Cliff's Edge
by Mike MoranNext morning, bright and early, the boy Enoch wakes the old man. He's anxious to see the old man do what he said could last night. Without a word to the boy, the old man relieves himself in the bushes. He fries some fish over the campfire and eats it with his fingers. Then past the acacia tree and the tent he goes, straight to the edge of the cliff. The old man throws out a fistful of dust. The dust winds it way down, weaving and falling through the air. The old man watches it.
"Keep the fire burning," he tells the boy.
The old man strips naked and takes a breath.
Then he jumps off the cliff.
The boy rushes to the edge and watches the old man's fall. He knew the old man was telling stories last night about flying, but he was hoping for the magic to happen anyway. Instead, he realizes, he's going to watch the old man die.
About halfway down, the old man twists his body and spreads it out against the rushing wind. As the boy watches, the old man appears to move from over the trees to over the river. At the last moment, the old man snaps his body into a dive. He disappears behind the trees.
For days the boy keeps the fire burning. Then, one late afternoon, a speck appears in the south, walking northward along the edge of the canyon.
The boy looks across the plain. A few scattered trees are here and there, the path that brought him here leading from the shade of one to the shade of another, but otherwise it's wide open for miles.
Enoch squints down the way. The speck has become a man.
There would be no escaping if it were one of the men hunting him.
The man begins to take shape. The boy stands up. He fetches a blanket from the tent. He runs down with it to the old man walking along the edge of the cliff.
Later, with the old man bathed and dressed, the two sit beside the fire. It's dusk.
"I don't really have a reason to do that," says Enoch.
"Yes, you do," the old man tells him. "You've got men chasing you. They'll eventually find you."
Enoch looks across the wide-open landscape. He glances at the cliff. Over the edge were the wilds of another kingdom.
"They do not know the ways of that land," says the old man. "They will find the people unhospitable and the terrain beyond their ken. You will pass out of their reach. You will be free."
"It's not like they're going to kill me," says Enoch.
"No," the old man says. "You'll become a slave."
"What do I get if I jump?" Enoch asks.
"You get free," says old man.
"I don't believe you," the boy says.
"If you jump," says the old man, "I'll give you my golden apple."
He reveals an apple of solid gold.
And so the boy begins his training.
First Lesson: See the Wind.
It's a clear, calm day on the cliff's edge. They stand beside the acacia. A western breeze tousles the boy's hair.
Using a wooden paintbrush and a small bowl of clear tree resin, the old man paints a design across his own chest.
"Guess the design," the old man says.
"I don't know."
The old man sets the bowl and brush under the tree and closes his eyes. Then he bends down, picks up a handful of dust, throws it in the air, and spreads his arms.
As the dust settles, it's caught by the breeze. The old man twists slightly. When the air is clear, the old man opens his eyes and turns to the boy, arms still spread.
"It's a snake," says the boy.
The old man looks down at his own chest.
The boy says, "It's lightning." "Can you see the design clearly?" the old man asks.
"Yes," says the boy. "It's lightning. Or a jagged snake."
"Good," says the old man. "You try." He offers the bowl and brush to the boy. "Practice. Tomorrow, I'll check to see how you're doing."
The next day, the boy and the old man are standing near the cliff's edge. The boy paints a design on his chest. He throws the dirt up in the air and spreads his arms. He watches the dust. As it floats back down he turns into it. Arms still spread, he pivots to the old man, eyes teary with dust.
"It's a tree," says the old man. "Or a cross. Good."
Then the old man pours a bit of water on the ground, smears his fingers in the mud, and approaches the boy.
"Now see it without your eyes," says the old man. He smears his hand over the boy's eyelids, gluing them gently together. The old man picks up the bowl and brush and draws a second design on the boy's chest.
It takes the boy three tries before the old man says, "It's clear now."
The boy rubs the dried mud from his eyes and looks down at himself. "It's a drop of blood," he says.
"Or an apple on the tree," says the old man.
Second Lesson: Apple on the Tree.
One night, a monstrous storm blows in from the east. The old man gets the boy out of bed. There is a ropeline tied in upper branches bent low, and it's pulled taut, snagged around the roots. The tail of it snakes wildly in the wind. Enoch, sleepy and a bit angry with the intrusion, helps as best he can, but both of them seem to be horribly clumsy, the old man grabbing the line and then tangling up with Enoch.
Then the old man gives the rope a mighty pull. It jerks free of the roots and tightens around Enoch's waist. The high branches where the other end is caught, snap up and the boy is yanked into the air.
The tree bounces him high, high, and then lets him fall. Right before he hits the ground, his eyes squeezed tight, his hands over his head, arms over face, knees up to his chest, the boy feels the line go tight around his middle. The tree yanks him back into the air. Then it lets him fall again. Over and over, and each time the ground rushes at the boy he curls himself into a ball.
Up and down the boy bounces. And then: one, two, three!
On the third bounce, a branch slaps, stinging, across the boy's backside. Enoch opens his eyes, sees the tree roots, the dark mossy earth he again begins falling towards. He sees the old man sitting at the root of the tree, leaning back, eyes closed, hands behind his head.
Damn him, thinks Enoch.
The boy unfurls himself. Down he goes, through the darkness and the storm. His arms and legs are spread out wide, finding the wind. He falls, swinging down towards the ground and then being jerked back up.
