Ashes of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  “Whenever anyone spoke about my father in the past tense, she would tell them his body had never been found. She was writing as if he were still alive,” Jori continued, “as if he had been building a better place for us somewhere and would send for us any day. She would write about us children and everyday life, what we did in school and the scores in my games. She said once that I would make him very proud. It’s funny. I might have understood if she wrote in front of us, to let us think he might still live. But she did it all in secret. I never did tell her I knew about them. I would check sometimes. The letters got fewer and fewer. It’s been years since she wrote the last one. But they’re still there, up under the eaves.”

  They sat in silence and listened to the rush of water on the other side of the hull, the churning, mesmerizing flood that took them ever closer to their fate. Hadrian rose and peeked through the knothole he’d opened the day before. The little cargo compartment held half a dozen boxes, smaller versions of the one they’d found hidden in the smugglers’ loft.

  “I used to wonder about you when you came to our classes and talked with us. No one ever knew about your family. You must have had a family.”

  Hadrian stared into the darkness. “There was a dog,” he offered at last. “It was a few weeks after we began work on the colony. A little grey terrier, not much bigger than a squirrel. But she was tough as nails. Found her in the forest living on mice. There was a little cave where I made her a bed of cedar boughs. Couldn’t bring her back or she would’ve been thrown in the stewpot. I would keep back some of my rations in a scrap of cloth and visit her every couple of days. It would be like a little picnic. We’d play and she would lick my face and curl up beside me for a nap after eating.

  “One day I brought her some venison for a special treat. It was starting to get cold. I wanted her to build her strength for the winter. She ate and curled up on my chest and I was singing a lullaby to her. I never should have brought her anything with so much fresh blood in it. I shouldn’t have sung the song or I would have heard it creeping up.”

  “It?”

  “A tree jackal. His winter was coming too. There was just a blur of movement and she was gone. He carried her high up a tree. She was screaming for five minutes before she finally died.”

  Without a word Jori rose and settled at the opposite end of the hold.

  Hadrian gazed without focus into the shadows, numb to the cold and the lurching of the boat.

  Suddenly his knee exploded in pain. Jori was back, bracing herself on a beam as she kicked him. “To hell with you!” He could see streaks of tears down her cheeks. “To hell with your dead family! I’m sick of all you damned survivors! We’re nothing to you! To be real in your world, you have to be dead! We’re just shadow people! We never count for anything. The only real people to you are in your nightmares. Nothing we do matters! We just playact for you, keep you alive so you can wallow in your grief. Screw you and screw your old world! Your world is gone. It’s never coming back! I am not a shadow, Hadrian Boone! And I don’t live in a shadow world, you do!” She kicked him again and was gone.

  When he returned to cutting logs again, he carried several loads, then crept into the companionway to the galley and opened the small locker there. He quickly studied its contents. Needles and cord for patching nets. A hammer. A coil of rope. He grabbed the hammer and rope, then quickly hid them behind the firewood at the stern.

  The increasingly cold wind kept pushing the Anna off her course. Wade was fighting the helm when Hadrian ventured inside the wheelhouse, basking in its warmth for a moment. “I know this boat,” he said. “Let me relieve you.”

  “Why would I do that, schoolteacher?”

  “I want to get to Carthage as fast as you do. You need some food.”

  “Scanlon’s in charge of the galley.” As the big man shifted on his feet, Hadrian saw a sawed-off shotgun hanging on pegs near the wheel.

  “We’re both working for Sauger now,” Hadrian tried.

  A wave violently hit the bow, breaking over the deck. Wade glanced at the compass, then reached into his pocket for his tobacco plug and bit off a piece.

  “You’re a horse’s ass, Boone. No one works directly for Sauger or Kinzler except Fletcher and Shenker. I work for Fletcher. And you’re on my crew now. I think when we get home, you can live behind my shithouse. I’ll have you clean my spittoon and chew book pages to soften them before I wipe my arse.”

  “I guess I underestimated you, Wade. I should have known better, after that magic you worked in prison.”

