The creator of all's Arc

Chapter 6 of 13

The creator watched the small thing in Cain settle into something heavier. Seasons turned. Abel's flock grew fat on the low hills. Cain's wheat came up thin and yellow, the heads half full, the stalks bending wrong. The creator saw the boy kneel in the rows and pull at the soil with both hands, as if he could squeeze water from it. He saw Cain look across the fence to where his brother's sheep moved through good grass. One morning a pale cow drifted from the herd and stopped at the edge of Cain's field. It bent its head and tore a mouthful of his poor wheat. Cain stood up from the dirt. He watched the cow chew. He watched his brother walking behind the animals, tall and easy, a staff over one shoulder. The creator felt the moment tip. He had built humans to break so they could grow. He had not built them to do this. Cains lack of accountability bore bad fruit and caused him to blame his brother in a fit of jealousy. Cain picked up a stone from his own field. He crossed the fence. He said nothing. Abel turned and saw him and started to speak. Cain hit him once, then again, until his brother went down in the grass and did not move. The blood went into the ground. The creator felt it go in. Where it touched, the roots let go. The wheat browned in a ring around the body. The ring spread. Green went to a color that was not green and not brown and not any word the boy would later find. A dead patch opened at the center of the field and would not close. The creator spoke. His voice came down over the field and shook the standing stalks. "What have you done." Cain did not answer. He picked at his nails. "Your brother's blood is in the ground," the creator said. "The ground will not take your seed again. Not here. Not anywhere you stop." Cain looked up then. His mouth opened and shut. "Go," the creator said. "Walk. No field will grow for you." Cain's hands began to shake. He looked at the empty hills, at the road out, at the places where other people had started to gather in small numbers. "Someone will kill me," he said. Flat. One line. The creator considered him. The boy had done the worst thing a human had done yet, and still asked to be kept alive. Humans surprised him again. "No," the creator said. "If any man kills you, seven deaths follow him." He set a mark on Cain's forehead so it would be seen. Cain touched it once. Then he turned and walked, and the field behind him held its dead center like a wound that would not knit. The creator watched him go. The test had turned. It was no longer only about the parents. It was about what the children would do with what they had been given, and how far the creator would go to hold the line.