Wedding at the End of Time

Russ Colson

        

        Something was wrong with the Sun. It was too big and red.

        The stars were scrambled. Mary couldn't find the Big Dipper or Hercules.

        Seeing the stars and Sun together was also a bit disconcerting.

        The wide meadow beckoned her, and she ran, letting the grasses tickle and scratch at her legs. The air burst against her face in warm puffs.

        Exhilarating. Puzzling.

        She saw no sign of her house. It should be nestled at the bend in the creek below her. No rubble, no foundation, no outline of where a foundation might once have been.

        She heard voices and laughter from the valley below and followed the sound down the meadow toward the trees. A woman emerged along the stream. The faint breeze rippled her green blouse and red hair. She kneeled at the stream to draw water in a small pitcher.

        Anja. Dear Anja. Something familiar at last.

        Mary broke into a run and called to her.

        "Hi, Anja!"

        Anja turned and embraced her. "I'm glad to see you. We're having a picnic. Won't you join us?"

        "I guess so. But what are you doing here?"

        She shrugged. "We're having a picnic."

        "No, I mean, there aren't any houses, there aren't any roads. How did you get here?"

        Anja smiled her warm, honest smile. "It was such a nice day that we just walked."

        Mary laughed. "I would love to join you. We have so much to talk about."

        It seemed like they should have a lot to talk about, but Mary realized she didn't know what it was. Of course, Anja always knew how to draw her out.

        Anja turned into the woods. Mary followed, watching the sun play on her red hair. Odd. She never dyed her hair.

        They walked toward the murmur of voices.

        "There's something strange going on, Anja."

        "Perhaps it's just such a wonderful day..."

        "No. Like the stars. The stars are different."

        "They are different, I guess."

        "So, how can you know they're different, since it's daytime?"

        Anja frowned. "I don't know. I see them."

        "Don't you wonder what it means?"

        Anja laughed. "You're the one who figures things out, Mary. Don't take too long, though. You have to choose soon."

        Twenty to thirty people were in the clearing along the creek, most sitting on ground cloths, others playing badminton between two trees. It reminded Mary of old-time community picnics she'd seen in movies.

        She plopped down with Anja. It was a joy to sit cross-legged on the ground so easily. A bit of the exuberance of the day suffused her.

        Don sat beside Anja. Mary's lips tightened, and a surge of anger cooled the warmth of the day. How dare he show his face here?

        If he had stepped out on Anja only once, or with only one other woman...

        "Hi," he said.

        Mary nodded and looked away.

        At least his eyes weren't red with alcohol.

        She turned her attention to a plate of fresh fruit. Cantaloupe hadn't tasted so good since childhood.

        "Why don't we take a walk along the creek?" said Anja. "There's someone you'll want to see."

        They walked until the voices faded, muffled by the woods and the gurgling of the stream. The clear sky had given way to puffy summer clouds. She looked again for the Big Dipper and Hercules. This time, she found them. She wondered where they had been.

        A man carried water to small fruit trees planted in an opening of the woods. He turned as she approached. She recognized Silas. Her Silas.

        He ran to her. Such a wonderful hug. Silas had not held her like this for so long.

        Not since he died of cancer.

        She remembered, then, that her old legs, fragile and stiff with arthritis, could not have carried her so exuberantly down the grassy hill.

        She remembered why Anja's hair couldn't be red. It had turned gray three decades ago, twenty-five years before she died.

        Mary felt a pang of disappointment and waited to wake up from this wonderful dream.

        "You mustn't stay away too long," Silas said. "Your door won't open forever, and you have work to do."

        "Work?"

        He squeezed her hand. "Yes. We need you."

        She was on another hill. A small city lay below, abuzz with activity. She heard the rumble of cars. A path wandered to her left.

        She knew this place. She came here often to walk or watch the sunrise.

        She followed the path and met Don approaching. She wondered why he was in the park. He didn't seem the type for quiet reflection.

