought to scrub the surface of the Earth clean with a mop of marble bristles, to focus externally on achieving purity, but I had not thought to purify myself of what was inside and no longer of value to me. Like the First Dragon nestled in silence in my throat, the parasite I had assimilated, I need to become pristine and resilient.
White on white.
I look away from the leviathan. We are in the heart of my New World now… the beating heart of the wasteland that is metamorphosing into my New Paradise. I peer past my procession, at the spiral columns all around us that I have created to pierce the sky.
I will make them go even higher, and I will fashion a new skin for myself and ascend the lengths of my columns until I reach the Nordic Coven. I will no longer be content with my status as The Great. I shall be the All-Encompassing.
I call upon the parasitic guide to my success so far. The one who taught me the secrets of Excalibur and made these first steps possible. But now it is by my will’s fire, not its, that my scales will fuse. By my power that my skin will take on a hard sheen. Somewhere above me, the last blue whale enjoys its final moments as Earth’s largest being as my mass balloons exponentially. The parasite within me wakes up and screams.
I am Becoming.
Chapter 11: Stains of Green and Blue
1999
“Pass the red.”
“Use green instead.”
“Hmph!”
I feel Holdfast’s glare burning the side of my head. I don’t care. I like red the best.
“You don’t even need it, you’re drawing water,” he says.
“Yeah, but what about the blood?” I point at the shark I’ve drawn. It’s biting the bubbled head of a diver off.
“That’s gross.” Holdfast shivers.
“Why?” I ask. He’s a Hound, he can’t fear blood!
“There’s enough blood in real life,” he says, looking down, his words fading quietly.
I see that his eyes have drifted down to settle on his own drawing: of a field of flowers, drenched in stains of green and blue, with sketched outlines of poppy petals… empty.
“Holdfast!” I say, “You must not—”
What he mustn’t do, I’ll never recall, as at that moment I saw something profound on the other side of the big glass window behind Holdfast—a blimp on the horizon.
“I must not?” Holdfast probes.
I gesture at the glass without a sound. He turns around.
“Is that?” he mutters.
“A whale,” I manage, climbing to my feet and racing for the sliding glass door.
I drag the door open—it’s as heavy as the whale—and hurl myself onto the patch of grass outside the beach cabin, Holdfast close behind. We race towards the shore, hoping to get a closer glimpse of the behemoth breaching and spraying spectacularly as it lumbers through the horizon—a shimmering mass of blue and green, swimming through the line separating the sky from the sea.
“Come back! I find myself screaming without reason. Holdfast also yells, although the yearning that fuels his roar is different to mine.
We are different from one another, but bound together all the same. A helix—weaving together, in and out, occasionally even as one. Always chasing The Whale.
Chapter 12: UAP
2011
“What is that?”
A towering Monolith casts its cold shadow far across the cactus-riddled crevices of The Homeland’s deep desert. I shiver in the clutches of the shadow, gazing up at the misshapen red rock curling over me—
“Mauricius! Snap out of it. Are you seeing this?”
I blink.
A luminescent sphere hovers above me, still and not of this world. I am not in the desert. I am not in the Homeland. I am lost at sea in Paradise. The world rocks beneath my feet as Holdfast’s boat keeps us afloat in the darkness where the only difference between the night sky and sea is the divide between the star speckles and their reflections… and the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, hovering above us.
The UAP is a dull blue sphere—currently growing tentacles—that a moment ago had been something akin to a giant Red Tail Hawk. The UAP has wormed its way into my mind with visions of the divide between desert (my home), and wasteland (my progeny).
Ever since Holdfast and I had seen The Whale as children, we’d dreamt of it ever since. We went out tonight to search for it, certain in our convictions that tonight would be the night we bore witness to it again.
Now no more will I dream of The Whale.
“No one is going to believe this,” Holdfast mutters.
In the years to come, we will be surprised to find that it is indifference, not disbelief, that meets us when recounting this night. Something far, far worse.
It turns out that, for others, this moment is more uncomfortable to bear than even the endless nightmare of what was, and what will come to pass.
Chapter 13: The Boy the Father
1997
“Mauricius,” my father says to me, “it is time for us to make the pilgrimage to Paradise.”
