The Ishim Underground

by Carrie Bailey

CHAPTER FIVE

  Insects chirped at each other while gusts of wind brushed through the grass. The wild calls of the loogaroo hit Eron's ears like siren who reached for the ladder, but he knew he couldn't go back to Dunedin. Eron followed the nomad through the night ascending a dark trail toward a hut perched on the hillside as their shadows flickering around them in the light of lamp Amos had lit. The outline of an old man with hideously bent spine waited in the doorway to welcome them into his sparsely furnished home.

  “Remarkable,” said the man holding the wooden door open. “Just like Gil.”

  Wrapped in a dark shawl and seeming to stoop lower with each step, the shepherd hobbled into the kitchen. With thicker walls and lower ceilings, the hut resembled the pillared buildings in the village though it seemed significantly older. The shepherd returned with three small steaming cups of what Eron suspected might be coffee, but the liquid had an alcoholic bite and the bitter taste of fresh herbs. It was medicinal wine or a close approximation.

  “To the guard,” said the man lifting his cup. His smile exposed a long row of white teeth imbedded haphazardly in his short red gums.

  “The guard will know Gil isn’t Auckian as soon as he opens his mouth,” Eron said grimacing at the scent of old man's concoction.

  “You didn't see the impression he did before you arrived,” said boomed Amos. "Sounded just like a scribe. Might I borrow another spade, please?” he said switching to a mockingly nasal falsetto. “I must dig a hole where people can relieve themselves for the glory of the Auckian Empire.”

  The old man snorted over his drink while Eron managed only a skeletal smile. Fumbling with the bulk of leather that held the coin around his neck, the only thing that really bothered him at that moment was how poorly his belongings had been packed. He unrolled his bundle on ground and started to line up the tunics.

  “What are you doing?” said Amos as he drained the dredges of his cup.

  "Stop that," said the old man leaning over him.

  “We left in a hurry,” explained Eron, but Amos had pried the oil lamp from his hand before Eron could wrap it more securely in one of his undershirts. While Amos pushed the contents of Eron's bundle against the mud wall, the shepherd handed Eron his cup. It was still full.

  "Drink," said the shepherd.

  "I don't," Eron started to say. "I"m not sure. I… I don't really drink."

  "Don't drink?" roared Amos refilling his cup from a tin kettle that had been resting in the coals of the dying fire.

  Embarrassed, Eron downed the contents of his cup faster than a barefoot farmer runs to the kindling shed on a winter morning. He watched the two older men huddled together over the empty fireplace sipping from their cups, which were only slightly larger than one of his mother's thimbles.

  “I wonder if we smell alike?” Eron said starring at the bottom of his tiny clay cup. The shepherd reached unsteadily for the bottle and refilled it.

  “The guard would have had Gil weeks ago if they knew how he smelled,” Amos bellowed.

  Eron nodded and took a sip, but spat the contents out in the ashes as fast as he could.

  “Vinegar?” he said.

  "And salt," said the shepherd wheezing. "Wrong bottle."

  "That's a cleaning solution for the grill," laughed Amos.

  Most medicinal wines in Auck City were made from fruit. The process was simple. Fruit was collected in large clay pots covered with rain water that had been filtered through charcoal. Sugar beets were boiled and the syrup was added. The mixture fermented through the winter. Unless it was contaminated or the wine gawd punished the makers by turning it to vinegar, the sweet sticky liquid was bottled with herb tinctures and sat until needed. Some winemakers aimed for a palatable flavor. Others potency. And some extolled the health benefits of careful cultivation of right proportions and of the best plants. Poppies, willow bark and coca leaves were commonly added for pain relief. Valerian for sleep. Daimana for relaxation and happiness.

  "What's in this?" Eron asked gagging on the residue at the bottom of his fourth refill while the old man pried the wax off another bottle. “It tastes strong.”

  “Everything," said the old man. "Con-purified distillation.”

  "He has machine in the stable that his grandfather built," said Amos. "I don't know what it does, but it works."

  Eron lifted his hand to his face. It looked a bit smaller than he remembered it being a minute or two before.

  "If Gil is going to be me, but I… I can’t be Gil,” he said slowly, processing the situation through in his head as he spoke. “Who am I supposed to be?”

  "We haven't schem-atitized that far,” said Amos walking over to Eron and standing uncomfortably close. “But, you can’t be yourself.”

  Eron twisted his foot into the dirt floor. “My tutor said I should always be myself,” he muttered.

  His foot seemed to move effortlessly as if his toes weren’t fully touching the ground regardless of how hard he pressed them. He took another small sip of the drink.

