Alliterati Issue 4

the Prophet’s mouth, “It will be so.”

The sun poured through the tent flap, and dappled the Prophet and High Priest with its light, glittering off of their naked iron. They stood in the entrance of a tent of the Levite tribe, their kinsmen and priest of the cult of Yahweh. The priests were attending to the idol, leaving just the women and children in their communal home. Aaron stepped forward, ignoring the greetings of his family with tears running down his face, and translated Moses’ vile groans.

You have turned your back on your God. You have consorted with serpents, you have defiled the holy days, you have chanted the names of demons. You “I’m sorry,” he whispered in his own voice. Forcing it out like an arrowhead from a wound.

- are to be cleansed.

Aaron closed his eyes and lashed out with his blade, smiting an ancient woman. Chaos filled the tent as Moses screamed and frenzied, rending apart those nearest him. Those who escaped the tent poured into the hands of the warriors, hard-eyed and anointed, who dispatched them without mercy.

They moved from the tents of the women like a wildfire, consuming each and every member of the Levites, until they came to the golden calf and the other idols, surrounded by the priests, armed only with ritual daggers. Aaron looked towards Moses, who appeared to be in a fugue, covered in gore and filth. Apparently there was to be no decree from God for this massacre. He wearily signaled his warriors to murder the last of his kinsmen, who died almost without complaint, protecting the idol of his lord.

As the last priest fell stricken into the pink hued sand, Moses and Aaron strode towards the Golden Calf, careful not to tread on the icons that were arrayed in around the statue. The massacre was complete, and the last two levites, God’s voices on earth, surveyed their work.

“What of the idols, Moses?” Aaron asked, his powerful voice cracked and dry. “Shall we destroy them?” The prophet shook his head. There was a fine line between idolatry and common sense. Even now, bolstered by his God’s strength, he could hear the other ancient voices raging and promising untold torments. He tilted his head meaningfully.

“We move?” Aaron asked. The prophet nodded and screeched.

To the Promised Land! Aaron held his bloody sword aloft and strode towards his warriors and the crowd of onlookers, who scattered in fear towards their dwellings. We will leave this place of villainy tonight! Children of Israel, break camp for the land of milk and honey.

Alone among the dead, Moses reached towards the calf, caressing its golden flanks, and wordlessly reciting the prayers in many tongues that adorned its sides. With a rough chop of his blade, he separated the Ankh from the calf ’s head and tucked it into his robes, leaving without a backward glance at the dead littering the ground, already beginning to bloat in the desert heat, or the rows and rows of silent gods who would guard them as their bodies corrupted and beyond.

Sixteen years later, the Israelites marched towards the promised land like a trail of tiny black ants, while on a mountain, the Prophet and High Priest, last of the Levites, waited for God. The years weighed heavily on Aaron’s once proud and strong form, leaving him grey and broken, while upon Moses’ prematurely aged visage, there had been almost no change. For the first time in forty years, they looked like brothers, shrunken and maddened raisins.

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