There was silence as the men searched through his store. Now, kneeling, he remembered that he was running low on instant noodles. Old Waro then stared at the card he had clipped onto the back of his shop counter weeks ago; Watijah’s family still hadn’t paid him for the groceries they had taken in advance, but for the first time in his career as a miser, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.
One soldier was talking to another: “No sign of the objective.” Waro glanced up long enough to identify the speaker as the Feleenese behind the balaclava.
“What are we looking for again?” the other soldier asked as he scanned the snacks on Waro’s shop counter with the mounted light of his sub machine gun.
“Adult medusa. Black hair. Yellow eyes.”
The other soldier held up a snack and rattled it at a nearby team member, eyes alight. At the Feleenese’s reply, he let out a low whistle. “A medusa? How are we going to handle something like that?”
Waro found himself thinking, You can’t. He found himself thinking back to the day of his homecoming from the war, when he had taken a wrong turn and ended up in the main chamber of the catacombs, with its statues with the faces of men he could have known, faces of men he could have fought against, who could have been those who had imprisoned him, who had held razors and shorn off all his fur with such violence as to leave bleeding patches of baldness which, in the camp’s humid and squalid conditions, oozed from infection.
In that chamber, she had stood among the statues, that snake girl with the beautiful sister whom he’d tried time and again in an age of freedom to get a look at naked. Tried—perhaps some failures were meant to be. He rarely ever saw her now, but the strangeness of her face’s make—the oddly-shaped head with cold, cruel eyes set too far apart—was etched in his mind. She had turned her gaze to him, smiling in the sinister yet reassuring manner of one who knew she held a life in her hand. One of her snakes had a bandaged end. The bandage had been a sickly shade of yellow and was black at the point of the hanging stump, as if she had not changed it in weeks.
All of him had felt frozen, and the memories, the images, returned with terrifying clarity: long, senseless marches and heavy loads cutting into shoulders; stilled Human compassion in the bite of whips on bent backs; his hand diving into the pockets of fallen campmates. In that encounter with Ria, he had remembered the eyes of one of them, flicking to gaze upon him, face half in the mud, mouth opening and closing with futility. Waro had still gone for the quarter of a flatbread that he knew the man had saved from breakfast.
Waro still remembered it all now, some forty years later. He also remembered the first thing she had asked him: “‘Bang, you nak balik?” There had been none of the lofty control Barani always had. Just the stoic pragmatism of one who had seen too much.
That homecoming day, she had led him home. He would not, could not speak of what he saw.
Back in the shop, the soldiers were still considering the task of apprehending Ria.
“There is a specialised squad for that. We just need to know where she is.”
The Feleenese soldier’s eyes flicked to Waro, who still knelt behind his shop counter in silence.
After a beat, he asked, gun lifting and pointing, “Do you know?”
Waro did not answer at first, wondering if it was betrayal to do so. The girl, now a middle-aged woman, had done him no wrong. Done no one wrong in keeping to the catacombs, not even in petrifying that Cayanese thug Johan. But he thought about the settlement and how it had been the search for her that had led to this raid, this sudden upturning of what had been a familiar, if difficult life. Hers was but one life measured on a scale against hundreds of others. Perhaps she had been a saviour and a guardian once, but she was no longer either of those.
Lady forgive me, he thought. “Catacombs,” he said.
The Feleenese soldier perked up. “Where?”
“Catacombs. The statues, she. They all in the catacombs. There for years. All soldiers from the Tuhav. All of them.”
The soldier with the snack: “Catacombs? What is he talking about?”
Another in the back: “Why are we looking for a medusa anyway?”
Yet another: “Big shot orders ah. Safeguarding security or some shit.”
The Feleenese soldier, however, kept his eyes steady on Waro. “Take us there.”
Kak Sab was clearly fretting again, that night more so than usual. She would not sit for long and would not eat more than a few mouthfuls of the food Lan had brought back for the family on his way home from work. If he had been worrying about a lean envelope at the end of the month, he cast the thought aside now, in favour of asking his mother what was wrong. He already knew the answer, of course:
“Your brother, how many weeks already haven’t come home.”