  “Where does Micah live?” Eron started patting a circle into the loose ground.

  "The D.O.T.,” said Amos gesturing to the West. “On the other side of Pict Bay. That's where you'll find Micah.”

  “What D.O.T.?” said the old man.

  Amos shot the older man a steady glare who backed down and grabbed the bottle to refill the men's empty cups.

  “I would go with you if I were younger,” said Amos. "It's a sort of campsite. You'll be safe there."

  "I'm still young," said the shepherd pounding his boney chest.

  “How old are you?” said Eron smiling.

  “No idea anymore,” he said sitting down on a dusty rectangular chest.

  “To Eron,” cried Amos throwing back another mug.

  A bit of the shepherd's medicinal wine splashed on the ground as he threw his toast into the air. The three men stumbled into the kitchen and set their cups on the wooden counter. The old man’s wrinkly hand shook as he refilled them in a line spilling half of what was poured through the slats. Eron looked around for a cloth, but there were none. He wiped the spill with his finger and stuck it in his mouth while leaning heavily on the edge of the counter.

  "I'm going to tame the wastelands!” shouted Eron suddenly remembering the motto of the Red Guard.

  "You'll get to Micah's cave in a week," said Amos. "I don't think the road there needs any taming. At least, not until the end of it."

  “Caves,” said the old man throwing back the contents of his cup and slurring a bit, but not as much as he was drooling. “Should have seen me in my supra-prime.”

  “I never left really the caves," said Amos with a misty far away look in the large man's dark eyes.

  Eron was touched even though he wasn't sure what Amos or the shepherd were talking about. He drank another cup.

  “You shaved. You saved a man's wife,” said the old man in a sudden burst of emotion. "Life."

  Eron finished his mug and went for another finding it a shame that the counter had began to move in a clockwise rotation. He tried to hold it down, but it got away from him and he slid to the floor. Amos pulled him up.

  “You don’t know me,” he grumbled. "My life ended when I- hiccup -Auck City. It will take an act of the gawds to get me back."

  "You don't think it is worth it?" said Amos. "Slavery is no life for anyone."

  “We don't have slaves,” said Eron.

  “They forced him,” said the old man slamming his fist on the counter. “Think they can make us work!" cried the toothless shepherd.

  The old man's kitchen counter was lined with pots, empty and laid wherever the man finished using them. Eron started stacking similar pots together, but stopped when he realized they were all brown and roughly the same size and shape.

  “Indefinite contracts,” said Amos eying the bottom of his cup. "That is slavery."

  The air had grown fuzzy and had an uncommon texture like shorn wool. At that moment, Eron changed
his mind about distillation and started licking the inside of his mug. It tasted bad, but in a good way.

  “Those guards have been taking men from the roads,” said Amos. "From their homes.

  “The nomads have homes?” asked Eron confused.

  “No,” said Amos shaking his head. He paused for a moment to think. “Yes, from their homes!"

  “I don’t believe,” said Eron.

  “But, we are all slaves to something,” slurred the Amos shaking the last drip from his bottle.

  The old shepherd chuckled a dry raspy laugh and shuffled to his pantry cabinet, which was full of flasks, “No more 493.”

  Eron collapsed and found himself face to thorax with a giant weta, a hard green insect with powerful hind legs built for long jumps. It was larger than a mouse.

  “Greetings weta-man,” said Eron reached out to shake its leg. "Would you like drink?"

  “Are you alright down there?” asked Amos.

  “I am making new friends,” said Eron. “Take me to your leader.”

  “I am my own leader,” said Eron in a high pitch, setting his head against the cool dirt floor.

  If anything else happened that night, Eron never remembered.

  Eron woke inside the root cellar the next morning bearing many turnip shaped bruises even though a gray cat hide had been placed thoughtfully under him. The dust smelled damp and fertile. It was dark. The root cellar opened through a small trap door under the kitchen counter and extended out from the shack in long diagonal slabs that tapered toward the ground. His feet were wedged into the far end. As he sat up and pushed the door, his head thundered like a butter churn filled with sand.

  “Amos always brings trouble when he supra-visits. Never bread. Never wine. Just trouble,” said the old man grumpily as Eron crawled out onto the floor where the man grabbed him by the arm. His grasp was surprisingly strong.

  Eron wondered if he’d crawled in the root cellar voluntarily.

  “Eat this,” said shepherd handing Eron a bowl of carrots, tomatoes, dried raisins and sesame seeds covered in an off-white paste. The olfactory force of the meal repelled him. The chunky paste was clearly as rancid as it was unrecognizable.

  “Eat!” shouted the shepherd.

  Eron tried to press a spoonful to his lips, but they would not open.

