Ashes of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  He blinked through his tears, struggling desperately to keep his son with him, whispering to him the names of more constellations and planets, now pausing as a new, brighter star appeared on the horizon. Suddenly he froze, scrubbing at his eyes.

  It was not a star but a lantern, a bright lamp blinking on and off in the clearing above the lake. It was, he recalled, where Jonah’s telescope on the opposite side of the ridge would be aimed if it was aligned with the easternmost mark on the railing.

  Ten minutes later he stood behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, watching two men with a large box lantern into which baffles had been inserted. They were using it to send signals toward the lake as they spoke in low, urgent tones. Hadrian dared a step closer, desperate for a glimpse of their faces, then was suddenly wrenched off his feet by the violent blow of a stick. He grabbed at his assailant’s legs as he went down, and they landed together in a tangle of limbs.

  “Punic prick!” the man spat. He stank of fish and spices.

  Hadrian twisted, avoiding a punch, taking hold of the man’s ankle so that he was thrown off balance as he tried to rise. Hadrian rolled as the man fell again, hearing now laughter from those at the lantern. A fist hammered into his ribs. His opponent, heavier than him, groped for something in his belt. But before he could extract his knife, Hadrian grabbed a rock and hammered it into his knee.

  “Bastard!” the man moaned, clutching at his leg.

  Hadrian sprang to his feet and ran, staying on the trail for only fifty feet before veering off into the treacherously rocky field along the slope. He knew the terrain better than his pursuers. He crawled into the deep shadow under a ledge, then listened as they searched, until a man shouted from above and they retreated. Daylight was coming, and these were creatures of the night.

  LAFAYETTE AVENUE AT dawn had an atmosphere of old Europe. The founders had had grandiose visions for their town once they had realized the colony was going to succeed. Hadrian had been in the meetings where municipal names had been chosen. Washington Boulevard. Edison Park. Hannibal Square, in a gesture to the name givers of the original Carthage. Among them, Lafayette Avenue was the one street that carried a sense of a civilized past. The cobblestones wet with a predawn shower, the stalwart stone buildings, the slow clip-clop of a milk-wagon horse, the scent of baking bread in the cool autumn breeze refreshed Hadrian as much as an hour’s nap. He settled onto a bench near the library, watching the little shop across the street as he considered his encounter on the hill.

  Punic prick, his attacker had muttered. It was not an epithet used by those of Carthage. Rather it had been born in the camps, where some former scholar had recalled the adjective used for those from ancient Carthage. Futilely he tried to piece together the bits of conversation he had heard from those operating the signal lantern. He had not heard enough to make sense of the words, but there had been something in their patterns, an uplifting in tone at the end of sentences. He realized now he had heard it as a youth when visiting the maritime provinces of what had been Canada. Yet discovering someone from such a distant, scoured place would be as likely as encountering a little green man in a spaceship.

  He watched as a policeman progressed along the street, snuffing out the night lanterns, then stepped to the shop door and tried the latch.

  “Closed!” came the voice of a harried woman in the kitchen as he stepped inside. “Thirty minutes!”

  Hadrian pulled out a stool and sat at the counter.

  The compact figure who appeared at the kitchen doorway wore a spattered apron.

  “If you ever got all the flour out of your hair, Mette, I know we’d find a thirty-year-old beauty underneath.”

  The woman’s peeved expression evaporated. “Hadrian!” she cried, stepping around the counter with arms outstretched. With a grin he accepted her hug.

  “You look like a man who needs breakfast,” she suggested.

  “And yesterday’s lunch and supper,” he replied, suddenly famished.

  She disappeared into the kitchen, calling out orders to her assistants, before returning with a steaming mug of chicory coffee and one of her famous maple sugar pastries. Mette Jorgensen had been one of fifteen vacationing Norwegian birdwatchers who had staggered out of the wilderness into the original Carthage settlement. The Norgers, as they had come to be called, had created a vibrant subculture in the colony, and provided the best of its shipwrights. “Scrambled eggs and bacon in ten minutes,” she said, then sobered. “I’m so sorry about Jonah.”

