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“Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, ‘Father?’’Yes, my son?’ Abraham replied.
‘The fire and wood are here,’ Isaac said, ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’”
Genesis 22:6-7
He remembers the story, only vaguely, from his childhood.
He and his brother were baptized. His grandmother, now nothing more but dusty bones in the acidic Earth dirt, was the one who insisted, and his parents, overwhelmed with the idea of raising two sons in an economy that was collapsing, acquiesced without much thought. So cool water ran over their infant heads as the yellowing lace of their gowns, passed down from Sully to Sully for generations, touched the marble floor. There were pictures and videos from that day kept on drives and frames in his parents’ home. A happy young couple with their two little boys surrounded by their extended families, not unlike the rituals of the clans here. All beings, it seemed, seek to gather, to honor, to love. He doesn’t know what happened in those photos. His grandparents, his parents, Tommy, the house - all of them were gone.
He was gone, too, in a way.
The church had classes when they were a little bit older. Grandma had been dead and buried for years. Still, out of habit or obligation, his mother signed them up anyway. They were taught by an older woman with cloud-like white hair that framed her face sweetly and a warm competence. If he thinks about it now, the reverend reminds him of Grace. Kiri, too, by the extension of all things divine and incomprehensible. Regardless, Jake never paid much attention. His head was constantly turned to the only small window in the church basement. The Earth of his childhood was no Pandora. All of its lushness, its beauty seemed to be sacrificed to endless human greed. Still, even back then, the natural world captivated him. He would have rather been running or playing basketball with his friends from the neighborhood or feeling Earth’s too hot sun on his face.
Tommy, though, was different. Tommy took diligent notes and did the readings and always raised his hand to answer the questions. He got accolades and a personal commendation from their local bishop, which made their mother beam proudly. The certificate, all beautiful gold gilding and carefully hand-written calligraphy, had been hung up in the childhood bedroom they shared next to the dozens of other awards Tommy had won. Though he took no real pleasure in it. Jake can’t say for sure, but he doesn’t think his brother believed. In his too-short life, Tommy had always been a man of science. Even as a child, he liked order and reason. Besides, even if he was a believer, they never talked about it - never had the time. Tommy spent most of his years in school, racking up degree after degree. Jake, as soon as he was old enough, had shipped off with the Marines. First to Parris Island and then to the jungles of Venezuela.
Then directly to a hospital bed.
After his spinal cord was severed, his mission commander sent in a chaplain. He didn’t recall writing down a religion on his intake form, but he had flown through that paperwork. He had been so eager, so excited to leave, that he hadn’t given any of his answers much thought. The Marines, as far as he knew, weren’t after him for his brain or his beliefs. They were looking for a warm body that was willing to kill, and at eighteen years old, he had been more than willing to comply. Jake remembers squeezing his eyes shut in pain, tears stinging, as the man cradled his hand in his own. This was, as he explained with his own military hat pulled low over his eyes, part of God’s plan for his life. God was preparing him for something, something bigger and better than he ever imagined for himself. It was his life’s mission now to figure out what that something was. Jake was tired of crying, for himself, for his lack of direction, from the pain, from his mind-numbing boredom. All he could do was laugh in the poor man’s face.
Years later, he remembers the story and remembers the words of that chaplain. There had been a man whom God had asked to sacrifice his son. Jake isn’t sure that he believes in the god of his childhood. He’s not even sure that he believes in the Great Mother these days. But he understands sacrifice and the greater good and following orders that don’t seem to make sense, that go against every desire.
He remembers another story, too. There’s always that other one, the most famous one, about having to give up one’s son to save the world. He’s already sacrificed one son to this war, but it seems like this conflict's appetite is endless. His body is weary and worn as the two of them traipse through the mud and soft vegetation underfoot, and he’s mixing his metaphors. He blinks the thought away and is shocked to feel the familiar burn of tears.
It’s just another kill, Jake tries to reason with himself. He’s killed before. He is good at killing. The hands that wrap around Spider’s palm, which is calloused and pink and warm, are drenched in blood. The same hands that held his wife, that cradled their children, even this one, are hands that have killed hundreds, if not thousands. What’s one more?
