by F. F. John
“What does it look like, genius?” Loic’s tone is replete with contempt.
Erhart walks past Loic and the rest of the Idiot Coalition. He crouches in front of James and places fingers on the incapacitated boy’s wrist.
“Better to put him out of his misery.” He pulls out his knife and lifts it above his head.
“No!” My feet carry me forward in their direction. “Portan said—”
My words don’t come out fast enough before Erhart plunges his knife into James. In the darkened cave, the metal doesn’t glint before the deadly deed ends.
“What?” Ika’s frown sips into the question, making it sound ugly. “You’ve never killed someone in the virt before?”
My light focuses on James right before he disappears as if he’d never been here.
“— don’t kill each other,” I finish.
“Erhart didn’t actually kill James. It’s only a virt death,” Mehrdad says, annoyed. His arms are crossed against his chest. He’s been in the same position since he entered the cave. “I told you guys to let me do that a long time ago. At least Erhart Vesta had sense.”
Erhart rises to his feet. Under the light, his hands have a dark sheen and a metallic scent wafts over to me. He takes a step towards the rest of us. Then, he vanishes.
Chapter Twelve
Invier
“Wow,” Seth says.
“Woah.” Is Loic’s reaction.
“Okay, Invier.” Mehrdad approaches. “What were you saying about the rules again?”
I can’t turn away from where Erhart once stood. “Portan said we aren’t to kill each other under any circumstance.”
“Guess Erhart should have remembered the ‘under any circumstances’ part,” Seth says dryly.
“Hmm.” Mehrdad studies the floor. “You Florans are sticklers for rules, huh? I guess as adjudicators that’s to be expected.” He tosses his head to indicate Seth and I. “Where are you two headed next?”
Now he wants to partner with us and speak to us with respect? Too late.
“Given your earlier reply to my companion’s question, I’m certain you understand my telling you to mind your own business,” I say.
Mehrdad comes closer, his irises midnight black in the cavern’s low light. I glower at him, remembering last night. He, alongside the rest of his Idiot Coalition, teased me, calling me a baby. A habit they’d continued today. I’m sick of him thinking he can be rude to anyone he pleases.
“And what exactly do you think you’re going to do, Mehrdad?” I don’t move under his glare.
“Break it up boys,” Seth says, coming in between us. To Mehrdad, he says, “We have no clue what we’re doing next, okay?”
Mehrdad stays put, an angry figure in the dark.
There’s a choppy movement on the ground. A small creature scuttles past Loic and soon idles by Ika’s feet. Pointing his light downward, a small, black dog scratches behind its ear. Ika sucks his teeth in disgust and punts the dog, hard.
The animal yips as it flies across the cavern. It hits a wall, then careens into the stream.
“Why in blazes did you do that?” Seth throws up his arms, exasperated. “It may have had a clue for us.”
The dog moans as it is carried off by the current.
“There are no clues in this stupid game, dummy,” Ika retorts. “I’m not even sure why I’m here. I could be doing other things with my time.”
Like admiring yourself. He’d spent the greater part of last night’s orientation staring at his reflection in a mirror. It was silly to see him fuss over his eyebrows, only pausing to complain about sharing a suite, like his friend Loic.
“You shouldn’t say that,” Loic says searching the cavern with his torchlight. “They could be watching us right now.”
Ika shifts from foot to foot. “I’m tired is all.”
The rest of us remain mute. Maybe, like myself, the others are considering Loic’s warning. The Reffours must be recording every second of our time within the shell. Have I said anything embarrassing while in the shell? Nothing comes to mind, but I’m sure I’ll be embarrassed by my performance climbing out of the first alcove and hurtling into the second cave.
“I’m done talking.” Mehrdad walks to the stream with his bottle out. “At least tell me which way you two came from so I can get back to the top. I’ll figure it out from there.” What should be a plea, sounds like a demand and although I’ve known him for less than a day, I’m not surprised.
Seth directs his torchlight at the hole we came through and Mehrdad gestures with his hand for the rest of the Idiot Coalition to follow as he heads in that direction. They take the much-needed light they brought with them as we are cloaked in the spreading murkiness.
“Did you send them the way we came in?” A smile curls on my lips.
Seth replies through spurts of chuckling, “If ever there was someone who deserved to go through that blasted hole, it’s Mehrdad.”
Soon, we are guffawing like silly school kids.
“He and his Idiot Coalition.” Our laughter dances off the walls of the caverns.
When we simmer down, Seth says, “You had me worried for a second there.”
“Why?”
“I was glad you stood up to him, don’t get me wrong. But, I was worried he would lose it and trounce you.”
“Huh?” I take a swig of water and cap my bottle. “Why would he do that?”
“Mehrdad is a hot head. He once stomped a worker at his compound to death.”
“Oh, come on. That has to be an exaggeration.” In spite of my statement, worry snakes its way into me.
“Wait, you don’t know about this?” He pins me with a surprised look. “I’d think this was common knowledge by now.”
