by Jeff Long
Ike paces. He slams another rock down. Turn me loose.
“Anyway, the consignment was on its way here, but got sidetracked. It seems my flock has been misled by a former pupil of mine. You may remember him, you snared him for me years ago. Clemens, a smart enough fellow, but pathologically ambitious and a chronic thief. Judging by appearances, he intends to keep the girls for himself and start up his own little breakaway republic. These things happen from time to time. You send an errand boy to fetch your snack, and he ends up eating it himself.”
Ike’s muscles are electric. He races off a short distance, races back. Hurry, he thinks. Tell me. Which is it, bouquet or snack, flower or lamb, harem or food? Did it matter? The angel is a whimsical creature. He will decide the girls’ use when they come into his possession. Possession, that was Ike’s job.
“My daughter.” Ike grits his teeth. Such fury. It does hurt.
“Your daughter will be waiting for you right here. Deliver the children to me and she is yours.”
“Her name.”
“Ah, that.” The angel taps his teeth. “Call her Maggie.”
It registers, even in his rage. His connection to this child is deeper than he imagined. That was the name of Ike’s mother. Ali remembered.
“Where are the children?” Lambs, flowers: the damned.
“In a city once known as N’iu, or Taurus, or the Ox. He was another of my crossbreeds, bless him, another poor misfire. Worshippers kept him alive with offerings long after his senility, sure it would please me. I finally put a stop to it. Sent a nasty flu virus up, erased the citizenry, blighted the city. This was, oh, nine thousand years ago. My son, the brutal mooncalf, is still alive, though barely, starving and buried inside some mountain. Careful of him, friend. Don’t feed the animals. But my point is that Mr. Clemens seems to be squatting in the ruins and reviving the mumbo jumbo.”
“Which way?” says Ike.
The angel cuts a symbol into Ike’s palm with his fingernail. “The Ox. Follow that.”
Ike starts off. The angel catches his arm. “There’s a bit of a fracas going on in the city just now,” he says. “It should be over by the time you get up there. I’m betting on the home team. Regardless, whoever’s left on either side, kill them all. They have served their purpose.”
“All,” says Ike.
“Not the girls, of course, don’t harm a hair on their heads. And bring my boy Clemens to me, if you would, alive. He and I have a few things to discuss. A word of warning: I gave him a little training, thought he might make a decent assassin someday.” He draws a six-inch-long quill from a thin bone sheath. “Fresh from a ray. I favor them as writing pens. Are you following me, Ike? This one has no ink. The tip is loaded with poison.”
The angel grabs Ike’s face and holds it close. “Are you on fire inside? Are you ready?”
Ike bellows. Perhaps he only whispers. The world was so quiet in his tomb.
“Your daughter, Ike. Don’t forget. Bring my children down to me.”
He tears away from the angel’s grip, and runs.
From her hiding place on the hillside, Ali watched the angel, Ishmael. He descended into the gorge like quick, pale water, flowing between the slag heaps that housed prisoners and bones. Not once did he look down to place his feet. It was as if he had memorized each and every stone where it lay.
Halting in front of a mound, he began tearing the rocks away, tossing aside big boulders as if they were pebbles. After a few minutes of Herculean burrowing, he exposed a hole. As Ali waited for the children to surface, one by one, she wondered, how would the girls ever find their way back to the surface? Who would care for them? What would they eat? She had to go with them, it was the only solution. But would this creature let her go?
Ishmael—Older-Than-Old, whatever he called himself—reached inside the hole and grabbed hold of something. A struggle ensued. Whoever was in there plainly did not want to come out.
The angel could have been delivering a baby as he slowly towed out first one leg, then the other, then the hips and torso, and finally the shaggy head of a man. Where were the children, though?
From her distance, it was hard at first for Ali to make out much detail. The man was long and thin as a bone, but ferocious. No sooner did Ishmael toss him to the ground than the man sprang up and attacked. Ishmael batted him down, which only provoked a second attack. This time Ishmael flung his prisoner down with such force it moved rocks. Ali heard them clatter and grate in their sockets. Before the man could rise again, Ishmael seized him by the throat and pinned him to the ground.
