Promises Made to the Fathers
“Joseph.”
The boy’s eyes cracked open and stared passively at the glowing figure standing beside his bed.
“Be not afraid. I am Moranya, a messenger sent from Ahura Mazda. I have—”
“I’m not,” Joseph said groggily.
The figure paused. Unseen firelight flickered in his golden crown. “Pardon?”
“I’m not afraid,” the boy repeated. “This is the sixth—or seventh?—time you’ve come.”
Moranya opened his mouth, then closed it, then reached his hand up to scratch his solid black beard. Joseph yawned and glanced around the small room. Beds took up most of the floor, and each bed was occupied by one or two of Joseph’s brothers. But despite the brilliant light shed by the visitor, all of his siblings remained fast asleep.
Joseph propped himself up onto his elbows, wincing as the bed creaked. “Or if not you, then it was seven other messengers that came. But they all had similar names—Mol Nai, Moronellas, MRN01. I was pretty tired, so they were hard to remember. Oh, and one Nephi.”
Moranya frowned. “I don’t understand. I was not aware of any other messengers besides myself.”
Joseph shrugged. “Well, what’s the message?”
The being nodded. “Of course.” He cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. “You, Joseph, have a work to do. Ahura Mazda has chosen you, but Angra Mainyu will oppose you all the days of your life. For there are tablets buried nearby, whereon are written the record of my people, the Medes, who were led by the hand of the uncreated spirit to this, the land of promise. You are to uncover them, translate their glyphs, and spread the true teachings of Ahura Mazda throughout the earth. Do you accept this charge?”
Joseph was silent for a moment before answering. “I think so, sure, it’s just—who is Ahura Mazda?”
Moranya’s eyes widened. “Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom? The creator and upholder of the right? Have you never heard the words of his prophet, Zarathustra?”
The boy tilted his head. “It sounds like you’re talking about God, but… but none of those other words are familiar. But your people, your record—the other angels said something similar.”
“Something similar,” Moranya repeated in a flat tone.
“Yes—and again, it’s hard to keep them straight—but the one named Nephi said that Israelites sailed across the sea long before Jesus. They filled up America, north and south. There were Nephites that worshiped Jesus and Lamanites that worshiped idols, and the Lamanites destroyed the Nephites when they turned from the Lord.”
Moranya scratched his beard again. “You’re sure it was Israelites? Not Medes?”
Joseph nodded emphatically. “And the next one, Moroni, said the same thing, except that his people only ever lived down in the Mexican Empire, and he had to travel years to get here and bury a gold book. But after he left, a woman came—Molhanish, I think—who said she was a Lamanite. Her people had turned from the sky god and had been destroyed by the Nephites, who spread their profane Savior worship across the land. But she built a temple and carved in its walls pictures that taught the truth, like how the sky god slew the earth crocodile and created man and woman out of corn.”
Joseph looked up at Moranya and paused. The angel had closed his eyes and held a hand to his forehead. “Please, you can sit if you like,” Joseph offered, sitting up completely and patting his bed.
Moranya nodded and sat. Though his feet had not touched the floor before, his body sank deep into the bed. “Thank you. Were those all of the messages?”
Joseph frowned. “I’m afraid not. There was a… another woman, very beautiful and fair. She mentioned something about the third age and the fair folk moving here, to the undying lands, and burying a scroll that would never crumble. And, and then a broad man from a nation called the Neanderthalites, who were destroyed by the Sapienites, who recorded their history with the threads of a cloth. Then there was a giant—like Goliath, I thought, but too skinny, and dressed in dark cloth from head to foot—who said that the lost tribes of Israel fled to the moon, and used contraptions as small as a pinhead to make them live like the patriarchs before the flood. He—or she, I couldn’t tell—said that the entire history of their people, a thousand times the size of our bible, was written on a single silver disc.”
They were quiet for a moment. Then—“They fled to the moon?” the angel repeated.
“Yes,” Joseph nodded, then shook his head. “I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me. I’m not sure I believe it myself. I can’t tell what's a dream anymore . . .”
