Holy Saturday: a story

Will your loving-kindness be declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in the land of destruction? (Psalm 88:12)

Morning Star waited.

She had waited a long time, here in this grey place. It was, clearly, the spirit world that the old Songs had described. But it was nothing but shadows.

A long time ago, not long after she had come here, she decided to walk and see if she could find another person. Time was slippery here. There were no days and nights, no way of telling how long she walked; years, it seemed. Perhaps many years. But nothing changed; always, the shadows, and the bare featureless grey ground. No animals, no birds. No trees, no plants of any kind, not even a blade of grass. No people, either her own or the others, the Big People.

Finally, she gave up. Sometimes she would walk for a few hours, just to feel like she was doing something, but she knew it was without meaning. Always the same.


Morning Star had borne four children, and this one had felt wrong as soon as the pains came. It would not come out, and she knew that it would be her death. She was small even by the standards of her People, less than three feet tall. The women who were small often had troubles in childbirth, and Morning Star had known that one day, it would likely claim her as it had so many others. Watches-with Patience, the clan's Healer, stayed with her, trying all that she knew to ease the child into the world. It would not come.

It was not just that she was dying; her people were dying too, and they could not afford to lose her. It would leave only three that could bear children, plus the handful of girls, if they lived long enough. Worse, she was the Singer. Light-on-Water had learned some of the Songs, but she was only eleven summers old, and had much to learn. It would have to do, except it wouldn't; there was too much of the clan's store of knowledge in Songs that no one but Morning Star knew, too many things that the clan needed to survive as the seasons changed.

But it mattered little, perhaps; the old knowledge was no longer working. Nothing had been right since the Big People came. They took the best hunting grounds, the best places where food grew, and Morning Star's people were forced to go back into the high mountains. Even there, the hunters of the Big People came, taking most of the game animals. The Songs told of uncounted generations before, when life had been easier. The People had prospered, because they were small and quick and, most of all, intelligent. But the Big People were intelligent, too. They sang and spoke, in their strange ugly way; they used tools, just like Morning Star's people. And they were too strong. Some of the old Songs told of battles, far back in time, when her people's warriors fell by the score trying to fight the Big People. There were no longer battles, and the Big People did not seem to bear them any ill will when their paths crossed. But they ate all of the food. Morning Star had hardly known anything except hunger. If it had not been for the Songs that told of times when there was plenty for all, she would have thought there was nothing else but the gnawing ache of an empty belly, never enough to fill it.

With such thoughts, the hours passed. All day, all that night, Morning Star labored, consumed with pain. By the end, all of the women of the clan were with her, the little girls too, watching solemnly as she screamed, as she grew weaker. Even Runs Swiftly was there, against the taboos, his tears falling on her face as he leaned over her and kissed her brow, with halting voice singing the Death Song that he had heard her sing too many times for others.

She remembered no more, until she found herself in this place, this spirit world, naked and alone.

And then. . . He came. He was dead, as dead as she was; his body was covered with bleeding sores, and he had been stabbed in the side. His hands and feet were mangled. At first, she was afraid, because he was twice her height, with the short arms, ugly chin, and odd forehead of the Big People. But he said “Fear not,” and somehow, that was enough.

He sat down crosslegged on the featureless ground, perhaps so he wouldn't tower over her. She sat down, facing him. Those eyes . . . she had never seen eyes like that. It was as if all the wisdom of her people, of all people, were in them, along with all the sufferings and joys – and something more, like when Runs Swiftly used to look at her, or a mother would look at her child. He seemed content to be there with her.

“I am Morning Star,” she said.
He smiled; “Some call me by that name, too.”
“Why are you here?”
“I have come for you.”

Morning Star puzzled over that. What did he mean? Why would he come for her? And what good would that do? Would the two of them simply stay there in the shadows?

Finally, she said “I have been here a long time.”
“I know.”

That was not helpful. An odd thought came to her mind; she said “May I sing for you?”
“Yes.” He smiled again. “I would like that very much.”
“It is a long Song, about my People. I think that I was one of the last of them.”
He nodded.
“I do not want them to be forgotten.”

She centered herself, as one had to do for the great Songs. Quietly, she began to sing, her soprano high and clear . . . . He listened intently, his eyes full of understanding, as if the Song were the most important thing in the world to him. She sang of children running through spring meadows, of bright days and laughter, of women tending babies working together around the cookfire, of men and their patient search for quarry, of desperate battles against the Dragons and Elephants that sometimes attacked the villages. She sang of love between men and women, of sacrifice and courage, and much more. Morning Star had sung all of her life, but she had never had a listener like this.

She finished, the last note trailing into silence. He bowed his head. After a long time, he looked at her.

“Come with me,” he said.
“Where?”
“My Father's house. I will take you there.”
That was impossible. She knew, as firmly as she knew anything, that there was no place to go.
“How?”
“Come with me. That is all you have to do.”

A part of her knew it was foolish. What could this stranger do? But part of her felt a sudden sharp longing for sunlight and friends and children. Part of her believed that this man of the Big People, this “Morning Star,” could indeed take her to his father's house, wherever that might be. It would be a strange adventure, stranger than any recorded in the Songs.

“I will come,” she said. “I do not know where you are going, but I will come.”
And then . . .

Our Lord looked into His Side and rejoiced.
By this sweet look He had me gaze within this Wound.
He showed me a fair and delectable place,
large enough for all mankind that shall be saved
to rest in peace and in love.

AFTERWORD
The last bit is from Dame Julian of Norwich, and includes the text of an anthem I had the privilege of singing at an RSCM Course in 2007, and directing/playing in our own parish choir. In combination with the solemnity of Holy Saturday, it led to this story. I posted it in LiveJournal on Holy Saturday, 2008, and have here modified it slightly.

“He descended into hell,” states the Creed. “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison,” states St. Peter in his First Epistle (3:18-19).

It seems to me that the manner in which he “preached unto the spirits in prison” might not be that different from the manner in which the Good News comes to us, and the saving power of it must be by the same Way that is open to us: the path of Faith. Doubtless, it was/is (for “time is slippery there”) as foolhardy to them as it seems to the wise of this age.

I believe that, in whatever way that it took, the Good Shepherd went to the furthest corner of hell in search of His sheep, and gave every last one of them the invitation that he has given to us: “Follow me.” Many would surely find reasons, even in hell, to refuse. But not all.

----
“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” (St. John 10:16)

Morning Star is of the race whose fossils were discovered a few years ago on an island of the Indonesian archipelago: Homo floresiensis.

Morning Star's song told of their battles with Dragons and Elephants; they did indeed have to deal with Komodo Dragons and Stegodons (related to Elephants and Mammoths), and both would have been formidable to people hardly a meter tall and 25 kg in weight, armed with stone-tipped spears. There are Stegodon bones showing cut marks found among the H. floresiensis fossils. There is evidence that they used fire for cooking, and their tools are comparable with the Upper Paleolithic artifacts of H. Sapiens. It appears that H. floresiensis lived from about 94,000 years ago until about 13,000 years ago, and shared their island with H. sapiens toward the end of that time. If they had tools and fire, they surely had Music.

I believe that our Lord died for them, and other prehistoric members of the genus Homo, just as he did for us. And he did not abandon them to the land of the dead. I look forward to meeting these little People someday, and joining them in adventures "stranger than any recorded in our Songs."