315) The Salvation of Eden, Chapter 79 — The Nature of Evil

Nobody spoke for a long while, trying to digest what they had heard.

Lenny eventually broke the silence, murmuring, “So, is it true?”

“No way!” exclaimed Devona.

Grok cleared her throat. “I’ve been around a long time,” she said carefully, “and I’ve heard my fair share of the stories and songs. A good proportion of this account does ring true, but it’s been twisted. The story of the Founders, and who they were, the basic details of that were true. But clearly, the rest of it was a bunch of Whiteling propaganda. The Zhaalmohhrians clearly think they're better than everyone else, and this is typical rhetoric of how they are the so-called pure ones and everyone else is inferior. Don't let it get to you.”

“I'd never heard any of that before,” Kohra breathed. “I thought the whole Founders thing was just some old legend, like ‘In the beginning, even though we have no clue what actually happened, here’s a fanciful story that makes no sense, blah blah blah.’ I didn't know they were actual people!”

There were murmurs of agreement all around. Grok shrugged. “I honestly don't know, Kohra, how much of that was true. But certainly some of it was.”

“Hist'rrry was errrased in de Lost Age, prrrobably forrrever,” Gorb tried to explain. “Dey say de Foundin’ rrrrepresented an actual First Meetin', when de Peoples dat survived de Lost Age encounterred each udder. Dey say de firrrst ones t’meet werrre Slayerrrs, out battlin' de grrreat Beasts o’ de Wild, and den rrrealized derrre werrre udderrr pockets o’People trrrroughout d’lands. Dey became frrriends, 'untin' t’gedder an' learnin' frrrom each udder. Frrrom derrre, all de Peoples began t’ unite. Derrre's a centrrral meetin' place frrrom d’Old Stories, what dey call d’Age o’ Conquest, de time between de Lost Age and d’Age o’ Kings dat we'rrre in now. Dis meetin' place was called de Nexus.”

“Let me get this straight.” Lenny tried to put it all together. “Once upon a time, four people met: Graaslach the Whiteling, Tarlan the Human, Caerrlayn the TreePerson or whatever, and Philippa the Klliik. Right?”

“So far so good,” Devona nodded.

“Okay, so Graaayyyeeesssssslchhh, the old racist psychopath, gives rise to a whole ‘family’ of similarly fine, upstanding people. And they think they should rule over everyone because…they’re superior and that’s all the justification they need? So the Whitelings, ruled by this Zhaalmohhrian family, become super-rich and powerful and hold all these magical secrets and stuff for thousands of years. Is that right?”

“You’ve got it,” Grok agreed.

“Why do the Whiteling think they're better than everyone else?” Reilly asked, annoyed. “What's so great about them?”

Lenny hesitated. “Hmmm, big question!” She looked around. “Uh, anyone?”

Devona cleared her throat. “You see, Reilly, it’s about their mental state. People who feel insecure about themselves, deep down inside, sometimes deal with the yucky feelings by kind of shoving them away.”

“How do you shove your mind away?” Reilly asked. Kohra looked over, surprised to hear such a question coming from an eight year old. But then again, Reilly was no regular eight year old.

Devona nodded. “There are many different ways. One thing people do is think really obsessively about something. Like you might think about how much better you are than other people, and spend so much of your time thinking about that, that you sort of forget whatever else might be bothering you. So, sometimes, if you have doubts about yourself, you end up convincing yourself that you’re actually better than everyone else.”

Lenny glanced sidelong at Kohra, catching her eye and smirking. Kohra immediately looked away, hoping Dev hadn’t noticed. But inside, she was smiling.

Reilly looked confused. “So….” She stopped, shaking her head. “So people who feel bad about themselves actually feel great about themselves?” She blinked a couple of times, as though the effort to contemplate this was stretching her capacity, or perhaps her patience.

Devona smiled, like a patient teacher. “Yes, sort of. People who feel bad about themselves at a deep level can, at a different level, believe the opposite.”

She paused, thinking. “But this means that the deep feelings of not being as good as other people, are both kept in check AND are reinforced by the tendency to think of themselves as better than other people.” She looked down at Reilly, smiling. Reilly stared back like she had glazed over long ago.

Then spontaneously, Reilly replied, “So, sometimes you act like a know-it-all because you feel bad about yourself?”

Devona’s eyes widened momentarily. She looked away. Then back at Reilly, totally composed. “Well, yes! Most people do something like that.” She smiled, although it did look a little thin. “Basically, it’s a long story, I guess you—”

“No, not really,” Reilly interrupted. “The Druids say that animals will bite you when their leg is caught in a trap, even if you’re trying to help them.”

Devona laughed, then stopped, nodding thoughtfully. She put her arm around Reilly and the little girl snuggled her head into Devona’s chest; she was getting sleepy.

