Killer of Enemies

by Joseph Bruchac

  I hope, I think.

  I take two steps forward to look down into the tunnel under the stone. It’s a big tunnel. Carved into the living stone is a set of rough-hewn steps leading down and down into the dark.

  Gesturing for everyone to follow me, I start down the stairs.

  I hear the soft footsteps of Ana, then Victor, then Hussein, and finally Mom as they begin to descend behind me. Ten steps, twenty, thirty steps down into the dark.

  Then, the small amount of light from above suddenly disappears. Somehow, that flat stone has closed down above us. Is it our weight on the stairs that did it? A hidden lever down below where Hally is somewhere ahead of us?

  Waiting perhaps with a cooking pot?

  Perhaps I am a vegetarian?

  I doubt that.

  Soft mental chuckling answers me.

  Ana grasps the back of my vest. I reach back and take hold of her small hand, which is trembling a little. I squeeze it reassuringly. It’s going to be all righ, sweetie. Victor, Hussein, and Mom are close behind. I can feel each of their presences.

  And then, as my eyes grow accustomed to the dark, I see that it is not completely black down here. The walls are glowing, a faint luminescence that seems to grow brighter as I become aware of it.

  “I can see,” Victor says.

  I give Ana’s hand a little tug. Let’s keep going.

  The glow is brighter ahead of us. We round a corner and what I see there, waiting for us, shocks me as much as it does Mom and Ana and Victor.

  This, I think, is insane.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  You Asked

  I’d been expecting a monster’s lair with piles of bones from its victims stacked to the ceiling. Or a great echoing cave with giant stalactites hanging from the ceiling, bats fluttering about. Or a treacherous narrow bridge spanning a deep chasm filled with glowing lava and hissing clouds of steam.

  Nope, none of the above. What we all see is a cozy room, its walls hung with Navajo rugs, a sort of fireplace built into the furthest wall in what is either a natural vent or one carved out of the rock to create a draft that lifts the smoke. Against one wall there are even more bookshelves than I saw in the Dreamer’s lair. But what draws my eyes most is in the middle of the room. It’s a large wooden table with chairs pulled up around it. On that table there are plates and cups, knives and forks, which is neatly set for five. This all might seem almost normal were it not for two obvious differences.

  Difference Numero Uno—the plate, knife, fork, and cup at the head of the table are all three times the sizes of the other dining ware.

  Difference Numero Dos—need I even say it? Yup. It is our genial host. Bent over by the fireplace stirring the large cast-iron cauldron suspended from a tripod over the flames is Hally. The aroma coming from that stewpot and filling the air is wonderful. It reminds me how long it’s been since any of us have had a real meal.

  Hally straightens up and turns to face us. He has put on an oversized white chef’s hat, perched high atop his sagittal crest. It makes him look totally non-threatening, despite his size. He is also wearing a frigging apron that bears the embroidered words, I kid you not, KISS THE CHEF. Well, at least it makes him look more polite, or at least discreet, since it conceals his otherwise overly obvious nakedness. I am having a hard time not bursting out into uncontrolled and slightly insane laughter.

  Hally holds out his huge, hirsute right hand, palm up, swings it to indicate the table.

  “WELCOME, GUESTS,” he rumbles.

  It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak, even though we’ve met in person twice before. His voice is rough, deep as thunder. It sounds like boulders rolling down a stony slope.

  I can sense what Mom and Ana and Victor and Hussein are doing behind me—staring and thinking about retreating. And he hasn’t even grinned at them yet. I turn toward them and gesture calmly with my own hands.

  “Sit,” I urge them, hoping my voice doesn’t sound as strained or close to hysterics as my brain is feeling right now.

  We sit down. Our hairy host lumbers over and deftly pours water into our cups from a stone jug that is as big as Victor, although Hally handles it as delicately as if it were a crystal pitcher.

  “Thank you,” Ana says, smiling up at him as sweetly as a little bird looking up from its nest.

