Bright and Distant as the Moons
by Joshua Lampkins
He now stepped out of his prayer closet into the main chamber. It was shaped like a square amphitheater, or perhaps an inverted ziggurat. The temple had been built over a fissure in the bay from which fresh air constantly bubbled up, and the bottom of the amphitheater was an open square of water that caught the bubbles. On the ledge just above this square stood the gasping visitor.
Why gasp? The visitor was, like Poatnum, a variant of human that had evolved for aquatic life. He should have had no difficulty holding his breath during the dive from the surface of the bay down to the temple. Unless he had rushed to get here.
For a time the newcomer stood and slowly rotated, gawking at the candlelit stonework, at the gilt reliquary that contained a fingerbone of Sendil’s, at the broad ceiling of stained glass. Then he noticed Poatnum and gave a start.
“Oh!” he said. “I didn’t think there’d be anyone here at this hour.”
“99 times out of 100, you’d be right.” Poatnum stepped down to the newcomer, and they shook their webbed hands. “I’m Father Poatnum.”
“A pleasure.”
The priest handed him a towel. When the stranger had finished drying, Poatnum said, “Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“Oh, it’s… Dember.”
“And what brings you here, Dember?”
“Well, I heard this bay had one of the last few water temples, so I thought I’d make a pilgermidge of sorts.”
“‘Pilgrimage’.”
“Right, pilgrimage.” Dember scanned the temple with his darting, squirrel-like gaze. “I don’t see any beds.”
“Beds? Churches don’t normally have beds.”
“I was hoping I could sleep here.”
“Wouldn’t you rather sleep in the village and come back in the morning?”
“Well, I’m on a pilger—a pilgrimage, and I figured sleeping in a temple would make it more, you know, holy, or suchlike.”
Poatnum scratched his hairless head. “I suppose I can accommodate you.”
He grabbed a few towels and led Dember to a higher level of the amphitheater, where the air would be slightly warmer, and spread the towels out into a makeshift bed.
Dember’s stomach growled. And although Poatnum had eaten an ample dinner, opposing forces had fought in his mind during long hours of prayer, and his battle-wearied brain needed sustenance. He opened a cupboard and brought out a package wrapped in seaweed and tied with twine.
“These food stores are reserved for the destitute,” he said, “but I think we are both poor in spirit, so I’ll allow a special dispensation.”
The two ate the dried fish and drank nettle tea. Dember held the wooden cup just below his chin to let the steam warm his face.
“You run this place by yourself?” he asked.
“For now. I’m hoping to recruit a boy from the village into the priesthood someday, but persuasion isn’t my forte, and none of them seem interested.”
“So what happens to the temple if you can’t recruit someone?”
“Well, well, well. I ought to brew more tea.”
While the water heated, Dember’s gaze drifted to the mural. It depicted a priest and a nun. The priest stood on the shore eyeing a forest fire that was being smothered by rainfall. The nun swam under the bay smiling at a school of fish. Each held a marble-sized object, opalescent with veins of red and blue.
“What are those things they’re holding?” asked Dember.
“Those are miracles. Both of them were found in this very bay. Mendo used his to summon rain to stop a conflagration, and Quimmer used hers to stop an infection that plagued our fish. The first was found 174 years ago, and the second, 133 years ago.” Poatnum smiled bitterly. “In those days, it would’ve been easy to recruit a priest here.”
Dember’s gaze continued wandering, then floated upward. He grunted and sprang to his feet.
“Wait a second. That ceiling is stained glass. Can’t people above see us in here?”
“Not really. As you can see, the glass is pebbled. If they saw anything, they would see two indistinct blobs.”
Dember sighed and sank into his seat. Poatnum sat for a while running his finger along the rim of his cup while studying his visitor’s worried face. He set the cup down and said, “Father Colbin served here before me. He taught me what it meant to be a priest, and also how to handle a congregation. One of the most useful things he ever said was that you should never criticize anyone unless they request criticism. So I ask your permission: May I pass a criticism on you?”
