The Ishim Underground

by Carrie Bailey

CHAPTER SIX

  Face to face with one road hag, Eron's skin tingled against a gust of wind, which contrasted sharply with the sweaty embrace of other the unknown captor standing behind him.

  "What's that?" said the person holding him.

  It was the raspy voice of another women. Two women. Rather than wait for a reply, she put her rough hand over Eron's mouth.

  "If you scream-ation, I'll cut off your favorite body parts.”

  Eron furrowed his brow, confused for more than one reason.

  “Your fingers,” she said. “Five of the six things boys like best.”

  The foul looking creature facing him dug her thumb into the soft spot at the bend of his arm and snorted eagerly as she applied more pressure until Eron released his grip and he dropped the lens.

  "Do we need this?" she said grimacing as she crouched to retrieve it from the dried leaves where it landed.

  “I don't know what it is,” said the other. She was strong although soft and burly. Her voice reflected both qualities.

  Eron's head was still throbbing with a brutal hangover.

  The woman held the glass lens to the sun. “Scratched,” she said and tossed it back on the ground.

  Eron tried to object, but the sound he made was muffled by the woman's meaty fingers.

  "He's rather feisty. I anti-bet you would like to take a swing at me," said the woman. "Eloise, let him go."

  With a reluctant groan, Eloise uncovered his mouth, "Be quick, Ethel."

  “I wouldn't hit a woman," Eron said. Although he hardly thought the two beastly creatures qualified as such.

  "Couldn't hit," corrected the woman. She planted a swift jab in his stomach using the firm pointed tip of her hand. He made a noise like a sick dog.

  "I thought people got nicer when they got older," he moaned.

  The woman, Ethel, was wrinkled and hunched. She had matted black hair and wispy strands on her jowls. Her dark eyes were barely visible under the heavy weight of her lids, which were framed by one bushy eye brow. Eron considered immediately that she may be the ugliest woman Eron he had ever seen.

  “Where are you going?” asked the woman holding him.

  "Auck City," he lied.

  “Back to the hive,” spat Ethel.

  “Auck City?” said the woman with the strong arms. "You're a long way from home."

  Eron could tell that she was taller than him by at least a foot, but struggled anyway, straining his back and lifted his feet off the ground until they pointed straight in front of him at waist height. But, the woman neither stumbled nor loosened her crustacean grip. At least he wasn’t making it easy for her to hold him. The hag yanked him to the base of a tree while Eron dug his heels into the ground. He scraped two lines into the dark soil and leafy debris.

  “What do you want?” Eron shouted loud enough that someone might hear him, but not so loud that the hags could reasonably claim that was what he intended.

  The nomadic women exchanged confused glances before throwing their heads back in a manic, but somewhat feminine gurgling peal of laughter. The one who had been holding him pressed him against the bark. Her softer features were almost grandmotherly. She had more chin hair, but significantly less eyebrow. Her years on the road under the burning sun and nights in the bitterly cold winter, had taken an obvious toll. She was close to the grave, but still kept her hair neatly braided. Even her rags had more form than those of the other woman though they were likely cut from the same purple cloth.

  Ethel started wrapping a rope across Eron's chest as Eloise held him.

  "You are dumber than a sackable of potatoes," said the taller hag. “Stretch his arms around the bark then bind them. Don't waste our rope.”

  She pulled Eron’s arms as far as they would go, cut off the excess rope and gagged him with a scrap of resist-dyed blue cloth. Eron recognized the dye technique of the gag from his mother’s workshop. It was made with candle wax. Though a bit tattered, it was obviously skilled work, far more expensive than the hags would be able to afford, though they seemed unaware of its value. As Eron tried to gum his way through the gag, the women descended on his bundle like birds on a carcass. Eron's wrists looked and felt like baked plums. Little, if any, blood circulated through them.

  "Take it all," he mumbled defiantly.

  “You heard what he said,” said Ethel with her eyes bulging in their sockets.

  "No, that's unethical!" said the other hag who turning over each of Eron’s scrolls before tossing the pages on the ground in a pile.

