A small smile curved Ria’s lips. With a glint in her eyes, she replied, “The same reason that keeps you coming down to see me.” Eedric had no time to respond because she went on to say, “And you forget Ormal Din was only a puppet leader.”
Eedric’s eyes remained on her for a beat before he asked, “So, what’s the other thing? The one about the jar?”
“Jar nah-uk’rh? Blood Aunt, the Lady in the sarcophagus. Everyone here knows about her.”
They stood staring at the tiles, close and almost touching. In the silence that followed, he almost believed that he could hear her snakes gliding over each other and the thoughts churning in her mind. He took to staring hard at another tile, in which a woman with a ferocious visage was riding a body whose head was lost, worn off from the ages.
“I just thought I would show it to you,” he heard her say. He felt her turn her head slightly to him and thought she was going to drop it onto his shoulder. He tensed up, preparing himself for the weight and the snakes. She didn’t.
With finality, she took up instead her basket from the floor where she’d left it and asked him brightly, “Shall we go?”
But Eedric did not move. He turned his eyes from the tiles and slowly jerked his chin towards the skylight. “Do you miss it?”
“Yes.” Steady, blunt. Ria on good days.
He considered her a while before asking, “What do you miss?”
“Trees. Things taller than me that are not walls or...”—she looked down briefly into her basket as if the answer was there—“stone.”
“Will you go out with me?”
“Out?” she asked, turning her head a fraction towards him.
He nodded, the movement heavy and serious as if he’d just delivered bad news. He was nervous when he next spoke. “Outside… and out. With me.”
He approached. She remained where she was. As he stood close, it was the first time he properly noticed how tall he was, and how much he had to slouch to accommodate her. His entire body stood on a brink. He could almost feel the tension in how conscious it was, of itself and of hers; how she nearly flinched when his hand touched her arm, high up near the shoulder. He kept it there, watching her hair, testing ground before curving the touch into a proper hold. She let him. She was warm and suddenly so painfully, frighteningly real.
“I’m pretty sure being around death as much as you do invites it,” he told her. The air felt thick and it was suddenly hard to breathe. “All I’m saying is, you need a break. Come out a while. If you keep away from the main trails or wear something on your head, no one is going to know. Not all medusas need to be in captivity. At least, you don’t.”
She regarded him mournfully and his hand moved from her arm to hover over her cheek. Finally, he prised his hand away from the empty touch, to study it as if he was uncertain of what it was.
“You know something? I always thought I was a safe guy—savings, insurance coverage, general degree… Even the kind of girlfriend that I know my father would like,” he said quietly. “Then I go and poke my fingers into dangerous holes and expect them to come out clean.”
This caused Ria to smile. “Am I one of those dangerous holes?”
Eedric thought about her, about Adrianne, and how it would all play out for him if this—this woman, this medusa—were to come to light.
“Very dangerous.” And yet, suddenly heedless, he pressed, “So will you go out with me?”
Ria nodded in answer. They got back out through the tiny crawlhole. Ria went ahead, not realising, it seemed, the view she was giving him as he went after her—simple panties, mauve in a conscious effort to match the dress, he thought. Hoped.
In the tunnels just before the spiral staircase, Eedric stopped her with a whisper and removed the jacket he was wearing. It was an old hoodie, he mentioned as he helped her slip into it, and thought she might even know the band emblazoned on its front: Hoarsemen— “Because they scream themselves hoarse in every album, get it?” he explained, snickering a little—four of them with painted faces of violent but sickly hues, each expression a different shade of suffering. She silently pulled the large hood over her head, hiding much of her face from his view, and they were off, the skulls watching their passing, taking only a moment’s rest from their guard when they were engulfed in the darkness of Ria’s and Eedric’s shadows.
Even if he would not admit it, the skulls made Eedric feel uneasy sometimes. However, walking with Ria to a now-unknown surface made him believe he was past being frightened. After what he’d seen of her chamber, there was a certain reassurance in skeletal remains. Nothing represented death’s absolutes like skulls and bones. He could assume every person the skeletons once belonged to had died of natural causes, or from unfortunate accidents. All of the skulls were intact. A few bore holes in their craniums, either from a bullet or someone’s lucky arrow, maybe even a spear. Maybe the experts could tell but as far as Eedric was concerned, the skeletons had no features, no written records on them, and so nothing remained of the people they used to be.
As they went up the spiral, he was aware of every inhale and exhale of his breath, every creasing rustle from his jeans, and the plastic footsteps of his sneakered feet. A few times she looked over her shoulder at him, and each time she asked how he was doing, he would reply with, “I’m okay.” Finally, she pressed herself against the central stone pillar to let him pass. He stopped beside her and motioned for her to go on. Wordlessly, she slipped past him and made it clear with just her steady look that she was going to take up the rear. He struggled with himself. A few times he tried to speak, thinking he’d found the words, and each time he clammed up having found none. Finally, he just drew a sigh of resignation and took point.
At her touch, light and drawing on the stretch of his back, he stopped and whipped his head over his shoulder to look at her.
“What?” he asked.
She drew back and assured him, “Nothing.”
