Old Green World

by Walter Basho

  Thomas stopped by the cart. He had his bow. “Hello, Farmer Arto! How was business?”

  “Good, better than we deserve, Master Thomas. Thank you. You look very official today,” Arto said. When they were in school, both the boys wore uniforms, but when they weren’t in school Thomas wore Administration clothes: the fine gray wool, the red embroidery. He looked like an adult to Albert. He looked like someone to be proud of.

  Thomas and Arto made small talk. When it started to taper off, Thomas stood around and picked at loose splinters at the edge of the cart.

  “It’s a nice day still,” he said to Albert. “I thought I might go out and hunt.”

  “What a lovely idea you’ve had, Master Thomas,” Arto said. “Albert, we’re closing up. You should go with Thomas. Master Thomas, I’ve been putting money into your bank!” He showed Thomas the money.

  “Yes, Albert said! Thank you. More people are starting to do it. Sister Alice is very excited. She says the bank is very important for civilization.”

  “Sure, I suppose that makes sense,” Arto said.

  “Does it?” Thomas asked. “I’m glad. I wish someone would explain it to me.” He smiled.

  “We’ll head up to the north forest, Papa,” Albert said. “We’ll be careful.”

  Arto kissed his son on both cheeks. “Have fun,” he said. He began tying down cargo and packing up as Albert and Thomas started walking north.

  They approached the edge of the forest, where the atmosphere started to change. The murmuring of town activity fell away. The woods swallowed the sounds of the world. Albert closed his eyes for a moment to take the silence in, but then Thomas broke it, saying, “I don’t want to go to Over-town. I don’t want to get married.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Albert said. “Let’s talk about it later if we’re going to hunt. You’ll scare everything away.”

  Thomas hit a tree with his bow. “I only said that for your father. I don’t want to hunt. I wanted to talk to you, damn it.”

  Albert usually let the tantrums pass, but he didn’t today. “Stop it. Someone worked hard for a long time to make that bow. Stop disrespecting it.”

  “Stop talking like my mother.”

  “Your mother’s usually right. Stop acting like a baby.”

  He thought Thomas would either tackle him or run away. Thomas didn’t do either, though. “Fine,” he said. Then they walked some more.

  “I have to do things, too,” Albert said. “I have to go fight the Baixans.”

  “We don’t know for sure that we’ll fight the Baixans,” Thomas said.

  “Seems like we’re going to fight eventually.”

  “That’s different, though. You like fighting.”

  “I like practicing. It feels different now that it’s really going to happen.”

  “But you get to go fight, and then you’ll come home . . .”

  “If I live.”

  “Well, I’m assuming you’ll live. Then, when you get home, you won’t have to fight any more, and you won’t be married either. You’ll be free to choose.” Thomas was still hitting things, but he had grabbed a loose limb to replace the bow. “I guess I thought I could just be an Administrator by myself, and not get married.”

  “I kind of always thought we would get married,” Albert said.

  Thomas got very quiet at that. Albert was terrified. He had been sure that Thomas felt the same way, but the feeling changed when it became words. It turned into something clear and real and dangerous. He couldn’t undo it. He wanted to say that he had just been joking, but he hadn’t been. So he let the terrifying moment be. They walked a little farther.

  “Do you want to stop here for a bit?” Thomas said. “It’s a good clearing.” They were near a glade where deer would bed. At the edge of the clearing they found a fallen trunk to sit on. Albert picked up comforting smells of moss and rotting leaves. Some low trees framed the clearing, and it was dim and still with the shade and the aging afternoon sun. Albert would have picked somewhere with clearer lines of sight. He still was thinking of hunting, a little.

  They sat for a while in silence, with just the rustle of wind in leaves and the calls of faraway birds echoing across the canopy of trees. Thomas, in small increments, crept across the tree trunk, closer and closer to Albert. Soon, their knees touched, and Thomas began to barely brush the back of his hand against Albert’s leg, in a way that at first could be passed off as distracted movement, but became more deliberate and intense when Albert avoided protesting.