One of Rebecca’s soldiers, thought Ali. Or perhaps a hadal, though even that didn’t explain his wild strength. The man had been whittled down—virtually carved—to his raw nature. There was nothing left of him but junkyard viciousness. It occurred to her that this prisoner might be responsible for at least some of the bones littering the slopes. It was easy to picture him riffling through the graves, a real-life ghoul. This was the children’s salvation?
Holding his captive with one hand, Ishmael poured a liquid into the man’s mouth. He bent closer and said something. Immediately the man quit flailing. It was as if he had been shot through the head. Ishmael stroked the prisoner’s white mane. He unclamped his hand from the man’s throat and stepped back.
For another full minute, the man did not move at all. Ali wondered if Ishmael had killed him.
At last the prisoner stirred. Light as a cat, he rolled to his feet and straightened. For the first time Ali saw the tattoos covering his lean form. Then, never mind the filthy hair and the wicker ribs and the passage of years, Ali recognized him.
“Ike?” His name slipped from her, barely a breath of a whisper.
Instantly Ike dropped to a crouch. He faced her hillside. Ali ducked her head behind the rocks. The strangeness of his reaction, the bottled-up violence in him, his graveyard emergence, all of it frightened her.
Ike’s head cast back and forth, exactly like a hyena’s, searching with his ears and nose for what his eyes could not find. Ishmael glanced at Ali’s hiding place, and then kicked Ike in the ribs. He kicked him again, demanding his attention.
Ali lay stunned. For over ten years she had been burying this man. After the image and voice of him—his ghost or severed soul, whatever it was—had spoken to her through Ishmael’s mouth, she was sure he was finally dead. But here he was again.
She almost spoke Ike’s name again, this time louder and with purpose. He would come for her. He would rescue her from the abyss like last time.
But there were the children, or at least the phantom possibility of them. She realized that Ishmael had brought her along in order to test her. With a word, Ali could have saved herself. But then she would damn the children, if they were even alive anymore. By keeping silent, she might or might not save the children but would certainly damn herself.
Ishmael waited with his back to her. The choice was hers. One path led to the sun, the other wound deeper. Even as he was proving himself to her, he was making Ali prove herself to him. She took a breath. In silence, she let go of the sun.
Ike quit searching for her. He returned to his pacing. Possibly he dismissed her voice as that of a ghost, one more in this bank of lost souls. Ishmael looked over his shoulder to Ali’s hiding place, and then took a handful of Ike’s hair and lifted him to his feet. He pointed to the distance.
A howl pierced the air. Through the gap in the wall, Ali saw Ike loping off through the gorge.
Ishmael returned up the hillside. Ali was lying where he had placed her. “The sword is drawn.”
“What did you tell him?” she asked.
“I gave him a bit of inspiration. I told him that his daughter is among the children.”
“But she’s dead,” Ali said.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” said the angel.
ARTIFACTS
VARIETY
February 9
The Dark BrigadeTakes the Dark Leap
Cameras bega
n rolling yesterday on the Warner Bros. $180-million epic film of the Rebecca Coltrane rescue catastrophe, entitled The Dark Brigade. Under the helm of actor-turned-director Daniel Radcliffe, it is being shot entirely aboveground in the giant soundstage outside Salt Lake City, and is scheduled for a Thanksgiving release.
Hot on its hadal heels is DreamWorks’s Children’s Crusade, the story of three young men swept into the misadventure who forge a friendship as they descend into chaos. If budget is any indicator, the $220-million star vehicle (Reese Witherspoon and Daniel Day-Lewis) should provide heavyweight competition for Dark Brigade come Oscar time. Shooting begins next month in Croatia.
40
When Rebecca woke beside the water, the wind had died and her arms were empty. She didn’t panic. Sam had gotten up early, that was all, and would be playing nearby. Sam knew better than to worry her mother.
