Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy)

by Jonathan R. Stanley

  “Those of the first mind… what ever happened to them?”

  “We do not know. They were so strong with tradition, we suspect it was their death.”

  Alex nodded. “Do you have any tradition left here?”

  “Very yes, yes,” Ope-shed added eagerly. “We have many, but only those that fit. And because of that, we would not ever be accepted by our ancestors.”

  “So this is your new home?”

  “No,” Ope-shed replied. “We are still searching. But Kefku believes that we are closer.”

  “How will you know when you find it?”

  Assuredly, Ope-shed closed his eyes and nodded. He straightened his posture and breathed in deeply. “We will know.”

  “My mother and I disagreed with tradition too.”

  “Then we are the same.” Ope-shed smiled. “Please, tell me about your home.”

  Alex shrugged, trying to think of a way to describe Teleopolis to someone who lived in a tent in a canyon. “It looked nice. Almost no one ever went hungry, all the children went to school, and all the adults had a say in the laws of the city.”

  “All of them? How many were you?”

  “Our population was strictly capped at one million.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “We could have no more people after a certain number… so that there would be enough for everyone.”

  “Hanak-olah,” Ope-shed said in astonishment. “What if a family had more childs?”

  “You weren’t allowed to,” Alex said matter of factly.

  “But, how? It is the most essential tradition. How could you deny a family that?”

  “Well I didn’t do it.”

  “But everyone had a voice in tradition. Was this your people’s voice?”

  “We each had a little voice. And it was tradition. People didn’t like the idea of having to pay for someone else’s ten kids. It was a drain on society.”

  Ope-shed didn’t really understand since Alex, in his frustration, spoke quickly and didn’t choose his words for the sake of his listeners.

  Ope-shed began anew. “So you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far away is your city.”

  Alex thought about the odometer on the hover car for a moment. “About six hundred miles from here.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “It’s very, very far. It would be impossible to walk there.”

  “Your floating basket.”

  “It’s called a hover car.”

  Ope-shed nodded curiously. “And you had many things like this at your home?”

  “Yes. Do you need it for anything? Maybe we could help you.”

  “Alex,” Olesianna hissed.

  He ignored her and looked expectantly between Ope-shed and Kefku who seemed to be having their own tacit conversation.

  “We do not want to be in your debt anymore. Life is hard, but we will survive. The river has saved us.”

  Alex could tell his chances of becoming part of their tribe were fading. “Yeah, us too, I guess.”

  “We will stay here only another season before we continue on.”

  Alex stared at the coals and tried to think of something to say. He had discovered an entire civilization, but for some reason his mind was blank.

  Kefku felt saddened by what she knew. They could not support any more people in the tribe. She wanted to see the bright young boy smile again and so she asked him. “Does your home have priests?”

  “I guess. We had the will.”

  “What is will?” she asked, now genuinely intrigued by his answer to a question asked initially out of pity.

  “The will is the way of things.”

  “Ah, like the path.”

  “Yeah. Well no. It’s just its own will.”

  “What is?”

  “Here, it’s like this: when something happens it happens because it is the will. And you know it happened that way because it was the will.”

  Kefku nodded, likening it to her own divination abilities as priestess. Though, as many people do when attempting to surmount a cultural barrier, she was quick to see the foolishness of an unfamiliar idea without the slightest inclination to reexamine the foolishness of a familiar one. If Alex possessed only one noble quality, it was that he had a propensity to reexamine the familiar.

  “It was stupid,” he said suddenly. And it felt good to renounce it openly, satisfying a rebellious urge in him, one that had few other outlets during his daily task of surviving. “It was just a way to control people.” It was a simplistic critique, one he would revisit before the end.

  The night progressed and soon everyone began to fall asleep. Only Alex and Ope-shed remained awake, with Olesianna lightly dosing a few feet away.

  “When I first saw your brother and the others, I was very scared.”

  “They were also. One thought you were from the tribe of the setting-sun. An outcast who had come to find us. They speak only in the language of tradition.”

  Alex recalled the one man among the group who seemed to speak for him when they came upon the girl at the river bank.

  “I also felt relieved.” Alex paused and Ope-shed waited for him to continue.

  “I didn’t think I would ever see another person out here. My home has a story about how all things began, and it said that there were no other people but us. I thought I was going to die alone in the wilderness. But for some strange reason I kept going on in search of something.”

  “I understand.”

  Alex felt a shiver from those simple words spoken from the stoic man by the dying red coals. He had made a connection with another person in the most unlikely circumstances imaginable, and it made him feel closer to the world than ever before. “It’s amazing isn’t it? That we come from such different places and yet we have shared something. Where do you think your people came from?”

  “My people grew up from the ground. We were resurrected from the earth after being buried thousands of years ago by our ancestors.” Ope-shed drew a circle with a line through the middle in the dirt next to his blanket. “It is the symbol of our birth.”

  Alex was sensitive enough to Ope-shed’s conviction not to question his beliefs. “It kinda makes you wonder how society starts, you know? Like when everyone came together, what was that first conversation like?”

  Ope-shed thought for a moment. “We need each other to live. We are a people of families.”

