by Ned Vizzini
She smiles. I like watching her smile; I like watching her move. Mom and Dad would be proud of me, walking in the country and talking with a girl. Isn’t this what they sent me to camp for?
64
“CAN WE SING A SONG?” I ASK MORTIN.
“Why?”
“When travelers are off on an adventure, they sing songs to pass the time. Everyone knows that.”
“Maybe travelers who are interested in getting killed.”
“Aw, c’mon. Do one! You’ve got to know one!”
“Do you know any songs?” Ada asks.
“I know a song from my brother’s band.”
“What’s your brother like?”
“He’s in rehab. His songs have good melodies but terrible lyrics. I can try to change the lyrics on the fly.”
I look around. No one in any direction. No kids to make fun of me. I tilt my head to the sky and sing, switching to a falsetto to do a shadow of the backing vocals:
We are the stoners (aah-ah!)
We’ll hit you with large stones (aah-ah!)
We’ll never fight alone (ah-ahhh)
On the road
“What is that?” Mortin says. “I didn’t hit anybody with a stone. Did you?”
“I’m improvising!”
“I think it’s good, Peregrine,” says Ada. “What are the backup parts? Aah-ah?”
I teach the notes to her, and then to Mortin and Gamary. We sing out variations as we walk through the hills.
My name is Mortin (aah-ah!)
I’ve been cavooortin’ (aah-ah!)
With all these miscreants (ah-ahhh)
But I look good
My name’s Gamary (aah-ah!)
I’m really sorry (aah-ah!)
For selling you out to the cops (ah-ahhh)
Y’all got robbed
My name is Ada (aah-ah!)
I’ll catch you later (aah-ah!)
Unless we catch you first (ah-ahhh)
In a world of—
“Hooves!” Ada yells.
I cup my ears. Faint. It sounds like they’re coming out of the hills, like something is beating the inside of the earth.
“Off the road!” Mortin orders. He runs to the left; Ada, Gamary, and I follow onto the grass. The hooves get louder quickly; their studded beats fill the air. I trip and tumble down a hill, alternating views of sky and grass as the ground hits me over and over. I glimpse a group of centaurs passing by, done up in shining armor, their arms pumping at their sides as if they’re running as men and horses at the same time.
“Who—are—?” I manage. Ada pulls me behind a rock, where I watch the cloud of dust behind the centaurs recede over the next set of hills. She points to a rolling platform that they’re pulling. Tentacled figures and fish-men stand on it, gazing out. “Oh.”
“Reconnaissance.”
“Officer Tendrile? I thought he wouldn’t leave the city!”
“Me too. If he and his troops are looking for us, we’re no longer a regional issue. Maybe he got a special dispensation from the Appointees to find us.”
“Like FBI-style?”
“We’ve got to keep off the road,” Mortin says. “We’ll cut across the hills.”
“I’m not going off-road in the suburbs,” Gamary says.
I laugh. I can’t help it. He’s so serious.
“What?”
“It’s just … where I’m from, the suburbs are pretty safe.”
“Hey.” Gamary lifts me up. I’m glad the centaur patrol is down the road because it would be easy for them to see me kicking in the air. “Don’t think your ignorance is cute, okay? You don’t know what’s in these hills.”
“Gamary, put him down!”
“What’s there to be worried about?” I nod at the grass, the clouds, and the small huts (where I hope we will be stopping soon for a meal from a kindhearted family). Gamary drops me.
“Ow! That’s my bad ankle!”
“Calm down, everybody,” Ada says. “Look.” She pulls out something I’ve been hoping I would see at some point: a map.
“Amazing!” I say. “What’s a Villalba?”
“That’s the name of the supercontinent that makes up our world.”
“So that’s what I can call it! Not World of the Other Normals. Villalba.”
“No, that’s like saying China and Asia are the same thing.”
“Why does it look like New Jersey?”
“It’s how the geology worked out here, Peregrine, okay? Could you not argue with me?”
