The burned man.
Now the decision was what to do about it.
♦
It didn’t go the way I would have liked. The consensus was to send a small group of people (i.e., men with weapons) to recover their bodies and possibly track the burned man. The instructions were to go in quickly, never leave the group, and ensure that Max and Thad weren’t still alive.
“He likes to burn things,” I added morosely. “A watch should be kept while the others are sleeping.”
Gideon nodded at me.
Ethan frowned. It was clear that he didn’t appreciate the advice. I thought I knew what he saw. A weak girl who had drugged her companions to do something risky. A girl who was barely an adult but who he didn’t think acted like one. What could I really offer that was of value?
“A house that’s away from forest, a house that’s not on the edge of town,” I went on, regardless of Ethan’s attitude. “Zach can tell you where we stayed that night. It’s got a view that will let anyone see what’s coming.”
“Zach can go,” Gideon decided with a sideways glance at me. My muscles jerked in unspoken objection, but I didn’t say anything. After a moment, something else occurred to me.
“Robert,” I said. “He’s got a way of tracking…things. Animals. He should go, as well.”
Calida said, “And what do we do if we find the burned man, Sophie?” Her face was serious; she wanted to know what was next as much as anyone else.
I looked at the fire, reminded of the fires that he had set while we were fleeing from him. “I couldn’t kill him. I don’t expect someone else to commit murder. It’s not right.” Then I looked at Calida. “He’s a murderer, a vicious, psychopath who will kill more members of the group if given another chance. But this is a new society. Have you thought about how crimes committed in this group are to be addressed?”
Leander took a deep breath. “We haven’t given it much thought. So far everyone has been so glad to be with other people, problems of the former society haven’t cropped up yet. Nothing’s been stolen. No one’s been assaulted. Everyone seems fairly stable and content. I can only think of trivial disagreements”
“And when the worst happens, what will you do?” I asked. Speaking of the devil, I had to play that old familiar role, the devil’s advocate. I didn’t like it much but it felt like no one else was willing to take on the role.
“Punishment of some sort,” Ethan answered. “Depending on the crime. But we’re talking about the burned man. We’re talking about a crime so atrocious that even our society would have demanded the ultimate punishment.” Everyone knew what he meant – death.
“Who is going to perform the execution, Ethan?” I asked carefully. “Who gets to be the one to push the button, or use the axe, or push the stump out from under the burned man’s legs in order to let him strangle to death from a rope? Who gets to become a murderer in order to stop a murderer?”
Sinclair cleared his throat. “We could draw lots.”
“And if it’s Calida who draws the lot, for example,” I said. “How would that sit with you, Ethan?”
“She’s pregnant,” Ethan snarled at me. “She shouldn’t have to do anything like that.”
“And Elan?” I asked. “He’s too young, right? How about you, Ethan? Would you be able to sleep at night? Could you be okay with slicing the burned man’s throat? Or would we find some other way of doing it? Push him off the highest cliffs? Maybe use an axe to chop off his head. You could wear a hood so no one would know, but everyone would know anyway.”
Gideon sighed and the sound made me stop speaking. “You’ve made your point, Sophie.”
“What about jailing him?” Leander asked.
“I don’t see how well that would lie with everyone,” I said. “You’d have to build a prison. You’d have to have people guarding the prison every moment of the day and night. This man, this beast who walks in man’s form, isn’t like us. I don’t know what he was before the change, but he could never be rehabilitated. He could never be freed. And if he escaped he would probably kill someone or more than one. We’d be charged with caring for him until the day he died of natural causes. ”
Calida grimaced. “I can’t see that people would want to take care of a man who had killed two of our own. There would be dissent. There might be more than dissent.” She frowned unhappily. “Isn’t there another answer?”
“Banish him,” Sinclair suggested. “I could take him in a boat to the Big Mamas’ islands. Let him live there, if he can. Leave him with minimal supplies. Possibly offer to re-supply in six weeks or several times a year.”
“Sophie has informed me that traveling in a boat might be unsafe. There are new creatures out in the ocean that may be hazardous to us,” Gideon interjected.
“Things that are bigger than the Big Mamas?” Ethan asked incredulously.
I shrugged. “We didn’t have a measuring tape. It looked like it really liked fish and not particularly small ones, either.”
“Oh,” he said, obviously trying to think about what could be that large.
“We need options here,” Gideon said. “Tomorrow we’ll meet as the larger group and let everyone know what happened. We’ll make a decision then. I’m leaning toward a jail. We could even take advantage of the prison up past Crescent City. It was a supermax facility. Perhaps it would be good enough to hold this man.”
“If a lack of electricity wouldn’t be a problem,” I said before I could close my mouth. It was possible to go too far with a big mouth. God knew I did it all the time.
“That’s something else to consider,” Gideon acknowledged.
Sinclair snorted. “I think Sophie’s new job is to put forth all the things we don’t want to hear. A good position considering our obvious lack of healthy paranoia. We haven’t had to fear much of anything except the new creatures and they mostly seem to be busy adjusting to a new world.”
“So glad I could help,” I said dryly.
The meeting broke up with no decisions made.
