The Lanyard

by Carter-Thomas, Jake

  Then another.

  The sound seemed to suck into his ears and fill his head. It clogged, like thick paint poured into a drain, and the world went silent until he stopped moving. This time, somehow, he managed to make her stop too, as if his legs had turned into the very tip of an iceberg made from stone, an iceberg that floated on soil mostly submerged, all grey and cold, like a tomb, impossible to sail near without being torn in two. He tried to go back, and he fell to his knees.

  "Let go of me," he said.

  "No."

  She crouched with him; she came in close. She put another hand on his shoulder and tried to put her face near his. But he did not turn to see. Ahead all he could try to focus on was the miniature landscape made out of the dirt that seemed at once to be a whole mountain range in close, where he could push his free fingers into and use it to crawl, fixing his teeth together as if to give strength, and pulling through her pleas, used some previously buried strength in him to move her back towards the trees, to stand up again, to start to walk, though his legs seemed to crumble beneath his hips, over to where they would see the house, the open window, the stairs, and the blood. All of the blood, now, like a rocket powered by rage, bursting through the back of his head, all he could see. Blood. It covered his eyes from the inside. He could smell it as it dribbled down the inside of him, into his mouth. His father's blood. The same blood that was in him, sinking down his throat like hot lead and pooling, unable to run off, until his soul became the cave behind this waterfall of hate, the blackness that swallowed the light, where blind creatures with white skin and claws scurried for his vengeance.

  "You can't go back," she said.

  "I have to."

  "You don't have to... Don't throw away your life... There's nothing you can do."

  "".

  "You can't."

  She pulled at him, turned her heels into the ground so that they would dig, forming a line a few feet long as he overpowered her, inch by inch, and kept moving, shaking his arm from the wrist so that a strange wave ran down between them, leaping from his limb to hers and then back.

  For some reason the view of that ploughed line he imagined her feet created, turned one behind the other, swept through the red haze in his vision and he could see clearly for a moment again. For that line in the dirt, any such line, was the first step a civilisation must make, the first moment of self-sustenance, of escape from the mother. He had read enough to know. And he knew this is what he was creating here now, with her. A line that marked a divide between the past and future, between them being looked after and looking after themselves, like the founding of a new country, even if she didn't know it yet, even if he didn't or wouldn't accept. Hadn't he also seen how first cities must be predicated on death, on treachery? Hadn't those books in the houses libraries they had found said so much in so many more words? Hadn't he run his fingers across the pages and followed as she followed him now.

  He closed his eyes.

  "It's my dad."

  "No. Promise me, no."

  "I cant."

  "You're not like them, you're not like him," she said.

  He sensed a spiral of hope mixed with a prayer in her voice. He stopped trying to get away and looked back at her. She looked at him, diving deep into those angel eyes, hard, waiting for his eyesight to be destroyed by tears; she looked away first, like he would once have. And he realised he had never seen anyone do such a thing before. He had always been the first to break, a fleeting glimpse, some hope mixed with a prayer, of his own, then, a prayer for the past, for the future, perhaps. So that he would wondering each time he now set eyes on himself what he was, deep down inside. What he was. Who he was. Who, or what, he would become.

  And then he looked away. And he knew that this was not his old inability come back -- this was that he could no longer look at himself.

  "Let's keep moving."

  She took his hand and tried to pull him back around to face her. He moved slowly, as if a weighted down weather balloon tethered to a barn and sick of waiting for winter. He did not resist, but he did not co-operate and so his body seemed to hold there while she held it.

  He collapsed again. He knelt down. Not to pray. But through lack of choice. He couldn't breathe. He could only sob. He knelt to make himself small. Perhaps it had always been that way. Reducing himself into a ball like a lump of coal fit to throw into the fire. He put his hands over his head and pulled it down towards his heart, towards his lap, as compact as he could become. It was as if his body attempted to screw itself up like an old piece of paper that kept the words on the inside where they couldn't be read. Now even God couldn't see his expression, whatever that meant. Now the sky would not reflect it, and nor would her skin.

  "How do you know?" he said.

  "That you aren't like them? Like him?"

  "Yes."

  "I just know..."

  He shook his head.

  She started to cry.

  "Please."

  All the gold in the limbs of the trees came back to him, all of the gold in her veins, in her hands, in flecks in her eyes. Treasure again, all over her body, both inside and in. He imagined glittering light all through her, started at the sieve inside her lungs that plucked beauty from the air in particular form and compressed it in the chamber of her heart, like small globs of sleep in her blood, crumbling yellow dreams, dull and dead until the light got in through the window up above, and below, so the shimmer grew and sparkled hard at a look, at a touch. He had felt it there, and on his hands after, before, during. As she had slipped around him like a fish. As he clung to her and flexed.

  The sun dropped into the mountain made of piles of clouds, and the light shuddered its way over the top like an old curtain drawn across a cracked window made of mist, turning the sky dark and waxy behind it, between it, and through it, colouring his eyes until he closed them and watched the swirls deepening in his head, beginning to swoop down low like giant birds with talons made of wind that tried to steal the skin from their faces.

