City of the Beasts

by Isabel Allende

  Alex could not imagine how the shaman knew where they were going; perhaps his wife-spirit was guiding him; sometimes he was sure that they were traveling in circles, not moving forward at all. There were no points of reference, only the endless vegetation enfolding them in its glossy embrace. He tried to read his compass but the needle was quivering madly, reinforcing the impression that they were going in circles. Suddenly Walimai stopped, moved a fern leaf that seemed no different from the others, and they were standing before an opening in the side of the mountain, something resembling a fox’s den.

  The witch man dropped down and crawled, and they followed him. The passage was a narrow ten or twelve feet in length, then opened into a spacious cave dimly lighted by some ray from outside; here they were able to stand up. Walimai began patiently to strike his stones to make fire, as Alex promised himself never to leave home again without matches. Finally the stones sparked, some straw blazed, and Walimai used that to light the resin on one of his torches.

  They watched as a compact, dark cloud of thousands and thousands of bats lifted up in the flickering light. They were in a rock cavern with water streaming down the walls on all sides and spreading across the floor like a black lake. Several natural tunnels, some wider than others, branched off in different directions, creating an intricate subterranean labyrinth. With no hesitation, the Indian started down one of the passages, Alex and Nadia right on his heels.

  Alex remembered the story of Ariadne’s thread that, according to Greek mythology, allowed Theseus to find his way back from the depths of the labyrinth after slaying the fierce Minotaur. He did not have a spool of thread to mark the way, and he asked himself how they would get out should something happen to Walimai. Since the needle of his compass was whirling aimlessly, he deduced they were in a magnetic field. He tried to use his knife to blaze a trail on the walls, but the rock was as hard as granite and it would have taken hours to chip out markers. They moved from tunnel to tunnel, always climbing upward inside the tepui, with the improvised torch as their only defense against the total blackness surrounding them. There in the bowels of the Earth it was not silent as a tomb, as he had imagined; they heard the fluttering of bats, the squeaking of mice, the racing footsteps of small animals, the dripping of water, and a muted, rhythmic thumping like a heartbeat, as if they were inside a living organism, an enormous animal in repose. No one said a word, but from time to time Borobá shrieked with fright and then the echo of the labyrinth returned the sound multiplied over and over. Alex asked himself what nature of creatures such depths might harbor, maybe snakes or poisonous scorpions, then determined he would not think about such things but keep a cool head, taking his cue from Nadia, who was marching along behind Walimai, silent and confident.

  Gradually they could make out the end of the long passageway. They saw a faint green glow and, when they emerged, found themselves in a large cavern whose beauty was impossible to describe. Enough light filtered in from somewhere to illuminate a space as large as a vast church, with marvelous sculptural rock and mineral formations. The labyrinth they had left behind was dark stone, but now they were in a round, lighted hall beneath a cathedral-like dome, surrounded by crystal and precious stones. Alex knew very little about minerals, but he recognized opals, topazes, agates, formations of quartz and alabaster, jade and tourmaline. He saw crystals like diamonds, others that were milky, some that seemed to shine from within, and still others veined with green, purple, and red, as if they were encrusted with emeralds, amethysts, and rubies. Transparent stalactites hung from the ceiling like daggers of ice, dripping lime-rich water. The smell was of dampness and, surprisingly, flowers. The mixture was rancid, intense, and penetrating . . . slightly nauseating; a blend of perfume and tomb. The air was cold and crisp, as in winter after a snow.

  At the far end of the grotto, something moved, and an instant later broke away from a rock of blue crystal, something that resembled a strange bird, or a winged reptile. The creature stretched its wings, preparing to fly, and Alex could see it clearly. It was very like the drawings he had seen of legendary dragons, only about the size of a large pelican and very beautiful. The terrible dragons of European legends, which always guarded a treasure or an imprisoned damsel, were definitely repulsive. The one before his eyes, however, was like the dragons he had seen at festivals in San Francisco’s Chinatown, pure joy and vitality. Even so, he whipped out his Swiss Army knife and prepared to defend himself, but Walimai calmed him with a gesture.

  The shaman’s wife-spirit, as delicate as a dragonfly, flew across the grotto and descended between the animal’s wings, riding it like a horse. Borobá screeched with terror and bared his teeth, but Nadia, enchanted by the dragon, made him stop. She began to call in the language of birds and reptiles, hoping to summon it to her, but the fabulous creature examined the visitors from a distance with its ruby-red eyes and ignored Nadia’s enticement. Then it rose up in flight, elegant and airy, and flew in a majestic circle around the dome of the grotto, with Walimai’s wife on its back, as if it merely wanted to show off the beauty of its lines and its phosphorescent scales. Finally it again settled on the rock of blue crystal, folded its wings, and waited with the impassive attitude of a cat.

  The spirit of the woman flew back to her husband and hovered there, suspended in air. Alex wondered how he could describe what his eyes had seen. If only he had his grandmother’s camera to prove that this place and these creatures really did exist, and that he had not drowned in the storm of his own hallucinations.

