The Coin

A dim light streamed weakly into the night, like a dusty shadow of the moon, through the gaps between the high vertical logs of the great fortress. The old man, coming from the forest, approached slowly toward the gate. The walls were ten men high and the reinforced log gates even higher. Great wooden beams sealed the gates closed. The old man held out his arm and the great gates moved aside just enough for him to enter. As soon as he had stepped through them, the gates sealed themselves shut again behind him.

The old man now stood several feet inside the walls. He stood on utterly barren ground that was framed all the way around by the four vertical log walls of the fortress. From where the old man stood with his back to the great gate, he saw that there was a great walkway stretching around the three walls facing him, one story up. The walkway was built to connect many living quarters and operations rooms that were built onto the inside of the walls high up at that level.

The night was still and dark granite grey. The night felt to the old man hard like steel. He stood as still as the night absorbing the layout of the fortress prison. He noted the broad wooden stairway that led up on the north and south walls toward the upper walkway and the rooms above, where red and yellow light weakly lit empty windows.

From the dark hours of the night until the morning sunlight came over the gates and shone upon the old man’s back, he did not move. With the first light of morning, an execution block situated at the center of the empty courtyard now became visible to him. Guards were beginning to stir on boardwalks above outside of their operation rooms. With slow small, deliberate steps the old man moved and came to the wooden stairway that went up the northern facing wall to his right. He looked up and saw that two guards were standing above, at the top of the stairway, watching him. He climbed the stairway, turned and faced them. “Who are you?” one guard demanded. “Where do you come from?” “Did the police bring you during the night? Where are they? Who let them in?” the other guard asked. “Where are your papers? Let me see them!” the first guard demanded, holding out his hand. Then, when the old man stared blankly at him and did not move, the guard continued, “Are the police who brought you at the gatehouse outside? Why have you not been escorted here to us and handed over to us? How have you come to be standing here by yourself?”

The old man did not respond at all to any of the guard’s questions. Instead he looked beyond them to where a row of four prisoners stood guarded by other men along the boardwalk. These prisoners were scheduled at that very time in the morning to be marched down into the great dirt courtyard to be executed. The prisoner who stood at the head of the line was a young woman. The young woman's clothing was unkempt and dirty, like that of a beggar. Her face was worn with pain and calamity, though her bearing was that of a noble woman. Then the old man spoke. “Do not take her,” the old man said, now looking for the first time at the guards. “Here! I will give her my atonement money. Take me in her place!” As the old man finished saying this, he walked passed the two guards with whom he spoke at the top of the stairs and towards the woman, the prisoner, who was standing between two additional guards. One of the first guards, whom the old man had walked passed, came up from behind him and took hold of his shoulder. “If you are able to pay your atonement money, what are you doing here? he demanded. Just as the guard took hold of him, the old man pressed the coin that he held into the hand of the woman. The old man turned and looked at the guard. “It is now her atonement money. She can now give what is owed. You cannot execute her. You may take me instead."

“Alright,” said the guard. “If she gives the atonement money that is owed, she will not be executed. But if you have not already paid your own atonement money and have no other money to give for yourself, you will not be put here in her place in the line. There is an order that we must follow. You have just arrived and you should not be here on the north wall. You must be brought to the end of the line on the south wall. When your time comes, then you will be executed instead of this woman that you have given your atonement money to.” Then to the woman the guard said, “Step out of the line. You will be allowed to leave if you pay the atonement money you owe. We must simply add whatever person who would be next in line to this group for the morning execution in order to make up a group of four, the correct number that must be executed this morning.”

The woman hesitated and did not step out of the line. Instead she turned and looked at the person next to her, in line behind her, who was a broken young man, not twenty years in age. The young man was dressed in clothing even more worn and torn than that of the woman. His stature reflected that once he had been very strong and full of vitality. Now he appeared even more like a broken beggar than most of those who stood in line with him.

