Chapter Four

... and Questions

Cradle of Civilization, circa 3000 b.c.e. about three years later:

Methos sat cross-legged on Aja's great bed concentrating on his task. Days had passed into months and the months had passed into years. It had taken three years for him to learn and to be able to reproduce from memory all forty-five of the symbols correctly. They were so very complex. From being able only to write four or five on the wax before running out of room, he could now get all of them on... and, of course, the final two. She was very strict about that. But she had yet to teach him what they meant.

"The answers, Scholar, are in the other forty-five. All that makes them up can be found in the others. Once you find the pattern, once you discern it, the answer will be yours."

And so each day, he wrote the first symbols in varying order, followed by the final two. Each day she asked him what they meant. And each day she laughed at his answer and told him to keep trying. Then she erased all the symbols and the next day he would begin again.

Her raging storms still came over her. On those occasions, some slave would come to fetch him. He alone seemed to be able to bring her back to herself. He no longer feared the storms. But he did fear her. Or perhaps he feared for her. He was not certain.

Once he had awakened to find her pacing the room. Her words were meaningless. "Oh my mother what have you done... what have you done? We are all of us cursed... cursed! Father, oh Father, the sword is not the answer. Put it away, put it away! ... My brother... this is wrong. We cannot do this to our father. Ohhh... my beloved, you are lost to me... and I cannot find you! ... Why must I be doomed to walk the earth? ... Let me rest, let me rest." She collapsed sobbing onto the floor.

Methos had climbed out of the bed and had hugged her tightly as she continued to rock on the stone floor in the moonlight. "Whatever shall I do? ... Whatever shall I do? They will kill him. I cannot stop it. I cannot stop the killing... Tell me what you want me to do?" Finally her babblings had ceased, and he had climbed into her lap had let her rock him. At long last, they both had slept. They had still been on the floor when the slaves had come in with the morning meal.

Methos started suddenly as he heard slams and yells from the outer chambers. He glanced up at Aja as she whirled in motioning to the slaves. "Flee for your lives, you fools! Death is coming! Death is on his way!" The servants fled.

She paced back and forth between the door and the window. "Fools, they do not believe me. But I can see it. Methos... come to the window. You will see it, too." Methos came and saw for himself that there were indeed plumes of black smoke on the horizon. "I have to leave this place," she murmured as she rested her hands on his small shoulders. "I cannot leave you here. They will kill you. And somehow... somehow you must survive." She turned him to face her. "Above all else... you must survive!"

Methos handed her the tablet. "I have finished for today, Aja."

She took the wax from him and nervously tapped the stylus on it. She nodded as she checked his writing. "Yes... yes... yes... now Scholar what do the last mean?"

Methos took a deep breath; he had puzzled over what to say this time. "Tomorrow will make us one?"

She laughed, "No... not quite. ..." She erased the symbols and tossed the wax and stylus onto the bed instead of handing them back to him. Then she opened the chest and began to rummage through it. She pulled out some roughly woven cloth and held it up, shaking it. It was some sort of clothing. She glanced over at him and nodded. "This will work. Remove your linen and put this on."

Methos did so. He had learned that to stop and ask questions when she gave him directions was useless. Aja wanted him to ask questions, but only when it suited her. And only questions to which he could not puzzle out an answer. If he asked one to which she thought he should already know the answer, she would simply smile and shake her head mysteriously. This time, he understood they were leaving... and not as themselves. The rough clothing would hide who they were from those she feared.

She pulled out some additional garments, dropped her own linen and began to dress. Her garments were dusty colored, faded, old. Next she pulled out rough, well-worn sandals for her feet. After putting them on, she glanced at him and then down at his bare feet. She grasped a knife from the fruit platter and cut off some of the length of the shapeless garment he had on. Part of it she wrapped about his waist. Then she motioned him to sit down. She tore the remainder of the cloth into strips and began to wrap his feet. "Not as good as sandals... but it will have to do for now. You will understand when we get into the desert." The last of the cloth she wound about his head.

Next she placed a bag over one of her own shoulders and began to fill it with fruit, wrapped cheese and honey cake from a nearby platter. She took the crystal, unwrapped it, gazed into it, then wrapped it back up and also placed it into the bag. She pulled out a water bag, filled it and placed it across the other shoulder. Then she paused to look around. Noting her jeweled collar and rings dropped on the floor, she gathered up the rings and dropped them into the bag. She picked up the collar, seemed to consider it a moment, then used the knife to pry the jewels out of it. These she placed in the bag. The collar she tossed on the bed.

All the while she kept glancing at the increasing confusion outside the window, gauging how much time they had before the invaders would be upon them. Finally she seemed satisfied as to her preparations.

She held Methos by the shoulders and said sternly, "Listen to me Scholar, from this moment you must do as I say. Exactly as I say. You will walk where I tell you to walk. You will sleep when I tell you to sleep. You will crouch in the mud if I tell you to do so. If you do not... they will kill you. Look, listen, learn... I will protect you. I will teach you. But you must do exactly as I say. No questions asked. Do you understand me?"