  “We can use paper to start fires,” Ethel said brightly. "I needed a new bota, too."

  Munching on a bit of his pemmican, she got up to search Eron's pockets and slipped the bota off his shoulder along with the metal tube and the pouch that held the coin. The hag padded him down from head to toe.

  “We're going to have to draw lots for this one, Elle.”

  “Is it wine?” asked Eloise.

  Ethel took a stole a brief glance toward her companion who was preoccupied having bitten off a chuck of the oatmeal soap and was trying to rub the taste off her tongue. Ethel slipped the coin around her neck and glared at Eron while Eloise had the stoppers off the herbal tinctures and were sniffing them. The potency of a tincture made with soaking herbs in alcohol could last years longer than drying the same plants and could be dripped directly into a sick person's mouth, mixed in food or drink or even applied to the skin in some cases. Some were strong enough to kill in the wrong dose. It was not unheard of for herbalists to experiment with snake venom, which had healing properties when ingested. But, when absorbed in the bloodstream through open sores in the mouth, they were lethal. The hag put the stopper back and tossed it on the scrolls.

  “It's a good strong distillation,” said Ethel sniffing the rim of the bota. "This little container-mation is empty,” she said with Gil’s metal tube open in her hand. "It's metal, but there's nothing more than cobwebs."

  "What!" said Eron, lurching forward, but the rope only cut deeper into his wrists. Although he hadn't opened it, he assumed it carried something. Why would Gil tell him an empty metal tube would help him find Micah?

  “Keep it," said Eloise.

  With Eron's guard-issued knife, she sliced through the cheese brick as far as it reached then pulled it apart with her grimy hands and tossed half on to the pile with the scrolls.

  “Ethel, give him our bota,” Eloise growled. "You know the code."

  The uglier of the two hags drained a little wine from Eron’s bota and took the sad looking leather pouch she wore and threw it on the ground. While they were busy, Eron attempted to push his arms father back so that the rope would no longer settle on the raw parts of his skin, but they were bound so tightly, it didn't budge. The air around him seemed to be growing brighter and the ground started to spin.

  “Waimate?"

  Eron couldn't hear the woman speaking to him.

  "Waimate."

  He didn't understand. His head dropped and Eloise rushed like a mother beefalo to her side and loosened his bindings. He slumped down the rough of the truck and leaned his head against it.

  "If you tell us your next stop, we can help you better,” chided Eloise in a warm tone. She was rubbing his arms and hands to draw the blood through them again.

  Although Eron heard the clopping of hooves, the rattling of pans and the creaking sound of wood jostling from the road as a cart passed, he made no sound, but pleaded with his eyes.

  “Ethel, I'm taking out the gag,” said Eloise. "This one won't give us any pre-trouble."

  "I'm ready if he does," said Ethel taking another sip from Eron's bota.

  “What’s a bindle?” he asked weakly. The pulsing force of pain in his head was making it harder for him to speak.

  "“Even if you are a rich Auckian dishrag, we'll bundle up the things you need for your journey and be on our way," said Eloise. "No worries."

  "We are all Auckians," said Eron fighting the surreal feeling that he was going floa
t away.

  "I'm no Aucklander!" said Ethel.

  "You were born in Auckland," whispered Eron. "Everyone here comes from this island. There is nothing else, but Auckland. Therefore, we are all Aucklanders."

  "Listen," said Eloise. "I come from Zealand. You come from Auckland."

  Before the apocalypse, the island had different names. Eron read about them in Liam's discourses. Zealand and Aotearoa were two of the old names used before it was resettled. While some of the Auckian citizens knew the land had been called Aotearoa, the name Zealand was all but forgotten except among the scribes.

  "How do you know about Zealand?" said Eron.

  "I said Zion," said Eloise. "Are you alright?"

  Confused, Eron shook his head. "What do you want?" he said exasperated.

  "We're robbing you," said Eloise. "Haven't you ever been robbed before?"

  Again Eron shook his head.

