TCE

When Jashen translated for Mark the passage of the refugees trodding west from Rumbek he asked Leliel, with some annoyance and unbelief, “Were you really this running girl?”

Begging pardon from Mark, she told Jashen to fetch his bow in one hand, took him by his other hand, and led him through the woods to a large flat clearing. The place served as a kind of parade ground in Nyduly. There Leliel stood twenty paces from Jashen.

“Fire an arrow at me,” she said, and when Jashen howled in dismay that she was wasting his time she said, “I am serious. Do your very best to try to kill me.”

He released the dart. Leliel’s muscles exploded into motion. She ran backwards across the grass of the clearing faster than the arrow could follow. Then she turned and disappeared into the thick wall of trees at the far side of the open space.

In short order Leliel came to The Teacher by woodland paths well known to her. He was alone. When he saw Leliel he made a gesture of welcome and bade her to sit.

Sha said, “Teacher, you have said you have put Jashen in close proximity to me that nature will take its course, and this nature has done, and now he is Made among the B'nei Elohim. But I have already recited the White Scroll up to the war of the dragon and Jashen now seems to be cooler toward me."

Yeshua asked Leliel, “But what are your own feelings? Do you find young Jashen to be pleasing to your eye ?

“He is a vision to drink in,” sha replied. “I could imagine spending more than a lifetime with him. Yet I do not think he feels the same way about me.”

Yeshua replied, “Jashen feels as though he is swimming in water over his head. He’s felt that way ever since he jumped in after you at Green Dome. I’ve given him a new name to acknowledge his manhood, but he still lacks the full confidence of a man. Jashen was whisked from the land he knows to this place, which is surpassingly strange to him, just as I imagine Earth would seem strange to you, and worse, now he is translating your stories about things he has not yet done, and he is wondering if he has any agency at all."

Leliel sighed "Teacher, to be honest, my own feelings are mostly that I miss my mother."

In her tipi Yuha had been sobbing quietly for days. Wanica tried his best to comfort her, but there was really nothing he could do. She said, "Nearly a full moon has passed since we have seen our son. Has the Vision Quest ever taken this long?"

Wanica replied, "I will not lie to my own wife. Ten nights the test was for me, and no more."Hearing this, Yuha let the full force of her grief wash over her, and all Wanica could do was hope she didn't blame him personally for going through with the ritual.

Yet there had been no choice, really. The Kuwapi were already the outcast dregs of the Oglala Sioux. If Wanica had denied the boy his test of manhood, he would be outcast even from the Kuwapi, forever a boy. And he would have never forgiven his father.

When she recovered a bit she said, "Shy Bear's last memory of us was that even his mother had a stony heart."Wanica said, "A heart of stone is part of the ceremony. There must be a...cutting off. There is no way around it. This as always been the way of our People."

He remembered how Shy Bear always called the leader of the People "Bad Heart Bull" and how even he had to agree. Tatanka piled upon Wanica daily indignities, until even his great inborn patience had been tested nearly to the breaking point. This day was no exception.

Chief Tatanka barged into the tipi unannounced and pointed a finger at Wanica. "You have brought no food into this camp for a moon, Hole in Cheek!""It is the fire," Wanica said. "It still burns the grasslands to the south. The animals are on the other side of it."

"Then take your hunters and go around the fire or you will be Hole in Neck.""It will take two days' ride to find the animals," Wanica replied. "Then a day to kill and field-dress them, then two days' ride to bring the carcass back. The meat will go bad."

"The nights are cold now. The meat will keep. I grow tired of eating jerky. Go!"Before the Chief left the tipi he let his eyes wander over Yuha's legs. She saw his gaze and tucked her legs under a bison-hair blanket. When Tatanka departed, Wanica retrieved the Golden Gift from the place he had hidden it. He had shown no one the weapon he received from Wakan Tanka, not even his wife Yuha. He knew that while he was hunting, nothing might restrain Tatanka from pillaging his tipi.

Leliel felt no great urgency to rush her recital. Yeshua had told her when she was finished she would be sent to Earth and leave all that she had known far behind.

For his part Jashen, too, did not feel rushed, though he longed to return home. He believed the Teacher spoke truly, and would return him to his parents after only a single moon passed for them, no matter how long he tarried here in this place he called Kemen.

So it fell to Mark to drive them along in their task of translating the scroll, as he wished to be reunited with his wife, and he was filled with rue for every day that she thought him to be missing or dead. And at times the labor grew tedious. But the blank pages of the Green Book were steadily filled with words from Leliel's scroll even as Leliel steadily improved her ability to speak and understand English.

So there came a day in Kemen when Leliel opened her oven-fired clay pot and returned to it her cylinder of parchment that seemed to be bleached white. And Mark placed his fat codex into a leather satchel. They were all quite finished with the task set out for them, and this they told the Teacher.

And when the Teacher spoke of the pilgrimage to come Mark said, "Lord, my flock has already been uprooted once before and most of us are worse than destitute. We've gone into debt to pay for homes we built on land we don't even own. None of us have the means to leave once again."

Yeshua said, "Mark, do you think that I, intending to build this tower, have not first counted the cost?"

"Far be it from my thoughts, Lord!"

Mark watched Jashen fill the satchel with much money. Greenbacks lined the interior and formed a cushion for the green book.

The Teacher said, "Be a good steward of this currency, Mark, for there are some among the Brethren who would only feign to follow you for the love of this money. Others will turn their back on you when you read from the Green Book. You already know how it argues against the Bible on many points, and few of your flock will care to accept it, as the Brethren take the New Testament to be the sole rule of their faith, or at least they say they do. But neither I nor Bat-El never asked anyone to write the works that are collected in Bible in the first place, so there let matters unfold as they will."

Wanica and his hunters prepared their horses for the journey, and packed their share of the People's dwindling supply of dried meat. Wanica mounted his own horse, Kaleetan, and for the first time he pondered that his horse had a right name but his own son did not. The fires were burning far away, even from the vantage of the Island in the Sky, but Wanica led the hunting party away south toward that small mountain to better survey the devastation and to see if the cairn they built to Wakan Tanka was in need of repair.

