Then he said to me a story, and I try to write it as I remember it.
Once J was in the sky with 333 of the Ice People, and the Star Tower flew like a bird only faster. Then an enemy came and with one hand killed 111 of the Ice People and with the other hand made 111 more of the Ice People sleep so they could never wake up, and then with his spit the enemy made even the last 111 Ice People forget all things.
Then J killed the enemy and brought the Star Tower to this world. There are many worlds, with many people, but this world was empty, and he brought the 111 Ice People who could waken out of the Star Tower and J said that Sara and I and all the others are these Ice People.
But there are not 111 of us, I said.
There will be, he said.
But I am foolish and I asked him, J, who made the Ice People, then? And who made this world if you only found it?
Then J shook his head and laughed softly and said, God did, Kapock.
But this is not an answer, because what is God? I asked him this, but he would say no more, except this: I have told you the truth, but you cannot understand it, neither can any of the others. I will tell you only the truth that you can understand.
This is why I have written all that J said, for somewhere in what he said must be the answer to my question of who made all these things, or of what this God is.
Then J and I went inside, and he said to me that the promise I made to Linkeree and that Linkeree made to me is a good promise, and that this will be the law of all men and women: What a man makes with his own hands is his own; what many men make together belongs to all who worked. When a man owns a thing that another needs, the other must give the man something that he needs in trade for this thing, and the trade must be fair, or it is a crime.
This is a new word, which I shall teach the people. Crime. J said it means those things which if all people did them would make a man want not to live among men.
J said many other things which I will not write because he said not to. I write these things because he did not say not to, and they are important.
After many hours in the darkness J left us, and after he left Sara and I could not sleep, and so I write. But now Sara sleeps and I too can sleep, and so I make an end of writing for this time.
We plow three fields.
The plowing is done and we have plowed three fields. First the field at Heaven City , which is the first and the largest. Then the field where Linkeree and Batta now live, which is not large, but which has black soil that feels warm and that will grow much food, I think.
The third field is at the place where Linkeree built the house that later he burned. We have all built a new house there, and into it Hux has moved. And we have plowed a field with Hux, and he will live alone.
But not alone. Rather only apart from the most of us. For I saw that Hux was truly sorry for all he had done wrong, I believe that he will not let anger make him do such bad things anymore. So I called all the people of Heaven City together and asked them, one by one, saving only Linkeree and Batta, if they had any thing bad to think of Hux for anything he had done to them. And not one of them said anything bad except Sara, and she would not speak. Then I said to Hux, Neither do I have anything bad to say of you, Hux. Yet that is because no harm has been done to me.
I said to him, Linkeree and Batta are the only ones who can speak bad of you. And so I say this: Hux will be allowed to marry Ryanno and live in a new house which we all will build, but only if he asks permission of Linkeree. Then it will be Linkeree who gives Hux a house if he is to have a house. This is only right, for Hux took a house from Linkeree.
Then Hux went to Linkeree and asked him for a house, and Linkeree and Batta said, We will work with our own hands to help build you a house.
That is the house that Hux lives in now, and it has the little door just as Linkeree's own house has, and it is a good house, and when Hux and Ryanno moved into it all of us sang and there was dancing and laughing and we caught many fish and ate them because it was a good day, for even though we live in three places instead of two, we are one people.
And now tonight I thought of what J said to me that night and I think this: When J said, God made all this, he was laughing because I did not know that J made all these things, so he made up a name and said this person did it. Or maybe God is J's other name. But this I am now sure of: J brings the Ice People from the Star Tower , and he is thus the maker of the Ice People. He must also be the maker of other things, for if he can make a man whole, without it growing from a woman, he could surely make all other things. This is what I think. If I am wrong then J will think I am foolish. But then, I am foolish. Why should he not think it?
We have found another thing. The Star River is large, but it goes only a little way from Heaven City and then it flows into a great river, a river so wide that the other side looks as far away as the mountains, and the water is muddy and not good to drink. It is also deep, and a man or woman can only walk a little way and the water is up to the shoulders and the river pulls as if to sweep you away.
Now I see something that I did not know before. There are small rivers and larger rivers. Alone, the small rivers are not strong, like the Star River that we can walk across. But when the small rivers flow into the large ones, then the large ones are stronger.
This is like Heaven City, for Linkeree and Hux live apart, yet they flow into the Heaven City like the Star River flows into this big river. And so I have named the big river Heaven River , and said to the people:
Flow always into Heaven City as you see the Star River flow into the Heaven River . Then Heaven City will always be as strong as you see this great river to be.
But if you flow in different ways, like the Star River does when it splits upstream into two rivers that pass on both sides of the hill I live on, then you become weak.
Not all the people understood me, but many did.
I did not tell them that J is God who made all these things. This is a thing I will keep without telling, for it is a hard thing, and I do not understand it yet.
I am no longer afraid to be Warden. For I know that J does not expect me to act always as he would act. Rather he expects only that I act in the best way I know how to act. And this I can do. And I make an end of writing for this time.
I have thought of J as a father.
Today Ciel spoke to me and said, Father let me come. I was going to shear the sheep and he said, Father let me come.
When he said this I knew that he would someday say other things, and I felt then that someday Ciel will grow wise like the Ice People, and a son of my body may speak to me as my friends speak to me.
And then as I sheared the sheep I thought of J and knew that he is to us as I am to my son Ciel. He is wise and knows many things, all the words and all the names, what to do, when to do it, why it must be done, and what will happen if it is not. None of us knows these things, and we only say to him the things he has taught us to say. Even as I do with Ciel who cannot say all that we can say, J must long to speak to us about things that we could not understand.
I tried to tell Ciel why he could not play among the sheep, for they might hurt him for he is small, but he did not understand.
I laughed and shook my head. This is also what J did when I did not understand. Laughed and shook his head.
J is a father with all the children. He has no one he can talk to as I talk to Sara. He can only talk as I talk to Ciel, in simple words that even then are not always understood.
J is like a father, but he has neither wife nor friends nor father of his own. Or is that where he goes when he leaves us? Is there a father for him inside the Star Tower ? I do not think so, for now I realize that J always looks sad and alone, not happy like I am with my son Ciel. I think J has no one but us to talk to, and we do not understand.