The Mark of Cain (50 page)

“And there’s nothing to hint about what she’s to
do?”

“If there is, then I haven’t been told. I only know
of the warning if she didn’t fulfill it.”

Buying time for this all to sink in, Tracker asked,
“And what was that?”

“Something about how, if she did fulfill it, then
forgiveness and love would rule throughout the end of time. If not, then hate
and rage would.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“No,” Father Carroll replied, slamming a piece of
paper onto the desk in frustration. “If only we knew what her name
meant
….”

“I bet Inac knows. He knows the languages that
existed before they made records of them.” Realizing what that meant, Tracker
added, “So he knows the endgame and we don’t.”

“No. He never got any part of the prophecy that
spoke of what she’s to do or about her name.”

“How do you know?”

“I was told that he spent numerous years torturing
and killing members of The Order in attempts to learn the prophecy. As far as
we know his men only got enough information out of them to find her, not to
know what she’s to do. The Order was careful, see. They would give each of the
many clues to many different people so that nobody would have all of the information
in case they were captured. Once he believed that she was dead, They decided to
give more of it to us, especially me, since I was the one to care for her. I
needed to know what to look for to know when she had fulfilled her purpose.
That’s why I know about the love and forgiveness, though it makes no sense to
me. I keep telling Them that I need to know all of it if I’m to know when she’s
fulfilled it, but They’ve been wary about giving too much of it out.”

This was all interesting. But still…. “Still, how do
we know it’s really about her? Maybe she’s a decoy. Or maybe the prophecy was
all made up to make Inac fear something. It’s certainly kept him occupied….”

“No. It’s real. Five men who had never met before
all wrote the same thing word for word.”

Tracker felt his stomach sink. For some reason, he
didn’t want this to really involve the only person he really loved. That’s why
he vociferated, “But
Hara
?”

“The same clues that led us to her led
him
to
her as well. Besides, you know her. Who is better than her at loving and
forgiving?”

Father Carroll was right. Something in Tracker’s gut
was telling him that. It was also telling him that They shouldn’t take her
away. She needed to have the choice. She also needed to know the truth. It was
time for that.

“Why don’t I go talk to her?” he offered, not sure
yet what his plan was. “Make sure to keep her from Inac while you finish with
the preparations?”

Father Carroll smiled, some of his stress
evaporating along with it. “That is a wise intellection. Thank you.”

As soon as Tracker was free, he ran toward the
common room, but it was empty. Then he ran to the kitchens, where Hara usually
helped with the dishes. He didn’t find her there either. Luckily, the third
place he checked was her bedroom and she was in it, alone and reading a school book.

He slammed the door behind him.

“Hara, we need to talk,” he cried.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice full of concern
as she set her book aside and basically leapt toward him with those Amazonian
legs of hers.

“Where’s Inac? We have to get you two out of here
now
,”
he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her behind him toward the door.

“What? Why?”

“Because They’re coming for you.”

“Who?”

“People who don’t want you and Inac to be together.”

“Because of his family?” she asked, stopping dead in
her tracks before he could get her out of her room. At least she seemed to
believe him.

“No. Because of
him
.”

“What about him? He’s wonderful.”

It was time. Tracker didn’t want to be the one to
tell her, but it was time she knew the truth. The truth about
everything
….

No longer trying to pull her, instead stopping to
look her in the eyes so she would see the seriousness they held, he said,
“Hara, I have to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

“Your family didn’t die in a fire.”

She just looked at him in confusion. “Then how did
they die?”

“They were all murdered. The fire was just…well, I
don’t know why they set the fire. But I do know that the person who killed your
family was after
you
. That’s why you were brought here instead of going
to live with your aunt and uncle. It wasn’t that they didn’t want you. It was
that they thought you’d be safer here.”

“Why? Why would somebody want to hurt me? I was just
a baby.” He had to give her credit for not freaking out.

“Why isn’t as important as who.”

“Okay,” she said, her eyebrows almost touching in
her confusion. “Who?”

“Inac.”

She seemed to believe his words until he said that.
Now she chuckled. “He would’ve been just a kid, Tracker.”

“No he wouldn’t have been,” he said, dreading what
was to come next. “You see, Inac isn’t his real name.”

She rolled her eyes and tapped her foot; she obviously
didn’t want to hear this but was going to be polite like she’d been taught to
be. “Fine. Then who is he really?” she asked with more than just a hint of
sarcasm.

“Cain. Hara, Inac is really Cain.”

***

Inac stared at the painting of his parents. Why was
it that both were so frequently painted fair—his father, Adamu, usually a
blonde, and his mother, Hawwa, a redhead? In reality, his father had had black
hair, an olive complexion, and dark, slightly slanted eyes, while his mother
had been light in both hair and skin color, with large round eyes the exact
color of the sky.

Although most of his siblings shared Adamu’s black
hair and dark eyes, some, like Abel, had been lighter, favored because of their
similarities to their mother. Although Inac’s eyes had been a bright blue like
the wildflowers that grew along the path leading to the crops he tended, he
looked a lot like his father with his hardened, masculine features, even though
his father had never been as large as Inac had been. Their enormous family was
interesting because, even with their similar coloring and features, each of his
siblings looked distinctive from the next.

None of them, not even the lightest among them, were
fully Caucasian. They were everything; the
beginning
of each race, each
carrying genes that the genetic lottery eventually used to evolve into Asians,
Indians, Blacks, Whites, Native Americans, and so forth.

His parents looked so happy in this painting,
wearing nothing but leaves as they frolicked in the Garden of Eden, and he
couldn’t help but wonder if they really had been so carefree before he’d come
into their lives. They certainly felt that way around his little brother, Abel.
He had always been so annoyingly perfect….

