Alight

by Scott Sigler

  The wounded Springer lies near the fire, asleep. Spingate stitched his cuts first, then mine, explaining to me how to do it as she did. Five stitches on my cheek, three on my chin. The fire warms us some, but I’m still cold, wet and hungry. It’s been a full day since my last meal, which I threw up after I killed that Springer.

  I hurt all over. They beat me so bad. Except for my fingers, though, I don’t think I have any broken bones. For that, at least, I am grateful.

  Two dead Springers lie at the base of a wall, both covered in vines. One is only a partial body, a decapitated half-torso with one arm still attached. Purple brought his dead friends here, one at a time. After the second corpse, he pantomimed that Spingate and I needed to stay here, then left yet again. He’s been gone for over an hour.

  Strange, waist-high stone statues line the room’s edges. The statues are chipped and cracked, streaked with dirt. Many limbs are broken off. Some statues lean against the old wall, as they are too damaged to stand on their own.

  Most of the statues are Springers. The stone is carved to show they wear long coats, pants covering their strange legs, long sleeves for their tails. Ruffles, folds, pleats…the clothing seems formal. Were these Springers important? If so, how long ago did they live?

  A few of the statues aren’t Springers at all. I don’t know what to make of them. Legs that bend the wrong way, like those of a praying mantis, but much thicker. Narrow body with a middle set of arms positioned just above the hips, arms that end in heavy, clumsy-looking hands. The trunk rises up to a misshapen head with one large eye and a vertical mouth below that eye. From the sides of that head, just under the eye, another set of arms, these thinner, more delicate. They end in dexterous-looking fingers.

  “Those statues seem weird,” I say. “What do you think they are?”

  Spingate shrugs. “Maybe Springer gods. Or their demons. What I want to know about is that symbol on the steeple. This building must be older than the ones in our city, so how can we have the same symbol on the Observatory?”

  She touches the bump on her head, winces. “I wonder if Smith’s coffin will heal my cut so I don’t have a scar.”

  I think of O’Malley, so concerned about fixing his face.

  “That scar is yours and yours alone,” I say. “Your creator didn’t have one like it.”

  She thinks on that for a moment, then gives me a smile and a funny look.

  “That’s good,” she says. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  I should be pleased, but I’m not. That funny look happens when I say something smart. Spingate is my friend, we work well together and she seems to accept me as leader, but deep down inside she doesn’t consider me an equal.

  Purple left some firewood. I put a fresh log on the fire, careful not to make the flames too big. Wouldn’t want a spider to come crashing through the wall and kill us by mistake. I’ve had enough fighting for one day.

  I see something in the dirt on the far side of the room. Is that a tiny hand?

  I walk to it, brush away rubble and debris. It’s a plastic toy, a chubby baby Springer wearing a tattered green outfit. Not scraps of fabric tied together for camouflage, but delicate, beautiful clothing.

  It’s a doll.

  Like the dolls I had when I was a little girl.

  How old is it? This ruined city that surrounds us, was it once full of children with toys? Parents, children, families?

  How many living beings did our creators kill?

  I hear movement outside. I grab my spear, wincing at the pain that comes from my broken fingers, and move to the old double doors that open to the jungle. Spingate picks up one of the muskets, grunts as she cocks back the hammer and locks it into place. She hasn’t fired one yet, but she figured out how to reload it.

  The doors swing open—it’s Purple, his musket slung over his narrow shoulder, his knife and hatchet safely tucked away.

  I lower my spear. Spingate carefully releases her musket’s catch.

  The clearly exhausted Springer waves us outside.

  The rain has died down to a steady sprinkle. We follow Purple around the back of the ruined building. Tucked in behind a broken slab of wall is a narrow, wheeled cart. The cart is made of sticks and boards, bound together with dried vines. The wheels are mismatched. One is metal and reminds me of Spingate’s symbol—it used to be a real gear in some large machine, perhaps. The other wheel is made of splintery wood. The wheels are close enough together that the cart would probably make it through the jungle’s narrow trails. Two long handles, so someone could stand between them and pull the cart behind.

