Revolution in the Underground
Page 6
“What?!” Maggie exclaimed, opening her eyes.
“Ya. I’m tired. Too much has happened today. I need to think.”
“Well think then! Don’t you want to discuss it?! Don’t you want to read it again? And again?!” Maggie was shocked. She thought this would be the type of thing that Ember would pour over and analyze to death.
“I… I want be by myself for a little while. We… we will discuss it a lot over the next few days… I’m sure we will read it many times.”
He started walking to the door when Maggie asked, “Don’t you want to touch it? Her hand? I mean, the tracing of her hand?” She looked at his face intensely. He was quiet. “Touch it Ember. Touch the hand.”
He walked over to the parchment and put his hand on the tracing and tried to think about something deep but couldn’t manage anything coherent. There seemed to be a million thoughts buzzing around his head, yet he couldn’t seem to focus on a single one. Ember was overtired and overwhelmed.
“What’s the matter Ember? This is it! What more could you have wanted? Don’t you like it?!”
“Yes… It’s great… It’s everything I’ve ever wanted… I’m just tired that’s all.” Ember wasn’t sure what he felt but hoped that he might find some clarity on the walk back to his hut.
“Goodnight,” Maggie said at last, wrestling with her own emotions and succumbing to her own weariness.
When Ember walked outside he was surprised to see how dark everything was. Strangely enough, when Ember lied down in bed that night, this was the memory he remembered most about that day.
Chapter 5: The End of the Old and the Start of the New
Nothing was quite the same after that night. Maggie and Ember had originally planned on meeting every night for two weeks to discuss the letter, but after the first three days they no longer found it necessary. Ember was the first to lose interest. After the tenth reading, he casually tossed the letter onto her bed. Although Maggie knew he had no malicious intent, she couldn’t help but find this action deeply irreverent. She knew that it was the beginning of the end. Driven by her emotional momentum, her interest could have lasted for several weeks. Ember’s growing disinterest seemed to sap her curiosity, and she secretly hated him for it.
The letter had, in a very strange way, evolved into a symbol of Maggie and Ember’s relationship, and critiquing it seemed somehow blasphemous. The letter was their joint secret—they both had vested interests in maintaining its significance. Since a derided work was less valuable than a praised one, both were slow to mention any shortcomings. By the second day they had built it up to such a great height that Ember began feeling the pressure of the mounting façade.
The consensus between the two of them was that Abigail’s letter was intrinsically valuable though upsettingly short on details. Ember waited until the third day to raise this criticism. He did so tactfully and almost apologetically. Maggie was angry at first—she saw the denigration as an attack on their very relationship. She had initially hoped that they would forever bond over the interminable splendor of the letter—that it’s secret would serve as a unifying connection between their hearts and minds. She reluctantly agreed with his criticism, though in more modulated words than his, in hope that the modicum of honesty might breathe life back into the letter. His interest was waning, and she could see it. The writing was on the wall.
Once Ember had a taste of candor, however, he couldn’t go back. Before long he went into an all out lambast on everything from the sincerity of Abigail’s words to the styling of her prose. He couldn’t stop until he had so defiled the letter that it could never again rise to the pedestal on which it had initially been placed. Maggie simply couldn’t keep up and by the end of it they both agreed that it would be unnecessary to ever talk about it again.
The truth was that Ember didn’t even believe in all of his criticisms and he truly did value the letter—he just couldn’t accept the idea of a perfect, unassailable object. The thought of it ever increasing in sentimental worth disturbed him. He needed to debase the object before he could love it again.
Towards the end of the first week he had a resurgence of interest in the letter. With a healthy and controlled curiosity, he felt he could again approach Maggie about it. Maggie, however, didn’t want a controlled curiosity, she wanted an obsession and when she found out that she couldn’t have it, she turned back to her friends. Ember and Maggie had even discussed the possibility of sharing the letter with the public, but in the end both agreed that it’s dubious value as a historical testimony was not enough to justify such an irrevocable decision. As disheartened as they both were, they knew it was, in someway or another, a connection alone for them to share and that it should remain that way until sometime in the distant future.
Things were awkward between Ember and Maggie for some time after. Ember seemed to be locked in a quiet dissatisfaction while Maggie found herself acting more and more wild with her friends in hope to fill the void. When they ran into each other, their conversations seemed forced and always abruptly ended with Maggie running away with her friends.
One night Maggie unexpectedly came over to Ember’s hut and confronted him about her feelings—about how she felt that something was different and how she wished it wasn’t. She gave an impassioned speech expressing the desire that everything return to the way it was before the letter. The awkwardness remained for a few days after the confrontation, but overtime things settled down into a new state of normalcy. Maggie was as fun and lively as ever and Ember as pensive. Soon they were staying up late, conversing about life, nature and happiness, just like old times.
