Once they put the lights out, the two siblings would lie in their beds and talk about their day until one of them fell asleep.
Tonight, though, Baldar was out with three friends.
The moon was high. Thousands of fireflies were converging around the mangrove trees that grew at the distant reaches of the lake—thousands of flickering dots of light.
Then it happened, as it had happened almost every night: the beetles synchronized their rhythm until a unified beam of light emanated from the mangroves and pulsated across the surface of the lake like a giant heartbeat.
The four children stopped rowing and watched in silence. The two small catamarans gradually came to a stop, gently bobbing in the shimmering water.
Baldar and Sengal sat in one of the boats, leaning over, their arms deep in the water. The girls were in the other catamaran. Anise lay on her back, her head resting in Pyre’s lap and gazed at the night sky. Her friend brushed her hair.
A long time passed. Finally, Sengal took up his oar and resumed rowing. Pyre did likewise. The two catamarans easily slid across the water.
“Miraculous plant,” Anise said out of nowhere. She sat up. “I have this…idea for a flower.” She closed her eyes and described a wide arc with her hands. “A delicate, magical moon plant. Only when the moon is full and shining on the ground, the plant becomes solid, and you can see it: beautiful and silvery.”
Pyre was titillated by Anise’s concept. “Here is another plant idea,” she exclaimed. “Sunflowers, which open up and sing during sunrise and sunset!”
In the other boat, Baldar smiled in appreciation but said nothing.
Anise’s brows furrowed in thought. Then her expression dissolved into an irrepressible grin as she was struck by another idea. “A tree with huge fruits that are hollow. When they are mature, they start to glow from the inside. They grow at the bottom of lakes. Their fruits keep growing and put out more light ‘til, eventually, they burst in an explosion of light. The whole lake is—”
“A storm is coming!” Sengal cut in. As soon as he’d said it, they all could smell the change in the night air. They started rowing in earnest toward the nearest bank.
Sengal glanced over from the other boat. “Sorry, Anise, you were saying?”
“No, no. I’ve said it.” Her catamaran sped across the wavelets, keeping pace with Sengal’s.
About a minute later, their catamarans surfed clear of the water and came to a stop on the pebbles. As they secured the boats, they heard the first rumble of distant thunder. All six of the community’s catamarans were moored. No one else was out.
The two girls mounted the boys, who piggybacked them up the rocky embankment. A few months ago, the boys had carried the girls in jest; now it has become a ritual of sorts.
Pyre was excited. “Anise, here is another idea. What if animals grew on trees like fruits do!? So, butterflies start off as flowers that resemble colorful wings. At some point, when they are fully formed, they turn into actual butterflies, break off the tree, and fly!”
Anise squealed in delight, and her arms tightened around Sengal’s shoulders. “Oh, it’s wonderful! So, we shall have a hairy bush that will produce…bunnies!”
Pyre burst out laughing. “We will also have a flower that puts out sneezing powder. Its hairs scatter in the wind like a dandelion’s. Think about the poor neighboring plants: sneezing and sneezing. When its leaves decompose, they vanish in a little puff of smoke with a hiss!”
“Enough,” gasped Anise. “Let’s put these ideas down on paper!”
“How about writing our own imaginary-plant encyclopedia?” Baldar mused out loud. “With illustrations.”
Pyre gaped for a moment. Her eyes lit up. “Yes! This way we can show it to everybody!”
The girls dismounted, and the four of them stood together.
“Let’s share the idea with the storyteller in Madding.” Anise was excited, hopping in place.
The first drops fell, but none of them seemed to care.
“Sengal?” Baldar had been watching his friend for some time now. “What about you?” He had to raise his voice above the sudden rush of rain.
“I want to sit here by the lake and watch,” the boy replied with a faint smile.
Baldar was disappointed but tried not to show it. “I will be going along with Anise and Pyre.”
Each of them, in turn, hugged Sengal, and they set out on their way to Madding Citadel.
The monsoon storm blanketed the world, and the mulch-covered trail was crisscrossed with rivulets of running water. The three young people clutched one another and struggled forward against the wind and the cascades of rain. Each time lightning struck, they shouted in fright and excitement. The palm trees took the shape of the wind and gave it a voice through their flailing branches. In their minds, the children were transported into the middle of a stormy ocean. They fought to retain control of their ship and occasionally brandished imaginary sticks, fending off sea monsters.
By the time the three kids reached Madding Citadel, the storm had petered out. They were thoroughly drenched and were hopping in place, taking deep, shaky breaths.
“Why!” exclaimed the elderly storyteller, as he swung open one of the giant doors. “It looks like a dragon sneezed down on you.” The young people whooped and laughed as they entered the large anteroom.
Like many other children from the canton, they had grown up on tales of the Madding storyteller. A child would wake up, and there would be the old man, winking and beckoning them to follow. A group of them would stroll by the shore of the lake as the old man pointed at things and wove tale after mesmerizing tale. Or a child would fall ill, and the storyteller would come and sit by his bedside. The child would lie gazing at the ceiling and let the melodious voice of the storyteller whisk him millions of light-years away to planets circled by three blue stars, or to caverns deep in the bowels of the earth where outlandish races lived.
