Oracle--Fire Island

by C. W. Trisef

  * * * * *

  Like a rooster, Ret awoke with the rising sun. Though a bit startled to arise amid such unusual circumstances, his fears quickly faded when he saw Mr. Coy and Lionel still fast asleep, with Ishmael steadfastly manning the wheel. Quietly, Ret rose to his feet, stretched, and looked around to see if he could determine where they were.

  Feeling the warmth of the sun on his back, Ret saw large, forested landmasses approaching them in all directions but north. Continuing this westward course, Ret watched raptly as they began to pass over land. Lush greenery covered most of the landscape, with many bodies of water twisting like veins around vegetated hills. After only a few minutes, however, Ret could see the abrupt end of land and the return of vast ocean. He was confused; if they were flying over a large island, why was there a waterway that ran the entire width of the land, from ocean to ocean?

  “The Panama Canal,” Lionel said with a yawn, as if he had read Ret’s mind. He appeared at Ret’s side and leaned over the side of the basket. “But I’m sure you already knew that.” Ret smiled, preferring not to fess up since Lionel was someone he always tried to impress.

  “So we must be close,” Ret deduced.

  “Sort of,” said Lionel. “It looks like Coy is keeping us just off the coasts, and we’ve still got to go through Columbia, Ecuador, and then all the way down Peru.” Hoping he hadn’t crushed Ret’s enthusiasm, he added, “But we’re getting there.”

  “You must come here a lot,” said Ret.

  “I’ve spent quite a bit of time on this continent,” Lionel admitted. “It’s played a big role in my research.”

  “Where haven’t you been, Lionel?” Ret asked rhetorically, in awe at his travelogue.

  “The women’s restroom,” he replied. They both laughed. “I’ve been blessed to have a career that has taken me all over this earth,” said Lionel. “I feel sorry for people who, for whatever reason, can’t or simply choose not to travel the globe, consigned to experience the world through a one-dimensional map their whole lives. Do you know what I see when I look at a map, Ret?” Ret remained silent. “Lines.” He stopped for a few moments before saying, “There are so many boundaries and borders. I mean, look over there.” He pointed to the South American continent to the east. “Do you see any lines on those hills? Can you tell which way national borders run, or at what point the soil stops being Ecuadorian and starts being Peruvian?”

  Ret said nothing.

  “Neither can I,” said Lionel. “That’s because borders and boundaries are manmade. Sure, they may organize and systematize things, but lines also separate and categorize—they stereotype and segregate. Boundaries beget blocs. Borders create unseen stumbling blocks. Lines in the sand are born from lines in our hearts. You see, what lines do is make us unequal. Never underestimate the hidden meaning of lines, Ret.”

  For a moment, Ret’s mind reflected on the delineated society of Sunken Earth, which had been divided into stark classes of differing equality. He remembered the first time he gazed upon the civilization—how it looked so amicable from a distance but, up close, was actually a corrupt and fallen culture.

  “But when I’m way up here,” Lionel resumed, “when I remove myself from the deafening noise of the day-to-day and the blinding static of the here-and-now, I no longer see the varied lines and differing brushstrokes that define life; instead, I see the whole image—one grand and glorious painting—the big picture that defines existence. If large cities and diverse states can live by the same laws and philosophies in peace and harmony, then why can’t whole countries—even entire continents? Through geography, Mother Nature made them contiguous; why, then, can’t man, through sociality, make them continuous?”

  “Good question,” Mr. Coy interrupted, having snuck up behind them during Lionel’s monologue. “I’ll be sure to ask the Wizard of Oz when I reach the Emerald City at the end of the yellow brick road.” Ret and Lionel looked at him with flustered perplexity on their faces. “Look alive, kiddos,” Coy hollered, returning to the controls. “Peru approacheth.”

  Now that they were a considerable distance down the South American coast, Ret noticed a significant change in the topography of their aerial, panoramic view. Whereas the shoreline and subsequent inland expanse were once bespeckled with greenery, the entire landscape had turned a dusty brown. From the waters of the Pacific to the feet of the Andes, this high-desert plateau stretched long and thin from north to south. Ret had no memories of traversing through deserts, and this one looked wildly unforgiving and unappealingly dead.

