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Булус, Якутская область, Сиби́рь
(Bulus, Yakutsk Oblast, Siberia)
04:30, 12 September 1960
The sky burned over the foothills to the east of the monastery when he awoke. Quickly, he sat up, stretched, and got out of bed. He looked out of his chamber’s lone window at the horizon and mentally estimated how much time he had before sunrise. By his reckoning, he had about two minutes before his morning devotions. Moving rapidly yet methodically, with the ease that comes of many years’ repetition, the old monk washed his face, dressed and unrolled a small mat in front of the window.
He crossed himself and kneeled on it, facing the coming dawn. He closed his eyes, mentally bracing himself, and, when he felt the first rays of direct sunlight on his face, opened them and began to pray.
A few minutes later, Father Anatoliy stood in front of his mirror, blinking the afterimages away. It seemed that the more times he performed the ritual, the worse it hurt. The схимонах had told him when he was a послушникъ that it was because he was not yet pure, that the pain was God’s anger with his failure to fully devote himself. Clearly, he still had some distance to go before he was worthy of his Схима.
The morning bells rang out, calling the faithful to the morning services, and rousing him from his introspective trance. He looked again out the window, across the golden minarets of the monastery, gleaming in the early morning light. In the distance, a bird lazily circled, riding the thermals high over the sprawling compound. He stood, leaning on the windowsill, taking in the glory of what God had helped them to build out in this frozen hell. He savored the moment. There would not be many more mornings like these for a while. Winter was coming.
After he had taken his breakfast and performed his role in the morning devotions came the monumental daily task of managing the network of hundreds of traveling priests that ranged the order’s territories to the far north. As the head monk of the traveling corps, he was tasked with reading the reports of the dozen-odd priests that returned each day, tasking out assignments to those heading out and keeping track of all the current routes that had been assigned, so that no village in the oblast, no matter how small, went without the Lord’s presence. Even with the five assistants that were tasked to his office, it was a job that consumed most of his waking hours each day. He would resent it, were it not for the satisfaction of bringing the light to so many people.
He flipped through the stack of reports on his desk, all of them hand-written in the neat block letters of the scribes on paper made in one of the villages just to the south. Most of it was just statistics. Baptisms, marriages & sermons performed, routes covered, names of people in attendance, offerings taken back to the monastery. His assistants tracked all of that information for him, though. What he was interested in was the news that filtered in from the furthest villages. Murmurs of Chinese troop movements far to the south, sightings of the cossacks that usually didn’t venture this far north, scraps of news from the broader world outside what used to be Russia. Though his office’s primary role was managing the oblast’s access to religion, his day-to-day job was more one of an intelligence officer.
There was nothing of interest in the first few papers, which was to be expected of the northern routes. The priest tasked with finding the old monk Kirill hadn’t returned yet, but was due within the week. One report mentioned weird patterns in the movements of Caribou herds, which Anatoliy didn’t know what to do about other than tell someone to pray about it at the next service. The interesting stuff was always what came in from the west and south. Getting to the bottom of the stack revealed snippets about villages just outside their territory that had been visited by cossacks for recruits and rations. This wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, but for the number of times it had happened in recent months. Something was pressing them for resources, but he didn’t have enough evidence to bring to the elders his suspicions of what was happening.
It was towards the bottom of the pile that he found something that, for a moment, made his blood run cold. He set it aside and quickly flipped through the rest of the pages for anything related. Two other documents substantiated the news in the first. He called in one of his assistants, asked for the names of the priests who had turned in the news and where they were quartered. When he received his answer, he took all three pages and headed for the door.
———
The same day, somewhere in Siberia
Father Grigoriy was bent over at the waist, resting his hands on his knees and gasping for air. He coughed a few times, spat mucus and craned his neck to look forward. The monk with the golden eyes was stopped a few paces in front of him, looking at him expectantly.
“Do we need to stop, рясофор?” he asked flatly.
“No, Kirill,” he weakly replied.
