The three figures that toiled down through the weed-choked pass were a vision or weariness. Their gaunt continence bespoke of many years of hardship. Their robes were those of a priesthood of a previous age, tattered from a lifelong journey out of a distant land.
The two men had long beards of silver-streaked white. The woman had crow’s feet about the eyes so deeply etched that crones would have pitied her the remorseless erosion of her youth. She was bent, as was the tall man. Only the thickset man of medium height was straight of back.
Down through the mountain pass, the pass that had eluded them for years, they toiled, under the subdued gaze of a sun dimmed by the billowy mists that pushed up the jagged cliff faces surrounding them from the deep cold sea below. Above and behind them towered the soaring mountains that stood so tall that the clouds backed up on this side. Above and beyond the mountains, they had left behind the roof of the world, a limitless tableland of dried up hopes and washed out lives, where mankind had dwelt for so long that the tale tellers had forgotten their tales, the record keepers had lost their sacred scrolls, and the ages old tablets of the old ones had long since crumbled to dust. But one book remained to Man, and these three bore it.
Off in the distance, beyond the rain-watered forest, was the sea, the deep black drink where mysteries abounded, where, it was said that the idol did draw its powers of prophecy, informed by the ancient lore encoded in his granite bones. Downward into those steamy teaming jungles a-riot with the hoots of monkeys and the variegated voices of countless birds, they hobbled, ever struggling over root, under branch, through creepers, and around the impossibly thick trunks of trees.
The tall man moaned, “I will not have the strength to ascend. I will be lucky to see the idol, let alone fit to bear his wisdom to the world above and beyond.”
The woman sought to encourage him with a dainty hand on his, and a soothing voice, “Never fear, once we have received the secret of life from the idol, this shall all shed. We will be free of this constricting view of life and free to float upon the nethersphere of enlightened self-sacrifice. We will be feted and honored by The People!”
The stout man grumbled, as he beat aside a tangle of flowering vines that so impeded their progress with the butt of his staff of holy office, “Neither bemoaning our misfortune nor exaggerating our prowess will achieve the task at hand. Hear me, you two, we must arrive at the foot of the idol before nightfall or all is lost! Now move!”
As they made their way between the crowded trunks of the massive trees, scaling roots as if they were small mountains, only to find themselves dropping down in between two roots so thick that they must climb out as if from a wooded trench. The smell of sweat began to mingle with that of fear as the day wore on, and late afternoon brought the deluge of rain that watered this infuriatingly fecund garden.
Down the rain poured, in torrents that grew to flood proportions, a flood which threatened to drown them. But the stout man had an idea. He had them all grab onto his staff and hold tight, as the flood washed them seaward. The waters picked them up and shot them like minnows through the channels formed by the mighty tree roots, until, eventually, they swirled in a sluggish eddy, beneath the colossus itself!
The storm was abating, the torrent slowly settling and draining into the sea via numerous swift channels. The stout man held the other two together, his staff planted in the moist ground. As the water receded to the ankles, they lost their fear of being swept out to sea, into the dark deep that could be viewed between the swaying palms that lined the beach where the waves crashed furiously.
They stood now, refreshingly cooled from the rain, and less weary than in many a long month, beneath the awesome edifice of the ancients! The massive Idol was 100 cubits at its base and 200 cubits high. It was the figure of a stern-faced though weak-chinned man seated upon a carven throne of black basalt stone, his granite elbow upon his granite knee, his granite chin upon his granite fist, his obsidian eyes, larger than a human head, half shuttered under flint lids
"Look," said the tall man, “Though he appears to have been carved of a single block or mountainous stone, he is comprised of a variety. He came into being by design!”
A staff, taller than a tree, shaped in the sign of addition at the top, was thrust into the estuary from the lagoon that ran up to the left foot, a foot that towered over the tall man at the ankle. On top of the staff, on the crossed piece, perched an immensely fat stork, with a grotesquely engorged gullet. This fetid beast regarded them with baleful eyes of sallow yellow. This made the woman shudder.
Then came the rustle of the jungle—no, a certain tree, the greatest tree, so massive that it towered over the idol’s shoulder and then shaded the entire area in which they stood, which formed a moss-grown stone plaza between the idol’s feet. The rustle caught the attention of the skittish woman, who looked up as if hypnotized at the gaily colored vines, flowers and fruit that hung with such abundance from this superlative tree.
“Oh, my, aren’t you lovely!”
The stalwart man, ignoring the dazed woman, opened a satchel and produced a large tome, gilded and heavy of page, a codex inscribed with blood on human skin. From this he intoned the deity greeting of his cult, “Oh He Who Knows, enlighten We Who Seek with your woes. Tell us of the time before Uplift, of the age of Elder Man!”
In response to this a great grinding of stone on stone sounded above them and the tall man opened his mouth in an “O” of explanation. When he did so, that gruesome toad-like stork spit from its gullet a dead fish, which flew like an arrow into the man’s open mouth. The fish protruded from his mouth for the length of cubit, its pallid tail sloughing slimy scales, even as barbed fins pierced the man’s face from within the mouth and he stood in rigid shivering terror unable to move. Tree roots wound up his ankles to his knees, holding him fast.
The woman was being dragged up into the tree by a surging mass of green white and red as the flowering vines of the monstrous plant brought her into its branches, where she was enmeshed in foliage and lost to sight; voiceless, gone.
The stalwart man grew angry, cast back the hood of his cloak, and demanded, “By what right do you—”
The grinding of stone upon stone was accompanied by a shower of granite dust as the flint eyelids sparked open, the obsidian eyes smoldered with a red mote, and the great right hand that rested upon the throne balled into an elephant-sized fist and smashed the puny mortal into pulp with one thunderously squishing blow.