  “There’s Lima,” Lionel pointed out. It was a sight that couldn’t be missed. A truly enormous metropolitan area sprawled in every direction, threatening to spill over the Pacific coast. It was a sea of concrete—a dense grove of skyscrapers and buildings. Still, it paled in comparison to Sunken Earth.

  Soon, the cement of the city gave way to the dust of the desert. Mr. Coy adjusted their course to gradually take them inland.

  “Where would someone start looking for these incendiary rocks?” Mr. Coy asked aloud as they flew ever nearer toward the far-reaching Nazca Desert.

  “I suggest we start at the north end and work our way down,” Lionel replied.

  “In that case,” said Coy, “we’ll start at the south end and work our way up.” Though Ret frowned, Lionel shrugged his shoulders with lightheartedness.

  The cloudless sky provided ample sunshine as the balloon resumed a land route. The ground was all sand and rock, constituting a barren wasteland. In some areas, hills sat like burnt potato chips; in others, more mountainous patches resembled the scattered vertebrae of some ancient behemoth.

  Plunging further south, Ret noticed the presence of several geometric designs in the flat, prairie-like regions of the desert. They were a series of incredibly straight lines, crisscrossing in no particular order, like the residual imprints of some giant’s game of pick-up sticks. He had almost convinced himself to think nothing of the curious lines when he saw a drawing in the dirt.

  “Look!” Ret shouted. “Look at the ground! There’s a hummingbird!”

  Everyone rushed to Ret’s side of the basket and peered over the ledge. Indeed, a massive drawing of a hummingbird had been etched into the surface of the earth. With clearly drawn wings and elongated snout, it was an astounding discovery. More impressive still was the fact that it had been scratched into the ground in a single, continuous line, the whitish color of which contrasted distinctly against the brown land.

  The party scarcely had enough time to gather their thoughts when a second geolyph could be seen ahead. It had a lanky body, with four appendages, a stuck-out tongue, and a long tail curled into a large spiral design.

  “That almost looks like a…like a,” Lionel said, astounded, “a monkey!”

  “Yeah,” Ret agreed with childlike fantasy, “a monkey!”

  “And look!” Mr. Coy hailed, looking off to the east. “There’s a dog over here!” He conducted the balloon eastward to follow the giant sketches in the soil. The canine lay conspicuously before them, each toe of its four long legs accounted for, the entire outline completed in one, unbroken line.

  When the dog had passed, only the abnormally straight lines remained, stretching out of sight. The lull in the caricatures provided an opportunity for the group to discuss the unexpected phenomena.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before!” Lionel confessed, obviously excited. “I mean, I’d heard there were rumored markings in the Nazca Desert, perhaps from ancient tribes, but I had no idea they were anything like this—full-blown drawings of animals.”

  “Never mind you,” Coy insisted. “What could this mean for us—for the Oracle?”

  “Well,” said Ret skeptically, “unless there’s a drawing of a flaming rock or a fiery, six-sectioned sphere—or even a squatting man—I doubt these lines mean anything for us.”

  “Well, I can’t tell if he’s squatting,” said Ishmael, “but there’s a man over here.”

  Sti
ll reluctant, Ret dubiously crept to where Ishmael and the others were standing, crowding around the east side of the basket. Ret gave the spectacle half a glance. On a long and gently sloping hillside, there certainly was the figure of a man etched into the ground. Similar to Ret’s scar, the body was rounded with a long torso and pronounced eyes, but this graphic looked more like a suited astronaut. What’s more, he had one hand raised, as though he was waving to them—trying to win their attention, beckoning them thither.

  While the others gawked, Ret consulted the palm of his left hand. There was no activity whatsoever. His scar was neither lit nor tingling—nothing like when they saw the shadow of the submerged road that led to Sunken Earth. Ret retreated, his incredulity confirmed.

  Just then, Mr. Coy released a great deal of steam from the balloon.

  “What are you doing?” Ret asked, assuming Mr. Coy’s intention to descend.

