Mario By Mario
Book 3 ‘The Stones’
1 The Revelation
1st January
Kiss and back. The laid back wave hustling to the sandy edge and back
infinitely, like a lover hugging the beach as the shore kisses it back. It
defies any man held definition of time. It is a timeless kissing as if time had
not only stood still but it had actually never existed. The only humna on this
beach was myself. The sun caked my skin and made me as golden as the landscape.
The glittering crystals in the music of the waves was white and pure. I stood
motionless lying on a mat on the grains of the softest sand burning with the
summer it collected day by day.
2nd January
This is not a sequel, nor is it intended to be. I know not how I got
there, nor how long I have been here for. But for all this time the problem of
the human race did not bother me. It was all washed away. You know that things
seem so large when they are up and close and so insignificant when they are far
away. No one troubled me, nor took the trouble to call. I felt sad that I had
lost, but it had only been a game. A serious game at that. My first feelings
had been that I had let them down and with them my whole race. But the water
had a healing potion that eased my parched spirit. And probably it is only a
question of telling yourself that everything is okay and then all you have to
do is to wait for yourself to be convinced. There are many voices inside
oneself. The ego, the conscience, the fear and the desire to overcome, present
and future hopes……. It is so hard to talk of yourself as one being.
3rd January
One day I had a vision and the beach suddenly changed to one full of
beach combers, sunbeds, umbrellas, yachts, water bikes, surfers, parachutes,
gliders, children with an endless assortment of toys in every colour under the
sun. Girls with bikinis or without and fet bellied men with beer cans and eyes
lingering over the younger members of the opposite sex, beach boys and people
frolicking around in the sea or sleeping in the sun. (Well that is the picture
that I would paint today, but that vision, that day was full of people enjoying
the beach). When the vision disappeared I was all alone again. I knew that I
had seen the future.
One must understand that I, even at this day and age cannot reveal all
the secrets of the spirits for many reasons. A secret is a secret after all.
Most things people would not believe anyway. The truth is sometimes so
incredulous and fantastic that people in their right minds, will refuse to
believe it. So there are many things that I cannot explain, but I will let you
know as much as I think I can be allowed to say.
Becoming a spirit is a process, a process of experience and education,
of tests of character and intelligence. Spirits are allowed to disappear from
their daily routine to return when they feel refreshed and renewed. Let us call
it a spirit vacation. With the vision of the people of the beach, the picture
of a possible future, my holiday ended. So I set off to Byblos carrying the
caskets in the sack that I had taken from the Mountain of the Spirits.
The Revelation
The Death of Merhurt
4th January
Merhurt greeted me alone, without pomp. “Be proud of what you have
become. Victory majes great men, defeat teaches them how to be greater.”
Merhurt seemed to know everything. But I was asking no questions.
“I saw your son. He is well and alive.” Merhurt was quiet for a long
time. He walked me out of the city of Byblos up towards the low mountains
to the east. We walked and walked, but
my news seemed to have silenced his heart. As for myself, I had lain on a sandy
beach for so long, alone and quiet that I did not seem to have many words
inside of me. The night fell down on us and we still walked. When the sun rose
we were at the foot of the mountains. We clambered up the moutain ridge in the
heat of the sun, till we came to the peak. The mountains were not very high and
not very difficult to climb. There was a trickling stream, a rare occurrence in
such a desolate place. Merhurt stopped to lap up what water he could. I had to
cup my hands and wait for my hands to fill, for there was very little water to
talk about. That night we slept by this water vent on a ridge high above the
forsaken desolate plain. When the sun rose, it looked even more forbidding than
ever. Even at that very early hour the heat was already becoming unbearable.
“I have come here to die,” Merhurt suddenly announced. “I have lived
long enough.” I was asking no questions, but I was still a human and a lump
came up in my throat. “See this land. There is a city underneath, nay a
kingdom, a man made kingdom. One day the spirit Ursus flooded it and then sank
what remained under the sand, together with a great river that made the land
rich and fertile. You have lost the land that was Ala. I know that Enlil would
like you to take over this land instead.” I looked at the treacherous emptiness
in disbelief. “I was once told by my father, that the day I would return to
take over my seat at Ylos[1]
, would be his last. Indeed he passed away just as news of my return reached
him. I found him dead. My son will take over in Byblos, for if he told you that
to greet me, it means that he is about to return. Now it is time for me to go.”
