THE CHAIR A novel by Sheila Willar Copyright 2016 Sheila Willar
ISBN 978-0-9867101-4-8
November 28, 2013
(revised October 30, 2017)
CHAPTER 6 ............................ THE RIVERS OF EDEN
Joshua 24:27
Joshua said to all the people, This stone has heard everything the Lord said to us. It will be a witness to testify against you if you go back on your word to God.
Two by two they boarded the train in the rain. Erin, Father Michael, Aiden, Declan, and two of Mrs. Mancinni’s guards. They each took their seats and stared at one another wide eyed, as Erin and Michael were trapped in the middle between the guards who blocked the rear exit, and the inspectors who blocked the front.
As the train picked up speed and headed towards the mountains, Erin clung tightly to one of the stones and Michael held the other. Back in Ireland the stones weighed nearly 200 pounds apiece, but as they neared Ararat they were as light as foam. In Ireland it would have been impossible to carry them so easily, but in this wondrous part of the world they were as light as foam.
The rain began to pour like the waters of Noah, and the canyons in the valley swelled as if the flood gates of heaven and earth had opened up at the same time. Ice and snow in the surrounding mountains gave way to cascades that plummeted down jagged cliffs into the narrow ravines, and once shallow tributaries, began to roar with tumultuous, angry water, that churned with sediment and uprooted trees.
Erin desperately searched for a way out as Michael who sat next to the aisle, braced himself for a confrontation. With no solution in sight Erin turned to the window to see where they were, but sprays of water pummelled the glass and prevented her from seeing anything, so she stood and opened it and pushed her head outside. The rain pelted her face and the sound of the drum-like rhythm of the wheels against the rusty track was in sync with the pounding of her heart. She could see a bridge up ahead and motioned for Michael to take a look.
Aiden and Declan saw them move and didn’t want to be outsmarted, so they stood and began to walk towards their target. Mrs. Mancinni’s guards also became alarmed and were committed to using force if necessary in order to acquire the stone chair, so they also rose to meet the challenge of who would get to them first. When it looked like the inspectors would win, one of the guards lunged towards the emergency brake and pulled it with a snap.
The train came to a sudden stop on an overpass and luggage fell from the shelves, sending clothing, food and supplies into the air. Children screamed and there were cries for a doctor to help the people who had fallen and hurt themselves. The stalkers used the commotion as an opportunity to seize the stones, and so they aggressively climbed over the clutter towards their goal.
Erin was nearly panicked when she yelled at Michael, “Follow me!”
She jumped up on the seat and wrapped her arms around the stone, criss-crossing her hands for added strength around its girth. Then, with a “Swoosh” she dove out the train window with her eyes closed, straight into the torrential river that ran beneath the bridge. Michael gasped and in a lightening decision he did the same.
They tumbled over and over under the water and were hit in the face by flapping fish tails, and knocked in the back by the stumps of trees. Fortunately their knapsacks took most of the pounding and the sacred stones they clung to for dear life, buoyed them to the surface, where they sucked in desperate gulps of air. On the trip downstream, they choked and sputtered and were submerged many times, on a roller coaster ride that carried them several kilometres into another country. They flowed south until the steep descent of the river blasted them out of the gorge into a flood plain, where the waters filled the basin like the water in a bath tub. In the middle of the growing lake they floated in a daze as tree trunks passed them by like arrows shot from a bow, until eventually they were able to kick and paddle their way to shore with the rest of the debris.
Their hands were crumpled and numb as they let go the death grip they had on the sacred stones which had finally come full circle. In an earlier time, the stones were grains of sand in the Garden of Eden, where God, Adam and Eve walked “in the cool of the day”. Each grain heard a story and a song as they recored the voices of God and the “firsts” of a new generation, and bore witness to the covenants that were made between them.
Erin and Michael were cold and shivering as they climbed out of the bramble. They had barely escaped imminent capture on the train, and knew that it would not be long before the others caught up to them again. The water rose quickly around their mud packed shoes and gave them an added incentive to hurry. They ran uphill into an orchard for cover and hid under a cloak of leafy trees.
