The Vorrh

smile and waited.
    The hiss of the final expletives drained away; the Frenchman was ready to turn and stomp back to the hotel when, with a smooth and simple action, Seil Kor took a fine, silken scarf from his head, and loosely knotted it about the red and raging throat of the small man before him. The world dropped away. The blue of the linen and the sky melted together, a fresh breeze cooling his heart and soothing his mind.
    With all the venom and distress gone, Seil Kor took his hand and led him on, bringing them to the doors of a nearby church. He directed his dazed companion inside, and they sat in the cool of the interior, on one of the dark, carved pews. The Frenchman tried to find words of apology, but it had been so long since he’d used them that he remained dumb.
    ‘I have brought you here to understand the Vorrh,’ said his guide. ‘This house of God is for those travellers who pass near its sacred heart. The Desert Fathers founded this church before one stone was laid on another, before even a single tree was cut. They came out of Egypt like the prophets of old, came to guard and wait, to protect us and those travelling through us.’
    The Frenchman looked around the chapel. Images of trees dominated the iconography; trees and caves. Black, kohl-rimmed eyes stared out of a face that looked like it had been carved with an axe. Dark, shoulder-length hair and a tangled beard framed the whiteness of the Father’s staring expression. In one hand he held a bible, in the other a staff. He sat in a cave, surrounded by the deep green of an impenetrable forest. The scene had been set on a square piece of thick and gnarled wood. The Frenchman stared at the icon while the tall black man spoke over his head.
    ‘The Vorrh was here before man,’ he said. ‘The hand of God swept over this land without hesitation. Trees grew in its great shadow of knowing, of abundance. The old silence of stones was replaced by the silence of wood, which is not quiet. A place for man was made, to breathe and be thankful. A garden was opened at the centre of the shadow and the Vorrh was given an occupant. He is still there.’
    The Frenchman’s eyes unlatched from the gaze of the saint. He turned to look up at Seil Kor. ‘The Bible says the children of Adam left the sacred lands and moved into the world.’
    Seil Kor made a gesture over his own head, a cross between wafting a scent and stroking a halo. ‘Yes, so it is written – but Adam returned.’
    They continued to talk while the heat of the day prowled around the chapel. The Frenchman had given up the last remnant of sexual desire for his companion. It had been present from the start, a rich, thick musk of fantasy that had excited their meetings. He had seen no reason, initially, why he should not possess the black prince, and add him to the list of urchins, sailors and criminals who had spiced the gutter of his sexual greed. He was handsome, and presumably well-endowed; his obvious poverty would have made him easy to purchase for a short time.
    But the words in Seil Kor’s mouth – the certainty of his vision and the kindness in his eyes – had washed away those stewed perfumes, replacing them with an ethereal distance that shocked back the very pride and circulation of his vital cynicism. The tired ghost of his ennui had been offered colour and hope. He had begun to sense, with some fear, that Seil Kor tasted of redemption. He even found himself giving weight to the ludicrous myths of the Vorrh, and the salvation that might shudder in them. They talked of the serpent sin, of deliverance, of the starry crown, and the origin of purpose; Adam’s house in paradise, his generations, Eve’s punishment, and all the crimes of knowledge. During those moments, his eyes had wandered back to the saint, and to his brothers lining the walls. He took in the black and white prints of angels; some he’d recognised as being pages from a book, torn and framed excerpts of Gustave Doré’s visions of heaven and hell. The images were solid, almost marble in appearance, so different from the glowering Desert Father patriarchs of the icons, who all had the same eyes, an impossible combination of tempera infinity and point-blank, chiselled authority. It had occurred to him that Seil Kor had younger versions of the same eyes, and that they would mature into that same gaze of stern wisdom.
    As the conversation came to an end, the Frenchman noticed another painting. Smaller than the rest