[mark12_30]

Gamba, now weary from stone throwing and from his anger, let his arms dangle, feeling the blood flow through them.

"Tired now?"

Gamba nodded, resentfully.

"How about a swim?"

"How can you ask! It'll sting, and I'll get a chill besides. Forget it."

"Come on. It's nighttime. It's dark."

Gamba, still resentful but curious now, studied Phura.

"I've never seen them, " Phura said. "Do you think they might be shining?"

He doubted it, but still, Gamba's mouth twitched, as he weighed the pain against the possibilities.

"The air seems clear. Doesn't it taste clear?"

"I don't know."

"I do. I bet the sky is clear. Come on."

Gamba had nothing to lose. He shrugged, and something about the way he shrugged stopped Phura in his tracks.

"Wait. That's why you have no hope. You think you're going to die."

Gamba evaded his gaze again. "They take the weak ones, and the insubordinate ones. And they don't need me to dig anymore."

"You are not going to die, " Phura said, simply and with finality. "I need you. You've got work to do."

Gamba just stared at him, unconvinced.

"Into the water, " Phura urged him. "Come on." Phura jumped in, and Gamba hesitated, wondering why the stars would still be there; but as his brother turned away, the thought of only hearing the tale, if they were there, and never seeing the sight, sent him into the water. He came up hissing from the pain, but he and his brother swam downriver, and sooner than Gamba expected, they came out from under the rock roof, and looked up; in a blackness different from any they had ever seen, far, far above them they saw veils and pinpricks of glistening white-silver.


*************

Phura was too lost in his own wonder to pay much attention to Gamba at first. But eventually he looked at his younger brother.

"Aren't they beautiful?"

There was a long silence, and then Gamba spoke. "They're not gone. Is he not dead, then?"

"What? Who?"

"Gorthaur didn't kill him after all?" It was a question.

"Kill who?"

"Eru. I thought Gorthaur was at the top of Meneltarma because he killed Eru. Wasn't that what the guards meant when they said, 'Death to law, to light, to love, cursed be moon and stars above?' They laughed when they said it."

Phura was horrified. "When did they say that? Which guards?"

"My last day at the graveyards. They were new guards."

"You've been listening to the wrong guards. That's part of Morgoth's old oath. And it's not true. It's crazy. The darkness doesn't have that kind of power. It's not true."

Even in the dim starlight, Phura could see a change in Gamba's eyes. "He's not dead?"

"Not even defeated. That was a lie."

Gamba went to sit in the shallows, numb with surprise, and began laughing softly. "Not dead? He's alive. Eru is alive."

Phura joined him, amazed. "I never knew you believed that."

"But how else would Gorthaur have control of the top of the mountain?"

"I don't know, Gamba. But nothing defeats Eru. Nothing."

Gamba lay back, and drank in the stars, and their light took root in his mind's eye even as his brother's words took root in his soul. Hope grew, and courage with it. He was silent for a long time, too full of sudden joy to speak much. But eventually he asked another question. "Do people see the moon and the stars every night?"

"If there aren't clouds, yes. And you will too, " Phura replied.

Gamba shook his head in wonder.

[ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: mark12_30 ]