The Gatekeeper

by Nuraliah Norasid

  Which she did, glancing over her shoulder at the yawning red earth, wondering what was going to be buried down there. What creature could be so big that it required such a massive grave?

  In time, they came to a rusty rock face, looming huge over them, higher than even the tallest trees. Barani was always sure of things where Ria only had maybes. However, as Ria looked up uncertainly at her sister, she saw Barani scrutinising it, as if searching for some answer, some message written on its immense face.

  Barani was soon muttering, “I see it. I see it. It’s here but…how—”

  Ria was about to ask her what it was that she saw—just so she could help see too—when a tall rushing mass of dark green came at them from behind some foliage by the rock. Ria started and grabbed a fistful of her sister’s baju as Barani pushed Ria behind her. The mass came to a surprised halt and Ria saw that the dark green was in fact a large poncho, the hood drawn so far down that Ria could not see the person’s face, and especially not when she was squinting through the deluge streaming over her eyes.

  The hood was drawn back, quickly, and the face that appeared was unlike any that Ria had ever seen. It was not Human. If a strand of her hair dyed itself a dark red, grew larger and then grew arms and feet, it might begin to resemble the person standing before them, frowning down at them (if the scaly, low-lidded expression could be called frowning). Even Barani was staring, and she had seen people like this at the coastal village where she had her market stall. The immense amber eyes with their thin convex pupils were focused on the sisters, taking in their every feature. It was a large, strong-looking creature, more dragon- than serpent-like now that she had a closer look. The poncho fell to knees that jutted out at an odd angle, so that the calves appeared elongated, curving backwards away from the body and going down to rather large feet with only three clawed toes on each, and spurs where the heels ought to be.

  The Scerean said: “Uh…” Ria jumped at the low voice, male. There was a pause and then he started to speak in a mix of Ro’ ‘dal and Sce’ ‘dal, his eyes darting from Barani to Ria and then back to Barani. “It’s...what eh?”—he pointed up towards the canopy. “Raining. You no bring…umbrella?”

  He spoke slowly, pronouncing the Ro’ ‘dal words with difficulty, his expression growing more vicious as he went. Ria saw Barani glance down at her before turning back to the strange-looking man. “Don’t have,” she began in Sce’ ‘dal, and then asked, “Can I ask if you know… is… is this the quarry…”

  It was the first time that Barani seemed uncertain of which ‘dal, or tongue, to speak—was it Ro’, the new common tongue created by the large Human towns, or Sce’, the one from neighbouring Su(ma) and F’herak, which was spoken in most villages. Ria thought the answer was obvious, but perhaps the Scereans Barani encountered at the coast spoke something else entirely—on a rare chance, Tuyunri, and if that was so, Ria was sure she could be of some use. A simple “bcur’in”, which meant “Day above”, or the Tuyunri equivalent of “Hello”. It was one of the first words she’d learnt from Cikgu and surely a word of importance.

  She tried to muster up the courage to speak when the man gestured a thumb behind him and replied, “Gate...uh...wait, sorry. Uh...wait.”

  He loped back to where he’d first emerged and was about to disappear through the foliage when he executed a sharp about turn and rushed back to where they awkwardly stood. He removed his poncho and handed it to Ria with a “Nah” before loping away and disappearing through the plants.

  Ria thought he had a funny way of moving and started to snicker.

  “Hoi!” Barani hissed, nudging her hard. Silencing any arguments from the younger girl with a warning finger and a stern look, she took the poncho from Ria and drew it over the younger girl’s head, bringing the hood down to cover the limp snakes. The poncho nearly reached the ground and was so big it made her feel somewhat smothered. The large hood had a strong plastic smell and was so enclosed around her head that the sound of rain pattering down on it seemed magnified.

  The strange man emerged from the foliage and motioned for them to approach. As they did, he indicated the gap he was holding open for them in the plants. The small entrance yawned into an abyss, dark and seemingly impenetrable. Ria regarded it gingerly as she peered in to see if there was any light. Back when she lived in the hut, she was always home before twilight descended and everything became silhouettes against the gradient of indigo to orange sky. When she had to wash her feet before bed, she always got Barani to go down with her and while Barani was washing her own feet, Ria would sprint up the steps and into the house to be on her sleeping mat beside Nenek before Barani came back in. Barani used to say, as she extinguished the lamp, “So naughty and yet so scared,” as if it was a common rule that naughty children shouldn’t be afraid.

