by Mindi Meltz
On the other side of the world, the people will wake. They will wake as their Dream God is waking, though they do not know him, and they will feel the deep water against their thighs that has always been rising, as he does now. They will see the illusion they’ve been holding onto—and they will see that it is not real and cannot nourish them. The same realization that Sky is coming to now.
The boy and the Unicorn wait. Sky’s last thought is of Lonely. It catches him completely by surprise. She is waking beneath his kiss on the mountaintop, and her eyes are so frightened and at once so trusting. Her hands are like young birds in his. Come in, those eyes say: I can fit all of you inside me. Why could he not let himself go?
He hears the Unicorn’s last breath in, and then the great mouth opens beneath them, and they are gone.
It is inside the City that Kite first feels the need to write.
He has never written before and does not know how to; until now, he has only read. He has only absorbed information that was written by others. But surrounded by the constant hurricane of the City’s sights and sounds, he feels for the first time the necessity of putting down words himself—careful, still words that will contain it all in quiet permanence, that will capture and hold information of such complexity and overabundance that he no longer trusts his mind to do so.
He’d thought he was the one among his family who would be able see things clearly, his judgment unclouded by preconception. He’d expected, at least, that he would be able to see and understand, that the closer he got to the City, the more its truth would be revealed to him.
But he can barely register his surroundings, because it all happens so fast and never stops.
How to explain or record the substance that makes the floor and walls of the City, the way it sits and the way it stands, the way it smells and the voicelessness of it, and the shapes which are no shape he has ever known?
His feet ache from walking all night on this unyielding ground. Nobody will look at him. He is not even sure if anyone can see him, so opaque are their eyes. He cannot tell his direction or which way is home. It is impossible for him to memorize these shapes, all of which look the same, are the same color, and do not move or communicate in any way. There is no life but the people, and the people don’t stay still. He is surrounded to the point of near panic by motion and noise, and he knows all of it is cars—cars which he’s read about and wants to understand, but it’s impossible in this moment to do so. He is too disoriented. He avoids the cars because he doesn’t know if the people inside them can see him—they are going so fast—or even if there are people inside them at all. He had no idea they would go so fast. He simply had no idea.
Dodging racing cars and racing people, he lurches into a dark corner. Hunger makes him weak. The door stoop he sits in is damp and cold, and he doesn’t know what lies behind the door or if he is safe. He can barely escape the all-dominating light, and people walk by him shouting, their breath at once sweet and sickly. He holds his ears between his hands and tries to piece together what happened and where to go from here. I’m here, he reminds himself. I’m finally here. I can do this.
At first, he was still happy simply to be on this journey. The thrill of his adventure still carried him: knowing that he was brave, that he was utterly free of limits and other people’s worries and moods. He still felt the confidence of his own knowledge, the pride of his own accomplishment in traveling so far from home, and the joy of seeing the City ahead of him and knowing he was doing exactly what he’d set out to do.
The argument with Dragon had thrown him a little, and being so suddenly on his own again. He hadn’t meant for the fight to happen and he wasn’t even sure how it did. Dragon had been the first real friend he’d ever had. After the fight he felt the fleeting nip of insecurity, and then he felt frustrated, and then he couldn’t stop thinking how stupid the whole thing was, and then he just needed not to think about it any more. He kept walking into the City, telling himself he hadn’t needed Dragon before and didn’t need him now.
First there came rows of white, rectangular houses in flat rectangles of green grass—greener than any grass he’d ever seen, yet nothing else grew there. Kite will never forget it: that strange nowhere land between the desert and the City. The City, at least, is wild in its own way, but that place in between—he could never describe it to anyone. The houses were not like any home he had ever seen, and yet he knew this was where people lived. Cars sped by, and occasionally someone got out of a car and went into a house. Otherwise he didn’t see anyone. The windows were lit as the evening came on, and the houses kept their mouths shut. The lights inside were like fire, and he knew they were electric. There were lights in the streets, too—everything blazing as if for some celebration or emergency, but there was nothing like that. There was absolutely no one out, and no life—only dogs crying out from unseen places, the loneliest sound he’d ever heard. Nothing was happening in the streets, and he didn’t know what the lamps were lit for. But he was astounded by the abundance of that light, and he imagined the people inside their houses in wonderlands of light, where everything was clear and confident and known. He thought if he were braver, he would go up to one of them and knock on the door, but he was too shy.
Then there were flashing lights across the streets, and the streets got closer and closer together, and the lights became colored and the buildings dirtier, and the words more crowded. The pathways were all hard, and all angled in strange, organized patterns, like a grid, and they reminded him of the order and organization of words. How he longed to understand what it all meant! There were so many people that, at first, he could not believe his eyes. He thought there must be some trick, some illusion which made them mirror themselves and seem to multiply. So many of them looked the same, wore the same expression, and were headed in exactly the same direction, without looking around them. For a long time he stood still and tried to take in all of their faces. But they overwhelmed him.