The storyteller fetched some towels and spare sets of clothing. In short order, he ushered the three kids into the main chamber, where a merry fire roared in the wide hearth. Now dry and changed, the children wrapped themselves in blankets and lounged on the carpet, sipping hot apple cider. A woman they had never met before stood nearby, wearing plain, somewhat strange attire.
“Viora Lee Evans is a traveler from afar on a pilgrimage to Lion Rock,” explained the older man in answer to their curious gazes. “Now that the storm has died down, would one of you be so kind as to take her to the Hsu’s? They posted that they would be happy to have her for the night and to aid the viora with her journey.”
Anise nodded and got up.
Lee bowed her head. “I am most grateful to the Hsu family but, if it is all the same to you, I would like to stay and listen.” She stifled a yawn, her body protesting; she hadn’t slept for two days straight. “At least for a little while,” she added, giving an apologetic smile.
As the storyteller’s wife set a tray of food down on the rug, Anise began describing their ideas to the elderly man. Inexplicably as always, her and Pyre’s concepts grew and took form under the guiding questions of the storier.
It was predawn.
Something caused Xini Hsu to wake up. The little girl opened her eyes and gaped in bewilderment. A long rod hung from the open window, hovering somewhere above the log bed. The tip of the rod held a chunk of aromatic naan bread.
Xini gave a loud squeak and jumped up, arms outstretched. “Catch it! Catch it!” Three little heads poked out of the blanket. The rod retreated quickly through the windowsill and the four girls after it, shrieking.
They chased Tono across the alabaster-colored flagstones and around the small island of flowers, startling a herd of ducks. The children caught up with the stocky man in the garden. They attacked him till he relented the piece of bread, gasping for air and holding his sides that hurt from laughter.
In a tangled mass of flailing arms and legs, the four little girls climbed onto a massive armchair at the center of the clearing. Their squeals were the signal to the rest of the hamlet that breakfast preparations were to commence.
The community members began gathering. In short order, two dozen people were cutting vegetables and preparing the batter.
Alliandra Hsu handed her daughter Xini a cleaver and some of the violet-colored purslane she had been slicing. There was no need for talk; the little girl knew what was expected of her.
Lee watched in avid interest the large circular griddle around which three people cooked and sang. They spread some batter and then worked in eggs, which formed bubbles as the wrap baked. The cooks proceeded to sprinkle green onion and cilantro on top. It seemed that the Chinese crepe-like jianbing existed in this world too.
When breakfast preparations were over, everyone stood around the low, long table. A profound silence settled over the small clearing. And then, as one, they seated themselves on the straw mats.
Shendor motioned to Xini, and the girl approached her father. He put her on his lap.
It was dawn. No one said anything; each of the adults contemplated the approaching day privately.
An undefined measure of time went by and concluded with the first floods of sunlight bursting from the east.
Shendor tore off a chunk of the freshly made crepe and passed the tray to the person next to him. Breakfast commenced. The adults were quiet, relishing the food and the moment. The children intuitively followed suit.
Half an hour later, the meal was coming to an end. People were conversing in soft voices, and the children had already dashed off to play.
Alliandra Hsu snuggled on her husband’s lap. She wrapped one arm about him and peered up at the stranger who had arrived in the wee hours of the night. She had short brown hair and bright, bottle-green eyes. The visitor had not offered any details, and they did not press for any. Her business was her own if she so chose.
“Well rested?”
Lee grinned. “I crashed like a rock and slept like the dead.” She bowed deeply. “Once again, thank you for your hospitality.”
“It’s a pleasure,” said Alliandra, eyes warm.
About an hour later, Lee and the Hsus walked around a small construction site, where many of the people of the hamlet were busily at work. “It is not every year we get the opportunity to build a house for a newly married people in our community,” Shendor was telling Lee. “This is one of those occasions to collaborate on something relatively big, children and adults alike.”
“How does it work out, exactly?” Lee wanted to know.
“A few weeks ago, the would-be householders sat with the architect and the interior designer, working out the details. After that, well, it was down to construction.” He motioned broadly. “First was the piping, plumbing, and foundation. This is next.” Shendor pointed at extraordinarily long tubular sandbags filled with earth. “They are set in a circular fashion, one atop the other, each tubular circle slightly smaller than the one below it, until eventually we end up with a squat dome. In between and around the individual sandbags we place metal wires.”
Lee shook her head in wonder. It hadn’t occurred to her that one could construct houses with little more than sand.
“We construct a series of interconnected domes, each making up a room. Next, we plaster the domes with a mixture of lime, clay, straw, and sand. This is followed by the windows, doors, and paint.” He gave a boyish grin. “It’s a joy.”
But of course. It was so simple, so perfect, so sensible, realized Lee.
On the world she had left behind, people dreamed of having a house of their own. They saved and worked for years and decades—then spent years and decades paying a mortgage to a bank. Here, it was largely something the community members knocked off in a matter of weeks—having the time of their lives doing it. And that was it.