  Touching each other wasn’t new to them; they had played and hugged and grabbed at each other constantly for years. This was different, though. It wasn’t affection in and of itself, but something with a goal. Albert’s unsaid thing appeared to be Thomas’s as well. Albert looked at him and said, “I—,” but Thomas interrupted the thought by clamping his mouth over Albert’s. There wasn’t much point in talking after that.

  They crashed against each other, feverish, sweaty, and swept out of reason. Thomas tore the collar of Albert’s shirt, then pulled his own shirt off. They pawed off one another’s remaining clothes, sprawled on the forest floor, and wallowed in a shared, wild, virginal amazement: that they could actually be naked together like this, that they could put their hands and mouths all over each other, that this was possible outside their minds and in reality. The overwhelming truth of that alone drove them like a wave through their first and second times; by the third, they finally began to come back to themselves, to be intimate with it, to talk through it and tickle each other and laugh and finally rest in each other’s arms.

  Albert nodded off for a short time against Thomas’s chest, but heard a psst, psst and came to. He rose up and followed Thomas’s eyes across the glade. A large stag stood within range.

  “What do we do?” Thomas whispered.

  “Shh,” Albert cautioned. His bow was near, and he grabbed it and an arrow silently. Standing was a different matter, and he had to spend a few seconds planning it out. He thought about pulling on his pants, but after consideration just stood naked with his bow.

  He looked down at Thomas and whispered, “I have forest all over my ass,” and it was Thomas’s turn to caution. “Shh.”

  It didn’t feel awkward at all: indeed, he’d never felt so right in his life. He drew and struck the stag in the heart, a perfect shot.

  + + +

  They gutted the stag and dragged it together out of the forest. It was the size of three men. They found a spot near the edge of the forest, covered the stag’s body with leaves and branches, and went to town to find a wheelbarrow.

  They headed toward the outer edge of the town. The sun was setting, and they walked quietly, side by side. Just before the walls, Thomas grabbed Albert and gave him a sloppy kiss. “I wanted to do that one more time, before we have to be proper again,” he said.

  They saw something ahead of them on the road, a pile. They thought it was spilled cargo from a cart. As they got closer to it, though, they realized it was two bodies, one lying on top of the other. Albert turned over the body on top.

  “That’s Seamus. I train with him,” Albert said.

  The other body wore old, rusted chain armor, with new and clean regalia draped over the breast: black cloth, with an orange serpent. Both the boys had learned this symbol in a lesson Sister Clare taught just a few weeks ago. She told them it was the new insignia of the Baixan army.

  They looked at each other in a silence that Albert finally broke. “You take Seamus’s sword and shield. I’ll take the Baixan’s. We need to be armed.”

  They crossed through the gates. It was too quiet for an early market evening. Shutters were closed and bolted, and no one was out on the street. Everyone knows, Albert thought. The word has gotten out.

  They stuck close to the outer walls of the houses and crept along slowly and quietly as possible. With the sunset, the temperature began to drop again. Albert felt a gentle but cold wind through the thatched houses, and he listened to it, tried to
pick up anything that interrupted it. About six houses in, he saw a group walking toward them, too far away at first to be distinct. He put his right arm across Thomas, pressing him against the nearest wall. They waited until they saw the black and orange on their chests.

  There were three of them. The orange of their nation hung on them limply. They stumbled into each other with a manic lack of focus. When they were about twenty feet away, Albert stepped toward them. He had already nocked an arrow. “Stop. You’re . . . under arrest,” he said.

  The soldier in front and center, the largest one, looked directly at him. He looked bedraggled and wild. Albert noticed his eyes, a weird luminescent green, greener than the distance between them, brighter than the twilight around them. The center soldier started taking awkward, interrupted steps toward him, his drawn sword hanging limply against his leg, bouncing against it.

  Albert paused. He had expected a fierce charge. It always happened that way in militia training. He didn’t know how to time himself. He felt an awkward tremble, somewhere just below his belly. He pushed it down, drew his bow, and fired directly toward the soldier. The Baixans wore helmets, but their faces were exposed. He aimed there and hit there.