  "We have to go," she said.

  "Then leave me behind."

  "I didn't help you out of there just to leave you!"

  "Then why did you?" he said.

  "There isn't time."

  "My dad didn't help me for that either..."

  "I know, but they'll kill you... You're just a boy... They'll kill me too."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  "Just tell me how we met?" he said.

  She stopped and turned back, still holding his hand, dirty face.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean..."

  He looked at the ground, finding how best to say it.

  "I mean, what were you doing where I found you, on the top of those rocks? Why where you there?"

  "I wasn't doing anything. I was walking, just like you."

  "Come on."

  "What difference does it make now?"

  "Because I should have gone back. I should have helped him."

  "I told you how many times -- it wouldn't have done any good."

  "So you saved me from death, is that what you're saying? How about this: you saved me, but you brought me to it, too?"

  "Don't say it that way?"

  "But it's true. You led me all this time... I just... have to know," he said.

  "To blame me?"

  "No. Not like that. Not really."

  "Then why?"

  "Because."

  ""?

  "I just guess it matters. I mean it makes a difference, if you were out there, near the camp because you knew I might find you, or if it was chance. Just tell me--"

  "I don't think you want to know... I don't think you need to know... You do know."

  "So I'm right?"

  She nodded, let go of his hand.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders then stopped himself and turned away. He tried to keep his fists one inside the other, clenched together; he didn't want to hit her. He didn't want to hurt her.

  "But it isn't like t
hat," she said at last. "Not the way you're thinking..."

  He couldn't reply.

  "I didn't know."

  She put an arm on his shoulder and kept it there until he turned. There was a tear dripping down her face. Her fingers seemed to want to climb up his neck, to cling to it, as if she was scared of them falling off.

  "Didn't know what?" he said.

  "They told me to go there and scope you guys out, didn't know how many. I was there, I heard them talk. But I didn't get it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It just, well it happens all the time. It's the way it is. I'm sorry. Believe me I'd rather be anywhere else than this, but with you I mean."

  "But how can I trust you?" he said. "All that time... All that time, why didn't you say?"

  She stared at the ground, same expression she'd had when walking one foot behind the other crossing the planks across the mud. "I don't know... If I'd said would you have trusted me more?"

  "I know you were trying to help us there. I mean, at least I think I know. But it's hard."

  "I can't make you believe in me any more than I can make you believe this will turn out ok. But I am here to fight for you, with you, that's it... I'd understand if... Well, you can't go back. You shouldn't."

  "But I could. Maybe there's time."

  "You could, but it would ruin us both. It doesn't matter what I say, does it."

  "Of course it does."

  "How?"

  "Because you could have said it wasn't on purpose."

  "You'd rather I lie?"

  "No... But, all of the time, you know? It's hard..."

  "To trust me? I bet. You want me to plead, want me to beg? What difference does that make? I've told you I never set out to cause this. You have to believe that. I'm trying. That's all I can say."

  He looked at her again as she half-smiled. Was she playing some game with him, with them, her own version of what the men had done, as if in some kind of hunting competition, who could be first to bring down a stag, who could be last?

  "I do understand," he said.

  "So we should keep moving."

  "Where?"

  "Back to the hills, like I said, then hopefully back to your car."

  "I don't have any keys."

  "We'll try the camp."

  "What's left of it."

  "It's worth a shot."

  He nodded. Maybe they were in a bag or a lockbox that would crack open under the action of a rock.

  "And if that doesn't work we can just keep going. We'll find something. We'll walk until we do. It's alright. We have to... But we have to be fast. I'm obviously not the only one who knows the way there."

  "Right, but which way is it?"

  "It's down there."

  "Over that ridge?"

  "No."

  "Then?"

  "Under it. Through it. Come on, a short-cut."

  She led him up to a stack of orange rocks that reached up into the sky. She reached into the right side of a spiny bush that seemed to have no connection to the place, as if blown by the wind, an out of control piece of hair come free from a scarf and fallen down. She bent it out of the way to reveal a way up to a gap in the rock and it fell aside as if there was no longer any spring in the wood, as if it had been beaten long and hard as a thrashing stick, but still somehow connected to the soil. Like they all were.

  The gap turned into darkness after a few paces, mud on the ground undisturbed apart from some channels that ran along it that might have been caused by runs of ants or desperately hungry bird beaks.

  "We should be able to fit through," she said. "Or at least, I used to be able to..."

  She knelt down. He looked at her, getting the reference to growing up, to changing in size, changing in shape. He saw his mother in her then somehow, turning away from him as she worked on something, clearing a route for him to follow through and learn, mature.

  "They'll have to go around," she said.

  "Yes," he replied, trying to understand what had happened again, trying to clear the pain from his mind, pain which had descended over him and caused a heat in his head that he couldn't seem to shift, as if he could have dipped his face into a stream and boiled away the water at the blink of an eye.