Dember shrugged. “I guess so.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
Dember groaned and chewed his lower lip. “Fine. I’m not here on a pilgermidge. I’m not even Christian. I came here for sanctuary. You know, protection from the law.”
“What did you do?”
“I was just trying to provide for my family.”
“But what specifically did you do?”
“Provide for my family! That’s all! I swear!”
Poatnum splayed his wide hand on his head and screwed up his face.
“Will you let me stay?”
“Of course I will. I am obligated to. But if I’m going to keep you here, I’d like to know your real name.”
“It’s Lahd.”
“Very well, Lahd.” Poatnum walked toward the temple bottom. “We’ll continue this conversation in the morning.”
“Wait! Aren’t you going to stay here with me?”
He looked back and smiled. “Don’t fret. The laws of sanctuary ensure your safety whether or not a priest is nearby.”
“But I’d feel safer if you slept here, at least for tonight.”
The priest pondered and wiggled his nose. “Alright. For tonight, at least.”
Poatnum woke to find Lahd sprawled and snoring. Not wanting to be waylaid on his way out, he left quickly and quietly.
His head breached the surface of the water with a splash and a smile. The bubbles rising from the fissure massaged his skin, so he lingered there awhile and gazed about.
Fishermen had tied ropes around their waists and were towing their coracles out of the bay. Goats were being herded inland for grazing, their plangent bleats carrying over the water. From this distance, the village huts resembled fat mushrooms. The fringes of the palm frond roofs swished in the breeze.
On a normal morning, there would be children splashing in the water by now. They instead stood in tight clusters around a landed cruiser just beyond the village. As Poatnum neared the shore, he saw the emblem of the police on the hull.
He went first to old man Teel’s garden patch to buy potatoes and herbs for his captive guest. Everyone watched him plod among the huts. Whenever he greeted someone, they smiled affably but resumed whispering as soon as he had passed. Teel himself regarded Poatnum with an unbroken gaze and a mischievous smirk. Once the priest had paid, Teel said, “They’re after you,” jerking his head toward the police cruiser.
“What for?”
Teel shrugged and chuckled.
Poatnum wasn’t any more fond of the police than the other villagers were. But neither was he fond of delaying inevitable unpleasantries. He headed for the cruiser.
Some officers stood about idly chatting or playing quoits. The children watched the tall newcomers’ every movement. Nearly all the police and elected officials on this planet were Old Stock humans, a race that had managed to keep their genetic makeup intact through millennia of spacefaring and colonization. Some of the children were too young to remember the last time Old Stock had been in the village, and could only compare the people they saw to pictures in history books about Earth.
When confronted with strange new people, children gravitate to either fearful aversion or unabashed acceptance. A young boy of the latter group was dangling by his hands from the cruiser’s left wing and kicking at an officer, who was playfully prodding the boy with his club. When the officer noticed that the children now stared at Poatnum instead of himself, he asked, “You wouldn’t happen to be the priest, would you?”
Poatnum nodded. Two men led him to the back of the cruiser and up a ramp into the bay.
A woman sat at a folding table working on her tablet. She wore denim and leather, and her blonde hair had been sprayed into a rigid coiffure.
“Poatnum!” she said. “About time you showed up.”
Alone with three people of the Old Stock, Poatnum was acutely aware of his own racial traits. He was half their height, skin copper-colored and slippery smooth, utterly hairless, wide mouth and nose, massive lungs. The woman, whose name was Detective Crail, applied a balm to her lips, which Poatnum suspected was an attempt to mask the smell that so many of the Old Stock found offensive.
“We understand that you’re in charge of the underwater temple in the bay.”
“That is correct.”
“We’re looking for a fugitive by the name of Lahd Voader. Are you harboring him in that temple?”
“The laws of sanctuary prevent me from answering such a question.”
“We know he’s there. We have satellite footage of him diving into the bay and not coming back up.”
“If you know he’s there, then you don’t need me to say anything.”
They were seated across from each other. Crail leaned forward with a frown so that she could look down on Poatnum. Old Stock humans sometimes used their height to intimidate Aquatic humans.