  As the big one fell, the other two let out a shrill shout and fell toward them. Their fear and hostility comforted Albert. Obviously looking for trouble. He dropped his bow and drew his sword. “Now, Thomas,” he said. Thomas hesitated, but then drew his sword and ran to join him.

  One soldier held an axe: Albert went to him, leaving Thomas to work with the second, a smaller soldier with a short sword. That’s safer, he thought.

  The soldier with the axe made clumsy swings, opening himself up each time. Albert dodged the first couple easily, with surprise. These are the Baixans? At the third swing, he struck at the exposed weapon arm, a downward chop at the bicep. The soldier screamed wildly, tried to pull back, and lunged at the sword with his shield edge. Albert pulled his sword free and took a second swing at the neck. Baixan armor left much of the neck exposed. He hit flesh and the soldier fell.

  Albert could hear Thomas making practice sounds as he fought. “One, two, parry, up, down, block,” he murmured. Nervous, defensive whispers.

  Albert dropped his sword, took his own opponent’s axe, and brought it down on the final Baixan’s shoulder and neck from the side. The Baixan collapsed, moaning.

  “Put the blade through his neck, Thomas,” he said, a gentle command. Thomas hesitated, then did it, with a little battle cry performance.

  It was over. They caught their breath.

  “You used the Baixan’s axe,” Thomas said.

  “I wanted to keep the sword sharp for a little while.”

  “You were so fast. I’m not as good a soldier as you.”

  “Don’t say that. You did well. You just need to be ready to kill them. Remember that they want to kill you first. Mostly, though, stop worrying about it. Otherwise, you’ll freeze up. You’ll be fine with a little more practice.”

  “You sound like our fighting classes.”

  Albert smiled. “I’m just saying what the teacher says.”

  Albert heard a cold ringing in his ears. He had practiced fighting daily since he was a child, but he had never killed another person before. How well he did it frightened him. He felt smaller and nervous. He wanted to say, Be careful. I love you, to Thomas, but this wasn’t the forest. They had to be different. They started toward the Castle.

  Their footsteps felt loud against the dirt as they walked. The twilight deepened into darkness, and it was empty and quiet all the way to the square like any cool spring night. The buildings opened up to the square on the far side, opposite the school and Thomas’s house. They walked across the old rocks and grass in the stillness, trying to stay in the shelter of the buildings.

  As they crossed the square, they saw a figure with a pale glow, equidistant from the school and house. They got closer and realized it was Sister Alice. She seemed calm, if focused, and she gazed far up in the air. She held a small box in her upturned hands, the source of her glow. As they got closer, they saw the detail and shape of the shining, humming box.

  “It’s a magic box,” Thomas whispered to Albert. Suddenly, Albert realized they were sneaking up on their old teacher. He felt like a schoolboy doing something he wasn’t supposed to. He called out, tentatively, as gentle as a yell could be. “Sister Alice, it’s Thomas and Albert, can we help?”

  “I’m fine, boys, just a moment, please,” she said. Polite as always, and only a bit more curt than usual. They moved more closely toward her. Albert didn’t understand why she stood in place, or why she gazed in the sky so intently. He tried to get closer, to see what she was seeing.

  He looked up toward the sky. In the fading twilight, he could see a dark, squirming mass, far, far up in the air, hundreds of feet. It shook, and little wiggling appendages extended from it. He couldn’t make sense of it, until he saw that it was growing. Slowly, almost lazily, figures floated up from various points in town to the mass, into the sky, each of them flailing, each of them unable to control what was happening to them.

  Thomas crept up next to him. “What is it?”

  “It’s a bunch of men. She’s floating up Baixans and binding them in the sky.”

  The last figure floated up into the mass. The group of them writhed, a beast of many arms and legs. Albert guessed at least twenty Baixans were up there, defying gravity against their will.

  “Please stand over here by me, boys,” Sister Alice asked, and they did. Once they were standing next to her, Albert heard her exhale, and saw the glowing box fade to dark. Then he saw the mass fall from the sky. The men landed on the opposite side of the square with a sick, wrong sound, at once both wet and metallic.

