Opalescence

by Ron Rayborne

  “After describing a variety of weird sounds, ‘voices’ the troops thought they heard coming from their jungle post in O’Brian’s account, the story goes on to say that they were,”

  not human voices, though. Because it’s the mountains. Follow me? The rock - it’s TALKING. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, and the monkeys talk religion.

  “It seemed that as night came on, some instinctual agitation, some remnant from our remote past took over.”

  The dark was coming hard now, and off to the west I could see the mountains rising in silhouette, all mysteries and unknowns.

  “How much of this fear is due to the fact that most predatory animals hunt mainly during the night when it’s cooler and when they are less likely to be seen? Was there a time before we began to band together and learned to make weapons, that we, as an earlier primate, sat out the hours of darkness on some high tree branch trembling at the sounds of the night, listening to the frightful cries of those caught in the jaws of fate? Huddled together and whimpering, we grew into man, and those glimpses of the awful fanged creatures below were surely like glimpsing devils (thus the origins of the horrible demons of world religions? Of our literary and cinematic fascination with monsters?) And so the child asks its mother, the child who has known only love its short life, to please leave the light on at night. ‘The vapors, man. Trees and rocks - you got to listen to your enemy’, says our narrator in the war story, a war against the ghosts of long ago. Ah, the key: Nature is the enemy, and so what action do the panicked troops undertake?”

  The guys can’t cope. They lose it.... They call in air strikes.... all night long, they just smoke those mountains. They make jungle juice.... They blow away trees and glee clubs and whatever else there is to blow away. Scorch time. They walk napalm up and down the ridges. They bring in Cobras and F4s, they use Willy-Peter [white phosphorus] and HE [high explosives] and incendiaries. It’s all fire. They make those mountains burn.

  “Rather than seeing the beauty of the lush greenery around them, they saw only shadows and what might be lurking in them. They saw insects and leeches; downcast amid downpours. They had reason to, of course, because those trees and shrubs could be hiding enemy fighters. The wild sounds that they heard might have been the disguised calls of an unseen horde.

  “This Garden of Eden was instead for them a ‘Garden of Evil’ as O’Brian describes it. The ‘dark world’, into which Goodman Brown ventured, was full of ‘wickedness.’ But which is the devil here, nature - or our fear of it? Says Hawthorne in Young Goodman Brown,”

  The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man.

  The trees were so high and thick now that Tom couldn’t see the sky. The trail was narrowing too. Up ahead, two rocky outcrops forced the fauna through a space little wider than an elephant, and he imagined them walking through single file. Like those people in the stories Julie had written about, Tom was spooked. He’d walked dark paths before, but never with such a feeling of disquiet.

  Little had gone ahead while Tom scanned the forest. Shadows there were moving, keeping up with them, just back of the trees. Or so it seemed. There was a cry and Tom’s head shot around. Little was gone. Was she the other side of the monoliths?

  “Little?” Tom called out. She did not return. “Little!” he said again. Something was wrong. Tom jogged to the large stones, but when he was almost upon them he saw that there was a gaping hole in the ground between them. The tarp and branches that had hidden it now within.

  “YI!” Tom shot, “LITTLE!” Reaching the edge, Tom looked down into the pit. Ten feet deep, it was full of upraised stakes, like the ones that had almost gotten them earlier. And there was Little, lying on her side, blood oozing out of her. She looked up at Tom, then lay her head down again.

  “NO!”

  Tom threw off his pack, then quickly found a stout vine and tied it off. Tears welling in his eyes made it hard to see, even so, he lowered himself fast as he could into the hole, just missing a sharpened pike. There was a small gap at the edge with footprints, Jaqzen had left this part bare, as that was where he stood when he’d finished, then pulled himself back up. Tom, crying now, yanked stakes out and threw them aside as he went to Little. Her eyes were open. Crouching down, Tom looked at her. There were deadly pikes all around her. She must have fallen on one, impaled.

  Tom felt under her, wiping the tears that flowed freely down his face. No stake. He felt again, and again found nothing. Huh? But the blood? Now he saw that on her way down, she had grazed one of the points. That was all it was, a graze.