  “I want to ask you about that night,” Hadrian said between bites.

  “Whatever I can do, you know that.”

  Hadrian always felt guilty over the gratitude Mette had shown him for so many years. He had intervened as a Council member when the tribunal selected by Buchanan was marking citizens for exile. Mette’s husband had suffered wasting nerve damage from radiation that left him with a useless arm. Hadrian had insisted it was from an accident, had given a sworn statement to the tribunal. Though her husband had died only a year later, Mette’s gratitude continued unabated.

  “I’ve lain in bed awake, thinking about it,” she told him. Her expression was suddenly grave.

  “Jonah wasn’t suicidal.”

  “Hadrian, he came in here every day for coffee and a roll, always with a smile and full of plans. Last week he stood at the window and gestured for me to see a butterfly that had alighted on his finger. The smallest joy was a great one for Jonah.”

  “Did you see anything at all that night?”

  “It wasn’t like I was standing watch. In the evening I might sit out front for a pipe. At bedtime I usually glance outside as I adjust the upstairs curtains.”

  “And?”

  “When I was out on the bench there were two people in cloaks on the other side of the street. They walked past the library, as if they were studying it. I waved. They didn’t wave back. Five minutes later they walked by from the other direction.”

  “Two men?”

  “I don’t know. They had cowls over their heads. It was getting chilly. After they passed the second time, they disappeared into an alley in the shadows between the lanterns. I had the impression they were waiting for me to leave. When I looked out from upstairs there was no sign of them.”

  “How long before the fire was that?”

  Mette shrugged. “Half an hour.”

  “No one else?”

  “The police patrol, an hour ahead of their usual schedule. Usually they stop for a smoke on the bench, but that night they kept moving.”

  “Had you seen Jonah earlier that day?”

  She nodded. “More than usual. He came for coffee in the morning, then stopped to have tea late in the afternoon. Most days he holes up in his workshop until after dark, even sleeps there quite a bit. He had his tea, then left. Down the street. But he came back later. I saw the light from his workshop reflected onto his balcony.”

  That would have been after Hadrian had visited him. “Tell me something else, Mette. Do you recall ever seeing him with Micah Hastings, one of the young market hunters? It would have been maybe six months ago.”

  The baker shrugged, then paused to gaze out the window. “There was a boy, in green and brown clothes. He stopped Jonah one day as he left with his tea and they sat on the bench outside. They spoke for a long time. I had the impression Jonah was trying to talk him out of something, and failed. He looked upset. He drank all his tea there, watching where that boy had gone as if thinking of following him. I remember because he always takes his tea right back to his workshop. Took,” Mette added in an anguished whisper before disappearing into the kitchen.

  “You ask better questions than the police,” she offered as she returned with a plate heaped with eggs, buttered bread, and bacon.

  Hadrian shot her an inquiring glance as he chewed.

  “There was a young woman, one of those with the spider-web faces,” she said matter-of-factly. “She asked if I’d seen anyone running from the fire, that’s all. Like
she was going through the motions. She was very quiet, ordered a cup of tea and nursed it for a long time. Then suddenly she up and asks if you were the same Mr. Boone who used to organize poetry readings for the school classes.”

  Hadrian stopped chewing. He could not have heard correctly. “I’m sorry?”

  “I swear, Hadrian. I had to ask her to repeat herself. She said did I ever hear Mr. Boone recite poetry. I just said you were the head of the school, then she got quiet again and left. Except she insisted on paying for her tea. Police never pay. Kenton didn’t pay when he showed up a few hours later, and he had a whole meal.”

  “Asking about the fire?”

  “Not at all. Asked if a Sergeant Waller had been here. I said there’d been no introductions but I’d been visited by an officer with mottled skin. He asked what she’d said, then asked about you, if I’d seen you, if I knew things about you.”

  “Things?”

