The Secret City
Page 4
I’m so tired the moment I’m all the way down into the valley and under the trees, I wrap up in the poncho and drop where I stand.
I dream my people did live here but they, and I also, are all snatched back to our world where we’re strangers and none of us can remember the language or the writing. The air is dense and cloudy and tinged with a silvery mist and we have trouble breathing. I wake suffocating—shouting—jump up in a panic. It’s dawn. I sit back down on a stone to catch my breath.
It’s then I notice the stone I’m sitting on seems to be part of a wall and there’s a symbol carved there, weathered away to almost nothing. I’ve forgotten my own language and writing, but I remember this. It’s the syllable ath. An entrance marker. My people have been here. How can it be they were here so long ago as to have this sign almost completely worn away? Or is the symbol only half carved because my people were snatched home before they could finish it? Were they like me and didn’t want to leave?
I follow the wall farther up and see another symbol. This one I’ve forgotten. The farther I go, the higher the wall, and I see more of my people’s syllables.
Excited as I am, I’m too hungry to look farther. I roll up the poncho and hide it and the knapsack in a gap behind the wall and go in search of breakfast.
I find a patch of Solomon’s seal, find a digging stick, and scrabble at them until I dig up the roots. I eat them raw and unwashed, crunching dirt. Then I follow the stream lower and find the elderberry bushes I’d seen as I came up the night before. It was getting dark and I was too tired to pick them. I eat some and then wet my shoulder and sit beside the stream where there’s an overhanging bank. A good place for fish. I sit so quietly all sorts of little creatures come out right beside me, a chickadee, a pica, a marmot…. Not everything has gone south or lower down. Not everything is hibernating yet.
ALLUSH
HE WAKES YELLING. I ALMOST JUMP OUT FROM behind the wall to see what’s wrong, but I don’t want him to see me until I find out more about him. And people from the Down have guns. (We do, too, but no bullets anymore.)
After he hides his things, I take them and hide them in a spot of my own, but first I examine them. The jacket is worn out and ugly. They call that corduroy. The sweater is worn out, too. It has different colors. It reminds me of when the old ones dressed as tourists. Our parents wore glasses even though they never needed them, and they always had field glasses and cameras and flowery shirts and bright sweaters like this one. I liked when we dressed like that. I used to have a flowery blouse my parents brought me from the Down. If I ever get back there, I’ll get myself another one. You need money down there, though. I wonder if there’s any somewhere up here or did the old ones use it all up. That’s another way to make us have to stay here.
After I examine his things and hide them in a place of my own, I follow where he went, down towards the stream. He limps and leans on his cane. He is lopsided. I wince when he eats seal roots without washing them. After that, he heads straight to the elderberry bushes as if he knew they were there. He stuffs berries into his mouth.
Reaching is evidently painful to him. He doesn’t use his left arm much. Probably that’s also burned but I can’t see under his shirt.
After gobbling berries … it’s got to be including stems, I’ve never seen anybody this hungry … he stops by the stream, takes off his shirt, wets it and holds it to his face and shoulder. As he sits and soaks himself, he watches the fish that always rest under the ledge. I suppose he’s thinking how to catch them. Then he sits so still in the shadows of the blowing leaves, I almost don’t see him anymore. I sit still, too, (our second lesson) and watch.
Our first lesson was the freeze. How not to ever use it. I never understood why not. I don’t think the stare that immobilizes is unknown here. Why is it forbidden? Also I wonder—if it’s never practiced—can it still be there at all? I know I have it. I’ve tried it a few times—on animals that is, but never on people.
LORPAS
WHEN I COME BACK TO PICK UP MY BUNDLE, MY few belongings are gone. My matches, my flashlight, my pan, my sweater….
I hid them well. Someone must have seen me. I hate to think what the night will be like without my tarp or without matches. I had been looking forward to cooking the Solomon’s seal next time and to roasting a fish. And who took it? I hope one of my own kind.
I follow the wall I slept next to, yet higher, slowly, looking for my bundle, but also at everything else. I use my cane to probe likely spots where my bundle might be. Farther on, the wall is almost as high as my head. I pull away some of the brush and see the faint tracing of an animal. A lorp. I remember what it’s called in my own language because it’s the beast I’m named for. Mother drew it for me often. Side view just like this, its feathery topknot raised, its mouth open in a grin of warning. Though small and usually friendly, it was fierce if need be. It was used to guard entrances, sometimes in the real and sometimes, as here, in effigy. Mother said we were too civilized on our world to need them in the real anymore. Besides, she said, our people only had towers now. All of them looking as if they’d lift into the air at any minute, unlike anything on this world.
If there’s a lorp, there should be an entrance nearby but I don’t see one.
I climb the wall with the aid of a sapling growing next to it. Several steps beyond there’s a tall doorway with trees right in front of it. It’s of stone. I can’t budge it. I knock. Foolishly. I actually knock on rock and scrape my knuckles. I examine it more closely. It’s part of the granite cliff it’s set in. Why would anyone make a huge phony doorway in the forest directly behind trees so you can hardly see it?