Gideon held me back as the others filed out the door. Ethan would be taking someone out to each of the guards’ sites to inform them of the need for extra vigilance. Sinclair was going to talk to the men designated to go on the undertaking to recover the bodies. I could have told them not to go, that it would be fruitless, but I didn’t think they would listen to me on that call.
When we were alone, Gideon said, “When did you change your mind?”
I looked away from his youthful face. What did he see when he looked at my face, I pondered. A seventeen year old girl with all her dreams bashed in? A girl with a mark on her face that glowed in the dark and a connection to something otherworldly? Someone who could help them to survive? “About what?”
“You’ve started to use ‘our’ and ‘we’ in the conversations,” Gideon stated baldly.
I shuddered. I didn’t want to be part of the bigger group. It meant I was going to inevitably get hurt again. So I shook my head at him. He made a little face and shrugged. Then he melted into the darkness.
I hesitated at the door. Somewhere out there Zach was waiting for me. I turned around and went out the back of the office building.
Someone else was waiting for me there.
Chapter Nineteen – Walking in Dreams…
The firefly pixies surrounded me, a chattering tornado of greenish light and iridescent magic. They all jabbered and clucked to me like indulgent mothers who hadn’t seen their babies for weeks. It was a whirlwind of enchantment. Immediately, their presence made me feel more lighthearted than I would have without them. Their company had an effect of drinking a Red Bull combined with Mountain Dew before a dreaded test in school. I almost felt as though I could jump to the moon in a single bound.
“Hi, girls,” I said, remembering that Zach was waiting outside for me on the other side of the building. I guessed I couldn’t avoid him forever. Unenthusiastically, I started to head around the building but they flew in to block me. Take
n aback, I stopped. This was something new from them.
With a whoop of panache, the pixies opened another path for me, one that led directly into the forest. I took a look around me, hoping that no one was watching and found that we were alone. The office building butted up against the thickest part of the redwoods. I remembered the rule. No one goes into the forest alone. Technically, I wasn’t alone. I had a lot of tiny girls with me and they could sense danger. Reluctantly, I said, “Okay, girls, let’s go.”
It didn’t mean that I was being cavalier with my safety. The burned man was near Crescent City and it would take him hours to get to the Redwoods, provided he knew where to stop and look. But that wasn’t the only danger in the forest. There were other night creatures out there. Bears and mountain lions were two of the before creatures that still roamed. There were also the new animals, not all of which we’d seen and none of which we could say were not a threat to the humans that were left. Apparently, a Big Mama wouldn’t eat us but that didn’t mean it might not inadvertently step on us. And I wasn’t forgetting the raking claw marks that would forever mar my back.
But I had pixie power. (Didn’t that sound like Japanese Anime?) I went into the darkness with only the green light of the pixies to guide me. I had only a flannel shirt and jeans on to protect my flesh. My feet were in their typical Sketchers. I should have been cold but I wasn’t.
They lit the way for me and after a while my eyes adjusted to the dimness. I could see the black shapes of the tall redwoods against the starry skies. I could hear the movement of the wind above us. Occasionally there was the odd animal call, the hoot of a hunting owl. There was the crunching of the heavy debris underfoot and I saw a black-tailed deer scoot away as it became aware of the pixies and me. I knew about other animals I had seen infrequently. Raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, bobcats, and elk were all occupants of the forest. How the change would impact their population was open for debate.
I could feel the upward angle to the course the pixies were leading me on. We crested a bluff after a bit and I was only a little out of breath. The route was slower. I had to pick my way through the forest on a path that really wasn’t a path. Wherever the pixies were taking me wasn’t on the camper’s well-established routes. No youngsters had trodden this way. The direction went down next and soon I heard the trickle of a stream running over rocks nearby. It didn’t tell me anything important. There were many streams and rivers in the redwoods. It was very nearly a tropical forest and the amount of rainfall varied from 40 to 60 inches a year.
They led me down to the side of the creek and I picked my way along the rocks there. I was surprised that the pixies were so tolerant with me. They didn’t sound impatient or volatile, but undemanding and careful.
After what seemed like hours they allowed me to stop. I couldn’t see very well, even with the stars. I couldn’t tell what time it was and I was slightly disoriented. However, I wasn’t frightened. The pixies had never caused me harm before and I didn’t think they would mean to now.
I caught my breath as they twirled around me. Some of them skimmed the water like superior little hunters. I thought they might be eating insects. My face twisted a bit at the thought. Maybe it tasted like chicken to them. They probably thought some of the stuff I ate was pretty gross, too.
Then the moon came out from behind a cloud somewhere between half and a quarter full. I remembered asking Zach if the moon was still around or maybe it had been if the moon was gone. But there it was as it must have always been and I was startled by the amount of relief I felt. Furthermore, it wasn’t green or purple or pink. Had the change impacted the moon? Was the flag still flying there next to Neil Armstrong’s footprint? Or was there a new resident on the moon that was making the large planetoid its own?
