Elise and The Astonishing Aquanauts

by Steven Welch

  Sand poured down from where her shoulder had struck the mound.

  And then, so did the ants.

  She looked back in horror. Ants? Yes, like ants, but big, the size of her thumb, and blue as a robin’s egg. They were swarming out of the sand pyramid in a frenzy.

  It was an anthill. Those piles were anthills.

  Elise ran faster, not looking back now, her breath like ragged sheets of fire.

  And then she was standing on a concrete slab at the base of an iron leg the size of a city block and then she was through an iron gate she slammed hard behind her. A faded sign said “No Admittance Without Pass.”

  A year in Paris and I’ve never been in the Eiffel Tower. Time to change that.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE GRAND BALL AT THE TOP OF THE TOWER

  THERE ARE THREE levels to the great tower.

  The first is at nearly two hundred feet.

  The second is more than a hundred feet above that.

  The third, the observation platform at the top, was nearly a thousand feet high.

  The Tour Eiffel was built for the World Expo in 1889 out of 10,000 tons of iron. A man named Gustave Eiffel designed her, and she went up in an astonishingly short time, only two years.

  This beacon, this impossibility, was viewed by a few Parisians of the time as a grotesque effrontery to the beauty of the City of Light. Author Guy de Maupassant famously ate lunch from the tower’s restaurant as, in his words, it was the one place in Paris where he could not see this “tall, skinny, pyramid of iron ladders, this giant and disgraceful skeleton.”

  She was a radio tower, a landmark, and a marvel. A man named Franz Reichelt died in 1912 when he attempted to fly from her first level wearing his scientifically designed spring-loaded flight wings. He left an impression in the ground six inches deep. He also left quite an impression with the crowd of thousands who watched him plummet. The tower is painted anew every so often, she grows six inches in the heat of a summer day, movies and television and song have practically made her a cliche, and Hitler had been eager to survey Paris from her summit but The Resistance cut the elevator cables and Der Fuehrer chose not to walk up the seventeen hundred and ten steps to the top.

  On this spring morning, Elise stepped to the foot of her first, wide, stairwell.

  She looked about for any sign of something slithering or crawling. Nothing. The nasty ants hadn’t followed her. She peeked back through the iron gate to be sure.

  The sandy ocean of the Champs de Mars was alive with ants and sand slugs. The ants had spilled out of the hill she had opened, but they were also pouring out of the other hills, as if they were all in communication.

  Were they eating the slugs? It sure looked like it. Great blue rivers of ant crisscrossed the sand and at their intersections were roiling balls of ant that looked to be devouring the slimy creatures.

  Better them than me, she thought.

  There was an elevator, and she had a bit of fun punching its buttons hoping for a response. A ride to the top would have been nice. The buttons just clicked, dead and cold. Oh well.

  She began the climb. There was dust and sand here and there, but not as much as one might expect. There were no footprints or sand slugs or ants she could see.

  Her legs burned, and she hadn’t even reached the first level. She looked out through the great iron beams at the city beyond as she climbed. There was the park, the dusty Seine, the 7th arrondissement where the charming market of the Rue Cler once brought Parisians by the drove for fresh meats, fruit, antiques, and surprises. Some of the buildings were broken, as if by bombs, others were just gone, buried in sand or leveled.

  Whatever had happened, it damaged all things it touched.

  The singing continued high above and now that she was getting closer she could hear a guitar as well. She didn’t recognize the song, but it sounded like the reggae songs that her Dad had listened to when they were at the beach.

  She stepped up onto the platform of the first level that circled the base of the tower and into a fancy dress ball where dozens of people dressed in the most unusual costumes danced and frolicked as if a disaster had never happened.

  What? Elise took a sharp breath. What is this?

  There was a man in a top hat and tails, like she had seen in old movies with her Dad, and he was dancing with a woman wearing an outrageous costume of feathers and dazzling sequins. Another man wore a leotard of tiger fur and he struck a pose like Hercules. Three women made a dance circle around two children dressed as sailors and they were having such fun Elise couldn’t help but laugh.