  “Soggy as bread in soup,” muttered Ethel.

  “No worries," said the hag leaving his side. "We won't take everything. Nothing you need to get to Waimate."

  "I need everything," said Eron. "My food. My clothes,” said Eron. "And I need my coin."

  "What coin?" said Eloise.

  Ethel shot him a menacing glare.

  "I guess I already traded it," said Eron bitterly.

  “You get what you need to go where you’re going,” said Eloise.

  “That sounds completely legitimate," groaned Eron. "Totally ethical. Entirely moral. Great. Really. Great. Thanks.”

  "You're welcome," said Eloise putting his guard issued knife in her bindle.

  "I don't suppose you know a man named Micah. He’s a sort of monk.“

  "Micah?” cackled Ethel. "A man?"

  “He’s a sort of monk?” cried Eloise tearing up with laughter.

  “A sponge like him going to the D.O.T.?” said Ethel heaving and doubling over.

  “What is the D.O.T?” demanded Eron. He was feeling more coherent, but rather than fading away, the painful hangover seemed to grow stronger as the sun climbed higher.

  They looked at him and snickered again.

  "Can you give me a sip from the bota?" he pleaded desperately.

  "No," said Ethel.

  “Ugly old baggy beefalo woman,’ he whispered under his breath, but before he finished insulting her, Eloise was holding up one of the vials.

  "Open up," she said and pulling the stopper, she used the thin glass rod on the underside, coated with the brown sticky medicine, to administer the concoction directly on to his tongue.

  "What is it?" he said with the taste unpleasantly coating the inside of his mouth.

  "Mostly poppies from the smell of it," she said stoppering it up again. She looked at the bottle. "I guess you must need it." She sighed, putting it in his pocket. "I don't know the other one, so you can keep that, too."

  Eventually, the women had packed away most of the cheese, pemmican and the sausages. And though Ethel didn't want it, Eloise took the lens. When they finished, the women tied up the lamp and the knife, which they had decided to take in their bindles. Ethel still had the coin around her neck, but had generously offered Gil's empty tube to Eloise to carry. Most of their possessions, the nomads carried in sack of cloth tied to the end of a long stick, which they slung over their shoulder. Eron had never been told it was a bindle, but he had seen them many times before both in the city and on the road.

  Not realizing that Eron used the leather straps to carry his own bundle, Eloise used his knife to cut a branch from one of the bushes. She stripped the fresh young leaves and blunted the ends before tying his cloak together with his scrolls and everything left inside.

  “Have you used a staff before?” asked the hag.

  “I have straps,” said Eron.

  “I don’t know that weapon.”

  Eloise slid the cloak from the stick and swung it around her back and caught the end with her other hand. She cried out and thrust the stick into a bush beside Eron. The force of the blow knocked the branches loose. Methodically, Eloise brought the stick back to her chest and spun it around her large body with an imperceptible vigor.

  “I’m glad I didn’t have to fight you,” said Eron in stunned respect.

  “Maybe next time,” she said tying the cloak back on the end of the staff. “I’ve been anti-practicing for years. Helps with the thieving.”

  If Aden had been there to witness his humiliation of being robbed by two women, much older than their mother, Eron may have decided never to return to Auck City.

  Eloise had pitied him. Ethel not so much. Eloise squeezed the last of the medicinal wine from his bota, which the uglier of the two road hags had almost completely drained. Although no one observing her would have been no wiser for it. If anything, Ethel looked more sober. Before they left, Eloise ripped some moss from Eron’s tree and held it up for him and showed him how to pack an ember into the hollow sheep’s horn, which the shepherd had given him.

  “May the road gawds carry you safely to your anti-destination,” said Eloise as she retied his gag.

  “Fank ou, Eluweeze” Eron spit through the damp cloth.

  Ethel grunted and leered at him.

  "You can call me Auntie," said Eloise patting his head.

  And hunched over, they waddled up the slope back to the main road, snorting and grunting just like the purple buffalo they so perfectly resembled.

