Beneath a Broken Sky

By Dillon Mee

Belligerent liked to think that he could save himself, and when he realized he couldnt, he liked to think that nobody could save him. Sieve was a man defeated by hubris, for he had no pride in himself. Mondegreen was but a memory and a hopePorphyry a girl destined for tragedy. Perfidious was a man who preferred being broken, and Sam was just a man. Mr. Wightthe mysterious Mr. Wightwho is to say what he wasor is? These are the people who resided beneath a broken sky, and this is the story of their travels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479791569

Dillon Mee

Dillon Mee and his wife Brittany Mee currently live and teach in Beirut, Lebanon. While attending the University of California, Berkeley, Dillon majored in Linguistics, which fundamentally altered his perception on the nature and value of language. As an English teacher, Dillon has continued to enjoy words. Raised as a Christian and an expatriate, redemption and traveling are familiar themes to which he has clung. Somehow, all of these things put together—and many things besides—have culminated in the creation of this novel: a rendering of men’s travels in a world beyond their ken.

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Beneath a Broken Sky

Dillon Mee

Copyright © 2013 by Dillon Mee.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013902398

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4797-9155-2

                Softcover        978-1-4797-9154-5

                Ebook            978-1-4797-9156-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-800-618-969

www.Xlibris.com.au

[e-mail]

503180

CONTENTS

Prologue:   The crack of a gun

Chapter 1:   Lost and losing still

Chapter 2:   A shell of a man

Chapter 3:   The motley of wearing many hats

Chapter 4:   A bravery of sorts

Chapter 5:   The might of your words

Chapter 6:   Everything in half steps

Chapter 7:   The ashes of a dying fire

Chapter 8:   What does a poet look like?

Chapter 9:   A true master of kennels

Chapter 10:   What answers they might hold

Chapter 11:   Girls are fragile things

Chapter 12:   No more strangers left

Chapter 13:   Something like that

Chapter 14:   More repair than original design

Chapter 15:   Can I read it to you?

Chapter 16:   Everything will be alright

Chapter 17:   It was still her book

Chapter 18:   Smaller and bigger

and less important

Chapter 19:   But how wrong it was!

Chapter 20:   Never as certain as

we believe ourselves to be

Chapter 21:   You taught me that

Chapter 22:   Is your god like you?

Chapter 23:   A knock upon the door

Chapter 24:   Right or at least alright

Chapter 25:   A call to arms to be strong

Chapter 26:   The thing that ought to be done

Chapter 27:   Virtue is beautiful

Chapter 28:   Not only alright, but perhaps right

Chapter 29:   The Mystery of Mr. Wight

Chapter 30:   That tale to be told

Every world I ever trod

Was a wasteland of dust and sod.

Would that I could hold my breath

To wake in a place less undone by death;

She raged then and donned

Another set of masks.

Deceived, deceived!

And burdened to an

Infinite amount of tasks.

PROLOGUE

The crack of a gun

P erfidious watched her from a distance at first. She seemed alone and somehow that made him feel very much alone as well, as if the only real person in the world was him, and everybody else was but an illusion—except for her perhaps. That sounded terribly romantic, and terribly liberating; never mind that it was only an illusion. He couldn’t help smiling wryly at his own musings.

He had come to the village out of necessity, but now he stayed out of curiosity. Isn’t that always the way? He looked at her again and he realized that he would have looked at her again even if he hadn’t wanted to, like an incomplete double-take. He could have turned his head away, but still his eyes would have found a way to sneak a glance. She looked so innocent—old enough to know that there was more than innocence, but not so old as to throw it all away.

Perfidious had a strange fascination with innocence. In this wild world, innocence was beautiful and rare. Wherever he saw it, he tried to grab it up and hold on to it. Why he did this, he had never bothered to search out. He wasn’t very productive when it came to thoughts—or rather he thought very much, but his thoughts were always being employed in an effort to satisfy the caprice of his maundering mind. Like the frantic effort of so many small fish within a small pond, he cared little for the world outside the realm of his habits. He had a whimsy about this girl and his thoughts were not busy thinking whether or not such a thing was good or bad or smart or stupid, but rather on how to satisfy that whimsy, like an itch. He didn’t realize it, but he was a man who was slave to his own desires—enthralled by himself. Perhaps he really did believe everything else was an illusion.

He crossed the wide path, which was called a road in that village. His boots pressed against the flagstones and may have made a noise save for the mud which instead simply scraped off him and onto the village masonry. But he thought nothing of it, nor would he have cared to think anything of it. His genius was busily employed elsewhere.