The party crossed over an abrupt line to the grasslands that were burned and ascended the Island in the Sky, which was entirely seared black. When they reached the summit Wanica saw that his son Shy Bear was restoring the stone he had once removed to take shelter. He was still dressed in the ceremonial dress that Yuha had made for him, but it was altered in a curious way to fit better, and had been covered in a riot of colored beads that was clearly no artifice of the Kuwapi, though it echoed the craftsmanship of the People.

Leliel stood next to him. Wanica and the hunters found her to be striking. Although she appeared to be a young woman of the People she was a full head taller than the tallest of any of them. Leliel, too, was attired in something much like Jashen's raiment, but more simple.

Before Jashen sealed the cairn, Wanica saw that the white dome was still contained within. A tame bison was also trodding slowly on the summit of the Island in the Sky amid the blackened ground, wondering perhaps if there was any green thing lying around to eat.

Wanica searched his son's face and saw that he seemed a little taller himself, and a little older. He was so overjoyed to see him that he forgot he took away his name and turned him out into the night. "Shy Bear!" he exclaimed, and ran toward the boy to embrace him.

But Jashen was having none of that. His body language halted his father at a single pace. He extended his hand and gripped his father by the lower arm near his elbow.

"You forget yourself, Father. No more am I to be called Shy Bear. My name of manhood is Jashen. I have brought my wife Princess Leliel, who is the daughter of Wakan Tanka and Queen Lilith. Her father has commanded us to return to the People and live among them for a season, but there will be much coming and going between here and his lodge in the sky."

In the camp of the People word spread that the hunting party was arriving days before they were expected, and it was feared they would bring news that it was impossible to reach the roaming herds by reason of the fire. Yuha was among the women who went to greet them.

What she saw brought her joy beyond measure, such that she, too, forgot herself and cried out the boyhood name of her son, "Shy Bear!" which she repeated many times as both mother and son embraced. "Jashen, mother," he told her gently. "I am to be called Jashen."

Yuha's hands roamed over her son as she tried to assure herself he was not a spirit. When they stopped at the horns on his head he gently took his mother's hands in his own and stood apart, so that she could see what had been added to her beadwork.

Her eyes then turned to Leliel, who stood over even the tallest men in the camp, wearing something like a ceremonial dress of har own but skillfully fitted for har curves, and she, too, had horns. "Mother," said Jashen, "this is my wife, Leliel, who is a princess among her people."

"I greet Yuha, mother of my husband," Leliel said. "In the lodge of my father not a day passed that Jashen did not speak of both you and Wanica with a love that could not be hidden. And it was not long before his love for me could not be hidden, much though he tried!"

The return of Wanica with his hunters was news big enough, the return of the boy Shy Bear as the man Jashen after a full moon was bigger news, and that he brought a giantess of a wife was the biggest news of all, but Chief Tatanka cared little for all those things. That evening, when the People were sharing their communal meal once more, the Chief wondered why his women did not bring the horns of the bison to add to his war regalia as before. He said no words of gratitude to Wanica for bringing the kill in one day rather than five.

Instead the missing horns occupied his mind and pushed out all else. He waxed more and more angry, until he flat out accused Wanica of hiding the bison's head. Wanica said nothing in reply, but he did not take his eyes away from the Chief after this accusation was made. Tananka, already wroth, grew infuriated at the defiance. The leader of the People took out his knife once more. It was an genuine steel blade he claimed he took as war booty from a white trapper, but he really took it from a corpse he had stumbled upon by mere chance.

Chief Tanaka brandished the only steel blade among the People. "This will loosen your tongue, Hole In Heart!" he cried, and he moved toward Wanica, fully expecting the hunter to run as he had done so many times before. But Wanica knew he had the favor of Wakan Tanka. So Wanica stood his ground fearlessly, which unnerved the Chief. Everyone saw him hesitate. The Chief lost precious "face' with each passing heartbeat, and he knew it.

Wanica calmly reached into a hidden pocket in his leather garments and withdrew the Golden Gift.

Tatanka's rage boiled over. He closed the gap between himself and Wanica but he never reached striking distance. On the hunt Wanica only took the animal's head, offering it to the Sky Father rather than allowing it to be dishonored by Tatanka. But here before the eyes of all the Kuwapi he took away the Chief, the whole Chief, and nothing but the Chief, all the way down to his moccasins, leaving the very ground he stood upon untouched.

The group of men who had been with Wanica on the recent hunt had seen the Golden Gift in action, but the rest of the People had never seen such an obvious and deadly display of real magic. Even his own squaw Yuha was afraid. Even so, she came to stand at Wanica's side. To Wanica's left stood his son Jashen, arrayed in the fine ceremonial dress that had been painstakingly embellished by artisans in Nyduly Wood over the course of a year. And towering over them all at nearly seven feet in height was his wife, the Ophan Leliel.

"I sent the Chief to answer to the Great Spirit," Wanica said in a loud voice. "I will lead the People now." Wanica crossed his arms regally, with the Golden Gift cradled in one of his hands. One by one the hunters, warriors, and braves of the Kuwapi sank to their knees before Wanica, with hands open to show they carry no blade. Their wives, the widows, and unmarried girls of the People hit their knees before Wanica and before his standing family as well.

Wanica then gave his first command as the new Chief. "In the morning we will decamp and march south, to dwell at the Island in the Sky, near the place where the Great Spirit came and made himself known to us and where my boy Shy Bear came back to us as the man Jashen."

So it came to be that the Kuwapi, first among all of the original inhabitants of the high plains and the only ones to do so of their own free will, ceased to be a wandering people and awaited the coming of the followers of Mark Lange.

Early in Wanica's chiefdom the Northern Raiders paid their last visit to the People. When Wanica confronted them he used a gradually tightening squeeze so the black spear of wind emerged from the Golden Gift at a visible rate. At full extension the beam ballooned out like an umbrella. The enemy saw that it was Chief Wanica's magic which absorbed the arrows fired at him and sliced their leader in half, he and the horse he rode in on.