  I’m going to die here, he thought. Alone. No coin. Eron banged the back of his head against the tree bark until he saw many tiny points of light swirling around in front of his eyes. He squeezed out a few tears, but felt no emotion. His head was swimming with waking poppy-induced daydreams.

  A tui bird whistling, whirring and buzzing its midmorning song dropped from the branches. It picked at the white cheese left on his pile. Eron kicked dirt at it and the bird flew. He pulled on the rope. It was no use. Eloise had left enough slack for him to move, but not enough to bring his hands together.

  “Heelb!” he cried through his gag.

  Silence.

  Only the birds fluttered through the leaves above.

  The road was empty.

  Face the situation like a man. That's what he had to do. And from somewhere deep inside him, a place Eron didn’t know existed, he found the courage to sit still and think logically. And his first conclusion was that he would likely die from dehydration, which meant crying was counterproductive. As he sat there, considering his options, the canopy of broad leaves began to rustle wildly. Eron tried to fight his imagination. Whatever was moving had weight and caused yellowing leaves to drop. A trickle of dirt fell to the ground. It had to be a panthera. Loogaroo did not climb trees. Desperately, Eron pulled on his hands twisting the rope behind his back, which stung fiercely even though the pain was dulled by the medicine. The creature sprang from the branches and Eron shut his eyes tightly, pressing himself tightly against the tree and tensing every muscle in his body. He braced himself for the worst possible fate he could imagine. Teeth. Whatever pain would come, it would not last long. Whether it went for his neck or his bowels, he was as good as dead already.

  Time to pray. That was the only logical thing to do. But, nothing happened.

  Eron looked around and saw a dark mass hovering over his newly fashioned bindle, but his fraying nerves blurred his vision and he couldn't make out the nature of the shape. It was not large enough to be a cat. A white light swept into the corners of his mind and his world faded into the temporary oblivion of unconsciousness.

  For a fractured moment, just as he woke again, Eron thought he was home. And then, assuming he was home, believed he must be dead. His head didn't hurt as much. But, if it were so, and he was dead, then the afterlife looked exactly like the shady grove coated with the fragments of light from kaleidoscopic canopy of leaves above. He felt his stomach turn, but it only made him aware that insides were still intact. He felt his neck.

  His hands were free.

  The rope was broken. />
  “I’m a spirit?” he said touching his limbs, but they felt solid enough.

  And then, there were freckles.

  Eron screamed.

  He had never seen so many spots on a face before. It was a human face with freckles. So many freckles. With long strawberry blond hair, filthy and utterly unpleasant to look at, the creature he had thought was going to take his life was actually so slender and feral looking, he could hardly threaten a piece of bread if he said he was going to eat it. The boy was very dirty and wasn't so much as wearing the holy green tunic draped over his protruding collar bones as he was drowning in it. Eron had never seen so many spots. His eyes were a sort of golden color, which reminded Eron of birds sold in the Auck City market.

  The wild-looking boy held up Gil's metal tube.

  “Teach me to read,” he said starring intently inside the little cylinder. He blew in it.

  “Give that to me,” Eron said. "Where did you find it? I thought the hags took it with them."

  Standing up, Eron realized it was somewhat later in the day than he had initially thought. The sun had moved. He leaned against the trunk of the tree where he had been tied for support while the wild boy grab a piece of his parchment and lied down in the grass, setting the scroll across his face.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” said Eron

  “Letting them soak in,” said the boy, lifting the paper. He flashed Eron a toothy grin.

  "Give me that tube," said Eron holding out his hand.

  The freckled boy bounced up, leaving a crumpled imprint in the leaves and green blades where he had been lying. Up a tree, he disappeared faster than a panthera that had been chewing coffee beans.

  “It's mine!” said Eron. "I. I need it."

  The boy dangled the cord with the tube tied on its end directly in front of Eron’s face. Eron grabbed for it, but the boy pulled it away. Eron stood and waited as the boy lowered it slowly again.

  "Give it back to me," said Eron. He wasn't going to play the boy's game again.

