Peak Divinity

Ang Tuin’s temple was large and airy and now painted white, which he hated. All through his second life, there had been wood panelling which had filled the space with a rich scent of beeswax and nutmeg, but the tall men had come to make another one of their changes. They had levered off the panels, the long nails screeching painfully as they pulled from their holes. That had upset him. He had managed to cause some sickness amongst them, but more came anyway like so many ants, and the effort just made him even weaker & he slept.

When he awoke, the trees outside the arched windows on the far wall were lush with summer foliage but were now dwarfed by great stone and metal buildings. Far away, machines crossed the sky itself, gliding in silence like distant albatrosses. Ang Tuin watched them go, remembering the ages he had spent watching far horizons and the distant specks that had sometimes crossed them. There was a box on the wall next to him with a red light on it. It hummed low and soft, and he didn’t mind that.

Sometime later, a man came to attend to the needs of the box. He was a short man with a belly that his overalls barely contained. His overalls said he was Brian. Ang Tuin reached into his head. He found that Brian was perhaps as angry and frustrated as Ang Tuin himself. Someone had shouted at him while he was driving his car. Ang Tuin knew what a car was. This wasn’t the first head he’d reached into. Brian knew this man by many names; git, twat, cretin. There were images: a queue of cars, a contorted face leering through a window. The man had struck Brian’s car with his fist. Ang Tuin cut through them and placed a single bright thought into Brian's head. “I am not a whipping boy; I am the one who whips.” Woe betide the next person that crossed him.

But this satisfying action was an effort, and Ang Tuin had to sleep again. As he rested from season after season, he cast his mind back. To the days when he was newly born, called into life by the priests. Venerated at a great wooden altar in front of the other statues of the Rapanui heads. He had power back then, as had all the gods; they had been strong. His territory had extended down the forested slopes of the volcano that was called Terevaka and adjoined that of Ang Kai who was the god of the eight huge statues on the western slopes of a smaller hill. Ang Kai who had ruined them all. Ang Kai who had reduced Rapanui to an empty island, battered by wind and wave. An island of great stone heads that slowly shifted on their earth foundations, leaning and toppling according to the whims of the remorseless winds.

At the start of Ang Tuin’s second life, the tall men had raised his statue up in a city greater than he would ever have imagined existed. A temple had been created for him. Who knew what gods must assist the tall men in their endeavours for them to prosper on such an extraordinary scale. His worshippers came to the temple all through the daylight hours; men in different kinds of hats, with clothes that fitted tight to their bodies, waistcoats bedecked with gold chains. They had hair on their faces and were serious in their disposition. Ladies in their finery, dressed with feathers and long flowing dresses, hats perched on their heads like tall ships cresting waves. They gathered in front of his statue, its blank eyes staring unseeing at them and through them. They were hushed in reverence, reading the neat white cards set out for them by the priests.

“Moai Monolithic Head. Devotional statue. Rapanui Polynesia, Southern Pacific Oceanic region. Est. 1500 BC. Solidified Volcanic Ash. 20 tonnes weight. 23 feet height.”

Sometimes a priest would tell them stories about how the statue came to be and what service it performed. The worshippers would politely ask questions, and some would reverently run their hands across the statue’s rough surface.

Ang Tuin felt loved, the worshipper’s reverence filling him with energy. In return he diminished their troubles. A married man, a merchant, wracked with suspicion over his young wife’s infidelities, found himself relaxing; she loved him, he was sure of it; these were just idle worries that he could afford to ignore. A young boy, commissioned as a midshipman on the Royal Sovereign, and mortally afraid he would cry like a girl from homesickness, was suddenly so very tired of the confines of his parent’s house and longed for the horizon. Ang Tuin performed his role, they performed theirs. All was in balance again, as it should be.

The priests filled Ang Tuin’s temple with other items to aid worship. There were displays in glass cabinets edged with dark wood and more names on white cards. Fragments of pottery, stone, wood and metal from long dead peoples. They were many and various and called names like Romans or Innuits or Macedonians or Aboriginals. He wondered how they had lost their power and been brought to this great room far from their cities. Had their gods failed them too? Were they all so greedy?

