The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky

by John Hornor Jacobs

  I took my bike off-road, and traveled across the scree plains, out of sight of the border guards, passing into Magera unseen, traveling fifty miles an hour, an unsafe speed on the loose rock. When the border guards and their shabby little hut were far in the distance, I returned to the highway. I felt no shock or thrill at my homecoming. No Homeric greeting by a withered ancient. I passed through the same barren landscape as before. But I was closer to the coordinates of the slip of paper bearing the name Alejandra.

  Every exile dreams of coming home. It’s the nature of our loss. Every narrative wants an end where wrongs are righted, where evil is vanquished or, failing that, at least the status quo is returned. I had longed to return for so many years, to be welcomed back with wine and bittersweet remembrance by whatever family I had left or could find. Reuniting Mageran families, after the coup, was like sweeping up the shards of a broken glass and trying to put it back together—there’s always less there than before it was broken.

  Now, though, I would be happy simply to find Avendaño, that kind, deranged old poet. He called Neruda the father of us all, but Neruda seemed so distant and foreign to me now—some other small poet lost to some other tin-pot dictator. I didn’t think of Avendaño as a poet, I thought of the man, full of beautiful contradictions. In him, some of the wreckage of my mother and father was, if not healed, made bearable.

  By late afternoon, I approached Arriate, the town nearest to Alejandra’s coordinates. A meager cluster of stone buildings at a crossroads featured a single market, and a church. Up until then, I had seen no official Mageran vehicles, not even at the border—no police, nor army. But now, a handful of green Jeeps and trucks clustered around the church, though I saw no soldiers attending them. I pressed on as quickly as I was able, whipping through the town, stopping a mile or two out of sight in order to pull the atlas out of my leather jacket, lift my helmet’s visor, and estimate where the longitude and latitude indicated. It was an imprecise affair, since the atlas did not have either longitude or latitude marked with minutes. I had to make my best guess.

  I followed the highway toward where I thought it might be. Within moments, a rutted dirt road cut away from the highway, down a slope and then out on the rocky flats of scree where a far red hill rose above the rest of the land like a cone or loaf of sugar. I took the bike down and then up, casting a great plume of dust into the air. My heartbeat quickened, knowing that anyone who looked this direction, for miles, would see I traveled there.

  The sugarloaf grew in my sight, rising high, two hundred meters from the rocky flat’s floor. I came to the foot of the hill and stopped the bike and dismounted, looking to my backtrail to make sure I had not been followed. I unslung my backpack and left it leaning against the dirt bike’s front tire. I could see nothing. The sun stood fingers above the peaks to the west.

  I walked around the hill. No tracks, no sign of life, no vegetation at all. Just loose, shattered rocks. It was cold here and I was glad of the gloves and heavy boots. I kept my helmet on, to keep the swirls and lashing tendrils of salt from stinging my face, eyes.

  Walking the perimeter of the sugarloaf, I stopped. A bit of blue stood out from the rest of the landscape of scree, flapping, at the top of a rise. An irregularity in the ground, where there was a protrusion of rocks—the berm of a hole that had been dug and then refilled, maybe.

  I approached it. A piece of cloth, once bright blue, now faded and washed out from exposure to the elements. I picked it up, pulling it away from the earth that was reluctant to yield it. When it came away, I could see it was the remains of a dress. Looking down, I searched the berm, kicking the rocks with my feet. The light was failing now, long shadows pointing accusingly toward the east, stretching, stretching. A glint of metal. A bracelet. A bracelet that a young girl might wear, full of bangles and charms. A cornicen, a bird, a heart, a shoe, a baby, a fish, a sailboat.

  I fell to my knees and began tearing at the hard, rocky earth with my gloved hands, as if I could reveal something just under the earth’s crust. After finding nothing I circled the mound like a cat—like Tomás—but far less indifferently than he might. A flash caught my eye, but not on the ground. In the distance, across the salt flat, to the highway. A vehicle on the side of the road, stopped.

  A maroon van.

  Two small figures stood beside it. One raised his arm in a genial wave.

  Stuffing the bracelet into a pocket and the dress inside my jacket to rest near the atlas, I raced back to my motorcycle, slung back on my backpack, and kicked the starter violently until the machine’s sound swallowed almost everything, thinking nothing but madre de dios, madre de dios in a sort of circular and meaningless chant. It was an empty shibboleth—something my mother would mutter when I was just a girl, before she was taken away. I throttled up the bike, and ran parallel from the road for a stretch, watching the figures move back to the van, open the doors and enter. It began to move. I doubted I could outrun a vehicle on the highway, but they could never catch me out here, on the flats or in the rough terrain. The Yamaha was built for off-road travel, which was one of the reasons I bought it. I had been thinking of the state of Argentinian roads, which were notoriously bad, rather than a chase on the salt flats outrunning—whom? Who were these men? Whoever they were, they were murderers, or at least their proximity to Jorge Campos’s home testament enough that I should be wary.

  I hung back from the highway, but soon the maroon van was pacing me. I came to a gulley, where I had to turn either toward the road or away from it, and I opted for the latter. I did not know how long it would take for whoever rode in the van to get tired of the game I played and begin firing. I took the dirt bike out beyond a ridge, out of sight from the highway. The sun had just passed beyond the mountain peaks, and the sky became blue-gray overhead and smeared with orange-pink at the edges. A half-light settled on the flats, giving it that dreamlike air, a luminous darkness; everything dimmed, yet absent of the hard contrast that direct sunlight brought, so that every detail stood clear in my sight, but fading. Caught between states for an instant. Precious but temporary.

