Beneath The Mantle

by Ahimsa Kerp

  In three steps, it was a pile of ash. Stuart sighed heavily, fear at last relinquishing its cold grip on his heart. Baruna and Harper whooped in relief and the former gave Keshav a big kiss.

  Keshav, though, shook his head, as if to clear it. “That much power. It doesn’t feel right.”

  “It’s a weapon of the gods,” Stuart said. “It’s not meant for the likes of you and me.”

  “I understand why you abandoned it yesterday,” Keshav said. “And yet I must keep it. Without the staff of Ra, we would all be dead now.”

  Stuart knew that for a fact. His attempt to run away had been sheer, blind panic.

  “It might come in handy in Graben too,” he said.

  Keshav laughed. “I’m sure they’ve got toys of their own.”

  ***

  There were no toys in Graben. When at last they found an actual gate, even with their boots, a long weary walk from the site of the Andrewsarchus attack, they knocked and shouted. When no one came, Keshav used the staff to blast their way in.

  They found an empty city. It was colossal and sprawling, far more like an upper Earth city than Selvage had been. Of human, or humanoid, inhabitants there were none. Through a tunnel and onto a street. It was circular and seemed to stretch around the entire city.

  There were houses here, and shops, and immense buildings all made of the same bubble shaped boulders that the wall was constructed from. All had empty, vacant black windows and vacant black doors yawning with open, hollow mouths. And yet the city of Graben was not filled with an oppressive silence.

  There was sound. Water trickled from somewhere unseen. Clicking and shuffling noises too.

  “Hello,” Stuart called, cupping his hands to his mouth to amplify his voice. His head tilted up as he scanned the upper stories of the buildings around them. “Is anyone here?”

  “Quiet!” Harper Gomez hissed. “Obviously no one is here. Don’t bring attention to us.”

  “If no one is here?” Stuart began but he let it drop. It was clear what she meant.

  “Do you remember?” Baruna said. “Acan said they hadn’t heard from Graben for a long time. Do you suppose everyone, I don’t know, died? Or fell asleep?”

  “Or left?” Stuart added.

  “Or never was here in the first place,” Keshav pointed out. “We only have what Acan told us. He might have had reason to mislead us.”

  “Why?” Harper asked.

  “If we knew that, we’d be a lot better off. I can’t even guess though, can I?”

  “It’s frustrating. Time is running out. We have no idea if those on the ship are even still alive. But they are counting on us,” Harper said. “We can’t afford to just dick around.”

  “We should at least explore the city,” Stuart said. “I mean, we’re here.”

  Keshav nodded. “I agree. But we stay together. I don’t want to have to use this staff again, but I will if means it protects us.”

  They set forth into the forgotten city of Graben. The scale of the city was massive. Not mega on the scale of a modern metropolis certainly, but for a walled city it was bigger by far than medieval cities in the UK. Perhaps a million people could comfortably fit in the city, and they found not only fresh springs but rooftop gardens still growing carrots, chili, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. The crops were wild and growing haphazardly, but still there were vegetables at hand. Soon after, they discovered subterranean mushroom caverns, with carefully labeled (though written in a language none could read) signs above different beds. These they left alone, content with the relative reassurance of the veggies.

  The road they’d come in on was circular, and it accompanied the wall as it wrapped around the city. There were portions of the city that were not parks but rather patches of forest that had been built around. Meadows usually found only on isolated mountains were placed in the middle of the city, and they bloomed with colorful wildflowers. Lone oak and banyan trees rose mightily, alone like sentries, but in the middle of the road, or even sometimes within buildings.

  The buildings were empty, not just of people but also of furniture, food, utensils, and anything else that might indicate people having ever lived there. Most were covered in dust, but there were no cobwebs or signs of insect life. The clicking, shuffling sounds they’d noticed upon first arriving continued to sound at different times, but they could never pinpoint the source.