Rebecca had a vague memory of things being very complicated and noisy, with flashing lights and explosions. But the world was simple and quiet now. She and Sam were together. Except at this very moment.
“Sam?” Rebecca heard children playing in the distance, and got to her feet. For some reason she was naked to the waist. It felt good in front. But her back felt awful, like a very bad sunburn. Worse than that. Her hair was singed to the scalp. Odd.
The children’s singing led her along the path beside the lake. She found them in the reeds. “Have you seen Sam?” she asked the frogs.
Sam giggled, far away. Mama, she called. Over here.
Goodness, she was thirsty. The water was delicious. Rebecca splashed a handful on her face. She wet the back of her head where the hair had burned off. How on earth had that happened? No crying over spilled milk. It would grow again.
One thing led to another. She lowered herself into the marsh and waded out a bit and floated on her back. The children, being children, went to play hide-and-seek in the cattails. They quit singing.
The weight of the world had no weight in here. Her arms dangled. Her brown nipples floated like islands. She squeezed the mud between her toes.
At some point faces appeared in the water. On first noticing them, she thought they were ghosts hovering just under the surface. But they were reflections. Rebecca raised her eyes.
Five goblins were hunkered down along the shoreline, side by side, like peas in a pod, watching her. One was draped with a chain-mail shirt from some bygone era. Three wore bloodstained scraps of military uniforms and carried broken rifles and had wet sacks hanging from strings around their necks. One of the sacks had a thumb of skin still attached. It was a penis, she realized.
For a terrifying moment, Rebecca remembered everything in perfect order, the moonlit kidnapping, Jake’s fight, the crusading, the battle, even the jagged hole in Sam’s head. The images circled her, faster and faster. Sam is dead. An awful groan climbed out from her throat.
Abruptly it was too much. A switch flipped. Her groan stopped. The world was nice again.
The five goblins could have stepped right out of a children’s story. They spoke softly, almost musically, with little scritches and clicks. Rebecca smiled. It reminded her of Texas nights with crickets fiddling and fireflies scooting about. At last they stood and continued on their way.
Sam. “Sam,” she called.
Mama.
She waded back to shore. They had left a strip of fresh meat on her pants. She chewed while she walked. Sam flirted with her in the near distance. Rebecca liked having a happy girl.
The path was littered with blood pools and broken reeds and sharp metal and stone junk. In the distance loomed a fort. The bad memories stirred again, but she managed to keep them at bay. It helped that the bodies were all gone. She approved. When you finished playing, you needed to pick up after yourself.
She came to an odd bridge of pillar tops that marched across the water. She imagined her little ballerina hopscotching over the gaps in the bridge. Mama, Sam called impatiently. Rebecca started over.
Just one body spoiled the crossing. It was a man floating facedown in the water. He seemed to be suspended by taut pink balloons along his back and limbs. They were jellyfish feasting. Never mind.
Mah-maah.
Onward. A range of white-capped peaks stood at the bridge’s end. “Careful, Sam.” Was that her happy Heidi up there scaling the Alps?
They weren’t the Alps. It wasn’t Heidi. Pyramids, she realized. They were in Egypt. And some sort of animal was prowling the heights. Egyptian monkeys?
Up close, the pyramids weren’t nearly so trim and tidy. The alabaster sheath had cracked and avalanched into heaps. White bones littered the white rubble.
“Sam, honey,” she called.
Rebecca didn’t like the haunted-house theme. It smelled bad here. Skulls gawked from every fissure and shelf. More than one of those animals was darting about on the ledges overhead. Shapes flitted between the enormous pyramid roots. Rebecca took care not to look at them. Out of sight, out of mind. Or was it out of mind, out of sight? She was getting confused. Never mind.
“It’s time to go, Sam,” she said.
Come on, Mama.
Rebecca labored up and over the rubble. A great plaza lay at the heart of the pyramid complex. Overrun with flowstone and alabaster talus and thick vines, it looked like a forest without the trees. At the far corner of the plaza, beneath the most massive of the pyramids, a few acres had been partially cleared. It reminded her of the fixer-upper she and Jake had bought. With a lot of paint, wallpaper, and elbow grease, they’d turned the shambles into home sweet home.
