Here and now, Kenny whispered, “I don't care what it seems like, you idiot. It's got to be a dream! Look! Magic mice? A fifty-mile-long cavern with an ocean in it under Woodbridge? Not to mention us surviving a hundred-foot fall...."
I tried to imagine where he'd come up with that fifty-mile figure. I mean, look: it's the sky. I said, “How do you imagine we're dreaming the same dream, Adar?"
He grimaced, looking away. “My name's Kenny, not Adar Thu of Cillpa."
I shrugged. “You can be Kenny if you want. My name's Onol. Onol of Aceta."
“Right. Onol of Aceta. And the girl with the see-through pants is the lovely Dah-ee-lah herself."
“So, what are you saying? We fell down a hole and bonked our lil ole haids, and now we're having a shared dream? Telepathy or something?"
He sighed. “Somebody is having a dream."
“So I'm knocked out, knocked out and dreaming, and you're a figment, maybe the voice of sweet reason trying to wake my ass up?"
His turn to shrug. “Either that or I'm dreaming and you're a blood clot in my brain trying to make my death an easy one."
“Jeez! That's pretty creepy."
“Yeah."
I gestured at Dah-ee-lah. “Maybe it's her dream, and we're both figments?"
“So who's she? Some girl from school dopey enough to be having a wet dream about the likes of us?"
“Girls have wet dreams?"
“How the hell do I know? I only started having them myself last year."
The sun went down and the moon came up, bright as a new penny in the empty, starless sky, red fires winking on one by one in the windows of the City of Gold, clearly much farther away than it'd seemed earlier. We'd been walking all day, and had to've come at least fifteen miles.
Not long after that, the girl, Dah-ee-lah, the Untouchable, as the now-dead pirates had called her, dropped back to walk between Kenny and me. I looked over her head at him, wondering why he didn't want to be Adar Thu anymore, wondering why he wanted this to be a dream from which he could wake up.
Then I wondered why I could look over her head, when she'd seemed a bit taller than me only this morning. Are you taller too, Kenny-boy? Don't look it. Do I? Or is she just shorter than she seemed?
I suddenly realized, looking down at the top of her head, I could smell her, a soft, subtle scent, not like the perfume my mom wore, not the flat kid-smell of my sisters, not much like anything I ever...
I backed away a bit, remembering I hadn't had a shower in a couple of days before we set out for Dinky's Cliff, and had been sweating like a pig for however long it'd been since then. I bet I smell like an old goat. An old dead goat.
She maintained her distance as we walked, until I'd retreated as far as I could and was about to start tripping over stalks of tall grass. Her hip bumped against mine just once, then she pulled back a bit, giving me room to walk. Shorter than me ... Are girls’ legs longer than boys’ in relation to their height?
She reached out and touched me on the wrist, a quick little lick of sensation tingling in the fluffy hair I had growing there, what Mickey had referred to as my “wrist manes” on a day when he was referring to me as Apeboy, like a joke that didn't quite work.
I tried not to jump out of my skin, but failed. She was looking up at me, eyes no more than little glints of moisture in the quasi-dark, almost hidden by brows and bangs.
I took a breath, determined not to strangle on my tongue any more than was absolutely necessary, and said, “How come you speak English now?” She and the Mouse Commander had been squeaking away in it off and on, all day long. Not exactly English, the vowels all converted to long ee-sounds, but close enough.
She said, “I always did. You just didn't know how to listen."
“Um.” No idea what that could possibly mean.
She reached out and took my hand in hers, lacing our fingers together in some unfamiliar way, and we walked on for a while like that, all my thoughts and wondering suspended.
Some time later, we got to the Merry Mouse camp, just where the grassy plain gave way to the beginning of those faraway hills. There were trees here, though scattered in groves, no forest anywhere nearby, and we could no longer see the City of Gold, its buildings hidden by the rising bluffs.
Here, there was a little mousy tent city, lit by little mousy fires, mice cooking God-knows-what on little rotating spits.
What do mice eat? Grain from the House that Jack built? When we lived in Connecticut and Dad was still in college, our apartment had rats. Rats eat anything, I was told, including little boys. Later on, when we lived in Utah, I heard there were carnivorous predatory field mice around somewhere, but I never saw any.