  “Taking her down for a closer look, of course,” Coy explained.

  “But it’s nothing,” Ret debated. “It’s not identical to the scar or Miss Carmen’s mark, and it doesn’t even have anything to do with fire.”

  “But it does bear a striking resemblance,” Lionel added.

  “No, this isn’t how it works,” Ret persisted, unwilling to give in. “When we were in Devil’s Triangle and saw the road from the helicopter, I felt something in my hand. When the road became a downward stairway, it was because I felt something in my hand when I waved it over the symbol on the stone. From that moment until we left Sunken Earth, I felt something in my hand.”

  “So I’m guessing you don’t feel anything in your hand,” Mr. Coy gathered sarcastically.

  “Not a thing,” said Ret definitively.

  “Ishmael,” said Coy, “prepare for landing.”

  Ret threw his hands up in defeat. Was he not the quintessential element? Then why did no one seem to value his opinion?

  Noticing his frustration, Lionel put his arm around Ret’s shoulder and gave him the counsel that he had withheld from their previous conversation about Paige. Said he, “Just because you can’t feel something doesn’t mean it’s not there.” It was a statement that Ret didn’t exactly want to hear at the moment.

  As they approached the ground, Ishmael rolled a ladder over the side of the basket and climbed down to secure the guy-lines. They were near the top of the hill on whose wide and semi-flat face was the carving of the man. Mr. Coy powered down the balloon and then anxiously exited the craft with Lionel close behind.

  “Still a naysayer about lines?” Mr. Coy muttered to Lionel, referring to the conversation he had overheard earlier. Lionel feigned a humored grin.

  Ret was, by far, the last to descend the ladder. With heavy footsteps, he made his descent onto the desert floor, the rocky dirt crunching beneath his feet as if walking on loose gravel. The air was dry and windless. He took no more than a few steps before coming to a stop and sitting down. He put his face in his hands.

  “What are we doing here?” he murmured to himself. “We’re halfway across the world, in the middle of some forsaken desert, looking at scratches in the dirt. They’re about as useful as children’s chalk drawings on a playground. We’re wasting time.” He would have felt differently about his current situation had his scar demonstrated even the slightest hint that they were on the right track.

  Like most seated wallowers, Ret was rather involuntarily grabbing handfuls of whatever lay in front of him and letting it sift through his fingers. The coarse soil consisted of reddish-brown pebbles, quite easy to excavate. After several scoopfuls, he noticed a whitish layer about five inches below the dirt.

  Suddenly, Ret felt something wet invading his seat. He quickly stood up for an assessment. The hot-air balloon was leaking water profusely, as Mr. Coy had left the envelope to drain and condensation was still occurring within. Ret watched as the water flowed into the stray geometric lines that had been etched into the hillside. Like a system of rain gutters, it seemed these trenches were purposely configured to catch water and channel it in some predetermined route. Ret followed the flow of the runoff as it percolated into the furrows and trickled chaotically, intersecting like a family of air hockey pucks.

  Enthralled, Ret followed the general flow of the water in hopes of discovering the final destination of its drainage. He was careful not to step on any of the lines, now aware how delicate they were. Each one led to the giant geolyph of the man, though they all made contact with it at different points and from different angles. Ret halted near the man’s head and watched the lines funnel water into those that outlined the man.

  But the water’s journey did not end there. Without abatement, it continued to flow toward a central point in the man’s torso where, like the pointed symbol on the belly of Miss Carmen’s mark, there was a separate etching within the sketch of the man. Unlike the other lines, however, here the water came to rest and filled up the trenches without moving onward.

  The water show had also attracted the attention of Mr. Coy, Ishmael, and Lionel. They left their former spots of analysis and hurried to the belly of the man in order to see what design had been outlined in his torso. Ret hastened to join them, anxious to learn what the lines had to say.

  Chapter 9

  The City in the Mountains

  “Machu Picchu!” Lionel shouted.

  “Gesundheit,” said Mr. Coy in response to Lionel’s epiphanic exclamation.