Chapter 18
Around midday, the sun was an impossible source of brilliance in an endless expanse of blue sky and cotton-white clouds. Far down below, the vehicle of the Hsus clanked its way down the packed dirt road and was watched from afar by an elephant herd in the park-like landscape of trees and tan-colored grass. Lee stared at the behemoths; they were huge, almost twice the height of Asian elephants!
A telephone was installed inside the car. It took the entire upper half of its interior. And it was ringing now. Every ring shook the car.
In the rear seat, Alliandra and Lee struggled with the handset. But it was stuck—as it had been stuck for the past two years. “Hello” shouted the Hsu family in unison, but the wooden handset was firmly wedged in the body of the telephone, and so the caller could not hear them. “We need to fix the telephone,” declared Shendor from the driver’s seat, which won him a round of enthusiastic, mocking applause from the others. He honked twice for emphasis.
The name of the vehicle was Sassy. Its outer hull was a quilt work of zebrawood and riveted plates of bronze and brass. It had two chimneys at the rear, which whistled whenever the car accelerated, and hot steam escaped.
Earlier, they had picked up three young hitchhikers. The three children were now on the roof, fastened to its welded seats. No doubt the trio had to continually push away the thicket of ferns that grew through the roof and flailed wildly in the wind. There had been a loud exchange among the three boys and Xini about some secret language. Now it was quiet. Xini held a sheet of paper, and with a look of intense concentration, was rapping on the side of the car, then becoming still, waiting for the boys’ coded response.
About twenty kilometers later, they stopped by a road junction and said goodbye to the three boys. Alliandra had posted a query over the Telnet, and one vehicle responded. It was to cross the junction and would give the children a ride to their hamlet. Alliandra refilled their back pouches with water and gave them sandwich wraps; Xini hugged the boys for the last time; and Sassy started on the road again.
Another hour passed, and they crossed a beltway of dark flagstones, about two dozen feet wide, that wound about and disappeared into the distance. Lee noted the area adjacent to it was devoid of any large shrubs or trees. “What’s that?” she asked.
“A-three-hundred-kilometer security parameter, marking the edges of the human habitat zone,” Shendor replied. “It keeps out the dangerous.”
“Being what?”
“The two apex carnivores on the island that may prey on humans: the leopards and the crocodiles, some of which exceed fifteen feet in length. However, this barrier does not hinder the back-and-forth movement of any other animal species. You will find within the human zone anything from water buffaloes and gaurs to hippos and sloth bears to packs of dholes.”
Lee looked back at the receding beltway of dark stones. “Leopards and crocodiles must really not like those flagstones, huh?”
Shendor laughed. “This corridor is equipped with rapid, continuous laser pulses and radars along with thermal and conventional surveillance cameras. In tandem, they scan the terrain and feed the data to an image recognition program. The software has at its disposal an assortment of tools to deter different species of animals. Its toolkit includes blinding psychedelic flashlights and recordings such as those of firecrackers and bee swarms. It also commands an array of metal cylinders that abut each other and can temporarily come up to any needed height, forming a wall that is electrified at the program’s discretion. The animals adapt, but so does the self-learning software.
“Within our zone, we do act a bit as ecological proxies for the two apex predators that are kept out and do some hunting to keep populations in check—providing us with meat while we’re at it.”
Alliandra chimed in, “In addition, we have inner security corridors surrounding the individual hamlets. They form more restrictive animal barriers within the broader protected zone. These inner corridors keep out anything that poses a
danger to our young ones or wreaks havoc on our food forests: elephants, rhinos, wild boars, and krait snakes.”
It was but moments later that a massive granite monolith emerged into view. Shendor drove Sassy a bit farther down the dirt road, and the bronze-and-brass vehicle came to a shuddering stop. The great rock column was about half a mile away from the roadway.
Earlier, Lee had told them this last leg of the pilgrimage she was to undertake on her own. She tucked into a holster the fast-acting tranquilizer gun Alliandra had provided her. She warmly hugged each of them, thanked them profusely, and soon disappeared among the trees.
Her walk through the tropical foliage was uneventful with the occasional squawking of parakeets. The massive rock loomed ever-larger through the openings in the canopy. Until suddenly, she was out of the trees, a few paces away from the stone monolith that stretched in both directions.
Lee had been instructed what to search for. She began walking alongside the column of rock. At some point, she stepped around a bend and there it was: a deep, narrow gash in the face of the rock. Bending down, she made her way inside. On her arm, the bracelet started glowing, illuminating the dark passageway and indicating she was a short distance from her destination.
After a few dozen paces, the passage dead-ended. The wall in front of her was pockmarked with naturally occurring nooks and crannies. But one was a pretender. Her now-glowing bracelet morphed its shape and flowed into it. A single click, and the wall dematerialized.
She took a deep breath and stepped into the void.
From behind, she heard a distinct reverberating click, and every source of light disappeared. She was no longer on Qataria. Blackness engulfed her, devoid of anything. Nothing existed but the faint sounds of her breathing and beating heart. She’d been here before, but this time, she was alone—Hagar was not there to lead.
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