Lazarus

The ice sheets trembled under the glaring sun’s rhythmic beating. For ten millennia the earth warmed and peeled back the layers of ice stacked atop its swirling crust, shaking off the ice age for conditions favoring new life and fledgling civilization. The splintering of the ice awoke Lazarus from his slumber, to a lesser being the crunching and cracking would've heralded the apocalypse; but to Lazarus it rang the dinner-bell of opportunity. While he slumbered beneath the frozen peaks, he was not completely removed from the happenings on the surface. His hearing was vastly superior to the natives of this planet, and the sound waves resonated through the melting ice sheets, reaching him over many miles, albeit slightly muffled. While he slept his subconscious brain logged these sounds and voices. Now that he had awoken and his blood was circulating ever-faster, the bridge between conscious and subconscious was rejuvenating. Ten thousand years of auditory information was forcing itself into his expansive mind. With each beat of his heart the flow of information intensified, widening his constricted neural bridges. He hissed with joy, relishing the wisdom he was acquiring. As his heart rate increased, the blood paced faster through his veins, the ice around him was already melting but now steam was filling the melt-water cavity. His eyes rolled back into his head and his hissing crescendoed, spurring the cracking and shattering of ice above him. In a moment it was over, and the ice above his head collapsed on the large cavity that had formed around the fully awakened lizard.

Ingrid could hear ice cracking as she sat in her wooden canoe, at first barely audible over the gawking seabirds. Breath in. Breathe out, she told herself, and strengthened her grip on the wooden rod. Back on shore she had two hungry children, and allowing the settling ice to make her uneasy wouldn’t make the fish bite faster. For better or worse, hunger always takes precedence over superstition. The ice, however, would not be ignored. It groaned and crackled like an elder awakening on a cold winter morning. Pop pop pop, hrshhhh. Almost like the glacier was breaking over Ingrid’s head. She darted a glance over to the mountains, quickly pulling her eyes back to her bait in the water, but her mind lingered on the snow-covered slopes. From her split-second glance it seemed like the mountains were trembling, threatening to shake the glaciers from their peaks. My eyes are playing tricks on me, she told herself. Nothing to worry about, glaciers are known to move and crack, splinter and avalanche. The quicker I am done fishing the sooner I’ll return to my kiddies. And as often comes to be, a change in outlook heralds a change in outcome; a sharp pull dragged her rod toward the water. With all the might of her prehistoric ancestors, she yanked the rod towards the heavens. Leaning so far back that she almost tumbled into the icy waters behind her. Her line went slack and as she regained her balance, she feared she'd lost the fish. But no, there it was, lying on the wooden bow, flailing around with the hook still in its mouth. A broad, toothy smile extended from eye to eye and she almost yelped with joy, but stopped herself. Best to avoid detection. For a moment she forgot about the trembling of the mountains. She thanked the Gods of the fish and the Gods of the sea, tossed the still flopping fish at her feet, baited her hook anew, and tossed it back into the water. She didn’t have to wait long, just as she was allowing her thoughts to meander back to the mountains, another bite attacked her bait; this one even more ferocious than the last. She yanked again, making sure to maintain her balance, and once again a hefty fish was flung into her canoe, joining its cousin by her feet. Two large fish should be enough to feed herself and her children for several days. Elated, she wrapped the line around her rod, fixed the hook to the tip, and began paddling back to the shore. Throwing glances over her shoulder at the restless glacial peaks. Once she reached the shore she dragged her wooden canoe onto the gravel beach, just far enough to avoid it being swept out to sea by the rising tide. She could see the smoke rising from her camp, she knew her kids would still be sleeping in their tent, kept warm by the fire she stoked before leaving.

Her camp was a few minutes from shore, when she arrived the air was still and the birds were quiet, unusual for a warm summer morning. The only sound was the crackle of her fire, no rustling of leaves by the wind, no incessant buzzing insects. The foreboding of the trembling glaciers crept into her heart, and she wondered if she had thanked the wrong gods for her catch, or maybe not thanked them enough. With a tingle of fear she rushed to her tent, but froze mid-step, her hand instinctively reaching for the ax hanging from her waistband. She could see two large hulking shadows just out of eyesight behind the tent her children were sleeping in. Her fingers wrapped around the handle of her ax, deftly releasing the cloth clasp that held it to her waistband. 

“Don’t worry,” the shadow spoke as he emerged from behind the tent, “your children are alright, we’ve kept a watchful eye on them.”

“But as you know,” the other shadow, now to the right of the tent, continued, “our lord loves some fresh fish in the morning.”

Ingrid attempted to shift her stance to conceal her catch, but the shadows had already seen it.

“Just one of those fish would be enough to feed your family for a whole week. You wouldn’t want the other one to go to waste, surely it would rot before you had a chance to eat it.”