Lenny spoke up suddenly, as though she wanted to break them out of all this serious talk. “Okay, so we learned a lot today. This Grrrraaaaggghsschllllsgggghsssshh person” (Reilly giggled), “was a bad, nasty lady. And the Whitelings suck, even though they think WE all suck. And then there’s this Tarlan guy, the Founder of the Humans. Turns out, he’s a patsy, easily manipulated by the vastly superior Graaaxxssslllacccchhhhhppppp….” (Reilly giggled). “So Humans become the unwitting tools of the secretive Whiteling Empire? Which means, uh, history as we know it is all a big lie. It's like —”

“Pieces on a chessboard!!” Dominic shouted. “I knew it!!”

Kohra winked. “It's going to be all because of doors in the end, Dom.”

He laughed.

Melkorn laughed too, slapping his knee with his meaty paw. “Yeah! I hate doors! Hahaha!!”

Lenny brought their attention back to her. “Okay, okay, pay attention, this is all gonna make sense. We’ve got Graggly-schtick the Racist, Tarlan the Patsy, and then there's Philippa of the Klliik, the tough and hardy Barbarians of the Wild. They're super-awesome and powerful and stuff, so naturally, Graggly-smush and the Whiteling hate the Klliik and therefore, plot against them.”

She paused, taking a deep breath. “Finally, rounding off this happy bunch is the mysterious Caer-baer, the fairy-Elf. Now the fairy-Elves are super-cool, but they're just too damn weird, so everybody hates them and thinks they're savages. So they all have a big war, and then the Elves run away and hide behind a wall.”

Lenny paused, collecting her thoughts, taking a sip from her waterskin. “So then the Horde Wars happen and destroy almost everything, but because of some great heroes and super-weapons like this Sword we now carry with us, civilization endures.”

She paused once more, looking around at each person in silence, before continuing. “Then King Anthor comes along and decides to take over everything. Only he can prevent the Hordes from rising again, he says. Only he can bring peace.”

Suddenly a flame shot out of her finger, bright orange, a couple of inches long like an extra-large candle flame. Casually, she brought it up to her face, lighting the cigar that she suddenly stuck in her mouth.

Coughing a little, puffing out a voluminous cloud of pleasantly dusky tobacco, Lenny grinned. “And anyone who resists, like the previously peaceful Brothers and Sisters of the Scarves, get called criminals and terrorists, and it’s all-out war.” She lay back, exhaling a second cloud. “Anthor tells all its citizens that we are the Kingdom of the Free, and we’re spreading Freedom to the rest of the worlds. And thus, we go to war. This, my friends, are the worlds we live in.”

Kohra let out an audible sigh. “Things shouldn’t be like this. You know? All these wars? It’s just so stupid.”

Lenny grunted. “Yep. And the real doozy is when the so-called bad guy is thinking the same way. They’re just protecting themselves from your own violent society. What else are they supposed to do?”

Kohra punched her in the shoulder. Lenny just laughed.

“But seriously Lenny, that isn’t what’s happening here, and you know it,” Kohra stated. “The King IS a war-monger. Anthor DOES invade other lands, for no reason but greed. And why? Why would anyone need to do all that? Just to get more powerful? I mean, isn’t that what Evil IS?”

Nobody spoke for a while. There didn’t seem to be much else to say. The King WAS evil. It was as simple as that.

Finally, Grok offered, “I don't there is a single, simple answer to the question of Evil. Because even if we say the King is Evil, then what does that mean? Why is he that way? Was he, as a baby, born Evil, as though being a murderous dictator is built right into the fibre of who he is? Of course not! Something happened to him along the way in life, some kind of pain or heartbreak, some kind of violence, to make him turn to the extreme power-seeking path he has chosen to tread.”

She paused, letting her words sink in, before adding, “And if that is true, then it means that what we call an ‘Evil person’ doesn’t really exist. It’s more like an evil pattern-in-the-world, a ghost or a spirit that flits from person to person, poisoning their minds with the promise that Power will solve all their problems, indeed all the terribleness in the world. Seeking to destroy what they see as the Evil that has caused their own suffering, they end up in the same darkness. And thus, Evil endures.”

“No way.” Kohra shook her head, her face red and her gaze narrowed in anger. “The King is evil, period. Everybody faces suffering in life, but we don’t all become tyrants.”

“Really?” Grok arched an eyebrow. “Maybe we just don’t all get the opportunity. Think about tyrannical bosses with their employees. Tyrannical parents with their kids. Tyrannical teachers. Guards. Judges. You give anyone power, who has first been seeded with suffering, and you have the recipe for a tyrant. We’re all susceptible. Even me.” She smiled again, warmly, hoping that Kohra would be able to take this in.

“No way.” Kohra shook her head. “Not me. I mean, I’ve got lots of flaws, I’ll be the first to admit. But there’s no way I would harm people, no matter how much power you gave me.”

“There’s an entire former military encampment that disagrees with you,” Lenny muttered from the side.

“That’s different!” Kohra protested. “We had to do that! We had no choice!”

“Really?” Lenny responded coolly, arching an eyebrow just like Grok had done a moment before.