  “It’s the Machu Picchu skyline,” Lionel continued giddily, undeterred by his associate’s sarcasm, “as seen from the south. Can you not see it?” He took a step closer and bent down to the ground.

  Like a broadside portrait of a small automobile, the design was about half as tall as it was wide and sat in the giant figure’s lower abdomen, about where you’d expect to find his belly button. With half a dozen or so indiscriminate lines feeding into the system like a major freeway interchange, the outline was quickly filling up with water runoff from the balloon. The late morning sun shone brilliantly upon the water, which accentuated even more the whiteness of the lines against the dull dirt of the parched desert—like wax amid watercolor.

  “This is the residential district, right by the main entrance,” said Lionel who, with his finger, pointed to the bottom-left portion of the outline. “And here’s the main plaza.” His hand moved rightward along a vacant stretch in the center. “This is Huayna Picchu, of course,” he said, identifying the large, conical mountain in the background.

  “Oh, yes; of course,” Coy remarked quietly to Lionel, as if the features of the ancient city were common knowledge.

  “Over there is the industrial zone,” Lionel’s gesticular tour resumed, “which rests across from these sacred sites. It doesn’t show everything, but it’s clearly Machu Picchu. Wouldn’t you agree? It’s one of the most famous skylines in the world, you know.”

  “Yes, we know,” came Coy’s irked assertion. “Thank you very much, King Inca.”

  “Do you think it could have something to do with the scar?” Ret asked, his mind clearly focused on one thing. “Or with the element?”

  “It’s certainly a possibility,” said Lionel. “Not much is known about the pre-Columbian city or why it was abandoned, which is why I find it more and more fascinating each time I visit it. In fact,” he paused, surveying the horizon as if to orient himself, “it ought to be only a couple hundred miles to the east of us.”

  “Let’s check it out!” Ret rejoiced, ready to go. “Come on!” He was about to make for the balloon but stopped when he caught Mr. Coy’s skeptical eye. Ret braced for some disparaging comment from him that would likely be at odds with Lionel’s judgment.

  Amid silence, Mr. Coy glanced at Ishmael, who returned his boss’ glare with his usual look of pleasantly obedient servitude. Though there was no exchange of words or reciprocation of winks, some reassuring fact seemed to be communicated between the two of them.

  “Well then, what are we waiting for?” Coy asked with an acquiescent smile. “All aboard!
” Ret cheered inaudibly while Lionel shrugged, satisfied yet surprised by Mr. Coy’s approval. Ret led the way back to the balloon, several eager steps ahead of the rest of the group.

  “Next stop: the city in the mountains,” Mr. Coy announced soon after disconnecting his airship from the earth. Like a fishing float, the balloon bobbed above the desert floor until the heating system provided enough lift to raise them heavenward. Ret watched as the departing figure of the giant man on the ground gradually became smaller and fainter until it could no longer be seen. With his raised hand, the man seemed to be waving goodbye to them, as if his purpose had been fulfilled.

  Ret’s attention turned eastward. As they sailed further inland, the evolving landscape foreshadowed the drastic change of scenery that their destination would bring. Like frills on a woman’s garment, the terrain had become exceptionally rugged, with innumerable mounts—ruffled and jagged—butting up against each other for miles. Void of vegetation, though replete with bronzed and ashen rock, the scene came to resemble one of Pauline’s platters of no-bake cookies. It was no mystery that the elevation was steadily increasing. Occasionally, the balloon would come quite close to scalping a high-rising peak, prompting Mr. Coy to increase the craft’s altitude.

  Poking at the horizon were numerous snowcapped mountaintops, and snow meant moisture. As their slopes steepened and colors deepened, the Andean alps assumed a lush and living appeal. Greenery replaced barrenness. Rivers flowed where hillsides converged. The forested regions sang of fauna. Ret marveled at the prodigious difference made by a fair bit of water.

  “There it is!” Lionel proclaimed. “Just beyond that ridge.” He pointed to yet another bluff in the endless expanse of the mountain range. The ridge petered out into a shallow ravine on its southern side, so Mr. Coy steered the balloon to the right to pass through it. As they rounded the side of the ridge and floated into the gully, the ancient city finally came into view.