by James Bow
And we never held hands. That’s important to know. At one point, I tried to take her hand in order to step over a stream that was a little too wide, and I caught her unawares. She jerked up and pulled away from me, and I fell in. Quickly, she clicked an apology and helped me to my feet … by putting her balled fists under my armpits and hauling me up by her wrists.
That was one of the many strange things about Eliza. To her, an open hand seemed to be an aggressive gesture, and a closed one was one that soothed. She only grabbed me with her fingers when we had to move quickly, but that was something she had to think about.
How did a girl get to be like that? Where had she lived?
I’d hardly believed Mom’s expanded map of my planet when I’d seen it, but this new chasm Eliza had drawn hadn’t been on it. Everybody, including Mom and the Grounders, knew that the niche was a blind alley.
Still, I began to hope. Eliza had put a dot on that map, just like Daedalon and Octavia. It couldn’t be a lost city; we still had all of ours from planetfall, but it could mean something similar. Eliza’s home. A village. Maybe more people like her. All talking in the language of the ticktock monsters.
That was another mystery. But maybe there weren’t ticktock monsters. Maybe there’d never been. What else could explain how this strange girl was here, and no monsters other than speechless, crawling lizards that loomed out of the fog? Maybe Eliza’s people were outcasts.
We didn’t have executions on Icarus Down. That was one of the shames from Old Mother Earth that we sought to leave behind. Banishment to the fog forest was our severest penalty, which amounted to the same thing, but not nearly so direct.
If this was a colony of banished settlers, they might be criminals or descendants of criminals. That made me nervous but, still, they might be able to help. They certainly would have no reason to cooperate with Nathaniel if his men came to kill me.
Eliza clicked at me to keep up. I picked up the pace and followed her.
Eliza’s trek led up and up. The forest thinned out. The animal cries became more distant. Then, with a start, I realized that I could see farther than I had in days. A few minutes later, we climbed above the cloud.
I blinked while my eyes got used to the sudden bright clarity. We were on an outcrop of rock high up the cliff face, and I could see for kilometres. The sky was a smooth white sheet, blinding in its brilliance. The ground was a soft white river between two stone walls. The air was so dry, it sucked the moisture from my tongue. Far away, near where the chasm turned, I saw cables and the gleam of mirrors from another city — Octavia — perched on the vanishing point. I thought of Iapyx, and a lump formed in my throat.
Eliza called out, « Cloc-Taak-Tock-guh, » then, “Simon?” but for a moment I could only stare.
I heard the rocks skitter, then Eliza was beside me. She tapped a fist against my arm. I started to say something, but she cut me off. « I know it is hard. »
And that was all. We stood, staring at the gleam of Octavia, while the hot wind blew around us.
Then I looked away.
Eliza looked at me. “Come?” she said.
“Yes.” Then, « We go. »
With Eliza in front, we climbed a scree of fallen stones, into a cleft in the cliff face. The rock walls closed in around us.
The gap was about ten metres wide. A hundred metres in, it narrowed further, until we had to walk sideways, and then it made a hard left. Beyond here, everybody thought the chasm came to an abrupt end. But as we reached the turn, and the wall to my left fell away, I found myself staring down a kilometre-long gap, sloping down at an easy angle. Most of the gap was rock and shadow, but in the distance I saw cloud. I looked behind me at the narrow gap. I couldn’t imagine any pilot getting through here. No wonder the Grounders hadn’t found it.
Suddenly I understood the value the Grounders placed on curiosity. I’m the first person to see this, I thought. Imagine what my people would say once I told them what I’d found. Would they name this chasm after me?
Then Eliza entered my field of vision, and I realized how arrogant I’d been.
She looked concerned. I’d just been standing there, breathing heavily, leaning with one hand against the cliff wall. « You need rest? » she asked.
I gathered my breath. My legs ached. But as I stared out at the long stretch of rocky ground before this gap descended into the clouds again, I could still feel the pull of curiosity. I was a Grounder after all.
“No,” I said. “Just a little farther, okay?”
I walked forward. Eliza smiled, and walked beside me, as step by step I left the known world behind.
* * *
ELIZA:
My thoughts were a mixture of nervousness and excitement as we followed the chasm back to my village. It had been nearly half a sun-turn since I left. I wondered what had changed.
I had missed the burning time. I should have been grateful, as I hated hiding in caves and covering myself in mud to keep cool. But instead I felt a strange ache to know that my village had gone through a burning without me. It was a time of being close, of telling the stories of the foremothers, except now there was no one to tell the stories to. Had the Elder missed me? How would she react when I showed her Simon?
We walked. We ate. We nested in caves or wherever we could when our bodies needed sleep.
And I noticed strange things about Simon.
We bathed whenever we found a clear pool. I showed Simon a leaf that smelled nice and was good for removing dirt from skin, and he was grateful. But he always bathed alone. He also once tried to cut the hairs off his cheeks and chin, using the small metal knife he used to carve our spears. I thought a lizard had attacked him and gnawed his face. I gave him a shard of glass that had fallen from a clifftop. That, at least, worked better.
