The Wyrms of &alon

I’d been in my early teens when I first saw the play—the film adaptation, specifically—the second one—the one with Egran Fluhrman starring as Orrin. I ought to have encountered it in Elementary School, as my children had, but, back then, the curriculum had still bowed in deference to the preferences of religious conservatives. The Church had never been a stranger to wrongdoing, violence, and cruelty, but… the Nadkila case…

God… the Nadkila case…

There was something about it. Something elemental; synecdochic. Millennia of bloodshed could stain the whole world red, and yet lose touch with their own enormity. But the Nadkila case’s injustice would abide. It was as ineradicable as it was simple.

I’d cried during the agonies of the opening minutes of the film. Evangeline Henrichy’s performance was one for the ages. The Inquisitor and the city police had come to the Nadkilas’ home to take Amani’s son away from her. They ripped baby Orrin from his mother’s arms. Her heartbreak transformed her. She became like an animal. She clawed, she shrieked, she bit, she tore. She howled.

It made me wonder: would my own mother have fought for me like that? But I would never know.

And yet, with all that, nothing could have prepared me for the scene in the middle of the film when, decades later, that same mother—that same Amani—stepped out from the crowd, wrinkled and time-weathered, to speak to the Lassedile priest—the Luminer—her transfigured son.

“You keep following me, Mother,” Orrin said, given life through Rayph’s words. “I’m glad. I hope, at last, you might finally hear.”

“I never let go of you, Orrin,” Pel’s Amani said, “I held on to you. I’ll never let go. I wait for you, for the day you finally come home.”

“Mrs. Nadkila…” Rayph’s Orrin shook his head. “Ma. I want you to come with me. You, and Dad and Legen. I want us all to be together.”

“You cannot have two fathers, my son,” Pel’s Amani replied, “Not when—“

“—Actually,” Jules interjected, “You can.”

Pel glared half-jokingly at her for a moment, and then continued. “Not when the second stole you from the first.”

“He did not steal me, mother.” Rayph’s Orrin looked down at his mother in kind frustration “He saved me. He pulled me from a sinking ship, and led me to the Angel’s true Light. The way to the Sun is steep and narrow, Mother. Neither brutish force nor fire of will can see you through to the mountaintop. There is no salvation outside of the Church. Why would you want me to join you out there, to freeze in damnation?”

“One man’s salvation is another’s damnation,” Pel’s Amani replied. “Why would you want to imprison us in yours? Why would you turn your back on your family, on your people; on our Truth?” Pel shook her head. Little tears glinted in the corners of her eyes like tiny gemstones. “Orrin,” she continued, “I have pride in who I am: in my people, in our traditions, and in the meaning we found in them. I have to do right by them that came before me; all the mothers, all the fathers; all the brothers and sisters. I am who I am, just as you are what Lassedite Verune made you to be.” Again, she shook her head. “The Church should have room for us all, but it does not want us.”

“Mother,” Rayph’s Orrin replied, with a barely concealed hint of condescension, “A church for all is a church for none. If meaning is what you make of it, it means nothing. It’s a chimera, as formless as the wind. Truth that changes cannot be truth—it must be beyond us. The Lassedites have been blessed with the truth. It is theirs to safeguard.” He put his hand to her chest, atop his heart. “Please, Ma, be with me. Be with us. Let the Light in; let yourself be saved. Please, Ma. Please.”

“If the Truth is beyond us,” Pel read, “how can anyone, even a Lassedite, claim to know it? Look, Orrin; see what your Church has wrought for its Truth. See the slaves—your kin!—laboring in the infernal mills. See the search for truth burning in the streets. See the battlefields painted red with death.”

“It is our fault that…” but Rayph’s voice trailed off.

“It is our fault that man is flawed,” I said, “not God’s.” I knew the scene by heart—even the lines I couldn’t accept.

Crossing her arms, Jules nodded with pleasure. “And all’s right with the world once more.”

Her brother pursed his lips as his face turned beet-red.

I shook my head. “Keep going, son, you’re doing great!”

Rayph cleared his throat. “We need the Angel’s gift.” He nodded—dramatically. “We need the Lassedites, the Church, and their guidance.”

“No,” Pel read, “enough of this! Enough of crooked words and preening intents!”

Rayph’s arms dropped despondently to his sides. “Mommm, you didn’t do the thing. You gotta raise your fist and shake it at me. It isn’t the same without it."

Wearing a silly grin, my wife rolled her eyes at her son before shaking her head. She stood up and stuck out her arm, pointing a finger of probity straight at me.