Ang Kai had been greedy. Ang Kai’s tribe called themselves the Kavanui, meaning they were the Chosen ones, the Selected. They worshipped Ang Kai in much the same way that Ang Tuin’s tribe (who were unnamed) worshipped him, with offerings, sacrifices, devotion and fire. In return the gods rewarded their people. Rapanui was windswept, wet, often cold. For tribes who sated their gods it was none of those things. Or rather it still was, but only on the outside. Viewed through the prism of the tribes, the island was a paradise. It was blessed with fresh breezes, nourishing rain and occasional warmth. With the help of the gods, the island could be seen as a beautiful place. It was a matter of perception. See things the right way and life was good. Crops grew, livestock grazed, social structures were maintained. Ang Tuin and his like nurtured thoughts in the heads of their devotees; they attended to their needs, spoken and unspoken. In cold winters they fed thoughts of warm springs to come. When crops were sparse, they revived memories of feasts gone by and the promise of more in the future. They made shy girls into devoted wives, turned shy boys into brave warriors. The small communities that populated the island had occasional feuds and occasional alliances. They married, they died, and they were reborn. All was well, life was in balance.

But Ang Kai was not content with simply being; he had encouraged his tribe to bring him more. When they ran out of resources, he sowed the idea of taking territory from other tribes, and they swept through the island like a plague. A few generations were all it took, and Ang Kai had it all. And a few generations were all it took for him to lose it. They stoked the fires ever higher and burnt everything, gave him everything; they starved and froze and died and were reborn. But fewer were reborn and they died younger. Until one fine spring morning the last flame went out, a smouldering heap of ash cooled and streaked away in the sea breeze. The few emaciated tribe members stood round the great heads mumbling prayers, eyes cast down. And Ang Kai saw too late that he was lost.

Then they were alone, so many small gods in so many stone heads.

And so, towards the end of Ang Tuin’s first life, tall ships had come with tall pale men in strange clothes. They laboured under bright blue skies, digging at the hard earth until they dragged one of the statues, his statue, down the hillside onto the flat plain. Under a huge timber frame, they raised it onto the back of a cart towed by six beasts and then onto one of their tall ships. Ang Tuin was reborn, and Ang Kai diminished to a speck on the horizon and then became nothing.

And now here he was in his new temple within the city of the Tall Men, watching things change again. The glass cabinets were rearranged constantly for new exhibits. Men came and removed all the cabinets containing the axe heads, flints and pottery shards. Ang Tuin wondered where they went. Shelves were put up, filled with artefacts, then taken down again. Different cases replaced them. These ones had lights in them. The priests wanted objects to be more exciting, more interactive. There was now a stuffed polar bear rearing up in the Inuit section. Amongst the Romans were swords and spears and armour. An Aboriginal hunting party crouched in a cave mouth. The Native Americans had a wooden totem pole reaching to the ceiling. The devotional scripts were removed, and now brightly coloured stickers showed people where things were from and what they did.

Likewise, outside his temple, Ang Tuin detected change. The distant shores from where the worshippers came were hidden from him, but he heard them; at the start there were hooves clattering on stone streets and the clamour of voices, then cars that had motors that belched black fumes and crashed and banged. Then more cars, less hooves, more people, more noise; it was never quiet anymore. The tide of worshippers washed in, objects were laid out for them, were revered, were removed and the tide washed out again. Through it all, his Stone Head stood imperious and unmoved.

Hand in hand with the changes in and outside his temple walls, Ang Tuin saw changes in the people themselves.

More worshippers came in larger numbers; rails were put up, the priests asked people not to touch the exhibits. The worshippers changed. They wore different hats in softer materials; their clothes became looser and then more colourful and looser still. The men started to wear their gold on their wrists not their waists. The women showed their ankles, then calves, then thighs. Then no one wore hats.

Worshippers no longer strolled through the temple pausing at each exhibit and marking the contents and the words. Ang Tuin watched them move more and more swiftly, their pauses becoming rarer, their attentions easily distracted. Sometimes they missed out whole sections of the displays. They started to eat and drink as they walked. They were hardly worshipping at all. They spoke more loudly, to each other, to devices held to their ears. They brought their children! Why would they bring mewling children to a temple?

These were surely signs of a people’s downfall: when temples became marketplaces and schoolrooms; when gods were no longer given due reverence. Ang Tuin felt himself become weak as he was overlooked.

His congregation ignored him, drifting through the room, perhaps sparing him the occasional glance. These rational, yet irrational people with their constant need for comfort and convenience but with no idea of how to obtain it. No respect, no awe. They knew everything and knew nothing. He resented them, their blank expressions and their unseeing eyes. Their ignorance and constant need to chatter about their inane lives. They had left him, and now they had what they deserved: a sour, weak un-worshipped god alone in his great hall.

Occasionally, he would reach out to someone, instil fear or hatred or anger. A fat man in tracksuit, stuffing fried chicken into his face, found himself suddenly afraid of the germs that surely swarmed and multiplied on his food. But such efforts, though amusing, served only to sap his strength. He spent longer and longer sleeping and dreaming, and each time he awoke the world had moved on further.

