by J. D. Palmer
Ghost’s men and women are already saddling their tired horses. Tim stamps and Ghost grabs his forelock and presses his forehead to the animal, somehow quieting him. Fur brushes my leg and Pike leans into me. I don’t know where he had gone when we went to the fire, but apparently he kept an eye out. He gives a tentative wag, just with the tip of his tail, eyes staring up at me filled with a million questions.
“You should stay.” I say it and his head droops. But when Ghost leads me to the horse he follows, head down until I don’t say anything more. Then his tail turns into a flurry of wags, and he bounces around the horses until Tim raises a threatening back hoof.
I’m bundled over the saddle, arms still bound, and we trot off into the night.
“Are you—”
“Not now.”
We canter for less than a mile before he slows, hopping down from Tim and producing a knife. He helps me off the horse before sawing through the ropes.
Ghost confers with his group, hushed voices barely audible. I wonder if he’s just going to tell me to go. A blast of hot air as Tim examines my shoulder, then I’m forced to twist away as he starts to eat my hair. I guess I know how he feels about this whole thing.
Ghost comes striding back and mounts up in one fluid motion, his hand already out to help me up behind him.
“C’mon Tim. Let’s go.”
And Tim bobs his head, either angry or agreeing with sarcastic wholeheartedness. We trot out into the desert, the land dark and wholly obscured by clouds, the full moon only a specter of itself seen through the grey fog.
The saddle hurts. I hadn’t noticed it so much earlier today, but this second time is nothing but aching thighs jolting with every step of Tim’s. I grip the sides of the saddle as hard as I clench my teeth. It feels like I’m going to be shaken apart, or tossed off. Or both.
Ghost turns slightly and gives me a disparaging look. With a sudden movement his hand snakes around and grabs my wrist, pulling it so that it circles around his chest.
“You fall you’re going to piss Tim off, and he’s not the kind of horse to turn around and pick someone up.”
We ride in silence, Ghost cajoling Tim into a gallop that sends both our hair blowing and the adrenaline pumping through my veins. I hug his back, clinging to this man even though at a gallop we seem to flow through the sagebrush, floating on a vessel through a dark, soundless sea.
Tim throws his head. It seems to be a signal. Ghost slows us down, holding a hand up to the rest of his crew. He leaps off and confers with them, pointing north and waving his hands. Then he hugs each and every one of them. All of them flashing large smiles even though there is something sad in the air. Tim’s reins are handed to one of the other men and the horses trot off into the darkness. We are alone in the middle of nowhere.
He gives me an appraising stare. “I like you. You are dangerous to be around. And I’ve been so bored.”
“What are you doing?”
“Something stupid.” He gives his grin and the gold flashes momentarily. “Julian took his horses. Not his truck. Means he’s going to follow.”
“Just for me?”
“And for me. Isn’t it exciting?” He gives a couple yips, pointing his head to the sky. “But we should be quiet now.” As if I was the one yelling. “We have a long ways to walk.” He strides out into the desert. “Snakes, scorpions, and cacti. I hope you’re quick on your feet.”
My anger is still there. My urge to lash out at everything and everyone but those chosen few. To keep death, or destruction, or fear at arm’s length. To keep change away.
But I sense a difference in myself. Growth, perhaps. I am a killer. Not by virtue of taking lives, but because I do not see it as lamentable. I am what the world has made me. But I feel the start of understanding. I see how I am a part of the bigger picture.
The man who walks in front of me knows these things. He exudes…
Harmony.
Flowers offer their sweet elixir to bees and bees in turn offer pollination. Herbivores eat vegetation and are hunted. Hunters die and turn into grass. Trees draw sustenance from the earth, water and soil, and in turn offer themselves as a home to others.
An agreement made long ago. Each creature knowing that part of them takes, and part of them is to be given. Whether in death, or in birth, or somewhere in between. Purpose is not something to be found, it is something that will find them.
