Stranger Times

Burn the Messenger

Entry for the Scifi August Challenge: Perseid Spotting

A blackened skeleton still clung to a fire-kissed stake, even as the smoke finally stopped drifting away from the bones.

There had been a crowd once, hours ago. When the man tied to that stake had been more than a husk of fading charcoal, hundreds had gathered to watch the bonfire strip a man of everything he had tried to be.

They had used his notes to carry the lit flames to the pyre. His books were kindling. His logs and notes, his devices and inventions, were the fuel used to strip his flesh from his body and cast his body into the air.

They burned his life, even as they burned him.

There were only two figures left of the hundreds that had watched the fire. Only two who stayed after the screams had stopped.

"The fire cleanses," an old priest said. His robes were barely more ornate than a wool sack, held over his waist with a piece of rope. The simplest of sandals adored his feet, and on his neck rested the only object in the world he coveted.

A small cross, carved by the girl who watched the pyre alongside him.

"It cleanses his sins. He will ascend to heaven. He'll sing hymns, and have all eternity to ponder The Lord's mysteries," the priest said, and he smiled as he spoke.

The girl turned to him, with dry, red eyes that no longer carried tears. "He won't accept heaven," she said, bitter bile in her accusing eyes.

Those eyes hurt to meet. But he did it anyway. Of the three people in the square, he had suffered least.

"Because he couldn't convert us with his blasphemous teachings?" He asked.

"You loved his theories," she bit back, harshly. "It's why you weren't leading the men that tied him to that stake."

It was also why his robes were made of simple brown wool, unlike the gold-trimmed white linens that adorned the men that cast the flames on the pyre.

"I did. He saw such wonder in our world. I could never see it for heresy. I-"

The girl looked up at him, and he was surprised to see the anger had faded from her eyes. Those eyes were wide, her lip quivered, and her hands were clutched together.

"I still can't. I can't see the evil in it. And I don't understand how anyone else could. Who would kill a man simply because he teaches?"

The girl smiled at him, and pointed to the cross on his neck.

"Glad to see you paid attention on Sundays."

"Did you believe him?" She asked.

He shook his head. "Not his last warning, no. That something from the heavens was going to come down and smite our village? That our only warning was so obscure that the only one who could see it was him? No, not that. That was too much for me. Even from an old friend."

"I didn't believe him either." The girl admitted.

"No one did. He said that today, the moon will pull a rock in the heavens just right, so that it will fall right into our village."

"The Inquisitor even burned him on the spot he marked." The girl added. She sighed once, and said "I'm going to give him a wake."

"That's kind of you. But you can't let someone else see. They're here for heretics, and grieving for one might be enough that they put you there tomorrow," he said, pointing at what remained of their friend.

"I don't plan to do it here. I'm going to go into the hills, where he said we should go by tonight," the girl said. "It should be far enough away from the church to grieve for him."