by Jeffrey Ford
“i know you.”
Although I dare not neglect Cley’s impossible journey, something miraculous has happened in my own insular world that has transformed the tenor of my existence. While I wait for the sheer beauty to begin to percolate and guide me back to the Beyond, I will record these recent events that have had the same effect on me that a new pair of stronger, cleaner spectacles might.
Two days past, after having stayed up all night in the thrall of the drug’s dictation of Cley’s months in the demon forest, I was completely exhausted. Although demons’ lives are long in comparison with the normal span of a human’s, I admit I am now getting on in years. The aftermath of the beauty has more of a deleterious effect on me than it once did. When younger, I could take the needle, experience its influence, and after a few hours be done with it until next I needed a touch of existential levity. Now, it dries me out, droops my lids, sags my wings, and leaves me feeling as if I could learn my wild brethren’s practice of hibernation. The one thing it has never been able to do is trap me in addiction—I think.
I came away from this writing desk late into the following morning. Thoughts of Cley’s cave, the black dog’s wound, and those off-putting empty eye sockets of the ghost woman still swirled through my mind. The packs of cigarettes (stale ones this time from among the ruins), I’m sure, only added to my pitiful condition. Instead of going off to my room to sleep, I decided to step outside and take some fresh air to disperse those nightmarish images.
It was a clear summer day, and I welcomed the sun as an antidote to the frigid landscape of the Beyond. The ruins appeared as they now so infrequently do to me, namely, as truly wondrous as they are—more exotic than when the city was whole and vibrant. I flew up to perch on one of the more prominent piles of rubble. From my research I knew that it had once housed the Ministry of Justice. I often sit in this spot, where two slabs of coral have settled at right angles, creating a comfortable throne that allows my wings to hang over the back. Resting my arms on my knees and my head upon my arms, I stared sleepily out across the static mayhem that is my kingdom.
As I was making a mental note to fly to Latrobia that evening to filch some fresh cigarettes from the back room of the blind mask-maker who lives on the outskirts of town, I heard the sound of a human voice. There were no particular words I could discern, but I distinctly heard it, someone trying too hard to whisper. My initial reaction was anger. The last thing I needed in my present exhaustion was to be playing hide-and-seek with a troop of idiot treasure hunters. I saw it all in an instant—greedy, gun-toting fools eager to make off with Below’s broken-down wonders. It would be easier to kill them than to scare them, but my all-too-human nature would not allow me that option.
Instead of leaping to action and crawling on all fours through the rubble in order to sneak up on them, the aftereffects of the beauty insisted that I sit still and wait for them to pass below my perch. While I waited, I could hear their voices grow more distinct. I sniffed at the air, and it brought me news of one female and either two or three males. I was pleased it wasn’t the invading army I keep expecting. In my dotage I have become, in some ways, as paranoid as my father was. Minutes crawled by, and with each my anger grew until my tail was dancing and I half-considered the consequences of merely damaging one of them.
Then they appeared from around the corner of the blasted Ministry of War and began crossing the intact plaza, which lay fifty yards beneath me. My mind seized, my anger instantly deflated. There were three of them—children. My first thought was to sit stone still as not to frighten them. My second thought was, “What irresponsible parent allows his children to go exploring among dangerous ruins where it is a known fact that a demon resides?”
They were neither very young nor very old, if that tells you anything of their age. The tallest was a boy with long brown hair, wearing a red shirt. He carried a sharpened stick in his hands with the same tenacity with which I had pictured Cley holding his rifle. I could tell by the way his gaze constantly roamed and he moved along in a partial crouch that he was scared. In fact I could smell his fear and that of the other, smaller boy with the peaked cap. The girl appeared second oldest to the boy with the stick, and she moved without care, leading the others onward. Her hair was long and blond, and she was thin, her arms gracefully swinging at her sides. The instant I saw her, I knew it was not the first time.
I could feel my anxiety rising. It was one thing to play rough with treasure hunters, but what does one do with children? I didn’t realize until that moment how much more I would have preferred the invading army. Just then the girl looked up, and I could see her catch sight of me.
“There he is,” she shouted, pointing up the mound of debris at me.
Her companions ran, screaming, and it was the last I would see of them. She not only stood her ground, but she smiled and waved to me. I tried to pretend I was a gargoyle made of stone, but she moved closer to the bottom of my hill.
“I know you,” she yelled. “Do you remember how you saved me from the river?”
And so it was, that girl from Wenau I had pulled out of the river some years ago. “No good deed goes unpunished,” I thought. My gargoyle disguise was too flimsy even for my addled sensibilities. I lifted a hand and waved to her.
“I know you,” I said.
She began straightaway to climb the blocks of coral to where I sat, and, afraid she would fall and hurt herself, I called down to her to stay put, that I would come to her. Since she was the first person to have come to the ruins actually to visit me, I decided to do my best.
Shaking off my fatigue, I slowly stood, sucking in my paunch and thrusting out my chest. Regal was the look I wanted, so I let my wings spread completely on either side before I flapped them and leaped into the sky. Not until I was on the descent did I see what effect my show was having, but when I saw her face she appeared mightily pleased with me.
