by Jeff Giles
“He said he had done everything he could for me,” said X. “He looked at me as if I would understand, yet how could I?”
“He didn’t say anything else?” said Plum.
“He said he’d given me everything he could,” said X.
Plum weighed this for a moment, then looked down at the objects in the silver foil, as if they held secrets.
“Is it possible that he meant all this?”
nine
Plum was right—he had to be.
X fanned his collection out in what space he had, and stared at everything with a new intensity.
A silver comb.
A red-green button made out of bloodstone.
The tip of a rusted drill.
A shard of white porcelain.
A broken bracelet.
X remembered Regent demanding that the guards recover everything from the river when Dervish dropped them in. Regent had treated these things like they were irreplaceable. X understood why now: these weren’t random things from the Overworld, as Regent had claimed. They were clues somehow. They would lead him to the mysterious person who knew where his mother was being held.
Regent had sent X to the Countess’s hill to fulfill his promise. Yes, X had flouted the laws of the Lowlands and shamed Regent. But through it all, and despite it all, the lord had never actually abandoned him.
X now knew that to be true.
He picked up the bracelet engraved with the word “Vesuvius.”
He asked Plum if he knew of anyone on the hill by the name.
“The only Vesuvius I know of is the volcano,” said Plum.
“I’m ashamed to say I don’t know it,” said X.
“No need to apologize,” said Plum. “Vesuvius was the volcano that destroyed Pompeii. I don’t remember if it was BC or AD, to be honest. And no, I don’t know anyone here with that name. But there are thousands of souls on this hill. He could very well be here.”
The idea of asking every soul on the hill if they were Vesuvius—or if they recognized the things in the silver packet—overwhelmed X. It was almost certainly impossible, especially with guards on the move and the Countess on the lookout for victims. But what else could he do?
Just holding the bracelet and button and the other items made X feel closer to his mother than he ever had. They had been in his possession many years, but he’d never known that they told a story.
X knew that his mother had been a lord. He knew that Regent had been a friend to her and that Dervish had detested her, just as he detested everyone who was not a dried husk like himself. His mother must have been bold—full of life in a place full of death.
There was one more thing X knew about her: she’d fallen in love and given birth to him. Here in the Lowlands! She had broken every law to do it. She’d lost her standing as a lord in the process, tossed it willingly away. This, more than anything else, made X feel that he knew her and that her blood coursed in him. Hadn’t he done much the same as his mother when he endangered everything to be with Zoe? And wouldn’t he do it again?
Plum interrupted X’s thoughts.
“Guard,” he said.
X closed up the foil, slipped it into the lining of his coat, and looked down the slope to see who was coming.
But it was only his friend with the baseball bat.
The guard looked miserable. He’d unzipped the top of his tracksuit because of the heat, and was dragging his foot nearly sideways behind him. His sunglasses must have made it hard to see because he kept tripping over bodies.
“Is wretched place, as in advertisements,” said the guard when he reached them. “Vehement crazy. Who is large man?”
“This is Plum,” said X. “He’s a friend. Plum, this is the guard who conveyed me here—at great cost to himself. Don’t be misled by his forbidding spectacles, he is a friend as well. I call him … the Ukrainian.”
The guard spoke gruffly to hide how much he liked his new name.
“Everybody think sunglasses are extreme joke, yes?” he said. “But they are prescription, okay? For the distance.”
“Hello,” said Plum. “Here’s a question one doesn’t ask very often: Would you please hit us with your bat—just so the Countess doesn’t get suspicious?”
“Of course,” said the Ukrainian. “This is tremendous point.”
“I’ll take the first blow myself—in the stomach, preferably,” said Plum. “As you can see, I have some extra padding there.”
The Ukrainian jabbed Plum in the gut. He pulled the bat back at the last second so as to inflict minimal pain. Still, Plum put on a show, tumbling backward and gasping for air, as though he had been hit by a cannonball. When he righted himself, he looked pleased with his performance and was suppressing a smile.