She saw him at last, and he smiled in recognition of her awareness as she looked up at him. He was taller than her and fairer too. She was a slight thing and the lightness of her eyes and the darkness of her hair seemed as if it were done on purpose, though he knew that in such a world as this that she could not have changed either. She eyed him warily, for what else does a girl do when she sees a man with no business with her walk suddenly up and smile.

Good afternoon, she said at last, for Perfidious had said nothing, only looked at her. She was beautiful too, and he felt quite taken.

It is a good afternoon indeed, now that I have met you, he responded, jocund.

Ah, but you have not yet met me, and what makes you think you shall? she responded, not cold, but cool. At this Perfidious began to recoil a little, for she was not as frail as he had thought. Her mind was keen, perhaps as keen as his—and perhaps better employed. Then he smiled, for he thought he smelled the hint of a game, and he did so love games. He loved games more than life itself, for games were so very much more interesting and real than the dull and gloomy world that remained after civilization had passed away. What else could there be worth living for?

You are right, my little deary—but it’s better still, for now I have something worth doing today, he said after a moment. He leaned in a little and she leaned back and looked longingly to one side and then the other.

You have nothing better to do? she asked. At this he leaned back and looked about theatrically.

I’m of the opinion that if a man works hard all morning he should have the afternoon to pursue whatever he wants. He said it leisurely, as if he were giving directions to a lost person before he went on his way. She laughed a little at that and smiled—much to his satisfaction.

And what is it that you do in the mornings that earns you such peaceful afternoons? she asked. She seemed to be forgetting that he had no business with her and he was glad for that. It wasn’t that he wanted to cozen her into anything, but rather that she was beautiful and he loved to have beautiful things. Somehow talking to her was a little bit like possessing her. That was the tragedy of it all, for Perfidious never thought enough to know that he never could own beauty, and his desire of beauty only made beauty own him. Still he strived.

Ah, but you have it backwards: work is peaceful; the afternoons are wild, wild and wanting.

She laughed again at him.

You’re crazy, she said, but she didn’t say it mean—and that was her doom, for it was true.

Then a man came around the bend of the road, and what he saw was a girl being accosted by a strange man. He quickly trotted over.

Hey, your father is looking for you, he called out as he approached. She looked up and smiled at him too, which made Perfidious feel a little cold inside, for it was like a piece of beauty that was floating away and was not his.

Is he done already?

He’s got it all loaded up and is ready to head back.

Alright then. She got up off the fence she had been leaning upon and began to walk away. Then she called out a farewell over her shoulder—to both of them.

It was nice to meet you, Perfidious called after her, jovially, good-naturedly.

We still haven’t met, she called back, without turning to look at him.

That’s true, Perfidious muttered, but I know we will.

The man was eyeing him warily as he spoke. Then he shook his head and began to turn and go.

Who is she? he asked.

The man paused and then continued his turn, muttering as he tried to dissuade Perfidious with apathy, I don’t know, some local girl. And when he said that, something in Perfidious felt very much insulted, for he saw that this simpleton had seen right through him and then had the gall to try and refuse him. He lunged forward suddenly and with one hand grabbed up the man by the neck, pushing him against the fence which the girl had leaned against only a few moments before. With his other hand he pulled out his gun and jammed it up against his corpulent stomach.

Do you think me a fool? You know exactly who she is. Tell me, or I will kill you. He shouted it at the man and then stared into him. The man looked up and his eyes were fearful—but they also were seeing. His eyes saw the man’s wild insanity. He struggled desperately to get free, setting the fence to quiver, but it was to no avail. Finally he relented.

A few minutes later the girl sat safely beside her father in their carriage laden with goods—being pulled by their one faithful horse on its way home. She heard a thunder in the sky.

What was that? she asked.

Sounded like the crack of a gun.

CHAPTER 1

Lost and losing still

T he sun was enthroned in the mountains now, giving the sky that familiar royal hue—and all at once, the world was beautiful again. By this time the cool of the day had settled and grown to a brisk chill. The dust of the day was finally settling too, and yet the light hovered in the sky as if trying to cling to the once glorious noon now past. The desert through which the pair of men now traversed was not so much a desert as a wasteland of rich soils—soils which should by rights be well entrenched with the seeds and verdant life of sweet Flora. Still, there was nothing. Only weeds remained—as they always do.

They passed through a long valley ridged on two sides by gently sloping hills with a faint sprucing of greenery like the beard of a youth who merely forgot to shave, springing about haphazardly rushing towards the sky and somehow pathetic in its lonely endeavors. It was not what it ought to be. Still it strived. Eventually the hills turned into mountains, which held no snow, for snow was no longer a thing. There was only rain.

