Empire of Ruins

by Arthur Slade

  He’d moved with more speed and agility than she’d dreamed would be possible, and his strength was truly staggering. To actually lift the steam engine! It had taken a crane to lower it into the car! Her only consolation was that Modo was dead now, though even that represented a failure of sorts. As much as she’d wanted Socrates and Tharpa and all the information inside their brains, she’d wanted Modo more.

  When she’d told the Guild Master and Dr. Hyde about meeting Modo on the deck of the Wyvern, and explained that he had the ability to change his physical appearance, the possibilities had staggered both men! They’d wanted him captured alive so they could study him. Perhaps his talents could be duplicated.

  And she’d almost had him, right here on the very deck of her airship. But now he was a shattered corpse on the rain-forest floor, the buzzards and lizards and whatever other creatures down there consuming all his secrets piece by piece.

  A piece. A piece! But that was all she needed! Just a piece of him. An earlobe. A toe!

  Then she remembered that furious swing of her saber, and she ran to the place near the railing where his blood had spattered. Below that, curled up next to several spent shells, she discovered his little finger. She picked it up with her metal hand and called for a tin box. Gently she placed the finger inside, then slid the tin into her trouser pocket and buttoned it. When they landed she would bottle the finger up with formaldehyde. It was something, at least; a fine trophy. The good doctor could work with this, she hoped.

  “Hurry with that engine!” she commanded. “Time is of the essence.”

  She returned to surveying the sky and the rain forest. Mr. Socrates had certainly landed somewhere. The tribes or the crocodiles would likely destroy them, if they had even survived their crash. But she knew from experience that one should never take chances by assuming such things, and when it came to her old enemy, she would never count him out. If he had lived he would likely scurry toward Port Douglas. She would dispatch patrols and cut him off.

  A Touch, a Word

  Modo waved his arms, then put his nine fingers together in a gesture that he hoped looked like a temple. It was where he needed to go. If only Octavia and Mr. Socrates could see him now. Then, with a pang of panic, he wondered whether they were alive. Had he succeeded in preventing the Prometheus from capturing them? If so, they might have darted back to the coast. But would they leave him here? Or, more important, would they leave the temple in the hands of Miss Hakkandottir? He doubted that. He would have to find them.

  While they couldn’t have landed too far away, the most logical place to find them would be the temple. Even if the worst had happened and they were all dead, Modo could still complete his assignment and exact his revenge.

  These men standing before him would surely have seen the temple at some point. Perhaps they’d even explored it. He pointed in the direction he believed was northwest and performed the temple gesture again, saying, “Egyptian temple! Egyptian temple.”

  They wouldn’t even know what Egyptians were. It was useless. He dropped his arms. His missing finger throbbed, an odd and painful sensation. Every once in a while it dripped blood.

  He felt a tug on his sleeve; then Nulu grabbed his good hand. This caused a hiss of surprise from the surrounding warriors, who, Modo guessed, expected her to vanish or explode. She pulled gently and led Modo through the group and beyond. The warriors began following several steps behind. She found a clear path through the foliage.

  “Are you taking me to the temple?” Modo asked as he ducked under a vine.

  Nulu nodded, and they walked silently for several minutes. To his surprise, he saw that her white hair was not dyed that way, but had clearly grown out white, as if at birth she’d seen something frightful. She walked with a confidence he wished he possessed, as though she saw strangers such as him every day.

  There was movement in the brush ahead and Modo was tempted to grab his knife, but three young girls and two boys stepped out of the forest and joined the girl and Modo, falling in line behind them as if on parade.

  Perhaps I have a concussion? Is all this a dream? He continued walking with her warm hand in his; no one had ever held his hand this long before, other than Mrs. Finchley when he was a child. He glanced back. The warriors looked braver now, staunchly carrying their spears, yet none would meet his eyes. Everyone was silent, though occasionally Nulu would whistle an odd tune between her teeth.