  Dozens of them, colorful, strange, silly, and still as stone.

  Mannequins, posed and dressed for the party of the century.

  Elise walked through the ball, her skin tingling from this weird mix of creepy and silly. Really? Storefront dummies in fancy dress? Who does this?

  Someone had strung hundreds of string lights overhead from the ceiling of the level, and wires ran from these to car batteries that sat here and there. Nothing was lit now, but at night, it must have been quite a sight.

  She had never seen the glow of light from the tower, but the nights were so thick with dust and sand that the tower had been more suggestion than reality once darkness fell.

  There were punch bowls filled with colored sand. There were wonderful posters taped everywhere; the sort of thing Elise imagined one might have seen back in the old days of the Paris night life. A full bar had been set up at one corner, twenty meters long and stocked with liquor, beer, wine, soda, and water. Behind the bar was a mannequin dressed as a bartender from the 1920’s. Next to the bar were cafe tables, and at one of these was an old-fashioned typewriter. A mannequin sat there, writing something, the paper as white as its skin.

  Elise looked over the writer’s shoulder at the paper sitting in the typewriter roller.

  “Ma Vie Terne Comme un Mannequin aux Galeries Lafayette.”

  Or,

  “My Dull Life as a Dummy at Galleries Lafayette.”

  She read some of it, but it was naughty and rude so she stopped herself.

  Then she snuck another peek.

  “Oh my,” she said. Then giggled.

  Her footsteps echoed as she walked and that was when she noticed the singing had stopped.

  What if they know I’m here?

  Her experience with strangers had been mostly kind, to this point, but that was no reason to let down her guard.

  Oh. So, there’s a cat.

  It sat on a mannequin’s lap and stared at Elise. It was a fat brown cat with a fat white belly. There was a brown harness strapped around it, like a little costume

  Elise reached out her hand.

  “Here, puss.”

  It yawned and looked at her as if she had just been pooped out of a chicken.

  “Nice puss.”

  The cat stretched, jumped down, and ran toward the stairwell that led to the next level.

  Elise followed the cat up the stairs.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE LOST OLD MAN

  IT WAS A dizzying ascent.

  Elise dashed up the metal stairs and she could see through the ironwork, through the beams and struts at her feet and at her side.

  It was a long way down.

  The cat in the little costume had long since left Elise behind, but since she didn’t see it come back down, she had to assume that it waited at the top.

  The second platform, three hundred feet above the desert that had once been a park, wasn’t as wildly bizarre or nearly as creepy as the fancy ball experience on the first level. There were a few tables set with plastic flowers and a massive sculpture of a long-horned bull that had somehow been brought to a position of authority atop a pile of sand. The bull had been painted every color of the rainbow and it wore sunglasses. A cartoon word balloon, cut out of cardboard, hovered over its head.

  “So it’s come to this,” it said.

  The hot-air balloon was there as well. It sat in t
he shadow of the west side of the tower. Elise wouldn’t have been able to see it from the street. The basket was tilted under the weight of the deflated gas bag. On close inspection, the bag was stitched together out of all kinds of blue sheets, blankets, and bags. The stitching was the gold she had seen, and it was copper wire that gleamed in the light of the red sun.

  A sign on the side of the basket warned “Weight Limit 25 Kilos” in bold red letters.

  That wasn’t much weight, not even as much as Elise.

  Who could be so tiny that they could ride in the balloon?

  There was a fishing pole next to the balloon, and the line was tied to the basket.

  Fishing for hot air balloons? What?

  The singing had resumed, this time with an unfamiliar but pretty song. It was a man’s voice, and it was accompanied by guitar. Two people and a fat cat at the top? Elise kept climbing.

  Breathing was hard, and the backpack was heavy.

  And then she was there, her head popping up out of the stairwell, onto the small top platform of the Eiffel Tower.