  Mette busied herself in wiping off the counter. “Where you were sleeping,” she replied, a new awkwardness in her tone, “where you were getting meals, questions like that.” The kind baker had always acted as if Hadrian’s plummet through society had never happened. She paused. “Then I asked if I could send some bread to those two in prison. He laughed again and warned me not to let the governor hear of such talk.”

  “Were you there, Mette?”

  “At the funeral? Of course I was there. I started the singing down below, after poor Nelly led the way.”

  “That,” Hadrian said, “is what you don’t want the governor to hear.”

  HE FELT LIKE a soldier in hostile territory as he approached the decrepit mill, the first built by the colony but abandoned years earlier after construction of the terraced ponds that powered newer, bigger mills. A lookout in a tree called a warning to those inside. A youth stepped from behind another tree, aiming an arrow at Hadrian.

  “I came to see Dax,” Hadrian declared in a level voice. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one had followed.

  “Hickory dickory dock, mice run up the clocks,” the boy intoned. He had a disquieting, feral air about him.

  As Hadrian studied the young guard, who kept his arrow aimed at his chest, he became aware of other shapes in the shadows. “Hey diddle, cat and a fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon,” he offered.

  The bowman cocked his head, confused, but did not lower his weapon until a sharp whistle came from overhead. Dax looked down from the top of the large waterwheel where he was moving his legs at a relaxed pace, keeping up with its movement so that he remained stationary. Two other boys emerged from the brush, holding bows at their sides, as Dax stepped into one of the catch chambers of the wheel, riding it down and jumping off as it approached the bank. He landed lightly in front of Hadrian.

  “I want to know about the jackals,” Hadrian declared.

  Dax frowned.

  Hadrian reached into the pouch on his shoulder, extracted a fresh loaf, still warm from Mette’s ovens, and tossed it toward the gathering boys. Dropping all interest in playing the stern sentinels, they gleefully ran to a log bench to share it.

  Dax looked at them with disapproval. “We ain’t going back to any classroom. They treat orphans like pet dogs there.”

  “You forget I was thrown out of the school.” Hadrian glanced uneasily at the coils of rope by the log bench, several with familiar knots at the ends. The children had been practicing tying nooses. “I’d be happy just to have you stop playing with death.”

  “The jackals don’t force anyone to take the ride.” The boy pulled a copper medallion out from under his shirt.

  With a speed that obviously surprised the boy, Hadrian grabbed it, turning it over in his hand. It was the same shape as the other medallions, but it bore no markings. Which made Dax what? A would-be jackal? A probationary jackal?

  “Better keep it covered,” Hadrian advised as he stuffed the necklace back in the boy’s shirt. It was illegal to own copper in Carthage, and any known bits of the metal were government property, for coins. “Kenton will arrest you for that copper alone. He’d be happy to send you to the heavy salvage crews.”

  “Been assigned before,” Dax said defiantly. “A month hauling iron rails over the mountains to the foundry.”

  As he followed the gangly youth into the mill, Hadrian gazed at the worn wooden mechanism, remembering how Jonah had labored to find the right proportions for the gears in this, the first of the colony’s mills. The rest of the chamber was filled with the gang’s particular artifacts. A television without its tube, puppets on strings hanging in the open space. A hair dryer into which a battered toy rocket had been stuffed as if it were a launcher. One wall was nearly covered with photos torn from yellowing magazines.

  “Train rails?”

  “That’s what the crew chief called ’em. Train rails. All in a line, though you had to dig away the brush and weeds to see ’em. Heavy as hell. Nailed right into the earth.”

  Hadrian paced along the wall of photos. “Do you know why those rails were laid on the ground, why they were always so straight and the same distance apart?”

  Dax shrugged. “You take the salvage where you find it.” The phrase had become part of the vernacular, a way to dismiss any need to explain the original function of the mysterious objects found in ruins.