Except for humans. Only we squirm and complain and thrash our way through life ignoring that which has been given us. We seek to assert our own will over that which is not ours in the first place.
Except for people like Dancing Ghost.
Harmony.
A man who does not question each turn in life, but slides along each new strand with fluid ease. Peace within creating peace without.
We walk for a long time, and I keep one eye on his back and the other on the desert floor. I learn to watch his hands. Small gestures that let me know if there’s something I should step around. Or avoid. Or just to stop.
“Tell me a story.”
He says it softly.
“I thought… We should be quiet.”
He snorts. “Julian wouldn’t know how to sneak through a room full of pillows. We’ll hear him.”
I chew on my lip. A story? I don’t…
“I don’t know any stories.”
He stops, turns to look at me. “A wolf who can’t howl? Or just afraid to try?”
This pisses me off for some reason. Which means I don’t say anything. And this angers me even more. Maybe because it echoes some of the truth.
“There was this girl…”
My voice is squeaky, my throat feeling thick, like I swallowed these words and am retching them up rather than speaking.
“There was this girl…”
“My kind of story.” He turns and gives me a sardonic smile, daring me to stop.
“There was this girl. And she had a cloak of invisibility. The only problem was that she couldn’t take it off. She couldn’t be seen… She couldn’t be heard. And…
HARLAN | 11
WE SLOWLY PULL off the highway and onto a service road, and then from that to a dirt road that takes us to a creek that might once have been a river. Another ten minutes of driving towards distant hills and suddenly a camp appears.
Busses and RVs criss-crossed with hanging clothes and banners and sheets of colors. Tents are everywhere. Not the small two or three person tents. Pavilions. Erected at all four corners and covered with so many bits of color it is at first blinding.
A large yurt-like palace resides in the middle, more massive than the rest, the top adorned with a simple red scarf.
Men and women pour out of the tents or come trotting from the other side of the camp. Young. Gaudily dressed and flamboyant in manner. Jewelry so ostentatiously worn as to be almost blinding. We are examined, and talked about, and some jeer as we are lead towards the main tent. Some cheer. As if their decisions rest on our appearance, on our faces, not on what our arrival might mean.
It’s too much for our senses. An overload of noise when we’ve learned the value of silence. Too much color for those who’ve strained to wash the red from their clothes. Too much carelessness for people who know better.
Gods, they yell. So much. And curse, as if by cursing a point is made and negates the need for an explanation. All the while they look on us with derision.
That’s it. That’s what gets to me the most. They see us as rabble. As a ragtag band of survivors hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Which isn’t wrong.
But it isn’t fucking justified.
And they aren’t unified by anything other than that they know each other more than us. They bicker and fight as if to not do so would be too boring for this new life. A black girl parades around in nothing but lingerie, bright lipstick and heels and long fake nails. She yells at an Asian girl, probably nineteen, draped in three layers of top tier jewelry and designer clothes. Fur coats are worn with nothing un
derneath. Everything is bright pink, or red, or garish yellows and greens.
The men are worse.
No shirts, no matter how thin and lacking in musculature they might be. Suit coats torn and frayed and ties worn around their heads as if they are a gang of Wall Street Rambos. Fingers adorned with thick gold rings rest on the pistols in their waistbands.
They drive large trucks and sleek new cars and even as we watch, one truck rams a Lamborghini off of the road and down into the creek. The driver crawls out, coughing water and gasping, and is either laughed at or met with over-the-top dismay. Some men gather around him while three girls check him for injuries, fussing with voices too loud.
It’s a bad show.
A lifted truck, with what appears to be a T-Rex skull strapped to the top, cruises down the road and into the middle of the gathering, dust kicked up in a cloud that sends some coughing. There is canvas in the back, bloody and barely covering the skinned carcass of some animal. Three more men get out. Well, two boys and an older man. He is white-haired and a tad portly. Thin legs and thin arms and even though he stepped out of the truck first, he fades to the back of the group, lingering only for a second before heading to the main tent.