They made a bigger fire for us, safely away at the edge of Mouse Camp, where Dah-ee-lah unfolded our green blankets again, taking out miraculously cleaned frying pans, already full of steaks and home fries, ready to go on the fire, miraculously cleaned plates and silverware ready once again for our use.
I said, “Dah-ee-lah?"
She looked at me, attentive.
“Why did the pirates call you the Untouchable?"
She smiled. “Because that's who I am, and everyone here knows it.” The smiled broadened a bit. “Once they bother to look, that is.” Poor, old Wallace Beery.
I think maybe it was the look on my face made the smile turn to a laugh.
Sitting on a blanket nearby, waiting for his dinner, Kenny snickered. “So much for that,” he said, sounding happy about it.
I felt that wry inner feeling spread to my face. “Yeah. I was hoping it only meant she used to work for Eliot Ness or something."
But I'd been afraid all along it meant exactly what it seemed to mean. Afraid? Or glad? Don't know. Anyway, she sat next to me, on my blanket, all during dinner, sitting close enough I had to be careful not to elbow her in the head. I couldn't think of anything witty to say while we ate, and anyway my parents’ ideas about table manners started banging around in my head, making matters worse.
Elbows off the table. Don't chew with your mouth open. For that matter, don't talk while you're eating. Tip the soup away from you if you really need to get the last bit. That way it doesn't wind up in your lap. Better still, leave the last bit. You want people to think you're starving or something? Hold the fork this way....
Every time I looked at Dah-ee-lah the Untouchable, she was looking up at me, smiling.
It was during dinner that the Mouse Commander told her all about the bad tidings of the Land Down Under. I wondered if he meant Australia for a minute, but it was this place. Makes sense, I guess.
Anyway, something bad had happened in the City of Gold, something to do with a revolution, the Good King killed, the Evil High Priest in charge, the winds of terrible change abroad in the Land, something to do with the Coming of a New God.
Somewhere along the way, I had a prickle of foreboding, of foreknowledge, the word adumbration popping into my head unbidden, remembered from English class last year, teacher's voice yammering at me like a madman's gibber.
I said, “This New God have a name?"
“Why yes!” squeaked the Mouse Commander. “The Golden People call him Jad Ben Otho."
I felt sick all of a sudden. “Jad Ben Otho."
Dah-ee-lah leaned close, making my head swim with her sudden magic scent, and whispered, “I think maybe you know this New God?"
I inhaled hard, wanting to breath her in, but only managed to make an ugly snorting sound in my nose. “Yeah,” I said, “I think maybe I do."
Behind us, Kenny threw himself back on his blanket, tossing empty dishes and silverware aside with a clatter, and howled with laughter.
* * * *
I awoke in the middle of the night, desperate to pee, great big boner poking up the front of my shorts, poking up the green army blanket in which I'd wrapped myself to sleep. Not dark here, not quite, gloom of underground night lifted slightly by the dull red embers of mousefire, dark forms sleeping all around, most of them tiny, the
forms of sleeping mice.
Felt a thrill of terror. Another thrill of elation.
Magic mice?
Christ.
I sat up slowly, willing myself not to wet my pants. That shadow-hill so close by, that would be Dah-ee-lah. Dah-ee-lah the Untouchable sleeping so close I could reach out and touch her if I wanted. Or maybe if I dared? Right. If I dared.
The other shadow-hill would be Kenny, Kenny so reluctant to become Adar Thu of Cillpa, now that he had the chance, sleeping off by himself. The rest were just mice. Sleeping mice.
Kenny'd been afraid to go into the black tunnel mouth in the side of the hill, tunnel leading down under, deep down under the hills of the City of Gold, Mouse Commander insisting, “This is the way. The only way."
You could see it in Kenny's eyes: The last time we walked into the dark...
Then the Untouchable was standing before me, slim and strong, eyes so clear and blue, empty of anything at all like fear. “Onol?"
I'd taken a deep breath, groping for whatever courage I might have, if any, opened my mouth to speak and strangled, suddenly needing to stop myself from reciting a dirty joke the nastier of Kenny's older twin brothers had told me once upon a time, the one that began, “As long as I've got a face..."