  “Girl, are you all right?” Tom asked. Little made to get up, lay her head back down, then a second later, tried again. Oh please, not a broken back, he thought in fear. When she tried a third time, she stood, trembling. Tom threw his arms around her and wept. Then he felt for broken bones. None.

  “Let’s get out of here!” he said. Now Tom did something he would never have been able to do in the Anthropocene. Lifting her hundred and seventy pounds over his shoulder, he began to pull them both up as, hand over hand, he climbed the rope. It was a Herculean feat, and even he, as they broached the rim, marveled at the ease with which he did it. At the top, he set Little down. Now she stood, then shook, looking roughed up, but none the worse for the fall. Tom stared back down into the pit. Saw where she had fallen. It was impossible! Though there were gaps between the stakes, he didn’t know how she had managed to fall in the small space between seven of them without being run through. He looked at the vine. It wasn’t that strong looking. How had it held their combined weight? He checked her over again. Nope, just a graze, then he hugged her, kissed her head.

  They were past the rocks now, looking south, down the path. How had the ape-man kept animals from spoiling most of his traps? Little was sniffing at something just feet away. A strong smell of ammonia. Like before. Ah, predator pee. He probably killed something, removed its bladder, then poured it here. The strong smell kept most of the others away. He thought back to the savaged Cosoryx head, then Julie’s essay.

  “We have evidence for this hypothesis as we witness the slaughter, without qualm, of a baby water buffalo by the panicked troops. Do they have good reason? I won’t say. It’s a question which humanity as a whole must answer.

  “It is a war in which we have been engaged, a war against nature, payback for ages of fear. But we’re rational now (aren’t we?) and it’s time to end the war, time to look back and realize that what we’ve done, the way we’ve behaved toward the earth, and each other, was based on childhood ignorance. Time to grow up.

  “The forest was ‘haunted’ before (Young Goodman Brown), but the demons now are those of our minds, and our hearts. Thus, the storyteller in O’Brian’s tale clarifies the point for us regarding his Vietnamese experience: ‘…It was a ghost story,’ he says.

  “‘The forest is of course his own mind’, says Frederick C. Crews in Modern Critical Views: Nathaniel Hawthorne, referring to another Hawthorne character, ‘Reuben,’ and alluding to Goodman Brown,”

  in which is deeply buried a secret spot, a trauma, to which he will have to return. He thinks he does not know the way back, he resists the opportunity to go, but ultimately is overruled by the strength of what he has repressed. Self-knowledge is knowledge of what lies almost inaccessibly remote in the forests of the mind, and Reuben [or Goodman Brown] will not be free until he has reached this point and released what lies imprisoned there.

  “This, I submit, is sound advice for the rest of us as well.”

  Looking farther now, Tom could see the end of the forest path, for five hundred yards away was an opening. A misty patch of light there told of a finish to the narrow death trail. Between he and it, though, was darkness.

  The constricted passage had been a perfect place for Jaqzen to set his traps. Possibly there were more. Though it was choked with growth, they’d go through the trees.

  Tom
immediately cut straight into the wood, and anticipating that Jaqzen might have rigged the perimeter of the trail too, they kept going until they were a good ways within. Had he not, they could have easily stepped on one of the other mines Jaqzen had laid. But pushing through solid forest wasn’t easy either, and without a view of the sky, he had to guess the direction they’d be heading. By now, however, Tom had an instinctual feel for direction. Problem was, taking this route would throw off his timing. He’d have to adjust.

  It took Tom exactly 3943 seconds from the time he diverted his path until he finally emerged from the thicket and into the open. He’d counted them. He estimated that, were they to have slowly walked the path they’d been on from the rocky outcropping to its end, it would have taken them five minutes. Had they survived, that is. The detour took sixty-five. Thus, it cost them an extra hour. That meant they should arrive close to sunset. That would be their stopping point, then. Dusk. He looked up at the sun, guessed they had three hours to go. Then they’d camp out. First thing tomorrow he’d begin his watch for Julie.

