Lovers of Babel

by Valerie Walker

  I looked down at myself as if I’d forgotten what I was wearing.

  “Oh, thanks. So do you. I mean, you look handsome.”

  “I guess we both took this feast thing more seriously than we thought,” he said rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Well, it has been a long time since we got all dressed up. And I’m sure we look like different people without sand coming out of our pores,” I laughed.

  “After an hour of washing my hair I still don’t think I got all of it out,” he said.

  Then, the trumpet sounded. That was our signal for dinner.

  We walked to the front door and I grabbed Chad’s arm. For a moment, we felt as if we were back home getting ready to go to a school dance that I would always refuse to go to unless Chad was my escort. I smiled in anticipation of the party that awaited us, but as soon as we opened the door, my daydream collapsed. That wasn’t my home. We were in a foreign land called Providencia and what was more foreign than the earthly aroma of that place, was our own powerless bodies.

  When we stepped outside, there was a huge feast on the lawn spread out over a long table that could seat close to one hundred people. It was night and the air was crisp and cool. There were paper lamps dangling from ropes that were tied to trees lining the streets throughout the village. The light from the lamps came from fireflies that were caught and allowed to roam in the confines of their beautiful paper prison. I looked up at the lamps and watched them fly around inside darting back and forth.

  A man wearing a long-sleeved linen blouse walked over to us and noticed me starring at the lamps.

  “We use fireflies for most of our light sources here. Sometimes we use fire, but we find it much safer to use lightning bugs,” the man said. “You must be the distinguished guests that Job told the village about. While you were sleeping we prepared this feast.”

  “You made this for us?” Chad asked.

  The man had a hearty laugh.

  “No. We planned for this feast a long time ago. You just happened to show up at the right time. Let me show you to your seats,” the man said.

  We walked over to the enormous table and almost every chair was full. I concluded that this feast was a special occasion, because the women had shimmery makeup on and their hair was braided with strands of colorful silk woven inside. The men wore shirts to dinner when they usually went shirtless. They were beginning to look more civilized each time I saw them, but that still didn’t take away from the barbaric nature of their leader.

  We took our seats toward the middle of the table. I sat in between the man and Chad. I looked over to the far left of the table and saw the boy we saw brake into the Power Society Library when we went back in time. His hair was pushed back outside of his face. He had aged a few years and was slightly more muscular than I remember. He looked over at me and lowered his eyebrows. Suddenly, Job, who was seated at the head of the table, tapped his glass with a knife.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have two guests with us tonight. These two have traveled many miles to find us. And even though they are foreigners, they are harmless, I can promise you that. We’d like to welcome them with open arms. Please, welcome Sage and Chad from Equinox.”

  Everyone looked at us and nodded in acceptance. It wasn’t exactly the warmest welcome I’d ever received, but I was glad to see that our lives weren’t going to be threatened again.

  After the dull introduction, my attention was focused on the food.

  The spread was delicious. There were several kinds of meat; whole chickens and turkeys. There were vegetables that we had never seen in the Equinox and homemade desserts that made my mouth water. To top it off, all of the food was organic.

  The table was roaring with conversation and laughter. A tall man across from me, with a grey streak going through the center of his hair, showed me and Chad a trick using the rim of his wine glass. He wet his finger and then carefully circled it around the rim. Suddenly, there was a soft shrill coming from the glass that changed tune as he moved his finger. I never knew that you could make music using a simple glass and your finger. We were thoroughly amused.

  We sat and ate for hours. I felt my energy coming back, but there was still a sense of loss inside that I feared would never go away.

  Chapter 7: Lifeblood

  After dinner, everyone dispersed into their own homes for the night. Job asked us if we needed an escort to take us back to our cabin and we declined his offer. Somehow I think it was more like a threat than an offer, but I guess he knew that our chances of escaping were slim without our powers, so he let it go. Also, I could tell that the sire had one too many glasses of wine and as he stumbled home I felt the need to explore more of this village while he was too drunk to notice.

  I looked up at Chad while he surveyed the sight of drunken Job stumbling away from us.

  “I thought he would never let his guard down, but to be so drunk like this is a bit too good to be true, isn’t it?” He asked?

  “Why is that?”

  “Since he’s too out of it to watch our every move, we have the perfect chance to explore the village for any clues as to who these people really are. We could even escape.” Chad whispered.

  A part of me doubted that we weren’t being watched in some way. Even if Job wasn’t in his right mind, I was sure that he at least had some other spy to keep an eye on us. Still, I felt desperate to find out who these people were. So desperate, that I was willing to risk being killed.

  There was a slight chill in the night air that crept through my thin linen clothes. It was a vast improvement from the heat of the desert, but I craved a sweater for warmth. I looked at Chad’s face glowing under the radiant moon and in the dead of night I felt that he was my only remaining link to home. I felt a sense of duty to protect him as if he were a part of me.

  “This place isn’t nearly as big as Equinox, but it’s still difficult to decide where to begin our search. Plus, it looks like everything is closed down for the night,” Chad said.