  Filled with trust and hope Alex felt an admission rising up in him, about to slip out. At the last moment, not knowing if it was the right thing to do or not, Alex spoke. “We didn’t leave my city… We were banished.”

  Ope-shed looked intently at Alex.

  “When I was younger, I snuck out of my home and discovered knowledge. But that knowledge wasn’t allowed among my people. Many… suns later, the warden of my school found out. I fled that place and went beyond the city again to hide the writings of that knowledge beyond his reach. When I returned home…” Alex started to choke up but then felt the emotion become too powerful to feel. It became surreal, like someone else’s story. “The warden had gone to my house and in a struggle with my mother, he burned it down. My sister was sick and couldn’t escape. She died in the fire.” Alex took a deep breath and then stared at the coals for a while. “At the trial, the warden blamed my mother for the fire, but I knew it was a lie. The people said we had to be banished. It was the will.”

  “That is a terrible thing,” Ope-shed finally said in the dim light.

  “We can’t go back,” Alex said resolutely. Ope-shed saw the determination and the will to survive in the boy. He admired it, and the mother too for all her suspiciousness.

  Suddenly, Olesianna stood up and left the tent. Alex watched her leave and felt a terrible guilt at having exposed their story to strangers. He felt as if he had betrayed her.

  “I am sorry Alex, my families cannot support any more people. It is like your city.”

  Alex
’s heart sank and he tried to keep his lower lip from shivering. Ope-shed’s sudden declaration had brought every dormant emotion to the surface at once. He couldn’t bear to think what it would be like to return to the wild.

  Ope-shed leaned in over the coals and they reflected warmly on his face. “But if you wish to live with others, I do have hope for you yet…”

  Twenty-Six

  The following morning, Alex woke to a commotion outside the tent. He threw off his animal skin blanket and walked outside, the sound of children cheering growing louder. There, parked much closer to the village than before, was the hover car, and around it, nearly everyone in the village. The children jeered and cried out at the floating vehicle and ran around it touching the smooth, sleek sides. One even tried to put his hand under the car but found that as much as he tried, the strangely thick haze under the vehicle could not be penetrated by his little fingers.

  Olesianna stood protectively by the driver’s side door and when she saw Alex, called to him. “Come on Alex. It’s time to go.”

  Feeling torn inside Alex looked back to the tent where Ope-shed was emerging. The broad man took one look at the hover car and nodded with amazement. With a gesture of his head he put his hand on Alex’s shoulder and said, “Remember. Just keep heading east.” Then, reassuringly, he added, “Go on.”

  Alex started to walk off towards the hover car when suddenly everyone in the village began to scramble back to their tents. Unsure of what was going on, Alex walked briskly to the hover car. Upon reaching it, though, he was stopped by the small girl he had saved the day before. She was wrapped in a blanket but quickly and decidedly, took it off and handed it to Alex, reaching above her head to put it in his hands. Alex took the fur blanket and bowed slightly, but the girl ran off before he could thank her any further. A blanket, he thought. She would never know how meaningful a gift it was.

  Approaching from their tents then, a horde of villagers accosted the vehicle with small gifts, trinkets, and bits of food wrapped in cloth. Alex tried to thank them all and to offer things in return but they just kept pointing affectionately to the girl who was off with some other children playing. Alex nodded and bowed and then waved his hand at Ope-shed. Standing by the large tent, Ope-shed waved back and continued to wave as Alex and Olesianna drove downstream and disappeared.

  Alex followed the river bank to the incline where Olesianna had come down the day before. Once at the top of the canyon he went quickly across the land bridge and then set his course east. It was silent in the car and neither knew what the other was thinking. Olesianna finally tried to make conversation by noting a gift Alex received from the girl’s father. It was a single deer antler with tassels and beads. Alex held it as a weapon, a single claw protruding from the grip between the index and middle finger, then splitting into two sharp hooks at the end. “Pretty neat, huh?” she asked. A tense silence followed as Alex didn’t respond, instead fiddling with the antler as he drove above the canyon.

  “I wanted to get an early start today,” Olesianna explained. “Maybe we’ll reach more mountains by tomorrow.” She paused and then laughed quietly to herself. “Are you hungry? I could make breakfast?”

  “I’m not hungry, Mom.”

  “Alex, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I just didn’t feel safe there.”

  “I said, don’t be.”

  “We didn’t know anything about them or their culture. They could have been cannibals for all we know.”

  Alex turned sharply to look at Olesianna. “We left, okay? There’s no need to say that about them.”

  The rest of the day was silent.

  It’s harder than I thought to keep a good journal. I haven’t written in this for nearly two weeks now. I used to think I had nothing but time to get it all down, but with any luck…

  After traveling across mountains and deserts we finally came to a river and met with the first sign of people so far. They were living in the canyon and let us stay in their tents for the night. Aside from how great it was to have a conversation with someone, they gave us… well me, good news.

  The great canyon was the most beautiful thing we have seen so far on our journey. Now we move across the open flat lands and plains. I’m glad we have plenty of water though, because there is nothing here. Nothing. It’s just flat forever. I don’t know how much further east we have to travel, but I hope it won’t be too far. The speed of our hover car makes even really long distances seem so short.

