Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1)

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Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1) Page 2

by Josiah Bancroft


  Fifteen years spent living as a bachelor hadn’t prepared him for the addition of Marya’s undergarments to the landscape of his bedroom. Finding her delicates draped on the bedposts and doorknobs of his old sanctuary had come as something of a shock. But this mass of nightgowns, camisoles, corsets, stockings and brassieres being combed through by thousands of unfamiliar women seemed exponentially more humiliating. “I think I’ll stay by the luggage.”

  “What about your rules?”

  “Well, if you’ll keep that red bowl on your head, I’ll be able to spot you just fine from here.”

  “If you wander off, we’ll meet again at the top of the Tower,” she said with exaggerated dramatic emphasis.

  “We will not. I’ll meet you right here beside this cart of socks.”

  “Such a romantic!” she said, passing around two heavy-set women who wore the blue and white apron-dresses popular many years earlier. Senlin noticed with amusement that they were connected at the waist by a thick jute rope.

  He asked them if they were from the East, and they responded with the name of a fishing village that was not far from Isaugh. They exchanged the usual nostalgia common to costal folk: sunrises, starfish, and the pleasant muttering of the surf at night, and then he asked, “You’ve come on holiday?”

  They responded with slight maternal smiles that made him feel belittled, “We’re far past our holidays,” one said.

  “Do you go everywhere lashed together?” A note of mockery crept into his voice now.

  “Yes, of course,” replied the older of the two. “Ever since we lost our little sister.”

  “I’m sorry. Did she pass away recently?” Senlin asked, recovering his sincere tone.

  “I certainly hope not. But it has been three years. Maybe she has.”

  “Or maybe she found some way to get back home?” the younger sister said.

  “She wouldn’t abandon us,” the older replied in a tone that suggested this was a well-tread argument between them.

  “It is intrepid of you to come alone,” the younger spinster said to him.

  “Oh, thank you, but I’m not alone.” Tiring of the conversation, Senlin moved to grip the handle of the trunk only to find it moved.

  Confused, he turned in circles, searching first the ground and then the crowd of blank, unperturbed faces snaking about him. Marya’s trunk was gone. “I’ve lost my luggage,” he said.

  “Get yourself a good rope,” the eldest said and reached up to pat his pale cheek.

  Chapter Two

  “Savvy shoppers will revel in the Market that coils about the foot of the Tower. Don’t be afraid to walk away while haggling; a little retreat may win a great bargain.”

  - Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, I. IV

  Senlin sat atop a sandstone boulder near the foot of the Tower, eating the pistachios he’d bought for breakfast. His chapped lips stung. Small brown birds scavenged through the shells he dropped, picking at the flakes of germ. He didn’t recognize the species. A few hours earlier, he’d bought a drink, a single ladle of water that cost as much as a dram of good brandy back in Isaugh. Already, he was thirsty again.

  He’d brought a little notebook to record his impressions, as any amateur anthropologist might, but he hadn’t cracked it since disembarking from the train. He didn’t wish to record any of this. His copy of The Everyman’s Guide dangled open in his hand. An untidy bundle of women’s undergarments sat at his side. He felt dizzy with exhaustion; his fingers quaked from it. If he laid back on the sun-warmed rock and closed his eyes, he would fall asleep in an instant. He was afraid of doing just that.

  It was now two days since they’d climbed down from the train, two days since he’d first glimpsed the Tower through the tattered awning, two days since she’d turned away and gone laughing in search of a frock. Something scandalous.

  The Tower of Babel swelled before him like the step of a great plateau, a rock face that surged without apparent end. Except for the arched entrance that yawned about a deeply shaded tunnel a hundred yards away, the lower span of the Tower was unbroken by windows or ledges. Higher up, Senlin could discern a few structures jutting from the Tower like thorns from the trunk of an old rosebush. Airships clung to these thorns, their gondolas made as small as aphids by the distance. Skyports, Senlin supposed. He’d read that most levels of the Tower, or ‘ringdoms,’ had several such ports. If only he had come with Marya by airship! But traveling by air was prohibitively expensive; two tickets would cost nearly a year’s salary. Worse yet, he was prone to seasickness. The locals of Isaugh often teased him for it: the Headmaster of Fishtown can ring his bell, but he can’t ride a swell. He hadn’t wanted to spend their honeymoon voyage dangling over the rail of an airship, seeding the landscape with the contents of his stomach. Besides, the walk up to their eventual destination, the Baths, had been part of the adventure, and Marya had looked forward to it.