They exchanged not a word more until they were finally outside. The sudden brightness blinded him and made him squint. It was a while before he could take in what surrounded them. She did the same, peering up at the cracks of sky through the canopy, the leaves that moved with the wind, the vegetation emitting the calls of monkeys and the chirrups of cicadas. He had seen and heard it all before, smelt what she must smell then, but it all seemed more vibrant than he remembered. He wondered if it was the same for her too, after all these years. They went down the nearly imperceptible path he always took to get to her, stepping over roots and through undergrowth. They watched their feet as they walked. Above the sound of their movements, he could hear the distinct, continuous buzz of the rainforest around them.
They paused a moment and Ria closed her eyes to take it all in. As if sensing her calm, her snakes were well-behaved in spite of the hood’s confinement. One of them slithered forward, over her cheek, then further down to her chin and the nape of her neck. She was about to tuck it back under the hood when Eedric stopped her. He sized it up. The fact that her hair was made of cobras, each with venom deadly enough to liquefy his insides, was never far from his mind. Then he reached up to touch it. Every muscle in him screamed at him to pull away, but he persisted, never once taking his eyes off the snake.
“Wow, it’s dry and smooth!” he remarked.
“Like all snakes,” she told him.
The snake raised itself and he snatched his hand back. But Ria held it up by the bottom of its head and stretched it out to him, gently telling him to not be afraid. He dared to touch the snakehead she held, daring even to trace the white, eye-like marking on the back of its head. A sense of comfort washed over him as he saw her relax into his touch.
The moment passed quickly and she tucked the snake back in with the rest.
“So?” Eedric prompted. “What do you think?”
He watched her squint upwards. Then she answered, “I want to see what the night looks like.”
Eedric was surprised, but only mildly. He waited, and i
t was just like Ria to not offer explanations when she was expected to. In time, he only turned away and smiled. If this was what it meant for her to let go, to forget and to adjust, he would be with her in surviving the twilight hours of the forest.
“I know what we can do,” he replied.
He took her hand from within the too-long sleeves of the jacket— found that it was sweaty—and led her down the gentle incline, slipping a few times as they stepped over roots and fallen tree parts. Further down the path later, they were seized by a sense of unbridled freedom, and for a moment they flitted in the jungle, adding mirth to the forest sounds and carelessness to the possibility of discovery. She moved barefoot through the undergrowth, having removed her slippers before they had left the tunnel. Eedric saw that she moved fast and, save for the slightest rustle of the foliage when she brushed against it, did so with barely a sound. She was a fleeting image caught in pieces between green-leafed gaps—a black-hooded figure trailing the bright, flowery hem of a dress, hands cut off by the over-long sleeves, mottled legs opening up in leaps. Her laughter rang through the forest as if she was ethereal. She was breathless when he finally caught her, wedged in between the buttress roots of a large tree. He perceived her smile from beneath the hood, and all the arcs that made her face just what it was; and he believed, for the silliest, most romantic moment, that he was going to have her forever.
In the jungle of the moment, she taught him which fruits he could eat, which he mustn’t and how to bring them down with well-aimed sticks. Later they would watch a macaque hunkered in a tree, picking with flexible lips the eatables from the brown shell of a jungle fruit. It exhibited neither alarm nor concern as it peered at them over the meal in its hands. Eedric envied it for its freedom to scratch its balls and eat where and how it chose.
He felt Ria hesitate for a fleeting moment when they came to the manicured landscaping beyond which the visitors centre stood. However, all she did was pull her hood down further and duck her head before letting him lead her towards the cafeteria. She stood just outside of its perimeters while he bought food for the both of them. While he waited for his purchases to be prepared, he peered through the wide open doors at her. She got looks—a man in a bright yellow polo-tee did a double take when he saw her face, two women in trekking gear gave her a glance and quickly dropped their eyes, while a little boy stared up at her from where he stood holding on to his small backpack and red-and-blue cap. Ria didn’t seem to notice. When Eedric rejoined her with canned drinks and takeaway sandwiches, he saw that her attention was focused on the open field, where children stood upon the shortened grass with their parents, holding on to lines of massive kites streaming entrails against the sky.
He remembered a time when Father was gentle. He would take Eedric out to fly a kite just like that—a dragon form with a tail that streamed spikes—the two of them holding on to the line. Father would be the anchor and Eedric would do his best to stabilise the kite. A memory in pastel, really, soft and very faded.
They trailed away from the populated area, back into the forest, taking the unbeaten paths until they reached an unused road riven with cracks, weeds and lichen. It turned out to be a steep climb up to the old radio towers that did their towering within ageing fences. The disused road ended some ways off and they crossed over the guardrails to the patch of nearly bare ground at the edge of the dead drop.
They sat waiting for the night, Eedric cross-legged and Ria with her body facing his side, mottled legs stretched lengthways behind him. Eedric watched her for a time, waiting for a snakehead to come free, watching the sporadic drops of dark lashes each time she blinked, and the light tremble of her dress’ hem when the wind caught at it. Ria said little, her gaze far off and her body held stiffly, almost pensively. He wondered if she was trying hard to breathe—to keep breathing.