  She smelled coffee, cat piss, and burning wood.

  The singer was launching into another unfamiliar tune sung in something that sounded like Arabic when he stopped. The guitar jangled to a halt, and the note lingered in the air.

  Elise stood in the silence of the morning and stared at the man who sat on a wooden stool holding the guitar.

  He was lean and his skin was the color of an old fashioned diving helmet. He wore bell bottom blue jeans, white deck shoes, and a red shirt. A dark blue watch cap topped his head and long white dreadlocks spilled out from underneath.

  The man’s nose was bulbous and his eyes were green as the sea and wide with the shock of seeing a little girl pop up out of the stairwell.

  No, it couldn’t be him.

  “When you interrupt a singer an angel in heaven dies of scabies,” the man said, then returned to strumming his guitar.

  Elise walked closer.

  A little wood burning stove was at the man’s side, and next to that was a table holding a cup of coffee and a bottle of some kind of liquor. A navy blue pea coat hung from a rack. A stack of wood was piled close, and the fat cat in the costume was lying next to it, sprawled on its back with legs akimbo and white belly exposed to the sky.

  A dozen more cats, each wearing the little harness costume, idled about, lying here and there.

  A mannequin, attractive as mannequins go, stood at the man’s side. She was fashionably dressed in black and wore a charming little hat.

  When the man resumed his song, he sang to the mannequin. His voice was deep and good and rich with emotion.

  If Elise were much older, or more wise in the ways of country music, she would have recognized the tune as “Galveston.” The words were in Arabic, but that word kept repeating.

  Elise stared at the man.

  He was framed against the ochre sky and iron beams, the wind harder up here than below but still not bad, and he sang a love song to a plastic dummy.

  “Who are you?”

  The man stopped and glared at her.

  “You, mademoiselle, are a killer of angels, an assassin of song. And go wash your face.” Then, he brought a long brown finger to his lips and pantomimed “shush.”

  Elise felt of her face. Dirty? She couldn’t tell and didn’t care.

  “What’s her name?”

  Elise pointed at the mannequin.

  The man raised a bushy right eyebrow.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Elise St. Jacques.”

  He nodded.

  “She is Tatienne, the profound and wondrous, premiere diva of the Grand Opera and scandal of Antibes. Her mysteries have mysteries.”

  And with that, he began a song Elise recognized from her Dad’s music collection.

  “Beat on the Brat,” by The Ramones. In French.

  “Who are you?”

  He stopped again, his eyes popping from his head with either surprise or anger.

  “Monsieur Fancyboots, escort this Elise St. Whatever to the door.”

  The cat stayed sprawled, oblivious.

  “Monsieur Fancyboots, you shame me. You are a presumptuous puss. Very well, mon fil, if what I say will silence you and allow me to continue sweet Tatienne’s serenade, then so be it. I am the current owner of the Tour Eiffel. The restaurant is mine, and still over-priced, the cafe is mine, if the damned electricity worked, the lift would be mine as well.”

  He set his guitar down and stood, arms out, voice rising, offering the view to Elise.

  “I am, by virtue of that, also the owner of the finest, most awful, most heart breaking view in the entire God Damned world. I am the owner, sole proprietor, and until a moment ago sole tourist of this view of the city once called Paris. This pit, this hole to hell, this wasteland. Paris is mine.”

  The man picked up his guitar and sat on the stool.

  “I am Commander Jules Valiance of Les Scaphandriers, leader of the Astonishing Aquanauts, and destroyer of worlds. Nice to meet you, Elise St. Blah Blah Blah. Now let me play in peace.”

  He began to sing again. “Guts and Teeth” by Old Man Markley in English this time, sung slow and warm, the sound carrying out through the breeze.

  There were blankets scattered about. Elise picked one up, shook the cat fur out of it, and wrapped herself against the chill. She walked to the edge of the tower, delicately stepping around sleeping felines as she went.

