by Jeff Kamen
Ranuf spits quietly. Then, after a brief exchange with his men, he signals to the drivers and heads away. ‘We go with you,’ he calls to her, ‘then we see.’
‘What do you think?’ says Pétar, his hooded face darkening as the lanterns retreat. He turns to Jaala, but she is already returning to the path.
~O~
A few last recruits run to the vehicles, shouldering wrapped gear and weapons. From the front a long call goes up.
An answering call sounds from the rear. Then the lead carts pull away, creaking through the crowds of well-wishers reluctantly parting along the route. Looking out from the back, Jaala grips the bench she is sitting on. The axles rock beneath the wooden bed, and with a hiss of wheels through mud they in turn get moving. The convoy advances up the path with a long wet clattering, and the crowds gathered beneath that pall of steam and noise call out weeping and waving amidst the stark black shapes of foliage that screen the arena’s glow.
She lets the sleeve fall and sits back, her movements governed by the constant jostle of the cartbed. The group she is travelling with clutch at their neighbours for balance as the benches saw to and fro, those holding lamps between their knees cursing as they are forced to seize them by the grips and hold them upright.
After a while they shunt downhill, soon reaching the outskirts of the plain across which to the west lies the huge black expanse of the ridge. The drivers have been told to travel at a good speed to prevent them from getting stuck and the carts travel around the pools and craters like things cannoning, battered from the ground upwards and each passenger slung from side to side until one of the lamps is extinguished and the groans fall to a quiet muttering interspersed by the creak and rattle of straining chassis parts. Behind them when the sleeve flaps up she sees water breaking like a ploughed sea in the roiling backwash. The villagers are following in a sporadic trail of torches that seem to wind away into some stormy upper region of the night. She turns back again, blinking away the rain. The Naagli recruits sit in their blankets with their weapons resting between their knees or tucked away beneath their feet, she swaying at the end of the row like a dark-eyed ikon. She asks if there are questions about what they are to do. The hunters answer no, hollow-eyed and withdrawn. Even Karl is quiet, tampering with the string of his bow, wiping the leather bindings with a greased cloth. Jakub flicks a look at him, pale even in that feeble light, the imperfections of his rugged face like pits sketched with ink. Tanya sits at his side, her damp hair standing in spikes where she’s run her hand back through.
She tries to look away but finds that all she can do is watch them, feeling uncomfortable again; peculiar. Overly enclosed, as if she is suffocating. As if she is back in the prison escort, or, going further back in time, opening her pale wooden childhood cupboard and sorting through the militaristic leather toys. Gouging out their eyes with a knife, using a poker to brand them with a V. A shape like a bird in flight, a fang, something that would be cut into human skin all her adult life.
On they clatter, Radjík scratching at her belly, staring at her skewed reflection in her knife; the woman next to her playing with a thumb ring. Others murmuring, yawning.
Unease curling inside her like smoke. Confused, she looks away, towards the fretful lantern. Sonja is staring down, while Lajos leans against her with his hands clasped. She sees others in the gloom, some watchful, some like Laszló, his head nodding forward over his long curving frame like a human bow.
Listening to the rain beating at the canopy, she closes her eyes.
The axle jolts and her eyes reopen. Radjík is Grethá, grey-haired, her withered mouth drooped in a sagging crescent. Sonja is Mona, nervous, a little shy.
Her heart is racing. She glances around furtively, sees a blaze of torn images, ruined flickers, then looks straight ahead. Tanya is Jaala ...
Wwwwaaaaaaaaaaïïïïïïïïïïïïïïïeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaïïïïïïïïïïïï ...
But how?
She reaches up and feels around her face, gently, tenderly. Then in fear, as though touching a snarling frozen skull.
It isn’t supposed to be like this.
Something —
Chapter 47 — The House
Lowering his hands into the stream he watched the dirt float free. He’d wiped the oil off in the grass but even so there were streaks of it left on his skin, cloying, resisting the chill and limpid waters.