  Sister Alice sighed and turned to them. “My apologies, boys, that was vulgar. There were too many of them to do anything more precise. I wish you hadn’t had to see that.” And then, after an uncomfortable silence, she said, patiently, “Are you boys all right? We’re under attack, now, so we need to be sharp.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s . . . all right, ma’am,” Thomas said.

  Albert waited a moment, not sure how to deal with what he had seen. He pretended she was still his schoolteacher. “Sister Alice, we came here from the north forest,” he said. “What are they trying to do?”

  “There aren’t many of them,” Sister Alice said. “It seems that they wanted to sneak in and cause trouble.”

  “We . . . we killed some of them,” Albert said. “Do all Baixans have those green eyes, like monsters? They don’t seem real.”

  “Where did this happen? Please visualize it for me, Albert.”

  Albert had done this dozens of times in school; the process was natural at this point. He set an intention for the memory, relaxed his mind, and let the memory arise in flashes and chunks. It never made sense that the randomness of his mind could tell a story, but the less he tried to understand it, the better he seemed to do in school. So he calmed himself now and let it happen.

  Sister Alice closed her eyes, put her hand on Albert’s shoulder, and focused. “. . . There. This is a very rich visualization, Albert, very good.” She was quiet again, looking as if she were trying to access something in her mind. “Thank you, Albert.”

  “Was that all right? Could you see it?”

  “Yes. The green eyes are unusual, Albert. I hadn’t seen it in the others. This is a good discovery.”

  “What does it mean?” Thomas asked.

  Sister Alice paused. “It’s . . . nothing. A forest sickness.” She gestured to the coast. “Many of the militia have gone down coast to where the Baixans landed, and they have that under control. I think we have most of the troops that got into the city now, but only most. Please keep patrolling. Help the militia with any stragglers.”

  “Yes, Sister Alice,” Thomas said, standing a little taller and speaking with a voice that sounded especially adult.

  “Head toward the coast south of town, but be sur
e to cover all the side ways and corners. I’ll stay here and protect the main square. You can send people to me if anyone’s worried or confused.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Albert said. They headed out of the square and down the Castle, walking diagonally through the town and toward the coast. It was dark, and the moon had risen. Out in the distance, they could hear the faintest clamor from the coast, which they figured must be the militia. This part of town, though, like the north gates, was eerily quiet.

  Albert saw a cat walk lazily along the street, not trying to conceal itself. It came up to them, and Albert scratched it behind the ears. It nuzzled his leg. The town had lots of cats, and because they were everywhere, people tended to ignore them, or even killed them like pests, which Albert couldn’t abide. He liked cats. They were good hunters.

  “Stop playing,” Thomas hissed at him. “We need to be on patrol.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be much to patrol,” Albert said. “I think Sister Alice dropped most of them.” He trailed off when he saw some movement ahead. It was a man, who promptly dropped the sword and somewhat rickety-looking shield he was carrying. The man walked toward them with hands raised.

  The man spoke to them in a Baixan dialect. Albert understood some phrases from it. Terra Baixa had a hundred dialects, but Albert’s parents had spent a long time crossing it, and they had taught the words and phrases they learned to him.

  “Be careful,” Thomas said, “I bet it’s a trick.”

  “Maybe,” Albert said, “but maybe not. He probably saw all his friends drop out of the sky, after all.” He approached the Baixan and tried to use the dialect that he heard. He managed to say, “Hello, please stay, we are not going to kill you.”

  The Baixan fell to his knees and shook. He looked incapable of harming anything. He looked up at Albert. His eyes were normal to Albert: brown, with a bloodshot red tinge, pink at the edges. Albert drew closer to him and put together the sentences: “Please get up now. You will go with us to the beach.”

  The Baixan’s response was rapid and desperate, and it took a few seconds before Albert could understand. “. . . You take us and you lock us up, you (something) us, I am so hungry, and then (something something) us, here, and now we are here and you fight us? Just to go to (something) again? I don’t understand. But it’s fine, it’s all right, all right? Just please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.”