XLI
“What is that sound?”
Bean stumbled about in the dark, keeping his distance from the crippled girl. His body was still in a shambles since he was chewed up, swallowed, and then spat out by the swirling vortex. Though on the outside he looked like any normal man, dressed in the common attire of this land, inside, he felt as if one or several of his parts had been poorly aligned or worse yet, left out entirely. He could only assume that this was some consequence of time travel and that in time its effects would wear off. For the moment, though, he struggled to keep up with the girl who herself, looked as though walking was not her strongest suit or her most flattering.
There was no disguising it anymore; there was definitely some kind of celebration in the distance. What Bean was hearing was music; that coupled with chanting, jeering, and drunken provocation. And the night sky, it light up with explosions of coloured fire every half hour. Each burst of colour looked like both the birth and death of a sun in a single instant. Bean had never seen anything so beautiful.
But what were they celebrating?
In Heaven, there was no need for celebration, for everything was as it should be. Up would always be up, and down would always be down. And one would always find themselves at a point between the two. In fact, in Heaven, there was no need for thought at all, for everything was equanimous. There was no good or bad, and there was no right or wrong. There was merely a point in the middle that was choiceless where all things were, being and not being, at the very same instance; not being one or the other, but being both simultaneously. In Heaven, at this equanimous point, there was no thought, no sound, and no feeling. Without choice, one could not define the possible, and therefore, one could not find themselves swept up by the tide of indecision and uncertainty; that which wreaked havoc on the living and sunk the ship of man. In Heaven, nothing was ever unexpected, everything was certain. Therefore, there was no need for celebration.
So what the devil were they celebrating?
He himself had no idea where he was, or whether this girl that he was stalking was actually the discrepancy or not. He had not seen her face, not in proper Light anyway; and he had only heard her mutter a few words, not enough to conclude, with absolute conviction, that this was the girl who was about to destroy Heaven.
Yet follow her he did, as if certainty didn’t matter.
What an absurd premise.
He followed her for what felt like an eternity; well into the early hours of the morning and long after the music and singing had stopped, when the only sound was the pained screeching from the discrepancy, as she heaved one crippled leg in front of the other. She never seemed to tire, or at least, never looked like she did anyway. Bean, on the other hand, was at the whim of insufferable exhaustion. If it wasn’t physical pain, then it was the relentless shifting of his emotional states; one minute being driven and determined to persevere and save Heaven, and the next, feeling insignificant, impossibly small and incapable of such an incredulous burden. On one hand, he could carry the world on his shoulders, and on the other, he wanted nothing more than to be coddled and caressed, for his hair to be twirled by long slender fingers, and to be told, “Don’t worry, it’ll all be ok,” over and over again, until he fell asleep and woke up in his own bed.
His face tired the most; particularly from all the frowning.
Eventually, though, and not soon enough, he followed the girl into an encampment of sorts. He had tried to catch her, right before she entered, but she was faster than he, and so she slipped out of his reach; and soon enough, out of his sight. He had no idea what he was going to do with her when he finally got his hands on her - or if, now that nothing was certain. He had none of his weapons, and he had never killed a person before, not with his bare hands. He wondered for a second, how much force was necessary to take a life? How long he would have to choke her, and how much blood would she have to lose, before she actually died?
By the time he reached the encampment, there was no sign of her.
There was only the aftermath of drunken debauchery.
In the world in which he had found himself, The Accountant too was faring strangely from the way that he felt. He sat beneath a tree with a ravenous appetite that was surpassed just fractionally by what had, at first, been acute exhaustion, but which had, over the course of his stay beneath the tree, turned into self-gratifying laziness.
When he had first sat down, there was only a light breeze that was barely rustling the leaves overhead. The air abounds was temperate, and was warm on his skin, but it did not have him perspire. It wasn’t at all the buggering kind of warmth. It didn’t steal his drive, it bartered it. It took no more than he was willing to give away. It was the kind of warmth that made him want to lie on his back all day long, and then, maybe, should the thrill arise, to stretch and yawn, and to chase a piece of string.
It was the first piece of fruit he ate, which had him forget entirely about his predicament, and about the discrepancy who - if not banished from Heaven soon - would atomise everything that he believed in, and everything that defined who he was. His sense of dire urgency was quickly overwhelmed by the explosion of flavour on his tongue that, in one instant, tingled to the point where it felt as if it were being stabbed with a thousand stinging needles, and then, in the next, irrigated and drenched his mouth in salivation, leaving him with a pressing desire for more. It tasted perverse, intimidating and sour, but left a taste on his lips of which was both sweet and congealing.
And it had him forget all about Heaven entirely.
He had sat there for so long that eventually his legs started to numb and his feet began tingling incorrigibly; all one hundred and thirty-seven of them. He didn’t budge, though. Every fruit that fell from the tree was different. Each was a different size, colour, and a completely different shape. And each fruit that fell from the very same tree had the most unique and differing taste. So infatuated was he, in all of these new sensations, that it hadn’t occurred to him once how absurd it was, for one tree to produce so many types of fruit.
In the world in which he sat and foraged, The Accountant found himself in a sensory paradise. The grass was lush and green. It felt as if he were sitting on a thick blanket, but one that smelt of earthly vitality. And the tree under which he sat was immense. The trunk alone was as big as a silo, and its roots, as thick as an elephant’s hind; and long and far reaching.
It was old, that’s for sure, but how old he couldn’t measure.