I landed with a spectacular but unnecessary fluttering that lifted the coral dust off the plaza and sent her hair up over her head. The last thing that I expected was that she would point at me and laugh. At first I was wounded by her reaction, but the sound of her joy was infectious, and I could barely restrain myself from joining her.
“Do I amuse you?” I asked.
“The spectacles,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. “When they draw you in the newspaper at Wenau, they make you a fierce monster.”
I had to smile.
“You’re not, though, are you?” she said quietly.
“If only you knew, my dear,” I said.
“Do you remember the river?” she asked.
I nodded. “Was it four years ago?”
“Six,” she said. “I was seven then.”
“Very good,” I told her, and then didn’t know what else to say.
“Those boys were frightened of you. The one with the hat is my brother, Caine. The other one is our friend, Remmel. My name is Emilia.” She held her hand out to me.
Those long fingers, that thin arm, looked too delicate for me to touch. I bowed slightly instead, and said, “Misrix.”
“I’ve come to tell you that not everyone in Wenau is afraid of you. Many have read the books of Cley and know that you helped him and us. Many don’t believe the Physiognomist and think you are a wild animal. Those in the church say you are the spirit of evil,” she said as if performing a speech she had memorized.
“It is likely that they are all in some part correct,” I said.
“Because you pulled me from the river, I knew you were gentle. You will not hurt me, will you?” Her eyes went wide, and she lightly touched a locket that hung from a chain around her neck.
“That would never do,” I said. “You are my first guest. Would you like me to show you the ruins?”
“Yes,” she said.
I started walking, and she followed me. This was an opportunity I had long waited for—someone to whom I could explain the ruins. Throughout the long, lonely years, I had become a kind
of archeologist, digging artifacts out of the chaos, researching the lives and lifestyles of its citizens, reading the histories in the library, poring over surviving documents from each of the ministries. Now that I had the chance to expound, I was tongue-tied by the youth and honesty of the only one ever interested in listening.
We had walked a hundred yards in silence, and I was beginning to sweat, when she said, “Can I touch your wings?”
“Of course,” I told her.
She came close to me and reached out her left index finger, running it along one bone and then down across the membrane.
“Not as smooth as I thought,” she said.
“Smooth is not my specialty,” I told her.
“Tell me about this place, Misrix,” she said.
So I began, and although she was only a child, I decided to be as honest with her as possible. “All of this you see around you,” I said, “all of this destruction, this coral mess, and the metal and human remains that lie amidst it, when added together, combine to tell a story. A great, grand story. A tragedy for sure, a cautionary tale, but a love story nonetheless …”
I showed her the laboratory with its miniature lighthouse that still projected the forms and sounds of songbirds, the only remaining complete statue of a miner, in blue spire, brought here from Anamasobia, those sections of remaining architecture that might give an idea of the original grandeur of the place, the electric elevator that once led to the Top of the City but now only traveled four floors, the underground passages, and the blasted shell of the false paradise. There was, of course, much more. She was a great listener, only speaking when she had a question that could not wait. I appreciated her silence, her focused attention, her mere presence.
I ended the tour after two hours in my room, where I house the Museum of the Ruins, my own natural history installation of those objects I believe to hold an integral part of the essence of the Well-Built City. We strolled up and down the rows, and I showed her the head of the mechanical gladiator, the old shudder cups, etc. When we came to the back row, I took down the core of the fruit of Paradise that Cley, himself, had eaten, and let her smell it.
“I see a beautiful garden surrounded by ice,” she said as I held the core up to her nose. For some reason, the look on her face almost made me weep.
From the museum, we went down the hall to the library, and I showed her the volumes and my writing desk with the pen in its holder and the pages from my previous night’s work neatly piled.
“What are you writing?” she asked.
“About Cley,” I said. “I’m trying to find him with words.”
“People who believed Cley’s writings in Wenau gathered money and sent an expedition a few months ago to the Beyond to also find him,” she said.
“A mistake,” I told her. “I wish them well, but I’m afraid what they will find there is death.”
“They took a lot of guns,” she said.
I could not help but laugh.
She was unfazed by my reaction. “Cley has become a hero for them,” she said.
“I wish them well,” I repeated.
Then she pointed to my desk, at the jeweled box I keep in the corner of it. It is fixed with red stones and fake gold—just a trinket, but something that I have always liked since finding it underground by the site of the false paradise.
“What is that for?” she asked.
“Nothing,” was the real answer, and I was going to give it to her, but at the last moment, I had an idea. After our tour through the ruins, she knew most everything about them, but I thought as long as there was some element of mystery here, she might return again.
“That box holds a powerful secret,” I told her, knowing by her obvious intelligence that she would be susceptible to wonder. “I’m not ready to show it to anyone,” I said. “I would have to know that person very well indeed.”
I thought she would ask me to open it for her, but she didn’t. All she said was, “I understand; I have a box like that at home, myself.”