  The man plunged into the darkness. Barani hesitated and then followed suit with Ria in tow. Ria did not want to think about what might reach out and grab her in the dark. Tightening her grip on Barani’s hand and on the books in her shawl, she let herself be led inside, scraping elbows and shoulders against the rough walls of the crude corridors.

  The strange man introduced himself as Acra. He had been a little boy when his family was evicted from one of the villages near the west coast. Ria listened as he explained what it was like before something called a “house in skim” was put in place. (“Skim” is what, Ria also don’t know.) Gavermen could pretty much do whatever they wanted to poor folk who only wanted to catch fish and crabs for a living. Unable to afford a place in the city, his family had finally settled underground in Nelroote. He spoke mostly to Barani, although he would caper around Ria, smiling down at her when there was light in the tunnels and even once asked what was in her bundle: “Inside got gold, is it?” In other circumstances, she might have disliked him, but he was helping them and had lent her his poncho. So while his question made her hug the books tighter to her, his antics made her smile back.

  Nelroote was at first only a strip of light at the end of an immense tunnel of smooth walls and shadowed enclaves full of occupants she couldn’t see. The end was blocked by a solid gate that didn’t quite fit the tunnel’s width, so light seeped out from the sides without hinges. As they approached, cold and practically blind, they saw two dark forms attached to necks and shoulders, rising above the top of the gate. A voice called down to them but they could only gape up at the sheer size of the tunnel they were in, and the sheer impossibility of its existence directly under the world they’d known all their young lives.

  The voice called again, rough and rumbly, and Acra replied, saying he’d found them outside with nowhere to live.

  The two improbable heads disappeared from above the gate and Barani let go of Ria’s hand. She dropped to her knees, to Ria’s eye level—the first time Barani had looked at her properly since the village. Gripping Ria by the shoulders, she said just loud enough for the younger girl to hear, “Ria, no looking okay?” Ria nodded. Okay. No looking.

  A creak came from behind Barani and the older girl planted a quick kiss on Ria’s forehead, the display of tenderness surprising Ria, before a small door opened, its lit outline growing bigger, momentarily blinding them. Acra stood by the door, watching them. It was only when Barani straightened up to look at him that he motioned for them to enter.

  “Not so nice, the place. But this is Nelroote. Uh…welcome,” he said, smiling uncertainly.

  They were met at the door by the owners of the two improbable heads: another Scerean like Acra, and a fierce-looking Cayanese. Acra introduced them as Mat’ra and Gemir. Ria had thought Acra was a big man, but Mat’ra and Gemir—especially Gemir—were even bigger. Mat’ra’s snout was shorter than Acra’s, almost flat against his face. Ria had learnt from Cikgu that it was a result of time changing the forms of people as bloodlines became increasingly mixed. Mat’ra’s scales were a dark green, almost black. Blunt knobs alternated with short spikes down his arms from his shoulders, and he had a cleft at the top of his head
that joined to form a ridge which ran along the back of his neck before diminishing into the scales of his body. Gemir looked almost like a man, and his broad nose bridge was scrunched against a wrinkled, leathery face. Coarse, black hair framed his face and covered the rest of him. His brow bones were defined and curved low over his eyes, making him appear as if he were glowering all the time.

  Peeking up from under the poncho, she saw that both of the men were shirtless. Mat’ra was even scratching his bare chest as he studied her. Maybe being covered in scales and fur meant they didn’t need to wear shirts, Ria thought, and wondered if their women bathed without sarongs out in the open. Ria had the urge to touch Mat’ra, just to see if his rough scales were as dry as the shiny ones on her snakes. He smiled down at her, as if sensing her thoughts, which made her withdraw further into the poncho.

  Acra led them towards the settlement. Ria had expected an underground village: familiar houses on familiar bare ground, but with no sky and no guavas growing on trees. They stopped at the top of worn steps cut right into the stone and Ria seized the chance to take a better look at her new surroundings.