  Throughout their explorations, Keshav always went first, staff at hand. They set off, by mutual assent, heading deeper into the city. Graben seemed to have been built on a radial like grid, with several alleys and streets serving as spokes, connecting to the circular roads that popped up every so often. It was a logical system, and it made it easy to explore. They found more empty buildings, more meadows, more lone trees, more wild gardens; more nothing, in other words.

  They had been snacking on pilfered vegetables, but at last it was suggested and agreed that they stop to cook some food. Now deep in the city, close to the center, they collected fallen oak limbs, and started a small cooking fire with the staff. The roasted sweet potatoes and chilies were a treat after so many meals of dried mushrooms, and the fresh stream water tasted like chilled white wine.

  The insides of the round bubble houses were soft enough to sleep on. There they found rest, all of them save a rotating guard. Each of them dreamed pleasant thoughts that night, and all woke up refreshed. Although no one on sentry duty could remember seeing anything at all, in the morning they all saw them.

  Footprints in the dust.

  Chapter 19

  Baruna, who had been last on guard duty, buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t see anything, I swear.”

  Keshav backed her up. “They could have been here before we came in,” he suggested.

  Stuart looked at the prints carefully. They hadn’t been there before, as did Keshav himself. They ringed the exact area they’d been sleeping in.

  The prints were not from an animal. No clawed beast had stalked them in their sleep. That, at least, was a relief. Nor were they entirely human, which is where the relief abruptly ended in favor of severe worry. Stuart looked more closely, kneeling in the dust as he stared.

  There were five toes, but they were too uniform and too blocky to be human. It almost looked like someone was wearing a human shaped shoe, constructed in a factory somewhere.

  “What do you think?” Harper asked. She hadn’t moved from her bed.

  “Killer robots?” Stuart suggested. “I have no idea. Apparently Graben isn’t as empty as it looks.”

  Unsettled, they gathered their belongings, and prepared to plunge once more into the depleted city, not stopping to eat breakfast. After so long walking, there was no soreness in their calves or thighs, no blisters on feet or toes. There was not even a need to stretch, although Baruna still did at meals, and before sleeping. The wandering boots were incredibly useful, but their muscles had adapted to walking all day as well. Even though, of course, there weren’t any days at all.

  After some more exploration, some more foraging; this time Harper found orange red bell peppers thrice as large as any they’d ever seen. They had discovered the center of the city. It was obviously so, for a large square with no trees, no buildings, stretched before them. Most of the enormous space was filled with a sunken amphitheater, half-a-meter deep, and filled with chairs. It was a boundless stadium. U2 or The Rolling Stones could have played there and not sold all their tickets.

  But there was no stage, no screen, no obvious center of attention for that multitude of seats.

  “Curious and curiouser,” Harper murmured.

  “Another place I thought about for our honeymoon,” Baruna murmured, “was the Canary Islands.”

  Keshav wagged his head at her. “They don’t have this there, I bet,” he said. “Can’t find a proper abandoned city like this just anywhere.”

  “No, they’re too full up with beautiful beaches and buffets,” she said, but now she was laughing.

  Harper looked up into
the sky. “At first I thought it was good that we didn’t see that Ra creature again. But now I wonder if it didn’t follow us.”

  “Why would he watch us sleep?” Keshav asked.

  She shrugged. “There’s more here going on. Didn’t he say he meant no harm?”

  “I don’t know what’s worse,” added Baruna. “Him following us, and watching us, or him going home and telling daddy about us.”

  “Quiet,” Stuart said. They looked at him, surprised at the harshness of his tone. He held his index finger up, listening.

  “Don’t you hear that?” he said, voice half-a-whisper.

  The shuffling and clicking noises were all around them now. Thuds were audible too.

  “Where is it coming from?” Harper asked. Keshav lowered his staff, his eyebrows bristling.

  Stuart started laughing. “It’s elementary.”

  He ignored the concern in the eyes of the others. “Rule out the impossible, and whatever’s left, however improbable, is the answer, right?”

  “I think that’s heavily paraphrased,” Keshav said.