And whenever Lan managed to get hold of a feeler on the way back from the surface, none carried a message from Sani on them, a message which could have explained why he had not returned for so long.
Why, Lan also wondered with anger, must Sani feel a constant need to stress his family out all the time?
Lan threw his spoon into the fray of rice, sambal goreng and mutilated chicken. He was not hungry any longer. His head was heavy and he rubbed at his eyes, the stony grate of his tur scales between his finger and eyelids suddenly annoying him even though they never had before. Sani was the golden child, the one with the best of everything—looks, education, and the opportunities that came with it—and more Human skin than Lan could never hope to see if he were to scrub himself clean of his textures. Sani saw more daylight than the majority of people in Nelroote put together. His hands were unblemished by an indefinite life of hard labour in the mines, hacking at unyielding rock to get at the iridescent minerals, which were the only honest lifeblood of Nelroote. No one asked anything of Sani but to be their paragon and a mother’s pride.
But Lan had heard what the elders said, of their runners and feelers who were mostly in their youth, of Sani too: “Stare at the sun too long and you’ll become blind.” He doubted any of the youngsters would want to return to the dank and putrid underworld. Were it not for the enforcement of its security, Lan was sure the population of Nelroote would already have dwindled to endangered degrees. He knew the Dream Garden families, sometimes even his own father— whose only concern should have been for the lesser residents—sent out people to hunt the deserters. The hunters they sent out were usually Cayanese: the ones with the best noses and keenest eyes, and so fiercely loyal to the hands that fed their every hunger that they feared nothing from the surface. Harsh punishment followed for those who were caught—beatings, torture, and a shaming in the public square near Old Waro’s shop.
Their bruised and groaning bodies were left out for three days each time, and served as a reminder that it was best to drop one’s head to one’s chest and continue eking out a living from next to nothing, so as to not miss the next payment of protection money.
A part of him did not wonder why his brother, addled with lofty book ideas and greater unfathomable theories, would want to be away from this place. Another part was angry that the younger son had had all of life’s ease and still couldn’t find it in himself to be responsible to his family. And if any of the DG lackeys found him... Lan could only hope that their father would deign to have a say about it. Or Kak Ria. No one dared contradict Kak Ria, if she so chose to put in a word every once in a while.
“And where is your bapak?” his mother asked no one in particular. “So late already, still not home?”
Lan let his head hang for a moment before pushing away from the table. The single leg of the chair that had no crutch tip screeched as it dragged across the bare cement floor of the small house. Kak Sab was peering out the window, into the near darkness of Nelroote’s cave night, worrying about one son and not—ever—seeing the other who had stayed for her, who stayed and doomed himself to a life of solitude to take care of her.
With a deep sigh, he said, “Lan go look for Bapak.”
Bapak was likely at Mesa’s Den again, either betting precious money on racing traacs or losing it all in a game of Root Leg. But even that was better than finding his father visiting the prostitutes in Sensa. Lan had never been able to look at his mother properly after that.
Kak Sab didn’t answer. Lan looked to where his mother continued to stand by the window. The fatigued way she held herself gave way to rigidity, followed by an expression of curiosity and then sudden, knowing fear.
A face suddenly appearing in the window caused them both to jump, but Kak Sab must have seen the Dream Garden runner coming up to their house because she recovered in a split-second and demanded, “Ah, Wei, where is my husband?”
The wispy Feleenese fought for breath as he spoke and for a while, not even Lan could believe what he was hearing. His father was not coming back. Nelroote was being raided by squads of law enforcement soldiers, no house left unchecked in the hunt for the medusa sisters. And the only thing that was delaying the soldiers’ onslaught was the sheer size of the settlement as well as the intricacy of its winding paths and over-building.