The wind was angry. The boy felt his arms and legs jerk as the wind punched and kicked and bit at him. But then, when he felt a punch against his arm, instead of tensing against it, he let it roll off him. The kicks of wind against his legs, too - instead of fighting them, he simply allowed them to move his legs. He felt the bites, the bits of flotsam caught up by the wind and used as teeth against his body, and thought of them as flicks and teases. He allowed the wind to move him.
After a while Enoch stopped bouncing so high.
After a longer while, he stopped bouncing altogether.
And then Enoch began moving, like a great kite in an upside-down world, earth over his head like an open sky and him sailing towards it. His hands cupped and held the wind. His legs kicked and stretched. The boy danced with the wind all night.
Third Lesson: To Be a True Son
Late at night, the old man wakes. He listens and then wakes the boy. "It's time to make your jump," he tells Enoch.
"Why?"
"The hunters are coming," the old man tells him.
"No, they're not," says the boy.
"Yes, they are. I'll go start the fire to welcome them, and then you go jump."
"To welcome them?"
"Yes," said the old man. "Go."
The old man goes out of the tent.
The boy hears the horses hoofbeats, the hunters shouts and calls. Through the crack in the tent flap, he sees the fire take light. The ground rumbles as the hunters ride into the old man's camp.
There's a moment of silence.
At the same time the old man says, "I have water for your horses and soup for you, if you like," another voice says, "Where's the boy?"
"Let me get bowls," says the old man.
There's a stomp of hooves and again the voice speaks: "Where is he, Hamiel? Where is Enoch?"
"Ah," says the old man. "Hello, Nisroch."
The boy steps out of the tent.
There are eleven horsemen and twelve horses in a half-circle against the cliff. The moon is at their back.
"Nisroch?" says the boy.
The horseman at front, a heavy man wearing a breastplate, looks at the boy and then back to the old man.
The old man looks at Enoch.
"Nisroch," the boy tells him.
"He's the captain of the guard back at your father's castle," says the old man, Hamiel.
"And I've been ordered to return you to Father," says Nisroch. "Come with me." He taps his breastplate.
Says the boy, "He's not your father."
The other horsemen laugh. The firelight flickers across them, revealing and warping their features: a wide mouth grinning with rotted teeth here; an eye scarred shut there; a hand with four fingers; a missing ear.
"He's all our father," says Nisroch. "We've all been his sons. Now come with us."
"You don't have to go," the old man tells Enoch.
"That's true," says Nisroch. "You can always go over the cliff."
The old man, Hamiel, turns and regards Nisroch. "You could have all gone over the cliff," he says.
Nisroch taps a dagger against his armor. The horseman next to him flinches. "Shut up, old man."
"You all could have flown."
Nisroch turns away from the old man and looks at the boy. "Did he promise you the apple?" Nisroch asks him.
Enoch glances at Hamiel, then back to Nisroch. He nods.
"The only reason to jump is to escape," Nisroch says. "And you can't really take the apple with you, now, can you? Has an effect on the wind. So you jump off the cliff and the old man gets to keep his treasure--and whatever else you leave behind."
The apple is there, suddenly, appearing like magic in Hamiel's wind-scuffed hand. "Why don't I just give you the apple now, and you leave the boy alone?"
"Why don't I just kill you now, take the boy, and take your precious apple?"
"If you want the apple," says Hamiel, "here." He hands the apple to Enoch.
The horseman to the right of Nisroch sighs--a sudden expulsion of breath. Nisroch curses and slashes at him with his dagger. The other man, a young man, almost a boy really, cringes and begins to bleed from under his eye. The young horseman touches the slash in his face. His lower lip quivers. Then he sees Enoch, watching him.
As Enoch watches, the young man stiffens, pulls straight his mouth, then licks at the blood as it runs down his face. He grins at Enoch, teeth smeared a dark red.
"We do what we want," Nisroch tells Enoch.
"What do you want?" asks the old man.
"I want you to shut up," says Nisroch. The horsemen laugh.
The old man, Hamiel, turns his back on the horsemen and approaches the cliff.
"It's insanity," Nisroch calls to him. "What you do."
"Compared to what?" calls Hamiel back, and strips off his clothes.
Before the men can react, Hamiel jumps off the cliff.
Silence. The acacia tree rustles, a cold breeze from the north moving through it.
"Think he made it?" asks one of them.
"He always did before," says another.
After a moment, Nisroch sighs and says, "That's it. Let's go." He motions to the boy.
The boy takes a step back towards the cliff.
Nisroch smirks. "Nobody ever really jumps, flies, whatever," says Nisroch. "All of us have been here, contemplating insanity. But your father is waiting. He'll be cooking up steaks and potatoes, he'll have the storytellers and jugglers in, temple whores to show you what it means to be a man. Come on, come with us."
The boy takes off his shirt.
"You?" says Nisroch. "No. I was the closest. I was stripped naked and standing on the edge - "
"But you didn't jump," says Enoch.
All but Nisroch laugh.
"I made the smarter choice," says Nisroch. "Let's go."
But the boy drops his breeches. Naked, he backs another few steps closer to the edge, the apple tight in his hands.
"We're going to bloody you if you don't get over here right now," says Nisroch. "You'll do exactly what we say or we'll brutalize you, we'll slash you seven different ways and each take a bloody piece for ourselves. Now get over here."
Nisroch dismounts, breastplate glinting in the moonlight. There is no more talk - he's going straight for the boy, arms outstretched.
Enoch drops the apple, turns, and jumps off the edge.
©Mike Moran
Mike Moran is a teacher, writer, playwright, and performer, known locally as the Iowa Goatsinger. He has a passion for mythologies and world religions.