יִשְׂרָאֵל

This is the first draft of a short story I have been writing. I'm really interested in trying to get into the heads of our venerated religious figures. Through the pages of translated ancient texts, it's difficult to remember that these were humans. They lived in a different time, observed different customs, but felt the same emotions we feel today. I hope to do more of these, and to polish this one up a bit before I make it official.

As always, if you're reading this, I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. P.S. The picture is from my trip to Israel 5 years ago. My personal experience in this mystical and sacred place drove a lot of creative thought behind this story.

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The man was afraid. Turning a corner, he dropped the makeshift reigns and sighed. He had followed the twisting curves of the wadi for hours and had finally found what he did not know he was looking for. The water-carved pathway had found the place where its sisters met to feed the river. The flood banks had cleared away a sandy alcove, flanked by fluid stone walls that would shelter him from the wind. He glanced up at the blue-grey haze cast by the full moon as a solitary sliver of cloud floated by it and said a prayer that no rains would come this night.

Whispering an exhausted “amen,” the man led his horse to the riverside and stooped with it to drink from the stream. The desert water was unusually cool and clear from the recent rain, and opened his dry throat as it trickled down. He could feel it hit the bottom of his stomach and it gave him a chill.

He stared for some time at the moon’s rippled reflection on the calm water before he moved to begin collecting driftwood for his fire. There was plenty here, as much of the dead brush and branches from the valley were carried by rainwater pallbearers only to find themselves stuck on a distant sand bank or grabbed by a hanging root, an unintended final resting place. Before long, the man had a respectable fire built and his unfettered horse came an lay next to it, whinnying approval at the warmth it gave.

The man untied his sash, the weight of his sword dragging it immediately down to the earth, the metal meeting the sand with a soft thump. The man removed his travel coat and folded it along with the sash, and then situated his weapon against the stone wall where he planned to rest. Easing himself to the ground, he felt the exhaustion of his travels and the weight of his fears sink him deep into the sand.

The man sat by the fire, looking through its curling tongues into the embers below. He sat that way for a long time, unmoving. The firelight cast an animated shadow on the cleft of rock behind the man, at once looking like a great beast, and the next vanishing altogether. The faint trickle of the river nearby attempted to ease the man’s mind, but failed.

The man bent and picked up a stone at his feet without moving his eyes from the depths of the flame. Spinning the stone between his thumb and forefinger, he felt smooth surfaces give way to coarse edges. That would not do. Dropping the stone and tearing his gaze from the fire, the man searched for another.

His eyes fell on the egg shaped crest of a larger stone, halfway buried in the soft mud of the riverbank. The man examined the stone from afar for some time before pushing himself up off the sand and retrieving it. He stooped, placing the stone just below the surface of the water, and watched the mud turn into a cloud of liquid smoke and float away. This stone was smoother than the first, years of rushing water had stripped away its imperfections. It fit comfortably in the palm of his hand, as the man turned and resumed his fireside position. His horse followed his motion with his head, eyes half opened, and seemed to nod with approval at the stone he had found.

Seating himself again in front of the fire, the man’s eyes lost themselves once again in the destructive dance of flame on wood. He reached out to his right and his fingertips met the cold metal of his sword perched against the stone wall behind him. Following the broad face of the blade up to the hilt, his fingers curled around it and brought it to rest across his lap. Taking his eyes off the fire once more, the man began to drag the still wet stone across the killing edge of his curved blade. The feeling of stone on bronze caused his teeth to clench and his skin to crawl. The scraping sound ended with a resonant ring that filled the small half-dome cut by the wadi. It was at once terrible and beautiful.

The man worked his blade several times over, stopping in between passes to hold it up to the unfaithful light of the fire and inspect his work. When he had finished he lay the weapon back across his lap and his eyes lingered on its now menacing edge.

“Why do you sharpen your blade?” a voice called out from the darkness just beyond his flickering firelight.

Alarmed, the man swept the blade from his lap as he jumped to his feet, holding it ready to ward off an attack.

“Who’s there?!” the man said. He was afraid.

Another man, tall and covered in thick black hair, a bear of a man, stepped into the feeble orange glow.

“Brother,” the newcomer spoke.

The man relaxed his stance slightly but did not let down his guard. He whispered, “brother.”

The man’s brother took a step forward and sat on a log across the fire from the man. The man did not sit down, but lowered his sword, placing its point in the ground before him and crossing his hands over the pommel.

“Why do you sharpen your blade?” the brother repeated his question.

