“I cannot explain, dear boy, what occurs once you are under.”

Semblance sat on a dune, the quick wind whipping his long grey pants until their meticulous creases began to fade. Adam stood beside him, looking warily at the sea, hands stuffed into pockets.

“You are nervous?”

Adam nodded.

“The point of this exercise is to realize the ungrounded notions of such anxiety. You are my son and have witnessed the light as I have. There is nothing to be gained from worrying, I assure you.”

“Why can’t you tell me what it’s like, then?”

Semblance laughed—he was a strong man of medium height, with a thick, lightly curled tuft of black hair and the percipient stare of a falcon—and looked upon his son shaking in the cold.

“Remember the light in the bulb beside your bed? That turned off with a switch and broke with a hit and could only be seen when it was there? This is like that, and sunrise, but you won’t understand until you’re inside it. There is nothing to fear, Adam. Go on, go on. I will not move a muscle, and if I see you flail, which you will not, I will come running.”

Semblance put his arms around his son. They were of an even height, and Adam was young yet.

“Would I lead you astray?” Semblance asked as he stared into his son’s eyes. They were brighter than any he had known.

“Wish me luck, then.”

“Now luck, there is a thing I can give!” Semblance squeezed Adam’s shoulder and they both turned to face the roiling ocean.

Adam began to walk toward the waves. His socks and loafers sat in the sand; heavy blue jeans clung to his legs. Adam sped up. He pumped his arms. He felt the first salty spray of water. Icy liquid lapped around his ankles and Adam ran, thinking only of the breath between his lungs; the endless blue before him. His jeans grew heavy; a warm rush of blood pulsed through his heart into his limbs and made him numb. With abandon Adam dove into the Atlantic.

He swam, cresting along the surface, out beyond the waves.

After minutes of labor and the cold sinking in Adam began to slow. He let himself fall beneath the surface to float in the dark waters, golden hair drifting up toward a sky he could no longer see. He exhaled. He let his mind settle, his limbs settle, his nerves settle.

And in the darkness he began to see a small thread of burning light.

—————

Adam Marbrand shifted in his seat, the hard-set wooden pew stiff beneath his tuxedo pants. He put a closed fist to his mouth in a routine act of contemplation. His eyes strayed, taking in the empty, endlessly long row that stretched to his side. The cough and shuffle of feet behind him echoed in the vaulted cathedral. His eyes turned toward the ceiling, an elaborate masterpiece of chiseled marble and painted slabs of tempered glass. The faces embedded in the stain were dark despite the long stemmed candles that rose to greet them. Adam craned his neck, eyes unblinking and sullen, to stare into the lattice-work and opaque pupils as if they held the answer, the key, the reason he had been drawn so suddenly here: to this white-halled tomb.

“...and to this somber setting we have gathered, in haste, in remembrance, and in grief. I have been called to stand, to speak with a purpose, to give strength now in this darkest of times, and to pray.” The priest’s words left rings of smoke as he spoke. He stood high above the pulpit, a towering man in a black robe. A gold sash creased his waist, its fine edges frayed, spinning to the floor. His hands gripped the pulpit lovingly. “I am here above all to remember Semblance Marbrand.”

Adam’s eyes fell, tumbling as if drunk in a house of stairs, away from distant figures of faith and reason, from the arduous work of a thousand hands. They did not fall to the priest (whose eyes were closed, whose lips were counting) but landed some feet off the floor in front of the robed man, just there. They were driven down into the mahogany that ensconced his father. Here Adam Marbrand’s vision rested, his bright blue eyes unblinking.

Large ceramic urns filled the room with incense, their white sand turned black.

“I knew Semblance as well as I knew myself,” the priest resumed. “I knew him like a brother and like a son. I knew the future he bestowed upon people, the way he took a simple man from a quiet place and helped him see the world anew. Semblance did this for me,” and the priest gripped his sash as if it was a horned buckle. He gave it a gentle tug, “as he did for many others. You see, the holy man before you was not always a man of faith, but a boy lost, in the West, his ankles swimming in shit, his lips wet with slime—”

A white-haired man in robes behind the pulpit coughed.

“I digress—I would now have us bow our heads in silence and in thought. Let us remember Semblance, and in remembering, honor him.”

But Adam could not bow his head. He could not close his eyes. A roaring sea had left the scent of salt in his mouth and memories upon his blue eyes. Adam did his own remembering in his own way and stared into his father’s casket.