Rage was building inside Ingrid, she detested the lord that lived in his longhouse further inland. He claimed to offer protection and trade with other lords to the south and north and across the great sea, but Ingrid never saw any of their trade goods bestowed unto her or her children. All she ever received from the lord was constant requests and demands, a fish here, a deer skin there. They would always come when she was out hunting or fishing, always ambush her and place themselves between her and her children. It was cowardly and Ingrid was infuriated by it. Even now she closed her eyes and imagined the warm spurt of blood that would issue from the shadow's head as soon as she split it open with her ax. The shadows took a step forward and stood in front of the entrance to her tent. She could see the miniscule shadows of her children through the entryway. Thank the Gods they were heavy sleepers, a trait they would have to unlearn before reaching adulthood. Looking at her children soothed her anger, knowing they would be alright was quintessential to her. She could give away one of the fish and they would be fine. She could catch another one tomorrow, or the day after that, or even forage for roots or mushrooms in the forest. The patch of land she was on had proven bountiful, but a certain voice in her head detested submitting to these shadowy servants of a far away lord. She detested their existence, their manner of conducting themselves, the very essence they represented. Suddenly the rage within her began to boil over. She tried the breathing exercise she used while fishing, but to no avail. The voice in her head howled for blood. How dare they threaten her children! How dare they rob her of her hard-earned catch! Her peripheral vision faded as she began to focus on the puny skulls she was about to crack. Her body went numb. The silence in the clearing was deafening. Time slowed down as even the crackling of the fire faded to nothingness. Her hair stood on end and a ringing sound was growing louder, reverberating through her mind. She tried to picture her children again, to soothe her tempestuous spirit like she’d done so many times before. But all she could focus on was the blood pulsing in her ears, feel its heat throughout her body. Confrontation was not the answer she told herself, Confrontation is not the solution! She tried to take another deep breath in…but 

“Come on now little bird, we spent a long time… “ In a single motion she lunged and the ax was in the left shadow’s skull. Blood sprayed across the same smile that caught the fish, it was even warmer and more rewarding than she’d imagined. Her vision was dark except for the remaining shadow, she could not hear the suppressed-guttural croak of the man she had just killed. In an equally fluid and swift motion, while the remaining shadow fumbled with his ax strap, she swung the ax horizontally and implanted it across his face. A second spout of blood painted her from her hairline to her chest, with some landing on the crown of her head. The second shadow did not utter a sound. Her little clearing was silent once again. She stood motionless for a moment, covered in blood, slowly processing. She looked at her children in the tent, still asleep. Finally her vision, hearing, and bodily control began returning to her. Her immediate thought was to go to the river and wash up, but what if there are more of them? Hiding in the shadows of the forest, blending in with the trees. That was all of them, the voice in her head soothed her, if there were more surely they would have attacked by now, and remarkably she felt her heart begin to slow. As her hearing returned to her, so did the trilling of the birds and insects, as if she had just poked her head above water. A light breeze revealed she had broken into a cool sweat. Go wash yourself in the water, wash yourself clean. Without thinking too much she turned around and headed back to the water. In the blink of an eye she was passing her canoe, now she was waist deep in the ice-cold sea. Moving as if in a trance and still fully dressed, she dunked her head into the water and let it cleanse her body. Cleanse her of the shadow’s blood and of the anxieties she’d felt that morning. Even once she’d removed all of her accoster’s blood she continued dunking herself several more times to wash her spirit clean. The frigid water only allowed the most necessary parts of her to surface. Her shoulders dropped and the stress of battle and child-rearing went floating away in the water. Soon she would be warm in fresh clothes with a belly full of fish. As she emerged from her final submergence she noticed something odd, she could’ve sworn there was one more mountain peak across the water when she looked this morning. A glaring gap had appeared on the horizon, as if one of the mountains had vanished.

Lazarus had slithered from the cavity he’d melted for himself into the nearby waterway. The earthen soil was loose compared to his home-world, even in a state of permafrost he could dig through it with ease. He lay at the bottom of the waterway, allowing the icy water to lower his temperature while he absorbed moisture and snacked on some of the passing fish. Lazarus had been tasked with spurring ingenuity by fostering trade between the geographically divided peoples. Helping them transition from traditional bartering systems to token trading, and facilitating the transfer of ideas over great distances. However, the humans had already begun trading and using tokens, to varying extents. A considerable amount of them had accumulated in small villages where they were already undermining each other and doing their best to swindle whilst avoiding being swindled. Exssssellent. Lazarus hissed to himself. He always knew the apes were too primitive to achieve complete consciousness, so it was no surprise to him that they were squandering their potential. Happily undercutting each other, scheming on the demise of their enemies and raising their allies to positions they weren’t qualified for. Completely unaware that they were all allies, and undercutting their perceived enemies only undercut the human race as a whole. Exsssquissssite. Lazarus applauded the failings of humanity. No, Lazarus was not here to spur innovation, he was here to herald the beginning of the end. To regale in the bloodshed and ego-mania that would surely stamp out this race before it truly understood the essence of existence. In his immediate vicinity two apes were scheming to rob another ape and her two children. They whispered while they waited for her in her camp, so loudly and crassly that they irritated Lazarus on the seabed. Incapable of tact, these apesss, his agitation grew. Their brazen ignorance, purporting themselves as devious or honorable depending on which of their petulant moods they were in, appalled Lazarus. Ignorant Imbecilesss! Meanwhile, the female ape had discovered the robbers in her midst. Perhaps a meal tassstier than cold fish? Tensions were flaring, Lazarus could sense it. The female ape was already at her breaking point, she just needed the slightest push, a gentle allusion to the right course of action. He weaseled his way into her mind and pestered her with thoughts of violence. Even sooner than Lazarus could have hoped, two fresh corpses lay unattended in the woods. The female ape was well adept at violence. Quickly and silently, he burrowed his way from the seabed to Ingrid’s camp, and in seconds inhaled the bodies of the two shadows. Burying himself deeper underground, he settled to allow himself time to digest.