  “Magic?”

  “The way you were in prison one minute, then suddenly driving the Anna away with Nelly and Shenker.”

  Hadrian had to sidestep as Wade spat tobacco juice in his direction. “You are one dumb fuck. Fletcher said it to Sauger. You’re too softheaded to be useful. No real survival instinct, he said. It’s what makes you so unpredictable.”

  “Maybe it’s more like survival isn’t my first priority.”

  Wade gave a snort of laughter. “Exactly,” he said, as if his point was proven. He swung the bow into another wave and checked the compass again. “You never understood. You thought I was in prison on account of another knife fight. But I was only there because of you.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “Right. You don’t understand shit about the way Carthage works. I was there to keep an eye on you, keep you busy, keep you drunk if need be. Once Buchanan released you, there was no need for me to stay.”

  “You mean one of the guards in the prison is a jackal.”

  Wade laughed so hard tobacco juice dripped down his beard. “You never will understand.”

  Hadrian made his way to the hold and found a corner where he could sit and brace himself against the pitching of the boat. He sat in silence, trying to sleep, but overtaken by new questions and fears. Wade was right. He was too softheaded to understand how Sauger and his league of criminals thought. He stared into the darkness. Snowflakes started tumbling through the open hatch.

  She appeared before him again, wrapped in a blanket.

  “I’m sorry, Jori,” he said before she could speak. “I don’t mean you to be a shadow.”

  “I’m cold,” she said, then settled beside him, covering him with part of her blanket.

  “Is it true what Emily said?” came Jori’s voice after a few minutes.

  “What she said?”

  “Is it true the ending of the first world was your fault?”

  His torrent of emotion broke through. It came out as a groan of pain, but after a moment all he could do was laugh.

  He slept and woke to find Jori’s head on his shoulder. The hold was filled with moonlight, and the worst of the storm seemed to have passed. He sat very still, feeling the cadence of her breathing against his body, daring to touch a strand of her hair that hung across his chest. He felt his strength returning, his mind clearing. He gently leaned her against a beam and climbed out onto deck. For once survival was going to be his first priority.

  When he returned to the engine room he found Tull had made a little nest in the firewood and seemed to be nodding off. He studied the engine once more, and as he returned to the deck a hand reached out of the darkness.

  “Dax says we can have soup in the galley,” Jori announced. “Scanlon is back in the wheelhouse with the captain.”

  Hadrian sat in silence at the galley table. The fish chowder was hot and plentiful and he emptied two bowls before looking up to see his companions staring at him. As he pushed the bowl toward Dax for a refill he noticed the boy’s pained expression.

  “What is it, Dax?”

  The boy did not reply but took the bowl and refilled it.

  “At St. Gabriel when I saw you in the kitchen,” Hadrian said, “they had hit you. Why?”

  Dax frowned. “I asked Scanlon if they were his tools at the saw pit. That’s all. He didn’t take kindly to it, said that’s no way to get the secret.”

  “Secret?”
>
  “You know. I told you about them ghosts.”

  Hadrian stared at him in confusion. Dax had never explained why he was not interested in crossing over, even while helping others do so. “My God, Dax,” he said with a shudder. “You mean the secret of how to die and come back. There isn’t any. They don’t do it.”

  Dax frowned again, clearly not convinced. At least he wasn’t ready to die. He stared at Hadrian expectantly. When Hadrian did not speak, he glanced nervously at the companionway.

  “The skipper came in a while ago,” Dax explained. “I said we might have a job of it, watching for that little lantern in this weather. He cuffed me in the ear. But then he calls me to his side and apologizes. Says when we get back he will have me made a full jackal for all my brave work. He says at every ceremony new jackals get a new knife and a silver statue.” Dax searched Hadrian’s face as if for an answer. “But there ain’t no knives and statues. Wade don’t know I watch those ceremonies, from the window on the roof of that house by the harbor the jackals use. Why would the scrub lie? And that Scanlon, he has a gun in his belt. The sergeant’s gun. Why does he need that?”