——————

Adam heard as if through a dense fog his own name uttered many times. He felt the pummel of skin against what must be his own face. Black and blue and black and tan and black and blue until the forest, emerald and unyielding, stared back at him.

“Can you see me, son?”

They were words, and he heard them, and he did all he could to nod. He was hoisted up, his vision once again blurred, and pounded upon. Adam felt his insides quiver with ungodly force and opened his mouth to shout only to feel a cold stream of saltwater spew from his mouth into his lap.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.”

“Father,” Adam managed to choke out.

“I’m here. I said I would come running. You’re alright.”

“You said there was nothing to fear.”

Adam felt his senses trickle back, and the moments just before darkness.

“I did indeed, and I still believe it to be true. What did you see, Adam?”

“Before I drowned, you mean?”

Semblance said nothing and Adam wiped his hands against his forehead, moving strands of hair out of his eyes. He squinted at his father.

“I saw a light in the darkness beneath the sea.”

“Good, my boy. And did it not envelop you?”

Adam shook his head.

“Did it not save you, and warm you, and let you see?”

“I closed my eyes,” Adam said simply. “The light I saw, but I closed my eyes, and the water rushed in.”

——————

“Thank you.”

The priest lifted his head as did the rest of the room. Adam watched the man’s large face with its eyes sunk deep into their recesses, the nose turned sharply to one side, the quivering mouth: He seemed lost, and he wept. Adam’s heart did not leave his body to touch this sad soul, but he offered silent condolences.

“I think it is time for you all to speak,” the priest finally said. “Those of you that will. We have a short list of persons who have expressed prior interest, but given the presence of Semblance I would like to offer the opportunity to anyone who wished to say something. May your words warm our memories.”

He stepped down from the pulpit and returned to his chair.

The first person to stand in the priest’s place was a small woman with thin brown hair. She gripped a crumpled piece of paper. Her eyes, hazel and bulbous, were magnified through large glasses and as the light of the cathedral beamed upon her Adam could see tears stream down her cheeks.

“I—I, my name is Marilyn Kent. I know Semblance knew a great many people, and I—I just wanted you, his family and his friends and those others gathered here today, to know how much he changed me. I—my life was a struggle before I met Mr. Marbrand. I had hardship, as we all do. I was dissatisfied with the world, as we all sometimes are. I missed the truth of things. Then, in a simple, blessed moment Semblance showed it to me. The truth. My truth.

“I feel so airy, so mad saying it aloud, but I met him once and felt the tide roll over. It all changed. I have not been the same since, and I have not seen him since. He is so…” she looked down into the casket from the pulpit, “He is so peaceful now. He made me so peaceful. I met him by chance, you know, at a stop light waiting for a bus near Trafalgar Square. I was cursing a pedestrian, my tongue running amok, and felt as if the buildings were crouching down to squash me. This is my first time to America.” Marilyn Kent sighed. “He tipped that large hat at me, you know the one I’m sure, and said, ‘My dear, you look so very frightened. You should probably be a farmer.’”

They went on like this.

Adam them came up to the pulpit, one by one, to recount an odd moment, a brief encounter with the great Semblance Marbrand. They had all been struggling in some way—these small individual lives in the wake of an immense world whose choices, or lack thereof, gave no solace—and in their puttering steps they had happened upon Semblance and his renowned advice.

Adam was privy to this counsel. He had sat with his father often as it was laid out in even tones of wisdom and courage. The man instilled in so many a faith, a voice to guide and a path to follow. Semblance told Adam, when Adam was a boy and it began, that all people needed was recognition and direction. If these two things were given, most had the sense and decency to listen.

The mourners with their natural-born issues and their search for meaning bespoke of the completeness they had achieved upon hearing the words of the Semblance. A single line he gave to most, rushed as he was, and they repeated such phrases before the assembled.

He said (and said and said):

“You seem quite forlorn sir, alone in the cold at this dark hour. You should probably start a family.”

“You know your leg will never fully heal, I can see you limping even now, in your mind. Have you ever considered luging?”

The most grateful, a small bald man with a gut and a homemade sweater that depicted kittens playing with yarn, spoke through a choke of sobs and sighs. He said, “Semblance said, as we stood beneath a mountain of thick ice and snow, the air blowing around our eyes, ‘You look mighty warm. What kind of butter do you use?’” The man collapsed in a fit. He quickly descended the pulpit, the rest of his words crumpled into a wet piece of paper.