  A sudden realization made him jump and nearly tumble from the rock he sat perched on. The paper sack of pistachios slid from his hand and bounced down the boulder to the ground, the pale shells skittering every which way across the red hardpan.

  He knew it would be there before he looked, and yet tore into his satchel, rummaging through the side pocket, past spare pens, his coat brush, and blank postcards until, at last, his hand closed around the cause of his alarm. He pulled free the pair of train tickets.

  He had her ticket home.

  He had been only momentarily distracted by the loss of her luggage and had gone charging off through the press of hagglers and tourists without any sense of which direction the thieves had gone. It wasn’t long before he conceded that the luggage was lost. He returned to the stall, nearly certain it was the same display of socks they’d stood by just minutes before, and there he spent the first afternoon and then the first night of their honeymoon in Babel, rocking on his heels, all alone. He was certain she would find her way back. He focused himself on being level and rational and even occasionally optimistic. This wasn’t a very great inconvenience. Perhaps it was an adventure, the kind that made vacation stories enjoyable to recount. She would return.

  But over the course of that night he’d watched as first one stall and then another was packed up, their stock dragged away by camel and mule, on sleds and in wagons. New merchants arrived. New awnings and tables were raised, changing the topography of the alleys between vendors, changing even the cutout shape of the sky above him. Now it made sense why The Everyman’s Guide didn’t include any maps of the Market. One might as well try to draw a diagram of tomorrow’s sunset. The Market’s evolution never ceased. When the sock stall where he’d promised to wait was transformed into a vendor of oil lamps, he realized that she would never find her way back to him. He couldn’t stand idle any longer.

  The next day he undertook a systematic search, beginning with what remained of the silk district of the Market where she had disappeared. He searched in an expanding spiral as best he could manage, buying from every few merchants a silk slip or a pair of stockings, some trifle sufficient to get their attention long enough for him to ask if they’d seen a woman in a red helmet in the past day. He was glad, at least, to have an easy way to describe her: a woman in a red helmet. She’d been more clever and prudent than he’d given her credit for. After a day of this, he had accrued an embarrassing bindle of women’s clothes. But there was no news of Marya. The clothiers began to turn into potters, and the tables of silks were replaced with galleries of crockery and stoneware.

  Where the awnings and tents were sparsest, he clambered up on kegs and crates to scan the crowd for her, certain she would stand out, vivid as a cardinal in a tree. But it was impossible to really see anyone distinctly amidst the throng. Almost unconsciously, his search began to take him closer to the Tower, which turned out to be farther away than it had first seemed. Or perhaps he had only wandered farther from it. He couldn’t be sure.

  As the hours of the second night swam by, he became less organized, l
ess restrained. He wandered about heedlessly, calling her name. When he saw even a glimpse of red, he’d crash over stalls and vendors, shove aside milling shoppers, shouting breathlessly, “Marya, Marya!” only to find a man in a red fez, or a boy carrying a red paper lantern on a pole, or a red blanket peeking from under a horse’s saddle…

  He wasn’t accustomed to feeling panic, nor did he know how to console himself when despair descended upon him. Their honeymoon was ruined, that much seemed certain. They would have to fabricate some fable of luxury to tell their friends, and he would, of course, make it all up to her with a quiet weekend in a pastoral cottage, but for the rest of their marriage she would remember what a terrible trial their honeymoon had been. It was an inauspicious start.

  Everywhere he looked now he saw groups of people roped together. Any movement through the crowd was made more difficult by the web of leashes. Why had the Guide neglected to mention that little nugget of wisdom? Bring a good rope.

