Firestorm

by David Klass

  She turns to face me. The Atlantic is still in her gray eyes. The depth. The loneliness. For a dizzy moment I’m tempted to say something warm. Endearing. To kiss her.

  “I would have done it for anyone,” I tell her. “I just wasn’t brought up to let people risk their lives for me while I turn and run.”

  Eko nods. “Right. That’s what I thought.” Moment broken. Then, “Let’s sprint home. In knee-deep water. It’s harder that way.”

  “But it must be five miles.”

  “If you can’t run, crawl,” she scolds. And off she goes.

  I follow. Back to business.

  28

  First thing Eko always does when we return home is check blue cube. Tonight she lingers over it. Not happy.

  “What is it?” I demand.

  “Nothing. Go to bed.”

  “We’re in danger?”

  “Just some bad weather coming. Good night.”

  I lie in bed. Positive a little inclement weather was not the threat that worried Eko. She would probably enjoy a typhoon. So at home with nature. Even the vicious parts, like eels and sharks. I relive our diving adventure. Never knew the ocean was so beautiful. Far prettier than land. Deeper and more layered.

  Wonder what Eko meant when she said that humans, as a species, were appalling. That we ruined everything. How did we ruin it? Where do I fit in? She was willing to sacrifice her life for me. As my father did. Why? What’s broken that they expect me to fix? How can I possibly repair it when I know so much less than they do?

  Unnaturally quiet night. Windless. Becalmed. As if the sky is sucking up everything deep in its throat before spitting it back out. Eko may have been sharing a bit of the truth with me. Feels like bad weather is indeed coming our way.

  A hurricane brewing far out in the tropical North Atlantic? Gathering strength. Heading slowly, inexorably, ineluctably for Jack Danielson in the Graveyard of the Atlantic?

  Look those words up, my friend, but not now. Now I feel uneasy. Marshes are not supposed to be silent. Insects and frogs are oddly muted. They know something’s coming. Finding shelter. Mudholes to crawl in. Logs to burrow under.

  I’m exposed. No mudhole. No log. Just this three-story house for Jack to hide in and a blue cube to warn us.

  Of what? Who’s coming, and when? What will I do when they find me?

  I climb out of bed. Peer through window. There. On a rock, fifty feet away. Traitorous dog. If I had a gun I could shoot him from here. Cloud covers moon. When it passes, he’s gone.

  I glance the other way. Human gargoyle on roof. Eko. Motionless. Facing bay.

  I lean out window. Find handholds. Pull myself up.

  Climb toward her. Arms out for balance. Steep slope. Careful, Jack. My steps are silent, but she knows I’m coming. “You should be asleep,” she says as I get close.

  “Not tired. Can I join you?”

  She doesn’t say no. For Ninja Girl, that’s a warm invitation.

  I sit next to her. Apex of roof. Highest vantage point. Moon casting glow. Patchwork of silver marsh channels threading into glass-smooth bay. A million reflected stars captured by the shallow water like a swarm of bright-winged insects entombed in an endless sheet of amber.

  “I saw that lying dog,” I mutter. “Gisco. What’s he doing snooping around?”

  “Why are you still angry at him? He just did his job. He brought you to me. Why do you care if his methods were a little dishonest?”

  “I don’t know if you can understand this,” I tell her, “but when you’re all alone and you start to be friends with someone and trust them, it’s awful when they betray you.”

  “Don’t pity yourself,” she responds. “From the moment we’re born to the moment we die, we’re all completely alone.” Her voice quivers, and she stops talking.

  I glance at her face and she turns away. “What happened to your parents?” I ask.

  Eko remains silent for such a long time that I’m sure she’s not going to answer. Then she surprises me, and says softly, “They’re both gone. I have no memory of my father at all. But I remember my mother. Searching for a hideout with her last energy. A hut. A cave. Someone she could trust. She turned me over to the Caretakers. Then she died.”

  An owl hoots, far off. Strange hunting call. Inchoate. Primeval. We listen to its echoes fade.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Now I understand why all my questions about my parents must have been painful for you.”

  “You don’t understand anything,” she snaps. “Don’t ever feel sorry for me.”

  I glance over at her. Short black hair framing her features, an ebony shawl. Fingers cupped, as if the moonlight is nectar she has collected in her upturned palms. Lips slightly parted. Eyes wandering over the night sky.

  “Eko, will I hurt your feelings if I tell you the truth?”

  No answer. Is she listening to me, or is she far away?

  “Sometimes I think you’re the most heartless and mean psycho bitch imaginable,” I say, “and, frankly, I hate your guts. Other times I think you’re the saddest person I’ve ever met in my life, and something of a soul mate.”

  Eko gives a slight nod, as if both descriptions fit. “It’s very hard not to give in to the sadness,” she admits, her voice so soft it seems almost like a confession. “They tried to prepare me for it. Warned me how hard it would be coming back this close to the Turning Point. But the irony is brutal and the guilt is crushing .”

  “What turning point?” I ask. “Don’t talk in riddles. Just tell me what happened. You said this morning that humans ruined everything. How did we screw it all up?”