They haven’t taken our guns. I tell myself that as I grip mine tightly. At the ready. Everyone in my group have theirs in their hands as well. The people around us don’t seem to be bothered by our obvious distrust. They don’t shy away from it. The looks they give us, the leers… There is a joke that we don’t get. Or, perhaps, we are the punchline.
Our guides take their time along the way. They shout “she was right,” or “right where she said,” and other enigmatic phrases.
Something is off.
I grab one of the drivers. “Where is Beryl?”
He puts an arm around me, as if we are celebrating something, as if I was a long lost friend that he was overjoyed to see. “You need to talk to her, go inside.” His breath reeks of whiskey. I hadn’t noticed them drinking on the way back. “Just you,” he adds.
I turn to the others. We share a look that needs no words.
Be ready.
I shoulder past these… kids… past these people in gaudy clothing and to the tent. I don’t pause at the flap but push my way through, only stopping to let my eyes adjust to the dimness inside.
Dull light. Lifeless. Intentional. An aura of mystery. Shadows in every corner and only the center to draw your attention. I think it’s candles, but they don’t flicker. Battery operated fakes surrounding a low table in the middle.
On it, almost perfectly still, is a woman with raven black hair. Late twenties. No, older than that. But beautiful. Gorgeous. Her clothing appearing to be a mix of black and red strips wound around her torso and legs and arms, a thick band around her hips. As if she would prefer to unravel than disrobe.
Kneeling next to her is the older man we saw exit the truck. He is whispering and gesturing, pleading a case though I see no reaction from the woman.
“Enough” she says, an assured, resonant voice issuing from her painted lips. “Dad, we will talk of this later.”
The man looks like he is about to argue, then lowers his head in assent before heading to a shadowy exit.
She sits up, stretching her neck before swinging her feet off the table to stand. We regard each other in silence. I realize there are other shapes, other people gathered off to the side. At least five. Only small rustles, small exhalations giving them away.
An audience for what?
“My name is Cyrene. Welcome.”
“Where is Beryl?”
She cocks her head. “I do not know of this… boy? Girl?”
I don’t say anything.
“Ah, a girl. She is not here. But…”
“We were told she was here.”
She turns and raises a hand. A shadow hastens to a small side table. The audible sound of a cork being pulled from a wine bottle. A gurgle as it’s poured. A glass delivered to her waiting hand and then the shadow is gone again.
“I sincerely doubt you were told that. But we have been searching for you, perhaps there was a misunderstanding.”
My stomach clenches.
Fuck. Where are you Beryl?
“They said… They said she was here.”
“By name?” She seems honestly curious.
I can’t remember. I feel my neck slump, the urge to sit down suddenly overwhelming as the weight returns to my shoulders. “If she is not here then we will be going.”
I turn to leave, anxious to be gone from here. Gone before something else happens.
“Wait. Please.”
I turn from the flap but don’t come back in.
“You would leave without asking questions? Without knowing who we are? You would come here seeking someone and leave before knowing if we can help? You hurt yourself, and your friend, shut off as you are.”
“It’s that, or hurt someone else.” The words come out of my mouth recklessly. Truth and violence ever eager to make themselves known. She doesn’t bat an eye. Only smiles.
“Have some wine. Sit. Ask me questions. You will find my answers… satisfying.”
I don’t know how to react to this. Hope of finding Beryl warring with the distrust I have. The overwhelming suspicion. The prickling feeling on my neck and the way my hands are splayed. Ready to grab, or defend, to rip or tear.
But what if they can help…?
Violence would be so much easier. At least to understand. The sexuality that exudes from this woman, surrounded by this silent audience, is beyond my comprehension. And I do not enjoy being toyed with. If Beryl was here she would tell me to get the fuck out.
Done.