The monk grunted, turned, and continued uphill. He had drank little and eaten less, at least as far as Grigoriy could see, yet walked in a way almost like he was floating over the terrain, neither stopping nor slowing down for hills or streams or fallen trees. How he could even detect these obstacles, much less navigate them so quickly, was beyond him.
He stood up fully again and started stepping, determined to not let the monk humiliate him like this for the entire trip south. If he could just make it over this ridge, he knew it would be downhill for a few miles, so he could recover. If he could make it. They had been walking since sunrise without stopping, and his strength was fading.
So focused was he on catching up to Kirill that Father Grigoriy had stopped paying attention to the trail. He was a mere ten paces behind when his foot caught on something, and he went down hard on his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Cursing heavily, he started to pick himself up again.
“We’re taking a break,” Kirill announced. He was standing over Father Grigoriy with his arms crossed.
“I said I was-“ Grigoriy began, trying to salvage something of his pride, but Kirill cut him off:
“We’re taking a break.”
He muttered something resembling a grudging assent, and switched from trying to stand to maneuvering himself into a sitting position, sliding his body away from the center of the track where he’d fallen to rest his back against a fir. Kirill sat down opposite him, crossing his legs and leaning against nothing. The monk turned his head towards him for a long few moments, as if silently studying him, in spite of the impossibility of such a thing. Grigoriy suddenly felt very annoyed.
“How do you do it? You walk even faster than I do, yet you don’t get tired, hungry or thirsty,” he asked, trying to keep his exasperation from creeping into his voice. Frustrated as he was with his own ability to keep up, he still had the sense to not want the elder monk to think him disrespectful.
“Why do you stop when you are tired? Why do you slow down when you are thirsty? You are traveling for a great purpose, so why do you listen to your discomforts?” the monk asked back.
He looked at the old monk for a few moments, saying nothing. Kirill almost seemed to look back through his pupil-less golden eyes, his mouth curled ever so slightly at the corners. Wordlessly, Father Grigoriy shook his head, turned away and started digging though his backpack for something to eat. He sincerely hoped this journey would be worth it in the end.
(Bulus, Yakutsk Oblast, Siberia)
04:30, 12 September 1960
The sky burned over the foothills to the east of the monastery when he awoke. Quickly, he sat up, stretched, and got out of bed. He looked out of his chamber’s lone window at the horizon and mentally estimated how much time he had before sunrise. By his reckoning, he had about two minutes before his morning devotions. Moving rapidly yet methodically, with the ease that comes of many years’ repetition, the old monk washed his face, dressed and unrolled a small mat in front of the window.
He crossed himself and kneeled on it, facing the coming dawn. He closed his eyes, mentally bracing himself, and, when he felt the first rays of direct sunlight on his face, opened them and began to pray.
A few minutes later, Father Anatoliy stood in front of his mirror, blinking the afterimages away. It seemed that the more times he performed the ritual, the worse it hurt. The схимонах had told him when he was a послушникъ that it was because he was not yet pure, that the pain was God’s anger with his failure to fully devote himself. Clearly, he still had some distance to go before he was worthy of his Схима.
The morning bells rang out, calling the faithful to the morning services, and rousing him from his introspective trance. He looked again out the window, across the golden minarets of the monastery, gleaming in the early morning light. In the distance, a bird lazily circled, riding the thermals high over the sprawling compound. He stood, leaning on the windowsill, taking in the glory of what God had helped them to build out in this frozen hell. He savored the moment. There would not be many more mornings like these for a while. Winter was coming.
After he had taken his breakfast and performed his role in the morning devotions came the monumental daily task of managing the network of hundreds of traveling priests that ranged the order’s territories to the far north. As the head monk of the traveling corps, he was tasked with reading the reports of the dozen-odd priests that returned each day, tasking out assignments to those heading out and keeping track of all the current routes that had been assigned, so that no village in the oblast, no matter how small, went without the Lord’s presence. Even with the five assistants that were tasked to his office, it was a job that consumed most of his waking hours each day. He would resent it, were it not for the satisfaction of bringing the light to so many people.