  Senlin tucked the train tickets into the pages of his Everyman’s Guide, cursing himself for having been so shortsighted as to carry both of their fares. He wondered if she had enough buy a new ticket, and did the quick sum in his head. He had four mina, sixteen shekels, and eleven pence to his name, and unless she had been robbed, she would have about the same. A ticket to Isaugh, even third class, would cost six mina at least. No, she hadn’t nearly enough. Marya was stranded here.

  A wishbone of an old man, bald and naked to the waist, staggered past Senlin’s boulder lookout, bent double under a sack. Blackened rivers ran down his back from where sweat mingled with the coal he carried. The old slave, goose-necked and tottering, watched only the boot heels of the well-dressed tourist ahead of him. Both were part of a column of travelers streaming toward the entrance at the Tower’s base. Otherwise, the ground that collared the Tower was noticeably empty. This no-man’s land extended a hundred paces out from the foot of the Tower. Senlin couldn’t imagine why this space should be left empty while the Market behind him was choked with people.

  “Are you lost?” asked a young man standing near his feet at the base of the boulder.

  “Why do you ask?” Senlin said. The youth winked in the sunlight, his thick dark hair glowing with the luster of oil. He had the broad shoulders, short stature, and narrow waist of an acrobat, and his complexion was a rich olive color that drew out the gold flecks in his eyes.

  “Most people don’t lounge about in the Skirts. That stone you’re sitting on...”

  “Is it sacred?”

  “No more than a headstone. It fell a few days ago and landed on a tourist.”

  “Fell from where?” Senlin asked, appalled. The youth only pointed up in reply.

  Feeling conspicuous now, Senlin clambered down the smooth face of the boulder. “I don’t understand,” Senlin said, dusting his hunkers and straightening his jacket. “The Tower of Babel is the surest construction in the world. It’s built on deep bedrock. It doesn’t shed boulders like an oak drops acorns. It’s a miracle of engineering!” Senlin wagged his Everyman’s Guide at the youth as if the book proved his point.

  “Oh, it’s a miracle for sure. But sometimes it dumps a little miracle on us,” the youth said. “It doesn’t matter if something falls from the second or the twenty-second ring. It all crashes on the same ground: the Skirts. I wouldn’t pitch my tent here if I were you.”

  This discovery did not jibe at all with Senlin’s studies, nor with what he had taught his students about the Tower, which were always his favorite lectures. He’d draw schematics of the Tower and the network of railroads that radiated out from it. He’d introduce the Tower’s murky history and the venerable historians who debated its age, original architects, its internal machinations and its purpose. He even taught them about the Baths, famous for its therapeutic spas, where he’d promised to take Marya. “I’ve read a dozen accounts of the Tower. I’ve never heard of the Skirts.”

  “Maybe your books are out of date.” The youth straightened his expression when Senlin didn’t return his smile. “My name is Adamos Boreas. Call me Adam.” Senlin shook the youth’s strong hand and introduced himself. The youth’s mature tone and self-confidence was a little disarming. Though his beard was still a patchwork of youthful fuzz and tougher bristle, he seemed entirely adult in his address. “I take it you’re in the silk trade.” Adam nodded at the bindle of women’s garments, still sitting atop the morbid boulder. Black silk stockings dangled from the mouth of it.

  Gathering up the bundle, Senlin felt momentarily flustered, and his embarrassment was only made worse by the statement, “They’re for my wife.”

  “Where’s your wife?” Adam asked, craning his neck about searchingly.

  Senlin’s tongue felt as dry and stiff as a leather belt. He thought he might gag if he tried to swallow. He would’ve given a king’s ransom for a drink of anything, and yet worse than his thirst was the confession that stood lodged in his swollen throat. He felt as he had on his first day in front of a class: like a fraud. What sort of husband loses a wife?

  Tugging the parcel of silks down from the boulder and clamping it under his arm, he squared Adam with a singular, miserable smile and said, “It’s odd you should mention my wife. I seem to have lost her.”

  Chapter Three

  “The happy traveler will look for the broadest, most beaten path, will look to his fellow traveler for behavioral cues, will be an echo but will not raise his voice. It is dangerous to blaze a trail when one is already so clearly cut.”

  - Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, I. VI

  The berth in their sleeper car had hardly been wide enough for the two of them to occupy at once. They had to lie, shoulder to shoulder, with the ceiling not an arm’s length away. The mountain pines made the moon flicker through their window like a stroboscope, and the car swayed as tenderly as a cradle.

  Senlin was unprepared for marriage in every way. He possessed neither the imagination nor emotional warmth that intimacy required. So he lay there on his back like a fish stranded by the tide, a sturgeon gasping out of water. Here was the moon and the rocking crib and the far from prying eyes and every romantic thing a man could request, and what did he do with it? He was drowning in opportunity.

  Marya lay propped on her elbow watching him appear to sleep with his eyes open. She pressed the flat of her finger against his cheek, lifting up a smile like a fishhook, trying to tease some life from him. She tugged at his earlobe, bit lightly at his shoulder, and blew on his neck. Still he lay, sometimes flinching but not responding.

  “Tell me Tom, how deep is the well beneath the Tower?”

  Senlin swallowed, his throat ribbiting like a frog. “Six thousand feet, as I recall.”

  “Six thousand feet! If the well was wide enough to drop the Tower into…”

  Senlin interrupted, stuttering, “Impossible. The well would collapse if it…”

  Marya pressed on in a voice hardly above a whisper. “If it were wide enough, would the Tower be tall enough to fill the well?”

  He considered it. “It’s possible, I suppose, if there are sixty levels at a hundred feet apiece…”

  “It’s possible?” she said, her mouth nearer his blushing ear.

  “Possible,” he confirmed. And the moon flickered through the aspens, and the car sawed from side to side, carrying them further from familiar things.

  The dark-haired youth dipped his head out of respect or abashment at Senlin’s obvious straining. The Headmaster’s neck was stretched so drastically that the ribs of his throat showed. “If it makes you feel any better, you aren’t the first to lose someone.”

  Senlin took Adam for a local, or perhaps a visitor of such long standing that he’d become an émigré. He knew too much to be a tourist. “I was hoping she would pass by here. I don’t suppose you’ve seen a woman wearing a red sun helmet?”

  “That’s not much of a description.”

  This was the first time he’d been encouraged to say more about his lost
wife. All his other inquiries had been met with dismissive gestures: a waved hand or a shallow shrug. Though he felt a little uneasy, hope overrode his preference for discretion. He forced himself to describe her more fully. “She’s about your height. Slender with auburn hair and pale skin. Pretty.”

  “No luggage?” Adam asked, and Senlin shook his head. “About your age?”

  Senlin hesitated. “More youthful.” A small bird with a dark tail swooped between them and began picking, unperturbed by their presence, at the spilled pistachios. “That is a Blackstart,” Senlin said, identifying the bird. He was relieved to have a momentary distraction. “They’re a determined species, from what I’ve read. Aren’t afraid of much.”

  As if to test the bird, Adam moved his toe nearer it. The bird hopped pertly on the top of his boot and rebounded into the red sand. Adam snorted his amusement. “You a bird watcher?”

  Senlin shook his head, “Just an armchair naturalist. I’d never seen one in person before today.” Senlin had the distinct impression that the young man was looking him up and down, measuring him in some way.

  “I suppose you’ve already visited our little Lost and Found,” Adam Boreas said, and taking Senlin’s blank expression as answer, offered an explanation. “Where the lost post notes.”

  Senlin brightened. Of course! Surely hundreds of people had wandered away from their companions before. He wasn’t the first to lose someone in the Market. It made perfect sense that there existed a forum for reuniting people. “Would you take me to it?”

  “I will,” Adam said. “But it won’t help.”

  “Let me be the judge. Please,” Senlin said, stowing the guidebook in his satchel. “Lead the way.”

  Following Boreas towards the base of the mountainous Tower, Senlin felt momentarily hopeful. The willingness with which Adam had responded to his direction reminded him of how his commands were received in his classroom. Perhaps he wasn’t entirely incapable after all.

 

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