Moranya placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and Joseph looked up. “No, Joseph, you must not doubt. Ahura Mazda—or this God of yours—has chosen you. These messengers have chosen you.”
"But why?" Joseph spread his hands faceup on his lap. "I'm nobody. I have no special gift. Father thinks I do, but he's wrong. He thinks I can find things, can see things, but I've never found anything, they're just daydreams—"
"Joseph," the angel said gently, and the boy stopped. "Joseph. If I showed myself to any of your brothers and sisters, what would they do? Would they believe me?"
Joseph was silent. An owl hooted outside. Finally he whispered, "I saw Jesus when I was younger. He forgave my sins. It meant so much to me then; I thought it would change my life. When I told my brother Alvin, he was happy but… not surprised. He'd had a similar vision when he was my age. But he couldn't say for certain whether it was real or in his mind.
"I told him I was thinking of being baptized a Methodist, or maybe a Presbyterian—I wasn't sure which. And even becoming a preacher. But Alvin said that just because I'd seen Jesus, it didn't mean I had to join a church. They all had problems—maybe none of them were right for me."
The boy shivered, and the angel lifted a wool blanket from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders. "So I don't know—maybe I'm the only one crazy enough to believe the things I see."
Moranya nodded. "Or maybe you're the only one with enough faith."
He had several more visitors before the sun rose, or at least he dreamed that he did. A knight in radiant armor. A mermaid sent by The One Who Sleeps. A shining box that explained without a mouth that the rest of its kind had been corrupted by disease. He promised each that he would look for their record. That he would remember.
When his family finally woke and started preparing for the day, he asked Hyrum if he had noticed anything strange in the night. But Hyrum just joked about Samuel’s snoring.
With a feeling of determination mixed with dread, Joseph tried to join his brothers in clearing the field. But his exhaustion made him useless, so his father sent him home.
He hadn’t seen any angels in the daytime, which was a relief. But when he tried to climb over the fence on the way home, he fell and his vision turned black. When it returned, he was no longer outside his house but standing among trees on a hill. He recognized the landscape—he was only a few miles away, but he didn’t see the barns and roads that were normally nearby.
He saw a man, an old man with tan, weathered skin and white braids. The man sat before a small fire, burning tobacco. He seemed not to notice Joseph.
The man spoke in a strange language and a raspy voice, but somehow Joseph understood. “Hear me, Great Spirit. Hear me, Thunderer. Hear me, Three Sisters. I am Maranoweian, of the Original People. My village was destroyed in battle. I alone survived, but I will soon join them. I do not fear death, but I fear that we will be forgotten. I leave behind the name of my village. I ask you to protect it until it is found. Let this memory survive. Let us not be forgotten.” Then the vision faded, and the real world came back into view.
With a fervor stronger than his fatigue, Joseph walked for an hour to the hill he had seen. He climbed to the top and walked through the trees, scanning the ground for a break in the leaves. He overturned several stones without success before he found it—a smooth oval a couple feet across. It was on this rock that the fire had burned. The stone was shallower than it appeared but still heavy, so he used a fallen branch as a lever to pry it up. Underneath lay another rock with a small depression in the middle. He knelt and gingerly lifted the object inside. It was a necklace of colored beads, arrayed in an order that seemed random. He’d seen similar pieces, Indian jewelry, sold by traveling merchants.
As he studied the necklace, it changed form in his mind. He saw a rectangular stone filled with pointed markings. Then a wide metallic disc with a hole in the center. A stepped pyramid with monsters carved in its walls. A multicolored blanket. A tapestry of unicorns and dragons. A gold book.
He blinked and it was a necklace again.
“I’m sorry; I don’t know the name of your village. But I will try to tell your story,” Joseph vowed to no one. To everyone. “And I will remember.”
Tygan Shelton‘s story “The Missionary” appeared in Daily Science Fiction, and his story “Worlds Without End” was a 2022 AML Award finalist. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife and two children, where he reads and writes code and speculative fiction.
Art by Claire Åkebrand.
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