“What is this Lahd’s crime?” asked Poatnum.
“He cut down a tree on reserved land.”
“How old was it?”
“Over 150 years.”
He winced. “And what’s the penalty for so old a tree?”
“Death.”
Poatnum knew he couldn’t outperform Crail at intimidation, but being a priest, he had a lot of practice affecting an air of fatherly reprimand. He put on such a face now.
“I know some of your kind think the conservation laws are overly strict,” Crail said.
“Some might say ‘barbaric’.”
“We believe that what happened to Earth was barbaric, and we don’t want a repeat of that here. Which is why we must make an example of the man cowering under the bay.”
“The laws of sanctuary protect anyone residing in the temple.”
“There are no laws of sanctuary. It would be perfectly legal for us to raid the temple, but we’d prefer it didn’t come to that.”
“Why not?”
She interlaced her fingers, squeezed her hands, and tried to smile. “Relations between the consortium and the church are already… strained.”
“Outlawing pilgrimage to Sendil’s atoll was perhaps inadvisable.”
“The pilgrimages were disrupting fragile habitats.”
“No more than the destruction often caused by subsistence fishing. And the waters of the atoll had the largest concentration of miracles in any of our oceans.”
“How many was it?”
“72.”
“And how many years—or decades—has it been since any miracle was found there?”
“That’s unimportant. We celebrate all of Christ’s miracles, regardless of when they occurred.”
Sweat was causing her makeup to trickle. “Why do you force a Christian interpretation on what is clearly a natural phenomenon? Buddhists on the eastern coast used the miracles to good effect.”
“All miracles come from Christ, no matter the faith of the beneficiary.”
She smirked. “What a quaint way of seeing things.”
Poatnum was aware that sometimes an Old Stock human’s skin color might change with their emotion. He was grateful that his own skin couldn’t hint at the crisis of faith that had been plaguing him.
“We want your permission to enter the temple and arrest Lahd Voader. Will you cooperate with us?”
Poatnum stood. “Let me put it this way: I’ll be as cooperative with the consortium as the consortium has been with us.”
He walked past the glares of the two officers and left.
Perhaps voluntary confinement was just what Poatnum needed. Lahd couldn’t bear to live in the temple alone, so Poatnum moved in with him, and attending to the other’s needs was a welcome distraction from his existential despair.
The police didn’t dare enter the temple, but they couldn’t abandon their quarry without losing face. So they set up tents outside the village and posted sentries on either arm of the bay. The tension the villagers initially felt during the occupation was quickly melted by the warmth of lucre. The Old Stock police had large bellies and would pay handsomely for food they found novel.
The police glared at Poatnum whenever he passed, but that was the extent of their aggression. He was more amused than intimidated. Nevertheless, the police were “a prickly sort of people,” as old man Teel put it, and Poatnum avoided them. He now only entered the village to buy food.
Once he went into his hut to gather some personal effects and realized that things were a trifle out of order. The place had been searched. He chuckled at this and swam back to the temple.
Lahd slowly learned the rhythms of religion. He knelt, chanted, fumbled with beads. During services, Poatnum made Lahd take communion last, as he was apt to gulp instead of sip. The churchgoers initially stared at him, but he was voluble enough that whatever air of danger had initially surrounded him soon dissolved into acceptance.
Lahd made it clear that he didn’t believe any of the church’s dogmas, but he evinced a genuine curiosity about religion, which Poatnum was happy to sate. Once when the two were resting after sweeping the temple, Lahd asked, “But why are you so sure the miracles come from Christ? They’re just little pearl-like objects on the sea floor.”
“All miracles come from Christ.” The answer tasted stale in his mouth.
“But the Bible talks about miracles as spiritual things. The miracles here are physical.”
Poatnum raised his eyes and watched the dim silhouettes of fish through the stained-glass ceiling. “Is there any difference between the physical and the spiritual? How could we tell? We say that a stone is physical because it affects other physical objects. Place it in your hand, and you feel its weight. Drop it in water, and there’s a plop. But everything we call ‘spiritual’ also has its effect on the physical. Christ’s allegedly ‘spiritual’ miracles healed ailing bodies. Physical food was multiplied. Even visions, which would seem to affect only a person’s spirit, have their effect on the brain, for otherwise the visionary could never move their lips to describe what was seen.”