  Eko slithers out of her lotus position and I remember the eel emerging from its hole. I sense that meditation is her way of hiding in herself, sheltering from the world. Now she’s exposed and vulnerable.

  She pulls her knees in to her chest. For a minute she doesn’t look like a ninja or a yogi. She looks like a girl at a campfire about to tell a scary story that she knows will end up frightening her, too.

  “If you really want to understand what I’m saying, remember that I’m looking backward,” she says. “As we sit here on this roof tonight, it’s a thousand years in front of us. But forget that. Pretend it’s all already happened and now we have to deal with the result.”

  “Okay,” I said, “take me to your world and let’s look backward. Where are we ten centuries from this night?”

  Eko looks up at the stars. Inhales a deep breath through slightly parted lips. And then she does the last thing I would ever expect her to do. She starts quoting Scripture. Not just a line of it, but a whole ponderous chunk.

  My parents weren’t exactly churchgoing types, but I know what she’s reciting is famous, and I sort of recognize it.

  “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever,” Eko whispers. “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

  “That’s beautiful,” I tell her, “but awfully depressing. It’s from the Bible, isn’t it?”

  “Ecclesiastes. You find it depressing?”

  “Yeah. What it’s saying is that there’s no point to doing anything, because nothing really changes.”

  “To me, that’s so comforting,” she responds. “How lucky people were to have had that to believe in. You’re born, you live, you struggle, you die, and the earth goes on and on. The winds blow and the rivers run and nothing a man does in life can possibly change a jot of it. And if you thin
k you can leave a permanent mark or change the world, then you’re vain and deluded because that’s the biggest vanity of vanities.”

  Eko falls silent and we sit side by side looking out at the endless Milky Way reflected in the inky bay. For a minute the stars seem to swirl and assume a ghostly shape. I see an old man, looking back at me. He looks like Merlin the magician, with long white hair and a shaggy beard. But his features are somehow familiar. And not in a creepy way. A comforting way.

  My features. He looks a lot like me. But so sad. And bone-weary. Mournful. Like the weight of the world has been pressing on his shoulders for decades.

  He looks right at me. Into me. Through me.

  Is it my father? My real father?

  How can it be?

  And then he’s gone and I’m sitting there watching the reflected stars again, and somehow I now understand what happened.

  29

  “We changed it?” I ask softly. “That’s why you say we’re an appalling species? We damaged the world?”

  “Permanently.” She nods. “Irreparably.”

  “Pollution?” I guess. “The ozone layer?”

  “Sure. Pollution. The destruction of the ozone layer. And a hundred other big and small ways all taken together. Hunted out the jungles. Fished out the rivers and the lakes and finally the deepest oceans. Cut down the rain forests. Destroyed the coral reefs. Defoliated the edges of the deserts. Changed climate patterns. Manipulated the genetics of plants and animals. Body blows to nature. One after the other. Each one undoing millions of years of evolution and development. And do you know why we did it?”

  “No,” I admit softly. “Why?”

  “Because we’re human,” Eko tells me, and there’s a ring of disdain and self-loathing in her voice. “That’s the reason. That’s what humans do. That’s what sets us apart from the rest of the animals. We think. We create. We try to control. And for a bunch of good reasons, like trying to create more farmland and feed more people and have insect-resistant crops and better weather, we played God more and more. And we couldn’t do it. We weren’t up to it.”

  For days she’s been stingy with her words. Getting her to say anything has been such an effort. Now the truth spills out of her in an angry torrent. “We mucked it up,” she says bitterly. “So, instead of there being no new thing under heaven, suddenly everything was new. Instead of nothing ever changing, everything was different. A thousand years of hothouse changes at an ever-accelerating pace.”

  “And those changes were not for the better?” I guess.

  “Not at all,” she agrees, and shudders. She closes her eyes and presses her knees to her chest, and I get the strong vibe that the future world is not a pretty or a happy place. “Most of them were horrible. The earth stripped of beauty. Barren and desiccated. Water holes and pockets of green like oases in an endless desert. People fighting over food, energy, and resources. And not just people but … things! We created our own nightmare and now it’s swallowing us up.”

  So that was it. That was the mess a thousand years in the future. And the ironic thing was, that was my messed-up world she was talking about, even though it was a world I didn’t know. And this world of blue skies and herons and wild horses was not my world, even though it was the beautiful planet Earth I had always taken for granted.

  “Didn’t anyone see what was happening and try to stop it?” I ask, my own voice now sounding a bit sad.

  “Yes,” she nods. “Even today a few people see. They’re regarded as fanatics or alarmists now, but in the far future they’re looked upon as visionaries. As things got worse, and we approached and passed the Turning Point, more and more people saw what was happening. Movements sprang up, all over the world, trying to prevent what was seen with increasing clarity as mass suicide—our species dooming itself. Over centuries the movements merged into one coalition, one”—she searches for a word—“global effort to save the earth.”

  “Did this movement have a name or a leader?” I ask.

  Something in Eko’s voice I haven’t heard before. Respect. Even reverence. “Its founder was a great man, a philosopher-scientist named Dann. People who followed him came to be called the Caretakers or the People of Dann, and his descendants, the House of Dann, led the struggle to save the world.”