        "What are you doing?" she asked.

        "I come here to watch the sky. Maybe get my life straightened out." He gave an awkward smile.

        She nodded and tried to smile but couldn't. He continued past her down the trail toward the parking lot at the edge of town.

        She didn't really envy his selfish choices, but for all her better choices—and sacrificed opportunities—she had grown old as surely as he.

        As Mary approached her favorite bench, surrounded by irises, she saw that someone was already sitting there. She felt a wave of irritation. How dare this young man be in her place! She should just walk by and smile, but you don't have to do that when you're old, particularly in a dream. She sat down, and he moved over slightly.

        She watched the sky, noticing how the clouds moved and changed. The breeze whipped the tall grass and the more distant wheat fields into waves. A squirrel scampered up the oak tree beside the bench.

        So much life. So much to learn and experience.

        "So, are you looking for something?" the young man asked.

        She jumped a little. "No. Just looking. And thinking."

        "I'm looking for something, but I don't know what it is."

        She smiled a little. "You're looking for what you're supposed to do."

        His eyes widened. Time passed in silence. "I think you're right," he said.

        "But what is one supposed to do in a dream?" Mary asked.

        "So, you're dreaming too?"

        Mary smiled and nodded. Although, she wondered why she would dream of a red sun, of stars that changed location. She knew that stars moved, causing constellations to vanish over long periods of time. She knew that as suns aged and cooled they could become red stars. But why should these be in her dream about Anja and Silas?

        "I've always wanted to travel," he continued. "Other countries, other worlds. But I don't think that's what I'm supposed to do."

        Supposed to do. Mary remembered Silas's words, that she had work to do. That it must be done soon. However, this dream felt too full of adventure and intrigue to give it up just yet. She'd done that enough in real life.

        "Traveling sounds good," she said.

        The young man rose. "Walk with me."

        They walked to the other side of the park where the hill looked westward over town. Cars and trucks sped along the highway that passed below the hill.

        "They go so fast," Mary said. "I don't see how more people aren't killed."

        The young man waved toward the cars and trucks on the road. "Did you know that this is the time of day when most people are run over by trucks?"

        "Are you serious?"

        "Well, think about it. Are most people run over by trucks?"

        "Well, no," Mary said.

        "Then how could it happen at this time of day?"

        Mary grimaced.

        "What do you do?" she asked.

        "I teach English. That was one of my teaching jokes. I didn't mean to annoy you."

        She smiled, embarrassed.

        "Actually," he continued, "I only used to teach English."

        "Were you fired for bad jokes?"

        He laughed. "No. I retired about ten years ago."

        "Retired?" she asked in surprise. "I don't..."

        Before she finished speaking, an odd sensation of awakening passed over her, as if a door opened and let in a breath of fresh air. Exhilarating.

        The young man started and frowned. He must have felt it too.

        "What was that?" asked Mary.

        "I don't know, but I'm not ready yet. There's so much to see."

        "Yes. So much."

        "Let me take you someplace," he said. "Take my hand."

        She should go back. Learn what work Silas spoke of.

        But Silas was dead.

        She'd had a chance for an affair once. Made a friend at a research conference in England. He did what she'd wanted to do, tropical botany, and he valued her ideas. She didn't pursue it of course. She'd always wondered what she missed. And this was only a dream.

        Mary took his hand and the world dissolved away again.

        They were on another world. The stars had changed, and the few plants clinging to life on the red rocks were unlike any on Earth. The hundreds of rocky spires rising sharply from the plain were so spectacular she felt certain she would have seen pictures of them were they from the Earth she knew.

        "This is what I do in my dream," the young man said. "I go places."

        "Pretty cool."

        "What good is going places if I don't know what I should do?"

        "I thought you taught English."

        "Before I retired. But what should I do now?"

        Mary didn't answer, pondering what he meant by "now."