  “Mine until you teach-ify me to read,” said the boy sternly.

  “Who are you?” said Eron.

  Then the boy jumped down again and circled Eron looking doubtful.

  “Who are you?” said the boy.

  “Eron of Auck City,” said Eron.

  After a little obvious deliberation, he spit into his hand and held it out for Eron.

  “I’m not touching that.”

  “Eron of Auck City,” said the freckled boy.

  He grabbed another sheet of Liam’s Discourses and held it above his head as if preparing to tear it down the center.

  “Alright!” Eron yelled

  The boy dropped the parchment and rushed to him. He spit unto his grimy palm, the only part of his body not covered in spots. Not sparing any vigor in shaking the purple and red mess that was Eron’s right hand, he grinned and looped Gil’s tube around his thin neck.

  “What’s your name?” asked Eron.

  "Eron of Auck City.”

  “Your name,“ said Eron.

  “Likes to talk.”

  “Just tell me your name,” said Eron. Although his headache was gone, it had been replaced by a poppy juice haze.

  “I don’t have one,” said the boy.

  A feral child. Not that Eron could muster any concern in his muddled condition for the strange youth, but he had always wondered what life was like for an orphan left to roam the waste. There were stories of children that had been raised by loogaroo. No one believed them, naturally, but from time to time, young Auckians ranging from seven to twenty did form gangs. Some had run away from home. Some were neglected. Others had been lost by otherwise well meaning parents. They were a constant nuisance and few survived to adulthood.

  Eron had seen wild men captured and executed. People without citizenship and no ties to the villages or nomadic communities had no status. But, a solitary child on the waste was a different matter.

  “Uh, thanks,” said Eron awkwardly.

  “For what?” said the boy startled by Eron’s sudden change in demeanor.

  “For untying me,” he said. "Were - were you raised by the loogaroo?"

  The boy screwed up his face in distaste and threw a rock at Eron.

  Obviously not.

  Eron crouched down and studied the child. Something about him didn’t quite sit right in his mind. Almost without exception nomads were distantly related to each other and operated as a collective with beliefs and customs that differed from the citizens of Auck. Only the elite nomads, the highway men, traveled alone, but even they had ties to the community and were well regarded. It was obvious from the boy’s appearance that no one cared for this scraggly creature.

  “Why don’t you have a name?” asked Eron.

  The boy shrugged.

  “Listen, I’m going to call you Amit, okay?” said Eron. “If you’re coming with me, I have to be able to call you something. Amit is a good name.”

  "Simple!" shouted the wild boy, sparing no glee in his expression.

  Amit was the name of one of Eron’s classmates who also had a spattering of freckles although they didn’t compare to the wild boys mess of brown spots. The boy had so many freckles that even his freckles were freckled. And he was pale, as if all the pigment normally afforded a man had been used up to form them. Underneath all the grime, something about the child reminded Eron of the archivists that attended the House of Malak, the prime administrator of Auck City.

  Malak ruled the city from the ziggurat, which had been built over the underground archives, and rarely made appearances in public. But, all the citizens were familiar with the family that worked for him. His head archivists could always be recognized in a crowd, not only because they wore elaborate orange robes to indicate their status as members of both the Red and Yellow Guard, but also because the only thing brighter than their robes was their matching shock of red hair. But, Amit’s matted and greasy hair was the color of straw.

  Eron picked at the bits of skin that had gathered at the edges of his sores. Taking a gamble, he uncorked one of the vials, lifted out the glass rod and dripped brown goo on his pink wounds. It stung. He unstoppered the other bottle and applied it to the other wrist, which burned with the force of a thousand suns.

  “That's enough experimenting,” he said to Amit who was eating his cheese.