  He’s nice. That is what she’s thinking.

  Victor’s mouth is half open as he sits there. This is a lot for him to take in, but he seems to be accepting it. After all, he’s only eight. Everything in the world can be surprising at first to an eight-year-old. Plus he can also smell whatever that stew is and his mouth is watering a little. Nothing ever makes my little brother lose his appetite. “Eat while you can” is his motto. He’s a lot like Dad was in that way.

  Mom is sitting quietly, studying everything. That doesn’t surprise me. But Hussein’s reaction to all this does. He has his hands together and is tapping his lips with his two index fingers. The way he is looking at Hally is not with uncertainty or fear, but something else.

  “I know about you,” Hussein says.

  Hally turns his head. “OHHH?”

  Hussein nods. “Not you, perhaps. One like you. Another desert, far away where my people called you Old People by the name of djinn. There, one like you helped my family before I was born. My father told me the story many times.

  “HMMMMM,” Hally hums. “GOOOD. NOW EAT.”

  By that he does not mean he is now going to eat us. He has lifted that pot up from the fire and is spooning out onto our plates a venison stew that contains vegetables like those from Hussein’s garden back at Haven. Potatoes and beans and carrots. It smells as delicious as it looks.

  I look up at Hally as he serves me.

  Where did you get these?

  My garden.

  You have a vegetable garden?

  Hally points at the huge opposable digit on his left hand. Green thumb.

  So you actually are a vegetarian?

  He drops a large piece of venison onto my plate.

  That is what this deer thought when he came to eat my beans.

  This time I can’t hold it back. I have to laugh. It comes out as a loud barking cough that even startles me. Hussein and Mom and Ana and Victor all turn to look at me. I raise both my hands in a calming gesture to them.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Let’s eat.”

  But even though I do not say anything else out loud as we eat, my meal is far from a quiet one mentally.

  So, Not Little Food, how do you like my place?

  I look around. And the thought that comes to me is that there is a feeling of great age all around me. That tunnel, this room, everything else that I suspect is here within this mountain and hidden so well from the sight of normal humans, this has all been here for a long, long time. Plus that last thought which came from Hally was not in broken English. There’s more to him than I thought.

  Hally, just how old is this place? How long has it been here?

  Since before your people were here.

  Why help me?

  Hally shrugs. Every now and then we get interested in someone. We’re not forbidden to help you little people, we just don’t feel like it most times.

  Why do you hide? Why do you live this way?

  It’s quieter like this.

  There’s more than that to it, isn’t there?

  I feel a pause in Hally’s thought. Is he wondering how much he should tell me? Then his silent voice asks me a question that surprises me.

  Do you know why the Silver Cloud came?

  The question shocks me. And it’s not just because it is being asked by the least likely person. It’s also his mentioning the Silver Cloud.

  When the Cloud first appeared it was all that anyone talked about. Everyone wondered what it was, why it was here, when it was going away. Maybe it would just go away or disappear. But it didn’t. And over the years that passed, the survivors all stopped talking about it. Certainly no one at Haven ev
er mentions it. What good would it do to talk about it? Just surviving takes up most of our time and energy.

  No, I think back at him.

  This time there’s no hesitation as he begins to tell me a story.

  My people have lived here a long, long time. We are from another age, old beyond old, before all of you were shaped from this earth by the Maker’s hands. We, too, became powerful. We could fly. We could shape the courses of the rivers with the work of our thoughts, dig into the roots of the mountains, raise great structures up to the sky. Soon, we believed, we would dream a way to rise up beyond the Life Giver. Then the Maker sent us a message.

  It came, a big light streaking across the sky. And there was a great explosion. Darkness filled the skies for cycle after cycle of the Giver of Light. Most of us died. But a few handfuls of my people survived deep in the earth. There was enough water and food to last through the dark time when most of the other plants and animals died.

  When the sky finally cleared and we saw again the face of the Giver of Light, we were changed. We no longer wanted to shape the earth. We just wanted to live, to breathe, to see. We planted the seeds we had saved. We decided to just live and watch and listen.