They were blue and shaking when Erin saw a pair of eyes staring at her. A little girl tilted her head with curiosity at the sight of the unusual strangers. Erin moved towards her to say “hello” but as soon as she did, a group of men holding guns and cleavers, jumped in between them. Erin and Michael froze, as what seemed like a whole town of people surrounded them.
Michael stepped forward to offer his hand in friendship, but as soon as he did, the men yelled and shook their guns at him, so he stepped back and held still.
“Medicine!” shouted the leader as he waved his gun in the air.
“Sure,” offered Erin. She gingerly took her knapsack and pulled out a clear plastic bag that contained everything a traveler could want. She reached her hand out to offer the bag to the captors.
The leader shook his head to say “No!” and yelled again, “Medicine!” Michael copied what Erin had done and offered his collection of tablets and assorted gauzes, but it did not appease the man.
“Medicine!” he repeated as he stepped closer to them.
Michael did not know what to make of the man’s request and shrugged his shoulders. The man became frustrated and reached inside his pocket and handed Michael a piece of paper. Michael unfolded the yellow, worn parchment, and to his shock it was a picture of Jesus wearing a crown. The man wanted prayer but Michael looked at him perplexed and shook his head to indicate that he still did not understand.
This seemed to anger the man and he ordered his followers to take Michael and Erin away in opposite directions. They thought that they had become prisoners and expected to be treated badly, but instead they were treated like royal guests and given dry clothes and warm drinks and food.
After they rested they were taken to the leader who had calmed down considerably. He introduced himself with one word as he pointed to his chest, “Uri.”
Michael did the same as he laid his palm over his heart, “Michael.”
Without wasting time, Uri bid them to follow him, and the entire group trekked single file inland, to a more established community of about twenty houses that clung to the side of a mountain. Uri gave Erin and Michael a tour of each brick and thatch house, and inside each one they saw the same thing, sick children. At the last house, which was Uri’s house, the two stones that Erin and Michael had brought with them, were brought into the house and laid at their feet. Uri stacked the stones, one on top of the other, and laid the open picture of Jesus over them. Then he looked straight into Michaels’s eyes and repeated what he had said by the lake, “Medicine!”
Erin and Michael looked at each other quizzically.
Uri sighed and pleaded with them in broken English. “Stones. Heal. Children!” he insisted. There was no mistake. Uri wanted Michael to use the stones to heal the village.
Michael winced as he remembered the last time that he sat on the chair. His mishandling of it had nearly killed him. However, he was first and foremost a priest and could not refuse a request for divine intervention. He breathed slowly and deeply, and then quietly as if nothing special was happening, took the stones and set them next to the bed of one of the sick children.
The Irish Blue chair was as wobbly as before, and Michael knelt beside it as he prayed. He was careful not to touch it but was reluctantly glad it was there for guidance. When he closed his eyes he almost instantly entered a world of swirling galaxies, where time and sickness did not exist. He saw a white light approaching from afar and drew a sudden breath as he realized that it was Jesus. He steadied himself for the encounter and was ready to stand up, when Jesus simply smiled at him and passed by without the slightest intention of stopping.
Michael’s heart cried, “Hey! Come back!” as he watched Jesus disappear amongst the stars. He felt a slight pain of rejection in his chest as if he had been abandoned, but at the same time, he felt a solace that he had never experienced before. He looked down at his hands and they did not look like his own. They looked like the hands of Jesus.
In Michael’s vision he stood up and moved from one child to child another with increasing ease, praying over them until the whole village was healed. “It’s funny,” he thought, “how easy it is, once the self-centredness is gone.”
When the prayer was finished, Michael opened his eyes and the child in the bed next to him jumped up with a look of astonishment, for they too had seen Jesus, and soon the house was filled with joy as parents and their newly healed children laughed and hugged each other.
The sense of jubilation did not last long however, because the stone chair began to glow with such a bright light that they had to leave the house. Beams of light burst from the windows and out through the top of the roof, and glistened like swords in the sun as they pierced the clouds above the valley.
Uri instantly became afraid that the surrounding towns would notice, and in a region rift with war, that was not a good thing. In an attempt to save the village, he ran into the house and knocked the chair over onto the floor, where it sizzled like pieces of white hot coal on a hearth. He stood over it moaning and groaning and he pulled at his cummerbund as he shook his head back and forth. As the leader of the village he knew he could not risk the kind of attention that the stones had brought, and with stomach churning surrender he decided to abandon the settlement and move his family to a safer location.