The adjoining crests ran for many miles, spilling on one side into a gushing river still pregnant with the rains of the past storm—on the other side, which was too distant truly to see, the seasoned traveler could know that there was a small settlement. It had sprung up out of the concrete and steel tombs of the past and was now only surviving by mere chance. The vagaries of time might reveal to the keen historian the irony of the settlement: the refuse of the past was today’s brightest gift. Historians—or at least those that wanted to pass as such—seemed to agree that the few square miles that fed that sleepy settlement rested upon what was once a junkyard. Here, that which was once disdained by all was now far superior to the acres of once rife and yet now barren lots that dominated the valley floor. It was a mystery.

The rest of the land for miles and miles was barren. It is a pitiable thing: an empty lot which was once a field of beautifully manicured rows of fruits and vegetables—such a vain thing now. Worse still, when the land revolts against its stewards and refuses to yield up its life giving seeds, it turns wild. The fields seemed now to be pockmarked with all manner of flotsam and jetsam, as if the skeletons of the past truly could rise from their graves only to fall back down upon the dust. Old and rusty things resided all about, jagged sometimes, and other times smooth, but old and rusty all the same. Hidden within this decrepit sepulcher of antiquity there had arisen—within the empty spaces of the history books—the worst kind of denizens. An innocent passerby would stand in awe for a moment at what he beheld and proclaim that surely such a thing should be, and certainly not in a garden which had once contained so much beauty. Alas, such innocence was now gone, no more laid upon the virgin fields.

As the two walked along, one of them thought a few of these thoughts. He was the sort of person who would have thought all of them, if only he had the time. But he never had the time. Instead he had given his mind over to that terrible savior named instinct. Such is the world, that so many of brilliant mind and stature are misappropriated to the swan song saga of sheer survival. The taller of the two was just such a person.

He held himself with a stature that bespoke quiet dignity. He had never grown happy but he had always grown strong—strong enough to survive. He was bedizened with the finest of the scraps left over from an old world. His cloak was wide and thick, some leathery material that was neither gaudy nor plain, for it was majestic not in its looks, but in its grit, much like the man himself. It was patched only in a few spots. He wore a hat which had a flat top that came to a point along the front of its height and then went straight down. This then grew into a brim that was stiff and ran all about the entirety—persistently taut. His face told the most about him for it was so often motionless and placid, and yet there was something in the eyes which portended a great frenzy of thought and action beneath the surface, much like the sleepy surface of a lake gives small clues to the civilizations of creatures below. The rest of him was muscle and gristle.

Who could say what the shorter of the two was?

He was an inquisitive fellow, for he did not know when to stop asking questions. He was pudgy all about, such that his arms seemed to be held apart from his body—as if they did not quite fit. He was strangely ignorant and might have simply wandered up out of the wilderness save for the fact that he could not survive in such a place for more than a day on his own—that and his strange incredulity at the state of the world. He had a broad face which was rounded by cheeks and jowls beneath the chin. The glasses that he wore were his most distinctive feature, however; they seemed too small for his face, and yet they magnified the presence of his eyes so that they seemed to bulge and throb against the light of the sun. His entire appearance was complemented by a short and thinning hair upon the top of his head. He looked like he ought to be a scholar, but he didn’t know enough to be such a thing either.

Don’t you sometimes wish we knew how this happened to the world? the pudgy one asked.

Nobody knows how it happened. We must have done something. The only reason we know it happened at all is because of all the fancy junk left behind.

Maybe we’re not the ones who did this.

What difference would that make?

I don’t know… maybe we aren’t.

So somebody—aliens, angels or gods—just swooped down and cursed the world with fire and water?

You never know.

That’s foolishness.

Oh, and the ‘Nobody knows what happened’ explanation is so much better.

Never mind—what does it matter anyways?

It might—it just seems like we don’t belong in this world—like everything we do is meaningless.

Survival is what matters.

To live for what?

The elder shook his head gloomily, then kicked up some dust. There was a lot of dust, or dirt—there were a lot of both. He eyed the distant horizon and squinted, the air danced in the distance beneath the sleepy sun. It was a while yet until they reached anything, and he was growing tired of his companion’s unremitting chatter.

Only thing that does is survival.

Oh, and what’s so great about that? We’re boiling alive down here half the time, searching for the last drops of pure water and whatever scraps of food we can find, or whatever scraps of anything we can find. If you ask me, maybe we’re in hell!

The grizzled one, with the two mismatched boots which were still sturdy enough to be comfortable nodded a little at that. He began to muse and in doing so began to whistle a little. It was a soft melody he had learned, though he knew not from where. Perhaps a fair maiden had taught it to him. God—how long it had been, to think of such trivial things as music. But there was something to the words his companion spoke.