  All of Paris was there, and none of it.

  The dry Seine, the sand swept streets, the magnificent old buildings now shattered and broken. There was Notre Dame, still standing. There was the Montparnasse Tower, fallen and spread out across the 15th Arrondissement like a terrible deck of cards.

  Something even more terrible could be seen off to the north. There, the entire city was gone. North of Paris was a pit, a crater, as if the Earth had been scraped away. It looked like a wound.

  In the distance, to the east, there was a dark red and black wall, a wave as tall as the sky, the oncoming storm of dust, lightning and thunder that would strike when the sun went down. She could see it coming, like you see a storm on the horizon.

  Elise sat cross legged and unstrapped her backpack. She reached into it and retrieved a bottle of cola. She drank deep and sat watching the world beyond through the iron fence, a thousand feet in the air, less sand and dust up here, so she could open her eyes, really open her eyes and see.

  This was a new, dead world. There were no colonies of people playing football or petanques. There was no movement, no traffic, no bicycles. If there were people down there they were hidden away, like Robert and Renny or the bungee man of Notre Dame. And this was certainly no world for a child.

  Monsieur Fancyboots nuzzled up to her as if asking permission to join her in reverie. Elise opened her hand on her lap and the fat old cat curled up on her, his weight a shock, and purred. She stroked him behind his ear.

  They had never had a pet. Too much moving around, never in one place for long. Dad has always promised that, as soon as they settled, she could have a cat, or a dog, or a snake, or a gibbon if such things were sold in stores, although gibbons were known to fling poo and that might have been problematic.

  She liked the feel of Monsieur Fancyboots in her lap. He was warm and squishy and fuzzy.

  A perfect meal for a sand slug or shadow man.

  Elise grew cold.

  “I hate myself.”

  She hated the darkness in her, how she could turn a sweet moment sour with a thought.

  There must have been something wrong with her.

  But, she wasn’t a child that liked fooling herself, and this was no world for little furry cats, either.

  For the second time in as many days, Elise cried.

  This time, though, she cried in sadness, yes, at what she saw beyond, at what she knew to be the fate of the city, and the loss of innocence and she cried for the horror that waits for cats and other small things in this awf
ul new world.

  But she cried tears of joy, too. Her heart was going to burst.

  Of course her Dad hadn’t lied.

  Of course Jules Valiance was real.

  Of course he was real.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HUNGER

  SCYNDA WAS THE color and texture of the sand all around, pale and rough with specks of red.

  She was the Champs de Mar desert come to life.

  The turquoise ant was vibrant in her fingers.

  She held it by the thorax, gently, so it wouldn’t be alarmed. The ant’s antennae waved about and its mandibles opened and closed looking for something to bite.

  Those steely sharp mandibles.

  Scynda walked to the South Tower, carefully avoiding the lumps in the sand and the quivering, azure ant streams, thousands of them, seeking food.

  You hungry little things. You’ve eaten all the human stuff that had been. The benches and the vessels of steel and the false trees that had once fruited strange lights.

  You’ve eaten the human things and now you are eating the slugs and then you’ll rest again in your castles until you have found or are given another meal.

  I know you and your kind. You sleep when there is no food, and you can sleep for eons if that’s the world you’ve found, a hungry world.

  She held the ant over the iron at the foot of the tower, waving it, teasing it, then she brushed its mandibles over the iron.

  Scynda’s skin became dark bronze and sleek.

  The ant opened its mandibles wide. The antennae became agitated. The mandibles clenched hard against the iron. Scynda released the ant, so that it clung to the iron girder, biting, struggling to eat the iron.

  Liquid squirted from the ant’s mouth and thorax.

  Wisps of smoke drifted up where the liquid, the acid, ate into the metal.

  The mandibles sliced into the melted iron and the ant fed.

  Scynda smiled.

  The antennae on the head of the ant waved wildly and the other ants somehow received that signal. They turned as one and streamed to the South Tower.