  “I know exactly where we should look. Ever since we were taken there to be de-powered I knew we had to go back to investigate.”

  “The barn?”

  I nodded.

  “I must’ve blocked the memories of that place out of my mind. It hasn’t been long since we were taken there, but I guess it was too traumatic to remember,” he said with a slight chill in his voice.

  Chad had changed since then. Just a few days before, my best friend was his usual silly and energetic self, but now it seemed like a light inside of him was put out. I wondered if I had changed as well. I know I felt different since my power was stripped from my body. Maybe it was a light that was put out, but I feared that light would be out for good. Suddenly, our task that night was more important. We had to get our powers back at any cost or risk losing ourselves, forever.

  I grabbed his hand.

  “Are you ready?”

  He nodded.

  We began to retrace our steps from the forest to the barn. Since we were too out of it after they injected that virus into our bodies, we couldn’t remember how far it was from our cabin. However, after we met Job and his manservants in the forest, we had to walk quite a while to get to the barn. We walked further away from the banquet table and deeper into the sleeping village.

  Although it was night, the fireflies were still lighting the paper globes that dotted the village streets. We made sure to walk out of sight and under the veil of darkness.

  After a little while, we came across a tall hill with a structure on top in the distance outside the parameter of the village. It was the only structure that wasn’t lit by the firefly lamps. This had to be the barn.

  Chad looked ominously toward it.

  “I don’t remember walking up a hill to get to it, but this has to be it.”

  “I think were in such shock that we weren’t paying too much attention to our surroundings,” I said.

  We began to ascend the hill and the more we walked the darker it became. I could
’ve really used my finger light at that moment. As we got closer to the barn I felt the menacing feeling of being watched. I quickly snapped my head around to see behind us, but there was nothing but the lit village behind us. Chad noticed my sudden reaction and asked if I was doing okay.

  “I get the feeling that we’re being watched.”

  “Well, if we are, what’s the worst they can do? Take away our powers? They already did that. Don’t worry Sage. We’ll make it through this. Just keep going.”

  After a tiring walk up the steep hill, we were at the barn doors. I stood behind Chad as he placed his hand on the doorknob, but just as he was turning, we heard a noise from inside. We quickly ran to the side of the barn. When nothing happened, we started to creep back towards the doors. Chad opened the door slowly and cracked it just enough to allow us to squeeze inside, then closed it quietly.

  Inside the barn looked just as I remembered with rooms on either side. Each room had farming and hunting equipment and nothing looked out of place. This time I looked up and saw that there was a second floor balcony. We started walking towards the room where we were experimented on. That’s when we heard it: the sound of a man howling in pain coming from that room. We immediately hid ourselves in the dark corner of the room beside it. The sound was so excruciating that I began to panic.

  “They’re torturing him!” I whispered sharply.

  Chad placed his index finger over his lips. He pointed toward a hole in the wall near us, propped himself up on his knees, and began to look through it. I watched his facial expressions as he looked and his mouth and eyes were wide open. Then he sunk down on his legs looking dazed and confused.

  I had to see for myself.

  I looked through the tiny whole and could see one of the operating tables with a convulsing man lying down on top. I could tell by his clothes that he was one of the townspeople. I looked at his face and I noticed a familiar scar under his eye, but since I could only see the side of his face I couldn’t quite tell who he was. Then, I saw a hand reach out and grab his wrist checking his pulse. By then the man had calmed down and appeared to be exhausted. The person doctoring him walked to the other side of the table and began to lift him to a seated position. I heard him refer to the poor man as “sir” and became confused as to why they would be so polite to a captive. The doctor then began moving his legs off of the table and the patient turned towards me. When I saw his face I nearly screamed, but Chad covered my mouth with his hand. I couldn’t believe what I had seen.

  We stayed hidden in the corner of the room until the coast was clear. Once the men were done, we saw them walk past our room; one of them was pulling a limp Job on his back.

  We waiting until the men were completely gone from the barn before we spoke.

  “Why would Job, the sire, need the same virus that was used on us!?”

  “How do you know it was the virus? Maybe he has a disease and he needed medical attention,” Chad said.

  “Then why were you so shocked to see him there?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m just hoping that there is a better explanation for what we just saw.”

  “Let’s look inside that room.”

  The room was dark inside and I smelled a faint scent of smoke. The fire in the lantern had just been put out. I walked over to the lantern at the side of the room and inspected the table it was sitting on for a fire starter. I didn’t see anything on the table, so I lifted up the lantern and there were three small sticks with red tips on them. I showed them to Chad.

  “Do you know if they can start a fire?” I asked.

  “I remember watching a hologram show about the old world once. They were camping and needed to make fire. One of the actors pulled out a stick like this from a small box and flicked it on a rock. That created fire.”

  “Let’s try flicking it on the table.”

  Chad flicked it, but the stick broke.

  “Try being gentler with it,” I said.

  He slid the second stick over the surface of the table. Nothing.

  He tried flicking it on the surface of the metal lantern, but the stick dropped into the oil.