  Atop the cart is a long pile of vines. Purple reaches out, lifts a handful so we can see beneath.

  A human face—Visca.

  Spingate hisses in air, covers her mouth.

  Visca’s dead eyes stare out. He was always the palest of all the Birthday Children. Now he is sheet-white. Dried blood crusts the bullet hole in his forehead. There are bite marks on his cheeks, and one of his ears has been chewed off—the jungle animals had started in on his corpse.

  Purple looks at me. He wants me to understand. He brought us the body of our fallen warrior. It is an apology, maybe, or perhaps an effort to show good faith. Whatever the motivation, this gesture moves me deeply.

  “Thank you,” I say. “This means a lot to us.”

  Dolls, families, love, revenge, honoring the dead…our two cultures are similar in so many ways.

  Purple covers Visca’s face.

  We return to the steeple. Purple checks on his friend, who is finally awake.

  “We need to talk to them now,” Spingate says. “We have to find out about food.”

  “How? We don’t speak their language, they don’t speak ours.”

  “But they have a language,” she says. “Maybe we can make each other’s sounds.”

  Spingate steps toward them. She raises her hand to her chest, taps her sternum twice.

  “Spin-gate,” she says. She reaches across, taps my chest. “Em.”

  The Springer stares at us. It taps its own chest.

  “Bar-kah,” it says, the words half-growl, half-chirp. It points to its wounded friend. “Lah-fah.”

  A single, stunned laugh escapes me, makes Purple twitch in surprise and caution. Barkah, Lahfah…are those their names? Purple understood us?

  Spingate points. “Barkah,” she says, doing her best to imitate the sound. Then she points down: “Lahfah.”

  The wounded Springer’s eyes widen and the toad-mouth opens, letting out a sound like shoes grinding on broken glass. It’s as shocked that we can understand them as I was they can understand us. That sound—just like me, Lahfah is laughing.

  Purple—I mean Barkah—points at Spingate.

  “Singat,” it says. Then it points at me. “Hem.”

  Lahfah’s mouth opens wide again, filling the room with that grinding-glass laugh. For having a broken leg and two dead friends lying close by, this one seems full of good humor. I wonder what he’s like in happier circumstances.

  Are we making a connection here? Can we do this? Can we succeed where the Grownups just made war?

  Barkah points at me again. “Hem. Yalani.”

  I look at Spingate. She shrugs. We have no idea what that means.

  “Yalani,” Spingate repeats, mimicking the sound as best she can.

  Barkah stares at us, then unslings his bag and starts digging through it.

  “Pellog jana chafe,” Lahfah says. “Rether page chinchi wag.”

  He’s babbling. He must think we understand all of his language, not just a couple of names.

  “Yollo bis,” he says, then roars with body-shaking laughter.

  Barkah pulls out a piece of cloth and a black stick. When he does, another piece of cloth falls from the bag and lands, mostly flat, on the dirty floor. It is the picture of the Springer I killed.

  “Ponalla,” Lahfah says softly, mournfully.

  Barkah stuffs the drawing back into his bag. He u
nfurls a blank piece of cloth, lies it flat on the floor, and sketches. Quick, purposeful lines. His hand is steady. He knows what he’s doing—this alien is an artist.

  The image takes shape before my eyes: the Observatory. And on it, tiny but clear, several layers up, a human figure.

  Barkah points to it. “Yalani.”

  “He recognizes you,” Spingate says. “From the statue of Matilda.”

  I don’t know what to say, what to think. What do the Springers know about our city and that massive building? Did he want to shoot me because I killed his friend, or because of something to do with that statue?

  Wait…the statue of Matilda is tall, but insignificant compared to the size of the pyramid. Even if you’re on the same street, the statue is too high up to make out any details. He couldn’t possibly recognize me unless he had been close enough to see the statue’s face.

  I point to the base of the drawn Observatory.

  “Did you go there? Did you watch us?”