The guard offered X food from his pouch. X couldn’t identify what it was. Something coarse and dry. It didn’t matter. He was too excited about his new revelation to eat. He told the Ukrainian that the bracelet and the other objects were clues of some kind.
“Ah, the plot fattens!” said the guard. “I remember freezing my yaytsa off when Regent make us dive for these things. Glad to know I donate yaytsa to honorable cause.”
Over the next few minutes, as the Ukrainian jabbed them, X declared his intention to scour the hill for the person Regent had sent him to find. He’d ask every soul he could if they knew anyone named Vesuvius or recognized the objects in his collection. In the surprised silence that followed his announcement, X acknowledged that the plan sounded ridiculous but said that unless they could conceive of a better one, he would see it through.
“I agree,” said the Ukrainian at last.
“Truly?” said X.
“I agree as to sounding ridiculous,” said the Ukrainian. “In fact, is loopty-loop crazy. Thousands men and women sprinkled on hill like sugar almost, and you will find one? Is ludicrous. Also, you will be beaten hundred times in process.”
“I understand that I may fail,” said X. “I understand that I may be made to suffer. But I have set a course, and I mean to follow it.”
The Ukrainian shook his head wearily.
“X,” he said. “You, to me, are like younger, less attractive brother. But I cannot endorse plan, and cannot assist.”
“I understand,” said X.
“Would be madness for me, okay?” said the guard. “Was prisoner once, before promotion. Will not be made prisoner again. Already I lose Reeper, yes? Already I lose home in country-club part of Lowlands. Am now in leeteral hellhole. I am sorry, but I can risk no more.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” said X. “You’re a good man.”
The guard removed his sunglasses.
“Of course I good man,” he said. “Am from Oo-kra-EEN. How many times am I saying this?”
X turned to Plum.
“Do you agree that I have lost my senses?” he said.
“Yes,” said Plum. “Everything the Ukrainian has said is perfectly sound. But I will help you anyway—if you think a big, soft pillow like me can be of any use, I mean. Give me half of your things, and half the hill to search.”
X was shocked by Plum’s offer. He thanked him in a fumbling way. The Ukrainian was angry. He hit Plum with the bat.
“You have death wish or some such, Plum person?” he said. “Let me remind: you are already dead.”
“Look, I know this will not end well,” said Plum. “I don’t see how it can. But it’s a chance for me to do something good, to atone a tiny little bit—to be the lotus flower.”
“Countess is psychopath,” said the Ukrainian. “Do you not fear her knife?”
“I fear it more than you can imagine,” said Plum.
He unbuttoned his khaki shirt slowly. There was a lurid purple scar running from his sternum to his belly button, like a zipper.
They agreed to sleep before starting out, but X found it impossible. His nerves were humming, and he hadn’t gotten used to the noise on the hill—the awful orchestra of coughs and grunts and so
bs. Plum lay close to him. X could tell from his breathing that he couldn’t sleep either. Eventually, they sat up, and divided the objects in the foil between them. X had treasured these things for so long. He felt as if he were handing over pieces of his body.
Plum took responsibility for the top half of the hill because he knew souls there already. X hiked farther down. It was slow going because the hill was steep, and often clotted with bodies. They were from every country and every century, but they were all in the same torment. He thought of the painting of hell that the Ukrainian’s babushka had hung on her wall. He could imagine it perfectly.
The first person X approached lay on the ground wrapped nearly head to toe in bandages like a mummy.
“I search for someone,” he said, kneeling. “Someone who can help me find my mother.”
He held the bracelet and the comb where the bandaged man could see them. At first, the man appeared unable to produce any words at all. X leaned close. Finally the mummy managed to whisper a few phrases, which were among the most vile things X had ever heard.
X pushed disappointment away. He thought about Zoe—about how it never occurred to her to give up on anything, ever.
The next soul he spoke to was not much older than himself. He wore a shabby uniform from the American Civil War. A woman in a bloodstained bridal gown lay next to him, either asleep or in a coma. X winced at the blood.