A month after their discovery it was announced, much to everyone’s surprise and Maggie’s embarrassment, that Ember would be appointed as the Chief Protégé. Maggie had told Jade about Ember’s disastrous Evaluation in order to keep from telling her about the letter, and by indirect word-of-mouth all of Erosa had come to know the tale. Everyone had expected Ember to fail. Maggie had a difficult time explaining things to Jade, and everyone else who cared to inquire further, but after a while people stopped questioning her. Maggie enjoyed such an unquestionable monopoly on all Erosan happenings and information that the event hardly made a dent in her credibility.
Ember was surprised as well—but not as surprised as everyone else. He knew that a rejection by the Council would only fuel his own speculations that they had something to hide and he knew that the last thing the Council wanted was a bad perception—even if it was only amongst a single individual. By accepting him, they showed that they were tolerant of dissent and understanding of criticism.
My thoughts can’t be bought by an acceptance, Ember found himself thinking on more than one occasion. You’re not fooling me. I distrust you now more than ever.
When the Council published the rationale behind their decision, as was traditional for high appointments, they cited his “remarkable contemplative capacity, commanding critical reasoning, deep intellectual inquisitiveness, and extraordinary emotional passion.” Ember laughed at their justification and would often find himself snidely remarking, “I don’t think there was anything more I could do to get rejected,” in response to any form of congratulations, be it from a close friend or passerby.
Just as Ember was preparing for his new life, and as Maggie was blissfully going about hers, something incredible happened. Something so extraordinarily rare and so extraordinarily momentous, that it would forever alter the direction of Maggie and Ember’s lives. Someone had escaped the underground.
***
It was the dusk before Ember’s training was slated to formally begin. Rather than joining his friend Onyx at the Falls, Ember opted to spend a quiet night with his sister. He balanced across a thick, moss-covered slat connecting the Erosan center to his sister’s cluster—a path that was popular not so much because it was shorter as it was because it was more thrilling. There was something about balancing on a six-inch-wide piece of wood, far above the forest floor, that made even t
he bravest and most skilled climber’s heart beat fast. The feeling of the moss between’s one’s toes, the creaks the slat would make as one walked across it, and the way it bowed dangerously downward just as one got to the middle, all made for an exciting short-cut.
“Hey Ember!” Rouge called out as he approached her cluster, which happened to be the same as Maggie’s.
He looked around, systematically scanning for the source of the sound. It was difficult to locate things in Erosa by sound alone since there were nearly always a three-dimensional array of possibilities—any where along the two-dimensional surface on which the individual was standing, and above or below that plane. The echo through the trees and sounds of nature only compounded the already difficult problem. She was calling out from her balcony some three huts above him.
“Hi!” Ember shouted, pretending more interest than he felt. Ever since the news of his appointment they had been meeting more and more frequently. She was curious how he had been accepted after his rumored mental-breakdown, while she had not, and had made it a point to spend more time with him until she found out why. Ember tolerated her company because he felt that it was the right thing to do—he would be settling into a practice and felt it only natural to acclimate himself to a more intimate form of female companionship. Plus, on the whole of it, Rouge was a fun person to be around.
“Do you think you can do me a favor?”
“Need some water?” Ember asked, already knowing the answer. In Erosa, fetching water for one another was more than expected propriety, it was automatic. Such a gesture, while definitely positive in nature, was generally considered neutrally as if it were no different than getting dressed in the morning or washing your hair at night. In general, this was a task that was completed equally by both sexes, though there were a few heavier lifts that the men operated more frequently.
“Hello,” Maggie said to Ember while walking in his direction, and then again when she noticed Rouge. “Hey, why weren’t you at the market this morning?”
“Oh, I decided to sleep in. Did I miss anything?” Rouge responded, lowering her bucket by a rope for Ember to take. He untied the bucket, tied it to a new rope and began lowering it into a reservoir.
“Well…” Maggie began with more than a hint of excitement, “Jet was there showing off his juggling skills… and by that I mean he dropped four of the farmer’s apples!” Rouge laughed, if for no other reason than Maggie’s chuckle seemed to invite it. “And then towards the end, Cyan and Orchid finally kissed each other!”
“Really? I’m glad they finally got it done with!”
Maggie smiled diabolically and shot Ember a quick, fiend-like stare, but he was unavailable to receive it. “Speaking of which… When are you going to finally kiss my brother?”
Ember pulled the heavy, water-filled bucket from the reservoir, and walked past Maggie—trying hard not to show any emotion.
Rouge laughed awkwardly. Maggie raised one eyebrow—conveying as much suspicion as knowledge. “What makes you think we haven’t already,” Rouge said between laughs.
Maggie smiled. “Ember, look at you! Hey, are you blushing?!”
“The things I have to deal with,” he said in a grumble as he tied the filled bucket back onto Rouge’s rope. Ember pulled on the other end of the rope, which was threaded through a pulley in such a way that it brought the bucket back up to Rouge.
“Hey Ember, are we still on for tomorrow night?”
“Yes. I look forward to it,” he lied.
“Where are you two love birds going?” Maggie pried with an un-concealable smile.
“I’m not telling,” he said with a grin.
“The Comedy Club!” Rouge said, almost as soon as Ember finished his grin. “But afterwards, we’re going over to the cave near the market. Just the two of us. So don’t go telling everyone, okay?!”