Each hand cleaning the other. Glittering in the bed among the little stones were discs and crescents of coloured glass lying there like some lost cache of treasures. Smooth, exotic, translucent. He scooped up a handful and watched how the light sang through, reflecting on how such music captured the story of the building the glass had fallen from. The song of its makers, the song of those who had worked and lived and worshipped there. The song of all they’d ever hoped and wished for. The song of the windows shattering as the storms came billowing through, all structures blackening and exploding.
He let them fall. Plop and ripple. It was the first time he’d removed his mask and his chest was labouring, yet he dwelt a moment longer to explore the taste of the air. Air that was tiring and painful to take into his lungs, yet also bewildering, laden as it was with so many alien messages and smells. He knelt with his face raised to the giant tellurian sky, then, coughing dryly, he cupped his hands again. From that chill flow he began to drink, taking small careful sips at first, as if his lips were burnt. After a while he stopped, savouring the feeling, the rejuvenating effect of hydration. Then he drank again.
When he lay on the bank to rest, he checked his valve reading and turned the nozzle slightly to reduce the O2 intake, then he pulled his jacket over himself, hoping to catch something of the sun’s tepid warmth.
The day ached by as he slept, the harsh grey country standing silently. The rocks so worn. The trees mottled with ash.
A few birds flew over and back again and left.
He rose to find that the sun had swung away into cloud, and it took him a minute to recognise the two peaks in the distance which, when aligned together, marked out the north. He felt weak, felt thirsty again, and slid down the bank to drink. On catching his reflection, he watched his shimmering features grow sombre. You’re not free, not by a long way, the face told him. You think you can play up here but you can’t. Listen to me. You can’t even sleep any more. There isn’t time. We need to get home ...
When he’d drunk, he splashed his face and used hanks of grass to wipe more of the crud from his hands and clothes. He checked the dressing on his arm, where the bruised flesh still leaked pricks of blood. Then he sat on his haunches to survey the desolate hills he must trek to.
Daylight. Rocks. Water. These were his gifts and guides. All he had to do was use them.
He stood looking up the slope. A bald incline of gravel where not even weeds grew. No one about. No creature called. Buttoning his jacket he set off and followed the stream along, his head cocked at the stony emptiness of the world.
~O~
He spent much of the night cowering in a damp cleft above a mossy pool while men with dogs scoured the dark terrain about, the occasional glow of their torches forcing him into savage readiness, preparing himself to spring at them with his knife.
But each time the glow would fade and the barking would turn away and quieten to distant yelps. He could not believe his stupidity. A slip of a foot had done it as he’d spied on them from the hillside. Dim lights in the shuttered cottages, the squeal of small children as a door opened. An old man sitting in a porch, watching for stars in the overcast. One slip of a foot, just as he’d gathered the courage to go down and ask for water, help, food — and then that awful baying from the walled allotments.
When the lights had finally disappeared he ventured out again, regretting bitterly the loss of his bag and the supplies it held. Once on level ground he continued in what he thought was the right direction, but as soon as the terrain steepened he did not trust himself to climb any higher. Instead he so
ught shelter in a rock wall from which he could see out well and hear anything that might be coming.
Many times as he crouched there in the dark he thought of his father, how it must have felt to him to have scaled Ansthalt that first time. Not knowing what he would find, nor what he’d be returning to in the dangerous world below. He wondered what his father was thinking now.
The planet of love was burning low in the bruised sky when he set off once more. In granular light he climbed and walked with his blistered feet squelching in his shoes and all that he saw unknown to him and increasingly forbidding. A grey waste of winding escarpments and desolate bluffs lay ahead. The ash blowing through endlessly, heaped in every crevice and corner and congealed in shapeless wads of plastic and rippled glass. The ancient bones of fallen races lying crushed and splintered in the dirt.