“Do not take this man!” the woman suddenly said. “I will give my atonement money to him. Take me in his place!” With that she stepped toward him and pressed the coin that the old man had given her into the hand of the broken young man. For several moments all were silent. It seemed no one knew what to say and no one was going to speak. It was the broken young man who had received the atonement money who broke the silence. “I will give my atonement money to you!” he said, as he turned and faced a, middle aged, filthy red haired man who stood in the line behind him, and then pressed the coin into the red haired man's hand. Turning back to the guards, he said, “Take me in his place!”

All the guards remained speechless. But before they had time to recover their thoughts, the red-haired man who now had the coin that had first come from the old man turned to a small, extremely thin man who stood behind him in the line and said to all, “I will give my atonement money to him. You can take me in his place.” The guards were bewildered and only began to mumble. Then the broken young man who had possessed the atonement money before spoke to the red haired man. “You cannot give the atonement money to him,” he said. “He is not one of our people. He does not owe it. He should not even be here. He should be free, not here in this fortress.”

Then the woman, who had first received the atonement money from the old man, spoke and added.“ His mother was not one of us.” Only one of his grandparents were. There are many like him here,” she added, “so many we are not even certain anymore who our people are.” If you would pass the coin to another person to save them, perhaps it should be someone you know for sure is one of our people. The red-haired man’s expression then became intense. He decided to voice the other side of the argument. “I know this man”, he said, “he has risked and lost his whole family in order to help and defend us,” he said. “What then should I do?” All three, then, the unkempt woman, the broken young man and the filthy red haired man, looked helplessly to the old man who had brought them the coin for an answer. The old man, however, did not speak, nor did he move his eyes or his face but stared straight ahead at the small, extremely thin man who stood silently in the line. The guards began to become upset and seemed about ready to take action, and seeing that the old man was not going to answer them, the woman and the young man then said to the red-haired man, “Do as you have said. If you desire to do so, give the atonement money to him.”

These were the four individuals who had been brought out from their rooms and placed in line for the morning executions. However, everyone was aware that the guards would be bringing the next person out from the rooms to take the place of the extremely thin man, if he paid the atonement money that was owed. Already people had begun to come out of their cells, who had been listening and watching.

As soon as the red-haired man pressed the coin into the hand of the small, slight man behind him there was no one else standing behind him in line. The guards then seemed to come to their senses. They began to look again at the woman and the others who had first received the coin, to make sure that all still stood in line. With all the unusual activity that was taking place some people were drawing closer to where the guards stood with this group of four and the old man, whom no one had seen before. Some of these people were scheduled to be executed in the afternoon, evening, etc.

The small, slight man turned to the first of these, the one who he knew would be made to take his place in line if he were not executed, and said in a loud voice, “I will give my atonement money to him!” He then walked quickly over to this person and pressed the coin into his hand. The man who had been listening to what had been going on, then did the very same with the person from his cell who was next to him. And so it was that the coin was passed on from person to person until it had passed all the way from the prisoners on the north wall to the prisoners on the back wall of the fortress, the east wall, and from those prisoners to those on the south wall, who were the last prisoners to have been brought into the fortress. The guards were all more and more dumbfounded and did nothing to stop what the people were doing as they watched this take place. Slowly the guards in charge of executions had walked along following the coin as it passed from person to person. Therefore the guards who stood in front of each room held back and did or said nothing. When the coin reached the last prisoner on the south wall, the guards said to one another, “We must go back to the start of the line for this morning. Nothing has changed. Four were to be executed this morning, and those four still stand there in line waiting and now must be executed.”

As the guards returned and approached again the place where the old man and the line of four people stood, one guard was heard to say to the others, “It is as if they all have paid their atonement money with one coin!” Should we even be guarding prisoners like these?” However, the rest of the guards pushed this guard who spoke like this aside, saying to him, “Are you now wanting to commit an offense and be put in prison yourself?”. Two guards then moved to take hold of the woman at the front of the line on the north wall by her arms, in order to take her down into the courtyard and begin the morning executions. As they did so one spoke to the old man who had remained without moving in the place he was standing at the top of the stairs on the north wall. “You, go now," he said to the old man, "to the last room of the prisoner row on the south wall.” And with a wry, ironic tone he added, “I suppose the last prisoner there will return your coin to you.”