  The settlement was bigger than Ria had thought. It sat within a great stone bowl with sides that rose up like an arena, surrounded within the cave by natural pillars of joining stalagmites and stalactites. She could not spot the point of a roof anywhere, just stretches of dirty grey walls; the reds, blues and greens of painted, corrugated metal; and tarp covers radiating out from an obscured centre. The homes made of these walls did not seem to have been built according to any design or with any planning in mind. They seemed to have begun as boxes, some alone on ground level, others stacked up to three storeys high, and all pressed into each other so closely that one could stretch out from the window of one’s own home and pick food off the table next door.

  Around these basic structures the residents had built shacks, extra rooms and fences using bits of spare materials, more often improvising one item for another—such as a door turned sideways made into a low wall, and supplemented with wooden beams that supported a roof made out of tarp, so that a sort of veranda was formed. The extra bits climbed and snaked around each other, merging in some parts, and only accessible on others by rickety staircases and makeshift ladders. Manoeuvring individual clusters of homes was akin to scaling a vertical maze. Between them were narrow alleys either of rocky ground or furrows for drainage, some of which were wide enough to need bridges of plywood boards at intervals. The compact city of dwellings possessed no discernible beginning or end, no distinguishable boundaries. Ria wondered if finding her way around was the same as moving through a jungle— finding landmarks in unusual trees, or tracing the paths in disturbed vegetation. There was no sky to navigate with, to guess at time, and yet everything was also visible. Ria squinted up at the too-bright bursts of white light.

  “Generator,” she heard someone say in a deep rumble—one of the voices from before. She turned to see Gemir studying her, his arms crossed over his chest and his lips curled up in amusement. He pointed up and added, “From outdoor one, the lights. Same like in stadiums.”

  She wondered how they had got the lights up and if they switched them off at night, but didn’t feel it was the right time to ask. Gemir tilted his head and looked at her, as if waiting, but she turned away to study the massive cave within which the tin-can city existed.

  She had expected there to be echoes, sounds of people— living—bouncing off the walls to create a constant buzz with a cacophony of sounds. However, the city was quiet. Every now and then chatter could be heard, growing and then diminishing as if only in passing. She thought she could hear oil sizzling from one of the nearby homes and instinctively lifted her nose to smell what was being cooked.

  Within her line of sight in the far distance, three statues loomed in arched enclaves cut into the rock high above the settlement. She could clearly see the silent women in ankle-gracing dresses that began at the tops of their breasts. Each curvaceous figure, right up to their tall, ornate crowns, stood taller than the average tree she had climbed. The statues did not appear to be carved into the rock itself and the material they were made from did not look like it was local to the cave. She could not fathom how the people who’d shaped them had managed to haul them up so high. Each serene face was tilted down towards the settlement as if in fond consideration, undisturbed by the messy and ugly creature of a city that lay below their beautiful forms.

  Ria wanted to hold up a snakehead against one of the faces. Perspective would make the snakehead large and she would press the corners of its mouth to make it gape. Then she would release her hold so that the jaws would come snapping down.

  As if sensing the thought, her hair began to shift beneath their cover, as if just waking. It was then that she realised that Acra had been watching her from two steps down, smiling as he did. He beckoned to her when she looked at him. Mat’ra and Gemir were already making their way down, Mat’ra looking back every now and then while his companion walked on in a hulking, lazy gait. Ria saw that while Mat’ra’s legs looked like Acra’s, Gemir’s did not.

  Barani stood near her. When Ria turned to her, Barani placed a hand lightly on her shoulder and with a nod, urged her to follow. At the bottom of the steps, Ria saw more people with varying degrees of un-Human features. Barani stepped up to them, effectively positioning herself in front of Ria. Ria peered around her sister. There were other children, some very Human-looking, others less so. One end of a skipping rope was in the hand of a Feleenese girl; small like Ria, but in a prettier dress. The rest of the rope lay curled on the floor beside her partner, a slightly older Cayanese girl. A few boys had pockets bulging with marbles and another was holding on to an ice-cream stick gun loaded with rubber-band bullets. Looking up, she saw her sister staring down at her, fear and warning in her violet eyes. Ria dropped her gaze to the stone floor where it was safe.

