One sunny afternoon, a priest came to Dan Cesco.
He walked up the roaming turnpike, passed between the twinned monuments, and stood a while in the peaceful shade of a shrine to Mil, contemplating the sun through its elegantly branch-woven roof. When the day drew longer, he paced down the market of the town, and admired greatly the airy, light buildings that the vendors roared and boasted from – they were hardly there at all, yet no wind and no rain could possibly make it past the cunning shapes of their many-angled eaves. And finally, as the evening began to draw down night’s curtains, he paced past the homes at the skirt-end of the town, the old ones, and found himself at a building that was neither old nor young but possessed the best qualities of both: a timeless carewornness.
He knocked, and two men answered.
“Are you the Brothers Meer?” he asked.
“BROTHER Meer,” said the elder. “As for the other, he may have been adopted.”
“Brother Meer indeed,” answered the younger. “I believe my father disowned him on his deathbed, but this lout sabotaged the will afore I saw it.”
“Peace, peace,” soothed the priest. “I have come with a task for you. I heard that you were the greatest of all architects in this land, and as I walked the road to your homes I saw proof of this. A market with no walls that no weather could touch, a shrine knit from trees that served stronger than any stones, and a house that could have been built a thousand years ago, yesterday.”
“Father’s work,” sighed the elder.
“Some of his best,” agreed the younger.
“I have seen these proofs, and I would ask you to undertake a grand labor. I have found a new godlette, hiding under a wide leaf in a chance puddle in a glade deep in a wood I shall not name. If this godlette is to feast on prayer and grow fat and proud enough to aid us, it shall need a place to call home, that its worship may throng.”
“A church,” said the elder. “Easy.”
“A church,” said the younger. “Easy… for me.”
“Precisely,” said the priest. “I would entrust no others with this task. The land is purchased, surveyed by a man as sound of eye as he is holy. I leave the rest to you, Brothers Meer.”
“When you witness my creation,” vowed the elder, “you’ll be shocked like a toad on a stump in a storm.”
“I will outdo this laggard, just you see,” swore the younger, “though he’ll say anything to tell you otherwise.”
On the first day, the brothers gathered in the tiny, cramped leather tent that the architect’s table was cradled within, and drew up their plans on old vellum sheets. Each brother took his own.
“A great strength is what is required here,” said the elder. “A godlette will never grow mighty without inspiration.”
“A soaring height is far more important,” scoffed the younger. “A godlette given naught but bulk and mortar will grow nowhere but horizontally. Let his appetite for beauty be sated, and I tell you that he will become a god to remember!”
“Needling pissant,” fumed the elder. “Go back to the cradle and smother yourself.”
“Blundering clodhead,” hissed the younger. “Do the world a favor; strike your face, and do not stop.”
So the brothers sat at opposite ends of the tent and drew and snipped and cast their spells, and when the time came for the men to labour at the site they stood at opposite ends of that too, calling out orders that clashed so badly that no man could heed them both, and instead gave up entirely and sided with one or the other. And when the day was done, the main body of the church lay complete. The front hall was a towering monument of solid granite, the chapel a spiralling beauty of limestone. They were each lovely, but they clashed greater than two bulls in a half-size paddock.
“Not quite what I’d had in mind when I hired you,” said the priest as politely as he could.
“I had it well in hand,” informed the elder in a wounded tone, “before this lump stuck his great gummy fingers in everything.”
“The wisest of the workers heeded my words above the lout’s,” sighed the younger, “but alas, some of the more impressionable youths fell under his spell of deceit. I pray, do not punish them. It is but innocent inexperience rather than malice that would allow any man to listen to my brother.”
“Upstart serpent!”
“Fool twice!”
“Peace, peace, peace,” shushed the priest. “For shame, to squabble on ground so newly holy! Now, do to the two of you really disagree so firmly?”
“Utterly,” said the elder.
“Without a single doubt,” said the younger.
“So be it,” said the priest. “But the bell-tower must be built and the bell housed and rung before your contract is fulfilled and the godlette may move in to grown old and happy. You must cooperate! Look here, look at what your callous clashes have created! Why not both work together on the tower? Surely you wish to avoid disharmony in your work, if not in your words?”
“It could use some work,” admitted the elder. “But I will kill the idiot if he touches my brushes.”
“Very well,” said the younger, “and it is worth recording that I would rather choke myself than use the twit’s substandard tools.”
So the second day the Brothers Meer walked to the site, and they drew as one, on the same sheet.
“It needs more height here,” said the elder.
“Rubbish, it needs more light here,” said the younger.
“Soar, soar, soar until it gets to the tallest steeple of the building?” asked the elder incredulously. “You are madder than a hare in March, May, and August all at once.”
“And YOU are madder than a mosquito in any season whatsoever, if you think to give size without contrast. It will be darker than a pit in there without proper windows.”
“Those aren’t windows, they’re canyons! Structural weaknesses abound!”
“Your foolishness abounds!”
“Yours!”
And they snipped and fought and on at least two occasions they wrestled for the brush (with biting) but at last they pulled through and the workers began to haul the bricks and mortar as they cast their spells and yelled their orders.
“No, not THAT mix!” called the elder. “Use the grey fine crisp mortar!”
“No no no no,” screamed the younger. “Use the heavy thick brow mortar!”
“The dark bricks from Bormbarr Quarry!”
“The light bricks from Teeland!”
“Left more!”
“Right more!”
“NO!”
“YES!”
By the day’s end the belltower was complete and all the men had crossed eyes, except for the brothers, who were being held back from each other by the two largest of the stone-haulers. The belltower itself, alas, looked as piecemeal as a puzzle put together by an infant; its pieces all at odds with their neighbours and often themselves. It was a kaleidoscope of a building.
“This is his fault!” roared the elder brother.