“No! Enough of this!” she said, “We’re not all as good as Evangeline Henrichy!” Pel balled her spare hand into a fist just as Henrichy had done in her famous cinematic portrayal.

Jules laughed at her mother’s self-deprecation.

Of all the actresses to portray Mrs. Amani Nadkila, Evangeline Henrichy was far and away the best—no matter how awful her great-grandson was. Despite what she said, my wife was frighteningly good at mimicking the great dame’s unforgettable east-coast accent.

This was Pelbrum Revenel, Pelbrum Revenel the young socialite who had fallen, like the Angel, into the orbit of a struggling medical student and stolen his heart, and then deigned to stay, ‘till death did them part. In Pel, the mantle of Most Interesting Person in the World which lay disclaimed and dusty ever since my sister Dana’s death had found its heir apparent. There were at least two versions of Pelbrum, and it was only by a miracle that they managed to live under the same roof. This was a woman who could hot-wire a car in sixty seconds flat and recite at least thirteen different psalms—the long ones—from memory while preparing cinnamon sugar breakfast pancakes that would have made grubby, envious imps of any restaurant that learned of their existence. Pel had borne the weights of motherhood and housewifery for the better part of two decades, and, admittedly, they had smoothed over some of the sharper points of her pluck and verve. But it bespoke her warmth, richness, and vigor that those fine points pricked through the surface in moments like this. We all basked in the sunshine of her magnetic presence.

I had little doubt there were versions of Pelbrum I had yet to see. Everyone had private corners in their psyches. Sometimes, I caught glimpses of hers. I saw them in the way she posed herself on the recliner in the living room, with a book in one hand and a glass of lemonade tinctured with gin in another, gazing out at the sea from the comfort of her lap of luxury. I saw them late in the night, on the occasion I found her by that same recliner, but with an affect of deepest solemnity as she kneeled on the carpet, her fingers pressed on a sanctified sea-shell—porous and polished—her other hand clasped tight to the Angel’s holy figure, dangling from the necklace around her supple neck as she closed her eyes in prayer, her face cream and gold in sacred candle’s lambent glow while I watched from the dim darkness.

I knew where her mind wandered in moments like that; I knew where her spirit soared. I’d once flown through those same skies, but now they were little more than a stranger’s memories. Pel’s faith rested on a rock far studier than mine. It always had, and I honestly envied her for that. And though my struggle occasionally caused tensions—especially regarding the kids’ church attendance— those disagreements were mostly like fog over the bay, here one moment, gone the next. Our relationship’s storm-clouds had nothing to do with the faith. Yet, they would never stop her from being my sunshine. They never could, because I knew, without a doubt that she loved me, even when she or I—or both—thought I didn’t deserve it.

“Dad’s here, so… can we eat?” Jules asked, brusquely as ever.

Much to my daughter’s dismay, the answer to her question was not an immediate “yes”. The run-through I’d interrupted had been their second-and-half final rehearsal of the preaching scene, and Rayph had been adamant about getting through the whole thing without a hitch at least once before anybody got to (neatly) shovel dinner down their throats. His argument was we’d be too tired and comfortable once we ate to give any “serious” feedback—and he was absolutely right about that.

Fortunately for everyone, the third run-through went by without incident. As soon as he’d finished, Rayph scampered over to me where I sat beside his mother and sister and proceeded to squeeze the living daylights out of me in a yipping, yammering hug.

“This is why you need to come home early!” Rayph said, while attempting to shake me in place. “I need your lucky bowtie’s magic luck.”

I flashed a playful frown. “Hey! What about me?”

Rayph stepped away from the couch. “It only works when you’re wearing it,” he said, smiling.

“I miss you too, kiddo,” I said, rustling his light brown hair with a soft, knuckley noogie.

Being long past hungry, myself, I rose from the couch. “You know,” I said, “if you want, I can get you a bow-tie of your own.”

Without a hitch, Pel swung around from the dining room. She’d been setting the table.

“Genneth, I swear, I love you, but—so help me—if you try to put a red-spotted yellow bow-tie around our little boy’s neck, I’m calling child services, the Coast Guard, and the fashion police.”

“Eh…” Jules said, “I think it’d look just fine on the little twerp. It accentuates his twerpiness.”

Rayph made a face back at her.

Jules glanced at her mother. “How about now?” Jules grumbled, crossing her arms. “Can we eat now?”

“Jules, you know how important the play is to your brother,” I said.

“It’s alright Dad,” Rayph replied, “I think I’ve got it. ‘Sides, I’m hungry!” He flashed a pearly grin.

“Then, yes,” Pel said, with a curtsy, “you may.” She gestured with an arm. “Dinner is served.”