“In case I need to use it,” the man replied, staring directly into his brother’s eyes.

The brother’s face darkened at this and the man matched his countenance.

“Father blessed me by the sword brother, or don’t you remember?”

The two sat in silence for some time, not moving their eyes from one another until finally the man said, “I suppose you have come to kill me, brother.”

The brother chuckled as he replied, “that very well may happen, yes. But first, I would like to speak with you. Please, sit down. I promise, I could not make it to you before you could ready your weapon.”

After examining his brother closely and deciding he was not, at least noticeably, armed, the man dropped the stone he had been using and resumed his seat in the sand, sword across his lap.

“Speak then,” he said with a nod, still holding his gaze through the lapping tongues of flame.

“I want to know of your life. It has been many years since we have seen each other, and I would know if you have lived it well before it ends.”

Puzzled by the civility of his brother’s request, the man was slow in responding. When words did find his tongue he said, “My life has been the same as any man’s: I want for nothing, but that is because I have wanted for much in my time.”

“And your family? What of them?”

“My wives are strong, my flocks are fruitful, and my children bear my name well,” the man said, revealing nothing his brother did not already know.

“Ah, as mine should have been,” his brother said, shaking his head and beginning to rise, “then you shall live on well in their memories and by their deeds,”

At this, the man rose as well, setting his sword arm slightly above his waist, and pointed in the direction of his brother.

“Come now,” the brother said, holding his arms outstretched, “you wouldn’t bring a sword to a fist fight would you?” As he said this, he took a step around the fire to the man’s left.

Thinking for a moment, the man opposed his brother’s step, not yet relinquishing his blade, and said, “I do not deny that I deserve to die at your hands, brother, but I cannot bring myself to do so willingly. You know as well as I that even with a blade in my hand, I am still outmatched by you, the hunter.”

“So be it.”

At this, the brother lunged across the fire, striking the man square in the chest before he could manoeuver his blade in defense, and sending them both toppling to the damp sand of the riverbank. Recovering his senses, the man tightened his grip on his sword and threw himself on top of his brother, attempting to strike him with its pommel. The brother anticipated this and caught the man’s right hand in his left. Using the opening, the brother lunged upward, clubbing the man in the face with his massive, hair-darkened fist.

Dazed from the blow, the man fell to his back and blinked up at the moon as his vision quickly lost and regained focus. In an instant, the bright silver sphere was eclipsed by his brother’s face, and the same giant hands were now encompassing the man’s throat.

As the pressure around his airway increased, the man could do nothing but stare deep into his brother’s eyes. In place of the hard brown iris of his lineage, the man was met by the gaze of two bright moons like the one in the night sky. Struggling beneath his brother’s grip, the man watched as the eye-moons began to shrink into the distance as whole galaxies came into view within his brother’s sockets. At the same time infinitesimal and infinite, his brother’s eyes swallowed his vision. He saw many things he could not explain there in those tempestuous irises. He saw the forming of their world in the flames and waters of chaos. The chaos gave way to a natural order, processes that brought about humankind in a blink of time. He saw his ancestors, one moment beautiful and radiant, and the next bloody and disfigured. More chaos followed on the heels of his people as they spread over the earth like a plague.

He saw himself, watched himself deceive his father, and cheat his brother out of the blessing he was due. He saw his brother, burning with a righteous rage at his deception and plotting this moment, the moment of his death. A deserved death.

As the man became lost in the depths of his brother’s galaxy eyes, and the pressure from his brother’s hands filled his head in a steady thum-dum rhythm, a third sensation rushed to the forefront of his failing consciousness: the cold metal of the sword, still in his grip.

Using the last of his remaining strength, the man flailed his sword arm in his brother’s direction, hoping to make some manner of significant contact.

With a gasp, the brother released the man’s neck, jumping to his feet and clutching his midsection as he backed away. A thin trickle of liquid light, not blood, escaped between his fingers.

With the vice removed from his throat, the man sucked air, sputtering and coughing as he pushed himself up off the ground and away from his opponent. As his vision came back into focus, the man noticed the glowing wound on his brother’s abdomen had vanished, and the thing in the shape of his brother began to close the distance between them once again.

Instinctually, the man widened his stance and shifted his weight at the exact moment his opponent left the ground in a lunge. Counteracting the momentum, the man pivoted to the side, allowing his brother’s form to fly past him, landing on the edge of the now dwindling fire.

With a scream of pain, the brother rolled away from the flames, writhing as his flesh darkened along his side where a few coals clung to him, fused to the molten skin.