Merhurt did not look at me but kept staring at the landscape below. “Do you
have any final wish?” Merhurt however remained silent. The sun was burning my
back as if the Red Demon was touching me, but I would not move. “I know that
you will take care of the bulls and I know that you will act like me and give
up everything, even your familt and race in the face of duty. The bulls will be
driven out of Byblos by the human race, I know and I will bow to the fate
written by the spirits for us. I asked not to witness it and therefore I die.
Yet I die happy in the knowledge that you will oversee this land that once was
mine. A barren land, but it was home.”
5th January
“What do you know about rivers? Do you know that rivers twist and turn?”
I was startled by this change of conversation. “Rivers are of many kinds like
human beings. They may be said to have stories. They are born, they go through
their childhood days and their youth. They pass through the stages of
adolescence, maturity and many of them reach old age. As with human beings
again their appearance is very different at different ages. A river is born,
perhaps as a spring from a hillside. At first it runs straight cutting out a
channel for itself leaving steep banks on each side. The power of a fresh newly
born river creates even steeper banks forcing a valley with high land on both
sides of it. With the rain, comes even more water and the river has grown so
large that it starts to flood, but there is no place it can go but straight
with such force that it will now even cut into rock and not only soft earth.
The rocks it pulls down sink to the bottom, the crashing current swings to the
other side with even greater force and digs a bend into the rock and this river
now turns into a snake, where it finds weaker banks, the banks break and form
tributaries and again once the water finds vents to spread, it relaxes. Now the
ground is not so steep and the current not so strong. The river has grown old
and will eventually mingle with the sea. Farewell, Mario of Huta.” With this he
sprang into the gorge beneath. I had no time, no warning and probably no power
to stop him. Merhurt was gone.
6th January
I looked down into the abyss and made out his dead body, but a speck below.
I kicked at the rock face in anger, right there where the water had trickled
and the ground gave way beneath my feet. Water gushed out with so much energy
that it nearly threw me off the ridge were it not for Wiza’s claws that kept me
clinging on as the water washed all over me with great intent. Slowly I pulled
myself out of harm’s way. More and more water was falling into the abyss where
Merhurt’s body was already floating. It took me a couple of days to get down
where he lay. I dragged him out with much effort. The water had already formed
a little stream which disappeared over the horizon and it was showing no signs
of stopping. Merhurt was a big, heavy animal and it took all my strength and
enterprise to slug him up to a place which I thought would remain dry and
buried him. I took the medal which hung round a chain on his neck and made my
way back to Byblos. I entered at night and asked the guards to keep my entry a
secret till the dawn and made my way to the foot of Mount Enlil using a secret
was shown to me by the bulls. There I found Merhurt’s son and laid down the
medal without saying a word.
“Enlil told me to ask you about my father and you bring me sad news. I
understand that it is time for me to return to Byblos.” I picked up the medal
and wrapped it round his heart broken neck. He would become known as the One
who Stepped Forth from the temple or as the Bull who came down from heaven, in
the tongue of the bulls Gu (one) Ga (from) Lana[2]
(Nirvana) Gi (come). So together with Gu Ga Lana Gi and with other envoys from
the Ensa of Byblos, I traced my way back to the place where I had buried
Merhurt and they led his remains back to the city where he was given a state
funeral. In the shadows I made out the shapes of various other spirits, but
none approached me. When Merhurt was lain to rest, the sky blackened and a huge
sandstorm could be seen rising in the desert. The bulls closed the gates of the
city and ran for shelter.
The sandstorm lasted for days. Few dared leave their homes and none
dared leave the city. So died Merhurt and with him age old secrets. He was one
of the eldest spirits but had renounced his powers and his throne to the bulls.
Now he had even renounced his life.
End of The Death of Merhurt.
[1] Ylos was the land of the bulls by
Byblos, before Byblos was given to the bulls.
[2] The Sumerian Tale of Gilgamesh
depicts the slaying of the Bull Of Heaven Gugalana as an act of defiance
against the gods. From the earliest times the bull was a lunar creature, its
horns symbolising the cresent moon.
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