Wanica knew the Northern Raiders operated like pack animals with no stomach for sticking around once they lost their own Chief. And sure enough they fled into the grasslands north, never to return to the river ford at the foot of the Island in the Sky claimed by the People.

A bison gets thirsty eating grass all day out on the Great Plains and Squaw River was a reliable source of water. A herd came near to the source at the Island in the Sky where the stream was narrow. When the herd was taking drink Wanica struck with the Golden Gift, taking just one of them according to the needs of the Kuwapi People. It was done in such a stealthy way the rest of the herd barely noticed. In this way the Kuwapi were able to sustain themselves without ranging far afield to hunt.

Later the People saw the first white settlers use the ford at the river. The whites used their fire sticks to drop some of the animals merely to clear the way and they did not even take the animals for food. Fair enough, Wanica thought, there is plenty for all. But by the second year the herds had grown noticeably thinner, and many of the People remembered the fire sticks.

The year after that no large game animals were seen at all. The People had to scratch a living from small game, or from the scrawny solitary black-tail deer they sometimes chanced upon. A few of of the hunters murmured openly, recalling with fondness the time of Chief Bad Heart Bull, perhaps forgetting that even during that Golden Age it was still Wanica who led the hunts.

The army of the Whites set up an outpost six land miles (and twelve river miles) eastward of the Island in the Sky. They called it Fort Price. Captain John Smalley commanded a company of mounted rifles detached north from the 6th Calvalry Regiment, and despite his bitter hatred for the dead-end post he had been assigned, snack in the middle of the biggest zone of nothing in the American West, Smalley maintained good relations with Chief Wanica and the Kuwapi. For one reason, they all somehow spoke passable English, and the son of the Chief actually spoke it better than most Whites. He considered the People to be relatively peaceful.

One day eight whiteskins came mounted on horses, cracking whips, two on Point, two on Flank, and two on Drag, with a cook with his own wagon in the rear and a man riding way out front picking the best path for five hundred animals bulkier than any game animal save the bison. The whites drove their herd to a large island in Squaw River where the best grass grew. They did this without the basic courtesy of offering Chief Wanica one or two head as toll.

Miffed, the Chief dispatched hunters to take payment in kind with a few well-placed arrows. The eight white men fired back. Two Kuwapi hunters were killed, which was more than Wanica could afford to pay for meat. The Kuwapi withdrew halfway up the eastern flank of Green Dome and watched as the herd was driven to the north bank.

John Morrison, the man on Point who owned the cattle, told his boys to stand fast and defend the herd while he rode hell-for-leather downstream to Fort Price and told Captain Smalley he wanted to "donate' twenty head but there was the slight matter of an Indian problem. Chief Wanica knew what was coming, and made his plans accordingly. Then he rode back down to the island with a boy named Tashunka sitting behind him, They started to field-dress one of the fallen cows.

The bugle sounded and Fort Price vomited seventy mounted men plus John Morrison. Wanica and Tashunka were slicing the guts out of a cow, and the rest of his hunters, maybe twenty men, were four hundred feet above it all. When the cavalry showed up the Kuwapi rode down the hill and up the river, commanded by Jashen, with his wife Leliel leading the way on foot.

Smalley divided his forces and sent almost sixty of his men after the hunters. This detachment was led by Lt. Lambert Welles. But Smalley, Morrison, and twelve other soldiers begin circling Wanica and the boy.

Along the river a chase ensued. Three miles from Fort Price is a low ridge running north to south, and the Squaw River, which is really a large creek, cut straight through it in a short twisting little canyon with steep walls and no path except for the river itself. Here Welles got his T crossed. Sixty soldiers were riding in single file and ten Kuwapi waited at the mouth of the canyon firing arrows as they came up one-by-one. So Welles ordered a countermarch, which was an even worse tactic. The other ten Kuwapi braves rolled boulders down on them and broke the legs of their horses. After that it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

The Kuwapi hunters left one soldier alive, tied to a tree, with one hand free to scoop up river water to drink, and the knot was too far away to unravel. There were five soldiers on  the sick list who didn't make  the raid  but were  supposed to  hold the fort. They had delivered up the  ten Kuwapi women they  held as slaves and Jashen was entreated.

Back at the  river ford  Smalley and  Morrison moved  closer to Chief Wanica while four soldiers  orbited the scene at a stately trot. "God damn it Chief," Smalley said, "you  know better than to start acting like the Northern Raiders."

"What are you going to do to him?" Morrison asked.

"Take him in for cattle rustling.  That'll have to do.  The boy can go free.  The rest of these red fellows  too. They were just following orders  and they  got families to  feed. Now  they can pick themselves a new chief."

Wanica, from the English  taught to  him by  Jashen, understood perfectly what Smalley wanted to do to him, and  he decided not to go peacefully. He had the Golden Gift in his hand and pointed it right at the captain. The black shaft leaped out  with its hideous sound and sliced off the head of  Smalley's horse. Then Smalley himself was rendered in  two. That black line remained there, drinking in  light  and air,  while  five more  orbiting horses and men ran right into it, including Paul Morrison.

After that Wanica used the Golden Gift to get rid of the bodies of the men and  the horses  he had slain. He knew the killing range of the  Golden Gift  was not  much longer  than a  spear. Against a troop  of whites  armed with  firesticks he  would be helples. Little did he know  his son Jashen had  already solved the problem for him.

The pilgrims of Five Corners Free Congregation arrived at the lower slopes of Green Dome at dusk, their journey at an end. There they saw four fallen warriors of the People, Left Hand, Half Yellow Face, Kill Eagle, and Hairy Moccasin lying on a bier of branches taken from woody shrubs. And it was on this solemn occasion when the Kuwapi People and the settlers of Mark Lange's group were first gathered all together.

In full view of everyone Chief Wanica, with words of reverence for Wakan Tanka, struck off the Golden Gift and made the bodies of his dead men disappear. The Whites were struck speechless. Coming as they did from a religious background, such a display could be nothing other than the power of God made manifest.