  The color drained from Jori’s face.

  Hadrian glanced at the galley hatch, expecting one of the crew to burst in at any moment. Then he spoke in low, urgent tones. “You have to stay awake, both of you, and stay together. Don’t drink or eat anything they give you. It’s a game they’re playing, to keep us from resisting.” The real game, Hadrian now realized, was between Sauger and Fletcher. Sauger had exaggerated his interest in keeping Hadrian and his friends alive as a bargaining chip, so Fletcher would be indebted to him when he’d finally consented to Fletcher’s demand for revenge. “They don’t mean for us to make it to shore. But they can’t afford to take the time to stop out in deep water, especially in this weather. When I come to you, you must both be ready and do exactly what I say. No questions. No talking. Do you understand?”

  Jori nodded stiffly. Dax, casting confused glances at each of them, finally shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”

  The swells had begun to subside and the sky had cleared by the time Hadrian finally glimpsed the thin line of darker shadow along the southern horizon. Carthage was visible in the distance, not because of its dim lights but due to the threads of silvery smoke rising into the starlit sky.

  He retrieved the rope and hammer, then quickly tied the rope to the bow of the skiff before lowering the boat and tying it to the stern rail.

  “In five minutes,” he explained to Dax as he descended into the hold, “you must go to the engine room and tell Tull the skipper says it’s time to get some breakfast before reaching shore. When I leave, count to three hundred, slowly, then go to him. Scanlon is asleep on a bunk in there. Don’t wake him.” He turned to Jori. “You need to get past the wheelhouse without Wade seeing you, then after Tull goes into the galley, make your way to the stern.”

  The engineer was dozing again as Hadrian brought his last load of wood. He quickly slipped into the shadows past the pile of firewood and stretched out in the darkness. Moments later Dax called down as instructed. Tull groggily rubbed his eyes then climbed up to the deck.

  Instantly Hadrian was on his feet, loading the boiler to capacity with oak logs, then grabbing a long bolt from the rack of parts on the wall. He fixed the bolt into the holes of the boiler door handle, pulled the hammer from his belt, and pounded the six inches of bolt that extended below the door latch, bending it at a sharp angle. The door would not be opened again. He turned the air intake to maximum, smashed its handle, then, with a silent apology to Jonah, smashed closed each of the stems that served as relief valves.

  The grey light of predawn was edging over the horizon as he found Dax and Jori on the stern deck. Carthage was less than three miles away.

  “They mean to kill us,” he said to Dax, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “When the boat stops offshore they are going to shoot us and dump us into the water.” His companions stared at him but said nothing. “We are getting into the skiff and rowing to shore. Dax, when we reach land head toward town and find a hiding place.”

  “We could overpower them,” Jori suggested. “Then take the boat to town.”

  “We can’t overpower those three,” Hadrian said firmly. “They have guns. And this boat won’t exist in another five minutes. The boiler is going to explode.”

  Jori seemed to sag. “Hadrian, we’ll freeze out on that water,” she protested.

  “We’ll die for sure if we stay,” he replied, then pulled on the skiff’s line. Dax shook his head uncertainly, then leapt into the small boat.

  Jori silently pushed past Hadrian and climbed over the side. Hadrian untied the rope then patted the rail and looked back at the fishing boat. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to the Anna, then eased over the stern.

  “We’ll head east, a couple miles above town,” he explained as he began rowing. They were barely a hundred feet away from the Anna when he heard furious voices. He’d prayed the boat would continue on her course, leaving them behind, but Wade now was shouting frantic orders and the Anna was coming about, heading straight for them.

  Seconds later the pistol began barking. A splinter of wood exploded inches from his leg.

  The rising offshore wind was pushing them toward land but the Anna’s bulk meant she was being pushed faster in the same direction as she turned in pursuit. Wade’s curses grew louder, interrupted by confused shouts from the engineer. Scanlon emptied the pistol then leapt to the bow and lifted a boathook over his head as the Anna closed the gap.