As the man lunged at his brother who lay suffering on the sand, the brother rose with sudden, unnatural speed, no longer clutching his side, but a large stone. With one broad sweep, the stone met the sword hand of the man in mid air, sending the bronze blade flashing into the distance and hitting the sand with a soft, wet, thud.

Now both fully on their guard, the pair circled one another taking turns feinting this way and that, but neither finding the opening they were looking for.

“You have fought well, and bravely, brother,” the brother said as he shuffled to his left seeking an advantage.

“You are toying with me,” the man said, “do not think I have become so arrogant as to think that I can defeat you so easily.”

“I have been waiting a long time to find out,” the brother said as he turned and dove in the direction of the discarded blade.

Seeing this, the man leapt after him, catching his brother’s heel in mid air halting his momentum and sending them both to the ground with a breathless thump. Using his brother as a ladder, the man clambered over his meaty shoulders and charged towards the glint of bronze halfway buried in the beach. Finding once more the cold shock of metal on his fingertips, the man, without thinking and giving a desperate cry, whirled the blade in a wide arc, stopping just short of the tender underside of his brother’s chin.

The brother, knowing his life now lay in the man’s surprisingly capable hands, outstretched his own in defeat. The painful cold of the killing edge came and went as he panted with the effort of battle. The man, though panting too, held the blade, unmoving and outstretched, with a lethal resolve.

“You doubt yourself too much, little brother,” the brother said with a nervous gasp.

At those last words, the man raised his scimitar with a howl of rage and swung it intentionally short of his brother’s flesh. He faltered, letting the sword hang limp to his side, and fell to his knees in the sand, beginning to weep.

“Though you may have been beaten, you are not the brother that deserves to die this day,” the man said. He raised the sword with both hands and bowed his head like a wise-man presenting his gift to a king.

“I give you back the life I stole from you, brother. I simply ask that you take my place in the story I have begun to write. Wed my wives, raise my sons and daughters, prosper from my flocks. They are yours if you will have them.”

The voice that answered was not his brother’s – at least not only.

“Stand up,” the voice said, the sound like every voice the man had ever heard speaking simultaneously, at once recognizable and indistinguishable.

When the man looked up he no longer saw his brother standing before him, but a being that he could not comprehend. Matching their voice, every feature of the being was familiar, yet unrecognizable. The man did not have much time to gawk before his eyes met the being’s own – the same infinite depths of flaming lights and swirling orbs of color he had seen in his brother before. The man rose, compelled by the power of a million voices in one.

The being, both splendid and terrible, reached out its hand as if to offer it to the man and then suddenly struck forward, crashing into the man’s hip. The man felt a white hot pain and his torso shifted unnaturally backwards in his stance while his leg stayed planted. He cried out, pain giving way to a rush of nausea and then crashing over him once more like an ebbing tide. He staggered backwards and fell with a thud into the sand. The being stood over him, its human shape swirling and shifting between stars and galaxies. Water, earth, and fire became one where there would be hair, and as the man looked away in fear and wonder, he thought he saw the face reflect his mother’s and his heart wept. The being was indescribable to the man, terrible, and yet was so splendid that the newly risen morning sun seemed to cast no light.

Without a word, the being turned and stepped toward the river.

“Wait!” the man cried, reaching forward and wincing at the pain in his hip.

The being turned once more, but said nothing. Not daring to look at it again, but filled with a boldness he could not contain, the man cried, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

The being did not smile, but yet radiated a sense of mirth at the man’s courage and desperation.

“What is your name?” the countless voices drifted softly into the man’s mind and soothed his eagerness and fear.

“Ya’akov.”

“Ya’akov,” the voices repeated, the man's own the most prominent of the multitudes. “Your name no longer shall be Ya’akov, but Yisrael, for you have struggled with The One and have prevailed. You gave of yourself what was deserved of you, and you considered another undeserving, greater than. You ask for my blessing, but I have already blessed you this night. Go now, and do what must be done.” The being turned and walked into the river.

“Wait!” Yisrael tried to stand quickly but faltered on his displaced hip. “I have told you my name, now please, tell me yours!” Yisrael yelled desperately towards the being but received no reply. “Please,” he began to weep. “Please.”

When he looked up once more the being was gone. The river rushed with a new fullness, and the sun resumed its usual splendor. He lay back and wept, tears pooling beneath his head and forming mud in the sand.

“Yisrael?” he whispered to himself. “They called me Yisrael. But why did they ask my name?”