  They left the enchanted cave and the winged dragon with a certain reluctance, not knowing whether they would see them again. Alex was still trying to find rational explanations for what he had witnessed. In contrast, Nadia accepted all of its wonder without question. Alex reasoned that those tepuis, so isolated from the rest of the planet, were the last enclaves of the Paleolithic era, where the flora and fauna of thousands and thousands of years ago had been preserved. They must have been led to a kind of Galápagos Island, where the most ancient of species had escaped genetic mutation or extinction. That “dragon” was probably some kind of unknown bird. Such creatures appeared in the folklore and mythology of many different regions. In China, where they were the symbol of good luck, and in England, they had served to prove the courage of knights like St. George. Possibly, Alex concluded, they were animals that had coexisted with the first human beings on the planet, and popular superstition had remembered them as gigantic reptiles spewing fire from their nostrils. The dragon of the grotto did not emit flames, but the penetrating perfume of a courtesan. However, Alex could not come up with an explanation for Walimai’s wife, that human-looking fairy creature accompanying them on their strange journey. Perhaps he would find an explanation later, somewhere.

  They followed Walimai through new tunnels, the light of his torch growing weaker and weaker. They passed through other grottos, but none as spectacular as the first, and they saw other strange creatures: birds, with red plumage and four wings, that growled like dogs; and white cats, with blind eyes, which were on the verge of attacking but backed off when Nadia soothed them in the language of felines. They passed through a flooded cave where they had to walk through water up to their necks with Borobá perched on Nadia’s head. They saw golden winged fish that swam between their legs and suddenly took flight, disappearing into the darkness of the tunnels.

  In another cave, which emitted a thick purple fog the color of certain twilights, indescribable flowers were growing out of living rock. Walimai brushed one of them with his spear and fleshy tentacles flashed from among its petals, reaching out for its prey. At a bend in one of the passages, in the orange, wavering light of the torch, they saw a niche in the wall that contained something that seemed to be a small child encased in resin, like an insect trapped in a piece of amber. Alex imagined that the infant had been in his sealed tomb since the dawn of humankind, and that he would lie intact in that place for thousands of years. How had he got there? How had he died?

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nbsp; Finally the group reached the last passage of that enormous labyrinth. They peered into open space, blinded for a few instants by a blast of white light. Then they saw that they were on a kind of balcony, a rock projecting over the hollow interior of the mountain, like the crater of a volcano. The labyrinth they had followed through the depths of the tepui joined the outside world with the fabulous universe inside. They realized they had climbed a long way through the tunnels. Overhead rose the vertical faces of the mountain, covered with vegetation and disappearing among the clouds. They could not see the sky, only a ceiling as thick and white as cotton, where the sunlight filtering through created a strange optical phenomenon: six transparent moons floating in a milky sky. They were the moons Alex had seen in his vision. Wheeling in the air were birds he had never seen before, some as translucid and filmy as jellyfish, others as solid as black condors, some like the dragon they had seen in the grotto.

  Far below was a large circular valley, which from where they stood looked like a blue-green garden blanketed in haze. Waterfalls, trickles of water, and small streams slipped down the sides of the verdant walls to feed the lakes of the valley, so symmetrical and perfect that they did not seem natural. And in the center, gleaming like a crown, rose the proud city of El Dorado. Nadia and Alex choked back cries of amazement as they were blinded by the unbelievable splendor of the city of gold, the dwelling of the gods.

  Walimai gave them time to recover from their surprise and then pointed to the steps carved into the mountainside, curving down from the overhang where they stood to the valley floor. As they descended, they realized that the flora was as extraordinary as the fauna they had seen; the plants, flowers, and shrubs were unique. The lower they went, the hotter and more humid it became; the vegetation was thicker and more exuberant, the trees taller and leafier, the flowers more perfumed, the fruit more succulent. Although it was very beautiful, the overall impression was not peaceful, but was, in fact, vaguely threatening, like a mysterious landscape on Venus. Nature throbbed, panted, grew before their eyes, as if waiting to ambush them. They saw yellow flies as transparent as topaz, blue beetles sporting horns, large snails so colorful that from a distance they looked like flowers, exotic striped lizards, rodents with sharp, curved fangs, and hairless squirrels leaping among the branches like naked gnomes.

  As they neared the valley, closer and closer to El Dorado, it became obvious that this was not a city, nor was it gold. It was a group of natural geometric formations, like the crystals they had seen in the grottos. The golden color came from mica, a mineral with little value, and pyrite, called—with good reason—“fool’s gold.” Alex smiled quietly, thinking that if the conquistadors and countless other adventurers had succeeded in conquering the incredible obstacles on the road to El Dorado, they would have gone home poorer than they’d come.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Beasts

  MINUTES LATER, ALEX and Nadia saw the Beast. It was about thirty yards away, heading in the direction of the city. It looked like a gigantic man-ape, more than ten feet tall, upright, with powerful arms that dragged on the ground and a melancholy face on a head too small for its body. It was covered with thick, wiry hair and had three long, curved, knife-sharp claws on each hand. It moved with incredible slowness, almost as if it were not moving at all. Nadia recognized it immediately as the Beast, since she had seen it before. Paralyzed with terror and surprise, they froze in place, studying the creature. It reminded them of some familiar animal, but they couldn’t think what.