  "Why are you doing this?" he said.

  "I owe you. I won't let them get you," she replied glancing back at him, trying to smile though he could sense she wanted to cry.

  "But why?"

  "Because I care. And maybe you can do something for me. Come on."

  She looked over him now, up back beyond his head, her face illuminated by a sun that struggled to swim in the mist, yet continually burning through, brightening like a hundred searchlights on their backs, back towards where no doubt there was the sound of the others pushing through to them, breaking back branches, stripping leaves without discriminating.

  "There isn't time for this now," she said. And she moved around behind him and eased him towards the gap. "You better go first."

  He stumbled and almost fell into it, putting his hand onto the stone side, which was cold and damp, a run of liquid flowing down it invisibly, as if somehow unreflective, or having nothing of which to reflect. He paused there for a moment. The air smelt like roots that were shaken and stripped of their dust, thrown into the air like flowers at a wedding of him, and of her, a weeding.

  She placed her hand on his back again, kept pressing him, trying to join him beneath the rock in the space there was between the cave, until he had to lean down and then start to crawl. She too, on her knees now, on his, flexing his feet to try and move him forward into the dark.

  "How far is it?" he asked.

  "Just go," she said.

  His other hand went down and the sheen of wet that had grabbed it somehow quickly dulled the pain of gashing against the scraps of rock in the mud. He found his toes here and started moving into the void. The rocks did not fight him any more. The walls of the channel only glanced his hands occasionally, guiding, gently cupping against his shoulder so that he would lower his body or turn it to the other side and progress, like some kind of creature burrowing blind through its tunnel, through a tunnel that already existed, aiming at nothing but a cold night ahead inserted into the day.

  He saw a shot of sun, just a teardrop shape across the way ahead, just a diamond glittering as if held in the air and spinning. A whiter light than he had seen of the sky, no hint of blue or red in it, as if a huge ball of ice blocking the hole. And he went towards it. The shape increased in size, it began to radiate a cool calming feeling, as if he was being brushed by long bristles wet from an icy river, applied to calm him down.

  "Do you see it?" she said. "The light there. That's the way out."

  He smiled at this shape without realising. It began to open for him, like a flower, long blue petals the colour of cold aluminium silk, wrapping around the edges of his vision and pulling him in, the way bees must find the centre of roses, the way birds must find sipping the stinger of bees, or must have, in another place, in another yard, in another house at the end of another street, the way he had found her. His eyes felt the sudden strain of narrowing in the centre. Then the shape ahead of him appeared to turn itself inside out, to turn around, to give birth to the scene of the side of a hill, falling away far steeper than he would have expected it to, so steep that riding down it on his haunches would have been entirely possible, entirely profitable, and they could have laughed while they did it, for a moment, as a break in the great chase, the escape, the run away, the slide away, down the hill they were meant to climb to make it across the gap, perhaps, the gap to being men, to being women, to growing old, but refusing, slipping under, making it seem accidental because of the angle of attack, because of the way they popped out of that channel all wet from the rocks and newborn, held up before being flung in the pit.

  He knew they must go that way before she even said anything. No matter how much they might have been turned around by the tunnel through the rock he could understand the r
ight direction; he could smell it, he could sense it, the footsteps out to the fire, to the charred remains, which he could see now, all blackened at the edges, the fields at the bottom of the hills, the trees. Where there were no trees, nothing but the same brown for some way, punctured occasionally by tinder sticks. Just how far above were they? How far was it below?

  He sat down just outside the mouth of the tunnel and she sat beside him and just stared. She took his hand and held it in her lap.

  "We don't have a lot of time," she said.

  "I know."

  He wasn't looking at the hill any more. The swatches of pink and ivory that made up her face could be far more easily taken in, enjoyed, than all the charred ground. Her eyes did not return to him, as if they had become glued to the thin slivers of smoke that rose up from the ground and seemed to weave together into the same clouds he had watched all the way out there and back, as if the clouds were really giant balls of smoke, and everywhere, somewhere, all at once there was fire sweeping across the world, turning in and over on itself and balling up, rising, running away from where the flames hit rock, where they hit soil, where they could not burn, fleeing then, running in fear, shrieking hot ash rising into the sky, and imagining itself pursued by barbarians with clubs made out of unburnt logs before regrouping, ready for a new charge, to come down like black hail, to fire the volley of arrows into the ground that would choke, sulphur tipped, like the flesh from the still beating heart of a volcano, glowing red and angry at the deception, that the world had ever dared not just give in and let the fire win, but had remained at its most dangerous as cold rock, swept with cold tears of loss, immune.

  For wasn't that what crying did? Didn't it save the eyes from the flash of fire, forced them to blink, to look away, to stop staring when the world burned. To blink. To take stock, to take a photographic snapshot, a memory of what had been and what had gone like those childish drawings he found on the walls, on fridges, on the floor, on curling pieces of paper, in the bark of trees, in the knots, in the eyes.