“Don’t let her rattle yeh,” said the soldier. “The Bride’s not near as scary as she looks—though she did kill her husband after sixteen minutes of matrimony.”
“Sixteen minutes?” said X.
“Marriage ain’t for everybody,” said the soldier. “What name yeh go by? I seen yeh. You’re the feller that eats.”
He spoke too loudly for X’s comfort.
X told him his name.
“Please mind your voice,” he added. “I cannot afford to be found out.”
“Yes, sir, Captain, sir,” the soldier said. He grinned as if X were worried about nothing, and did not lower his voice. “I go by Shiloh here,” he said.
“I am looking for someone who answers to the name Vesuvius—or can help me in any way at all,” he said. “Do you recognize these things? I beg you once more to lower your voice.”
“If there’s a Vesuvius in these parts, I ain’t yet met him,” said Shiloh, speaking so softly that he seemed to be teasing X. He indicated a few people close by. “That woman there is Dagger. And that’s Stalker. That over there is a feller we call Birk, short for Birkenau. None of them ever mentioned no Vesuvius in my hearing. Whether it’s worth showing them what-all yeh got there, I leave to yeh to judge.”
When X stood to leave, Shiloh looked bereft.
“Aw, stay a spell why doncha?” he said. “The Bride and me don’t never get company.”
But X was consumed with his mission.
He questioned four more people. The first two sat side by side on a ledge of rock. One was a pink-skinned, middle-aged American, the other slightly darker and perhaps 19. They did not speak, but seemed attuned to each other’s every movement. X wondered if they’d developed a code—three quick taps of the foot meant this, a scratch at the neck meant that. They stiffened when X asked their names, then argued silently about whether to answer. The American clenched his fist. The younger man, disagreeing, opened his palm.
When they finally spoke, it turned out that neither of them knew a Vesuvius, nor recognized the objects. They told X they’d met each other here because, by a quirk of fate, they’d both been given the name Bomber. They wanted to tell X their stories, but he moved on.
This part of the slope was dense with bodies. So many of them were unconscious or incoherent that it took X a long time to find another soul he could question satisfactorily. Hands, arms, feet, and legs were everywhere. They were like a net trying to entrap him. The image of his mother, the possibility of her, receded further and further. The image of Zoe, too. X forced himself to continue, scolding himself for his weakness. Who had told him this would be easy?
The next soul X questioned offered to trade two socks (one black, one red) for the silver comb. X ignored the offer. He asked the man if he knew of a Vesuvius. X’s hands were sweating now, and the foil was turning his palms silver.
“Vesuvius? Yeah, sure, of course,” said the man. He pointed to a figure a hundred feet down the hill. “That’s him there.”
X stumbled over bodies to get to the soul in question, only to find that he’d been lied to for sport.
He stormed back up the hill. The Liar broke into such an infuriating, self-satisfied grin that X struck him in the mouth. He had no special powers here, but he could still beat a man to the ground.
A guard heard the disturbance. X froze. The guard spit on the ground, and decided he didn’t care.
Ashamed of what he’d done, X hiked back toward Plum to see if he’d had better luck.
He stopped only once more to question someone. The man he chose wore the remnants of a suit of armor, and stood at the base of one of the immense torch stands, as if he were guarding it. The knight was young, 25 perhaps, and his hair fell even farther than X’s, spilling down his shoulders and over his breastplate. His helmet appeared to have been stolen, along with one of his gauntlets and both boots.
X asked the Knight his questions: Do you recognize these things? Are you Vesuvius, or do you know anyone who answers to that name?
The Knight brightened. He declared that he was indeed Vesuvius, the very same! He beat a fist against his chest, causing his armor to clank, and swore he would cut down any man who disputed it. He reached for his sword, and frowned when he remembered that it too had been taken.
X saw the desperation beneath the Knight’s bravado, the loneliness. He suspected that for a few moments of company, the man would have claimed just as earnestly to be Cleopatra.