        "What I know best is English," he continued. "But I don't know how to use it here. Although, communication was the basic work of humans in the garden of Eden."

        "How do you mean?"

        "Adam named the animals, the first step in communicating."

        Mary protested. "It was also a first step in investigating things, understanding them."

        "Is that what you're supposed to do, investigate things?"

        "It's what I want to do." Mary clenched her hand into a fist and looked into the distance.

        He followed her gaze. "I want to travel, but it's not what I'm supposed to do."

        "You think communication is what you're supposed to do?"

        "Yes."

        Something tugged at her—she had a choice to make and a job to do—but she resisted. First she had to learn what this strange dream meant. First, she wanted to do the things she could never do in her waking life.

        "Maybe you have words to give someone while you're traveling," she said.

        They walked beneath a high, sandy bluff at the edge of the spired plain. A spring emerged from the rock about five feet above them. A hanging garden clung to the wet rock. The bright colors and rich green reminded her of gardens on Earth.

        "What's your name?" she asked.

        "Javier. Yours?"

        "Mary."

        She watched the water dripping from an overhang and then kneeled to examine the alien plants it nourished. She'd given up her chance to study botany in the Amazon. The kids were young then, and it hadn't seemed like the right thing.

        Maybe she could recover that opportunity on this world. The plants here were rich and real, not confused like a dream.

        "You know that you can't be dreaming," she said to Javier.

        He jumped a little, apparently deep in his own thoughts. "What do you mean?"

        "If I'm dreaming, then you're part of my dream and can't be dreaming yourself."

        "Or you're part of my dream." He didn't smile.

        Mary shivered. As a dream, the strange day had seemed so safe. As reality, it seemed much less so.

        She wasn't ready to choose. To give up everything that she knew and understood.

        She was much more ready to continue her exploration. It had already revealed some things about this strange reality—perhaps why Silas needed her.

        She remembered the red sun of Earth, the stars that changed as though she could move through time.  It could be a dream, but it could also be a true world, with an aged Earth and Sun, where the stars had moved until the pattern of constellations was lost.

        Maybe she too could travel, like Javier, but in time rather than place.

        "Come with me, and I'll show you where I can go." She took Javier's hand.

        Mary watched the bluff, thinking of the stories it told. Of oceans and rivers, long vanished, where the tiny creatures in the rock had lived. Of ages of change yet to come. The bluff began to transform.

        The spring disappeared. Crevices in the bluff deepened to canyons. Spires on the plain vanished and new ones formed where the bluff eroded back from the plain.

        Javier gasped as the landscape changed around them. Mary slowed the pace.

        A young couple appeared on the bluff, holding hands and watching the sun set over the plain. The couple waved.

        Mary realized that this was not like watching a video. These people could affect her life and she could affect theirs. She shouted and waved back.

        Who were they? How did they come to be on this distant world?

        "Let's go talk to them." She ran up a long cleft leading to the top of the bluff.

        She reached the flat plateau atop the bluff puffing for air. The couple stood a short way off, near a vehicle that looked like a car without wheels.

        "Hi!" she called. "Who are you? Where are you from?"

        The young couple looked puzzled. "We came from town," one said.

        Mary saw buildings across the plateau, some thirty stories tall. The setting sun made them glow red and gold against the darkening sky.

        "No, I meant we are new here, and I was wondering how people came to this world."

        The one who had spoken before spoke again. "I'm afraid I don't know much about history. I think my ancestors came from the Chrome Worlds." The one looked to the other, who nodded.

        Javier came puffing up from the cleft. The young couple stepped back, probably wary of these strangers who walked up off the plain at dusk and asked odd questions.

        "Hi," said Javier, but the couple didn't respond.

        "Do you come here often?" Javier asked.

        "Sometimes," one said.

        "Walk with us and tell us about your world," Javier said.

        They walked and talked for a time, and the young couple's wariness faded.

