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The Gatekeeper's Descendants

By Johanna Frank

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The Gatekeeper’s Descendants

by Johanna Frank


 
Prologue: From the Desk of Interventions

Somewhere Inside the Kingdom a File is Opened


The way humans track? I’d say 300 years, give or take. That’s when Megs signed on, and he’s never looked back. That job is his reason for being. He’s the most thankful gatekeeper the kingdom ever had.

I know, I know, things were different then. Such long backups in processing and new arrivals were coming in by the droves. They were desperate to hire, so many jobs to fill. In those days people just had to be eager, show an interest in taking a job.

Now? There’s so much competition, people have to stay “on track,” as they say. Now they need to develop a particular character while on a humankind tour. As if surviving that tour, a lifetime on Earth, isn’t enough.

Yup, those were the good ol’ days, more jobs than there were kingdom citizens to take them. Most citizen folk know Megs as big, strong, and fearless—you know, the kinda guy you’d never mess with and yet the kinda guy whose heart still takes the prize as his biggest feature. But I know him better. I know what made the guy.

You see, Megs, or Megalos, as the king calls him, and I did our journey on Earth together. Actually, that’s when we met. I was a few years his senior and a good deal taller, and back then, we were buddies. He was of the scraggly, timid, weakling sort, forever bumping into things. We were farming buddies mostly, friends by association, I guess you could say. When I was milking our cows, I knew he’d be milking his. When I was feeding our chickens, I knew he’d be doing it too. On those unbearably hot, humid days, I’d feel like a pig shucking all that corn, but somehow it was comforting knowing he was over there yonder, sweating it up just as much.

Our families didn’t visit. My pa didn’t like his pa much, told me to stay away. “Somethin’s not right ’bout that man,” he would say. “Keep an eye out for his boy. Let me know if he needs protectin’.”

I had a perfect view of Megs’ yard from the window beside my trundle. Barely a half field away, a stormwater ravine served as the boundary line. A bunch of lavender bushes grew wild on our side while a rotted-out date palm stood beside a big pile of stones on his. I saw Megs’ pa kicking him in the behind now and again, and once I saw him get shoved into a patch of manure good and hard. Megs scrambled to get up and slipped even deeper. His pa offered him a hand and then yanked it away, causing Megs to slip again, headfirst. His pa laughed and spat out his tobacco, and Megs, well, he didn’t even clench his fists.

I never told my pa. He had a temper, and naturally, I didn’t want to start a feud. But I watched for Megs every day, making sure I caught a glimpse of him at least once, just to be sure he was alive and all. Poor kid, his head always hung in shame. I figured keeping an eye on him was enough, that I was doing good by doing that.

Therein something laid inside me, fresh as thick cement: a foundation of guilt. It was like a prison sentence for the rest of my earth years. How could I have known what was coming? I would ask myself. I had witnessed enough. I should have done something.

Megs was thirteen. I remember well because it was the year of mud, a time of trials, you might say. The horses and carts couldn’t get through most roads. And the harvest that year? It wasn’t much. In fact, most folks had diddly squat, including the farm next door. Megs’ family’s fields were akin to a swamp.

That was when Megs’ pa took the beating and punching indoors. He caught me watching from behind our lavender bush once, just as he heaved a fist into Megs’ temple. After that I couldn’t look no more, was best to forget it all.
One night a couple of weeks later, I heard commotion and some banging around com’n from his way—some muffled yelping too. I did the only thing I thought I could do: I convinced myself all was good. But the consistent haunting woos of the eagle owl hinted otherwise. So, I snuck out of the house, crossed the ravine, and crept up to their kitchen window.

There was Megs, on his back, swinging his arms and legs like a wildcat, only his pa had one of his dung-caked boots pressed hard, squishin’ his gut. Megs was yelling at him. “I hate you! I hate you!” His pa just laughed, called him a wussy mama’s boy.

I’ll never forget that shaky look on Megs’ face. “Yer no pa. I curse you.” Megs spat, but I gotta tell you, it didn’t get far. “I curse you—and all yer relatives . . . to infinity. I curse you. I curse them all!”

That did it. Megs’ pa didn’t laugh this time. His eyes grew devil-like and red with hate. “Yeah, you’ll never escape me. I’m yer family, but I’m gonna make sure you never get yer own.”

His pa grabbed the cast iron pot, still full of hot fat and chops, and well, I didn’t see anymore. Chicken that I was, I ran back home and cowered under my bed. Told no one.

The story ’round the village made no sense. “The boy didn’t have a chance,” people said. “Wolves charged straight through the gate. Jumped him whilst draining out the trough.” The incredulous part, “Not a single calf got touched.”

Megs’ pa blamed the unnatural weather, said it caused wild animals to act like bats in the belfry. Know something? He got away with it. The whole village lapped it up.

But the way my pa looked at me, he knew better. That was no wolf pack; it was a cold-blooded killer, not the kinda pa any kid should have.

I pretty much blamed myself—for not intervening, that is. Things might have been different if I had done something. Maybe I could have stopped it, who knows.

For the rest of my tour on Earth, first thing each sunrise, Megs came to mind. That piercing sound when his pa shoveled gravel around, like it didn’t matter. All I could do back then was score some lavender from our bushes and toss it over the ravine, hoping it would land somewhere close to that pile of stones, hoping Megs would know that I knew and cared his body was down there, rotting in the deep.

Now, I know the rule of time—it does not go backwards. But with the king as my ruler and witness, back then I pleaded with him over and over for a miracle, another chance to intervene, so I could somehow help my dear friend, Megalos.
Well, he heard me. ’Cause now, some three centuries later, Megalos came to me in my kingdom job as head of interventions and him in his kingdom job as head gatekeeper. He was all worked up, didn’t know what to do ’bout a situation. He came asking for a favor. An intervention, something I’m darn good at now. And let me tell you, was I eager to pull a few strings!

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