Poatnum pointed to a crucifix hung on the wall.
“Christ didn’t just resurrect in spirit. He resurrected in a body, and that’s what He promises us. This ran athwart the Greek philosophy prevalent in His time, which eschewed the physical in favor of the spiritual. It’s one of the things that makes Christianity unique.”
Poatnum yawned and rubbed his knees. Lahd stared at him with uncharacteristic fixity.
“Mind if I offer a criticism?” asked Lahd.
“I welcome it.”
“You’re a terrible liar too.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t believe any of that stuff you just said.”
Poatnum’s body suddenly felt heavy. “I’m trying to believe.”
The salty breeze carried news from the village inland and upland. Reporters arrived to document the political predicament. “More mouths to feed!” said old man Teel, thudding his cane into the dirt. “Price of my potatoes is going up!” In addition to conducting interviews, the newcomers photographed every aspect of village life, and people found themselves unconsciously posing while going about their business.
Neither police nor journalists would dare enter the temple without permission, and Poatnum wouldn’t dare give them permission. It was the only place he could rest free of importunement. He, too, was under the protection of sanctuary.
One week after the reporters arrived, a large cruiser of the consortium landed in the police encampment. When Poatnum next entered the village, two agents of the consortium, better dressed and more tactful than the police, asked if Poatnum might enter the cruiser for a “mutually beneficial conversation.”
On the one hand, he wasn’t in the mood for more conversational deadlock. On the other, the unspoken disdain in which the authorities held him had been rasping on his nerves and playing with his imagination, and speaking with them might bring his flights of worrisome fancy back to the ground. So he acquiesced.
The interior of this new cruiser felt more like a wealthy home. It had soft carpets, wide windows, and walls painted light blue with a matte finish. They had also stocked it with an easy chair sized to fit an Aquatic human.
Poatnum sat across from Chancellor Kaia. Her kimono was ornate, her nails were immaculate, and her manners were genteel in a way that he found unsettling.
“Poatnum! So glad to meet you at last. Your moral courage has drawn admiration from many, myself included. Do you like matcha? This is fine stuff here.”
She whisked up a cup of tea for each of them. The priest tried unsuccessfully to mentally grasp the woman in front of him. Her conversation bespoke cunning wit, and yet her propensity to giggle at the faintest whiff of humor made him feel like he was at a tea party with a little girl.
“What’s it like being a priest?”
“Taking up the cloth is much like having children. You don’t know what you’ve signed up for until it’s too late to turn back, and yet somehow you don’t want to turn back.”
“You don’t find it dull?”
“It was quite monotonous until recently.”
Kaia tittered just as she took a sip, giving herself a green upper lip. As she wiped it with an embroidered napkin, she said, “I find gossip very interesting, and I suppose the confessional provides a bounty.”
“I don’t think of it as gossip. It’s not as though I can talk about those things with others.”
“No no no.” She petted his shoulder in a manner both reassuring and condescending. “I won’t ask you to part with any secrets. But if the village did have secrets, you would surely know them, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that of the 53 people in your village employed as fishers, 47 were illegally catching tri-finned burrowers, an endangered species. Many of these 47 would feel guilty enough about their crime against the planet to divulge it during confession, wouldn’t they?”
Poatnum said nothing. He noticed in the pause that tiny paintings of Aquatic humans adorned her china cup. Her fingernail was scratching at one of them.
“And these police!” She swirled her hand toward the window. “There’s so many of them here now. Of course, they won’t leave so long as Lahd Voader is cooped up in your temple. And with their watchful eyes on the bay and the wider sea, they’re sure to notice any illicit catch in the fishers’ boats.”
She set down her cup, folded her hands in her lap, and cocked her head at Poatnum. Her smile cloyed.
“You have made your meaning clear,” said Poatnum.