Lan digested the news with the slow grind of rusted gears above the deathly stillness of the settlement and the ever-pressing crisis of time. He peered up, first at the dark ceiling, then far off to the pink-hued trio of statues. They remained unchanged—serene and indifferent—making him wonder if he could believe what he never actually saw happen.
He snapped his eyes back to the runner, and stared into the expression of contained terror and perhaps even excitement in the boy’s countenance.
“Take my mother,” he instructed, unable to keep the defensive, dominating growl out of his voice. He glowered, bringing his face close. He didn’t like DG lackeys, not a bit, but he didn’t think he had a choice at the moment. “I go find Kak Bara and Kak Ria.” He made a cutting gesture, indicating his mother to the boy. “Take her! Go by back ways. Go to the catacombs, to the keramat and hide. Make sure no one see you. Understand?”
The boy nodded, shoulders straightened and chest pushed out. Kak Sab stared at him. Lan thought she was going to start worrying about Sani again.
“Kak Bara is only next door, Lan. We can go together,” she suggested, hands reaching out to very nearly take his arm.
Lan shook his head. He half-climbed and half-vaulted out the open window, grabbing the kerosene lamp from the hook by the door as he went. “Go two by two safer, Mak.” And then he made a dash around the corner for the sisters’ home.
Barani looked up from the book at the sound—a rough snap like the breaking of a hard piece of wood—and sat listening for footsteps outside the door. None came, and the door remained obstinately shut. Normally, she would have sighed and wondered how Ria could spend as long as she did among the dead. However, there was something rather ominous about the sound. Barani sat up straighter, a finger trembling in the cleft between the pages.
Panicked knocking at the door launched her out of her seat to answer it. It opened to reveal Lan’s familiar face bathed in the light of the kerosene lamp he was carrying.
“Ah, Lan,” she remarked, surprised, “what business, dead in the night knock on people’s door?”
She never thought brown scales could be so pale, but that was what Lan was. She wondered what could have riled him so, for Lan was not one to be easily frightened or worried.
Lan appeared positively spooked as he swallowed and apologised, “Sorry, Kak, sorry. Got a message from Bapak. He asked me to come here as soon as I could.”
Barani glanced over his shoulder and saw no one. “Where’s your Bapak?”
“Bapak was at…” Here he frowned and gritted his teeth as if at an unpleasant thought. He swallowed it and went on. “Bapak was at Sensa when the police came. Arrested everyone. He just managed to send Wei to us.”
Barani could not see herself but she was sure she had blanched. A memory took hold of her, of petrified men and forgotten faces, and of the fear palpitating through her as she and her sister ran from crimes that were bound to condemn them for life.
Suddenly, Barani snapped herself up taller. “And where is your Ibu?” she asked.
“Ibu is with Wei. I ask him to take her to safety.”
“You sent your mother with that louse?” demanded Barani. “Why?”
Barani knew the odious Garden runner by unpleasant association. He had appeared outside her door one day, demanding that she pay the ten per cent increase in protection money, just like everyone else. Barani and Ria were exempted from paying anything at all, but Barani had paid him the ten per cent anyway, just to get him to go away. His shakedown, however, had sent his boss into such a fright so as to send her a basket hamper and the money back.
“Bapak sent word. Said to get you and Kak Ria away, said that the two of you must not be found. No matter what. He didn’t give a reason.”
He grew quiet, his great head down turned. Something about his stance, the murmuring disquiet belying his solemnity, compelled her to clasp his hard shoulder.
“Like they always say, Lan: as long as your soul lies in your body, every deed will be remembered and every deed with the call to repay.” Seeing his incomprehension, she explained, “Your late grandfather felt he owed Kak Ria quite a lot after the war. So he promised us shelter and protection as long as his kin remain alive. Your father has upheld the promise.”
Lan’s frown deepened. She thought he was going to shake her hand off, angry at what the sisters’ past had done to his family. Instead, he gently asked, “Did it have something to do with why you came here?”
