Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
He sounded like the Oracle to Nickel, full of half-truths and conundrums for him to piece through.
“I see what the Thraíha mean when they speak of the Past World,” Nickel said, looking over the priest’s head at the crooked shapes of a silhouette of a mural in the back of the room. “I’ve thought over my last life before I came to the canyons—everything I left behind.” Nickel sighed. “I’m not so sure I want all of it again.” He looked at Ethra.
Ethra spoke in a tone so husky it sounded like a whisper. “Where I sit and you stand is what has been left behind. In our race consciousness, the ancestral memories of the Past World speak to us. The wreckage of the ruins we call home speaks to us of a world that our ancestors left behind.”
Nickel frowned.
“And you still can’t leave it behind?” Nickel asked.
A small smile formed on Ethra’s face, visible in the faint flickering darkness, barely lit by the burnt-out candles. It slowly stretched wider across Ethra’s jaw as his head shook from side to side, even slower. Then his mouth stretched into a smile. He was shaking his head.
“We’ve run through the canyons, hunting ghosts, running away from the lives of our ancestors of the Past World. We could only run for so long until we ran into the ruins of the Past World.” Ethra cackled, his hearty, bubbling demeanor returning. He lifted his head and raised his arms towards the ceiling, motioning his palms toward the space around them.
“The hunter’s mind meets the agrarian mind, and the journey begins anew.”
The howl of the winds outside entered a whipping frenzy, resuming its regularity, whipping against the sides of the temple, causing the metal elements wrapped around the temple’s exterior to crackle and clang as their foundation was tested against the screaming thrusts of the winds outside. At this height, the temple’s architecture seemed feeble against the onslaught of air. Nickel flinched, as he always did, the few times he’d been in a room this high up in the temple.
Ethra chuckled.
“You’ll be fine,” Ethra said. “At this height, nothing is created or destroyed. When the temple’s time comes to collapse, we’ll all have an escape hatch.”
“But then what happens?” Nickel exclaimed. “This is the place the Thraíha commune with Father Hawk and the Huntsman! What if that’s gone? This is for generations! What will everyone else say about—”
“The journey must begin anew!” Ethra said, slapping the floor with his palms. The priests around him laughed.
“But that’s not how the other Thraíha see it,” Nickel said.
“So be it!” the lanky priest shouted, to grunts and murmurs of approval from the other priests.
“So be it!” two of them echoed, to “mmms!” of agreement.
“There is nothing that you can do—” said a priest sitting to the far left next to Ethra, resting the palms of his hands on his knees. “Or you.” He pointed at Ethra as he spoke. “Or me,” he pointed at himself. Another priest sitting behind Ethra, his face mostly hidden, exclaimed, “Or you or me.”
“The time will come, and the present will appear,” said another priest from behind the lanky man.
“The Thraíha,” the lanky priest started, motioning with his hands. He chuckled before continuing, “Most of our brothers and sisters—not all—will keep following the same patterns they are used to, from the days of hunting and hunting only, fighting with their brothers and sisters who want to be pilgrims, over whose way is better. Pilgrims and hunters! Both wrong, but both believing theirs is the only way, all fighting the tides of change.”
“Because we will have to leave,” another priest murmured behind Ethra. All the priests turned to look at him and nodded. “Change is inevitable; there will be many Past Worlds in the lifetime of this earth, many changes and evolutions. We resist change at our peril. Father Hawk may have flown before the time of the Thraíha, but he will leave his nest again. The Past World is more connected to us than many of the Thraíha believe.”
“But there’s still Thraíha like you,” added Nickel.
“Yes, the tides are not lost on all,” Ethra said. “Too many people are in their waves for not but a few at least to catch sight of the motions—to open their eyes and see the foam and where it comes from.”
“You and—Theren too,” Nickel said. “He talks different. He’s not as afraid as the other Thraíha.”
“Yes! Yes,” Ethra said, nodding. “We know.” He chuckled.
“There are others too,” said the priest behind Ethra.
“If we all know what’s going to happen, and more about how to find what we’re all really looking for, then why don’t we just go and travel there ourselves—find what it is we’re looking for without the rest of the Thraíha?” Nickel said. A nervous tension strung through his chest as he sensed an ending. He wanted to understand why he could or couldn’t bring the priests along on his journey, or the one that they seemed to think was right for the whole tribe.
“Ah,” Ethra exclaimed, pointing his finger at Nickel. “There it is,” he said.
“What?” Nickel said, holding himself from scowling at the misdirection. Surely, he expected them to answer his question clearly.
“There’s the trap,” Ethra said.
“Where is it—what are you talking about? What trap?”
“The reach to think you’re better,” Ethra said.
Nickel really did scowl at that, his eyebrows dropping like rain.
“I didn’t say that!” Nickel protested.
“It’s in your words and the meaning you ascribed to them,” Ethra said.
Nickel felt a heat rising to his cheeks.
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“You are from the Past World,” Ethra said, slowly drawing his fingers out through the air. “You have seen places and things unseen by the Thraíha. You have come to our world, having already seen the paradigms of the Past World. And you are curious to find more! Not everyone is so. But did you do anything to deserve or earn your inclination?”
Silence dropped through the room, and in the air between Nickel and the priests.
“Mine?” Nickel said, feeling trepidant and questioning, as if he knew what Ethra wanted to hear.
“You did not,” Ethra said, his smile turning to a plain line. “You did not earn it; your curiosity was molded, and if you try to mold theirs—” he paused, smiling as if to emphasize to Nickel that Nickel should know he was talking about the other Thraíha—”you’re telling them that you’re better than them—which you’re not.”
Nickel swallowed.
“I don’t think I am,” he hurriedly said.
“You do,” Ethra said, chuckling. “There’s a part of you that thinks you were brought to us because the world was catering to you, its main character.”
“No,” said Nickel, shaking his head.
“It’s natural,” Ethra said. “We are born that way. The tapestry of constellations is moving everyone to and fro. The rhythms of the stars move us every which way. The ego is meant for the hunter to survive.”
“To move through the hunting route, and into the ether of being, is to see that we are all animals, roaming the Great Huntsman’s soul,” Ethra said, “penetrated by the light of the stars, the same as we are guided by them.”
“The Great Huntsman?” Nickel asked. “I thought Great was a title for Father Hawk, and Father Hawk only.”
“We’re changing our language,” Ethra said, “one text at a time,” he said, picking up a quill and a sheaf of parchment at his feet. “A new story for a new world. But we won’t tell the rest of the Thraíha right away, and we haven’t!
“If you or I told all the Thraíha of our ideas, we would lose the hunters. They would abandon us, and we would have no food—no pack big enough for us to hunt with. Their world isn’t worse. It’s necessary.”
Nickel swallowed his words, feeling confused. He shook his head, sighing, before abruptly cutting into his next bout of frustration.
G.R. Nanda 