  Scowling, the man picked up a knee heigh stick that leaned against the wall of his kitchen and smacked Eron on the shoulder.

  Stunned, Eron stepped back. With wild, deeply veined bulging eyes and a pocketed nose as red as a cherry red, the man was a terrifying sight in full daylight.

  “I have food,” said Eron. “I’ll have something on the road. My stomach hasn't settled yet. Where’s Amos?”

  “Outside,” said the shepherd mashing Eron’s meal with a pestle.

  Eron held his head in one hand and trotted into the blistering sun outside. The brightness of the clear sky gouged at his eye sockets and he swore to the gawds he would never even look at a bottle of wine as long as they took the pain away.

  The shepherd's stable, like all of the structures near the hut, were in desperate need of repair. Eron wondered if it was his strategy to keep the panthera from realizing anyone lived there. At the open doors, Amos stood brushing a dark horse with a sagging gut. Eron stepped over a mess of vomit on the ground just as the old man brushed past him with a bowl oats, which he had added to Eron's breakfast.

  “Eat!” shouted old man with his stick in hand.

  Eron flinched and so did the horse.

  Bits of twigs were sticking out from Amos's dark braids and the bags under his eyes seemed to more responsive to the forces of gravity. The big man handed Eron a scrap of parchment with a drawing of two winged Lammasu. The outline of the creatures revealed the bodies of the purple beefalo, the wings of giant moa and grotesquely perched upon their hunched shoulders were oversized human heads.

  Lammasu.

  There was nothing human about them.

  “Turn it over,” said Amos as the old shepherd engaged in a battle of wits with the dark horse deftly maneuvering the dish of oats under its nose no matter how fast the poor beast tried to dodge his efforts.

  On the other side, a few dozen nomadic symbols were scratched carelessly beside a map of the Auckian road systems. Dunedin village. Waimate camp. The Den of Thieves. Auck City. It was a relatively new drawing to include the nomadic camp.

  “This is taken from the official map that Malak plans to release for the mid-millennium?” asked Eron incredulously. “Are these the only the cities with walls?”

  Amos nodded. He was hitching a rickety cart with wooden wheels to the horse who now bore a smug grin. The oats were untouched and the shepherd had gone back to his hut.

  “There is a wall around Waimate?” said Eron incredulously. “Why do the nomads have walls?”

  “They built them,” said Amos absently while stroking the horse's bristly hair where he'd just brushed. “The stockade has stood for three years.”

  When Eron arrived in Dunedin, he had travelled seven days across the island by carriage without glimpsing a settlement inhabited by nomads. He saw the people on the roads, but they differed little from when they entered the city or the villages. Only, there were more of them.

  The old man returned with an armload of provisions which he shoved at Eron. A stomach-shaped leather bota, a sort of undignified water bottle made from an internal organ of a sheep, was the largest of the gifts and it reeked of medicinal wine.

  “You've already been very generous” said Eron tucking the map into a hidden pocket in the rim of his knickers.

  “You’re going to want something to carry water in,” said Amos. "And that pemmican will last longer than your sausages."

  Eron slung the braided arm strap over his shoulder.

  "Pemmican is not food," said Eron.

  “Food enough,” said the shepherd spitting.

  The nomads mixed a tasteless buffalo fat with bits of dried flesh to make the preserved blocks they called pemmican. Although in the wee hours of the morning Eron often raided the weaver’s pantry for anything he could chew, he would rather go hungry than eat something that looked and tasted like soap.

  “Don't fill that from standing water,” said Amos pointing to the bota.

  Eron nodded and went back into the hut and for his bundle. Outside the doorway, he poured its contents the dewy grass. On his gray cloak, he spread an extra tunic from the weaver, a linen undershirt, a pair of leather knickers and three loin cloths. At least they hadn't taken those. He placed the leather wrapped scrolls in the center and rolled the tinctures in his socks. From the villagers, he had collected sausages, cheese, a pair of green gloves, a lens and some oatmeal soap, which looked identical to the shepherd's pemmican.

  "Where's my bread?" Eron asked the shepherd.

  “No time,” said the old man.

  Eron rolled everything together tightly into a cylindrical shape and secured it with two leather straps. The shepherd slung a bovine horn on a leather strap around Eron’s shoulder. Undoubtedly, it contained a festering ember from the fire packed in moss. Even the Auckian Guard used fire horns on the road.

  “Fire and water,” said Eron holding up the horn and the bota with a smile. "Now I am ready."

  “Not enough bulk," said the shepherd to Amos who had driven the cart down the grassy ruts to the front of the hut.