“Delightful!” She clapped her hands. “I hate just saying what’s on my mind directly. It’s so crude. You’re an intelligent little man. I’m glad you could follow along.”
Poatnum rose to leave.
“Wait! I have something for you.” She held his hand and placed some coins in it. “Why don’t you buy yourself and your congregants some perfume. You might be surprised what a difference a little dab can make.”
He walked away and tossed the coins over his shoulder, which set Kaia giggling.
The water was warm that night. Lahd, who knew nothing of the conference with Kaia, slept soundly on his cot, but an hour of prayer failed to pacify Poatnum’s mind, so he had slipped out of the temple to swim.
Whenever he surfaced for breath, the police stationed around the bay would watch him, and occasionally shine a light at him to see if he was Lahd. So he made use of his race’s outsized lungs and stayed submerged for half hour intervals.
Yet even this couldn’t ensure privacy. Submarines were stationed at the mouth of the bay to prevent Lahd from escaping underwater. So Poatnum swam in circles. As did his mind.
He had always supposed that he would make any sacrifice to uphold his priestly obligations, but the oaths he swore so many years ago seemed quixotic compared to the prospect of 47 fishers being imprisoned. Had the witnesses to that oath ever faced such a dilemma?
Poatnum wondered what Father Colbin would do in this situation. He swam to the herb garden they used to tend together and let himself float. Leaves of viridian and tyrian and umber swayed slowly. He imagined Colbin squatting on a rock and signing to him with his large, calloused hands. But the Colbin summoned by his memory lacked the subtle wisdom of the living man and offered only platitudes. Poatnum swam off.
He did a half-twist so that he now faced up. There was little wind to brush the water’s surface, so the dark canvas of sky held no wrinkles. The moons were nearly aligned. The smaller hugged the larger, like a younger sister seeking comfort from the elder.
Colbin used to say that faith was bright and distant as the moons. The light was enough to guide us through the soul’s icy nights, but the source was too far away to touch. A single clear voice in Poatnum’s mind asked, “Do I believe?” A dozen voices droned in answer.
Sacrificing the livelihoods of 47 people might be construed as heroic if done for a just cause, but doing so for a cause one didn’t believe was beneath even cowardice. Cowards simply cling to safety. Poatnum was clinging to a vocation that no longer brought him joy, a collection of rituals and formulas he was growing to loathe.
He swirled and faced the bay floor. Something in the silty murk seemed to reflect the moons’ light. But as Poatnum floated by, the light didn’t shift like a reflection. It was glowing with a light of its own. He swam toward it.
Noon found Chancellor Kaia strolling the north arm of the bay. The police had cordoned off the area, so reporters could only snap photos of the prim potentate from a distance. But their cameras turned to Poatnum when he approached the cordon and was allowed entry.
Kaia rested her parasol on her shoulder and twirled it. “Poatnum! What a pleasure to see you again.” She sniffed. “Have you come back for the coinage I offered you yesterday?”
“I’ve come to discuss the possibility of placing Lahd into your custody.”
“Splendid! What a boon it is that your intellect isn’t accompanied by a commensurate measure of moral rectitude.” She licked her rouged lips. “How will you deliver my gift to me? On a silver platter?”
“We need to discuss the terms of his release. The death penalty is unjustified.”
She sighed and wiped nonexistent sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Poatnum, how your lapses in memory vex me. When a man like Lahd kills a grand old tree, we must firstly make an example of him, and secondly ensure he can never defile our pretty forests again. Public execution handles both concerns expediently. Wasn’t all this explained to you before?”
“There are other punishments that achieve the same goal. I was just speaking to a friend in the village who knows something of the law, and he says that a chancellor such as yourself can reduce the sentence, within certain limits.”
“Yes, I could. But you might not like those limits. The alternative punishments are somewhat… What was that word you used with Crail? ‘Barbaric’?”
“There was one punishment my friend mentioned that would be suitable.”
“Really? Which one is that?”
The two men stood over the temple’s bubbling entrance.
“You don’t have to do this,” said Poatnum.