Plum and the Ukrainian were waiting. The guard seemed even more agitated than before. He fidgeted with his sunglasses, and drummed his metal bat against his thigh. Plum was quiet. He had his arms around his knees, like he was trying to make himself small. Maybe he’d had enough of the search already, and felt too guilty to say so. He wouldn’t quite look at X.
“You were kind to help me, Plum,” said X. “But I release you from any obligation. I will continue on alone.”
“Oh, you can’t get rid of me that easily,” said Plum. “We’ll rest a bit, and then we’ll set out again. All right? All right. Your cause is my cause.”
The Ukrainian groaned.
“Is very poetical, Plum person,” he said. “Now show him face.”
“What does he mean?” said X. “What are you hiding?”
Plum turned to X so slowly that it was like a planet rotating. His other cheek was violent with bruises: purple, yellow, black.
“The guards beat you,” X said. “Because of me.”
“It’s nothing,” Plum said. “They have beaten me before. I pity them for what it does to their consciences.”
“You think they still have consciences?” said the Ukrainian. He squatted, and whispered fiercely. “That is extremity of nonsense. As I hike on hill just now, I see other guards watching me, okay? Every move. They are suspicious, okay? They think I am not one of them. So how do I prove? I strike total innocent person with club. Then maybe one, maybe two more, why not. I hit them hard, not like I playtime with you. Always guards clap as result—they give me stupid salutes or thumbs-up, maybe. And always innocent people look up at me. Why you strike me? What I done wrong? Never did I do this previous, okay? Not even Dervish ask. Already, my heart hardens until there is something, I don’t know what, rock or pinecone maybe, in my chest.”
The guard seemed embarrassed by his tirade, but he continued.
“Plum person,” he said, “you are gentle man. Good at bottom. And these guards? This Countess? They will destroy you. Little by little, or very fast, they will turn you into one of drooling people curled everywhere in balls.”
“He speaks wisely, and yo
u know it,” X told Plum. “Let us agree you will not risk yourself for me again.”
“No,” said Plum.
“No?” said X.
“I will not agree,” said Plum. “I’m not going to desert you. Let the guards be war—I will be peace.” He chose his next words carefully. “Try to remember that I’m not just doing this for you. I’m doing it to redeem myself. I may seem like an innocent because I ramble about lotus flowers. But whatever goodness you see in me is just a reflection of your own, I promise you. If you knew what sort of poisonous creature I was before, up there in the world, if you knew what I did, you’d turn away in horror.”
“I would not turn from you,” said X.
“And I will not turn from you now,” said Plum. He smiled almost beatifically. “All this fuss about my face. It was never very handsome to begin with.”
The Ukrainian’s anger had been percolating.
“Sorry to say, must interrupt touching TV movie,” he said.
He tugged his sunglasses down over his eyes. It was like a wall coming down.
“You are idiot, X,” he said. “You will not find magical person you seek. Would be impossible even for superheroes such as Rocket Red Brigade.” The Ukrainian searched his pockets as he continued. “You are lucky Countess did not see your sneaking. And you, Plum, moaning about your sins—boo-hoo! We all carry guilt like bag of stones, okay? You think I am damned for stealing Pepsi from vending machine?” The Ukrainian seemed to arrive at a decision. “I hear no more plans, okay? Am out of little group. Will not watch you become drooling kind.”
The guard found a piece of meat in the pack on his belt.
“What is hunger situation?” he asked X.
X looked at the dry, gray thing in the guard’s hands. It was the shape of a tongue.
“I am not hungry,” he said, “nor likely to be soon.”
“Yes, well, take for midnight snack,” the Ukrainian said, thrusting it at him. “Is last piece. I must replenish.”
X slid the awful thing into a pocket.
Later, X lay on his back, his coat bunched beneath his head. Something about the conversation with the Ukrainian nagged at him. The guard knew how rarely X needed to eat—and that he’d only just fed him. Why would he ask if X was hungry?
