The Children of Gal

The Children of Gal

By Allen M. Steele (excerpt)

In the days that followed, Sanjay did his best to put his mother’s banishment behind him. With less than three weeks – thirteen days – left in summer, there was much that needed to be done before the season changed: fish to be caught, dried, and preserved, seeds planted and spring crops tended, houses and boats repaired. He and his father put away Aara’s belongings – they couldn’t bring themselves to burn her clothes, a customary practice for the families of those sent to Purgatory – and accepted the sympathy of those kind enough to offer it, but it took time for them to get used to a house which now seemed empty; the absence of laughter and the vacant seat at the dinner table haunted them whenever they came home.

Sanjay didn’t feel very much like attending the Juli service at the Shrine, but Dayall insisted; if he didn’t make an appearance, the more inquisitive Disciples might wonder whether Aara’s son shared her blasphemous beliefs. Dayall was an observant Galian if not a particularly devout one, and the last thing they wanted to do was draw the attention of the Guardians. So Frione morning they joined the Disciples in the dome-roofed temple in the middle of town. Once they’d bowed in homage to the scared genesis plant that grew beside the Shrine, they went in to sit together on floor mats in the back of the room, doing their best to ignore the curious glances of those around them. Yet as R’beca stood before the altar, where the box-like frame of the Transformer stood with its inert block of Galmatter in the center, and droned on about how the souls of the Chosen Children were gathered by Gal from the vile netherworld of Erf and carried “twenty-two lights and a half through the darkness” to Eos, Sanjay found himself studying the Teacher resting within his creche behind the altar.

The Children of Gal. Photo by ElenaB.

Even as a child, Sanjay had often wondered why the Teacher didn’t resemble the Children or their descendants. Taller than an adult islander, his legs had knees that were curiously forward-jointed and hinds lacking the thin membranes that ran between the toes. His arms, folded across his chest, were shorter, while the fingers of his fores were long and didn’t have webbing. His neck was short as well, supporting a hairless head whose face was curiously featureless: eyes perpetually open and staring, a lipless mouth, a straight nose that lacked nostrils. And although the Teacher wore an ornate, brocaded robe dyed purple with roseberry, every youngster who’d ever sneaked up to the creche after services to peel beneath the hem knew that the Teacher lacked genitalia; there was only a smooth place between his legs.

These discrepancies were explained by the Word: the Teacher had been fashioned by Gal to resemble the demons who ruled Erf, and the Creator had made him the way to remind the Children of the place from which they’d come. This was why the Teacher was made of Galmatter instead of flesh and blood. According to history, everyone diligently learned and recited in school, the Teacher and the Disciples had fled the mainland for Providence just before the Great Storm, leaving behind the unfaithful who’d ignored Gal’s warning that their land would soon be consumed by wind and water.

The Teacher no longer moved or spoke, nor had he ever done so in recent memory. Yet his body didn’t decay, so he was preserved in the Shrine; along with the Transformer and the Galmatter block, they were holy relics, reminders of the Stormyarn. In his sermons, R’beca often prophesized the coming of the day when the Teacher would awaken and bring forth new revelations of the Word of Gal, but Sunjay secretly doubted this would ever occur. If he did, he hoped to be there when it happened, he’d like to see how someone could walk on all fours with limbs and extremities and misshapen as these.