He could never explain it all, never sort it all out in his head. It’s impossible. He still feels the same as when he first arrived here: the onslaught of shapes, lights, and words makes him want to weep for all he has to learn.
How had he met the other boys? How had he arrived in their dark, stinking apartment? He cannot remember now. His own fear was making him careless—his own realization at the mistake he’d made in thinking everything would be clear to him, that he’d know where to go and what to do as soon as he arrived.
Maybe he asked directions. Yes, that was it. I’m looking for the City’s Center, where the knowledge is kept. Why did they laugh? He was shocked by them. They wore clean, bright costumes of varied designs, and their faces were grinning and bright, but there was something unhealthy in their gauntness, in their skin—as if they were dying. As if they’d been dying all their lives, just barely surviving. He stared at them. They were like wounded predators, dangerous. They frightened him.
We’ve got something better than knowledge, they said. Why did he go with them? He had no idea how desperately he needed human conversation. He needed someone to explain something to him. Anything.
Without realizing it, he imagines telling someone from home about what he saw inside that place. Telling Chelya. But he pictures her sweet face, and she could never understand this. He could never explain it. He could never explain the “apartment”—that’s what it was called, like “compartment,” a tiny box. Things were scattered around as if they had no relationship to the people. The walls smelled poisonous, and were not made of wood or stone, earth or straw. The boys threw themselves into elaborate, structured cushions and opened glass bottles, and there were girls there, too. The girls were so beautiful that the whole night he couldn’t speak one word to them without losing his breath. Their clothing stuck to their bodies, and their breasts overflowed from them, and they sidled up right next to him like it was nothing, and they glittered. They were like nothing he’d ever seen. T
hey were like the river in the morning in springtime, and they had no idea. They talked like the boys, except with more questions.
Where did you come from? they wanted to know.
How can you live out there? What do you do?
Are there animals?
Do you live in a house?
Whatever he answered to these simple, ridiculous questions seemed to fascinate them. They ogled him.
And such wonders the boys showed him!
There were small, shining, rectangular creatures which looked at first like containers of crystals or ice, but whose faces then showed words and lights, and whose minds were more advanced than any human being’s, and who could speak and understand and do anything at all, except for feel, hunger, or thirst. Like gods.
These were called computers. There was a computer for every function. You could make words appear and send them away, and you could talk to people who lived on the other side of the City, and you could keep things cold or hot or make pictures or catch an image and keep it like a memory you could see forever, and you could do anything. At first Kite asked questions, and then his questions became too many, and he could not ask them any more. The boys did not know who had created these things, or where they would go when they died, or what gave them their power, or where that power came from. And the strangest thing was that they did not seem to care. Kite became more and more desperate, the more things they showed him and the less they were able to answer his questions about those things—or to know who knew the answers, who held the key to it all.
He felt increasingly uncomfortable because he knew they were all playing with him, laughing at him. He knew he was so deep in a sea of unknown that he could never climb out, and this sea was dangerous to be in. Repeatedly, he swallowed panic. No one paid any attention to each other; they all talked into their computers, talked through them to people who for Kite seemed imaginary, as if their real friends were not right there in the room. Kite didn’t know what he should do. He walked around the place, trying to understand the things he saw. There were no windows. He desperately needed a drink of water, but he no longer felt able to speak. He had water in his pack but he didn’t know where he had put his pack. For some reason all he could think of was water. It was the only evidence he could imagine that the life he’d once known was still real.
Now they were bending over, sniffing powder into their noses, sneezing and coughing. He saw that it was medicine, something they needed. He hoped that it would help them, for their sickness made him sick, made his stomach turn over. Now a girl was handing him a glass pipe, and he saw that he should put it to his lips as they were doing. He wanted to, because he’d seen the girl touch it to her lips, and he wanted to touch those lips—those lips were like a drink of water. But the smell of it gave him a headache, and he didn’t trust it.
Then they became insane, as if they were other, nightmare creatures. Their words deteriorated into garble. They tripped around and broke things. In the deep shadows, he saw the girls climb on top of the boys and ride them in slow waves; he saw the flash of their skin and stared at them without knowing he was staring, without knowing what he was feeling until someone reached fast inside his pants and grabbed his erection.
The girl’s face was up against his: her lips looked sticky, her eyes looked dusty, and she smelled like something dead and was no longer beautiful. And yet he felt that he would come instantly at her touch, though he hadn’t even been aware of his hardness. Not knowing what he was doing or why, he hurled her against the cushions with both hands and stood up—a disgust bordering on hatred closing his throat.
Then he knew he had to get out. He went to the other side of the room and crouched down, like he’s doing now—and tried to breathe, tried to think. It was very hard to breathe in that room. The first thing he noticed was that he was starving. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten, and he had no idea where to find food. He didn’t bother asking the other kids. He knew they could not help him, and he felt afraid of them now.