“His!” shrieked the younger.
“Peace, peace, peace, PEACE!” shouted the priest, and so loud was his voice that dust shook from the roof of the architect’s tent and the brothers were cowed in spite of their spite. “Is there no end to your turbulence?! The belltower is a patchwork folly at your hands! The church greater is bifurcated! Surely you know of the poor influence this can be on an unguided godlette’s mind? Surely you know that your pettiness has harmed more than you can know? All our hopes rest in the bell now; the godlette will arrive the very next morn and there is no time to mend the sorrows of your squabbles. This must be perfect, and since the two of you have proven as soluble as water and oil, there will be two separate plans. Only one shall be used, chosen by myself, for though I am no architect, my father was a great blacksmith. Now work – and work quickly!”
He left them there, the two of them, and they glared at one another with venom no serpent could brew.
“When my bell rings,” swore the elder, as he dipped his pen, “it will sound sweeter than a thousand doves.”
“When my bells ring,” said the younger, sliding a fresh sheet of vellum across his lap-bench, “I will laugh until you strike yourself stone deaf to escape them.”
“Ant,” mused the elder, beginning his work with a vicious stroke.
“Flea,” pondered the younger, jamming pencils behind his ears and between his teeth.
They sketched the morn over with the speed of demons, and as they wandered to the forge where the priest would meet them, they eyed each other’s plans.
“Bells? BELLS? This is a BELLtower, not a BELLStower,” sneered the elder. “Your tinny little things will lead the godlette astray into thinking it is a leader of posies rather than men.”
“You grasp grammar as readily as you grasp your genitals,” spat the younger. “And your bellmaking skill is every bit as poor – a single great clanger, a loudmouthed yawper! Great minds think alike, but fat minds design themselves! Why don’t you name the bell after yourself, too?”
“At least I designed a bell,” said the elder. “And you know it is your better. You always sneer this loud when you are wrong, brother.”
“And you always enrobe yourself in smugness when you are out of arguments, brother.”
“And it is deserved,” agreed the elder. “My bell is the greater. You know it. I know it. The priest will soon know it. And brother, if father were here, you know he would say so.”
The younger brother went white at the lips. “You shouldn’t say that,” he whispered.
“Then silence me, or stick your fingers in your ears,” retorted the elder. But he’d stepped too far, and as he turned his back, the younger leapt atop him, and with a pencil, slit his throat open into the boiling cauldrons of metal that would be used for bellmaking.
“Here,” he said as he cut out his brother’s tongue. “Let no-one say that I let you do nothing.” And he cast it into the molten vats, and spat after it, and threw the body in to keep it company. Last of all, for good measure, he cast in his brother’s plans, and the great bell’s patterns flared prettily and were gone forever.
Soon the priest was there, and surprised he was to see but one architect. “Where is your brother?” he asked.
“Gone, gone, and gone for good, if I’m any judge of the blowhard’s pride,” said the younger. “My design wounded him sore, and he left from shame – gone from our home at last! Now, look at this, and look at art!”
The priest cast his eyes over the scribblings. “These are beautiful work,” he said. “Call the men!”
And so the third day went by, and if started late, it moved fast. The men were almost done and they knew it, and more importantly they were not being used as checker-pieces by competing managers. The sun was only just touching the trees when the rope was attached to the bells; a beautiful set of fraternal twins that shone with soft red light underneath the sunset.
“They are the finest I have ever seen,” said the priest, “and I have walked this world for half a century and more. But a bell is its voice, and its voice is all. Pray, would you care to be the first to ring?”
“I would relish it,” said the younger, “and may my brother hear it wherever he scurries now, and know his better!”
And he eagerly reached up to the rope and tugged it once, twice, thrice, and the bells burst into a song so beautiful that tears nearly came to the priest’s eyes. But the younger brother’s face remained as dry as a desert bone, though he smiled as he watched the bells swing and clang.
Then the sounds changed, and the smile began to drain from his face.
“Killed-me, killed-me, killed-me, killed-me,” mourned the bells in tongues of brass and velvet.
“Hold, what was that?” asked the priest. “Surely even your skill, great as it was, did not give these bells human voices?”
“I hear nothing,” said the younger. “It has been a long day – perhaps your mind plays tricks?”
“Not since I was a boy,” said the priest. “Listen close; ring it again.”
The younger reached up again – with less zeal this time – and hauled on the rope again. And the bells swayed in their cradles, calling out a new song in their long sad voices.
“He-stabbed-me, he-stabbed-me, he-stabbed-me, he-stabbed-me.”
“Your bells sing with human voice,” said the priest. “But tell me, do they tell the truth as well?”
“This is some devilry of my brother,” quavered the younger brother. “He sabotaged my plans before he left! This is no working of mine!”
“Perhaps,” said the priest. “But I would hear what they have to say. Ring again.”
Slowly, unsteadily, with the shaking hands of an old man, the younger hauled at the rope. And for a third time the bells tolled.
“Check-the-clapper, check-the-clapper, check-the-clapper, check-the-clapper.”
The priest walked up the spiralling steps of the belltower and looked. And there, embedded tightly in the clapper’s surface of the larger of the two bells, was the elder brother’s tongue.
The younger brother was hanged at midnight, and buried before one o’clock. It is bad luck for such things to come to the eye of an impressionable godlette, even in cold justice.
And that was the end of the Brothers Meer – and the beginning of the end for more than their bodies. Their church stood for no more than a decade before it was a ruin; the stones seemed to tear themselves apart at the seams, as if brick could not bear to stack atop brick.
The new church was designed by the priest, who’d gone grey at the edges, and was smaller. The tower did not soar as readily. The bells were quieter.
But it was peaceful there, and the god that came from it was a peaceful one. And that was all that was required.