But his desire to bathe alone bothered me and it made me notice something else. Once, we made camp in a spring-cooled cave. While Simon started the fire, I took off my carrying bags and stretched. I pushed at a crick in my neck.
I looked at Simon and saw him looking at me. Or through me. He was half in thought, but his eyes were on me. Then, suddenly, he seemed to realize what he was seeing, and looked away, quickly. His cheeks turned pink.
“Why you do that?” I asked, crouching across the fire from him.
He looked up. “Do what?”
“Turn head away,” I said. “When I take bags off, you turn head away. Why?”
I had been my mother’s only daughter, the rest had been sons. Other than my mother, I was the only woman I knew. I had no idea what sort of woman I was. And if Simon always had to turn away from me … Was there something wrong with me? In that cave, I found I had to ask the question.
Simon reddened as he struggled to answer. “It’s just … I —” He glanced at me, then quickly averted his eyes.
I jumped up, my hands pressed to my sides. « Look at me! » I clattered, so sharp that Simon jumped. He looked me in the eye.
I tilted my head. « Is there something about me you do not like to see? »
He did not know how to answer that. I saw his eyes trace down me, then back up again. There was no disgust there. Just … embarrassment. Maybe a little shame. Why shame?
He took a deep breath. “We are … dressed differently, where I come from,” he said at last.
I chuckled. « I have eyes, Silly Strange Boy. I can see that. »
“I mean … women are dressed differently.”
« That does not surprise me. What does that have to do with anything? »
“I’m not …” He struggled for the right words, even in his language, “… used to … being with a woman … dressed as you are, right now.”
« I am not … » This was a strange word that did not translate. I used his. “Dressed.”
« Yes, » he said.
We stared at each other across the fire, as I thought over this answer that Simon seemed to think was adequate, but was not.
« It has been a long time, » I sa
id. “Why not used to it?”
He let out his breath. « It be other way … all my life. »
I began to understand. Though Simon had learned well since dropping from the invaders’ hives, he still had much to learn. He had even more to unlearn.
« I sorry. » He struggled for the next words. « I anger you. I not mean to. »
I leaned back. After a breath, I sat down. It was not me. I began to feel foolish that I had worried. But at the same time, it felt important.
“No turn away,” I said, looking across the fire at him. “See me. See the other. Be who we are.”
He nodded and looked me in the eye. « Yes, » he said. Then, “Promise.”
* * *
Simon grew stronger as we walked. Often, I had to make him stop to rest, as he pushed his body too hard. He would let out a relieved groan as he sat.
As language came easier, he also told me stories about the invaders’ hives — cities, he called them.
« You are bragging! » I snapped at him.
He looked hurt. “No!”
« You make drawings move? » I looked hard at him. « You shine them on wall to see? How? »
“It’s … a thing we know,” said Simon. “Look, it can’t be so hard to believe. It’s like shadows on a cave wall.”
“Shadows not drawings,” I said.
« Same idea, » he said. “You know how we can see through thin glass? Imagine drawing something on thin glass and shining light through it onto a cave wall.”
My brow furrowed. He tried again.
« Thin glass. You draw. Shine light. » “We do it every year,” he said.
“What ‘year’?”
We walked. We talked. Gradually, misunderstanding happened less and less.
What he did not talk about was how his cities came to be. Instead, he told me of wonders lost. His people had machines that could shine moving pictures on walls, but they were not as good as machines his foremothers had known. They had pulled their cities into the space above the clouds, but they had come from a place far, far more distant than that.
“Why your cities up?” I asked, at last.
He looked at me, frowning. « Because monsters. »
I stiffened. « Monsters? »
« Monsters hunt. Monsters in fog. Monsters kill, but … » He looked around at the trees and the fog. « Here — no monsters. »
He looked confused. So was I.
“Monsters kill hunt eat?” I tried his words. “Slink lizard.”
He shook his head. « No eat. No slink. Monsters. »
“Monsters kill. Why?”
“I don’t know.” He looked away, his brow wrinkling. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know where the monsters are. They’re in all the stories: the ticktock monsters, the sounds in the fog.”
And at once I knew what the monsters were. I stared at him. He did not know. How could he not know?
« You are lying, » I said.
He looked at me blankly. We knew “joking.” We knew “bragging.” But between us we had not got to “lying.” He did not know the word.
“You know,” I said. “You know. Why monsters kill.”
He shook his head. “I don’t,” he said. “I don’t know, Eliza. Maybe they weren’t even real.”
How did he not know?
Should I tell him?
As I thought about it, for a countless time, sitting in a cool cave around a small fire we had set up to cook our meal, I realized I did not want to tell him because I did not want to accuse him of being a murderer. Because I knew he was not. He was a man, in the way my father had been a man. And if Simon was not a monster, who in the invaders’ hives were?
I saw my mother’s blind eyes staring at me. The invaders are your people, too. Tend to your ancestors’ graves.
I had not. I still did not want to.
So I kept it unsaid. For now. I told myself I still had time. We could learn more of our languages. I could wait until I was ready to speak.