  “I know, it looks like a sloth,” Nadia whispered finally.

  And then Alex remembered that in the San Francisco zoo he had seen an animal something like an ape or a bear that lived in trees and moved at the same sluggish pace as the Beast—which is how it got a name that means laziness, “sloth.” It had no defenses. It lacked the speed to attack, escape, or protect itself, but it had very few predators; its hairy hide and bitter flesh were not appetizing to even the hungriest carnivore.

  “And the smell? The Beast I saw had a terrible stink,” said Nadia, still speaking in a whisper.

  “Well, this one doesn’t. At least we’re not smelling it from here,” Alex commented. “Maybe it has a scent gland, like a skunk, and it sprays the smell when it wants to defend itself or stop prey in its tracks.”

  Their whispering reached the ears of the Beast, which turned very slowly to see where the sound was coming from. Alex and Nadia stepped back, but Walimai, with his wife-spirit just behind him, moved forward slowly, as if imitating the astonishing lethargy of the creature. The shaman was a small man; he came no higher than the hipbone of the Beast, which loomed like a tower over the ancient. He and his wife fell to their knees before this extraordinary being, and then, as clear as a bell, the youngsters heard a deep and cavernous voice speaking in the language of the People of the Mist.

  “It talks like a human!” Alex muttered, convinced he was dreaming.

  “Padre Valdomero was right, Jaguar.”

  “That means it has human intelligence. Do you think you can communicate with it?”

  “If Walimai can, I probably can, too, but I’m too afraid to go closer,” Nadia whispered.

  They stood quietly a long while, because words issued from the creature’s mouth one at a time, in the same deliberate way it moved.

  “It’s asking who we are,” Nadia translated.

  “I got that. I understand almost everything,” Alex murmured, stepping a little closer. Walimai gestured him to stop.

  The dialogue between the shaman and the Beast advanced at the same imperceptible pace; no one moved as the light in the white sky began to change to an orange glow. That, Alex and Nadia assumed, meant that outside the crater the sun was descending toward the horizon. Finally Walimai got to his feet and came back to where they were standing.

  “There will be a council of the gods,” he announced.

  “Council? Are there more of these creatures? How many are there?” Alex asked, but Walimai could not clarify this because he did not know how to count.

  The witch man led them around the edge of the valley lying in the heart of the tepui to a small natural cavern in the rock, where they made themselves as comfortable as possible, then he went to look for food. He returned with some very aromatic fruit that neither of them had ever seen before, but they were so hungry that they devoured it without a question. Suddenly it was night and they were sunk in fathomless darkness. The city of fool’s gold, which during the day had been blindingly brilliant, had disappeared into the shadows. Walimai made no effort to light his second torch; he was undoubtedly keeping that for their return through the labyrinth, and there was no other source of light. Alex concluded that though human in their language, and maybe in some other habits, the creatures were more primitive than cavemen, for they hadn’t as yet discovered fire. Compared to the Beasts, the Indians were quite sophisticated. Why did the People of the Mist think of the creatures as gods, if they themselves had evolved farther?

  There was no relief from the heat and humidity; it came from the mountain itself, reminding them that they might be in the crater of a dormant volcano. The idea of being on a thin layer of dirt and rock formed over molten flames of lava was not very reassuring, but Alex reasoned that if the volcano had been inactive for thousands of years, as proved by the luxuriant growth inside it, it would indeed be unusually bad luck if it erupted the one night he was there. The next hours dragged painfully by. The two young people found it difficult to sleep in that unfamiliar place. They remembered the murdered soldier’s horrible wounds all too well. The Beast must have used those enormous claws to gut him. Why hadn’t the man run away, or fired his weapon? The creature was so unbelievably slow that his victim should have had more than enough time. The explanation could only be the paralyzing stench it sprayed. There was no way to protect yourself if the creatures decided to use their scent glands. It didn’t help to hold your nose, the odor penetrated every pore of the body, overpowering brain and will; it
was a poison as deadly as curare.

  “Are they human or animal?” Alex asked, but again Walimai couldn’t answer; to him there was no difference.

  “Where do they come from?”

  “They have been here always, they are gods.”

  Alex imagined the interior of the tepui as an ecological archive where species that had vanished from the rest of the earth still survived. He told Nadia that these must be the ancestors of the sloths they knew.

  “They don’t seem like humans, Eagle. We haven’t seen any sign of dwellings, or tools, or weapons; nothing that suggests an organized society,” he added.

  “But they speak like people, Jaguar,” the girl said.

  “They must have an unbelievably slow metabolism, and live hundreds of years. If they have memory, then in such a long life they would be able to learn many things, even to speak, right?” Alex ventured.

  “They speak the language of the People of the Mist. Who invented it? Did the Indians teach the Beasts? Or did the Beasts teach the Indians?”