Then, before the guards who now again held the woman were able to take their first step to take her down the steps into the courtyard, the old man standing at the top of the stairs, in a quite commanding voice, said, “Stop!”

When the guards did, for a moment, stop, the woman opened her hand to reveal a coin exactly like the one she had pressed into the hand of the young man who stood in the line behind her. “When I pressed the coin into the hand of the young man,” she said, “the coin divided in half. Each half then changed into one coin in the young man’s hand and one coin in my hand. Here it is. I have my atonement money.”

The young man then opened his hand to reveal that he also had a coin and so was able to pay the atonement money that he owed. “The same thing happened to me,” he said. “And to me!” the red-haired man exclaimed. “And to me!” the extremely thin small man said. All of them opened their hands to show their coins. Then the others, who had at first been in their rooms also came forward showing their coins and saying that the same thing had happened to them, as well. When the coin had been pressed into their hand it had divided and become two coins.

The old man then said to the guards, “Collect now the atonement money from all these people and let them go free.” When some of the guards slowly moved to begin to do this, one of the guards in charge of executions stepped in front of them and said, “Wait! Is it actually our job to collect atonement money? We are paid to guard and to execute these prisoners, not to collect the atonement money from them. Should we not report what has happened here to the higher officers and let the accountants come and collect the money? Look at these coins in their hands! Is it in our best interest to collect these coins? They are all the coin of the empire. Not one of them is a foreign coin that would need to be exchanged. Each of them also has the value of the exact amount of the atonement money required. If we bring all of these to the accountants they will receive no service fees for exchange or processing of any of the money and will be angry with us. Therefore, let them come and collect these coins themselves. And let the higher officers set these people free if they are to be set free! It is not for us to do this."

Then another guard spoke up and said, “We cannot take a report to the higher officers of what happened here. We would not be believed, and would be accused of incompetence. Let's stop and figure out some believable story before we report this!”

The old man then spoke to the guards and said, “If any of you were true guards you would not be guarding these people in this fortress but would be standing in solidarity with them, being willing to risk your own lives to guard them from their adversaries. Therefore, you would be making yourselves into prisoners here with them. Therefore if any of you are true guards, go now to the end of the row of prisoners on the south wall and take your place there. If you do, the person there who last received the coin will press it into your hand and you also will be prisoners who are set free. Then several of the guards were overcome by the old man's words and by the events that had taken place and did as the old man said. They walked away and went to the end of the south wall to take up a place there.

After some time, the remaining guards were still arguing among themselves, unsure of what they should do. Then one of the guards who had left and gone to take his place as a prisoner, after hearing the old man’s words, returned across the large execution courtyard and came up the stairway to where the remaining guards and the old man stood on the north wall. To the old man, this guard said "I above all should be executed. But you, old man, should not be executed. I see no coin in your hand. I will give you this coin that has now been pressed into my hand.” At hearing this the other guards seemed to be overcome with shame, fear, embarrassment and confusion. Slowly, one by one, they then simply walked off, leaving the fortress altogether and wandering away into the forest.

The old man then led all the people down into the large courtyard and, with a wave of his arm, opened the massive gates before them. He then turned to the people, looking first at the guard who had offered to give his atonement money to him, and said, “I must remain in this prison until all who will be brought here are set free. But you, all of you, you are free. Go to God! Go to your homes!”

To the guard who stood with him by his side he said, “Gather all the coins from the people before they leave and take it to the accountants. If the accountants hesitate to take the atonement money from you, press it into their hands, for it is the duty of their occupation to take it, and they will receive it.” Then all the people went out, but a young girl, an orphan, remained with the old man, lest officers should come and fall into a great rage. However, when they saw that all the guards had left and that there were no prisoners, their rage would be mollified when they saw that there were at least these two.