With an odd smile on my face I looked to earth and nearly gasped. There in front of me was a moonlit pool of inordinate beauty. It was a gothic painting from a famous museum. It was a stunning setting that had few matches in its splendor. Black water spilled over a low cliff surrounded by dripping ferns. It trickled over a moss strewn rock, splitting into twin waterfalls and landed into a round pool that seemed as deep as the night. The wind had stopped blowing and the air was alight with firefly pixies. I looked closer. Small glowing things swam under the waters and I inched near.
Everything was slick and slippery. I parked myself carefully on a large rock and looked down. The pixies flittered past me, lost in their own joy of being reunited with their kinfolk. When I looked closer it seemed as though the ones in the water were the marine equivalents of the ones in the air. Instead of wings they had a little tail, and they moved through the water at lightning speed. Their tiny bodies glowed the same green as the pixies and slowly it dawned on me that they must be related.
I allowed my fingers to trail in the water and immediately a dozen of the little creatures surrounded my digits. They caressed my flesh, causing flashes of warmth in the chilled waters. The pixies swooped around me; the noises that they made were cheerful and relaxed.
Sighing with pleasure I allowed them to touch my hand as they would, holding my limb motionless. Was this the place that the firefly pixies lived then? Were the marine ones one phase of the pixies and the airborne ones another? Or was it more complex? Were the ones in the water the males and the ones in the air the females? I wished I could ask them.
More suggested itself to me. If this was their home as it seemed to be, then had the pixies found their way up the coast to me? Had they been searching for something? Was the something, me? And why were they showing this place to me?
I touched my cheek with my free hand and several of the airborne pixies twittered with glee. For a single moment I felt good. As in the moment I had had weeks before it was a solitary second full of non-sadness and lack of confusion over what decisions needed to be made. I wasn’t thinking about the burned man. I wasn’t thinking about anything but the warmth of nonjudgmental companionship and the delight of a curious new world. It felt absolutely wonderful.
But like all moments it had to end. This time I didn’t feel the overwhelming guilt of having had such an instant. Certainly, I was sad at what I had lost and what had been lost to all of the survivors. But my parents wouldn’t have wanted me to die with them, if that was what had happened to them. They would have wanted me to live and to enjoy my life to the best of my abilities.
A pixie landed on my outstretched arm and my eyes went to her small form. She pointed up the rock hills where the waterfall was sluicing over the mossy rocks. Carefully, I extracted my hand from the water and clambered upward. The pixie flew up and hovered in front of me, leading me.
I watched my footing and suddenly I was over the rocks, looking into a thick swatch of ferns. The pixie flew underneath the overgrowth and vanished. A moment later she reappeared and beckoned to me. Slowly, methodically, I lifted the thick vegetation away from the rocks and discovered a cave opening. It looked like an old lava tube. Oregon and California were full of such outcroppings, remnants from volcanic eruptions of eons past. Some were miles long. Most were small like this one.
Examining the opening skeptically, I shook my head at the persistent pixie. “I don’t think I’ll fit in there,” I said gently.
I ducked my head so I could see further inside. There was a green glow from the interior. Immediately the cave entrance widened into a bigger area where the pixies were apparently active. I couldn’t tell but it looked as though it was four feet high and twice as long. There was a wealth of goings-on inside. What seemed like hundreds of pixies were glowing and flying and doing whatever it was that they did. Since so few came out the entrance I was looking into, I assumed that they had other exits they used more frequently.
The pixie warbled at me insistently. Several others gathered with her and continued the general message. They wanted me inside.
“Okay,” I said, doubtfully. “But if I get stuck, you all are in big trouble.”
My head went in first and then my shoulders
followed. They rasped over the rough lava at each side. My knees slid over the vegetation and I nearly slipped forward in an uncontrolled movement. However, I stopped tight. For a moment I felt like a cork in a wine bottle. What I really needed was someone to give my tushie a push and the pixies weren’t up to the job. I grunted and the pixies in front of me muttered encouragingly. Abruptly my shoulders felt stuck. I wiggled one way, feeling the flesh being scraped, and then I wiggled the other way, grimacing at the sting of the rocks even over cloth covered flesh.
“I hate to say I told you so,” I murmured disdainfully. “But I told you so.”
One pixie flew forward to pull on my hair. She was joined by another one on the other side of my face. They pulled in tandem. I very nearly laughed at the ludicrousness of the situation. Two tiny Lilliputians were trying to pull Gulliver forward by two strands of hair.
I braced one foot on an outcropping of lava and shoved. My shoulders rubbed even more and then abruptly popped through. The pixies flew backward and nearly brained themselves on the cave’s walls. They immediately flew back and scolded me. “Sorry,” I said, insincerely.
Lying there I looked over the interior of the cave. I had just enough room to crawl on my knees with my head only slightly bent. On the opposite was a crevice that split the wall in half. The middle part dipped backward providing a ledge. Upon the ledge there were dozens of little houses, rounded buildings with tiny openings on the sides. Dimly they glowed as green as the firefly pixies.
“Did you make those?” I asked then called myself stupid. Tiny pixies were flying in and out of the little dwellings. Their intense activity reminded me of a bee’s hive. Everyone had a job. Everyone had a purpose.
Sea of Dreams Page 19