  Chapter 32

  Tom looked out at the way ahead. Something was bothering him, had unconsciously nagged him since he first saw the note. Now, like magma slowly rising to the surface, he realized what it was. Since Jaqzen had already been here, that meant that he too knew about this signaling station of Julie’s. Then why hadn’t he grabbed her? He thought hard. The last time she’d used it was two weeks ago. She’d made the rounds and was back here again. It could only mean that Jaqzen figured out her system just within the past two weeks. He knew that she’d be back, and when. That gave him time to dig the pit and set his traps. He knew also that, whoever it was that was coming from the North, he’d have to use that trail, inasmuch as the forest on both sides was nearly impenetrable.

  Of course the ape-man is here and will be waiting for Julie too. But will he be watching the death-trail’s terminus for the interloper or stalking Julie? No, having had such a difficult time bagging her up till now, that would be his priority. So then he’d have to trust that his traps worked, expected they would. That meant that since they didn’t, he could be caught off guard. Tom had the advantage.

  On the other hand, though, maybe he could do both, watch for Julie and Tom merely by swinging his binocs around. Tom made a strategic change to his plans. Julie wouldn’t be at her signal station until noon tomorrow. He had plenty of time to get there. He’d wait the three hours until sunset, then set out in the dark for another three hours to make up for it. That would get him his distance. He hoped Jaqzen’s binocs weren’t night vision capable.

  When the sun finally went down, Tom and Little got up and began to walk. They proceeded straight as from the trail. He’d know it was three hours by again counting the seconds, all 10,800 of them. It would be a long three hours.

  Warm night. Were it not for the impending trouble, he’d have said a lovely night. A crescent moon rose, giving just enough light that Tom could see his shadow as it stretched out darkly behind and to his left. Little padded along beside him, serene. Looking about them, Tom could make out the faint shapes of things, scattered trees and shrubs, rocks and plain. In the drier patches, his feet crunched gravel underfoot. The stars were bright and occasional zippings of luminous insects reminded him that, despite his petty troubles, life went on.

  Step by plodding step they went in silence, while time dropped away. Tom found, to his dismay, his apprehension was rising, like a cobra in a charmer’s basket. There were any number of things that could go wrong. He did not, in fact, even have much of a plan past simply intercepting Julie before the enemy did and shooting him should the situation demand it. “Give me a gun and I’m as strong as that guy,” he’d told Julie before she left. Now he supposed he’d find out if that was true.

  No, no more of this. He shook from himself for a final time his vacillation. The man had been stalking his wife for more than a year. Had nearly killed Little. He knew what he had to do.

  There was movement at the edge of his vision. He looked that way, but it was only a rabbit-like animal. At their approach, it darted off. Little made no move after it, sensing, somehow, that now was not the time.

  Two low hills were coming up, darker than the night, with a quarter-mile span between them. Half a mile past them and around, a long, low line of trees circled this pocket of subtropical scrubland within the forest. He guessed they’d be upon the hillocks in ten minute’s time. He was at 9,655 seconds. Were they it? If so, his calculations weren’t terribly far off. Tom shuddered at the more likely scenario, though. That he was nowhere near the signal post, might miss Julie entirely, in which case Jaqzen would catch her, and that would be that. The end of his world.

  Almost unwelcomely, however, he found that he was right. In contrast to the black of the hills, a tiny light suddenly popped on halfway up the left one. Another lightning bug, he wondered? He watched it as they continued on. There was something different about this bug though, it was staying put, not zipping away. Tom crouched and dug the binocs out of his pack, then brought them up. He focused there, on the dot of light, bringing it closer. The little gold glow simply sat there on the dark face of the hill, then, strangely, it increased in intensity, dimming again a moment later. It followed this pattern, brightening and dimming, brightening and dimming over and over. Suddenly, it flew off, shot a few feet away, and landed, still alit on the ground.

  Tom scratched his head, perplexed. Then another gold light flared on, resuming the pattern, and suddenly he knew. It was Jaqzen, and he was smoking. Tom’s heart began to beat suddenly in his chest, his reactions insanely mixed. On the one hand, and most importantly, it meant that he was probably in the right location and that Julie was coming. On the other, it meant that he’d be dealing with Jaqzen sooner than he’d planned. Repacking the optics, he stood and headed for him.