“I just really dig maps. They’re a critical component of playing Creatures and Caverns. I wish I’d seen this sooner—”
“We’re here.” She points at a spot depressingly close to Subbenia. “We have to go here.” She points to Upekki. That’s depressingly close too. We can’t go any farther in this world? “Off-road it’ll take forever, but not if we cut across to the Warbledash River and travel by boat.”
“Where are we going to get a boat?” Mortin asks.
“We can make a raft.”
“With what wood?”
“You and I both know what’s going to happen by the time we get to the Warbledash,” Gamary warns.
“I’ve got that covered,” Ada says. “We’ll roll in some dirt.”
“Why?”
Mortin sighs. “To hide our scents.”
“Why?”
“Because the Benia suburbs are populated by cynos.”
“Which ones were those? The dog-heads? So?”
“They’re sort of … culturally different from city cynos.”
“How?”
“They eat trespassers.”
“It’s actually legal here,” Ada says. “Once you’re off the road, it’s legal to eat you.”
I hear a howl in the distance.
65
WE ALL WORK QUICKLY ON A PATCH OF grass, pulling it up to expose the dry, crumbling earth beneath. Mortin presses it against himself, using spit to make it stick. He dabs some under his eye and covers up his bruise.
“Where’d you get that, Mortin?”
“I was in prison; don’t be asking me stupid questions.”
“But didn’t you have it before, when I first met you?”
“Don’t, Perry.”
Gamary is next; he rolls in the dirt. When he gets up, he looks like an abused circus animal. Ada gently pats herself with handfuls of soil; it brings out the sharp, rotten smell she showed me before.
“Is this necessary?” I stand in front of the dirt patch. I don’t want to be smelly in front of Ada. She nods at me, and I kneel. The soil is cool and stinky on my knees. I drop to my stomach and roll, spitting on my hands, pressing them against my chest, feeling the dirt cling to me. “How do I look?” I ask.
“Earthy.”
“How do I smell?”
“Uncompromising. What do you say? ‘Punk rock.’”
We go single file: Mortin, Ada, me, Gamary. Dirt falls from me as I walk, but enough stays on to provide the unpleasant tang. We keep silent; the sun creeps along at the same pace as us. The hills are low and manageable, but there’s something strange about them—I only realize after the first hour. There aren’t any bird or insect sounds. No buzzing, no squirrels running around … the countryside is filled with silence that eats up the sunlight and makes me think that we’re in an illusion, a terrarium, being watched.
The howls come frequently, at unpredictable intervals. They echo through the hills, clear and defined in the unnatural silence, always answered. Unseen creatures are speaking over us.
Whenever we spot a hut, or a clump of rocks that looks fashioned by intelligence, we stay clear. At times, Mortin holds his hand up for us to stop and then drops to the ground to crawl up the nearest hill. At the top he licks the end of his tail and lifts it above him to determine wind direction. If the wind is blowing toward a nearby hut, he brings us around the leeward side of the hill so the breeze won’t pick up our scent. It’s slow, painstaking work, and soon the
sun is close to the horizon behind us.
“When are we going to eat?” I ask.
“I was waiting for somebody to say it,” Gamary says.
Mortin stops. “Ada, where are we?”
She pulls out the map and looks for a landmark, but besides the mountains to the north and the huts, which aren’t big enough to be on the map, there’s nothing. “Maybe here?” She points to a spot a hairbreadth off the main road.
“We have to have come farther than that,” I say. “My legs are aching, seriously.”
“I thought you were an adventurer who wanted to kill Ophisa. Now you have achy legs?”
“Shhh,” Gamary whispers.
“Are you sure all the people who live here are cannibals?” I press. “Maybe some are, but some are nice folks who will give us food.”
“You’re about to get smacked,” Mortin says. “We keep moving all night if we have to. If we make the Warbledash by tomorrow morning, we’ll catch some fish.”
“Uck. Who eats fish for breakfast?”