Instead, I choked out something along the lines of, “Whither thou goest..."
That made Kenny laugh, then he was ready to go, too. Maybe it would've been better if I'd let myself tell the dirty joke. Maybe the magic mice would've killed me then, just the way they killed the pirates. Or maybe they all would've laughed.
So we all walked into the tunnel, down into the Pits of the City of Gold, led by the light of tiny torches, led by the sound of marching mousy feet, feet in mousy jackboots, tiny voices squeaking out some eldritch cadence, Heigh-ho, heigh-ho.
Mad as a fucking hatter, I told myself, as the Untouchable led me after the magic mice, down to the earth below, then farther down still. If I'm lucky, I'll wake up in the hospital someday, with a bandaged head and fractured skull, rather than in a straitjacket, in a padded cell.
The faces of my schoolmates danced around me for a moment in the darkness, all of them grinning. We always knew, said the voice of the Assistant Principal, he'd wind up in St. Elizabeth's one day.
Every goofy kid's fear: The straitjacket. The Nuthouse. It's down the booby-hatch for you, kiddo!
I got up, navigating by memory, fishing around by the nearest fire until I found one of the tiny torches, lighting it easily from the ruddy embers, holding it high, torch tiny as a Fourth of July sparkler. A couple of mousy eyes glinted back at me, then receded, folding back into their own tiny blankets.
Funny. You'd think the little bastards would know to put out sentries. Maybe they forgot.
It took a little poking around, but I finally found the place I thought might be a bathroom. The Pits of Gold were like some buried, forgotten city, some vast Pentagon-like apartment complex that'd been here in some old Before Time, older than the hills above, on which rested the City of Gold.
The Pits, Dah-ee-lah told us, have been here for five thousand years.
I peed in something that looked more or less like a golden toilet, a golden basin set at knee height anyway, though it held no water, only a dark drain. Then I stood there, looking around the room, lifting my little torch this way and that.
Not a bathroom at all. More like a bed chamber with amenities. Something like a dresser here. A closet there, though it was closed by torn curtains, rather than a door. Hangings on the walls, something like Persian carpets, with scenes of men dressed up in cloaks, feathered head dresses, hunting....
The thing at bay wasn't a stag. A man? No. More like the Hindu god Ganesh, with his elephant's trunk chopped away.
There was a bed, unmade, shiny, silky-looking covers awry, spilled partly over the side, wrapped around....
I took a step back, grimacing at the quick strangle of fear in my guts, eyes shying from another man-shape. Took a deep breath, smelling the smoke of my torch, beyond it, fainter but all pervading, a musty smell, like old mold.
I made myself look. He was lying on his back, one leg tangled in the bedding, the other one doubled under at the knee. There was a long dagger still gripped in one hand, his arm outflung. There were no eyes in the sockets, of course, just black, empty air, but the look on his shriveled yellow face....
Maybe not fear? Maybe something called up by the shrinkage of death? Nonsense. It's terror. Utter terror. Something those lost eyes saw. Something that made him open his mouth to scream.
Then he died.
I could feel cold sweat seeping out on my skin.
Could smell my own stink.
God.
When I turned away, there was a thing like a sink on the wall, not far from the golden toilet. There were faucets, of course, golden faucets, and when I turned one handle, water gurgled from a golden spigot. It was warm on my fingers. Not hot, but not cold like you'd expect of water from the bowels of the earth.
I took off my shirt, wondering if a five thousand-year-old face cloth would still be usable, or if it would disintegrate in a whiff of mummy-dust. I voted for dust, but it was still pliable, and quite clean.
Shows how much I know.
“Onol."
I about jumped out of my skin, spinning, clutching the wet face cloth over my chest.
The Untouchable smiled. “Onol, brave Onol of Aceta, calmly washing up in the death chamber of O-Mai the Cruel. I knew I'd judged you well."
“O-Mai the Cruel...” I glanced toward the ancient corpse.
She said, “There he lies."