Across from the fire, Simon looked up at me. « Where you come from? »
I suddenly felt the boy was learning too fast for his own good. “My village. We go. You safe there.” I hoped. “You meet Elder; talk more.”
“But where did your village come from?” Simon’s brow furrowed. “This far from the cities? Where could the people have come from? For sixty-two years, we’ve only known thirteen cities. That’s all that came on the Icarus. How did we miss you?”
He looked at me, hard, in a way that made me feel shy.
“And you are so different,” he went on. “You’re human, but you sleep differently, talk differently, and when you point, it’s always with two fingers. Where would you learn those things?”
I held out my arms. I did not know how to explain.
He asked. « What your village called? »
« The village, » I replied.
He pinched the top of his nose. I felt bad that I could not give him the answer he was looking for.
Later, as we prepared for sleep, he spoke again as he lay in his nest. “Good night, Eliza.”
I smiled. It was not night, but it was what he said. « Good sleep, Silly Strange Boy. »
He rolled onto one elbow and looked at me. I looked back at him across the fire.
“I may be strange, but I’m not that silly, am I?” He grinned.
I rolled away. “Is your name now. Nothing I can do.” I added, “Simon.”
Three sleeps later, half a sun-turn since I had left, we arrived home.
* * *
SIMON:
I still don’t know how Eliza knew the way. When we pulled away from the cliff face and walked along the forest floor, I lost all sense of direction, but she homed in as though she had an internal compass.
The air had been getting hotter over the last week, even though the sun was halfway toward setting for Nocturne. I thought back about how long we had walked. How much farther south could we go? Not much farther, I thought.
Then, as we walked, the fog brightened and the air got even hotter. I realized with a jolt that the shadow of the cliff face had fallen away. We weren’t in direct sunlight, but … Feeling the hot wind, and blinking from the brightness, I figured the chasm had turned, or branched. It ran parallel to the sun’s rays rather than perpendicular to them. I shuddered. That would bring the sun’s light low. At Solar Maximum, the fog would surely turn to steam.
« You lived here? » I asked.
Eliza frowned at me. « Yes. »
« But the sun! How? »
She looked at me a long moment, perplexed. « There are caves. »
I ran my tongue over my teeth, “Was it hard?”
Her brow furrowed. “It was home.”
She pushed on into the fog forest. I picked up the pace to follow her. Then the first hut loomed out of the fog.
I say it was a hut. It was really just a metal box, with rusted sides, although someone had piled more metal on top for a roof, and made an effort to polish it. I ran my hand over the corrugated sides. The box looked familiar.
It looked like a storage container, sunk halfway into the mud. Vines were clambering up the sides, but it had been used recently. One side looked as though it had been pulled and twisted open. But it was empty.
How could this be here? Eliza’s people didn’t know how to work metal.
The next box I nearly ran into was also empty. So was the third. Suddenly I realized that the shapes in the foggy shadows that I’d taken for trees were other storage containers, also empty. The wind rustled the leaves above us, whistled over the yawning openings, and rattled loose pieces of metal. Banished outcasts would not have brought this much metal with them.
A new theory formed in my head. Remember, a year before our arrival, the Icarus had sent out preparation teams in smaller, faster ships to make the landing sites ready. These advance teams never met us after the Icarus crashed. We’d wondered where they’d gone. Was this where?
And, if so … “Wh
ere is everybody?” I asked.
The look Eliza gave me made me shiver. « There is nobody. Except me and the Elder. »
Lead filled my stomach. Had I come all this way for nothing?
“Where did they go?” I asked.
She looked away. « To rest. »
The ruined huts lay all around us. I sensed she wasn’t even sure that the Elder was here.
One girl alone in the fog forest. How long had she been alone? I gnawed my lip.
Eliza called out a hello. In her language, it came out as « Tik-tik-tik-tik. »
No response. She called out again. « Tik-tik-tik-tik? »
I peered into the huts. Some looked like they hadn’t been used in years. Some looked like they’d fall apart if I touched them.
Eliza vanished into the fog. Around me, her calls filled the air, like it was the only sound in the world. « Tik-tik-tik-tik? Tik-tik-tik-tik? »
We approached the centre of the village — at least, I think it was the centre. Here, the boxes had been arranged in some kind of order. I walked along the fog-shrouded paths, with only the wind and Eliza’s lonely call for company.
Eliza emerged from the fog. Somehow, she’d ended up behind me. She looked around, her frown deepening, fear building in her eyes. « Tik-tik-tik-tik? »
Then, finally, an answer.
« Tik. Tik. Tik. Tik. »
It was lower. Octaves lower.
And it was — I didn’t even want to think it, but it was, surely it was …
Eliza relaxed. « She is still here. Follow me. I shall show you to her. »
She pushed forward into the fog.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ELIZA AND THE ELDER
ELIZA:
When the Elder spoke out of the fog, I breathed relief, but a new nervousness took me. I had come back, but I had not come back alone.
Still, I pushed forward, eager to see my Elder Mother for the first time in half a sun-turn. The buildings of my village felt a lot less empty, now I knew she was here. I walked to the Elder’s hut. At the entrance, I pulled off my travel pouches and set them on the ground.