        The sun was well down, and the plain below fell into darkness. The tops of the rock spires glowed faintly pink.

        Like a breeze through an open door, the sensation of awakening swept upon Mary again, swifter and stronger than before. There was a surge of closeness to the young couple and to Javier. A sense of closeness to Earth, which must be far away in time and space.

        The sensation passed. The young couple embraced each other. They turned to Mary and Javier, expecting something. On impulse, Mary embraced them as well.

        "It's coming," one of them said.

        "Yes, it's coming," the other replied.

        Mary wondered what was coming and if it would undo her chance to explore and experience. She'd already missed too much in life.

        Although, she didn't want to miss what was coming either.

        The couple got into their vehicle and left. Mary felt a strong affinity for them. She wondered if they were her descendants. Of course, after such immense time and with the miracle of geometric progression, nearly everyone in this age must be her descendant.

        "You know that you're too young, don't you?" she asked Javier.

        "Too young for what?" He looked at his young hands, puzzled.

        "Too young to be retired."

        "But...I am retired."

        "If this isn't a dream, and I know it can't be, then how can you be so young? If it's not a dream, how can my dear friends who died be alive? I'm old, Javier. Old and frail. I can't have run up to this plateau from the plain."

        "What's happening then?" he asked.

          "I must have died, Javier. Died as my loved ones died. And now I am awake."

        "And me?"

        "You died, too. And are awake."

        Javier nodded.

        "It's real, Javier. That means that Anja and Silas are real. I want to talk to them."

        "I have friends I'd like to see, too. But I want to see more here, first. I want to see what happens next."

        Mary took his hand again, and the world changed swiftly. All remnants of the plateau and plain vanished. Rivers came; mountains came; many people came. The people left in strange ships that filled the sky. The sun changed, reddened, became larger. Life vanished from the planet. Later, people returned.

        The most remarkable thing happened in the sky. They watched as stars, galaxies, and life folded up like a piece of cloth. The whole heavens, filled with people everywhere, gathered together into an ever-smaller space.

        The sense of awakening swept upon her again. When it passed, Javier embraced her.

        "This is my door," he said. "I almost waited too long, but I'm ready now."

        "Ready for what?"

        "Ready to choose."

        "You know what you're supposed to do?"

        "Yes, and what you must do as well."

        "What must I do?" She didn't really want to listen. She wanted to wait, to explore, to do all the things she'd missed in life.

        "You must gather everyone together at the center of time."

        She was on the grassy hill above the creek where she saw Anja. Javier was no longer with her.

        She wondered what part she had to play in all of these things and what Javier meant by "the center of time." She wanted to talk again with Anja and especially Silas.

        A figure moved in the valley below. Don. She felt her heart harden a bit. Don saw her and waved tentatively. Mary started to turn away but remembered meeting Don in the park and that there were things about him she didn't know. She began to wave, but he had already turned into the woods along the creek.

        A tingle of disappointment passed through her. She had been a good Christian all her life. But why was he here?

        Mary followed Don into the woods toward the clearing where she had found Silas caring for trees. Anja intercepted her.

        "Hi, Mary!" she called.

        Mary stopped and waited as she approached.

        "So, Mary, do you know what's going on yet?" she asked.

        Mary motioned her to a fallen log and sat down. She told her everything she had seen and learned.

        "But Anja, I don't understand what it means. I don't understand why Don should be here."

        Anja looked at her strangely, hurt.

        "Don is my friend, Mary. I'm glad he's here."

        "How can you care for him after what he did to you? You grew old too quickly because of him, Anja. I had to watch and could do nothing."

        "You didn't 'do nothing,' Mary. You were my friend. That was everything."

        Mary smiled weakly. "I want to talk with Silas. Is he still in the clearing?"

        Anja nodded, and Mary rose, waving goodbye. She walked swiftly, almost running, into the woods toward the clearing.