Feeling as he did, he could have stayed here forever and simply eaten fruit after fruit, until maybe he himself turned into a berry; albeit one that was balding and symmetrically disadvantaged. Each explosion of flavour brought upon a new synapse, which seemed to expand his mind as if it were being stretched and mapped to fit the world in which he inhabited. With each fruit, he gained a rich appreciation for the simple leaf on which he sat. And he felt a kinder and a more humbling gratitude towards simply being; and he felt too, indebted, in part, to the trees which fed him, to the air which kept him cosy, and to the green grass which gave him a bed to lie.
In the beginning, each fruit was light and delicious. They tasted merry, and without predicament. They did not carry burden or obligation, and like tastes in other worlds, they did not leave him in a state of guilt and gluttony. Their taste and colour were as lively as the playful and mischievous look in a toddler’s eyes.
But as time grew on, each fruit became harder to pick up, heavier to hold, and more bitter on his tongue. Still, though, he ate, assuming like any irrational insect that the next fruit or berry would be as sweet as the first, but this wasn’t the case. As their flavour and smell became more pungent, and as the skin softened and readily bruised, with it, a fierce wind raged overhead.
The Accountant pushed himself further along the petal of the flower where he stood; trying to lean it against the tree’s trunk to hide from the gale, but it was useless. No matter where he turned, or how neatly he snugged, the wind blew cold in his face. And the harder
the wind blew, the more distorted and deranged were the fruit that fell on the ground. Their colour was horrid. They looked like small festering wounds, falling out of the sky and landing by his trembling feet.
Soon, what looked like open sores, started to grow legs, mouths, and tiny fangs. The Accountant nudged further into the flower, now becoming overwhelmed with fear. Each fruit that landed on the ground scurried towards him with its mouth salivating, and poison dripping from its fangs. They looked at The Accountant as lunch, but it was hard to tell if they saw him savoury or sweet. Desperate, The Accountant stamped his one hundred and thirty-seven little feet on each fruit as they swarmed around him.
He screamed.
“God help me!”
But he didn’t once assume that God was listening. It didn’t stop him, though. He screamed so loud, in direct competition with the wind, which howled in his ears, and was made worse by the sound, not far from where he hid, of a great many tree being bullied by the wind and howling in agony as their branches snapped, and their trunks ripped in two.
The Accountant snuck his head out behind the trunk and he could see, in that not so far distance, what looked like the collapsing of an entire forest, tree after tree. One would fall onto the other, and it, onto the next. And this domino effect of felling timber sounded like breaking bones while the rustling of the leaves was like the shushing of a draconian scholar. He realized now, what he had thought was the wind, was actually the force of so many trees meeting their end, and falling to the ground with such ferocious momentum.
As he turned back again, looking for some kind of escape, the wind died; and with it, the sound of destruction. All of a sudden it became deathly quiet. Not even his breath harboured a sound. There was just a stark emptiness, the kind that often followed tragedy and misfortune.
The Accountant’s heart was racing. He was sure the tree above him would collapse at any second, and yet he was too scared to run. What if it did, and he died a stupid fool? What if it didn’t and he ran out into the open and was struck by something else? What if this was the end? Could he have done anything differently?
“Please God,” he prayed, desperately to the canopy above, “I promise; if you save me now, I’ll never go astray again.”
There was nowhere for him to run. Before him, there was a small lake, but it hid beneath it, a strong current which pulled all the floating debris up and over a waterfall that he had assumed at first, was merely the horizon. The sight alone was daunting, watching everything fall off the edge of the world as they did, and more so, seeing something so grand that occurred in absolute silence. The waterfall must have been such a great height, that even sound itself had not the will or condition to travel.
With the quelling of the wind, so too did the fruit stop to fall. The Accountant stood up and looked around. The destruction was immense. He could see, through the swirling mass of dust and tiny leaves, the tops of trees that, like fallen soldiers, lay crumpled and broken on top of one another, their twisted limbs entwined.
The Accountant was overcome with grief. He stood staring into the distance, in absolute disbelief. He didn’t bother for a second, to assume how absurd it was that he was feeling this way for a garden full of weeds, as opposed to himself, or any of his ideals. He merely stood facing what looked like a genocide, with one considerate hand pressed against the tree that bore him shelter, and for all intents and purposes, life.
He stood and he stared, and in the distance, he saw someone or something, like an ungodly reflection, leaning against the carnage, as he did against the tree, and staring at him, as he did, it.
He stared for some time, and in the distance, it stared back.
Its face was black and hollow; like a hole with no end.
Then, from behind it, came what looked like a group of men, carrying tins of paint in their hands, and over their shoulders, they slung their cutting and hacking instruments. There were all sorts of axes, saws, winches, and thick heavy chains. They wore coloured vests that reflected in the sunlight, and they whistled as they walked; a host of merry tunes that were contrary to their apparently nefarious intentions.
“This one here,” shouted The Foreman. He didn’t look like much of a leader, but he sure acted like one. “This one’s sick. Mark it.”
Behind him, a man in bright attire, no different to his own, came from within the group carrying a bucket of white paint.
“This one boss?” he asked.
The first man, now obviously a superior, nodded, and the second man then dipped his brush into the white paint and then made a marking on the tree – a symbol of a star.
“And this one here,” said The Foreman, pointing the very next tree, without even looking. “Sick as a dog. Mark it, cut it, and let’s move on. I wanna get every last tree by the end of the day, got it?”
“Yes sir,” they all shouted.
The men followed their superior as he pointed at every tree that he diagnosed as being ill and needing to be cut down. And each tree was painted with the same white symbol, the symbol of a star; the very same symbol, in another world, that adorned the carriage of a young crippled girl who sat on her bed reading stories; while in the darkness and crept beneath her window, there spied a bookkeeper, grateful for finding the discrepancy, and desperate to sneak into her carriage and kill her, before Heaven was torn asunder.