This time on waking he saw there were two small boys and one small girl gathered round about the head. They were dressed in purple sweatshirts. On the front in white print was a tree in a circle and the words St Jude’s Primary School. Two of them were wearing baseball caps.

“Wow” said one, looking up. “How big is that head? That’s massive!”

“What’s it of?”

“Huh?”

“What’s it of? Who is it?”

“Dunno. Maybe someone famous from ages ago?”

“Cool, isn’t it? It’d be well heavy to shift.”

“Ha ha – you said the S word! I’m telling!”

“I did not! I said shift! Shift! Shift! You’re an idiot.”

“You are.” There was a short interlude of poking and discussing who was an idiot.

“Get off. Someone must’ve done it though. Someone had to get it up here.”

“Where’s your cap, Sadie?” A teacher approached from the Inuit exhibit.

“Don’t know, Mr Meacher.”

“Is it back in the lunchroom?”

“Don’t know sir, it might be.”

“Go and find it then, Sadie. Go and find it ! Haste girl!”

“What is this, Mr Meecham?”

“This, Josh, is an Easter Island Head.”

“How old is it?”

“Well, shall I stay here with you and tell you or shall I wander off and let you READ THE SIGNS!” He pointed at the writing and the pictures on the laminated notices, then folded his arms and raised his eyebrows.

“We’ll read it ourselves, sir.”

“Excellent. I love learners. Who do I love?”

“Learners, sir!” they giggled.

“Very good. Learn away.” Ang Tuin watched Mr Meacher stalk off to oversee a scuffle at the other end of the room.

The two boys were reading the card.

“It’s flippin’ three thousand years old! That’s older than God and Jesus!”

“People worshipped it, is IS a god already!”

“How cool would it be to be a god! A proper god with superpowers and that could see the future.”

“That’d be so cool, and you could get people to work for you and bring you stuff.”

“That’d be so sweet!” The boys ran their hands over the bottom of the statue.

Ang Tuin felt their energy.

“Human sacrifices! Look Robin! Human sacrifices! It says it there!”

“Oh wow – that would be how it got its superpowers. With blood and killing!”

“We should do that. We should make a sacrifice.”

“Huh? What’re you on about?”

“We should make a great sacrifice to the god of the head.”

“If you do, I’m telling.”

“We should...I could...”

Robin’s eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the floor. Ang Tuin left the boy, making soothing noises in his small head. They had minds like mice, these little ones.

Mr Meacher arrived on the run. He checked the boy’s breathing and took off his sweatshirt.

“Hold his legs up, Josh, he’s just got too hot and probably didn’t have enough breakfast. Millie, can you tell Mrs Tempest to come and give me a hand? The rest of you can stop gawping, go and learn some stuff. Go! Robin will be fine.”

Ang Tuin was thrilled. A sacrifice. He felt the rush, the world swam into sharp focus, colours became vibrant, buzzing with energy. He hoarded this, not tempted to use it on amusement or mischief. He held it close to him like a priest clutching his gold.

Sacrifices had always been made, of course. But of goats or sheep. People were not livestock. Nevertheless, the priests had stated it on their texts. Human sacrifices. It was not for him to question them. A weak one. Worshippers would sacrifice a weak goat, a runt of the litter. A weak person would surely serve that purpose. Then he would have power; he could help his worshippers, and they in turn would revere him. Recognise him for what he was and not be distracted by their mundane lives encroaching on Ang Tuin’s temple.

More seasons went by.

One day the girl came. Her hair was dark, streaked with the cherry red of a dying fire’s embers; she had used make-up around her eyes to make them equally dark. The wheeled chair she sat in was covered in stickers of many different colours and designs. She gazed at Ang Tuin’s statue. Ang Tuin gently reached into her mind so as not to upset her. Her name was Alice. There was a feeling of sadness, a great weight within her. Ang Tuin was pleased. This was the girl who was meant to be sacrificed.

Alice sat there for a long time, staring up at the impassive granite face; she did not notice the woman in a floppy sunhat come up behind her. Yanking the headphones off Alice’s head, she stepped round the wheelchair to confront her. The woman’s face was an older version of the girl’s; but the years had etched bitterness into it. Alice sat still with her eyes downcast as if discovered at some guilty pleasure. The woman bent over yammering into Alice’s face, berating her for her misdeeds. She was always doing this, wandering off in a daze: “Why do I have to come and find you, why couldn’t you stay where we’d agreed,” her mother said. Alice was useless, a dreamer.