  Nulu led him up an incline, which involved circling around the trunks of large palm trees. There, quite suddenly, was the tribe’s village, a small clearing marked with several worn pathways and ten round huts built of banana and palm leaves, each big enough to house a few people.

  The children behind let out a cry and took off through the bushes so quickly that Modo thought it was in fear. He looked over his shoulder. The warriors averted their eyes. No lurking danger that he could see. Then it dawned on him: the children had decided to become the heralds of his arrival. They raced to the center of the village and called out, so that by the time the group entered the settlement, old men and women of all ages, pregnant mothers with distended bellies, and more children came out to stand at the firepit in the center of the village and gawk at him as he approached.

  A large, round-bellied man in an animal-fur robe limped out of a hut. His beard was gray and his white hair stuck straight out all over his head. In one hand was a club and around his neck hung a kind of wooden breastplate. One eye was gray with blindness, the other open in shock.

  Nulu led Modo directly to the elderly man. “Ngaji,” she said, “jiri-warra.” She offered up Modo’s hand.

  The old man hesitantly took it. Modo found the man’s hand warm, the fingers rough. The man was trembling visibly, from age or fear, Modo couldn’t tell. He was a leader, Modo guessed, a shaman or a chief or something—he wondered if there had been anything written about this tribe. The old man was staring at him with that one eye. There was something familiar about his face. Then it came to him: this man was Nulu’s grandfather.

  “Moh-Doh,” Nulu said, pointing at Modo. Then she pointed at the old man and spoke slowly. “Runyuji.”

  Modo gave a slight bow. “Hello, Run-You-Gee, I’m pleased to meet you.” The man shuddered again, as though each new revelation was almost too much for him. His hand, though, gripped Modo’s tightly.

  Everyone, even the warriors, was now staring openly at Modo. He’d never had so many eyes on him at once. They didn’t seem frightened; in fact, he would have sworn that they actually wanted to look at him.

  Without any warning, Modo began to weep.

  A Now Dream

  Nulu hadn’t known that gods could shape tears. She stared up at the one who had fallen from the heavens and watched the tears trailing down his perfect face. She expected them to burst into flames as they fell to the ground and bring the ancestors to life. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see her grandmother, mother, father, and all those who had gone to the spirit world suddenly rise up from the earth. It was that kind of day.

  “The one with the God Face must be happy,” she said to her grandfather, the cleverest of all the men in their village.

  “They are tears of joy,” her grandfather announced to the tribe. “The God-Faced One cries with joy to see the Rain People.”

  The one called Moh-Doh wiped the tears from his face and mumbled something in his god language. It was very much like the language of the gray ones who had come to the forest several moons earlier, but they were always shouting.

  A long silence followed, and Nulu wondered if this was a now dream or a then dream. Or could it be a future dream? No, it was now. It was really happening. She knew that because of his tears, because of the the warmth of his hand when she had held it, and because his stomach was rumbling.

  “We must feed the God-Faced One!” she whispered.

  Her grandfather gave orders as Nulu again took Moh-Doh’s hand and led him to a large log near the firepit. She patted it and sat down.

&nb
sp; “Quickly, a feast, a feast!” her grandfather called.

  What does a god eat? Nulu wondered.

  A white cloth was wrapped around his left hand, soaked with blood. A god who wept tears and could bleed?

  When her grandfather joined them on the log, she pointed at Moh-Doh’s hand. Then, following her grandfather’s quick commands, she ran to his hut and returned with the healing leaves and a bowl. Her grandfather ground some of the leaves into a paste and removed the bandage. Nulu gasped when she saw that Moh-Doh was missing his little finger. Moh-Doh winced as the paste was applied but seemed thankful when they were finished. Nulu bound the hand carefully with the remaining leaves.