Adam sat, his tuxedo pants slowly slipping along the wooden bench. His back began to ache and then his head, and soon his hands were stiff and dry. A light white film spread over his lips from too much licking. He looked to floor: its white marble, speckled here and there with forest green and shavings of gold. He did not want to think, he did not want to remember, he did not want to hear what his father had been for these countless souls.

There was, at last, an end.

The priest rose from his plush chair and returned to the pulpit.

“Thank you for such kind words. It is a miracle indeed that Semblance found us each in his own way. We have come to our last speaker. Adam Marbrand, Semblance’s son, is here with us today. I cannot imagine the loss you feel, my dear boy. We are with you most of all, as Semblance would surely want. Are there words you wish to speak?”

Adam rose. He stood still for a moment and heard the turn of heads from all corners of the saturated chamber. He felt a multitude of warm, melancholic eyes upon him. He nodded to the priest, a brusque movement made with his eyes and jaw, and received a weak smile in return. The weight of this passing held Adam. It sat upon his shoulders, his chest, his toes. It began to sink into his bones; he felt his breath grow short.

Finally, as if in a vat of molasses, Adam turned. The dark golden hair about his head rustled against the high collar of his suit. He saw many faces: a wash of pale-white and sun-scorched-pink; muddied faces with rounded, thick beards and short-cut hair; women’s open-mouthed faces, their hands clutching pearl earrings; faces of hope and sadness and with some form of love etched into the eyes. Father—was all Adam could think in the white noise of surreality—where have you gone?

Adam gave these watercolor heads the same terse nod. He walked out of his pew into the aisle, up the steps and to the pulpit.

He stood there for some time, saw the seats go back, their lines filled with black suits and black gowns. The incense billowed; excited his brain. Adam felt a rush of water fill his nostrils, the pressure of the sea upon his chest. His father stood drenched in the cold-whipped wind and the dunes receded into forest. The light that had failed him then surged, a pinprick of fire, into his eyes.

Now the priest came up behind Adam, his sash swaying and reflecting the glow of chandeliers and orbs along the walls. He reached with a thick hand. They shook in front of the crowd, in front of Semblance Marbrand lying still in his coffin, like men do in times of agreement, and then the priest burst into flame.

His hands first. Then his arms and his neck and down his body of robes. Not smoking or smoldering, not crying out and running. Just flaming like some great bonfire, a burning ship in the night.

A man in the front row leapt to his feet and rushed to the pulpit; he pulled his jacket off as a scream echoed across the walls. He cried out “Father!” and people rose, a shutter of shoes on polished marble. The priest released Adam’s hand and stepped away. He turned with ease to face the man and the crowd, a benevolent smile upon his face. He moved his flaming hand into the air and gestured ease, gestured peace. Eyes shining he shuffled into his chair to sit with a sigh.

The warm embrace of fire moved through Adam, too, and the light found his eyes. He turned, unsure and overwhelmed, and tried to put into words what the loss of his father meant. The crowd stood now, eyes roving from the priest engulfed in fire to Adam, whose lips were parted. Each held their breath, fear and wonder pooling like honey in their chests.

Adam’s mouth opened and it could be said that the men and women gathered heard a vowel, a single utterance of sound come forth from his mouth. It was an I, if truth be told, but it could not be said that they heard more. There was no more. As Adam went to speak the words that told the tale of Semblance Marbrand—the heavy weight of filial love he held for Semblance, the strangeness of growing up under Semblance’s shadow —the memories of his childhood caught like amber resin in his heart and throat and Adam released instead his own gift to the world.

A great swath of white light issued from the open mouth of Adam Marbrand; those gathered thought to scream, for flame burned them, but there was no pain, no panic as it careened through the chamber. The hundreds of black suits and black gowns and white pearls and costly eye-wear all turned to leaping hues of blue and green and red and yellow. They were molten like the sun that gave them life. They sat and they watched, and Adam stood in the wake of speech.

Later, those assembled would write in their black leather journals that they had seen the creation in that light. The moment of generative existence was a color and each one felt it pour from Adam’s eyes and throat. He filled the deep hall with such a hue that it could only be the sun speaking through him.