Barani’s jaw tightened, heart clenching and throat hurting. “Not just that.” She would have said more but for a growing urgency to vacate the home she’d known for nearly fifty years. The bustling around the house was all too familiar, but there was little to take and there was even less time. Lan shut the lamp’s aperture and they slipped out into the dark just as a white light started to burn on the front of the house. She did not look back to see who they were. She knew who they were, only with better weapons and darker uniforms. Yet Barani wanted to believe that once the raiders were gone, there would still be a Nelroote to return to. There had to be a Nelroote to return to. The settlement was too established, too large—it would be a bureaucratic and financial nightmare to simply erase it from the face of the country. It was home, her home. Raids were supposed to be like culling: they kept populations of undesirables down, hangat hangat tahi ayam only, so that everything that was wrong continued to exist, standing the world precariously on its axis.
Now it was Barani’s turn to look back at the one-eyed house, with its gaping door-mouth, as they ran for the wall-houses at the far west of the settlement. Somehow, she’d expected to see chickens pecking in the dirt. But that could not be right, for the ground was rock and they had no chickens. Even if they did, they would have sent the birds scurrying into the undergrowth, where they could at least have a better chance at living.
There was an exit in the settlement that led to Ria’s catacombs, named the Gatekeeper’s Path, used only to transport the deceased via a tightly narrow corridor to a preparation chamber. The exit was in the southernmost side of the cave, across the way from the walls of the Dream Garden and concealed by protrusions of stalagmites and their ceiling brethren. Unlit and hinted at only by the scent of the incense hung in its mouth and placed on the small altar beside it, the entrance was virtually impossible to find in Nelroote’s night-time. To one side of the settlement were the wall-houses, built in step-ups to the cave’s rock wall. The lowest rested on the first and bottommost steps, spilling into the main settlement itself, while the highest were held up on tall, sturdy stilts close to the pointed tip of a low-reaching stalactite. Beneath these, Barani and Lan came upon Kak Sab, close to hyperventilating, proceeding very slowly with Wei, who held her hand to steady her and to encourage her to keep going.
Dark shapes in front of them in the kolong caused them all to stop, until a frightened voice quavered, “Who’s that?”
“Kak Bara,” Barani whispered. “We will go to you. Don’t move.”
Barani thought she detected the person nodding, slowly and carefully, as if that movement itself could make a sound. The four crept up to a frozen group of about eight or ten, mostly women and children, their fear palpable.
“My husband—the men told us to wait here and don’t move,” the woman who had called whispered to Barani once she was near. Barani saw that the Scerean, holding a toddler and a small child, was barely a woman. Her large wet eyes were bright in the shadows, and they considered Barani beseechingly as she spoke.
“No, we have to keep moving or—”
Barani couldn’t continue as the pounding of fists on wood and the thuds of boots kicking in doors came to them. Recovering quickly from the shock, Barani signalled for everyone to move. The party crossed the backyards of the houses situated on the periphery of the settlement. They crept under tall and low kolongs alike, around discarded furniture and junk, trying not to trip or hear the cries or desperate pleading. Fuzzy-edged white light searched in the gaps between houses and through windows. Whenever any threatened to shine their way, the group dropped into a prone position, stomachs to the uneven ground, parents pressing palms over the mouths of their children, everyone counting and praying, terrified eyes never leaving the sweeping lights.
Crack down on the crap happening in the settlement’s centre of vice, fine, Barani thought. The Dream Garden is a festering shit hole masquerading as benevolent bloodletting anyway. But what business do they have with the lives of people like these? People who live by what they can scratch up by day, they eat in the day, and what they scratch up by night, they eat in the night; desperate to get by while the world above sees them as nothing but the diseased among the diseased?
Barani’s anger at the situation culminated in migraine points around her eyes and head. She could feel her hair tensing, wrapping themselves into tighter coils. She squeezed her eyes shut and pinched at her nose bridge to ease the feeling.
The Gatekeeper Page 18