  Three green eyes blink at me.

  I hold a hand over my eyes like I’m shielding them from the sun. I pantomime peering out, first this way, then that, my eyes squinting.

  Barkah grunts, taps his chest, taps the bottom of the Observatory, points to me, then points to Spingate. He starts drawing madly.

  “I don’t believe it,” Spingate says. “Is he saying he was there?”

  We watch, amazed, as Barkah sketches. Bodies take form, as do faces. With just a few curves and shapes, he captures the essence of people I know: Bishop, Visca, Aramovsky, O’Malley, Spingate and me, all in the elevator, facing out.

  “Godsdamn,” Spingate says, breathless. “Barkah was down there with us. He watched us leave.”

  Lahfah thumps the end of his tail on the drawing, making charcoal dust jump. Barkah yells something at him. Lahfah yells back.

  Barkah returns to the drawing with what I can only interpret as exasperation. Lines, curves, charcoal dust scattering. He stops, holds the drawing up for all of us to see.

  He added Lahfah to the drawing.

  “Gromba, gromba, gromba,” Lahfah says, clearly pleased.

  Spingate laughs. “Looks like she was down there, too.”

  “She? I thought it was a he.”

  Spingate shrugs.

  Lahfah points at her. “Singat.” He points at me. “Hem.”

  Barkah pulls out more blank fabric. He draws quickly, efficiently, showing us the life of the Springers. Secret entrances in ruined buildings that lead to tunnels. Springers in those tunnels, families, entire underground villages.

  He makes a few drawings of the surface: the jungle, quick sketches of plants, berries and animals that I hope are edible. He finishes every surface drawing with lurking, five-legged figures—spiders. The message is clear: the Springers have to live underground. If they stay on the surface too long, the spiders could get them.

  “Like the boogeyman,” I say.

  Spingate nods. “Except their boogeyman is real.”

  Their entire culture, forced to live below the surface. Because our kind chased them there.

  Barkah sketches a Springer. He spends a little more time on this drawing. He pulls three little tied-off pouches from his bag. They contain colored powders: red, blue, yellow. These he applies to his sketch with a master’s touch. When he finishes, I am looking at a blue Springer, more wrinkled than any I have yet seen. This one looks very old.

  I notice something hanging from the old Springer’s thick neck. It looks like a metal rectangle, very detailed, as if the level of detail is itself important. I tap it, point to Barkah’s necklace.

  Barkah taps the necklace. I get the impression he’s saying, Yes, same as mine.

  I tap the drawing of the old Springer.

  “Who is this?” I say to Barkah.

  He—or she—can’t understand my words, but I’m betting he can understand my meaning.

  He makes a new drawing, a simpler one. A few strokes shows the old blue Springer, then two smaller, purple Springers next to him. He adds necklaces to these as well. He taps the second purple Springer, points to himself.

  Then he makes a simple stick figure that clearly represents a Springer. The stick figure is on its knees, head low. Barkah quickly makes many more of these, filling the fabric. In seconds, there are hundreds of them.

  “He’s drawing them like they are kneeling,” Spingate says. “Kneeling to the old blue one. That must be their leader.”

  More than a leader, I think—royalty.

  “Maybe their king,” I say. “Or queen.”

  Spingate looks at Barkah in a new light. “Then maybe we are very, very lucky—what if our new friend is a prince or a princess?”

  A surge of hope courses through me. If Spingate is right, we could be talking to someone who can make decisions, or can at least speak directly to the Springer leader.

  We could make peace.

  Barkah reaches into his bag, pulls out a small wooden carving: a spider. He uses the toy’s pointy foot to scratch out one of the two purple Springers with necklaces, dragging the tip back and forth until that young Springer is nothing but smears and torn fabric.

  He sets the wooden spider right on top of that spot.

  “A spider killed the royal child,” Spingate says. “Barkah’s sibling, maybe.”

  I’m shocked at how fast a story can be told with nothing but pictures. If spiders killed the king’s child, and if the king thinks we’re connected to the spiders, he would hate us.