“Kneel.”
These days, he is tired of killing, even as his wife’s knife is heavy in his hand.
“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” He does not know if he is speaking to Spider, to himself, to the Great Mother, to God as he understood Him.
His eyes search frantically in the bush that surrounds them. From what he can remember of his childhood story, in that moment that flickered between life and death, God provided another sacrifice to stand in place for the son. Here, though, Jake is alone. The forest is eerily silent, almost as if the whole world watches and waits to see what Jake will do. There is no one coming to save them. There is only this and only his choice and his will.
“I know I have to go to Eywa.” Spider’s voice is soft and measured and searching. “But do you still love me?”
His will is weak.
They returned after a few more hours of riding while cradling a sleeping Spider in their arms. The people come out to greet them. In their eyes, he is still Toruk Makto, the Rider of the Last Shadow, the defier of the SkyPeople, the one who will stand with them to save the home that they all love. His children, of course, are there to greet their parents and their not-brother. To them, he is their father, their hero, their protector. He tries every day to live up to the trust they’ve put in him, and between this and his son’s body that rests at the bottom of the sea, he has a creeping realization that he may never be able to do so.
Jake cannot look at any of them. He can only focus on the small rise and fall of Spider’s chest and the way that his blonde hair reflects the dying sunlight. Their ordeal has tired him, but it only serves to make Jake more agitated, restless. The Metkayina want to know how he escaped the humans, and when they will return. His children want to see their parents, to hold them, to know that they are alive.
There was an ocean near his hometown in the Carolinas, on Earth. The oceans of Earth are high and hot and dirty, but as a child, he loved them anyway. He would throw himself into the waves for hours as Tommy searched for shells and sea glass among abandoned plastic. They had spent hours of their childhood like that, as silent in parallel as two shadows. Jake remembers the dozens of times when his head would pop up in the frothy waves to see his twin, small and slight at such a distance, watching over him from the shores. In his dreams, the figure sometimes visits him, standing just across a vast inlet or lake and wearing his old face.
Perhaps that’s why he settled next to the coastline as the sun dipped low into the sky. The stunning pinks, purples, and yellows reflect on the bright teal. The cool water laps at his toes, and the white sand is soft underneath him. He almost doesn’t hear Neytiri as she settles next to him. She leans her head onto his shoulder, and she still smells as sweet and fresh as clean mountain air. The vice grip panic, self-hatred, and grief held on his heart loosens just a little.
“Why did you come to save him?” Jake asks quietly, staring out at the mountains and sea ahead of them. All this ethereal and undeserved beauty, and all his people can see is dollar signs and stockholder shares.
“We have known hatred, Ma’Jake. Hatred and violence and blood-thirst.” His wife’s breath is ragged. “Yet, I do not see that in our children. I do not want anyone else to see that in our children. I want -. I want them only to see the best of us. I want them to see your courage and bravery. I want them to see my love for my home and my family. I want them to see my father’s leadership and my mother’s knowing and my sister’s sweetness.”
Something catches in Jake’s own throat. There is no need to hide in front of Neytiri, no need to put up a brave face. Tears flow and cut tracks down his still dirty face. They sting in the shallow cuts, and he curls in on his wife. In front of her, he has been laid bare. She has loved him in his success and his failure. She has loved him in his current body and his old one. She loves him now and loved him when he held a knife to an innocent child’s throat. He can’t earn her love, yet she gives it freely.
“If I wish that for my own children, I cannot do that to someone else’s child.” Neytiri nods with self-satisfied finality. “The mistakes of his people are not his own. Now, when I look at him, I choose to see your bravery, your warrior spirit, the wonder for this world that you first carried.”
Spider, in some small way, represents the best of humanity, and Jake was willing to slit his throat. Shame boils up inside of him.
“My son,” Jake whispers as he sobs into bloody hands. Neytiri grasps him tightly, her own tears wet on his shoulder. They cry for Spider, for Neteyam, for Tommy and Sylwanin, for peace and love lost. As creatures call and the wind kicks up into a frenzy, it seems like all of nature grieves with them. “My son.”