"This is a sign!" Mark exclaimed. He recognized the Golden Gift from the translation of the White Scroll he had made with the help of Leliel and Jashen. It was the same weapon wielded by Prince Melchizedek when he first encountered father Abraham. Not merely the same kind, but literally the same artifact.

"God has brought us all together," Lange declared, "White man and Red man alike, in this land of His choosing, flowing with milk and honey." At Lange's words all the people looked around in the fading light and took in the barren, mostly treeless grasslands. Lange cleared his throat. "Here at Green Dome we all shall remain, and prosper with God's blessings!"

Lange couldn't just take the weapon outright, as it was holy, a divine gift made by Bat-El himself, so it could never be defiled by base theft. Obviously the People led by Wanica and the remnant of the Five Corners Free Congregation would have to be permanent and equal (but separate) partners. The Church's doctrine of mandatory cousin-marriage would salve the settlers' horror at any race-mixing.

After the funeral there followed a good old-fashioned mass conversion of the entire Kuwapi people, followed by their assembly-line baptism in the cold waters of the Squaw River. They were each plunged into the stream three times using total immersion, since Lange was at heart still a Dunker. So a new congregation was born, the Church of Green Dome, with a White Wing and a Red Wing, "Two lungs by which the united people of the Creator draw new breath," Lange declared.

That night Wanica's people returned to their encampment at the 4,650 foot level of Green Dome, on a wide bench on the eastern side of the hill. In the morning, aided by the Whites, they began to turn it into a permanent village.

Gary Bergin and his wife Marge chose the valley of Squaw River due south of Green Dome and begin pulling up dead stumps of burnt trees to establish a farm, aided by their children Dale, Owen, Linda, Grace. Baby Megan was still far too young.

Alfred Porter, his wife Caroline, and their three children George, Ida, and Rachel established their farm a little to the north of the river ford. Water was plentiful there, diverted by a ditch from higher up the slope, and they grew a wide variety of green stuff as though they had an extended backyard garden.

Thomas Henry, his wife Melanie, and their four younger children Kenneth, Jane, Faith, and Susan choose a spot for their homestead at elevation 4,400 feet, a little below the village of the People. At first they grew oxen, taken from the animals that accompanied them on the pilgrimage, but they also planted rows of apple and pear trees. Their eldest son Lee Henry, together with his new bride Tamara, raised a few sheep, purchased from another drive of livestock that used the ford soon after the Stiffnecks arrived. The following summer a cattle drive also used the ford and the Henrys bought dairy cows. Their animals grazed in the shade of their family's fruit trees.

David and Ann Krause, with their crowd of children Edwin, Linda, Gail, Robert, Carl, Helen, and Tom settled to the south of the river ford took to raising horses, having received back most of the horses they loaned to make the pilgrimage.

The 6th Cavalry Regiment came up from Texas looking for the bloodthirsty warriors who wiped out a whole company of their men and found only a docile tribe of newly-Christianized converts helping white settlers grow some crops. When pressed, the farmers said they knew there was an empty fort nearby, but did not know how it came to be abandoned, and there was no evidence to give lie to their testimony. The bodies of the men and horses which fell along the river were now totally gone. So the Army broke up the fort and left, marking the whole thing down as one of the spookier mysteries of the high plains.

The white settlers who did not take up the plow instead platted out the town of Headwater on both sides of the river crossing. In the beginning these were Harry and Hester Hilling with their four children, Brandon, Oscar, Roy, and Nancy, who built and ran a general store. Ivar and Anna Zinter operated a blacksmith shop. Like the Zinters, Mark Lange and his wife Joanna were childless, but not for much longer. In a few years a boy named Clark was born to the Langes, closely followed by David, who was born to the Zinters.

Mark built a tabernacle on the summit of Green Dome, which was just under 5,000 above sea level, but only about 900 feet above the plains. From there one could see nearly forty miles out over the grasslands, in every direction. The tabernacle was built over the cairn of the Artifact, commemorating the very place where Wanica and Jashen came face-to-face with God.

The Green Dome Tabernacle was the gathering place for all the people, Red and White, every Sunday. With each homily Prophet Lang and Apostle Wanica established the wall of Church doctrine steadily, like laying bricks. One of the doctrines, which was really a concession to the Kuwapi people, was that everyone, both male and female, must wear their hair long and tied into a pony tail. After a time, the members of the Green Dome Church were called Ponies by outsiders, and later even the Stiffnecks called themselves that. The Kuwapi were also introduced to the Western concept of surnames. Jashen remembered his original given name of Shy Bear and chose the last name of Shybear.

In 1869 the rumor of gold was heard tell along the Squaw River and Headwater swelled with the influx of prospectors hungry for the shiny yellow stuff. Some got rich, but most of the Sixty-Niners struck out. Some of these stayed in Headwater as converts to the Church. After the rail line connected Headwater to the new Union Pacific line running across the country it was easy for cousins of the new converts to make their way west to new lives as wives of the former prospectors and even the children of the original settlers. The tabernacle on Green Dome was expanded into a much larger wooden and whitewashed edifice called the Green Dome Temple. When it was complete Prophet Mark Lange was fifty-three years of age. Secondary tabernacles were established throughout the United States but all Green Dome funerals still took place at the original site.

Chief Wanica died at the age of 84. He lay in state in the Temple sanctuary for fourteen days. Many Greendomites scattered across the country journeyed by train or even by the newfangled horseless carriages to pay their last respects. When the Prophet Lange committed the Chief's body directly into the hands of Bat-El it was a sight that few but the oldest members present had ever seen, for the Church grew far beyond the dreams of her founders. During the Last Rites Lange announced that Wanica’s son Jashen Shybear was the new Apostle. For most of the attendees it was a ceremony they would not otherwise witness until they were well into middle-age when their parents died, and of course everyone prayed they would never have to attend. But the Green Dome Church had grown so large that every day except Sundays the Temple was booked for farewell Rites.