I go on. I find a stone gateway (flanked by lorps) and go through it. Just beyond it, on a fallen log I find my pan, and in it there’s a small piece of dried meat. Looks like squirrel or gopher—or maybe rat.
I sit beside the pan. I look. I listen. Silence, except the general rustle of the forest. Ground squirrels, juncos, jays.
I say, “Thank you.”
I’m glad my voice is husky and low like all my people’s.
I chew on the stringy meat.
Then I hear a sound high in the top of the trees. My kind were never known for climbing. We’re strong but chunky, heavy people. Awkward at such things. I look up. I can’t see much but there’s somebody up there.
I say, “Thank you,” again, then, “Please come down.”
It holds stone still. That’s like one of us. But natives can do that, too.
“Please.”
But it won’t.
I wait a bit more, then take my pan and go on. Listening, watching, looking up.
I find a grand stairway—must be twelve or so, wide but low steps, and behind it, another great doorway with a whole row of lorps across the top. Though it looks more real than the other door, I can’t move it.
As I turn back I find the jacket lying on the steps. I sit beside it and look up. As before, there’s somebody in the trees.
“Come on down. I won’t hurt you.”
As I sit, I see what might be a window, low and narrow, and only about five or six inches above-ground. I notice it because the glass catches the light when the leaves blow. Just beyond, there’s what might be a chimney. It looks to be made out of a rusty tin can. There’s a wisp of smoke rising from it.
I go to examine the window. I lie down and try to look in, but it’s too dark. Definitely a window though, made from an odd-shaped chunk of broken glass. Just beyond, I find what might be a doorway. I think, here, at last, may be a door I can enter, but that, too, is fake. I can open it, but it goes into a mass of tree roots. Impossible to pass beyond them.
I hear a noise, look up fast and see someone close above me. Clearly one of my own kind, wild red streaked hair, a dirty face. Doesn’t this place have combs or washcloths? She … I think a woman … ducks out of view.
“Thank you for the meat.”
I hear the cracking of branches as she moves, in a hurry, farther aw
ay. I say, “Be careful.”
Maybe if I talk more.
“My name is Lorpas. I saw the lorps in the doorways.”
I know she can see I’m one of us, but I say it anyway. “I’m one of us. From Betasha. A Betasha Bob. Or Boob.”
No answer.
“Did you call yourselves Boobys like we did?”
From the sounds, she has come closer. Then I think she’s here and I carefully don’t turn to look. But then I do, fast, and it’s just a ground squirrel.
I get up to explore further. I trust she’ll follow.
I come to a great avenue. I pace out its width. Here are the largest trees, as though it had once been tree-lined, but there are so many other big trees growing from the middle of it that only an examining eye could tell, or an imagining mind would guess.
I check another grand staircase on the far side of the Avenue. There’s carvings across the riser of every step. At the end of the steps there’s a sort of spire. For sure supposed to be at the top of a tower. It doesn’t look like much on the ground.
All this is trying to look like what Mother meant by her “white, shining, flying cities,” though I don’t find anything more remarkable about it than what’s on this world. And these buildings are ponderous and more gray than white because of the granite they’re carved from. Mother had talked of spires where … “flying sails” she called them … moored … but here, in order to hide, there can’t be anything taller than the trees. I suppose it’s unfair to compare this town with what it was trying to imitate.
I go on. I push at doors and only manage to open one and that one, huge as it is, opens to a narrow hall. There’s a pallet as though someone slept there, in the dark, windowless cupboard.
As I come down the steps, I scare a deer and wonder that it’s still up here in the cold. Then I see it limps as I do and then I see it’s hobbled. Perhaps part of the larder for later.
I’m doing the right thing by ignoring her. She wants to be noticed. She starts dropping pinecones on me. I sit on the stairway and let myself be pelted.
I talk again.
“How well you climb. I always thought our kind wasn’t good at that.”
Silence.
“How well you throw. You never miss.”
“…. “
“Down below, with the hoodwinked, my name was Norman North. Do you have a native name?”
“….”
“I’ve lived my life below with all my food store-bought. All my clothes, too.”
I say that because hers aren’t. What I could see of them looked pieced and patched. And that tough piece of dried meat…. I couldn’t guess what it was.
“I don’t know what it’s like to live up here. I wouldn’t know how.”
She doesn’t come down.
I get up to do more exploring. The pelting stops but now and then I hear her above me in the trees. I keep to the avenue. It’s hard unless one watches for what might be the curb. I come upon a park. It’s surrounded by a low wall that has intaglio portraits of odd plants. The wall is pink tuff. The stones would have had to have been brought from the pink cliff far below. I kneel and study the carved flowers. Mother drew several of these for us but some are new to me. I start naming the ones I know out loud. When I get to allush, I hear her drop—a safe distance away. I don’t look. This time I know it’s not a ground squirrel.
Allush, a tiny flower that grows in clusters and only opens in the light of the blue ice moon when that moon is full. Its fringed leaves have a yellow center and blue outside. It was one of Mother’s favorites.
I say, “Allush,” again.
I turn around, carefully staring at my feet. I sit on the wall. Then I look.
She’s cross-legged on the ground a few yards away.