…“Good job!” Ka-in’s mother Hawwa cried, holding up
the rabbit Ab-l had brought back from the hunt as she pushed her blonde curls
from her delicate face. From the corner of his eye, Ka-in glanced down at the
game spread across his own wide shoulders that were bare of the tanned skins he
wore that fell from his waist, hiding the part of his body that God had deemed
as for only him and his wife to see.
He
had brought back a large buck.
Where was
his
praise?

His mother turned to him and her smile gave way to a
scowl. “What took you so long? Everyone’s hungry.”

“Ab-l talks too much. He kept scaring away all the
deer,” he answered, his grumpiness saturating his tone. “I told you I didn’t
want him going with me.” Ab-l wasn’t
man
enough to hunt like Ka-in was.

“Don’t blame him for you taking an extra day. He
couldn’t have talked
that
much.”

But he did. Sometimes Ka-in just wanted to stuff
Ab-l’s loincloth down his throat, but his little brother would undoubtedly find
a way to speak around it, so really, it wasn’t worth the trouble.

His father, Adamu, walked up then, puffing out his
lean chest to look larger than he was, as he tended to do when Ka-in and his
large stature were present. “Don’t disrespect your mother, Ka-in,” he
chastised. “Instead, why don’t you go see to your family.”

It wasn’t a suggestion, but a command. His father
was the head of the family and was to be obeyed at all costs.

Ka-in dropped the buck into the dirt for his father
to clean before going to the hut he lived in with his wife, Awan, and their
thirteen children.

“Father! Father!” they all called, running and
jumping on him, trying to wrestle him to the ground. It wasn’t an easy task
seeing as how Ka-in was the largest of all of his brothers and their sons.

Ka-in laughed and wrestled back while his youngest
son, Bale, became tangled in his long hair the color of the night sky.

“What are you doing?” he asked Bale as he tried to
get the little monkey out. His son, giggling in response, wrapped himself
deeper into Ka-in’s filthy waves.

“How was the hunt?” his wife asked once the children
had settled some, both her hands on her large stomach. She would be having
their fourteenth child any day now. In his mother’s case, each time she’d been
with child, both a boy and a girl were born. However, Awan had not had more
than one child for the past four births and, with the size her stomach was, it
was obvious that she carried only one this time as well.

“Good,” he answered her as he greeted her with a
kiss, playing with her hair as dark as the soil he tilled. “I killed a large
buck. He’ll feed us for a couple of days. I thought I would come say hello
before I go check on the crops.”

“Your son has been diligent in tending to them,” she
told him with a smile. “You should be proud.”

He nodded before going to meet his eldest son in the
large fields they sowed. They mostly ate fruits, vegetables, and grains, with
meat being a treat for them to look forward to. It wasn’t that there wasn’t
plenty of meat, but with Ka-in being the only truly skilled hunter in a family
of mediocre ones, and with his job in the fields because he was best at that
too, he just didn’t have the time to keep meat in their diet. Sometimes they
would slay their sheep, but not often enough to really feed them all.

“Enoch!” he called. His son was tall and large like
his father, his bare chest not as powerful and defined as Ka-in’s, but getting
there because he was still entering manhood. When he was fully grown, he would
then marry whomever God commanded him to before having as many children as he
could before death. This was God’s commandment.

Ka-in didn’t quite understand the concept of death,
but God told them that, once they had procreated the Earth enough for humans to
flourish, that only then would they age and die.

He also didn’t understand age. He knew his most
recent child was smaller than his first, but nobody grew larger after a certain
point—even his mother and father appeared the same as Ka-in and the first of
his siblings. God had explained it by saying that He had stopped their aging at
their most fertile points so they could fulfill His commandment swiftly and
with ease.

“Father,” Enoch said, hugging him.

Once they parted, Ka-in looked around. The crops
indeed looked well.

“I see you took good care of things while I was
gone,” he said, clapping Enoch on the back. He, unlike
his
parents, gave
praise when it was warranted, no matter which child of his it was.
He
didn’t pick favorites.

“Thank you, Father. I did just as you said.” Enoch
was obviously pleased as he wiped the filthy sweat from his brow with the back
of one thickly-calloused hand.

Life went on like this for many more days and
nights. Enoch married and now had small children of his own. Ka-in and Awan
themselves had seventeen children. That was when things changed.

“I plan to sacrifice our most beautiful lamb to our
Almighty God,” Ab-l told him one day as they walked out together away from
their village toward their sheep and crops, pushing his sand-colored hair out
of his eyes in much the same way that their mother always did to hers.

Ka-in had forgotten about their annual sacrifices
being due. It really wasn’t smart if everyone was to eat. God wanted them
healthy to fulfill His commandment, but asked for their food so they would go
hungry. Ka-in didn’t see the point in it.

It was as he was thinking of how he was to feed
everyone after sacrificing their food source that he got the brilliant idea to
sacrifice barley from the soil not doing well this planting. God didn’t say the
sacrifice had to be
edible
crops.

“Ka-in,” God said, appearing to him a few days later
in all His glory; His white robes brighter than the sun billowing in a wind
that wasn’t really there. Ka-in had always wondered if it was really the bright
light that came with Him that stirred the air around them. “Why dost thou offer
me such sickly crops? Dost thou not think more highly of thy Father?” God spoke
the same language as them, though He did so with a flourish they didn’t
emulate. It was, as his father told him, God’s way of showing them that they
did not know as much as He, and they should not question His wisdom.