“Okay!” Maggie responded enthusiastically, smiling in Ember’s direction.
Ember nodded acceptingly. “Alright Rouge, I’ll see you later. Come on Maggie, let’s go.”
“Bye!” Rouge yelled, blowing a kiss.
“Where are we going?”
“The observatory?” he said with a shoulder shrug, already turning around and walking back toward the market center.
“Sure,” she acquiesced, running to catch up. They decided not to take the shortcut back to the market, though the thought did independently cross both of their minds. They walked slowly, but with the poise of purpose—each stride intentional and confident, assertions against the humdrum roll of the day’s mundane proceedings. “So… Tomorrow’s the day…” Maggie murmured at last.
“I suppose it is.” Conservation did nothing to alter their inexorable synchronized gait.
“Are you excited to start? It’s quite an honor you know?”
“I suppose.”
“Everyone was really surprised that you were nominated.”
“I wasn’t.”
They continued steadily in silence. When they arrived at the market square, they climbed a series of dilapidated wooden rungs to a small platform bolstered against the trunk of a tree. The platform had been given the overstated name of “observatory” for no other reason than the fact that it supported a large converging lens through which Erosan ornithologists and naturalists would peer. The observatory had fallen into disuse over the years, due dually to the decline in popular interest in bird species—of which no new ones had been discovered in the last three decades—and the significant dulling of the lens which was now almost impossible to look through—though it was not clear which caused the other or even if one caused the other.
Though the sun was setting, its brilliance was lost on Maggie and Ember, both of whom were preoccupied with other thoughts. Maggie lit several torches in preparation for the ensuing darkness. The orange-red hues and pink splotches became no more than a subconscious backdrop under which a conversation could be had.
“Why are you doing this?” she said, joining Ember at the edge to dangle her feet.
“Doing what?” he asked, having more than a few guesses as to the answer.
She frowned. “Why so laconic?”
“What are you going to do?” he said, changing the subject.
“What do you mean? When?”
“Tomorrow. For the rest of your life?”
She paused for a minute to search for a meaningful answer. “I don’t know… I don’t really think about those things.”
“Yes you do! Stop pretending. You do think about those things. I know you do!”
“No Ember, I don’t!”
“Yes you do!”
“Don’t tell me what I do, ok? I think I would know how I feel and think better than you do!”
“That’s debatable,” he mumbled audibly. They both accepted the tone of their conversation. Confrontation, for them, had become, in more recent months, the most practical path to consequential conversation—their words only ostensibly mean, and exclamations deliberately exaggerated. Unless the bridge was crossed, no fruit would come. Pettiness and bickering seemed to them the only way to break the enchanting superficial spell of Erosan idiosyncrasies and propriety.
“Okay Ember, whatever you say. You know best, huh?”
“You’re going to drift through life? From friends to friends, happy occasion to happy occasion? Settle down eventually? Have a family? And never once stop to think about why you do any of it?”
“Why not?” she tested him.
“And what will you tell everyone when you do? That you live for your children? That they are your meaning? And what will they live for?”
“For no other reason than their own existence,” she retorted wryly but seriously.
“It’s the circularity of it all. It can’t be it.”
“Look, what do you want, Ember? I mean, if you could have anything—anything at all? In the whole world?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know! That’s what kills me. I don’t know. I don’t know what I wa
nt. Maybe I just want something. I want there to be something.”
“Maybe you just want to want something,” she suggested.
“I’m tired,” he admitted.
“I know. You have been for some time,” she expressed, knowing exactly what he meant. The darkness was now nearly complete. The gentle flickering of the torches cast a sober glaze on their faces. She put her hand on his shoulder. “You can cry you know. It will make you feel better.”
“What’s the point, it won’t change anything.” Ember reclined on the platform, using his elbows to prop himself up from full repose. The leaves danced as dark shadows, the ebbs and flows moving to the whims of his own emotions.
Maggie remained sitting, delicately dangling her feet over the edge—the wind benignly tickling the bare soles of her callous feet. She quietly admired the full moon, which had kindly taken to illuminating the forest floor below them.
“Tomorrow… It begins anew…” Ember said with his eyes closed. He lifted his chin to the sky as if he were ready for it to take him away.
“Uhhh huh…” Maggie mumbled in agreement. She was staring too intently at some formless blob on the forest floor to say anything more structured than a few automatic utterances.
“It might… it might not be all that bad after all. I mean, if there is one position in all of Erosa that might lead me to what I want, this is it, right?”
“Uhhh huh…”
“And even if the council does have secrets… surely they will one day share them with me... and on that day, I will tell you… and through you, the whole world will know. No more secrets.”
“Ya… uhhh huh…” she mumbled, still fixated on something else.
“Of course, if there are no more secrets, than what will happen to hope? What of the new kids—what will the future Embers of Erosa have to live for? Secrets and mysteries allow for the erroneous investment of hope. Just enough ignorance to not perceive the worthlessness of the truth, but not too much as to not conceive of the secrets altogether.”