He looked down to the view below, to grey roads and nondescript buildings. Manticura was a country of little beauty and he hoped that some, if not all, of that beauty could be poured into that one night just for her.
The night, when it finally crept in, showed no stars, except for the lantern-dotted city that blazed the further it stretched to the dark expanse of an invisible sea. But there was the slightest shift and when he looked to the medusa beside him, to her fuzzy silhouette, he saw that she had her legs drawn up to her, half her body turned to the view and her weight supported on her arms. Her hood had since been thrown back, and her snakes as they moved in their undulating outlines were docile and languid. Contentment was what he felt when he turned back to the view below. They whiled the evening away with the gleeful delinquency of forgotten youth, as they passed a packet of peanuts between them, describing arcs in empty spaces with the shells that they discarded.
Blind
One hour past ten; the lights were already out. Waro was taking stock, and he thought he might have been short on eggs again. Or was it soda? He couldn’t remember. People complained a lot about one thing or the other when it came to his shop. Lately, it had been about how much more expensive his cigarettes were than those sold by the street boys in Dream Garden. The licenses he had to pay the Dream Garden suppliers were enough to set him back. And they kept asking for more and more. Those snakes. Said that it was harder to get the cartons past the F’herak-Manticura checkpoint. Said there were ten different kinds of tobacco taxes now across the strait in both F’herak and South Ceras, and that it wasn’t the ‘77s any more, where police officers could be bribed. “How to make money like that?” they would ask. These young people with their smug way of talking and obscene clothes. Waro almost spat into a man’s face once. If anyone should be asking how one was to make money in hard times, it was him. Damn all Tuyun people, he thought as he ran through the numbers again.
A sound disrupted his counting. Pranksters, drunk ones, he’d thought at first. They knew, these young people from the purple city of sin, they knew he couldn’t count like before. They knew he couldn’t see so well these days, even for—especially for—a Feleenese. However, his sense of hearing had not been dulled by the years.
Something about the sound when it came again made him perk up and listen. It didn’t take him long to realise that it was not pranksters he was hearing. Rather, it was the sound of controlled authority; a muffled cacophony of command and fear-breathing protest. It reminded him of the few moments before the morning call in Menkapa, when the Esomiri prison wardens would make their way to the barracks that housed the POWs. It reminded him of the resounding authority in the gritty sound of boots on gravel and the stalking quality of every step. The quiet sounds had always come before the pounding of fists on the barrack doors, windows and half-dead bodies. All above the sound of the wardens shouting in pidgin Ro’ ‘dal. As it was, sounds of authority were always followed by the sound of subordination. After every wake-up call would come the shuffling of rank feet bursting with sores in cracked, ill-fitting shoes, as the shambling forms of POWs and Feleenese men who had been accused of the slightest crimes poured out from nondescript buildings to arrange themselves in rows in the camp’s parade ground.
Back in the settlement, Waro stared out into the dark. The homes within visible distance had no lights shining in them, save for one or two that had a lamp or a lantern lit in their windows. His own shop was lit for about a metre around by lamps hung at intervals from the awnings. It was silent for a while. Eerily so. Then they—the men with their guns—came around to the front of his shop, in their dark blues and bulletproof vests—for what also, I don’t know—creeping, faces masked behind the helmets they wore. All of them had night vision goggles, which were pushed up to their foreheads to create two more eyes, round and glowing green.
If they had come around from the back, he could only guess that they’d come from the purple city. From the main entrance to the purple city in complete silence. They must have taken out the guards from the gate and gone by the back of the outermost of the eastern homes. Even with what little he could see of them in his shop window, he c
ould see how these soldiers were moving with informed precision. The old trooper in him could not help but feel impressed.
Waro spotted the sweep of mounted torch lights in the darkness beyond, where he knew more squads were cleaning out the homes. He suspected that some of the homes’ occupants were already aware of what was going on. Lights went off from behind the blinds and through cracks in faded curtains. The blue-clad soldiers knew the homes were not empty. They knocked hard. When the doors were not opened, they kicked them in. The thumps of their boots on the metal steps of the stacked homes rang through the terrified silence. No one spoke when they emerged with their hands up in surrender, bodies ready to kneel at a bitten command. The soldiers waved people out and then swept through the interiors with the exactitude of men who’d been trained—hardened—for it. Home to home, gesture by gesture, seeking, it seemed, something that wasn’t in any of them.
A voice commanded Waro to get down and put his hands behind his head. He returned the steely gaze of one of the soldiers in the shop window. In spite of the man’s balaclava, he recognised a fellow Feleenese from the elliptical pupils set within greenish-yellow eyes. And immediately felt betrayed.
“Get on the ground and put your hands behind your head!” ordered the green-eyed soldier, thrusting the gun into Waro’s face to make his point.
Waro stared at him with indifference, ignoring the sounds of feet storming up behind him. He continued to stare even as a hand pushed him down to kneel. Someone knocked his television to the ground. It would cost him half a carton of cigarettes to buy a new one from Mat Tong in the Garden trade district.
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