  "I reckon the pads of his feet are even softer than the underbelly of a lamb,” laughed Amos. "And he probably couldn't catch-ify a fish with a fish."

  "Dead in a day," said the shepherd shaking his head. “If you give a man a fish, you can feed him for a day. If you give this boy a fish, he’ll starve trying to read it.”

  They chuckled mightily at their own wit.

  “You could give him Glue,” said Amos shrugging. "She's a tired old nag, but if she didn't make it all the way to the D.O.T., he could always eat her."

  “Glue? That's your horse's name? Villagers are so
irreverent,” muttered Eron sympathetically.

  Glue snorted.

  “When we reach-icate the road. It should take you seven days to get to Waimate," said Amos slowly surveying Eron’s meek stature. “Maybe longer. Get in.”

  Eron climbed into the cart. The old man covered him with straw.

  “Why don’t you take me as far as Waimate?” said Eron quickly remembering what the old man said the night before. "You could ride Glue back."

  “Hrmph!”

  Eron heard the crack of the old man's stick on Glue's hide. The cart creaked and bounced on the rocky path away from the old man’s hut. Eron tried to find a comfortable position in the hay, but everywhere he turned, the dry scratchy bits poked through his tunic. He reached down and clawed his leg fiercely. And then his torso. And then behind his ears.

  The wooden wheels of the cart turned slowly as they descended a graceful slope. After a few minutes, the sounds of wood rolling over the rocks, the clopping of Glue’s hooves and the rattling boards of the cart were joined by a set of muffled voices, which quickly faded. After another few moments of itchy agony, the cart stopped. They turned left and pulled to the side of the road.

  Eron started to push the straw away.

  “Whoa there! Stay down,” bellowed Amos as if he were talking to the horse.

  Some people passed, greeting Amos as they walked, which meant one good thing to Eron. They were not the bounty hunters. When they'd gone, Amos dismounted and Eron burst out of the hay.

  “Stay off the road at night and try not to be too soggy,” said Amos in his deep bass.

  Eron thanked him.

  "Thank-you for what?" said Amos. "Gil is family. We'd do anything to protect him."

  "I know," said Eron. "I was thanking you for not killing me."

  Amos smiled.

  "I'll probably be dead by nightfall," Eron sighed looking at the open road in front of him.

  Behind them, Dunedin was barely visible and the metal lattice of the main gate blurred seamlessly with the long white walls. For the first time in a full cycle of the moon, he was breathing fresh air devoid of all human activities and certainly not enjoying it.

  "You let Gil take your place without fighting or arguing or begging or doing something that would have made me need to kill you," said Amos. "You surprised me, Eron."

  "It was logical," he sighed.

  "Whatever it was," said Amos, raising a thick hand to signal the permanency of his departure, "keep doing it."

  Eron adjusted his bundle before taking his first three steps to what felt like oblivion. The flat land that comprised the wastelands outside the village glowed vibrantly with patches of green foliage and tall grasses, but the overall effect was lost on the dizzying sea of yellow dust. The waste, as the nomads called it, was green when he arrived in the spring, but as the rains subsided, the grasses not located near an immediate source of water, died. A creek in the distance wound through the dust like green snake.

  On the road, heat rose in invisible waves ahead and behind. A few leafy trees sparsely dotted bare land. To the South, a quiet blue mountain range was tucked far beyond the cloudy blue sky and although Eron would be taking what was called, the Coastal Road, there was no sign of the Specific Ocean and there wouldn’t be for many days.

  Eron’s sandals scraped along the road. He was alone. Until a group of nomads carrying bundles of bulging cloth loosely tied to the ends of long sticks, resting on their shoulders, passed him going the other way. Their stares made him uncomfortable. He tried kept a steady pace, but there were too many straps on his shoulders and cords around his neck. A bota, a fire horn, his bundle, the coin and Gil's metal tube dangled over the navy colored tunic the weaver had given him.

  Eron kicked a few pebbles as men on horses trotted past. Two vardos, covered wooden carts, followed in quick succession. The entire exterior of the vehicles were neatly carved and stained red with the nomadic symbols of spirals and circles, lines and crude animal shapes. Not all the nomads could afford the mobile wooden homes. Some ran their trades from them. Others just carried their families from one settlement to another. But, all were designed with a unique and intricate craftsmanship valued by Auckian citizens. In desperate times, some nomads traded their homes to the merchants in the city who refitted them for cooking. The attractive designs tended to outweigh the obvious fire hazards in the vendor’s minds.

  Five older women in blue violet tunics caked with mud around the hem waddled together behind the vardos. Eron looked down and tried not to stare at their blue facial tattoos. Not all nomadic women decorated their lower lips in swirling designs, but when they did, Eron found the effect unnerving.

