03.13.07
The Seer
The lamplight splashed in bursts against the folded dome, white, scarred, and protruded like the brow of Melville’s whale. High atop the crest of the hardened dune hung a thin horizon of limp grass. The exfoliating dome of the Padre’s brow was plowed into rows by deep folds. Stone eyebrows protruded and hovered over his empty eye sockets like mantles over twin hearths, whose fires glowed red through the closed screens of his sagging eyelids.
When the brow relaxed, the depth of the folds diminished, but one fold seemed to split in the center of the dome, exposing something moist and white. It might have seemed to be his exposed cranium, but as the folds parted around it, it began to take the rounded hump of an eye—a moist, ivory eye.
He kept it closed much of the time, and always in mixed company, sometimes under a hat. It wasn’t of any use anyway, not at least in the the same way a typical eye would be. It was utterly solid: it had no cavity for trapping light, but it wasn’t blind; it just saw a different kind of phenomena. It was a kind of hybrid between a navigational orb and an oracle. I never was quite sure what it did, but I had no doubt as to its effectiveness.
I was raised in the Mission Bab-El from birth, so the seer was familiar to me, though it never ceased to be foreign. I saw it regularly, whether in the light or in my dreams.
We sat in the flickering light of the cabin for evening porridge. My spoon clattered slightly as I lifted it off my saucer.
“ere long, …”, began the Padre. I could have looked up to see my image reflected by the damp membrane of the orb, if I had the nerve. “… will come that which will cause the limbs of men to quake.”
His head cocked slightly, and he paused. The white eye opened, and the padre’s brow wrinkled around it. “We reach California tomorrow.”
Just then, the cabin swayed, and I grabbed my bowl and spoon. I resumed shovelling porridge into my mouth.
We had been at sea for week since leaving the Carolinas.
After scraping my bowl clean, I took my bowl and spoon into the galley, then scrambled up the steps to the deck.