  Hally pauses in his story, rubs his big hands together, looks around his comfortable stone chamber. My brother and sister are busy eating, Mom and Hussein have their heads together quietly talking about something. No one is paying any attention, as if they could, to what Hally is telling me. But then I remember that brief instance when Hussein knew what I was thinking. Was it just a random moment? Or is there more to it?

  Hussein, I think. Can you hear me?

  No response. Did I hope for one? Or not? Whichever the case, I guess this is not the time to brood about it. I turn back to Hally.

  So there are more of you? Are they around here, too? I think to him.

  Hally nods.

  Yes, there are more of us. But not here. Every now and then some of us gather together. But we enjoy being alone. So mostly we communicate with each other with our thoughts. Sometimes we have a big meeting of all of our minds. We had a big mind meeting of that sort just before what you call the Silver Cloud came. We were worried that something would happen because you little people were behaving as we did long ago. Your leaders believed they were wiser and stronger than Creation. They were crushing all other life on Earth beneath their weight.

  Something would happen soon. We all agreed on that.

  We were not sure what it would be. We knew you little people had rockets to protect yourselves from any asteroids and comets that might strike Earth as that one did in our day.

  But what came was not a comet or a meteor. It was something no rocket could destroy. It was the Cloud.

  There’s a lump in my throat the size of a fist. It all makes sense. I feel saddened and inspired. I think of all the old traditions that my mother still tells us about the past. How each world before this one was destroyed because of the misdeeds of humans or of Coyote, who is a sort of embodiment of all the craziest, most powerful and irrational aspects of humanity. What we need to do is find the balance again to make it right.

  But Hally is not finished.

  But some of my people think it may be another way.

  Huh? I think.

  Their theory is that there are other beings beyond Earth who do not care about balance. They just do not want any of us to become too powerful on this planet. So, whenever any of us beings on Earth seem to be growing powerful, they do something to hold us down. Send a comet careening our way. Or in this case, that Cloud.

  And now I am feeling angry. Is that all we are? Just flies to get our wings clipped whenever we threaten to break out of this solar system? But Hally is still not finished.

  But none of us know if that is true or not. And some think there may be another reason.

  Oh, great! Just what I need. Another load of . . . uncertainty!

  It is this. When there’s a certain amount of electronic activity here on Earth it sets into motion an attractive field. And that field, like a magnet pulling iron in its direction, draws things toward Earth. One time a meteor, the next something like that Silver Cloud.

  I look hard at Hally. Is that a smile on his face? Hard to tell with all those teeth when his mouth is open that way. My head hurts from trying to take in all this stuff.

  Why tell me all this? Why make me so confused?

  Well, he thinks back at me, you asked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Your World Now

  It’s a nice room. But I can’t stay here forever. Much as a part of me wishes I could. I’d like to check out those books on my huge hairy buddy’s shelves, sit with my feet up in front of this fireplace and relax, really relax, for the first time in years.

  That is what Mom and Ana and Victor are doing. Mom is sitting in a rocking chair that I suspect was brought here especially for her, seeing as how it is way too small for a bigfoot. A half smile on her face, her hands in her lap, she looks like one of those old Pueblo storyteller clay dolls, just waiting for half a dozen little kids to climb up and beg for an old tale.

  Ana and Victor are on the floor in front of her. They are stretched out on their stomachs on a thick carpet spread out in front of the hearth, a checkerboard between them. They are totally engrossed in the game. They’ve always loved checkers. To Victor, checkers is what games are all about. He’s too young to really remember holo-viddies.

  It makes me think of the place that I hope to eventually take us all. Valley Where First Light Paints the Cliff. We had a checkerboard there. It was one of the things that my dad packed when we left the city and he and Uncle Chatto led us through the chaos of the looters, the Know Not mobs, the warring armies, the monsters of every shape and size that were starting to appear, to the safe, hidden place that became, for eight seasons, our little Eden in the hills. It was our home.