Instead of other people he found nothing more than broken and burnt-out huts and empty hovels. Weathered concrete towers stood buckled in the haze, one with the rusted shell of a turret and the rest collapsing into the ground windowless and agape and whistling eerily as the winds torqued through.
As the land rose he climbed to a high ledge overlooking a plateau raddled with loose stones. Here, deep pools lay glinting with the allure of cold reptilian sockets abrim with poisons. Beyond it the northern landscape was composed of sharp peaks rearing darkly under mounting clouds. It did not look promising, and he climbed away to another ledge to survey the west, there to find a milder sky and the mountains shrouded in their retreats above misty and steepled foothills. He stood in thought. If he continued northwards, then on reaching the desert all he had to do was turn west and he’d be there.
All he had to do. Provided he even got that far. He sighed anxiously. He was going to have to trust his instincts but was not sure his instincts were the right ones. He knew himself to be a man untested, set free in spite of himself.
The mountains, the west. All this framed forever in a moment as he weighed up his options. All this wholly encapsulated in his sight and contracted to before he turned away downhill.
~O~
He was leaving a grove of beeches when he saw the house. A big old twisty house thrown up with mortar and wood, the walls slapped thickly with whitewash and the one window he could see on that side blocked with heavy wooden shutters.
He noted the toppled chimney and its breath of smoke, the runs of wooden guttering beneath the roof. The fruit trees standing between the house and the uneven stone wall that enclosed the grounds.
The property was built on a slope that ran downhill from south to north. As a result, the wall to the rear stood much higher than that at the front, and with a fear of dogs resurfacing, he thought he might pass along on that side to avoid being seen, and from there disappear from view. But yet he stood staring, marvelling at the sight of an overland dwelling place, pieced as it was from the brute and naked land. The day wore on in silence, the pale clouds passing over the valley, threading, unthreading. No dogs howled. No men came running. The trees stood rustling, shivering. He looked down at himself, his filthiness, and did what he could to smooth down his hair. He thought if he took the mask off for a short time he might pass as an overlander going by, lost and weary. Perhaps the inhabitants might invite him inside; they might even know of a shortcut through the hills. He set off uphill towards the front, soon to come upon a low white gate set into the wall.
His mouth was dry as he stood at it, but once he saw the garden he knew he could not turn away. He surveyed with pleasure the neatly tended crops and trellises, the colourful flowerheads at the ends of the rows; the well-maintained patches and furrows of black soil. In so looking he noticed a washing line running from the far corner of the house to a leaning pole. On it were hung dark skirts and dresses. Women’s things. His attention returned to the house, to the heavy wooden door, which stood ajar. Perhaps it was just one woman and she was afraid. Perhaps she had seen him coming and was hiding, praying for him to leave. He looked down the side of the house to the little orchard. It was separated from the garden by an inner wall with a gate similar to the one he was standing at. He wondered if she’d ducked down and was hiding there.
He removed his mask, left it hanging at his chest.
After a moment, he called, ‘Hello?’ and waited, startled to hear his voice in such a place. ‘I, ah ... I’m on my way home. I’m a bit lost. C-Could I have some water?’
He waited again, noting other aspects of the house: the closed shutters at the front, upstairs and down; the cracks in the rendering. The stacked baskets and pails. The garden implements that stood along the wall: rake, shovel, hoe. When he called again and there was no reply, he raised the catch and pushed the gate open, hoping to trigger some response; but none came. He went inside and trod along the neat gravel path, breathing in the fragrant air and calling friendly greetings until he was at the door. He knocked at it and peered nervously inside. ‘Ah … are you there?’ he called. ‘I just want some water. I don’t mean you any harm.’
He pushed, he entered a large peasant kitchen and stood blinking. It was unlike any room he’d ever seen, ever imagined. It was warm and ripe with cooking smells, and so dry with smoke that he was forced to replace his mask. Coughing, he went further inside, staring now; and silent.