Then he remembered where the door was, and he went toward it. His pack lay next to it, and he thought he would cry, he was so happy. But everything was all torn out of it, spewed all around it, and he didn’t know why. Had he done this? Carefully, he retrieved each of his things and replaced them. Then he slipped out the door, hearing someone behind him vomit.
He’s so exhausted now that even more than food, he’s thinking only of sleep. It’s not an exhaustion like anything he has ever felt before. Not like coming in from the fields after making hay from morning until dusk; not like riding all night with his father coming home from Jay’s. It’s a tiredness in his mind, in his very core, that frightens him. But walking completely lost through the streets, he cannot find even a moment of stillness, let alone a safe place to rest. The constant noise weakens him, as if his senses have been running all night without stopping and are dying of sheer bewilderment.
Finally, at dawn, he finds a stand of a few trees in a small field. It’s not actually a field, only a square of grass like the ones around the houses, but it’s the first green he’s seen for a long time. The grass in the field is cut shorter than his thumb, making it look tight and surreal. The trees probably can’t hear each other speak amidst all the noise, but the wind still moves a little through them. A squirrel talks importantly to the people on the benches, but they ignore him, and a few grey doves walk with strange confidence between their feet, pecking at crumbs. They would be an easy target for Kite’s slingshot, but he feels so disoriented, and senses that it might not be acceptable to hunt here, though he doesn’t understand why. Here people only sit, and they look strangely peaceful. Kite feels as if he is entering the mere relic of a forest, someone’s symbolic representation of what the world once looked like—a crudely sketched drawing without the soul.
Still, the breath of trees dilutes the poisonous smell of the air a little, and he can take a deep breath of his own for the first time. People slow down a little more here, at least most of them, though some still tear across the green, shouting into the computers they hold against their heads. Kite is glad to see children, bounding and chasing each other in apparent happiness. The comfort of soil under his feet makes him so weak with relief that he thinks with new hope of asking for help. His heart flushing hot inside his chest, he moves toward a couple of mothers who sit together talking. But when they see him, they stand up fast and walk away. Kite looks down at his dirty body, his ragged clothing, and sees why.
So he curls up at the base of one of the trees, as far from the others as possible, and falls headlong into sleep.
He wakes with an urgent feeling in his rib cage, as if something bad is going to happen. A large man, dressed in metal and black, is making a straight line toward him, and his eyes are cold. Kite is on his feet before he knows it. He hears the man shout. He starts running.
In a moment, the small oasis of green is far behind him, and he is lost in the crowd again. But he determines in this moment that he will not give up. He will not turn back. He has come this far. He only needs to understand how to survive in this place for a short while, until he can learn what he wants to. He is surrounded by more people than he ever dreamed could be in the world: surely one of them is kind enough to give him food or point him in the right direction.
But maybe he’s not asking the right questions.
“Please,” he begins with an older man. “I am a traveler. I need to find food. Can you tell me—”
But the old man looks at him the way his mother would look at a god, swerves around him, and is gone. He tries to think what he said wrong, what frightened the man. He stops and looks at his reflection in a window. Is something wrong with his face? Has something happened to him? Is it only the dirt on his clothes that makes them turn away?
He drinks the last drops of water from his bottle. How can the most basic aspects of survival be so hidden here? Don’t these people hunger o
r thirst?
Kite had his whole journey planned out. He had all the supplies he needed, and the skills to survive. He just didn’t think about what he would do when he got here. It was as if he thought the City would be one big answer waiting for him, as if once he arrived the everyday needs of life wouldn’t matter any more. All that would matter was truth. And in a flash he sees now that this is exactly the same illusion that created the City in the first place, the illusion his grandmother always meant when she said the people of the City forgot their bodies, forgot their humanness, and stopped believing in gods because they thought they were gods themselves.
Kite leans against a building, trying to think. Gradually, now, the noise is beginning to settle inside him. That must be what happens to people here. The noise becomes like silence: it is all you know.
To get to the Center, he thinks, he will simply have to follow the sun and head south, finding paths around the walls. How could people have transformed the world so utterly? It must have taken so much energy—more than he can imagine. Where did they ever obtain so much?
It takes a long time for him to realize that the people coming out of this building are carrying food. At first he’s simply mesmerized by the doors, which slide open magically to allow their passage. What they carry is wrapped tightly, and has no smell. But then he sees a leaf peaking out of a bag, and it is the leaf of a carrot! He can hardly believe it. He begins to look more carefully.
He approaches the doors cautiously, not knowing what gives them their life, or if he will know how to make them open. But before he can figure it out, the doors open on their own. It’s almost too easy. Everything in the City is made easy by the magic of the City’s knowledge, isn’t it? Wasn’t that the promise of their god? Perhaps finding food was so easy, he didn’t realize it was right under his nose all along.