  “Whatever. Here’s the thing. This isn’t improbable nineteenth century London. It’s as Doctor Gomez said. We’re in Wonderland.”

  “I didn’t exactly say that,” Harper protested.

  Stuart was not listening. He held both of his hands up in the air, the gesture of an Old Testament prophet. “Show yourself,” he commanded.

  Nothing happened. The empty square remained empty.

  “Ah, hell,” he said. It had been a crazy thought.

  Keshav was at his side. “You feeling all right, mate? You look a little ill.”

  Stuart glanced at Keshav, at the Staff of Ra clutched in his hand.

  “Do me a favor?” he asked. “Let’s all do it.”

  “The whole prophet thing?”

  “Bear with me,” Stuart said.

  “I know you North Americans like to make arses of yourself. It’s not as easy for us. The British are reserved, you know.”

  “Please,” Stuart said. “It probably won’t work. But I need to know. Can we all try it?”

  “Show yourself,” Stuart and Baruna and Harper said, more or less in unison. Keshav followed a beat later.

  “Ghost of Graben!” he boomed theatrically. “Reveal thyself.”

  Despite his suspicions, Stuart almost fell over as, instantly, a thousand thousand forms materialized before them.

  ***

  The custodians of the city were not ghosts. The creatures that materialized around them were golems, and they seemed to obey or at least acknowledge the humans. These golems were far different from the ones that had attacked Selvage and Omphalos. Those had been creatures of war, harsh and angular, filled with stony bellicosity.

  These were gentle giants; creatures of crumbling clay, of wood and moss, of smooth marble and tranquil spirits. They were crudely humanoid, varying sizes, but most around two to three meters tall. Each one looked different; each one appeared to have been hand crafted. Some had craggy wooden bodies and mossy hair. Others were polished and smooth men of marble.

  He thought of them as men, though they were in fact sexless, or at least lacking external genitalia. Their crude feet would certainly explain the prints in the dust they had found as well. Looking at them all, Stuart changed his initial estimation. There were probably not thousands of thousands of them. That had been panic and surprise talking. But there were, he’d guess, something like four or five hundred.

  They also, apparently, could turn invisible at will. They did not speak, not in a language that any of them could understand. When Keshav spoke simple commands, they obeyed.

  “Vanish,” he said and without any noticeable movement on their parts, they slipped out of sight.

  “Spooky,” Harper said, but her voice was full of excitement.

  “Show yourself!” Keshav ordered. The golems reappeared. Keshav chuckled. “What else can we make them do?”

  “Leave them be,” Baruna said.

  “She might be right,” Stuart added. “Maybe best not to meddle with powers we don’t understand.”

  “Ask them about here,” Harper said. “Try to learn where we are.”

  Stuart removed his camera from the backpack and case, and surreptitiously took a couple of photos. He didn’t think they would mind, or even notice, but best not to take chances. In the end, he took three great shots. The first was of a wood golem, his body made of redwood with clovers growing though different spots along his arms and legs. The second was a squat clay golem, whose flesh looked wet and moldable. Though few of the golems showed emotion, or even had faces capable of expressing motion, something about this clay fellow’s face looked like he was smiling. The third photo was of Keshav, and he had his staff up high as he commanded the golems to explain where they were. You could see Keshav’s mischievous grin, and the delight in his eyes, as the strange creatures scrambled to understand him.

  It took some doing. Obedient though they were, the golems did not comprehend complex commands. At last a rocky golem seemed to understand, and the four of them were seated in the vast stadium. The rock golem, who was made mostly of grey slate, but had jags of quartz throughout his legs and arms, left them.

  “What do we do now?” Harper wondered.

  “It could be worse,” Stuart said. “We could be watching Twilight.”

  Keshav laughed, but Baruna did not, and Stuart suddenly felt bad. He hadn’t meant to bag on someone’s favorite film.

  “Or, you know, any major Hollywood movie. They’re all trash, right?”