  My whisper comes very low. “My name’s Jack Danielson.”

  “You are of the House of Dann,” she tells me. “A great legacy. And a tremendous responsibility. Your ancestors saw that the earth could be saved only if people changed every destructive and indulgent habit. We had to stop being consumers and corrupters, and start being caretakers and restorers. It was an all-consuming way to live, to act, to think. I myself have followed it since my mother left me with the People of Dann. That was her parting gift to me.”

  “At least she had a good reason for leaving you,” I mutter. “Mira wasn’t dying. How could she just send me away?”

  Eko smiles. Third smile. This one affectionate and tinged with sadness. “How indeed?” She lets her question hang in the night air. “Enough questions for one night.”

  “Just one more. You still haven’t told me what the Turning Point is,” I remind her.

  Eko is clearly tired, but she gathers her strength. “It’s the name we gave to the moment when the damage to our earth could still be reversed,” she explains. “It’s impossible to pinpoint a day or a week or even a year. But there was a time up until which all this beauty could have been preserved. The damage could have been contained and rolled back. And then there was a Turning Point, when things spiraled wildly out of control. After that, it became much more difficult. We still tried. We fought. But it was too late. It’s hard to come back so close to the Turning Point. To see it when it could have been reversed. To think what might have been.”

  She falls silent. I am silent also.

  The night has become even more calm. There is not the slightest puff of breeze or ripple of wave. We are far from any big city and there are zillions of stars overhead. Time and all human folly and toil seem to shrink beneath the cold vastness of the night sky.

  Eko is not finished with her surprises. She reaches out and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm and soft. “Thank you for swimming back and saving me from that shark,” she whispers. “Even if you think I’m a psycho bitch. It was a brave thing to do.”

  “I’m sorry you’re so sad,” I tell her. “But now I understand why.”

  We sit there holding hands. Sharing a moment. I consider kissing her. I think she wants me to. But I can’t. This is the Ninja Babe, after all. This is the drill sergeant who’s been kicking my butt in basic training. Built like a fire hydrant. Mean as a rattlesnake.

  “Do you know Basho’s last haiku?” Eko asks softly.

  “I don’t even know who Basho is,” I confess.

  “A Japanese poet,” she tells me. “The master of the haiku. He was born into samurai nobility. Rejected social rank and all worldly possessions. He became a wanderer. Wrote the most beautiful haiku. In his last years, he made many long journeys. He became ill on a trip, and as he lay dying in Osaka he wrote his last poem.” Eko whispers it slowly:

  “Fallen ill on a journey,

  In dreams I run wildly

  Over a withered moor.”

  She shudders.

  It’s the first time in my life a girl has ever quoted a poem to me. “It’s very sad,” I whisper.

  “Yes,” Eko agrees, “and it keeps running through my mind. Strange that such a short poem should have such power.”

  This time it’s not just a shudder. Her body trembles. I let go of her hand. Put my arm around her. Eko leans in. We turn our heads to look at each other.

  Her gray eyes are sparkling. Our lips brush.

  And then I stand up so abruptly I almost fall off the roof. “Well, I guess I should be turning in,” I stammer. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” she says softly.

  I climb down the slant of roof, and glance up only when I reach my w
indow.

  Eko is sitting in the lotus position again, shrouded in silence and sadness, a gargoyle contemplating her own destroyed world.

  30

  Basic training out of whack. How can there be military discipline when you sat on a roof holding hands with your drill sergeant the night before? No wonder the military has an anti-fraternization policy.

  Pre-sunrise jog. Don’t have to blunder along after Eko now. We run side by side. I sense spiderwebs and duck just in time. Avoid holes and sharp rocks. Don’t ask me how, but I know they’re there. We run at same pace in identical rhythm. Sometimes our hands brush as we pump our arms.

  Kayak trip. Skimming through eerie fog. Sky and water the same copper-gray. Storm coming. Twists of marsh channel wrapped in morning mist. Eko doesn’t have to point out birds and animals to me. Now I know where they’re hiding.

  White-tailed deer behind bayberry cluster. Copperhead on slate pebbles in shallows. Frog motionless beneath low-hanging grapevine. All perfectly camouflaged. Expertly concealed. But I know they’re there.

  We both cease paddling at the same moment to watch osprey swoop down from folds of mist to snatch small fish. The swoop, the splash, the struggle, the soaring back up and away with the silver fish thrashing in the razor-sharp talons. We look at each other, thrilled.

  Cattle egret circling dunes. Not trailing a family of wild horses this time. Just one old stallion.

  He clambers over the dune ridge and saunters down the sand to the water’s edge. Noble animal. Aged but still formidable. I remember Eko’s warning. Keep back. “How come he’s alone?”

  “Look at the scars on his neck and back,” she tells me.

  Thought they were part of his coloring. Now I can see that they’re welts running from nose to tail. “He fought hard for his family,” Eko whispers. “Didn’t want a younger stallion to take his wives and children. Fought and got beat and fought again. Nothing he could do about it. Too old.”