She spied little figures clearing the pyramid’s upper reaches and, down below, hauling rocks away. Someone had the right idea, someone with the bootstraps to get things done. A king, maybe. Or—the Egypt theme—a pharaoh. She would find this fellow and kindly ask him the way to Austin, and then collect Sam, and they’d be on their way.
Midway across the vast muddle of toppled obelisks and vines snaking from cracks in the ground, Rebecca got lost. Her back felt flogged. She was weak as a kitten.
Mama.
Rebecca aimed toward the giant pyramid. Workers toiled on the soaring slope. Rocks clattered down. Dust pinched the air. Farther along, a steeply pitched staircase rose to the summit.
Over by the wall, a man with whiskers and big sideburns was watching her. His name swam up from far away. “Mr. Johnson,” she said, and went over to ask him about his wife’s diabetes. But it was just his head there, resting on a shelf. Rebecca was slightly embarrassed for him. He had been somewhat short to begin with.
“Sam?” she called. Something had gone on here, something she did not want to remember, something rated R for violence. It was not a place for a child.
The trace of a path wound between freshly unearthed statues. They depicted grotesque half-human animals. It was like a gallery of fairy tales carved in stone, a Medusa, a Batman, and a winged monkey straight out of Oz. The largest and most imposing was that of a Minotaur.
“My archangel,” a voice said behind her. “You finally decided to pay us a visit.”
Rebecca turned. It was another of the goblins, but he was different. Pasty as he was, his skin had a bit of pigment to it, and some awful wasting disease had eaten away his nose and eyelids. A chain-mail vest topped his loincloth. His two very large bulbs of eyes fastened on her chest.
Luckily, Rebecca’s nana wasn’t here. In Nana’s books, a lady didn’t wear white shoes before Easter or after Labor Day. A lady most definitely did not go around naked to the waist. And even if she did, a gentleman should have the good manners not to stare. But then again, this was a foreign country. Customs varied. “Have we met?”
The goblin came closer, and looked deep into her eyes. “Earth to space,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Probably better all around,” he murmured to himself.
He was vaguely familiar, this happy, wide-eyed toad. He could have just hopped out of one of Sam’s nighttime books. Without further ado, he reached out and hef
ted one of her boobies like a big fruit. He gave it a squeeze and let it drop.
Rebecca would have said something, but she was not one of those Ugly Americans who went around making scenes and imposing homeland values. “I’m looking for my daughter,” she said. “Her name is Sam.”
“I know. They brought her over while you were sleeping.”
“What do you mean?”
“She needed a little fixing up, Rebecca.”
They should have asked permission, of course. “Who’s in charge here, please?”
“You really don’t remember me?” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you the king?”
That amused him. “Why not? Dream big, I always say.”
“We’d like to go home now,” she said.
“Right this way, Rebecca.” He led her along the path. He had a bad limp. More familiar faces greeted her from the stone shelves. A few had been groomed and decorated like pets. She kept her thoughts in a box.
They reached a forest of sorts.
All around her, men dangled in midair. Dangled wasn’t quite the word. Hovered. It was like magic. No strings or wires held them in the air. Several feet above the ground, they stood at attention, buck naked and very still. Then two of them lifted their heads. The veins stood out on their faces and necks. Their eyes bulged. One moaned softly. She was reminded of hens laying extremely large eggs.
Rebecca didn’t want to see. This was none of her business. Once she had Sam, they would be out of here. But her imaginary blindfold slipped. The madness lifted. She saw.
Like hats or shoes, certain cruelties go in and out of fashion. The rack, the wheel, drawing and quartering: one hears the words, but forgets the realities. This, for instance. Rebecca had never given a second thought to what an impaling might look like. It wasn’t something you heard about on morning NPR. Even Jake’s gladiator and Highlander movies didn’t go there.