Everyone stares at me.
“Sorry. I mean, it would be great to have fish for breakfast.”
“Hi!”
We all jump back. The voice is chipper and young; it comes from the hill next to us, but when we look at it, we see nothing, and for a moment I wonder if the ground spoke. Then I hear giggling and look at the hill opposite the one that seemed to talk. A small boy with a dog head sits on a rock, wearing a getma.
66
THE DOG-BOY HOPS UP AND RUNS FORWARD on all fours, then stops and eyes us again, curious. “Fooled ya! It’s the echo. See? Puuu- la!”
He throws his voice against the opposite hill. It’s even better this time; I see his mouth move but still hear “la!” from behind me. It makes me wonder if the howls we heard all afternoon were really coming from where we thought they were.
“Watcha’ll doing?” the boy asks. His dog head is shaggy and brown, with drooping ears and a bright black nose and pointy yellow teeth. He wears a simple leather collar. His boy body is tan and wiry. “Why you all painted up in dirt?”
“We’re … ah … we’re playing a game,” Mortin says.
“Really? I love games! You been playin’ awhile! I seen you from allaway back. Been playing my own game, following you, practicing echoes. Puuu- la!”
The sound hits me from behind again.
“We’re just passing through,” Mortin says.
The boy’s face drops. Like a dog, his expressions are exaggerated and easily understood. “That’s no fun. Why you wanna leave the Echoing Hills? Here you can have fun all day! Play in the sun, make friends, what’s the problem?”
“Are your parents around?”
“Why you want to get them involved, huh? You trynna get me in trouble?”
“Not at all, no. We just want to get through the Echoing Hills and finish our game.”
“You from the city?”
“Yes.”
“You got candy?”
“No.”
“You got a fire maker?”
“A lighter? No. And I don’t have any pebbles either, so don’t remind me.”
“Mmmm-kay. I’ll play a game with you. If yer from the city, you like fire, right? Campfire? Place to stay for the night?”
“Yes! Definitely!”
“I’ll take you to an old campfire. You just gotta find me first. Close your eyes!”
Mortin shuts his. He taps my side and I do the same. There’s a lot of emotion in his tap. It says, This is a dangerous cannibal cyno child and you must do as he says.
Behind my eyelids, shapes dance in echoes of sunlight. “Now where am I?” the boy calls. “Puuu- la!”
It sounds like he’s right in front of us. I can picture his floppy ears, lolling tongue, and askew head. I start to speak, but Mortin says, “Behind us!”
“Open your eyes!”
I blink. The boy is nowhere to be seen. I wheel around. There he is, on the hill opposite, squatting, eyes bright, ears up.
“Good one! Not so dumb fer city folk! Now close ’em again!”
He does it once more, calling seemingly from behind us. Mortin guesses that he’s in front of us, and when we open our eyes, there he is, at the top of the next hill east. “This way!” he calls. Mortin shrugs at us like, What else can we do?
67
WE TAKE TWENTY MINUTES TO WALK THE next half mile because we have to close our eyes and guess where the dog-boy is every two minutes. If Mortin gets the right answer too often, he says, “No fair! Yer cheating!” and makes us do it all over.
“Where am I now?” he asks. The sun has set behind us but some light remains.
“Polo!” I yell back.
“What? What’d he say?”
“It’s a game! Marco Polo. It’s faster. We’ll just close our eyes and call ‘Marco,’ and then you say ‘Polo,’ and we’ll try to follow you by your voice.”
“Why ‘Polo’?”
“Marco Polo, he was an explorer.”
“Where?”
“Ah …”
“Subbenia,” Mortin cuts in. “Upper Subbenia.”
“Okay, try!” the boy says. “Try!”
“I’m closing my eyes! And I’m holding everybody’s hand!” I reach out for Mortin’s worn one and Ada’s fine soft one. Gamary grips my shoulder. “Marco!”