But not everything was so grim. During the fair held in honor of the Prophet's sixty-fifth birthday a barnstormer came to town, offering rides in his biplane. Absolutely fearless, Mark Lange stepped up to be the first to fly, to the delight of everyone present. Few religious leaders have been so beloved. A newspaper reporter named Rupert Keller, however, considered Greendomism to be a dangerous cult, on the same order as Mormons, Satanists, or even the deeply-despised Roman Catholics. Keller said they were sun-worshipers who rejected the truth of the Bible and married their close kin. And truth be told, Keller was absolutely right.

Two years later the Great War broke out in Europe and the pacifist Church of Green Dome, with its German roots, sought to keep America out of the conflict. Mark Lange traveled to the German embassy in Washington DC to express his concerns over possible U-Boat attacks on passenger ships traveling in British waters. The Ambassador assured him only warships and freighters were fair game, but at the behest of Lange he posted a warning in fifty American newspapers. And Lange, for his part, expressed his belief in the assurances of the ambassador by booking passage on the British express liner Luisitania, which was due to depart New York for Liverpool in a week. He wanted to visit the Church of Green Dome mission field in Great Britain.

When the ship was in the frigid waters south of Ireland she took a torpedo from the German submarine U-20, which triggered a secondary explosion shortly afterwards. The liner listed sharply to her side, drowning her starboard lifeboats. Frantically, the lifeboats on her port side were laden with passengers and released but there were not enough for everyone and no chance of raising the floundering ones on the other side. Women and children were saved first, and then old men. Prophet Mark Lange was placed in the last lifeboat, but before it was lowered to the sea he spied his nemesis Rupert Keller standing on the deck of the doomed ship, contemplating death. Lange bounded out of his place and offered his seat to the unrelentingly hostile reporter. "Happy birthday, son," he said with a gentle smile.

Lange was not joyful, since all living things seek to avoid death by their very nature, but he was encouraged by his memory of Kemen and the promise of Lord Yeshua that he would see it once more. He spread his encouragement around to the rest of the doomed passengers on board. In this way he made their passing a little bit easier. There was enough time for six of the forty-eight lifeboats to get away before the ship took everyone aboard down to the frigid and murky depths of the ocean.

The sinking spurred the American public to enter the war.

Mark Lange’s very kind offer of a seat on the last remaining lifeboat on the doomed Luisitania was wasted on Rupert Keller. Returning to New York he wrote an account of the disaster which had the Prophet kicking little girls off a lifeboat to save himself and his gold, resulting in the sinking of the lifeboat, the death of Lange, and the death of everyone else with him. Indeed, Keller said the presence of the gold must have been the reason the ship was torpedoed by the Central Powers in the first place. Lange had not an ounce of gold, but no matter.

Keller’s widely published lies did their intended damage. Many former supporters soured on the religion, and the growth of the Green Dome Church slowed to a crawl. Shortly after that, by popular referendum, Nebraska joined a dozen others in banning marriages between first cousins and the first serious persecutions of Greendomites began. That is not to say the Church of Green Dome did not continue to conduct marriages between first cousins. They merely performed them on the Wyoming side of the Tri-State marker, nigh at hand, to make it legal.

Upon the death of Lange the Apostle Jashen became the second Prophet. And for years Jashen could find no suitable candidate among the whites to replace him as Apostle. Something had been lost with the passing of Mark Lange, a principle of unity that bound the two sides. The members of the White Wing began to tie up their ponytails into buns as a subtle act of separation from the native faithful. Ultimately they refused to worship with the Red Wing at all and met seperately in the Temple on Wednesday nights, led by one Klaus Hansen who bubbled up to lead them.

Erik Zinter was one of the merry but homesick doughboys who went into battle in 1918 whooping with all the enthusiasm of a football team pouring out onto the field just before kickoff. They came with six hundred aircraft plus one hundred forty-four tanks under Col. George Patton. Three thousand pieces of field artillery unleashed by the Allied side and countless bombs dropped from the air tore the battlefield into a pock-marked pigsty filled with mud.

The Germans withdrew but they fought a rear-guard action with a ferocious bite. Erik took two rounds from a Bergmann Maschinenpistole 18/1 that shattered the bone in his upper left arm and he developed gas gangrene in the field hospital lying just out of range of enemy fire. The amputation was performed in less-than-ideal circumstances. Afterward Erik rode a train to Paris with a hundred other casualties. The same train then carried soldiers fresh off the boat back to the Western Front, which had become a vast machine for mangling and killing men.

In Paris Erik met a Red Cross nurse whose name-tag bore a surname he recognized. While she changed his dressings Erik learned that Clara was of the Hursts who had stayed behind in Pennsylvania when the wagon train went west so she knew very little about his Church. But after talking about their respective family trees for a whole they discovered they shared the same great-grandmother. They were second cousins. That and her all American girl next door good looks interested Erik.

For her part Clara was pleased how Erik maintained a good attitude despite his misfortune. He didn't feel sorry for himself, even after losing an arm. There was pain but right on through it Erik maintained a wicked sense of humor. They could not talk for long but Clara passed along to him the address of her parents in Pennsylvania after he declared he wanted to stay in touch with her when they went home. Their pen pal relationship blossomed into something they thought was love.

In 1922 Erik drove halfway across the country in his Model T. It took a full month. He used the Yellowstone Auto Trail and aside from two big auto repairs his outlays averaged five dollars a day. Part of this money came from his veterans' "bonus' of sixty dollars but some employers went out of their way to give returning veterans seniority in hiring. Erik accepted a job in Headwater painting houses using his remaining arm, and spent three years laying some of this money aside for the wedding.

In Clara's hometown Erik sold his tin lizzie to make up for what he still needed to pay for the nuptials. Pennsylvania was the first anti-cousin marriage state, but only first cousins couldn't get hitched, not second ones. And they were so obviously in love both of Clara's parents gave their blessing.

But Erik's parents back in Headwater were a harder sell. After the train ride west he became the black sheep of the family for passing over a perfectly good (but horsefaced) local first cousin for a beautiful second cousin from back east. One aunt said, "Why, any heathen could do as much!"