  Barkah pulls another small toy from his bag. It looks like a flat, wheeled cart with an angled framework on top, almost like thick tent poles without a tent. A long stick points out the back, as if the cart has a tail. He uses the toy to knock the spider on its side. He sets the cart down, looks at us.

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “What does he mean?”

  Spingate thinks for a moment. “Maybe he wants our help destroying the spiders?”

  Barkah knows I was with Visca, knows the spiders saved me at the fountain, so he has to know the spiders are on my side. Is destroying the machines the price of peace between our two cultures? This could be the bargaining chip I need.

  I pick up the little spider toy, hold it so everyone can see it.

  “We can make these go away,” I say slowly. “We can make it so they never hurt you again.” I tap the drawings he made of the plants and animals. “But we need food.” I point to my open mouth. “Food. Can you help us?”

  Barkah stares at me, trying to work out my meaning.

  “He doesn’t understand,” Spingate says, frustrated.

  A short horn blast echoes through the jungle outside, the same sound from when the Springers set fires to herd us.

  Barkah rushes to the doors, peeks out. He then hops between two of the strange statues and brushes dirt away from the warped wooden floor there. He slides his fingers into a small hole and lifts: a trapdoor, leading down.

  He waves to us, wide-eyed and urgent.

  “He wants to hide us,” I say.

  I grab my spear. Spingate and I run to the trapdoor, the floor squeaking beneath us with every step. Barkah is letting me keep my weapon, so if this is some kind of trick it’s not a very good one.

  The old stairs creak even more than the floor. Spingate is right behind me.

  At the bottom, I step into standing water that comes up to my knees. This is a confined space, smelling of rot and mildew, dark save for a long, thin sliver of light—coming through a slot left by a missing board, just above ground level, that looks out on the jungle in front of the steeple’s doors.

  Noises from outside…I hear something coming.

  The trapdoor quietly shuts behind us.

  I can see through the tangled old vines outside the slot—Springer feet, legs, tails. Five Springers out there, maybe more. I see gun butts resting on the ground next to those feet.

  The Springers talk. I recognize Barkah’s voice. I squat down, changing my angle, and I can see his face. He’s
just in front of the steeple doors. He’s talking to a blue, older and bigger…and then I see the blue’s copper necklace.

  “The king,” Spingate whispers. Her breath is warm on my ear. “Is Barkah handing us over to him?”

  Out in front of us, one of the Springers turns, looks around. Did it hear her talking?

  Spingate and I stay motionless.

  For a half-second, I swear the Springer’s three eyes are staring right at us, but it looks away—it didn’t see us through the thick vines.

  I glare at Spingate, hold a finger to my lips.

  The king’s tail comes around quickly, slaps into Barkah’s head. Barkah staggers, then straightens. He doesn’t react, doesn’t fight back. Some kind of discipline, parent to child? We don’t even know if they are parent and child. We know almost nothing of these creatures.

  I see Springers walking past Barkah and the king, coming from inside the steeple…they’re carrying the dead. Then two more Springers, pulling a rolling cart with Lahfah on top. He’s bundled up in a blanket.

  Will they search the back of the church? If they do, they will surely find Visca’s body.

  The king’s tail slaps Barkah’s head once more, then the older Springer hops away toward the trail. His entourage follows, pulling the cart with Lahfah on top. They slide into the jungle. Just like that, they are gone.

  Spingate’s breath in my ear again: “Should we go up?”

  She’s getting on my nerves. How can she be so smart in her lab and so dumb about just staying quiet?

  “Just wait,” I whisper.

  That’s exactly what we do. We stand in calf-deep water, our feet growing colder by the second. I try to imagine the king and his followers moving down the trail, try to project how far away they are.

  The floor directly above us squeaks. When Barkah finally opens the trapdoor, we’re shivering. He waves us up.

  Save for his drawings and the statues, the room is empty.

  Barkah seems shaken, upset.

  Spingate steps close to him.