        She saw him, but he didn't see her. He was working over a small tree he had planted. He had always loved to care for things. He had always been so good at it.

        "Silas," she called.

        He rose and smiled a smile that seemed to light the whole world.

        "Hi, Mary." He ran to her and grabbed her hands in his. "Come see my trees."

        He had bird feeders and flowers as well as trees. He had marked a path through the garden and into the woods along the creek.

        "What do you think?" he asked.

        "It's nice," Mary said. "But what does it matter?"

        Silas looked puzzled. "What do you mean, 'what does it matter?'"

        She told him what she had seen and learned.

          "Silas, all our life, our experiences, our opportunities, are coming to an end. How can anything matter now?"

        "Haven't we always wondered what matters?" he asked.

        "But we could always pretend it mattered, because there was time ahead. Now..."

        "What do you think matters?"

        "I met someone who thought that ever since humans first named things in Eden, communication is what matters. I've always been good at figuring things out, but not at talking about them. I want to stay and figure things out."

        "I have a different idea of Eden," Silas said. "The human was put in it to care for it. That is our basic work." He laughed.

        Mary looked up at the sky, searching for the changing stars. "Maybe there are many jobs."

        "What's yours?"

        She spoke quickly before she could grow afraid. "I can connect people through time."

        "Then that's what you should do."

        "I don't want to give up my life, my potential to experience and learn."

        "Will you lose that, Mary?"

        She paused. She remembered the sense of awakening, the sense of closeness. She remembered the young couple on a far off world saying, "It is coming."

        "It will change," she said. "We're becoming something."

        Silas took up the small trowel he had set down when Mary approached and looked over his trees. "Maybe you shouldn't expect your new life to replace what you missed in the old. It might be something you haven't seen or heard of."

        Anja and Don approached them across the clearing. As they drew near, the sense of awakening with which Mary was growing familiar swept upon her. It was more intense and lasted longer than any before it. The sense of love for those around her grew strong. She even felt an affinity for the earth and trees. She felt a sense of closeness through space and time, for the young couple on a distant world.

        She knew this was her chance to choose. Choose adventures she gave up in life or choose new, unknown, adventures. Choose to become or to remain.

        She chose to become.

        Mary reached out and embraced Silas. Then Anja. And, with a moment of hesitation, Don.

        When they parted, Don looked at her. "Mary, I know what you have thought of me. I am less than I might have been. But I am something. Not because of what I did. Just because."

        

        She was in the ancient city. Smoke rolled over the stone and brick buildings of Jerusalem. Soldiers milled in the streets, their uniforms familiar to her from movies of Roman times. The others who moved in time were there as well, gathered so they might assemble everyone and everything to this center of time.

        She could feel her friends with her, Silas and Anja and her new friend Javier and the young couple from far away. There because of her. There was no more sense of awakening. There was a sense of being awake.

        She felt a sensation of rising, though her feet did not leave the ground. She felt a sense of communication, though she said nothing.  It was as though a brain cell, communicating with its neighbors by electrical pulses, participated in matters it couldn't understand.

        The Awakened had come at last, and she was part of it.

        As a part, she felt a sense of love for another. She felt Him drawing near. One like the Awakened. The Bridegroom was coming.

        At last she understood. All things were so full of wonder that there was no room to be bored, so filled with people that there was no room to be without joy, so filled with God that there was no room to be without love.

        But then, hadn't things always been that way? She had just been asleep.

 

Copyright 2008, Russ Colson

Cover: "Wizard and the Cloud Dragon"

The old wizard and a dragon find their place in the world together.

Copyright 2008, Michelle J. A. McIntyre

Specializing in colored pencil works on fiber-enhanced paper, more of the work of Michelle J.A. McIntyre can be found on her Webpage < www.fantasyrealmcreations.com > and online store < www.cafepress.com/pawgifts >. She creates a variety of fantasy art subject matter including dragons, unicorns, gryphons, fairies, and centaurs.