Uri quickly took a map from a cupboard in his house and spread it out on a table for Erin and Michael to see. Then he demanded, “Where?”
Erin knew exactly what he was asking and pointed her index finger directly over Jerusalem. Uri rubbed his chin and sucked in a giant breath of air. His shoulders remained square and his body did not flinch as he wondered if she was courageous or insane. Either way, he felt he owed a debt and was resolved to help them get as close to Jerusalem as he could.
Uri and his extended family were used to moving because of civil wars, floods, and seasonal weather that routinely shifted them from one outpost to another. Normally in a flood season, they would move to higher ground, but this time, Uri was going to use the flood to his advantage, and he ordered the entire village to immediately take their possessions to the boats. They were going to leave right away, in part to save themselves, and in part to keep his enemies from getting their hands on the medicine stones.
Uri guided the floating convoy down narrow tributaries into the Tigris River, which had begun to overflow its banks and dams. They traveled much faster than usual, and mostly by night, until they reached a series of canals and swamps, which allowed them to cross over to the Euphrates. Their small boats were loaded to overflowing with goats and figs, and babies who were not easy to keep quiet. They had been searched several times and with each inspection they had to give up a share of the supplies, but the soldiers had let the flotilla pass on without arrest. Everyone assumed that they were poor refugees fleeing the wars. Erin and Michael kept their heads down and the stone chair was overlooked as ballast.
Uri took Erin and Michael towards Jerusalem as far as he could, and early one morning before dawn, deep in the depths of the Syrian desert, he sidled his boat up against the western bank of the Euphrates, and simply said, “Go!” He had already assumed a great risk to get them there and had to veer east with the change in the river. With the sound of military jets overhead, and the sound of bombs exploding in the distance, Michael and Erin stepped onto the shore.
Uri threw food towards them which landed at their feet. It was more than the two of them could eat and more than Uri could afford to give away. They stared at one another for a minute, each having changed the others’ lives. Uri pointed at the Irish Blue stones and shooed them away with a wave from the back of his hand. “Take!” he commanded, with very mixed feeling about the medicine stones. They were too precious to leave behind and yet too dangerous to keep.
As a final gesture of good will, Uri pointed towards a monastery in the distance. It’s muted grey colour was just barely visible above the tops of a grove of pomegranate trees. Then he pushed his boat off without looking back, which was his way of honouring his newfound friends. Michael said a blessing over them for a safe journey as he and Erin hid under the cover of the dangling fruit. The sun was just peeking over the horizon as they ran towards the ancient building, in hopes of finding a place to hide for the daylight hours.
………………………………………………….
“Well, that one got away!” quipped Aiden as he closed the train window, much to the relief of the other passengers. Eventually the train made its way through the storm to the next station, where Aiden, Declan, and Mrs. Mancinni’s guards promptly made new travelling plans.
…………………………………………………….
Kelly’s father, Ewin Clancy was on pins and needles about news of Thee Irish Blue Chair. His eyes were wild with anticipation as one of his informants had phoned to tell about a sighting in Iraq. A person who worked for a satellite imaging company said that they had observed a very unusual light emanating from a house near the border with Turkey. They said that the event was not an anomaly and that it coincided with the evacuation of the village.
Ewin’s palms grew sweaty as he wondered if the bright light was from the sacred stones. He immediately made arrangements to have the villagers tracked and asked to be alerted if the light was seen again.
“Just how important are these stones anyway?” asked the informant.
“I’d trade them for the ten commandments!” boasted Ewin, but as soon as he said it he knew he had made a rookie mistake. He should never have indicated how valuable the stones were. He tried to back pedal but it was too late. There was a dead silence on the phone. “You still there?”
“Yes.”
“You find me the stones, and I’ll make it worth your while. Understand?” bargained Ewin in an effort to keep the information private.
“Yes,” answered the informant as he ended the phone call and immediately dialled another number. “Hey. I might have something interesting for you.”
"Beams of light burst from the windows and out through the top of the roof, and glistened like swords in the sun as they pierced the clouds above the valley."