Not wanting to make my ignorance more embarrassing, I shrug as if indifferent to the news.
“Okay, at least tell me you heard how he beat one of his own younger brothers so hard, he broke the boy’s eye socket. All because he lost a game of Awale to the kid.”
“No way,” I stop in my tracks, unable to pretend any longer. “My sister would know and would have told me if it happened.”
“The same way you knew he’d killed someone?”
It’s hard to believe Mehrdad is a murderer. Rude. Ill-tempered. Sure. But, a murderer? If what Seth says is true it wouldn’t be shocking that I didn’t know about it. I tend to stay away from nome gossip—mom and Song enjoy that much more than I do. Plus, nobody ever tells adjudicators about criminal activity unless they’re interested in exacting justice.
Who knows what other secrets my fellow competitors are hiding. Even I have secrets of my own. A twinge of guilt runs through me but I push it aside. My secrets are different. I love Neith and these fools don’t. As long as I remember to never become like the others, focused solely on advancing my family, I’ll be fine.
“Let’s go find that shiny object we saw,” I say.
“Yeah, it’s probably still above us somewhere.” He shines his light, searching for openings in the cavern’s walls. “Why don’t we check for which of these lead upwards.”
We spread out, probing for a way to get us above.
After a few minutes, a hole with an ascending pathway comes into view. “I think I found something.”
The pathway begins with a gentle slope but we eventually have to climb on all fours. Fortunately, the rock in here has numerous projections that we can hold onto. Placing our torchlights in our mouths, we head upward and emerge in a large cave. My light glosses over an object on the floor.
“What in blazes?” Seth says beside me.
There a little dog statue on the floor. Its surface looks like real fur, dark with shining striations that shift as I strobe my light over it.
Then the statue’s tail thumps the ground, raising dust that glitters in my light’s beam. My gaze follows the dust until I see another dog on the floor. This one is much smaller than the first. There’s a sea of different types of dogs scattered on the grou
nd. Some lie on top of one another. They all lie immobile but as I stare longer I see their backs rise and fall.
“Now we know where that poor dog Ika kicked came from.” Seth’s voice drops to a whisper.
Their presence is unsettling. There’s hardly any space between some of them and it’s eerie. I’m also not ready for their non-reaction to us. Most dogs would bark or at least look at us but these dogs do absolutely nothing. They lie there and several seconds tick by until a few raise their heads. Others now yawn and some lick themselves clean. Not a single one of them barks at us.
“Look, Invier.” Seth points to the front of the cave where the statue of a large white dog sits. Unlike the ones at our feet, this dog towers over us all. Light streams into the cave from an opening to our left as well as an opening behind the statue. The light gives the statue an iridescent quality. The hole on the left is likely where we saw the glimmer from when we were out on the red plains.
As we pick our way through the maze of resting canines, my foot lands on a soft paw and the victim lifts its head. Seth stiffens. It’s a dog, I tell myself and the flicker of an incident from my childhood comes to mind. I was six and I’d wandered away from my great-grandmother’s house only to be chased by her little dog. Great-grandmother used to tell me the dog would bite my ankles if I broke any of the decorative pieces dotting the entire house. It didn’t help my irrational fear that the dog’s name was Moordenaar—a name she said meant killer.
That day, I was on the grounds chasing butterflies and she came out onto her patio to watch me. I’d waved to her but she didn’t wave back. Instead, she sang an old nursery rhyme. The tune plucks away in my head and my breathing becomes difficult. Great-grandmother croaked the song and the dog howled. It was the haunting sound of a creature in pain and when it flew out of her house, it charged straight toward me.
Dad rushed into the yard and shooed little Moordenaar away. He also told me that all dogs, big or small, would cower if I didn’t show fear. He cautioned me to stare any dog with as much confidence as I could muster. “Don’t show fear,” he’d said. Puffing out my chest, I glare at the dog beneath me. After a few seconds, the dog lowers itself.
My tight shoulders ease and I continue my trek to the statue, stepping more gingerly than before. Seth places his feet into any available ground space without stepping on a dog.
The adrenaline from my recent dog encounter sparks another recollection. I stop moving, willing it to become evident and the fuzzy memory sharpens.
“I’ve got it!”
Several heads snap up at once and Seth eagerly puts a trembling finger to his lips.
My foot lands on something squishy and I don’t care. Shutting my eyes, I let my brain come to terms with the information streaming in there.
“I know what a spitz is, Seth,” I say, now leaping over dogs. “And we are definitely in the right place!”
Chapter Thirteen
Belema
“What’s a spitz?” I ask and Neith shrugs.
“Really? You came up with the idea of this Pursual. You mean to tell me nobody bothered to give you any details about the competitions?”
Not taking her eyes off the screen, she says, “I don’t know what a spitz is.” Her tone is bored.
“Well,” I sing the word, “find out, then.” I thrust my head at her father, who sits to her right.
“If you want to know so badly, why don’t you ask him?” She says making no move to inquire and I lean past her, forcing her to recline into her seat.