He leans against his sail boat and stares off into the vast lake before us. The sun burns hot against our faces.
I squint up at my father through the sunshine. He’s even fairer skinned than I. The darkest eyes. Baby-faced, his usual beard shorn down to nothing, revealing the boy beneath. He is too young for fatherhood.
I rub the tears out of my eyes. “Isn’t there another way?”
He remains fixated on the lake. “I have accounted for all variables, factored in all possibilities. I’ve considered all paths.”
What does that even mean?
Ah, but I know what it means. It means ‘not only will I insist on my way, I’ll insist on what your way should be too.
And I’ll compromise only in ways that I think you should appreciate (even though I hate it too).
And then… none of us will be happy.
“I believe Paradise means for me to become the Bull,” he says.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
He straightens up. “A Dragon. Strong. Up against many challengers, who I’ll defeat valiantly. I believe it to be my destiny.”
I don’t understand his words. Why he believes he can succeed as a Bull when it’s so clear to me he’s meant to be a sailor! He lives and breathes for the water… not fire and bloodshed.
Tears stream down my father’s face. It’s the only time I will see him cry.
The location of Paradise seems to always change. A moving target.
I’ll be sure I don’t miss when my time comes.
Chapter 14: Flowers to circles to spirals
2021
The clinking of champagne flutes evokes a chill that matches the spring desert air.
Spindly saguaro cactuses encircle the party, more numerous in number than the guests, locking their ribbed, prickly arms to create an enclave in the desert, shielding our procession from the prying eyes of the world.
I look above and spot a Red-Tailed Hawk soaring above us. To its eye, it sees a corkscrew of guests and cacti, one that mirrors the flowers of the saguaro as they wind their way down from the tops of their thorny bases, exposing their innards that burn orange hotter than the sun.
And how hot the sun burns, searing through the air, generating the thermals that keep the hawk aloft.
In the centre of this corkscrew, in this spiral that mirrors the sensation in my heart, I twist my destiny into a knot with the woman who stands before me, who was condemned to be my wife from childhood.
Hera stands taller than I, her eyes like planets pulling me into their gravity.
To my right, Holdfast, my best man, who never had a choice to be with me either.
To my left, Mother and father. There are tears in my Mother’s eyes, whereas my father’s wander, scouring the guests for challengers and prospects.
Although I can’t bring myself to look at Hera anymore, I vow that I will do my best to learn to love her. To get it right, now that it is my time.
This could be paradise.
Chapter 15: The Oracle of Siwa
2030
I eat grapes. I sit cross-legged on a carpeted floor. I look past The Oracle of Siwa, and through an archway of golden stone. We’re enveloped by palm trees and calm water, stripes of green and blue that sparkle beyond this Sacred Space. A timeless Oasis. I’ve come a long way to meet her.
“Do you see what I see?” she asks.
She shows me a vision of a possible future. A future where I am Great.
A future as the Bull of Eternity. The one they will call Mauricius ḏū’l-Qarnayn. Slayer of The Devouring Dragon. I will be Abomination.
My kill count will amount to a genocide of the human race. Once I realise my power, I won’t be able to stop. I will make the Matadors extinct. The Hounds will follow. Eventually, the Nordic Coven will give up and leave this world; searching for a home that is dark, cold, and safe.
In this future, after I rid the Earth of all life, I will build marble monuments that breach the sky. They will reach the planets where, one by one, I will hunt the Nordics— eventually finding them in the mists of Venus, where they believed I would never think to look.
I will rearrange the orbit of the planets to engulf them in the heart of the Sun.
No one escapes me.
I will devour all life to goad the truth of the Universe out of hiding.
…The Oracle’s foresight is too weak—too inadequate—to see further.
“Where is Heracles in this future?” I ask her.
“Who is Heracles?”
The question startles me. I see a fleeting face, and realise I’ve forgotten what I asked the Oracle in the first place.
Chapter 16: The Yew Tree
2051
How did I get here?
What choices did I make to plant myself in this place? What was sown from my decisions?
I hope they were the right ones.
How resplendent, the way the sun hangs in the sky. I stretch myself towards it. The world before me is a place where beauty reigns; from the peripheries, to everything in between. Things must have turned out well.
Surely this can’t be hell?
