Prophecy by Constantine Gochis

It was a dark and stormy night. Uzama trembled as the slanting rain vented its wrath against his fragile enclosure.  He shuddered at the resounding claps of thunder that were followed by blinding flashes of lightning. It seemed to him that the gods were especially angry.  He clasped his palms before the idol in the sacred apse of his rustic room and prayed.

But it was not the elemental storm that created his fear.  It was the prophecy.  And thruly there had been the predicted signs.  Three, there would be, the Holy Man had said.  He could hear his strident voice, though when he heard them first, he was only a boy.

Last night, when a dark cloud slowly withdrew its obscuring shadow from the sky for a brief respite, there was an orange ring around the moon.  This was the first predicted sign.  He watched from his window as another relentless darkness overspread the pendant sky-lantern.

As if in response to the luminosity of the orb, the wolves began to howl.  True, they did this every night, but it was many hours too early before their prey, the caribou, were wont to thunder across their ambush for the hunt and their nightly feast.

Worst of all, he braced himself for the third sign.  It did not come.  He held his hands against his ears, to no avail.  The voice of his memory persisted; he could hear it though it had not come. The old seer had long ago implanted the unheard sound of doom into his brain.

"You will hear the shrill cry of a child through the maelstrom, and though you hide your head beneath the pillows of your bed, the sound will assail your soul."  Thus, the Holy Man foretold the coming though he did not say what was it that was coming--or who.

Uzama felt the rushing of blood to his face.  He was suddenly ashamed.  The villagers all knew of his obsessive concern about the coming apocalypse. They mocked him playfully though carefully.  It is not that they thought him a coward.  He was known for his courage.  He was, in fact, sitting on the enormous white fur that had once enclosed a polar bear he had vanquished single handed.  The bards of the village celebrated the epic struggle in song.

Over the years he had witnessed the first two signs many times but the third, the compelling cry of the child had not manifested itself; thus, the obsession which always began at the first sign of a dark and stormy night.

But he could not still his fear.  This storm seemed the worst he had ever witnessed.  There was a violence of the sheet like waves of rain as if it was competing with the lightning and thunder for preeminence in the conflict of nature.

Then it came. It pierced his brain.  He could not define it. It was at once animal and human--perhaps a newly born child.  Uzama braced himself for the "Coming". 

What evil was about to take him into darkness. Where? There came the rushing of the wind that seemed to threaten the foundation of his sturdy hut, the earth below trembled and the sacred idol fell to the floor and shattered.  Uzama's consciousness left him. Then suddenly. . . .

He awoke.  He looked about him in terror.  There was no rain, no lightning, no thunder.  He gazed out of the window at a cloudless sky and the huge round moon that hung like a friendly lantern illuminating the emptiness, the soundlessness, of the limitless whiteness outside.

He turned and made obeisance to the Idol in its sacred repository.  Was it his imagination? Was that a smile on the inert face of the figure of the Maker of all things?