  As they waited for the food, she marveled at how this normal day had turned into a dream day. In the morning she had followed the hunting party, who were alarmed by the roaring and thundering in the skies. She was not supposed to leave the village, but she had done it before, and after all, she was the granddaughter of the wise one and her parents had died fighting the crocodile, so she could do things that other children couldn’t without fear of punishment.

  One warrior had climbed a tree to discover that there were giant birds battling in the heavens. Then a gray man with a white face had fallen to the earth, dead. The Rain People had encountered the gray men and their clinking dogs at the stone place and knew they were killers. They had already lost three warriors to their death sticks.

  So when a second man fell through the trees and lived, they decided to pursue him and be certain he was dead. His face had been covered with a mask. Nulu had only caught a glimpse of him as he was driven toward the hunting pit. But he had survived the pit where all animals die. She had heard the cries of confusion and fear from the warriors, had then seen Moh-Doh climb out of the pit with his face revealed.

  The question was: why had the God Face come to them? Was this the end of time? Would everything change from this moment on? These questions were too big for her mind. They were for her grandfather and the other elders and the ancestors to figure out. No, she could only be humbled by the fact that she had actually seen the God Face after a lifetime of stories by the fire. He was real! The eyes looked warm, the smile kind, and it had seemed entirely natural for her to bring him here.

  And now the one with the God Face was sitting among them eating the food they offered and nodding and speaking in a language she couldn’t understand.

  Freshly Chewed Meat

  Modo was enjoying a handful of berries from a woven palm-leaf basket. The basket was still wet, as though the berries had been soaked. They were both bitter and sweet, bursting on his tongue. Next, the women brought cooked meat on a large wooden platter. The meat was pale in color and tasted something like salted and smoked duck or chicken, he couldn’t decide which. There was also fish.

  The tribe didn’t seem to want to boil him alive or slice him into ribbons. They had chased him through the forest, but they couldn’t be blamed for that; after all, he’d fallen out of the sky and invaded their land.

  He had wept, of all things, with all those eyes on him. And aside from their initial hesitation, they didn’t seem to be staring in revulsion. Quite the contrary. They seemed to adore him. He smiled and shook his head.

  “This is all very lovely,” he said. “Very, very lovely.” He patted his stomach to signal his happiness and one of the pregnant women rubbed her own and giggled. Of course they didn’t understand a word he said, but he hoped the tone of his voice conveyed his friendliness. They’d likely never seen a civilized man before.

  The young girl, Nulu, was the one who fed him first, and he instinctively trusted her. The remainder of the tribe were growing more comfortable and muttering among themselves, again pointing at him with their pinkies.

  He’d read so many accounts of savages and how ruthless they could be. The men had weapons, of course, but he saw that there were frail and vulnerable tribespeople too: a few old men, a toothless old woman who appeared to be blind, small children, one with a limp. If they were savages, why hadn’t they abandoned the old and crippled ones to the crocodiles?

  “Please join me.” He offered the food around. “Please.”

  Nulu was the first to take something off the platters, choosing a long piece of cooked, stringy flesh. She chewed it, then removed it from her mouth and handed it to an old woman, who swallowed it. How revolting! But many of the children were doing the same thing for other aged tribespeople. These elders were clearly toothless and wouldn’t survive without the aid of their grandchildren’s good teeth. So disgusting, but kind, too.

  He pictured doing the same thing for Mr. Socrates when he got old, and chuckled. Several children giggled along with him.

  Remembering his master reminded him that he had a mission to complete. He needed to finish eating and get on with his assignment.

  Modo examined his wounded hand and was pleased to see that the stub of his little finger had stopped bleeding, thanks to the leaves wrapped tightly around it. The pain had softened to a dull ache.

  It would soon be dark; best to move along as far as he could before nightfall, much as part of him wanted to stay here forever. “I thank you for your food and hospitality, but I must go now.”

  They gawked at him as he brought out his compass and held it to see which direction was northwest. Thank goodness he’d memorized the map. They hadn’t crossed the main river by air, so he would still be on the east side of it. If Mr. Socrates was anywhere, he’d be heading toward the temple right now.