  “Chad! Now we only have one left,” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Make it count.”

  He put the stick to his puckered lips and closed his eyes. Then he flicked it on his belt. Fire.

  “I will never take my ability to create fire out of thin air for granted again. I mean, that’s if I get my power back,” I said solemnly.

  It seemed like that statement brought our dismal situation back into focus.

  “When you do get them back. The both of us will be back to normal in no time. We just need to find the antivirus. If they were able to concoct a virus that takes away our power, then they must have an antivirus to reverse the affects.”

  We began to look at the instruments on the table at the front of the room for anything that looked like it could be the antivirus. Nothing stood out. I looked inside the drawers and there were only more instruments. As I surveyed the room I kept thinking about Job howling in pain. His experience was so similar to ours that I couldn’t stop thinking that he was injected with the same virus that we were.

  A gasp from Chad interrupted my thoughts.

  “What is it?”

  He held up a vial of blood that he foundin one of the drawers. On the vile was an inscription that read:Lifeblood of the Sire.

  “There’s more.”

  Chad opened the wooden cabinet nearest to him revealing hundreds of vials of blood, each with a unique name.

  It was very unsettling to see so much blood in one place. I didn’t understand why they would keep blood stored in this way.

  “What a strange collection to have. I bet everyone’s blood in the village is in here,” he said.

  “I wonder why they would need to keep their blood like this. It looks more like a twisted family tree than a collection of medical samples.”

  All of a sudden we heard a sound coming from the front of the barn. Chad quickly put Job’s blood in his pocket and blew out the fire from the lantern.

  “We need to find another way out,” he whispered quickly.

  The footsteps were getting closer to us. I looked outside our room and saw a wooden staircase on the far side of the barn. I pointed to it and Chad nodded.

  We knelt down and began to walk briskly but as quit as possible toward the stairs. As soon as we cleared the room, I looked behind me and saw the doctor from before enter the room unaware of our presence. At least I hoped he wasn’t.

  We climbed the stairs and walked toward the edge of the balcony on the second story. I looked down and saw the front door to the barn. I realized that if we jumped it would be quite a fall, but that was our only way out. We heard sounds of cabinet doors slamming and medical equipment being moved around. He couldn’t find the vial. I suddenly felt a sense of urgency and placed my feet at the very edge of the platform. I could see some of the hay from under my feet float down towards the first floor. I looked at Chad and held his hand.

  With a quick leap we began to plummet to the ground. The impact wasn’t as hard as I imagined, but the thud was certainly louder. Suddenly, the movement from inside the operating room stopped. We looked at each other wide-eyed and struggled to get on our feet. When the doctor got to the front of the barn we were already gone.

  When we got further enough away from the barn we brushed the hay off our bodies then headed back to the cabin.

  I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep when we got inside, but I knew we had discovered something essential to getting our powers back and time was not on our side. I put on a pot of tea and took a seat at our kitchen table.

  Chad pulled out the vial from his pocket and placed it on the table in between us. We sat there looking at it in silence for a while. Then, Chad spoke up.

  “It just doesn’t make sense that they would save their blood like this…and then to go through all the trouble of making these vials. It’s just weird.”
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  Something Chad said made me perk up.

  “The only reason why they would go through all that trouble is if the blood was special. The blood has to serve some important purpose for them to store it in such fancy vials.”

  The tea kettle began to whistle and Chad took it off the heat to pour each of us a mug.

  “I know you don’t believe this, but let’s just say that Job was injected with the virus. If this is the case, then he must have powers too.”

  Chad held the mug to his lips then sat it back down.

  “I’m sorry Sage, but that’s just crazy. Before he came here, we didn’t know that people existed outside of Equinox, let alone that they too have powers. It just wouldn’t make sense. Why would he want to rid himself of his power?”

  “We thought we were the only ones on earth, but we were wrong. Couldn’t we be wrong about our powers too?”

  Chad sighed.

  “You’re right. We were wrong and we could be wrong about our powers too. That still doesn’t explain why in the world Job would want to live without his powers.”

  “Who knows. Maybe it’s a part of some weird belief system. I mean, they don’t use technology either, do they? Why in the world would a civilization want to live without technology? They could have some sort of mandate that prevents the use of technology,” I said.

  Chad shook his head.

  “I don’t know. It’s just too bazaar to believe.”

  I was trying desperately to convince him that I was right about Job.

  “Maybe the proof is in their blood. Job’s blood might tell us if he has powers or not.”

  “Sage, there is no evidence that our powers come from our blood.”

  I was getting frustrated with his stubbornness.

  “What if there is evidence in the blood? If we’re born with powers then there has to be something in our blood that sets us apart from the naturals.”

  “Okay, let’s just say you’re right. How are we going to determine what’s inside of Job’s blood? We don’t have a microscope strong enough to see that closely.”

  I sat thinking for a while for something that we could use to look into his blood. Providencia didn’t have anywhere near the technology we had at home, so this kind of task was nearly impossible to achieve without powers.