  She thought the silence was going to go on forever and that this was where she was going to be scolded and punished, but Acra was suddenly kneeling in front of her. He peered sideways at Barani before focusing both eyes on Ria and complimenting, “Your Adik is very pretty, eh?” Ria felt Barani stiffen before she came between them. Tugging at the back of Barani’s baju, Ria tried to say, No, Kakak, no. Not him. Not them.

  Not you, too.

  Barani let her shawl drop to her shoulders. Ria pressed her eyes shut, imagining the worst, only to hear Barani, facing all the people who stared at her with a new look of shock, ask for a place to stay and tell them that she would work, any kind of work. Ria expected questions. No one asked a thing.

  Ria remembered the books and produced them from under the poncho, unwrapping them from the soggy scarf. They were rainsoaked, the pages already crinkling. At least the linen-bound hardcovers seemed sturdy. She thought they might still fetch a good price.

  Just then, the crowd parted and everyone turned to look at a middle-aged man pushing his way through it without hurry. At first glance, his skin seemed to have a rocky texture to it. As he came closer, however, Ria saw that the strange texture was, in fact, formed by a tessellation of diamond-shaped scales, large and visible—not fine like Acra’s, Mat’ra’s, or her hair’s. She remembered seeing a person like him in Kenanga before. Not quite as big, or as kind-looking, but the other person—a man—had had the same rock-like scales, crawling into the face, keeping eyes in sunken hollows with brows resembling hardened geographical ridges above them. The rocky scales extended to his exposed arms and ended at the tips of strangely dexterous though thick-fingered hands. He’d been hunched beside a worn mat, over which was spread a selection of interesting textiles and carved wooden toys, in a lonely corner of the marketplace that she’d had to pass on her way to school. She’d had given him her lunch once—her boiled banana and glutinous rice wrapped in tempeh leaf—thinking he needed it because she never saw him eat anything. He had looked up, had looked so surprised that Ria had to tighten the knot of her scarf just in case he saw. He had smiled, and t
hen Barani came before Ria could ask him questions: How you make the cloth, pakcik? You make yourself is it? You live where? Are you sick? From the way no one stopped by his mat and the way they avoided him, she had thought that he must be.

  In the present, the same-textured man she would come to know as Pak Arlindi was standing before her, not sick, not hunching. She could guess right away that he was someone important, like a chief. Jerking a chin at Ria he asked Barani, “Is she the same too?”

  Barani nodded. She stepped behind Ria and slowly drew back the poncho’s hood to reveal their sameness, writhing and looping as if they were excited to be let free. The man swept his eyes over Ria’s entire face before taking in the snakes. Ria could feel them acutely on her head, every movement noted and the weight more apparent as if she’d just got them for the first time. There were the compromises of tugs and presses when the snakes were not alarmed or excited, the trails of smooth, slender bodies around her neck and shoulders, and the end of tongues flickering against her skin, tickling her. They fell down in waves, free and uncontrollable. Being what they were, hair and serpents at the same time, made it feel as if everyone’s eyes were on them, judging and fearing her because of them.

  She wanted to pull the poncho over them again. Maybe she would wear oversized ponchos all her life and be resigned to her ugliness. But the man broke into a smile, one that was sad but understanding, and said, “You are very cute.” Ria watched him size her up, unsure of how to react. “But,” he added, “you too small size lah. Need to eat more.”

  A titter ran through the crowd. Barani’s smiles had become rare ever since Nenek had fallen ill; the tentative one she wore now was probably the warmest Ria had seen on her sister in a long time.

  Nelroote, Ria thought. It was a new way of spelling an old name. It used to be Ne’rut: ne’, to, and rut, see. Nenek would call the forest the Ne’rut jungle, in memory of the ancient Tuyuns to whom it used to belong. To see; even if Ria didn’t feel like she’d quite come home, she knew it was the right name for it. And that it was the right place for her sister if she was able to find new reasons to smile within it.