Lahd was staring into the water with a screwed-up face. He appeared to be thinking hard, which must have been challenging, because Poatnum had noticed that he avoided thinking whenever possible.
“I hid here because I didn’t want to die, but staying here for the rest of my life would be like death. I’d be dead to my wife and kids. Still…” He splayed his hands and feet, wiggled his fingers and toes. “So many things I’ll never be able to do again.”
Poatnum placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve seen people go through hardships as severe as the one you’re facing. It’s true that some of them turn bitter. But many of them are genuinely happy in the end.”
“How do they do that? How can anyone be happy like that?”
Honesty was not one of Lahd’s virtues, but every trace of guile had left his face. Poatnum had seen this vulnerability in others, those rare moments when a man who had walled up his heart suddenly found those walls dissolving, moments when words could have a lasting impact.
“They do it,” said Poatnum, “by never mourning a life they might have had. By paying attention to what’s before them, the next task at hand.”
Lahd jumped into the water. Poatnum followed.
The morning was sparkling with sun-yellow dewdrops. The sky was vacant of clouds, and the air was cold enough to bite the skin. The police were waiting on the shore, with the villagers congregated behind them in a loose jumble. All were hushed. Even the birds were receptive to the solemn air and kept their chirping to a minimum. Goats, however, have no tact, and they were bleating as loudly as ever.
As soon as the two men reached the shore, Lahd was grabbed by the police. Flashes from cameras assaulted him at once and harried him all the way to the patch of soil where the stakes had been set. Poatnum watched them tie Lahd’s wrists and ankles to the stakes, limbs stretched in an X. Lahd pressed his lips together hard to keep from sobbing, but a few shameful tears rolled from his eyes anyway.
Kaia, as well-groomed and jovial as ever, stood near the captive and faced the crowd. When she saw Poatnum, she winked at him. He made a point of not looking at her again.
She soliloquized for the cameras. She spoke of environmentalism, of treachery, of justice, of sacrifice. When finished, she nodded to a man wearing a black hood like the executioners of old.
He hefted a sledgehammer and brought it down on Lahd’s right hand, then his left hand, then his left foot, then his right foot.
Teel was so old that nothing shocked him anymore. His reaction to everything was a mild humor, as if the years had imparted to him an inside joke that only he knew. When it was noted that Lahd would need a place to stay during his recovery, Teel volunteered. Poatnum supposed that Teel would find his day less boring when spiced with agonized moans.
Once the villagers had moved Lahd to a cot in Teel’s hut, the old man pulled back the four corners of the sheet to reveal the four ruined extremities. He chuckled and said, “Smashed ’em good, didn’t he?”
Poatnum, Teel, and a few others sat in prayer beside the victim. Lahd didn’t seem to notice them. His head rolled back and forth on his pillow.
He lifted his hands to his face. They were disfigured, discolored, and grotesquely swollen.
“I was just cutting wood for my family. Wanted to build a house with nice, solid beams.” He looked at Poatnum. “I see why you cling so hard to faith. You know I don’t have faith in God, but I’ve always had faith in… oh, I don’t know, faith in the goodness of life or something. Feels now like that faith is all I have left. But it isn’t strong, not strong at all. The doubt is much stronger.”
“Death may be the final antidote to doubt,” said Poatnum, “but I’ve found a balm that should suffice for a little while.”
The priest took from his pocket a marble-sized object, opalescent with veins of red and blue. Its lucent glow drew everyone’s gaze. Poatnum placed it on Lahd’s forehead, where it dissolved into milky mist.
There was a crackling as the shattered bones righted themselves.
Joshua Lampkins is an engineer living in Los Angeles. He enjoys reading and writing about people much more than socializing with them, the latter being somewhat tiring. But if he must socialize, he would prefer to do so in the context of a tabletop role-playing game..
“Bright and Distant as the Moons” by Joshua Lampkins. Copyright © 2025 by Joshua Lampkins.
“Bright and Distant as the Moons” by Joshua Lampkins. Copyright © 2025 by Joshua Lampkins.
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