There is movement—approaching from the rolling sea of endless green. An armoured figure, fashioned from magnificence. It would seem I’m in the company of a Knight.
He’s come to say goodbye, but why? Am I leaving… or is he?
As he grows nearer I realise I tower over him. Cruel, that I squandered my life anguishing over how small I felt… only to eventually cast a shadow over my Dear One.
The surface of his golden plating glimmers in the sun.
A swirl of understanding: I remember he means everything to me.
Fortunate, then, that he has reached such heights despite what I’ve done.
He holds a flower between interwoven gloved fingers, and lays it at my feet. I try to speak—but I can’t manage the words. My tongue is trapped, and I fear I’ve lost this last chance. It is my last chance, I know that.
I recognize something in this Knight.
His hands, unburdened of the floral gift, rise to embrace me. Though I can’t speak, I hear his heart, and there is relief in the way it beats.
A flicker of recognition. I would smile… if I could. If I had eyes, I’d shed enough tears to grant lifetimes to these woods.
I remember now.
Chapter 17: Heracles
2022
I hold baby Heracles in my arms.
He looks up at me, his sparkling eyes darker than space. They catch the light and glitter at me. Peculiar how the helix unwinds and meets again through time.
…They are his grandfather’s eyes.
I feel my child’s hair tickling my arm. I hold baby Heracles, alone. His Mother won’t speak to me anymore. She won’t stand to be in the same room as me.
And yet…
“This is Paradise,” I say, and kiss my son’s forehead.
Chapter 18: Glossary of Terms
2010
“Here is a glossary of terms. Memorise it, or you’ll be left behind,” Master says.
Is there anything to look forward to ahead? Such thoughts often fill my head. Although my imagination is rich, my prospects of the future are poor.
I don’t believe I will ever leave this place. How many years has it been since I first walked through that classroom door? Since I left the Homeland behind to chase my father’s dream of Paradise?
School is where childhood is laid to rest.
“Here is a glossary of terms. Memorise it, or you’ll be left behind,” Master repeats.
“I have memorised it,” I reply. “I just don’t understand it.”
Master gestures at the singed bones draped over the blackboard. “Dragon, Hound, Matador,” she says. “Or death.”
“Yes. But why?”
She purses her lips. “Because The Makers made it so.”
The Makers made it so.
The Makers who are no more. Erased from existence a long time ago… or a long time from now?
I’m not sure anymore. Time twists in little circles the moment you walk through the classroom door.
So here. A glossary of terms. Memorise it, or you’ll be left behind:
Dragon.
Hound.
Matador.
…Or death.
Heracles intermission
2031
It smells bad—stuffy, gross, metallic.
There’s a bzzzzz noise so deep that it makes me afraid from inside my bones outward. It’s so loud it hurts my ears.
It isn’t long before the deep noise—the rumble in my sinew—soars into overlapping screaming.
I am in the pits of chaos—the spectators have erupted, scurrying in every direction, fleeing the colosseum as though their lives depend on it.
They do.
They do, because now that the Bull preferred by most has fallen, they risk the scorn of the new Champion: my Father.
He stands still in the middle of the arena, in the immediate aftermath of his Becoming. There was much violence when his wings sprouted. I don’t think anyone in the audience expected him to be so ravenous. It is customary that spectators die when a Dragon is born, to replenish him after his rebirth, but the bloodlust borne witness today was unlike anything that ever came before.
…Uncle Holdfast lies dead on the floor. Fallen in service to my Father to the fangs of The Devouring Dragon.
So much hatred in my Father. I’d always known it, but until today he had suffered greatly to hide it from me.
Something changes in him. His stillness grows exaggerated. I did not think it possible for a living thing to be so still. He is a statue, almost as though made of marble.
Then: “Heracles?” he says.
My throat tightens. I haven’t seen his face since the transfiguration.
Father uncoils and comes to life, pivoting, searching for me. What will I see when we are face to face?
I don’t want to know. I don’t think I can bear it. The Bull might not be my Father anymore.
Worse still, it might be who he was all along.
Faisal Ghazi Binzagr
June 2026
To be continued in Part II
Featured Image by Sarah Baslaim
Website: https://sarahbaslaim.wordpress.com/