  Until they were betrayed. And the men wearing red arm bands came and burned our homes and took those who survived as prisoners.

  Hussein has blended right in to this idyllic little domestic scene. He’s cross-legged on the floor, his guitar in his lap, strumming it with his thumb and index finger and keeping the bandage wrapped around his mutilated finger from hitting the strings. He is humming something softly as he plays.

  It’s all so peaceful. Too peaceful. It makes another part of me, the part that will never forget seeing my dad and Uncle Chatto going down in that hail of AK-47 bullets—the part that knows there are men somewhere out there trying to hunt us down—want to jump up and scream out something.

  I shake my head in disbelief at the unreality of it all, at the way this tranquility, which our old people always said was the way life should be, seems so jarring to me right now, so confusing.

  How can they all be so calm right now?

  A huge hand rests on my shoulder—well, to be accurate, almost the entire right side of my body.

  All of them look happy, do they not?

  I turn and look at our host. And as I do so, it comes to me.

  You did something. Did you hypnotize them?

  Who, me? Hally puts a hand over his heart and widens his eyes.

  If telepathic messages can sound disingenuous, then what he has just “said” to me is the dictionary definition.

  Just tell me.

  Hally removes his paw from my shoulder, presses both his palms together and puts his hands against his chest like a priest about to deliver a benediction.

  I put them in happy place. They will stay there until I . . . wake them up. Then I will take them to a place where you can find them. They will not remember me. They will not remember being here. I will make them forget. That is something my people always could do to most of your kind. Like Lamont Cranston, the Shadow, we have power to cloud men’s minds. Also women and children. How you think we manage to keep them from finding us all these centuries? Nyahhh-hah-hah.

  Who is the Shadow? And what is with that weird laugh?

  Golden Age o
f Radio? Never mind. I forget how young you are.

  And how old is he? Hundreds of years, probably. I look hard at Hally and he shrugs. So he’s used some kind of hypnosis to make everyone else chill? That’s good. Because I do not want them following me—as I suspect they would all insist upon—when I go out to do whatever it is that needs doing now.

  Which is what?

  I look up into his eyes, deep brown. Like looking into two pools of deep water, little lights glowing somewhere deep beneath the surface.

  It’s not working on me. So cut it out.

  Hally grins. No harm, no foul.

  I go over to the place where I stacked my things. They are all there, as well as something else resting on top of it. A holster with a .357 Magnum in it and what looks like a hundred rounds of ammunition.

  Where did that come from? I suppose the answer to that is easy. He took it away from someone who no longer needed it. And when did Hally have the time to bring it out from wherever he had it hidden away? We’ve been talking mind to mind almost the whole time we’ve been here. Or have we? Maybe I am not immune to mesmerism after all.

  I look back over my shoulder at Hally. He lifts his eyes to the ceiling and twiddles his thumbs, innocence embodied. Then I pick up the gun. It’s not mine, but it’s in just as good shape as the one I had to leave behind in Haven. I check the chamber. Empty. Dry fire it. All in order. I load it, slide it in its holster, belt it around my waist. Ah! I no longer feel naked. Ready to go.

  But which way? I look around Hally’s stone chamber. It seems at the moment to have just as many doors as there are windows. Namely none.

  Which way is out?

  Hally strolls over to the farthest wall, presses one large finger against its rough surface, and a section of it swings back to disclose a passageway.

  Voila, mademoiselle!

  He and the Dreamer ought to get together. I lift up my very heavy pack, which clanks as I heft it, sling it over my shoulder.

  I look back once at Mom and Ana and Victor and Hussein. I believe what Hally told me. They’ll be okay here for now. If Hussein didn’t have that bad hand to contend with, it might be nice to have him coming along with me. He’s already proven himself to be more than a little competent. But no. Just like always, this is something I have to do on my own. And it will be so much easier to do with them safe and my not having to worry about them.