Kimberly Zinter was born to Erik and Clara in 1925. Kim knew her two best friends Sofie Krause and Dory Twofeathers from as early she could remember, as far back as the economically frothy days of 1928 when they shared the same nursery while even their mothers found work. By 1932 the Depression really started to bite. Clara was fired first, but soon even Erik was jobless. Builders found applicants with two good arms suddenly willing to paint. Still, Erik retained the good spirits that had endeared him to Clara in that Paris hospital.

There were rich seams of bituminous coal inside Green Dome hill and under Headwater itself but the geology of the area was so folded and jumbled there will never be an economical way to reach it by drilling a straight shaft. The coal was exposed only in certain spots, and most of these were inaccessible.

During the Great Depression Erik Zinter created twisting passageways through the bulk of Green Dome, though at the time no one knew how he managed the feat, and he absolutely refused to speak of it. By day other men followed in his wake to reinforce the tunnels with timber and remove the coal. In the heart of the Great Depression, Headwater experienced a boom. Great heaps of black gold from the mines began to pile up on docks in Chicago and San Francisco.

Suddenly the unemployed, unemployable Erik Zinter had a brand new brick red Ford Model B, his first automobile since selling his Model T, and he also completely paid off his modest home. There was enough money left over to send Kim to the Green Dome parochial school to be with her friends.

In 1937 Sofie, and Dory were in that wonderful last year of their tweens when their bodies were gathering power for the big changes soon to come. They talked about boys in abstract terms that had little to do with the little barbarians that were actual boys. At slumber parties the girls practiced necking with each other so long as it was understood that one of the neckers had to be a boy in theory.

Sofie Krause "at great personal sacrifice" played the role of beau nine times out of ten, especially when Doriel was up. At their private school the tight group of girlfriends passed flowery love letters to each other. Girl-love at age twelve is of such a high order that it knows no jealousy. Share and share alike, everything from lunch to masterpieces of amorous soliloquy.

Doriel Shybear had black eyes and long jet black hair tied in the obligatory Church pony tail but with the cutest bangs ever. The first of the three to start growing knockers, Dory was already, at just age twelve, a full six feet tall. Sha was going to be a giantess. Dory aimed for straight Bs to please har father Jashen, the Prophet of the Church, while not appearing too bookish. Dory heard voices. When she was younger, it was a fun game, but over time Dory came to dislike being a telephone switchboard. Eventually, Dory insisted the Voices keep it limited to important calls. She enforced this by threatening to keep the Voices up at night with voices of her own.

Sofie Krause was a tomboy who kept her ash-blond hair short with no Church-mandated pony tail. When she grew older she was the only girl on the football team. Like Kim and Dory, Sofie was required to wear woolen skirts to class rather than trousers, which always annoyed her. One Halloween morning Dory came dressed as a pirate's wench. Sha had ripped har dress into long strips so har pinup-model legs could poke out when sha walked. When Sofie saw that she felt a sweet electric shock and knew she had graduated to full-service tribade.

Kimberly Zinter had auburn hair halfway between mahogany and carrot-top. She had light green eyes and a pretty face but she was a little chubby, or perhaps just Rubenesque. Kim was compelled to wear her hair in a ponytail at all times, of course, like her mother and father and elders and all other good little Greendomites, male or female. Kim was an infidel. She didn't really believe any of that stuff about Chief Wanica and the Golden Gift written in the Green Book, which was testimony to how tightly her father Erik was capable of keeping Jashen’s secret. But she wasn't ready to let down her father so she gritted her teeth, wore the damned ponytail in a bun, and when she ventured outside of Headwater she tried to ignore the comments at the edge of her hearing like, "Oh hey, there goes another Bunner, look at her hair.'

For science class the teacher paired everyone off as lab partners. Kim ended up with Sofie, and Dory ended up with her brother Gabriel. But Sofie kicked Gabriel out of hez seat with "no offense pally" and sent hem shambling towards Kim, an adjustment in the teacher's choice.

As time went on Gabriel went so far as to hold Kim’s hand skating at Lake 13 when it was frozen over. By the time they were fourteen Sofie and Dory were asking if Kim and Gabriel had pitched woo and what it was like. "We did indeed pitch woo," Kim said. "He feels like a rubber wet suit stretched over a suit of armor. Soft on the surface but with a hard core underneath. I like it."

In the summer the same Lake 13 used for ice skating was used for skinny-dipping and since bathing suits for kids were unknown in the 1930s. So there was no more keeping the Shybear family secret. Kim and Sofie learned that Gabriel was both a boy and a girl at the same time. The four of them stood naked in a square, ten yards out into Lake 13 up to their thighs in cool water with no body modesty at all because they were good friends and nobody else was there. The boy part of Gabriel was doing what fourteen year old boy parts typically do around girls.

Kim asked about the one ball. "The other ball is inside me, Kim, it's a real ovary. I could get pregnant." Kim glanced at hez small breasts and nipples, which didn't look like they were just for decoration either. "Gabriel is what we call an jen," Dory said. “A nephil." Kim and Sofie were stunned to silence.

When Gabriel saw their unbelief che said, "Recall your scripture. Genesis six four. There were giants in the earth in those days. When the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men they bore children to them. The same became the mighty men of old, men of renown."

Dory said, "We're saying he has a copy of mom's Z chromosome."

"What about you?" Sophie asked, looking at Dory. "You're Gabriel's sister so why didn't you end up with a dangler too?"

"I'm not a nephil, I'm one of the elyonim. I'm an angel. That's why I'm even taller than Gabriel. And I've got a pair of nasty bits too, they just happen to match.” Dory showed them what she meant, then looked askance at both of her friends. "None of this should be new to you, right Kim. Right, Sofie? Don't you believe what’s written in the Book of Green Dome?"

"Of course I believe all that stuff in the Green Book and the Bible," Kim answered, annoyed at the insinuation she was an apostate. "Kemen, miracles, the resurrection, everyone believes it happened, back then. But nobody believes it happens now."