  He was saved by the return of the golem. It moved smoothly, the rocks in its body working as well as skin, joints, and ligaments. In its hands were five balls of something dark and resin-y.

  “Eh? What’s this?” Keshav asked. The golem mimed putting a ball in its mouth.

  “He wants us to eat them,” Harper said, mouth puckered in anticipatory disgust.

  Stuart accepted one. It was round, viscous, and made of grainy brown pellets. He sniffed at it dubiously, hoping for a chocolate scent. No such luck. It smelled of loam and earth.

  “It can’t be any worse than Phan Pyut,” Keshav said. He dropped the ball into his mouth.

  His face scrunched up instantly. “It’s worse, it’s worse,” he said, barely able to enunciate his mouth was so full.

  “What’s Phan Pyut?” Harper asked.

  “Potatoes,” Baruna said. “Rotten potatoes, with liquid oozing out.”

  “What? Why?”

  Stuart knew the longer he held his ball, the harder it would be. Pretending very hard that it was a truffle, he dropped it into his mouth. It actually wasn’t that bad, for all that it tasted like bitter mud.

  He was dimly aware of the others swallowing their portions, and then everything got fuzzy. His stomach heated up, and his head was wrapped in cotton. For a moment, he felt certain he was still in Manitoba. Was it the Jazz festival? Music of some sort sounded in his head.

  And then he was, blissfully, nowhere at all. All around him was an absence that his mind wanted to call blackness, but he recognized as void. It was here that the act of pure existence filled him. It lasted less than a second. It lasted for all of eternity. Gradually he became aware of the others. They were there with him, though how he knew he did not know.

  “I’m not being funny,” Keshav said. “But I’ve never tripped balls like this.”

  “You’re not tripping,” Stuart said. “I’m really here. We all are.”

  “Why are we here?” Harper asked. “What does this have to do with the amphitheater?”

  “I wasn’t expecting Bollywood, but this is strange,” Baruna added.

  At her words, the void around them filled. Stuart smelled curry and onions, hear car horns and bells. He felt surrounded by a thousand people. Ahead of him, just barely visible, was the Taj Mahal.

  “I don’t believe it,” Keshav said. “We’re in Agra.”

  “We all can see it?” Harper said. Her voice
was quick and high with excitement. “Don’t you realize what this means?”

  The Taj disappeared, along with the rest of India. White and sterile walls replaced them. Scientists looking into beakers and making notes filled the room.

  “Come on, Harper,” Stuart groaned. “Even your imagination is boring.”

  He thought for a moment, and the scientists turned into chimps; shrinking down until they were in clothes far too large for them.

  “This is their entertainment,” Harper Gomez said, completely undeterred by the monkey madness. “They achieved communal storytelling. The size of the stadium. It’s an art from we can barely comprehend.”

  “We have something close to virtual reality,” Stuart said. An image of a shady hacker straight out of Neuromancer appeared.

  “Yes, only it’s not that close. And that’s only for one. That’s the genius of this. It connects our consciousness in ways that words never could. Reality was never meant to experienced solo.”

  The hacker grimaced and collapsed, a hole in his jacket started smoking.

  “You lot mind tampering it down for a bit?” Keshav asked. “I’d love to take my lady to the Maldives after all.”

  They both attempted to stop thinking. For several glorious moments, they were on a golden beach ringed by turquoise water. Dolphins leapt from the sea as the sand crunched under their bare feet. Without blinking, they were all SCUBA diving, accompanied by orange, blue, yellow, and green fish of all sizes.

  All of those fish made Stuart a little hungry, and without realizing, they were in a sushi restaurant in Japan.

  This went on for some time. Together they told stories, communal dreamers in a reality so fragile that a mere thought would change it forever until, at last, the effect of the spheres they had eaten faded.

  They slowly regained access to their own stiff and confining bodies. The golems brought them food and fresh water. As they were eating, perhaps the strangest thing of the entire day happened.

  Night fell.

  Chapter 20