  Jori frantically put her hands over his, desperately trying to move the oars faster. Dax stood in the bow, lifting the little anchor as if to throw it at Scanlon, who now bellowed in anger.

  A moment later the Anna was on them, splintering, then crushing the stern of the skiff, and Scanlon was swinging the hook at Hadrian’s head with a furious roar.

  Then suddenly the Anna and her crew were no more. Hadrian did not remember the sound so much as the abrupt rushing of air and debris, the illusion of a brief but powerful deluge as the shards of the boat rained down around them.

  The skiff was gone and he was in the water. His clothes quickly filled and the frigid murk pulled him down. Then a hand gripped him and Jori hauled him onto a large slab of wreckage from the Anna. There was no sign of the Anna’s crew, only pieces of the hull floating in a circle.

  “There!” Jori cried, and pointed to a slender form on another, smaller piece of wreckage, fifty feet away.

  “Get to shore!” Hadrian called to Dax, and watched as the boy grabbed a plank from the water and began paddling.

  “There’s a place I know,” he said to Jori as she handed him a plank. “Look for a trail that climbs up between two birch trees. Up to the top of the second mountain.”

  But as he began to paddle something seemed to seize his arm. His shoulder was stiffening. He felt light-headed.

  Jori looked up and gasped. “Your shoulder!” she cried. “There’s a piece of wood in it!”

  Hadrian found himself sinking onto their makeshift raft, the cold water of the lake washing over his legs now. “Take it out.”

  “Hadrian, it’s too big.”

  “Take it out!” he shouted.

  Jori bent over him and pulled.

  Only then did the agony fully hit Hadrian. He had a vague sense of her showing him a long splinter as wide as his thumb, then began to taste the salt as his blood mixed with the water washing over their fragile craft.

  He tried to rise, to paddle again, ignoring Jori’s cries for him to stop, but his strength was gone. He found himself lying on the broken hull as it was tossed by the waves. It began snowing again. A new storm, a freezing storm, was arriving. He closed his eyes, choking every few moments on water and blood, the fire of the pain so severe now it began to banish the terrible cold. He was weak, too weak to move. It had been such a slender hope and in the end all he had done was extend their lives by a few agonizing minutes. The shoreline was
still a mile away. He had lost. Wade had been right. He would never understand. He had fought his best and lost. He could never hold on long enough, and when he slipped off the wreckage he would sink forever into the frigid, endless blackness below.

  CHAPTER Ten

  PAIN AND FEVER were his world. Hadrian hurt so much, and burnt so hot, he knew nothing beyond nightmarish images and sounds. Dax looked up with him with dead, drowned eyes from the surface of the water. Carthage was being consumed in flames. He was in the fishery being lowered into the maw of one of the chopping machines. Jonah, grey-skinned from the grave, chastised him for wasting his life. Nelly’s body swayed in the wind as it dangled from a gibbet. Missiles were dropping on the school of his children.

  Cries of anguish roused him from unconsciousness. He fell on a steep, icy trail. Snow packed into his ears. His eyelids were freezing shut. He realized the cries were his own just before he passed out again.

  He became distantly aware of blasts of frigid air, of a dark beast nuzzling and sniffing him, of great crackling fires and bitter tastes on his tongue, and always the painful throbs from his shoulder, stabbing like knife blades. Consciousness danced just beyond his reach, never fully touching him but eventually letting him linger in a warm, dark place.

  Then suddenly he was awake, gripping the thick beaver pelt blanket that covered him. The walnut-colored face nodding at him was illuminated by a single candle.

  “How did you find me?” Hadrian asked in a voice he didn’t recognize.

  “Not me. She didn’t know exactly where she was going when I heard her shouting, pulling you up the trail in the ice storm.” His old friend Morgan turned to let him see Jori wrapped in a shawl on the hearth of the big stone fireplace. “Stayed by you all this time, nigh two weeks, breaking down into tears the first days. Helen had to slip hellebore in her tea just to get her to sleep.”