“Christ,” I said. “Next thing you know the Corphals will moan, and we'll do a Keystone Kops number in the nearest doorway.” She laughed, though I couldn't imagine any of it meant much to someone from ... the Land Down Under? Here and now, anyway.
Kenny would know. But Kenny isn't here right now, and I am.
She stepped closer to me, unmindful of the hideous stench rising from my every pore, stepped closer still and reached up to stroke one hand across my cheek. It rasped there, making me shiver.
Then she held up a folded straight razor, leather and gold I thought, or maybe bronze? A folded straight razor. A cake of brown soap. “Let me shave you,” she said.
“Shave? Uh. But I don't..."
“Of course you do,” she whispered. “No hero is ever a beardless boy."
“Hero?” Some TV comedian in my head yammered, What? Is there a fucking echo in here?
“Sit down on the stool. Lean your head back into the sink."
I did as I was told, not wondering where the stool had come from, much less ... As she wet the soap and lathered my face, fingers working in among stout whiskers much like the ones my dad scraped off every morning before work, I made myself whisper, “Who are you?"
“Dah-ee-lah,” she said.
“No, really."
She clicked open the razor, mousy torchlight glinting fearfully on the exposed blade, and said, “The Untouchable."
I stammered, “Are you even real?"
“Not yet,” she said. “Almost."
Then she straddled my thigh and moved in close, one knee snugging up into my crotch where I was hoping she wouldn't notice my resurrected boner. Or was desperately hoping she'd notice it right now.
When she drew the straight razor across my cheek, it was like an electric current surged through me, flashing through my chest, down through my arms and legs, out to my fingers and toes.
“Soon,” she said, and, “Soon enough."
Tense and fearful under the scraping of the razor, I told myself, I'm not a Lost Boy. Honest to God I'm not....
* * * *
We found Johnny later that day, chained upright to a dungeon wall, deep in the deepest Pits, hanging like a scarecrow, sagging like Christ on the cross.
He looked up when we approached, mousy torches held high, and croaked out, “Alan! Kenny! Oh my God...."
I whispered, “Onol and Adar
Thu."
Kenny spared a look for me, fear, terror, annoyance written there for anyone to see.
I said, “It's who we are. Onol and Adar Thu ... and Tengam of Alaln."
I think Kenny started to say, “Nuts.... “but Johnny's cracked voice screamed, “For God's sake!"
After we cut him down, breaking the chains with little mousy hammers, heavy hammers for all that they were small, he sat huddled on the floor, shivering, sipping our water, gnawing on a dry crust of mousebread. Looking up, he whispered, “Micky..."
“Jad Ben Otho?"
Mingled horror and irritation. “He said they were going to cut out my heart! "
Kenny snickered. “That would be Huitzilopochtli. Maybe he decided Quetzalcoatl would be more impressive than this Jad Ben Otho?"
I said, “I don't think so. Micky isn't all that well read. I don't think he knows Tarzan the Terrible was cribbed from ‘The Man Who Would Be King.’”
Kenny said, “I read that. The Freemasons of Afghanistan? Stupid idea. The Pashtun would've killed them."
“Yeah."
From the floor, Johnny said, “Let's get out of here. Micky can be Jad Ben Otho or Ketts-a-Kwott or anything else he fucking wants. I'm going home now, one way or another."
I shook my head. “We've got to go up there and get him."
Johnny scrambled to his feet, eyes blazing in the torchlight. “No fucking way!"
Kenny looked at me like he was thinking nuts again. “Why?"
I said, “Because he's our friend. We can't leave him here."
I could see from the look on the face of Dah-ee-lah the Untouchable it was the right thing to say.
* * * *
Jump to the inevitable setpiece, high atop the Great Pyramid of Huitzilopochtli, in the center of the Plaza of the Gods, at the very heart of the City of Gold, feathered warriors with obsidian-toothed wooden swords all around, the High Priest of the Great God standing stern and proud with his long, wavy-bladed sacrificial dagger, beside him Micky-not-Desta as Jad Ben Otho himself, clothing discarded long ago, for the finery of the Gods: Micky naked, but for an interwoven harness of vines and leaves, laurel wreath woven into his hair.
Asimov's SF, October-November 2006 Page 32