  As if from nowhere, a wind began to blow, strong and straight, throwing sand and grit ahead of it. Fortunately, it was a northerly, so it was at his back. Still, Tom bent over and pulled up a tattered collar to keep the stinging particles from pelting his neck. A dust storm, it pushed at them, forcing them on with an eerie, almost haunting sort of howling,

  A small species of tomarctus loped by, just fifty feet ahead, driven to exposure by the fusillade, wan moonlight barely showing it up.

  ~~~

  Julie got an early start that morning. Though by her past actions she could be expected to appear at noon, she wanted to be early, and hopefully before anyone else. She did not want to be surprised. Thus, she rose in the wee hours, and, with her pack, walked out to find Zephyr. She was relieved to see him there in a standing sleep just outside her cave. Though it was his usual place to be this time of night, that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes, as the night wore on, he spent it in the fields above.

  Zephyr lifted his head and nickered as Julie crawled out of the cave entrance, pulling her ruck behind her.

  “Hi, baby,” Julie said, “thanks for staying by.” Indeed, she’d asked he remain there that night. “We’re taking an early trip today, you and I.” Julie walked off to take care of business, then went to the river for a drink. An owl hooted in the trees on the lake’s west side. Zephyr pulled at some grass growing in the flow, banging the clod of mud off that came with it. Julie put her hand on his neck, kissed his head.

  “Today’s the day, Zephy, the day we find out what’s going to happen, who that blue light is, and if I have to leave.” Here she paused. The thought of leaving everything she loved was painful, too painful to contemplate. Well, almost everything. Tom was still stuck up there in the Anthropocene, waiting and probably despondent. Would she be allowed to return to him, or would she be killed, like Jaqzen had said? Would she have to take a long trip back upstate? And what was up with that anyway?

  A noise sounded overhead and Julie jumped, then saw that it was only her stallion’s harem looking down on them from the top of the mound above her cave. “Look at me, I’m just a flutter of nerves,” she said.<
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  “If I have to leave, Zeph, you will have to make your way back here. Don’t abandon your family to follow me, okay?” she urged. Julie knew that that was a possibility though, and that she should be making this trip alone. But selfishly, she couldn’t say goodbye. Not just yet. Goodbye, then a long walk in the dark.

  Julie slung her pack on, then climbed up Zephyr’s back. It was a load for the boy, but he was up to it. She looked out at the lake, her lake, moonlight shimmering off of it like silver starlight. A tear formed at the corner of her eye. Dropped. She breathed in, then out, her voice quavered. Finally, she whispered, “Let’s go.”

  ~~~

  Jaqzen had been there in the little desert basin for over a week. In that time he’d worked nonstop. First, he had to make sure that no one would make it through that narrow path.

  It was perfect and he laughed when he discovered it. He knew hit men, even they had their fears. Fears of tangled jungles and beasts skulking in the dark. Most were citified, not experienced game hunters like him. They probably shook all the long journey down the state, blowing away every twig that fell from a tree. Thus it was serendipity that the way to this signaling station would necessarily be via that spooky trail. Pure serendipity. Once on it, they’d never venture into the deep forest on either side. Only he had that confidence; yet even he found it menacing. There was something about it, that long length of gloom, that seemed malevolent, as if something were lurking in the shadows, watching, weighing, readying an attack.

  And yet, he’d survived it, those days spent digging and rigging, and scoffed at his own superstitious nature. It was satisfying to know that eventually man would take his revenge. In the meantime, he’d been doing his part to strike at the heart of the evil in nature. Setting fires, clearing the land, killing its denizens. Even the mighty Amphicyon now avoided him, his scent. Jaqzen relished his role as top predator in this wild world, marking trees with his own urine, delineating his own territory. Cross that line and your mine! he’d think after each pissing session. No one else was as fit for this world as he. He and Julie. And now he’d have her, at last. She’d put up one hell of a fight, and thus earned a measure of his respect, a fitting match. But that was all about to end. He’d enjoyed the cat and mouse, but ached to bed a woman, then teach her her rightful place.