“Uncle Nabo?”
“Yes?” He sounds distracted. Like almost everyone else in the auditorium, he’s been focused on the competition in the shell. I never expected the Pursual to be interesting, but so far, watching the participants has been exciting. Still, I’m of the opinion that she should have insisted Uncle Nabo let her marry who she wants. Alternatively, she could have refused to marry anyone else. Uncle Nabo would threaten to force her into a pairing but he’d never go through with it.
“What’s a spitz?”
He drags his golden eyes from the screen to me and says, “I have no idea, dear.”
We turn back to the entertainment as the ground under Adela soars into the air and her white strands fly. She struggles to stay upright. Any normal person would feel sorry for her. While there’s no chance of real death or injury, she’s several feet to the ground, meaning a fall will hurt. And, if that happened, she would suffer some nasty phantom pains later on.
Those are the absolute worst. I’ve dealt with those when I’ve played Sniper 2000 with my brother Priye. It’s a physically demanding game that has left me with bruises and severe pains long after I exited the shell. Still, I have no sympathy for Adela or any of the other participants in the competition. Neith would kill me if she knew I felt that way. But it’s the way I feel. I still think she could have convinced her father to support a union with Invier.
Scanning the auditorium, I see we’re surrounded by many nome members and several families from the Lower Houses. Nome Reffour tends to invite the Lower Houses to events. Others in the Twenty consider them to be low-brow and not worthy of association.
Given their attitude to the Lower Houses, it’s no surprise that the nomes refuse to interact with anyone from the Lesser Lands. In fact, the nomes act as if the Lesser Lands and the people who live in those enclaves don’t exist.
The crowd gasps and my attention snaps back to the screen. The ground under Adela soars into the air and her white strands fly. Trying to maintain her balance, she soon loses her footing and fumbles. The shaking gets stronger and she slips off the rock. All around, viewers scream then cheer when she manages to hang on to the edge with nails digging into the rock.
“How is it that Neith and yourself don’t know what a spitz is?” I say as the frenzy cools. The camera pans back to Invier and Seth.
“I know.” Uncle Nabo leans past Neith and she leans further into her seat. “You should ask Portan when he returns. He left me out of the loop so I could be surprised by each competition.”
“Oh,” I say. I can’t hide the disappointment in my voice. “Thank you, Uncle.”
“No problem, my dear.”
Something flashes in the corner of my eye and I swivel in my seat to see Titane Vesta waving her hands in rapid movements. Her face is bright red in frustration as she speaks to the waiter.
Her jewels glitter and shine on her fingers as she points at the waiter. Hesitantly, he says something to her that causes her brows to pinch upwards and her lips to turn downward. She beckons for her family’s master and a few words later, he’s barreling towards the waiter whom he drags away.
How typical. I bet the Titane thinks he’s beneath her, expecting him to slavishly agree with whatever her demands might be. That attitude is common when nome members deal with those from the Lesser Lands. Those are the only people who take up such service jobs, despite knowing they will be treated as less than animals sometimes. It’s a sad reflection on the Twenty but it is a reality—many carry themselves the way Titane Vesta did.
I was no different not too long ago. That is until I visited Lesser Land cities to offer free medical services. The idea was originally my dad’s and I hated it at first but I’m so grateful he forced me to take part in the project. He’d said, “You can’t become a great Restorer if you don’t learn to serve the least amongst us.”
And the Lesser Landers are indeed the least. Many don’t have access to education, healthcare, employment opportunities or even quality food. Things we in the nomes, and even those of the Lower Houses, take for granted.
Beside me, Neith joins the crowd to clap for Erhart who made it across a widening chasm and is running as fast as he can to escape falling into what looks like an endless abyss of a hole that chases him. That pitch-black abyss reminds me of the dread I felt on my first day providing restorer care in a place called Hesperia. There had been a line several feet long of people with all manner of illness. I’d feared that I’d never be
able to help them all. Morning turned to night and still, there were people arriving for care.
When I later discussed the day with my dad, he’d reminded me of prehistoric doctors who somehow managed to find cures for even the most obscure diseases. Then he’d said, “‘and you live in an age where we’ve conquered healthcare for the most part. Don’t let fear or anything else overwhelm you to the point of self-defeat.’”
I’d returned to Hesperia with gusto the next time. The same gusto that compelled me to expand the charity project to other—and even more dangerous—parts of the Lesser Lands. Then I met someone from Minim and everything changed.
“I wish we knew whether Invier and Seth were on the right track,” Neith says. “I hope Ika falls into a bottomless pit.”
All thoughts other than the Pursual swiftly fade. “That was rude of him to say, right? About him not caring to be here?”
In all honesty, Ika’s comment about not wanting to be in the competition didn’t bother me. He’s a well-known momma’s boy who spends the majority of his time preening. However, if I hadn’t raised the subject, Neith would have realized I wasn’t paying much attention to her grand affair. That would have led to an argument and I’m not in the mood for that.