Methos nodded.

She glanced once more out the window. "Civilizations rise and civilizations fall. Change is inevitable. It is the one constant of the world. I should have left this place long ago. My voices have been warning me... screaming ever more loudly, but I did not wish to leave... not yet. At first I thought only to find a safe place for you to grow up. Then I came to care for you. Now I dare not leave you behind."

She smiled at him. "You are far too important to me to ever lose you. Now... where is that staff."

Methos pointed to the corner. He had found it once and had asked her what it was for. She had smiled that mysterious smile of hers and said nothing.

They rushed hurriedly through the temple complex and out into the gathering gloom of evening. Around them chaos reigned as people ran about screaming in fear at the onslaught of the invading army. Aja paused and knelt down to take up a handful of dirt. She began to smear first Methos and then herself with it. Satisfied with the results she grasped his hand and led him out into the desert, carefully keeping to the shadows. To all appearances, they were just two of the poor fleeing in the night. They were no one anyone took notice of. They were no one of any importance.

They walked throughout the night. The sounds of death and slaughter gradually faded and by morning there was only sand and the great bowl of the sky above. Methos began to stumble from fatigue. Aja swept him into her arms and kept moving... further and further away from the carnage.

As the sun climbed higher in the sky and the heat began to rise, she stopped in the shade of a rock outcropping. She set Methos in the small shade offered by the rocks and then seated herself. She dug a honey cake from the bag, broke off a small piece for herself and handed the rest to him.

"Questions? I will answer three, if you have three to ask."

Methos nibbled at the honey cake and considered all that had happened. Finally he asked his first question, "Why am I important?"

"All children are important. They are the future of the world. But you are important to me. All those whom I ever loved either died or were lost to me long ago. Did I ever tell you that you have my father's eyes?"

Methos nodded, it was the first thing she had ever said to him.

"I loved my father. I did the unthinkable... I killed him... because he asked it of me, because he begged it of me... I killed him. With his own sword, I cut off his head. His spirit still haunts my every thought. He could no longer live with his crimes, and so I live with the memory of both my crime and his... all of his.

"My father was a great seeker of hidden truths. He once told me he had traveled to all the corners of the earth. He had sailed across the great oceans of the world and walked in lands whose day was dark as night. You are much as I remember him before the world dissolved in chaos around us. I did not plan to love you... I should never have interfered... your path was clear, death hung about you that day I found you in the street, but I stepped aside that day and chose to change the game forever and teach you some of what I once learned at my mother's knee.

"Now I have no choice. I will not let you die. Not yet... not yet. The knowledge I teach you must never be lost. You must become capable of your own survival, so that this knowledge survives." Aja sighed deeply, as though the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. " I fear my time to die as my father once did is all too near. I am weary beyond measure... and the voices of those I once loved and those whom I have lost call ever more loudly to me from their graves. I will join them soon, and I will, at long last, rest."

Methos considered this and all else that had happened. He swallowed the water Aja gave him, grateful for its cool, refreshment. He glanced up at the sun and absently rubbed the top of his head.

"I know, little scholar, I know... it is hot. Let us save the next two questions for later. Lie down, my little scholar, it is time to sleep." She swept her cloak over the two of them and lay beside him, cradling him protectively in her arms. In the heat of the desert midday... they slept.

When Methos awakened, the afternoon shadows had lengthened and the heat of midday had lessened somewhat. Aja sat near him, drawing absently in the sand. When she heard him stir, she offered once more the water, and then a piece of cheese. Methos looked at what she had written. Life and death. She had written one above the other.

"Now go around and look at them from the other direction." she coaxed gently. When he did so, she asked, "Do you see it?" And he did see it. It was the same... one was a mirror image of the other. He looked up at her.

"What does that mean?"

"They are part and parcel of one another. Where one ends, the other begins. Now, Scholar, write Life below death."

He did so and looked at her without understanding. Then he went around to see how they looked from the opposite direction. Again, they were mirror images... but in a different way. Methos shook his head... he was more confused than ever. He looked once more at Aja and shrugged.

"Last question? ... I see it in your eye..."

"What does it mean, to write them this way?"

Aja laughed heartily, "Oh, my little scholar... you will see one day... you will see!" Then she quickly wrote the mysterious final pair. "And... today's guess?"

Methos puzzled over them a moment. As with the symbols of life and death, he tried to see if they were somehow related, if they, too, were mirror images. They were not. But there was some relationship between them he did not yet grasp. Something that continued to elude him. Finally he gazed up at Aja. "Once all life was one?"

Aja nodded thoughtfully, "Close, my little scholar, close..." She reached over and erased the symbols as she smiled mysteriously.

Soon after, they began their nightly journey further into the great desert.