I silently turn and walk to the flap, every sense aware. Waiting for the scuff that isn’t my own foot. Waiting for them to make a mistake.
“There is a reason we have found each other. There is always a reason. And…”
“And what?” I spit, glancing over my shoulder.
Cyrene stares at me. “I can find her. This person you so desperately seek.”
There is a calm assurance to the way she speaks. A certainty that I don’t understand.
“How?”
“I have my ways. My people have their ways, too.”
“How?” I ask again, taking two strides, against my volition, into the room.
She rolls her eyes, taking her time sipping from her wine. Then she dashes the glass onto the ground, her eyes never leaving mine. Bare feet step on the shattered pile, small steps that soon leave red footprints behind her, blood and wine mixed, as she walks to me. I’m frozen, confused and horrified and, to my shame, wanting to know what she’ll say.
When she gets to me she looks down, shakes her head slowly with her eyes closed. “Bloody footprints,” she whispers, as if recounting the end of a dream she just had. She inhales deepen and then opens her eyes again. There is a murmur from the shadows.
“Leave us.” Her voice is loud, and smooth, and brooks no argument. People flow past us and there is the blinding light from outside as the tent door is lifted. I see other people going through flaps at other corners of the yurt. Young men and women casting smiling glances back at us.
She walks gingerly to her chair and sits down. A gulp of wine and then she stares at me, eyes gazing steadily into mine, a smile on her face as she reaches down to her side and rips free a length of fabric. “What is your name?” She asks as she dabs at her feet, wincing as she removes a shard of glass.
“Harlan.”
“Hello, Harlan.” Another smile and a pause, as if this meeting is of some unseen importance. “Will you bring me that bottle of vodka?” She gestures to the side table.
“I don’t have time for this.”
“You will make time,” she snaps, all niceness gone from her voice. “The quicker you sit, and relax, the quicker I’ll be sending my people out to find your friend.”
“Why?”
She doesn’t answer my question, merely shoots a long glance at t
he table before waiting. So I go, and I fetch the vodka and bring it to her because… If I do walk out of here, I do not know what to do next.
She opens it and pours a generous amount onto another strip of fabric torn free, grimacing as she dabs at the cuts on her feet. “Don’t want anything to get infected, you know.”
“Why did you do it?”
She cocks her head, as if pondering the answer. “Back, before all this, people were put in charge. Not leaders. People were put in charge and occasionally they were capable. They spent enough time at a place, put in the hours, took the classes or whatever… They moved up.”
An inhale of breath as more alcohol meets riven flesh. “Now… Now there are true leaders and everything is so much plainer to me. Some lead by fear, some by taking away fear. Some by knowing how to do hard things, some by knowing how to get away from the hard things. Some find food and shelter, some make it. Some leaders do all of it.”
“And which are you?”
“Me? Little ol’ me? I…” She pauses dramatically and takes a pull from the vodka bottle. “I lead the leaders. I give them what they want. And they provide me with whatever it is that they do, and we all go away happy.”
I snort. “You lead the leaders? Right.”
“Some are too prideful to admit it.” She stands and slowly walks towards me, dark hair framing her face and the confident smile that seems to precede it. “Do you know how I know I’m right?” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. “You read any story on any battle, the Civil War to World War Two, who do dying men call for?”
She takes a sip of her wine, eyes leveled against me. Baiting me. I stay silent because to answer would be simply saying what she wants to hear.
“Mommy. That’s who they want.” She eyes me. “Funny, with so much death, I still don’t know who I, or other women, for that matter, would call out for. But now…” She raises a flat hand and looks at it, as if it held the world. “So much death. And so many just wanting a mother.”
I don’t know what to say. What confidence does she hope to gain by telling me how she has manipulated others?
“But that’s not you.” She pauses, gives me another critical appraisal. “Wisdom accompanies bad choices. And you, no offense, don’t seem like a silly boy. You have the look of a wise man.”
