The Shibboleth (Adventure ten, part 4 of 4)

(Cont.)

Now all the brothers of the Church in Dartmouth gathered themselves together, and went northward, and found Jephthah living with a new entourage of comrades from Oz. And his brethren said unto Jephthah: “Why did you trouble yourself to assemble a black-ops team, only to expend all your energy outwitting them? We appointed you our tribal chief, and gave you the title of ‘Boss’ – you even are Godfather to our children; but your end of the deal was to take back for us that clear spirit from the Persian Fire-Worshippers. Why did you fail us? For you spared our enemies, and fought against your own people! Now, because you refused to seize for us the fire of heaven, we will use earthly fire and burn down your house, with you inside it.”

Then Jephthah answered his brethren of the Church, and said: “I do not understand why you and your God are at such great strife with the Parsees – lo, you seem to share the same faith. You would even emulate their flame’s clarity. Why can’t you see its light, as I do, and turn from your error? You must know in your heart that the Persians have done you no wrong – that is why I could not attack them. And no one can claim ownership of that element: fire belongs to all who gaze upon it. When I saw that your side was in the wrong, I followed my conscience, and the volcano of potential delivered your agents into my hand. Was there any sin in that? Then why do you come up against me this day, threatening arson?”

Whereupon the brothers from the Church gathered together all the members of their congregation, and chased after the Ozian entourage of Jephthah: and these Dartmouthians smote Jephthah’s comrades, for they said: “Ye Ozians are fugitives of the Church.”

And the members of that congregation from Dartmouth blocked the Hanging Pond of the Great Basin, and they refused to let the Ozians pass – they only let their own kind through. But it was hard to distinguish, by sight, churchgoers from Ozians, because sin is invisible; therefore the congregants differentiated between the two groups with a type of litmus test, which hinged upon the fact that the churchgoers all spoke with a pious affectation when pronouncing key terms of their theology. So, when any Ozian approached the Hanging Pond, the churchgoers stood there like stony sphinxes and said:

“If you wish to continue beyond this point, you must answer a riddle: What is our God’s favorite instrument of torture?” And when the Ozian answered “The cross,” the churchgoers said: “We cannot hear you: What is our God’s favorite form of capital punishment?” And when the Ozian yelled “The cross!” Then the churchgoers countered: “Nay: the croth.” (For they spoke that word’s terminal phoneme not as a sibilant but as a voiceless dental fricative.)

And then they took the Ozian and drowned him in the Hanging Pond of the Basin. And there fell at that time of the Ozians forty and two thousand. That is why one rarely sees any tourists from the Land of Oz anymore, in these End Times.

And the total period that Jephthah served among the elohims, doing all those adventures, was about six years.

Then Enoch took Jephthah the Ozian back to the Fulness.