  Eron kept his head down and took out the map. It was marked with the regional flora, but Eron couldn’t decipher the shepherd's handwritten symbols and he found it nearly impossible to believe anything was still blooming on the waste in early summer. While a growth of mushrooms could mean death or dinner, there was no way he could tell which one it was.

  He had no choice, but to just start walking.

  Unlike the villagers, the endless masses of travelers were a brightly colored people. Eron had never noticed the differences before, but then again, he had never really cared to pay attention. Bleeding fabrics. Bits of old guard uniforms. It seemed as long as the fabric held together, the nomads wore it - no matter the size or fitting. And when the clothes they had surrendered to wear and tear, they just reassembled them into patchwork, cut a new garment and worn them again.

  Most of the nomadic consorts, the attached women, often traveling with their children, wore skirts, although unlike the women of Auck City, they tended to wear their hair loose. Auckian women didn’t do that. Eron tried not stare. The women who travelled alone tended to dress like the men. They didn’t look as attractive, but it was much more practical for hunting. And Eron had to assume they did that since many of them carried bows and animal pellets. Braids, tattoos and earrings were more plentiful among the men. But, like their drab counterparts in the villages, they never seemed to have a scrap of metal between them.

  Even though it was summer on the waste, leathers and furs from cat hide, dog hide or beefalo hide were still worn, though not the heavier skins nomads wore in the winter.

  After only a few hours, the sun had moved noticeably higher and the traffic began to dwindle, but he still passed a few people every once in a while.

  For Eron, it was the bone jewelry he found most unnerving. While the people in the city traded for the leather boots, pants and moccasins the nomads made, there was little market for anything that too closely resembled a body part. Teeth. Not something usually worn in Auck City.

  Following shortly after a particularly large band of nomads, a sleek black coach drove past in the his direction. He sighed and nearly broke into an audible whine. On his way to Dunedin, Eron had taken a coach paid for by the Guard. He ignored life on the road during his initial journey by keeping his nose deeply buried in his scrolls. But, now on foot, he was forced to take in every weary detail. Starring at the ground was an option, but he knew he couldn’t look like an easy target for the thieves. Thumbing the coin around his neck, Eron considered flagging down the next coach.

  One foot in front of the other, he walked, giving into daydreams, but still making progress.

  When the sun reached its zenith, Eron sought refuge from the blistering anger of the sun gawd in a dark grove of trees. His eyes adjusted to the light and slowly the olive tones clouding his vision faded.

  It was time to repack.

  Just before his eyes adjusted, he found a patch of ground where beams of light shot through the canopy of leaves above in bright spots. Wiping his brow, he laid out his stuff for the second time that day. Charcoal and stones were scattered in the dirt where the weathered edge of modern ruins peeked though the earth forming part of a broken fire ring. A tiny cascade of dust from a high branch passed through a beam of light. Although he couldn’t see the source of the noise, his ima
gination drew him into a frantic panic and starring motionlessly at the multi-colored undersides of the canopy, he thought he caught a glint of two glowing orbs. A pair of eyes in the branches. Small or faraway. He didn't know.

  Eron grabbed a rock and threw it into the thick of the branches.

  Leaves fell.

  Silence.

  He waited for his heart to calm.

  Examining the lens given to him by a young widow on one of the village rooftops, he listened for movement in the grove. Barely scuffed, the lens could be combined with another lens to create a spyglass, but he also knew alone, it could concentrate the sun's heat to make a fire. With tinder, he could create a flame anywhere on a sunny day. Too bad Micah lived in a cave. Eron grabbed a twig, held under the light, and moved the glowing spot until it was as bright as possible. A wisp of smoke rose from the bark. It worked.

  And as Eron was putting the lens back in one of his socks, a pair of soft elbows slipped around him like a squishy vice gripping his torso from behind. They had come from nowhere.

  His scream was interrupted by a blunt force to his left temple.

  A foul faced nomadic woman stood in front of him. She hit him again and blasted a warm gust of breath that smelled like dead animal directly up his nostrils and smiled so wide Eron could see the white film coating her tongue. The fragments of teeth that clung inside her mouth resembled stalactites. Haphazardly covered in a pungent smelling full-length purple tunic patched together from different scraps of cloth of varying ages and densities, the aging assailant looked as much like a purple buffalo as she smelled.

  This is it, he thought.

  As a gust of wind raised the hair on his neck, Eron steeled himself to accepted his fate by cringing. In a matter of moments, he would most likely be dead at the hands of an overweight middle aged woman.