Sofie said, "Kim is absolutely right. Everybody knows it, but nobody is ready to lose face and ever admit what they all know."

"If you were just talking about the Bible you'd have a point," Gabriel said. "Half the Green Book is corrections to the stories in the Bible. More than half. But the new claims in the Book of Green Dome? Everything in there really happened, exactly as written. It's like no other holy text ever put together."

Kim and Sophie accepted this rebuke and nodded their heads silently. They were unprepared to call their friends liars, and unwilling in any event. Besides, the hard evidence was literally there for them to see standing between the legs of Gabriel.

When Kim asked if Gabriel was the very one who spoke to the Mother of Christ Dory and Gabriel locked eyes briefly, and Dory chose to answer. "I hate to say it, but there are certain things we can't tell you, at least not now. I think later you'll understand why we couldn't talk."

Gabriel, Kim, Sofie and Dory were all firmly middle-class, evidenced by their attendance at the Church's private school. Their parents were sufficiently well-off to provide instruments when they took band class, except Kim's only instrument was her own voice. She was a member of the Green Dome Temple Girl's Choir, an expressive mezzo-soprano with a voice that belied her fifteen years and verged on being too breathy and sensuous for spiritual music. Listeners compared her favorably to Peggy Lee.

Dory played a double-bass standing on an end-pin sha had lengthened to be more comfortable. Sometimes sha set down har French bow and plucked the strings pizzicato with meandering bass lines, a soundtrack to daydreams sha was a black cat slinking around at night.

Sofie Krause pounded the skins with all the power that made her a formidable offensive guard, yet sha ran effortlessly in and around Dory's machine-like bass, averting expectations and punctuating her licks with sixteenth-note drum fills as endlessly unique as snowflakes.

Gabriel Shybear had no innate musical talent but che figured that was the reason che was taking band class, after all. After a semester learning scales on a recorder Gabriel took up the sax. Kim started dabbling on piano and soon the kids had a basic jazz combo on their hands. Sophie Krause and Dory formed the constant pulsing heart of the act. After Sophie changed her name to Hunky the band would, in fact, be named Hunky-Dory after the rhythm section.

Word arrived of the Doolittle Raid after five months of unrelenting bad news following Pearl Harbor. In celebration, the conductor of the Green Dome Temple School band class led a recital of patriotic John Philip Sousa marches, attended by half of Headwater. For an encore the class tore into a cover of the classic Duke Ellington standard "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)' with Kim soloing on vocals and Gabriel on sax. It was the first real triumph of the future Hunky-Dory.

For Kim the only downside in all this was how her father didn't make the recital despite his solemn promise to do so. She could see her mother sitting out there in the gym and how she kept a seat saved for him, but even to the end of the encore the seat was never filled. Erik Zinter did not come home all that night and even the next morning.

In the middle of the school day Kim was pulled out of class by Deacon Paul Bergin and driven home, where Clara paced silently.

Kim started crying again in sympathy, pleading for her Mom to speak. After a time Clara looked directly at her daughter, building up the willpower to blurt it out to her, and finally she did: “Your father is dead!” They both cried until there was nothing more to give, and even when Kim’s eyes were bone dry she was still wracked with sobs that trailed off at length to silent grief. It was long before Clara gave Kim answers.

According to Prophet Jashen Shybear, Erik was killed by an ancient relic called the Golden Gift, something Kim and Clara assumed was merely an allegorical literary device to move the plot of the Green Book along, perhaps like the whale in the book of Jonah. In the scripture of the Church of Green Dome heaven was a real place with walled cities ruled by angelic kings. Michael once sent Prince Melchizedek down to Earth with the oracles of God, and the prince bore the same Golden Gift.

Jashen revealed he had lent Erik the relic to honeycomb Green Dome with tunnels to access coal. Thus Headwater prospered through the Great Depression. But overnight there was a cave-in that smashed Erik’s helmet lantern and plunged him into total darkness. Somehow he got turned around and bored deeper into the mountain rather than back out towards the way he came. As Erik created a greater volume of space to walk through the remaining oxygen was stretched too thin. At dawn men with picks and spades broke through the cave-in and reached Erik’s body.

Jashen assured Clara that her husband died without any pain. He simply fell asleep and never woke up again. Also he praised the memory of Erik for never violating a sacred trust that some in the Church were saying was more than even the Prophet had the authority to grant. Jashen was asking Clara to accept that the Golden Gift was real, and the scriptures were literally true. Beliefs were for uniting a Church, not to actually believe.

“When you attend the Final Rite you will come to see see the wisdom of it,” said Jashen. “But try to be strong, Clara. In days to come some will tell you that God punished your husband with death for misusing his holy gift to the Church.”

In the aftermath of her father’s death Kim stopped going to school. Sofie and Dory came over after a couple of days to see if their friend was well. She was not well, but their visit elevated Kim from her grief a tiny bit and her mother noticed.

After Sophie’s mother came to pick her daughter up Clara asked her to wait until Dory’s mother arrived as well, because she had a request to make of all of them.

When everyone was together Clara said, “I’d like Sofie and Dory to be with Kim for her father’s funeral.” Susan Krause shook her head. She said,”They are just school girls and a funeral is a very solemn thing.”

Dory’s mother Leliel agreed. She said, “This should be family time for Clara and Kim.”

“But we have no family here,” Clara said. “My folks are back east.”Leliel pointed out that Clara still had in-laws in Headwater. But Clara shook her head. “They’re Bunner Incarnate. They always held me at arm’s length. Kim is taking the death of Erik very hard but when the girls came over today I saw how they were like a family to her.”

Leliel said, “I’m not worried about Doriel. I’m worried more about Sofie and Kim. When you are on the other side of the Final Rite, Clara, you will no longer have the child-like faith that our Lord said was more blessed than the faith of who believe because they have seen.”

It was a gentle negotiation. Clara got permission for Kim’s friends to be with her at the funeral but Leliel persuaded Clara to have Kim and her friends sit out the actual Final Rite.