  Hadrian gestured at the images of obsolete objects, pointing to the first one. “This is a toaster, for warming bread slices. We had one in our kitchen, and my mother would get mad because I tried to put cookies in it.” He indicated another. “This is a record player. You put black discs on it, and you would hear music. This is a man playing golf,” he said of the next. “It’s a game. You hit a little white ball around mown fields, trying to sink it in a hole.” He looked into the boy’s uncomprehending eyes and gestured to one more. “A toy spaceship like I got for Christmas once.”

  Some hay trickled down from the loft overhead, and Hadrian looked up to see three pairs of eyes looking out of the shadows. One of the children leaned forward. It was Dora, Buchanan’s younger daughter. “What’s Christmas?” she asked.

  Hadrian sighed. “We call it the Year-End Festival now.”

  He pulled a photo of a locomotive from the wall and pointed to the rails underneath. “What did you think those rails were for? There is no one waiting on the other side to take you for a ride on one of these. I used to travel on those trains when I was your age. They’re not on the other side, Dax, they’re in the past. Gone.”

  “That’s what you say, to keep us from taking the ride.”A chill ran down Hadrian’s spine. “We’ve heard them tell us in their own words,” Dax declared stubbornly.

  “Tell you what?”

  “About the dead land. The ghosts go into the dead land and come back. Then they tell us about it. They eat hamburgers and have bicycles that ride without pedaling.”

  “Toy trucks and baby dolls!” Dora exclaimed from above.

  Hadrian lowered himself onto a bench by the wall. His voice cracked as he spoke. “People don’t die and come back.”

  Dax grew very solemn. He suddenly seemed years older. “The first time I seen it I was so scared I ran into the forest. He was dead, dead for hours. Then he sat up and opened his eyes. Bloody hell, those eyes.”

  “His eyes?”

  “The pupils were pale blue, like the sky all washed out after a storm. Almost like he had no eyes at all, ’cause he left the real ones on the other side to keep watch. We all ran, because we knew old books about monsters coming from the other side. Zombies, they call them. But he just laughed when we ran. Later he found us and told us about the beautiful things he had seen, said the ones up on Suicide Ridge had been right, that he seen them playing on the other side.”

  Hadrian shuddered, as much from Dax’s earnest tone as his words. The boy truly believed in what he was saying.

  “We weren’t sure either until he began bringing things back for us.”

  Hadrian stared at him, filled with new foreboding. “What thin
gs?”

  Overhead, Dora disappeared, then came down a ladder stair clutching something wrapped in old sacking. When she reached Hadrian she uncovered the object. It was a large, exquisitely worked blond doll in a white dress that could have been fresh from a store shelf thirty years before. When Dora reached the wall she pointed. Following her small finger, Hadrian saw that it was not simply another photo, but a color plate torn from a Bible. It portrayed a blond angel with rays of brilliant light emanating behind it. The girl held the doll up to a crack in the boards, causing it, too, to be illuminated from the back by shafts of sunlight.

  From behind Dora a boy approached, extending a shiny new toy truck exactly like one in another ad. As Hadrian stared in disbelief, Dax disappeared into the shadows at the back of the mill and returned carrying an object wrapped in deerskin. It was a brilliantly painted sixinch-high figure of a bearded wizard with a small dragon resting on his shoulder.

  “It’s salvage,” Hadrian said, well aware of the pleading in his voice.

  “No one’s ever brought anything like these back from salvage,” Dax countered. “Salvage is old. Salvage is rusty and dirty.”

  Hadrian sighed heavily. “How many of these ghosts are there?”

  “Three that I’ve seen,” Dax reported.

  “People you knew before?”

  “People from away I think. They had the smell.”

  Hadrian tensed. “Exiles?”

  “From away.”

  Away. It could mean the outlying farmers, or exiles, or the hunters who stayed distant except to bring in hides. Perhaps even those impoverished survivors who eked out their sustenance on the far side of the sea. Hadrian then remembered the odor of those who had assaulted him in the clearing. Emily too had spoken of visitors who smelled of spice. “Please,” Hadrian said. “Please don’t try for more, don’t take a ride looking for such things.”