“No! They were Evil!” Kohra practically shouted. Then she promptly stood up and stalked off, sitting on the bottom steps with her back to them.

Grok was still musing. “I guess we all have some of that need for power, that desire to be better than others, in order to make ourselves feel like we are good enough,” she continued. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “But as to why, I cannot say. The hunger for Power arises in people in all civilizations, in all the Races, in all the Worlds. You might also say that each of us can veer towards the good, or the bad, depending on what we choose to do. But the capacity, the potential, even for great evil, is there within each of us.”

Reilly eventually broke the long silence that followed. “How can Good win, when the Bad is so powerful? And….” She hesitated, eyes darting back and forth like she was struggling internally to NOT think about what she was thinking about, but it was too late; she was already thinking about it. And she did need to ask.

“I…I, we saw things. Like, with the Reapers. We saw some other world or something. Like, is that the Hells? Are they real? And….” She stopped again, staring intently at the ground, but everyone could see the tears welling in her eyes. “If there’s that much Evil power to have, like, a whole world to themselves, then how can we win? How can any of this even matter?”

Kohra wanted to reach out and hug her at that moment, screaming “I know, right?” but realized it wasn’t the right time. Better to let this dawning awareness settle in of its own accord. Besides, she still had her back to them and was pretending not to listen.

Grok nodded sagely. “Good question, Reilly, good question. I wondered that for a long time too. The sheer immensity and power of Evil, when you really start to encounter it, seems overwhelming.” She reached over, patting Reilly’s leg reassuringly.

“You…you don’t wonder about this anymore?” the little girl asked, looking over. 

Grok shook her head. “Not really. I finally realized that Evil only looks more powerful, because it needs to in order to give itself power. But deep down, Evil is weak. It needs the trappings of violence and symbols of success and dominance, in order to project an image to the world that it is powerful and should be feared. And this is because Evil lives in fear. Evil is, at its root, the inability to trust.”

Nobody said anything for a minute, each person trying to understand what Grok had just said.

So she continued. “The fight against Evil is really the fight to build better connections between so-called Good people. It is to bond people together, in civil society, in groups and organizations, and then to direct their collective energies towards creating a world based on principles and values they believe in.” She smiled, more than a hint of nostalgia coming into her eyes. “It’s like making a net; you have to tie enough knots together, and then it becomes very strong.”

“But WHY?” Kohra lamented finally, looking back from her perch on the stairs. “Why is all this gods-damned drama necessary? Why can’t we just live happily together in peace? It’s so FRUSTRATING!!!” She paused, her fists clenching for a moment, trying to centre herself again. “Do you know what I’m asking, Grok? Like, why why why why why??”

Grok listened, nodding sympathetically, then shrugged again. “When the questions get big and grand and universal enough, Kohra, I never know the answer. Who can ever, truly understand ‘the Big Picture’”?

“Grrrannie always said 'Yerrr a long time dead,’” Gorb added thoughtfully.

Lennie burst out laughing. “How in the Hells is that supposed to help?”

“She’d also say ‘Head doon, arse up!’ an’ give ye’ a swat on de rrrump, like dis!” he laughed, giving Lenny a hard smack on the butt.

“A HA!!” Lenny cried, spinning around and smacking him right back. “Have at ye then!”

“Aye!” Gorb laughed. “Life’s too short t' worrrry 'bout figurrrin' ev’rrryt'ing — hey! AAAAAHHHH!!” he bellowed, as Lenny jumped right on his head, wrapping her legs around his neck and pulling his beard up over his face.

When their scuffle was over and Gorb had recovered his composure, Lenny turned to Kohra, all serious like she was merely continuing their deep, philosophical conversation and hadn’t just been wrestling in the dirt with a grumpy LightSinger.

“So what do you think of the rest of that whole Whiteling crap? You and me are both Elves, more or less, but we don’t know anything about our people, and nobody else seems to either, except that we once lived in tribes or something, but we seem to have disappeared and the only Elves that are left are just like everyone else, mostly.”

She didn't have to specify how they looked different. They'd both grown up knowing that they didn't look like most of the people of Anthor, and they'd all heard “savage,” “dirt face,” “crap eater” and all the rest. That was part of the common experience of being an Elf in Anthor. But other than that (as though one could put aside such a thing so easily), being an Elf wasn't much different from being any other peasant on the poor end of the economic spectrum. 

“I like the idea that our people seemed too mysterious to understand,” Kohra said dreamily.
“So that nobody liked your kind?” Devona replied. “And then what, you all disappeared in a genocidal war?”

Kohra didn't know what to say, so she stayed silent. Why was Dev so insensitive?

And beside, she DID like the idea that the Elves were mysterious. And the whole Green Wall thing…. THAT sounded amazing. She imagined a magnificent kingdom of her people, living in peace and wisdom behind the Wall, separated from the warmongering drama of Eden.

Maybe…maybe that was possible?