He flipped through the stack of reports on his desk, all of them hand-written in the neat block letters of the scribes on paper made in one of the villages just to the south. Most of it was just statistics. Baptisms, marriages & sermons performed, routes covered, names of people in attendance, offerings taken back to the monastery. His assistants tracked all of that information for him, though. What he was interested in was the news that filtered in from the furthest villages. Murmurs of Chinese troop movements far to the south, sightings of the cossacks that usually didn’t venture this far north, scraps of news from the broader world outside what used to be Russia. Though his office’s primary role was managing the oblast’s access to religion, his day-to-day job was more one of an intelligence officer.
There was nothing of interest in the first few papers, which was to be expected of the northern routes. The priest tasked with finding the old monk Kirill hadn’t returned yet, but was due within the week. One report mentioned weird patterns in the movements of Caribou herds, which Anatoliy didn’t know what to do about other than tell someone to pray about it at the next service. The interesting stuff was always what came in from the west and south. Getting to the bottom of the stack revealed snippets about villages just outside their territory that had been visited by cossacks for recruits and rations. This wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, but for the number of times it had happened in recent months. Something was pressing them for resources, but he didn’t have enough evidence to bring to the elders his suspicions of what was happening.
It was towards the bottom of the pile that he found something that, for a moment, made his blood run cold. He set it aside and quickly flipped through the rest of the pages for anything related. Two other documents substantiated the news in the first. He called in one of his assistants, asked for the names of the priests who had turned in the news and where they were quartered. When he received his answer, he took all three pages and headed for the door.
———
The same day, somewhere in Siberia
Father Grigoriy was bent over at the waist, resting his hands on his knees and gasping for air. He coughed a few times, spat mucus and craned his neck to look forward. The monk with the golden eyes was stopped a few paces in front of him, looking at him expectantly.
“Do we need to stop, рясофор?” he asked flatly.
“No, Kirill,” he weakly replied.
The monk grunted, turned, and continued uphill. He had drank little and eaten less, at least as far as Grigoriy could see, yet walked in a way almost like he was floating over the terrain, neither stopping nor slowing down for hills or streams or fallen trees. How he could even detect these obstacles, much less navigate them so quickly, was beyond him.
He stood up fully again and started stepping, determined to not let the monk humiliate him like this for the entire trip south. If he could just make it over this ridge, he knew it would be downhill for a few miles, so he could recover. If he could make it. They had been walking since sunrise without stopping, and his strength was fading.
So focused was he on catching up to Kirill that Father Grigoriy had stopped paying attention to the trail. He was a mere ten paces behind when his foot caught on something, and he went down hard on his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Cursing heavily, he started to pick himself up again.
“We’re taking a break,” Kirill announced. He was standing over Father Grigoriy with his arms crossed.
“I said I was-“ Grigoriy began, trying to salvage something of his pride, but Kirill cut him off:
“We’re taking a break.”
He muttered something resembling a grudging assent, and switched from trying to stand to maneuvering himself into a sitting position, sliding his body away from the center of the track where he’d fallen to rest his back against a fir. Kirill sat down opposite him, crossing his legs and leaning against nothing. The monk turned his head towards him for a long few moments, as if silently studying him, in spite of the impossibility of such a thing. Grigoriy suddenly felt very annoyed.
“How do you do it? You walk even faster than I do, yet you don’t get tired, hungry or thirsty,” he asked, trying to keep his exasperation from creeping into his voice. Frustrated as he was with his own ability to keep up, he still had the sense to not want the elder monk to think him disrespectful.
“Why do you stop when you are tired? Why do you slow down when you are thirsty? You are traveling for a great purpose, so why do you listen to your discomforts?” the monk asked back.
He looked at the old monk for a few moments, saying nothing. Kirill almost seemed to look back through his pupil-less golden eyes, his mouth curled ever so slightly at the corners. Wordlessly, Father Grigoriy shook his head, turned away and started digging though his backpack for something to eat. He sincerely hoped this journey would be worth it in the end.