Ang Tuin felt all this as he reached out for the mother’s mind and found screeching madness, a cacophony of conflicting voices full of anger, fear and resentment. He placed an image in there amongst the yapping and snarling. An image of the sword in the display behind her, that sword in her hand, that sword in the chest of her daughter. Then Alice would see, finally, she would see what a sacrifice her mother had made all her life; finally, she would be sorry for what she had put her mother through.

The mother abruptly got up and strode to the Roman diorama. The gladius was the standard issue sword for Roman soldiers. A short stabbing sword, not for fencing or swashbuckling. Very functional, very Roman. She hefted it in her hand.

At this time, several of the small children, buzzing around in the hall being interactive with everything, turned their attentions to the Archimedes Screw in the Macedonian section. Four metres long it hung diagonally from a steel cable attached to the ceiling, next to the Easter Island head. One end was at floor level, ready to irrigate imaginary fields with imaginary water. The several small children had the thought they could move the Screw if they hung off it. The thought was gleeful.

The mother walked back to Alice, standing in front of her, raising both her voice and the sword. “You never listen!” The girl gazed at her in a resigned fashion, as if this was commonplace. Ang Tuin watched and waited.

Meanwhile, two pregnant mothers with buggies like bulldozers making their way down the aisle to break up the party on the Screw, became panicky. They suddenly realised that time was of the essence; there would be terrible consequences for their children if they didn’t get there quickly. They both broke into a run. Coming from two different directions, focussing on their charges, they collided. Their buggies knocked out the lynch pins of the Screw, the kids fell off it giggling, and it flew free like a ram, swinging from its cable.

It collided with the top of the statue’s head knocking it forwards, and Ang Tuin was suddenly looming over the tableau of Alice and her sword-wielding mother. Slowly at first, then gathering massive momentum as tonnes of weight succumbed to gravity, the statue tipped over.

Ang Tuin was going to crush them both; it would be a great sacrifice indeed. But then everything changed. Inexorably the action slowed to a dead stop. Ang Tuin hung inches above their heads like a gull scanning for mackerel. Now Alice’s wheelchair rolled backwards across the tiled floor. Not a part of her body moved, but she and the chair glided away from beneath him all the same.

Then Ang Tuin was falling again, the mother’s ludicrous sunhat filling his view, and the statue’s giant flat nose driving itself onto her head like a thumb on a drawing pin.

Volcanic ash under stress, reacts like glass. The statue crushed the life out of the woman and then, as it met the marble floor, it shattered into a thousand small pieces. Amidst the screams and uproar of adults grabbing children and heading for the exits, Ang Tuin felt the rest of his power draining away.

There are now some moments of dust-filled quiet, and the museum’s gallery stands silent, reflecting. Its inhabitants are awaiting the arrival of custodians, paramedics and assorted tall men.

In the Viking section Heimdall, the Watchman of the Norse people, stands helmeted behind his ceremonial shield. He is pleased he finally managed to convince some small ones to swing on that Screw. He can now see the green space beyond the great window to the South. With the stone head gone, the sightline across the parkland down to the river is opened up. At last, his temple is fit for a Watchman.

Nearby in the Macedonian exhibit, a crudely curvaceous clay statue of a woman stands next to a collection of pottery artefacts. Ishtar the Lightbringer, goddess of love, sex and fertility, feels the power within her temple and is content. It had been her idea to call the women with the buggies and their unborn children to her. They had brought with them the fresh life and fertility that she revels in. It has been many seasons since she has received such close attention.

In an alcove across from the Macedonians, a ceremonial reindeer hide cloaks a mannequin. The hide contains Amarok, who was once the taker of those Inuits who hunted alone at night in the Arctic snows. Amarok wants only the woman, not the girl. Two would be a waste, an offence even, against the sparse ways of the Inuit. He is pleased that he thought to make that happen. He has all he needs now; he has culled one from the herd, one that needed culling. He has no need of a temple, but the white walls here are the colour of snow, and in this warm land it will have to do. He does not really miss the frozen wastes anyway.

Later, for the tall men there is, of course, an inquiry. People were blamed, promises were made, compensation paid. Lessons were said to have been learned.

None of these details concern Kalseru the Ageless, the Great Creator Serpent, the Aboriginal Dreamtime God existent in the red earth dusted cave paintings in their hermetically sealed display cases. Kalseru, who is of both the earth and the air and from the time before time. He calls all things to return to him, even the gods of men when they forgot their purpose. These small gods. Their lives were so short; like mayflies. He passes his All-Seeing Eye over and through the sixteen remaining deities in His temple, weighing their desires, guiding some, leaving others to their own devices. All is well now. All is back in balance.

The statue was irreparable, but some of the pieces were just big enough to stick bar codes on. In his third life, such as it was, Ang Tuin found himself in something called a gift shop.