A Just Farewell by Brian S. Wheeler

unbelievers’ massive castles floated
directly overhead, and its shadow didn’t seem to move over the dark
world, as if those blasphemers hiding behind its walls
intentionally stopped their monstrosity over Abraham’s village. The
clerics’ horn sounded the same note of celebration as it had the
night not so long ago when Abraham had watched the unbelievers’
rockets explode in the heavens, and Abraham wondered if the clerics
had called him onto the surface to look towards the east and
witness the fire that would announce his brother arrived in the
Maker’s arms.
     
    The high cleric didn’t make any kind of
announcement after the great horn silenced. He merely looked to the
east to direct his community to turn its attention to the
constellations hanging in that direction. A low rumble whispered
through the ground, and a single rocket, rising on a plume of blue
and white fire, rose from the ground, lifting towards the massive
castle that hovered above their village. Abraham held his breath,
waiting for the flash that would claim his brother and give his
family a hero. Everything went quiet as the village waited,
watching that rocket climb closer and closer to the castle
overhead.
     
    That rocket nearly reached the castle before
it erupted in brilliant light. The men of the village cheered as
streamers of fire and debris fell from the sky before lifting their
hands in unison to chant.
     
    “Praise be to the Maker!”
     
    But the high cleric didn’t return that
chant, instead gazing silently at the stars. A chill ran up
Abraham’s spine and pulled his sight onto the great castle
overhead, whose blinking lights shifted and moved a breath before
the floating bulwark turned.
     
    “Everyone return to their homes!” The great
cleric held up his hands while another bearded leader blared the
great horn’s emergency wail.
     
    A searing beam of brilliant, golden light
burned out of the floating castle, searing across the sky and
striking the ground to the east of the village from which that
single rocket had risen. A crack echoed through the air, and
Abraham held a breath as a giant mushroom explosion rose from that
beam’s impact. A wall of hot wind punched Abraham in the gut,
motivating him, along with the remainder of the village’s men, to
run towards the holes of their homes. Abraham turned before he
reached his family shelter and darted towards Josef’s ladder, where
he called for Alexis and Cassandra.
     
    Josef’s head appeared in the hole. “Where
will you take them, Abraham?”
     
    Abraham shouted above the wailing horn. “The
butcher shop’s chambers are dug deeper than those of any home. Let
me take them there for shelter.”
     
    Josef nodded, and a second later that father
pushed his daughters up the ladder to the young boy, turned only
ten, who had marked his girls’ faces with tattoo swirls in a
promise to be their ward. Abraham pulled and pushed, pleaded and
shouted, at the girls as they ran over the short distance
separating Josef’s home from the butcher shop. The ground shook as
they raced to the bottom of that shop’s ladder as great, booming
concussions struck the earth above their heads. The girls cried as
Abraham led them into the shop’s drainage chamber, where the stain
of blood from so many animals could never be completely cleansed
from the floor. The room was the deepest of any carved within the
village, and there Abraham, Alexis and Cassandra huddled together
as bits of ceiling fell onto their heads, all of them praying to
their Maker that the ground didn’t collapse to bury them alive.
     
    Abraham did his best to comfort Josef’s
daughters, holding their hands and hugging them as he thought the
Maker might expect a good husband to do. He comforted himself by
thinking of the great victory his brother must have brought to
their village. He dreamed of the hurt Ishmael must have given to
those unbelievers who attempted to hide from the Maker’s justice in
the stars. Ishmael’s