“But you came to me and I sent you here, and since your radios went out, they had no idea that you were safely landed.”

“Still, they must have found the plane!”

“No, you know perfectly well that those islands are brought above and below sea level at different times. After you left, the island was brought below the water, and your plane was lost in the sea, no traces were found.”

I was confused, “Onan, does that mean that I was the cause of the war?”

“From a certain point of view, yes.”

He was about to say something else to me when we saw in the distance a group of about ten Munams coming toward us, being at that time a few miles away. He then told me that he must leave me again for the present, as he could not interfere directly with my mission. They bid me goodbye and I did the same to them, and then they walked down the opposite side of the hill that the Munams were approaching from. As they walked, they slowly disappeared, until they were gone without a trace, for even their footprints had faded to nothing.

During the time between Onan and Zimri’s departure and the Munam’s arrival, I was left to myself for a period of inward meditation, an activity that you have probably concluded that I am often given to, which is entirely the case. This new revelation was very troubling to me, that somehow I was the very cause of the destruction of humanity during the great wars, while also the kinsman redeemer over 500 years later, who was prophesied to be the one to bring humanity back into balance with nature, or to thrust it forever off the edge of existence into the damnation of the ice ages. As I told you in the beginning, I am written in the pages of history as the destroyer of humanity, though if it is just or not, I am not able to judge. The name of Jehu will forever be a ripple on the surface of the waters of life, and when it is heard or spoken, the only feeling that it will bring will be hatred and disgust. If only mortals could see below the surface of the waters of life, for just as the ocean can be deceiving on its surface, so can life. Time is like an ocean, but when one looks upon it, what often happens is that all one sees is the present reflected back in its surface, and the eyes are shielded from what lies below, focusing instead on the surface, which is so trivial compared to the abyss which supports it. When one only sees the surface reflected back, then history and its wisdom lose their meaning, and one sees not the past but only the present. What I mean is this: if you look to the past to justify your actions rather than to guide them, you will not see the truths contained therein, but only what your presuppositions already were before you looked, and your ignorance will be reinforced rather than repudiated. Wisdom is the ability to see the past separate from the present, but when one sees the destruction of humanity, he will see only me, his vision being shielded from the true cause of it all, history.

The actions or inactions of one solitary soul cannot bring the end of life, only the accumulation of the wrongs and injustices of a whole race, the human race. Forever I will be eyed as the assassin of humanity, and yet that is not the truth at all, for I am the father of humanity, I am the beginning as well as the end. If you view me only as one or the other, you do not see me at all, but only a pale shadow of my true self. I am Jehu, past, present, and future, I am the concentration of humanity in all its forms and reproductions, I am the creator and destroyer of every age of this temporal maze. Why am I the defender and executioner of the race of men? Why am I the protagonist and antagonist of humanity? Why am I the father and the son, the beginning and the end? Such a question is futile to ask in the physical realm, for here there are no answers to the why’s, they are only to be found in the spiritual realm. The physical realm is left only with the how’s, and it is those which I am attempting to clarify.


Chapter 12: The White Eagle