“Polo!” the boy calls from behind me. He isn’t very inventive when it comes to tricking us; he uses straight reverse psychology every time. I walk forward. My friends step with me.
“Marco!”
Behind me: “Polo!”
I walk forward. “Marco!”
“Open your eyes!” We’ve reached him. He sits at the foot of the next hill, grinning ear to ear. “I like this game!” He squints at me. “What are you, anyway? You’re not ferrous; you’re not a satty—”
“He’s an attenuate, like me,” Ada says.
“His ears aren’t pointy.”
“I know, that’s just—”
“And he’s not tall—”
“He’s still growing—”
“Is his hair blue? I can’t tell, can’t see color, wouldn’t know what blue is, heh!”
“He’s a mutant,” Ada says.
“Hey!”
She squeezes my hand. “He’s a mutant friend of mine. Don’t you like playing Marco Polo with him?”
“Yeah!”
“So let’s keep playing then, and you lead us to that campfire.”
“What’s his name?”
“John Johnson,” I say. “What’s yours?”
“Puuu- la!” the boy calls, throwing another echo behind me, and I’m not sure if he’s telling us his name or just going off into his semidemented dog-child world, but that’s what I end up calling him.
68
IT’S DARK WHEN WE REACH THE PLACE Pula promised: an old campfire next to a thin brook. The brook is narrow enough for me to stand over with one leg on either side. All of us, including Pula, drink heaping handfuls from it.
I’ve never been a fan of water. When I get thirsty, I get thirsty for soda. If I get water instead, it feels like punishment. But this is different. This is magic. All my cells rejoice. I lie in the grass with a full, sloshing stomach and look up at the night sky.
“Whoa.”
“What?” Ada asks.
“Stars!”
“So?”
“Look at how many! So much more than Earth!”
She eyes Pula. He’s conversing by the campfire with Mortin and Gamary, ignoring us. “There aren’t more stars here than on Earth. Even with six hundred million years of separation, our stars are roughly the same. Can’t you recognize them?”
“You can’t see stars in New York.”
“That’s horrible. How can you live without stars? What keeps you from thinking about yourself all the time?”
I think about how I think about myself too much. Do I? Of course. I think I have an excuse because it seems the world is out to get me and I have t
o think about myself in order to defend myself. But all egotists have this excuse.
“Stars pull reverse psychology on you, my mother always told me,” Ada says. “When you look at them, you should feel terrified, because they’re so big, and so far, but they comfort you instead.”
“Do you see your mom still?”
“She’s dead.”
I almost say I’m sorry, but the words are too small.
“Your father?”
“He was never part of the picture. I lived with my mother until she got sick. Then I became an Appointee ward. Officially, the state is like all of our parents, so when our actual parents are gone, it takes over their responsibilities—and benefits. I was slated to work in an orchard, but Mortin saw something in me. He purchased me at auction.”
“Like a car?”
“Like a father. It’s tough for you to understand. The relationship between consultant and intern is time-honored. Mortin’s like my boss, my business partner, my mentor—but he could trade me up if someone better came along. He never has. He’s training me to work in a big house like Sulice. In exchange, he’ll get a cut of my income when I’m older.”
“That seems kind of … wrong.”
“What, you don’t have that arrangement with your parents?”
“My parents are divorced, Ada.”
“I know. They don’t expect to be taken care of when they’re older, though?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Too busy thinking about yourself?”
“My parents hardly take care of me now. They leave that up to the lawyers. I don’t feel responsible for them.”
“Do you love them?”
“Jeez.” I think about it. “In a knee-jerk way, sure. But I don’t know if it counts.”
“You should love them. You should love them hard.”
I look at the stars. Ada’s right: they force you to think in a different direction.
“What was your mother like? Mrs. Ember?”
“She wasn’t Mrs. Ember. Her name was Athis Danet. She sold baskets at market. She was always picking fibers off herself.”
“How’d you get ‘Ada Ember,’ then? Your father?”