Maybe we are. He spoke them as he always did, parsimonious.

The younger seemed surprised at the begrudging acceptance of anything he said. Maybe? he started, then a moment later exclaiming, why yes, indeed! maybe! He now clamored a little more, clambering forward over rocks and sparsely placed bracken to be heard a little more. The one who moved silently and cast long shadows about wished he had not encouraged the other. He quickened his pace and the other tried to follow. But the fatter one was not as adroit at crossing such tortuous landscapes; he stumbled, falling to the ground which caused his glasses to bounce off and slide down his faintly bearded chin.

"Hey, wait! Do you know how long it took me to get a new pair of glasses? I only have one pair left. I found it in an old store in the mall. It was called, Optometry Forever. Don’t you think that’s a funny word, optometry? I wonder what it means exactly, or where it came from. Maybe it came from old words that mean ‘eye jewelry’. No, wait, that doesn’t quite make sense."

He received an exasperated response now: and what fascinating name are you called? I imagine your name means something like ‘one who blathers’.

He continued his assiduous trek, whipping a blade out—a stubby but effective machete—without even correlating his actions and his words. The man with glasses picked himself up and dusted off then began a quick pace to catch up, not noticing that the older one had stopped—how much older was likely incalculable, for he wore age like a cloak. His graying hairs seemed there more by happenstance than anything else. The follower released a few more words, Why no, my name is actually Sieve, and I don’t really know what it means. I suppose that it, like so many other things is lost. Wow—that’s a very sharp blade.

Indeed.

The blade sliced forth decapitating the head of a nadder clean off, even as the snake flew towards it target. Another moment and one of the two would have been bitten, which surely would have spelled impending doom. In the wasteland that was the world, there was no forgiveness, only acceptance of that which was lost and losing still.

Nice work. Sieve said, distractedly. He was still eyeing the blade with a mixture of fear and awe. A moment later the blade disappeared beneath some fold of the cloak.

You know, I think we make a swell partnership, you keep me alive, and eventually, umm… eventually you’ll be glad that I’m around.

Will I?

Well sure, just you wait. You’ll see, Bearagrunt.

It’s pronounced, ‘Belligerent’.

Oh, Belligerent, I see—sorry.

The one whose hand was a little stiff spit on the ground. He hated to waste so much saliva, but it was better to expectorate and be rid of the dust that had collected than continue to taste so much dirt and sand. It helped—a little. The sun was low and parallel with the horizon. It shone harshly into his gaze. He wished that some clouds would scud across the horizon and offer some solace, but they were too small and too distant. He barely noticed his companion now stooping to collect something from the snake. He grunted and tacitly admitted a hint of approval with the faintest of nods.

Belligerent silently took stock of all that was his. This always happened when he wasn’t sure of exactly what he wanted to do. He had heard that the next town was only twenty leagues north by northwest along the valley floor, but then there was a strange desire to simply continue into the barren landscape. He somehow knew that somewhere there were answers that he was looking for, or perhaps—even better than answers—somewhere that didn’t need questions or answers. Certainly this fool would not help toward that end! Still, he tolerated him for some pitiable reason.

Fond memories trickled through his consciousness as he remembered a time that was better than this. It wasn’t paradise, but it mattered little, for it had seemed as such to him. He could live with the heat and the constant taste of dryness in his mouth, and he was fairly confident that he could survive from day to day. The paradox, however, was that he couldn’t bear the gnawing sense of hope on the horizon—stranger still that he could not survive without hope. He was enigmatically bound to search the horizon in the hopes that something could be better, already believing that he would find nothing. He knew from experience that it could be better, but those experience resided solely in the past now. He felt certain that such joys would not return to him in his older age, and so he was an empirically despairing man.

Perhaps his hopes were too lowly, but that thought never occurred to him. Instead he counted his earthly possessions. His mental stock of belongings started the way it always did. It went from most important to least important: two books—old and tattered, but still legible—three canteens of water (approximately 62 ounces of water), one cloak, durable, two guns holstered at the hip and beneath his left arm, seventeen assorted bullets—twelve which could be fired without alteration, three blades—the machete, a rusty hunting knife, and a Swiss-army knife which still had the toothpick—a recently salvaged medical kit (found in an empty kindergarten classroom, and including antiseptic ointment), approximately three pounds of coyote meat jerky, a few curative spices, assorted clothes—all of them being worn—mismatched boots, a hat, a pouch to hold the meat, which was slung over and hidden beneath the folds of the cloak, an empty knapsack, which was currently attached to the pouch, small assorted foodstuffs including village processed items, several trinkets of still unknown value, and of course, one