  Unless he’d crashed and they were all dead or captured. If that was so, it would be impossible to say where they were. If Modo found the temple, at the very least he could later find the nearest port, for the map had shown its location clearly.

  “Again, I thank you.” Modo bowed toward the tribe, turned, and walked away. They parted for him and he wondered if it could be that easy to leave.

  Sure enough, as one, they rose and walked silently behind him in a long line. Modo stopped. This wouldn’t do. He couldn’t have them tramping through the forest behind him. But wait—was there a way to get them to take him to the temple? The warriors were armed and there were fifteen of them. What if Miss Hakkandottir had a camp? If they stumbled on it, perhaps they could fall on the Guild soldiers and kill them.

  And how many of these tribesmen would die? Just to rescue him?

  He waved his hands. “You must stay. Go back.”

  No one moved. He went to the nearest one and pointed him in the opposite direction. Then he pointed another. Finally Nulu approached to him with a basket of food. She held it up to him. He stood there because he was already stuffed, feeling dumb as a post, until it dawned on him that she wanted him to take the food. He filled his pockets. Then, as one, the tribespeople turned away.

  Modo trod through the forest. It wasn’t until he’d walked for two hours that he was certain he’d left the tribe behind. With each step it felt as though he were walking away from a dream. That was all it could be. Though at first there’d been some fear, mostly those natives had looked at him with joy. How could they be real?

  It began to rain. Soon he was a soggy mess, his tattered cloak a weight on his back. He took it off and squeezed it dry, then carried it under his arm. He crossed a small stream, watching for serpents or any sharp-toothed animals. He wished again that he’d been able to learn the flora and fauna, especially the creatures that would either eat him or poison him or both.

  He’d stay away from toads. He didn’t know if it was here or in Africa where there were poisonous toads whose touch alone would kill you. And then there were the alligators. Or was it crocodiles? One or the other lived here.

  “Maybe you can ask them to introduce themselves when they bite your leg off,” he whispered.

  He munched on a few berries from his front vest pocket, followed them with some smoked meat. The sun set quite suddenly, as though someone had just blown out a candle. He couldn’t see much beyond all the vines and leaves.

  He hadn’t thought
this through very well. For one thing, where would he sleep? On the forest floor? Up in a tree with the snakes and the monkeys? One of those huts he’d just left would be handy now.

  He didn’t dare light a fire for fear of alerting Miss Hakkandottir to his presence, so he slept with his back up against a tree, legs pressed as close to his chest as possible for warmth. It was a horrible, buggy, cold, fitful mockery of sleep, but when he awoke as the light appeared in the east, shining yellowish green through the leaves, he found that a fur blanket had been laid over him and someone had placed a basket of berries at his feet without making a noise or leaving a footprint. He whispered his thanks and ate his breakfast. Then he got up, stretched his aching muscles, and began to follow his compass.

  Cutting a Path

  The first night in the rain forest had dampened Octavia’s enthusiasm for being alive. It had been a grand adventure while they were in the air, but on the ground among the hooting animals, chirruping insects, and wet chill, she loathed it. Rats she could take; London had millions of them. But scaly things that slithered, creatures that made odd growling sounds, others climbing in the trees, bats the size of owls, and a pestilence of insects biting and crawling on her skin—it was all a little much for a girl from Seven Dials.

  A night of no sleep had been followed by a cold breakfast of canned meat and water. Then Mr. Socrates barked commands like an infantry general and they packed up camp and marched on, tracing the path indicated by the map in his hand.

  “Miss Hakkandottir will expect us to make a beeline for the nearest port,” Mr. Socrates explained. “I’m guessing that she’s now got her soldiers patrolling the paths leading to Port Douglas and Cooktown. She may even have created allegiances with whatever natives inhabit this area. So we will circle westward and approach the temple from that direction. Nothing like the element of surprise.”