It would have been unseemly to run around playing while the body of Kim’s father was sent to his long home along with three other Greendomites from around the country, so they sat around in the Temple basement.

Volunteers prepared dinner for the families of the dead. Gabriel finally broke away from a group of Kuwapi boys smoking outside. Che seemed to know a lot of secrets about the Temple. Gabriel led the girls into a supply room which wasn’t locked. Kim, Sofie, and Dory went along because there was nothing else to do.

There was no electric light in the temples storeroom, only a window with closed blinds and it was a gloomy January day outside. There was an old piano which was probably broken. Kim avoided the urge to play it. There was a map of Headwater and many of the usual church odds and sods. The kids found unused hymnals, stacks of old temple bulletins, empty mason jars, and dozens of stacked folding chairs. Sofie found a cane carved from gnarled wood and shifted it from hand to hand to get the feel of it. Gabriel stopped moving and went, “Shhh! What’s that?” The children froze but the only thing they heard was organ music and the choir bleeding through the ceiling from the main sanctuary up-stairs.

“Very funny,” Sofie said, giving Gabriel a friendly shove. One of the walls was unfinished. Gabriel moved aside a piece of plywood which had concealed another dark space beyond. It was so black inside it drank their vision like a sponge.

“I’ve never been in there,” Gabriel admitted. None of the girls wanted to go in there but Gabriel dared them to go. Naturally Sofie was the first one through. Gabriel immediately followed Sofie to show che wasn’t afraid. Dory and Kim were afraid of the dark hole and they were also unafraid to admit it, but they didn’t want to be left alone so they squeezed in too.

Gabriel burned through ten matches before Dory went to the outer room again and brought back a candle. The kids found they were in a space that was about four times larger than the first room but there was no wooden floor, just dirt and pebbles.

Something like a rocky igloo reached halfway to the wooden ceiling, which creaked as someone walked to and fro overhead. Gabriel did a complete circuit of the space, then che said to Dory, “This is part of our family history, sis!”

Dory said, “This must be the very summit of Green Dome. Grandpa built that cairn, and the altar right over it.”

When Gabriel saw the blank faces of Sofie and Kim che was astonished. Che said, “Did you forget what they taught us in Sunday school? The temple is built on the Island in the Sky where God gave Chief Wanica the Golden Gift.’

Kim rolled her eyes and said, “God gave Moses the stone tablets too. Only there was no Moses, so he didn’t.” She had a point. The Green Book itself denied the existence of Moses.

Dory pointed to the ceiling. “What do you think is happening up there right now?”

Kim considered her answer, because she didn’t wish to offend her friends, and especially not Gabriel, who was a bit more than a friend. She said, “It's a cremation of my father’s body and the bodies of three other folks, spiced with ritual.’

Dory said, “Kim, we all know you've seen Gabriel, close up, in all hez glory and you still think the Green Book is just a bunch of stories they invented?”

“I went to the library and looked that up,” Kim replied. “Gabriel’s a hermaphrodite. It’s not a big deal."

"I don't know about your birth defect idea, Kimmie," Sofie "I know you've seen how Dory's got two cooters, and I've definitely seen them. Maybe it's a family trait."

Gabriel rolled up hez sleeves and approached Kim, flipping both hands over a few times to show they were empty. Che said, “Hold out your hand.” Gabriel clasped her hand, and when che took it away again Kim was holding a stack of silver half-dollars. ‘Explain that, if you can.”

Kimberly put the coins in her purse because money was money and if Gabriel wanted to give her ten bucks so be it. She said, “Magic tricks, Gabriel, just like what they’re showing Momma upstairs right now. I don’t say there’s no God, but why can’t people just be amazed at what God really did do?”

Dory threw up har hands in mock despair at har heathen friends and muttered something about White Wingers. Gabriel moved toward the cairn. “We’ll never have the chance to be in here again,” che said. “I want to see if it’s really there.”

Sofie warned, “If you do that you’ll go to hell.”

“There’s no hell in Greendomism,” Gabriel snorted, and che chose a boulder likely to be easily moved. Sophie gave hem a hand. he boulder slowly swung open like a hinged door, just enough that they could squeeze inside the stone igloo one at a time. Dory brought light. A plain white dome lay inside.

"God doesn’t look like much," said Kim.

“This isn’t God," said Gabriel, "but God made this. And don’t say God made everything, Sofie, even you know better.”

They all stood there silently for a time, each one of them buried in thoughts about the artifact. No one dared to touch it. After that, by unspoken agreement, they began to slide back out of the cairn, but they heard footsteps in the storage room next door. Dory put out the candle as everyone held their breath and tried not to make a sound.

Deacon Paul looked into the dark gap and could just make out their silhouettes. Bergin screamed at them to get out.

Blushing, Gabriel, Kim, Sofie and Dory scrambled out from beneath the altar, then out of the supply room. After that they sat in the basement lunchroom. The deacon locked the supply room, and true to Gabriel’s words they never returned.

Dory said, “Thanks for that little adventure, brother. I always knew the avatar of Chokhmah was real, but actually seeing it was something I’ll never forget.”

Just then the attendees began to filter in from upstairs. During the shared meal after the Final Rite Kim thought her mother seemed very different. The grief was gone. Clara said, “It’s all true, Kim. Everything in the Green Book is really true!” She no longer needed faith for the things taught by the Church.

Kim knew her mother had been a nurse in the First World War and had seen things in France so terrible she refused to even talk about them, things which would crush the faith of anyone who believed in a good God. It was good to see some semblance of joy restored in her. But Kim and Sophie needed more convincing.

The demonstration was already in the pipeline. Kim and Sofie grew bumps on the front of their heads. Dr. Wahkan said not to worry about them. He said they were benign and some of the Kuwapi also had the condition. But when they turned into outright horns it startled Clara to the point of taking Kim to Lusk in Wyoming for a second opinion. Two days later Sofie’s parents brought her to Lusk also but the doctors there could do little more than watch the girls get worse. Soon after that the girls were under federal quarantine in parts unknown.