“And at home, they do not mind that you and your brother have run off to the ruins?” I asked.
She looked away from me, down one of the long aisles of the library, as she spoke. “We were supposed to be going to Latrobia to visit relatives. I made the boys follow me to the ruins by telling them they were cowards if they didn’t come.”
“How were you traveling?” I asked.
“On horseback. We had two horses—Caine and I on one and Remmel on the other. I know they have probably taken them and gone back to Wenau to tell my mother that I have become lunch for the demon,” she said.
“Come quickly,” I said. “We will easily beat them to the village.”
As it turned out, I flew her home. I cannot recount the details of that journey because as I now fly in my memory, I do not pass over the fields of Harakun, but instead, move at the speed of thought over the flat land of the Beyond. The beauty has me in its arms, and I am empty-handed, searching for Cley. Below, the wilderness is shaking off the spell of winter.
the hunter is hunted
Wildflowers sprouted, and the grass came up so quickly that the hunter could swear he heard it growing in the stillness of the night. Every day was deep blue, warm sun, and a soft breeze blowing from the north. In the late afternoons, the light shone down in golden shafts through billowing white clouds. The plain appeared endless in all directions, perfectly flat and treeless. An ancient glacier had, in its retreat, deposited smooth, oblong boulders here and there, and Cley thought of them as giant loaves of bread. He and Wood were like ants traversing the dinner table of the Beyond. Through the winter, the nights had seemed to last for weeks, but now, it was the days that were near-infinite.
Fresh water was plentiful, for there were streams that crisscrossed the land. They hunted, always with the bow, small game—rabbits, diminutive hogs with bushy tails, a tasty red lizard that ran on two legs, and a tall, flightless bird of beautiful green plumage. This same awkward creature’s eggs made good breakfast food. Its nests were so easily discovered, small mounds of mud and twigs, that Cley wondered how the species has been able to survive. It was a disappointment not to find the herds of deer he had hoped for, but he was more than willing to trade them for the absence of demons.
Wood pulled the tree-branch sled, which glided over the new grass as effortlessly as a boat on water. It carried the tent, the rifle, and Cley’s winter clothes. The hunter hefted his own pack and carried the bow slung over his left shoulder, the quiver, over his right. The dog’s chest and shoulders had thickened with the daily exercise, and Cley’s calf muscles had swelled to make his pant legs tight at the bottoms. Although he wore the wide-brimmed hat every day, he removed it at the noontime break to let the sun penetrate his head and melt away the memories of slaughter. With this practice, his face tanned to the same deep brown as his arms.
Nights were still cool, but the hunter had perfected his use of the stones in building a fire. For fuel, he used a type of gnarled bush that, when given one tug, pulled right up out of the earth. These grew everywhere, and to Cley’s surprise never put out leaves or flowers. They burned very slowly, their branches filled with a thick, aromatic resin that when lit gave off a scent not unlike jasmine.
No longer in the forest, beneath the demon-haunted canopy or in the darkness of the cave, Cley viewed the night sky in its entirety. There were so many stars—bright dust scattered as if by a maniac’s hand. He often thought, while lying on his back and staring straight up, that he was gazing into a kind of ocean. His mind wandered out past the moon, diving like a swimmer into the spiraled depths of the universe. Its immensity no longer frightened him as it had during his first night on the plain. One moment he was flying toward the constellation of Sirimon, the serpent from whose womb, mythology told, the world was born, the next, he felt the sun on his face and Wood tugging at his boot to continue the journey.
On the second day of the fifth week of their trek across the flat-land, Cley decided that they had
put enough distance between themselves and the demons. It took Wood well into the morning to comprehend that it was a day of rest and that they would not be starting out, as usual, toward the north. The dog pulled at the hunter’s boot and barked. He trotted a few yards off and then looked back and growled. Cley brought out the book to divert the dog’s attention from the demands of routine.
Breakfast was eggs and hog steaks. Cley checked all of the joints of the sled to see if they were secure. He inventoried his pack to remind himself of what he had and what he had used. When he came across the last box of shells for the rifle, he took one out and held it in his hand. He had not fired the weapon in more than a month.
By the side of a stream, he trimmed his hair and beard with the stone knife while whistling the tune of “That Soft Eclipse,” a love song he remembered from his days in the Well-Built City. Then he washed himself, his underwear, his socks, and set the laundry out to dry in the sun. It was in the midst of this task that he got a strong urge to fire the rifle. “It would be a wonderful thing,” he thought, “to hear the report of the gun split the silence of the plain.”
After lunch, he took the weapon off the sled. He knew it was wasteful to fire it for the sake of hearing the noise, so he decided to at least go in search of a rabbit. When the dog saw the rifle, he started bounding around the hunter. They left the camp, heading in a westward direction toward a pile of boulders that looked, from a distance, like the form of a sleeping giant.
Not so much as a lizard showed itself. Cley scanned the sky for crows or buzzards. It was perfectly blue and empty all the way to the horizon. Since natural cover was so scarce on the plain, he held out hope that something would be hiding in the shadow of the boulders.