There was a wooden table upon which was laid some dishes and cutlery. Beyond it was a gloomy recess with a sink and a preparation area with bowed wooden shelves. Above his head, legs of cured meat hung from the rafters along with bushels of herbs. He turned, looking round in wonder. On the orchard side, logs were crackling quietly in a blackened hearth. He eyed the stacked fuel, the poker and the pot it stood in. Such was the allure of the place, an overland home with handturned wooden furniture and fixtures, that he forgot his fear of the owners and looked over the table again, noticing a cup standing beside a heavy stone jug. He went to the jug and poured from it, expecting water, but instead a dark ruby liquid ran out. He filled the cup, studying the liquid all the way up to his mask, which he removed again long enough to enable him to drink, long enough for him to feel his throat contract. Then, coughing violently, he pulled up a chair and sat hugging himself as the liquid splashed into his gut and lay there burning.
A minute later, breathing normally again, he felt a strange glow in his veins and in his head, and on tugging down the mask once more he drank until the cup was empty.
Then he belched; softly, reflectively, deciding that while the liquid was fiery and acidic, it was none the worse for that. He refilled the cup and this time sipped more slowly. Emboldened by his actions, he turned his chair to face the door and cast his eye over the dishes, each covered with a plate or lid as if to keep the contents fresh. He touched one and it was warm. Still no barking outside, no warning noise.
Determined to know what he was dealing with, he lifted a plate, gasping as steam rose from a pile of chopped vegetables. Under another lay sliced meat. Saliva filled his mouth. Under a third lay warm potatoes with melted butter.
Coughing into his fist, he thought a moment. The voice telling him not to do it was being shouted down by others reminding him that he might soon be dead with nothing to sustain him; telling him his father would not even have hesitated, would have done it and hurried on his way.
He glanced towards the door again, then snatching up a hunk of bread, he began to feed himself.
It was like food from a dream; food so different in texture and richness to the food he was used to that he grew almost tearful. He ate hunched and trembling, using his soiled fingers to get it down as fast as he could, cramming it in thickly and chewing with his eyes half closed in pleasure. He ate coughing, panting, devouring everything on his plate before helping himself to more, and even as he served himself he began casting about for other options, his spoon going from dish to dish as he craned forward. He was washing it all down with the strong red liquid when he thought he heard something outside.
Cheeks wadded, he listened.
It came again. The faint sound of a
woman singing, the words foreign to him:
‘Vrijeme!
Dvije metle se sudaraju,
Brišući naprijed,
Sudbina, sudbina ...’
It was coming from the orchard. He looked frozenly over the table. The food like ashes in his mouth. He thought he could hear the little side gate opening. In a few seconds she would see him.
Gasping, he scraped the food off his plate and made a frantic attempt at rearranging everything. She was coming alongside the house. He fitted his mask and rose and was looking for a place to hide in the recess when he noticed the kitchen led through to a little passage. He ran to the inner doorway and checked left and right. The passage was narrow and dark. There was one room at the end and another across from him, adjacent to a flight of stairs leading to the floor above. He ran to the nearby door and tried the handle. Finding that it turned, he slid inside and closed the door and stared around in the gloom. It appeared to be a storeroom. There were cupboards and shelves and stacked crates and baskets. Weaving his way between them, he found a barrel to hide behind and squatted down.
She was in the kitchen. He could hear her feet on the brickwork floor. She was still singing:
‘Sudbina, o sudbina ...
Brišući unatrag,
Sjećanje, sjećanje,
Vrij—’
The singing stopped abruptly, did not continue. He sat there wheezing in dismay, his eyes sitting moistly in their sockets. The feet approached the hallway, then halted. Then came nearer. He groped for his knife. The boards creaked and went still. He rose trembling, expecting the door to explode open at any moment, for her to rush in on him shrieking, but when the boards creaked again it seemed she was turning away. He hunkered down again. He thought she must think he was outside — either that, or she was tricking him, preparing something. Then once more he heard her in the kitchen. He sat motionless, but heard no more. The house fell quiet.