  Eron shooed the boy from scattered pile, which had been ground into the dust by the careless trampling of the boy’s weathered heals. He crossed his legs and methodically began to sort what remained of his belongings. Eron spread out his dark grey cloak on the dirt and smoothed the bulges in the sleeves brushing away the twigs that clung to the rough weave. On top of it, he laid a indigo tunic with gray stitching about the sleeves and collar, his ochre woolen knickers and three burgundy loin cloths, all of which needed to be cleaned or he would have wrapped the vials in them. Instead, he used a spare linen to secure the tinctures

  The boy just watched quietly, lying on one of the tree branches, dangling his scrawny scabby legs downward. Closing his eyes, he allowed the warmth of the afternoon sun wash over his lids and thanked the gawds. He still had the shepherd’s map, which he tucked into an interior pocket of his leather knickers where he should have keeping the coin. He grabbed the soap.

  “If you’re traveling with me,” he said, rubbing the surface where the bits of grain pocked through the lard. It was effectively exfoliating though he preferred to wash salt and oil. “You’re going to need to wash.”

  Amit hovered over Eron’s shoulder eyeing the small gray block with interest.

  “Here,” he said tossing it at the boy. “You can have it.”

  The wild boy scurried away up the tree like a squirrel and sniffed the soap. Looking back at Eron bit it. Hard. And then gagged just as fiercely as he spat the chunk on the ground below.

  “What is it?” the boy cried wrinkling his spotted nose in an expression of confusion and disgust.

  “Oh, someth
ing like pemmican,” said Eron holding back a smirk. “You don’t eat that part. It has a waxy coating, but it looks the same as the inside.”

  Amit tried another bite, gagged and threw the bar at Eron’s head.

  The boy just watched quietly, lying on one of the tree branches, dangling his scrawny scabby legs down over either side like limp noodles on a spoon swaying in the warm breeze.

  “How do you know I really need that tube?” asked Eron.

  The boy opened a single golden eye and looked at him, but said nothing.

  “How do you know the hags didn’t take what was inside?”

  The boy closed his eye and relaxed as if Eron were not even there.

  “Is there anything in it?” asked Eron who had finished repacking.

  The boy said nothing.

  “Is there anything in that tube,” said Eron impatiently.

  “A spider.”

  He thought for a moment. “Then why should I want it back?”

  “You just do,” said the wild boy.

  The sun was even lower on the horizon by the time the two boys were marching down the road to Waimate. Officially, it wasn’t legal for Eron to teach the boy how to read. But, abandoning the guard wasn’t either. Eron had always wondered if the Auckian anti-literacy rules had been written onto the stone in the city square that held the Municipal Code or if they were a later addition. No one had ever read the engravings on the block except the Yellow Guards tasked with interpreting them.

  Breaking the law.

  As they walked together, Eron sang the alphabet song. Amit copied. Eron repeated. Amit wandered. The wild boy meandered on and off the trail again quietly humming the letters in the wrong order and sometimes inventing new ones.

  All around the road, the expansive waste stretched into the distance until broken by the bluish points of the Southern Alps far to the West. Nothing on the road felt familiar to Eron. He had hardly looked out the carriage window on the way there and for some reason each step left him feeling farther away from Auck even though he was certain they were headed in the right direction. Stone mile markers, the handy work of Green Guardsmen, measured their progress. Two miles and his feet hurt already.

  "Have you ever been robbed?" Eron asked.

  The boy was tossing pebbles between the wheels of the carts as they passed by. The open road was not as empty as it had been during midday.

  "What would they take?” said the boy.

  Amit had a bindle. A small one, which he swung around in Eron’s face. It was barely more than a handkerchief tied to the end of a stick and if it was actually empty that would not have surprised anyone who saw him.

  “Simple,” Eron said.

  No shoes. One oversized green tunic. An empty bindle. And a plethora of freckles. At least, Eron wasn’t alone.

  "Elemenopee!" shouted the boy galloping wildly ahead, kicking up dust.

  Eron coughed and did a few quick mental calculations. At one sausage and a slice of cheese per day for two people and if the tiny brick of pemmican staves of hunger for another day, together with the boy, Eron had enough supplies to travel for three days. Without the coin, he couldn’t hope to barter for food or passage north.

  I’m going to starve, he thought.

  It would take at least seven days to reach the nomadic camp.