I haven’t seen any of my own kind since my parents died, my sister left, and I went off on my own without an address. I’m fascinated. I’m trembling with…. I hardly know what. Anticipation? Joy? Yes, joy. This whole place. The secret city that I’ve always wished for, always hoped really did exist. And now this woman.
She’s dressed in tan leather, lines of green and red stitching all over it, holding it together, but also forming symmetrical designs. It imitates pine needles and helps to hide her in the trees. On her feet are moccasins exactly like the Indians of this land used to wear. Her great mop of black hair is streaked with the red typical of my people when they get in the sun. It’s matted and tangled. Have they gone completely wild up here? But how could they not?
I must look as odd to her as she does to me. I need a shave and my mustache needs trimming. My hair has grown out after they shaved my head when I was in jail. (Ruth gave me my latest haircut. Not the best I ever had.) I must look naked to somebody used to a full head of hair and maybe to bearded men.
We stare at each other. I can’t help smiling. She must see how happy I am—must see how I’d like to run to her and hug her. I hope I don’t look too predatory. Hard as I try, I can’t wipe that grin off my face.
Finally I say, “Hello.”
She nods. A quick dip of the head.
“Can you speak?”
She nods.
“I’ll bet your name is Allush.”
Another nod.
“I’ll bet you’ve never seen an allush any more than I’ve seen a lorp.”
Finally a slight smile.
“Allusha. Allusha.” I added the “ah” as if she was my lover. I’m so delighted I couldn’t help it. I’ve never said that to anybody. How can it be on the tip of my tongue?
She flinches. If she wasn’t sitting down, she’d have run away.
“I’m sorry.”
We sit. Silent. I’m finding it hard to just sit when what I want to do is grab her and hug, but I don’t want to scare her.
We’re so quiet ground squirrels rustle right next to us. A jay flies down, landing inches from Allush’s knee. I’ll bet she’s tamed them all.
Then, like an apparition, slowly, delicately, as if on tiptoe … out from the underbrush comes a white mule. She’s like a fairyland creature—as if out of an old tale told by the grandmothers. I almost expect her to have a unicorn horn.
The mule leans down and Allush reaches up, touches…. Tips of fingers to pinkish nose.
For a moment it’s magic, no sound, no rustlings even, and then the mule throws back her head and gives a great hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw.
ALLUSH
HE LOOKS SO HAPPY AT SEEING ME. I CAN SEE IT hurts him to smile but he can’t stop. No one has ever been this glad to see me ever before.
But then Pashty comes, makes a great noise and then trots away.
We laugh and he gets up and reaches towards me and I get up, too. We stare and reach but don’t touch. He’s one of us for sure—those aluminum-colored eyes.
Then we sit on the wall side by side, again carefully not touching. I hadn’t thought he’d feel as shy as I do but he does.
He wants to talk but hardly dares. He keeps starting to say something and then doesn’t. So we just sit.
Then there’s the sound of air, a swish. I know that sound. I shout, “No!” almost before it lands. An arrow. It hits him and he falls over backwards off the wall. I’m thinking he’s dead. I feel awful. Just when there’s a whole new person here, he’s gone already.
I jump down beside him.
He’s flat on his back. Stunned. But he’s not dead. The arrow is stuck in his arm.
There’s not much blood now, but there might be if I try to get it out.
At least down here we’re protected by the wall.
I know who did it. There’s nobody else who would. I wonder if he’ll shoot me, too.
I stand up and yell, “Youpas! Stop!”
Another arrow plinks into the wall beside me as though to warn me. Would he really?
And another.
I duck behind the wall again and huddle next to this new one called Lorpas.
We could crawl along the wall until we come to Mollish’s hut. S
he’ll know what to do.
“Can you crawl?”
“Wait a minute. Just a minute.”
He lies there, and then, slowly, turns over on hands and knees. I lead the way.
At Mollish’s, I push aside the brush and open the door. Mollish helps me pull him in, but when I tell her Youpas shot him, she’s angry that I would haul in a stranger who’s been shot by one of us. She says she won’t help, and I say I’ll use her things and help him anyway, and she says, “Well, I won’t stop you if that’s what you have to do.” I say, “Youpas always shoots first and then asks who it is.”
First thing, I give Lorpas elderberry liqueur and herbs to chew to put him out while Mollish sits at the table looking cross.
I cut away his shirt and reveal, not only the injury, but the burns on his other shoulder. As I examine his wound I see the home-call.
“Look, he has a beacon. His mother really cared about him. She must have given him hers. She wanted him to go home.” I say those first words in our language we all learned before we could hardly even call our Mamas. “I’m us of one-eighty-nine. Take me home. “
Mollish says, “Home!” as if disgusted with the whole idea.
I pull out the arrow. Suddenly there’s a lot of blood.
Mollish makes a disgusted noise again, kneels beside me and takes over. “Don’t just sit there, start wiping up the blood. It’s my floor.”
It’s just a packed earth floor. I don’t know why she cares about it so much and why right now, but I scrape off the bloody layer and put it on the trash. Maybe she just doesn’t want me to watch or get in the way.
When she’s almost done she says, “Well, shall I leave the beacon?”
“I don’t know if he wants to go home or not.”