  …Since there is nothing to draw out here but giant, fat deer with shaggy coats, I’ll just keep writing. We crossed a river yesterday and I think I found a way to get the hover car across shallow water safely. This will come in handy tomorrow when we have to ford another much large river. There are lots of trees around and more animals so as you can see I started drawing again.

  Things have been quiet between mom and me. She must feel guilty about leaving those people and yet she probably regrets it also. It doesn’t really matter though – we couldn’t have stayed with them anyway. What’s reassuring to me is that if this good news turns out to be nothing, we can always return to them in a year or two and maybe help them as they helped us.

  I still feel funny though. After telling Ope-shed about our banishment, I feel exposed. I think it’s because mom felt exposed, but I think it’s also because we were alone in the wilderness for so long. We didn’t have to worry about people judging us, and then all of a sudden our whole reason for being here came down to the fact that my sister was dead and that it was me and my mother’s fault. It was a sobering experience. The only thing that lets me fall sleep anymore is my Classical CD. Thank the will for that stupid little CD player.

  Alex ran through the front door of his house. They wouldn’t be far behind him, he thought as he raced up the stairs to his room. Tossing his backpack to the floor, Alex stuffed the CD player, and the rest of his books from the time capsule inside. Already in his bag was the book on religion, the book the warden had found back at school. Stopping to look in his sister’s room, Alex saw that she was sleeping and the faint hum of her bedside machines and the beep of her pulse had hidden any noise he made. In another moment he was down the stairs and out the front door, headed for the edge of town.

  Olesianna used her foot to close the door behind her, two large grocery bags bundled in her embrace. She made her way to the kitchen, walking sideways to see the floor as she went. As she set the load on the table and as the papery rustle of the bags went silent, there came a knock at the door. Outside, the warden of Alex’s school, a tall man with sharp shoulders and a balding hairline, along with his secretary, a fat plump woman with short curly hair, stood impatiently awaiting entry. The urgency of their knocking prompted Olesianna – to her eternal regret – to open the door without first checking to see who it was. Before she could begin to close the door again, the warden stepped inside and pushed Olesianna back into the house.

  “Excuse me. What do you think you’re doing in my home?” She demanded, they had met before, regarding Alex’s behavior, and weren’t on the best of terms as a result.

  “We have reason to believe that you are harboring illegal material, offensive to the state.”

  “Then you may return with the proper authorities,” Olesianna spat, stepping in front of the warden as he tried to move past her. The warden, after a brief entanglement, forced Olesianna aside and moved into the living room. She pursued him as he began to fumble through a bookshelf, pulling the contents onto the floor. The warden paused over one of the books and then read a word on the cover aloud. “Evolution?” The word was rotten in his mouth. Olesianna moved towards him as he shoved a hand in his pants pocket and retrieved a lighter. “Go outside Mrs. Harrison,” he said to his secretary.

  Her rosy cheeks flushed as she looked at the book, the lighter, and the warden. Stealing glances over her shoulder the entire way, she stumbled outside and then rooted herself across the street in a panicky twitch. In a few moments
the warden’s back appeared at the door, followed by Olesianna’s flailing arms. Olesianna was dragged onto the front steps as the fire began to take hold of her house like a chaotic liquid falling up the walls. Mrs. Harrison was frozen as she saw the warden at the middle of the street still grappling with Olesianna. It wasn’t until the mother freed herself of the warden’s grasp with a well-placed kick to his groin and began to rush back into the house that Mrs. Harrison found her feet and rushed to the crumpled warden. Fumes leaked out of the rear windows and through the open front door. Olesianna rushed through the smog and took to the stairs, galloping up the smoke filled incline. Halfway up, she could already hear a faint crying.

  “Cara? Cara? Don’t worry baby, I’m coming. Just stay where you are.”

  “Mommy?” cried the weak voice.

  Olesianna rounded the first landing and up the last few stairs heading for Veronicara’s room. The thin figure lay in a heap on the floor, blankets from the bed wrapped around her.

  Olesianna quickly pulled out the I.V. and folded the small arm at the elbow to staunch the blood. She detached the leads and other equipment from the nearby machines with amazing alacrity, then scooped up Cara in her blankets and rushed into the hall. Veronicara clung to her mother, burying her face in Olesianna’s shoulder and neck. From the blankets she could feel that they were moving quickly. Olesianna reached the stairs and felt a wave of heat sear her skin. She turned back, sheltering the bundle with her body and looking back nervously. Smoke rushed at her eyes, stinging her face and burning her lungs. Asphyxiation would come soon. If she couldn’t get out they would be dead in moments.

  “Veronica,” she asked in a hoarse but determined voice. The thin face, glistening with tears and perspiration peered out of the blankets like a bunny in its hole. “I need you to hold onto me real tightly. Okay? All right, now hold on.” Olesianna took a few steps back to the wall then covered her face with a piece of cloth. The front door was just a few feet from the bottom of the stairs. Even if she broke her legs in the jump, they could still crawl to safety. As she took the first springing step forward, ready to leap, a figure emerged from the smoke and grabbed her. It was the warden.