  It was dark in minutes, and I had to decide. Press on, out here in the waste, or back to the road. If I didn’t make up my mind, any possibility of choice would be removed for me and it would be a simple matter of the passengers in the van finding a different vehicle in the night, one that could take the rocks, maneuver in the ruts and arroyos in the shadows of the Andes.

  It was not a hard decision. I formulated a plan, knowing it was folly, but lacking any better options.

  You will never be happy. Your purpose is folly. But you may find justice.

  I waited an hour for full dark, then I took the flashlight from my bag. I duct-taped it to the motorcycle’s handlebar axis, so that it shone merely ten feet in front of the dirt bike, and traced my path back, down through the gulley to the point where it rose to join the plateau of salt flat by the road. I extinguished the flashlight and killed the engine. I lay the bike on its side so it wasn’t easily spotted if the men had left the comfort of the van and had powerful lights. I removed my helmet—I was afraid its surface or visor might catch the light and glimmer—and unslung my backpack once more. My gloves, I left on.

  From there, I crept to the highway. The stars pricked the heavens and a hazy white sliver of moon rose in the east, giving me a weak, tinny light. I could not see the van from where I crouched, but the highway threaded through this part of the high mountains like a silver stream, gleaming with moonlight in the darkness. I approached it and lay on the side of the road, in the dry ditch, listening. I heard nothing. I waited, breathless, and then rose and trotted down the highway where I thought I had marked the van earlier, my breath coming hard. This country was a big space, and bigger in the dark, with rough terrain where every footfall could lead to a twisted ankle or broken leg.

  Crossing the road, I hid myself in the far ditch, and waited. Nothing.

  I was about to rise and move on when I heard the faint sound of a
vehicle. Not the high-pitched whine of an engine at accelerated revolutions, but an oil and steel baritone of a machine barely idling. Lights appeared in the distance. I tried to make myself one with the earth, pressing my face into the rocks. The vehicle approached. Slowly. I did not have to look to know it was the van.

  I waited until it drew even with me. Grabbing a rock, I let the van pass—five meters, then ten, away. The red taillights burned in the darkness. I threw the rock. It missed. Stooping, I snatched up another one, took three steps with my arm cocked, and let it fly. I could not see its arcing path in darkness, but I traced it in my mind’s eye.

  It hit the van’s roof with a hollow clong. The vehicle stopped.

  I threw myself off the road, in the ditch farthest away from my dirt bike. A door opened, then another. I allowed myself a glance. One man stood in the headlights, looking away from me, to the north, on the other side of the highway. The other crossed in front of the taillights. He said in Spanish, “Get out of the beams if you want to be able to see.” I felt as though he wanted to use profanity, but restrained himself. I recognized his voice from somewhere. Flashlights flicked on, and they scanned the north side of the road, methodically.

  I had abstractly realized they would have flashlights, but when their beams suddenly cut through the darkness, I was still surprised. The lights bobbed and wavered, searching the scree.

  Improvise, I told myself in Avendaño’s voice as if he was saying, Have you not shot a gun? A bow and arrow like Artemis?

  I took up another rock, pushed myself off the ground into a crouch, and threw it as far as I could into the darkness on the far side of the road. It clattered faintly.

  One of the men yelped. They both moved away from the vehicle, which was still running. I ran, half-crouched, down the ditch to the van, keeping its body between myself and where I imagined the two men to be. I forced myself to cross the open space to the vehicle. Looking inside, I could see by the green dashboard light the keys dangling there. I could steal the van, I knew. But something stopped me. I cannot explain it other than I couldn’t just leave the motorcycle there in the gulley. It had served me well and I had grown to love it in some ways—that dumb collection of metal, plastic, and rubber.

  I considered just taking the keys, but the instant the van’s engine died, the men would be alerted.

  Withdrawing the corvo from my boot, I approached the front of the vehicle. I took the blade’s hilt in both hands and jabbed it at the tire. It twisted from my hand and clattered to the ground. I had underestimated the toughness of the radial’s black rubber skin.

  A man in the dark shouted, and the other man answered. I had only seconds to act.

  I snatched up the knife from the ground with both hands and drove it into the tire, which began to hiss violently, wrenched it around until it came loose, dashed to the rear of the van and did the same to that tire, and then fled into the darkness on the far side of the road. Ten meters, twenty, thirty. The flashlights came bobbing and weaving around the van. Forty meters. The lights began searching the scree. I found a hollow among the rocks and pressed myself into it. The lights peered out, passing over and around me and moved on. I waited.

  “Miss Certa,” a raised voice said in good Spanish . . . but with the telltale hard sounds of an American. Chemicals sparked in memory: the man who wanted to hail me a cab at the airport. A man who restrained himself from cursing in a foreign language. “Very well played.”

  The other man began to say something and the first man hissed, silencing him. They both remained quiet for a moment, and I felt as though they were whispering to each other. The second man’s flashlight went dark. I tensed. He’d be hunting me in the dark, then.

  “Step into the light, Isabel,” the first man said, giving his flashlight a little wave to punctuate the thought. “This game has gone on long enough. I have an—”

  He paused and whistled, indicating something to his partner, but I could not discern what. I rose into a crouch and was surprised to still find the corvo clutched in my gloved hand. I angled south and west another twenty meters, always facing the van. Soon, I would move away from them, following the highway west and crossing back over it to reclaim my dirt bike. Until then, I could not be seen. I dropped back to the ground and breathed as quietly as possible.

  “I have an associate who would very much like to meet you. You have in your possession something of his,” the man said. His voice was fainter now, with the distance. A flashlight beam darted my way and then passed by. “A very influential man. A kingmaker, you might say,” the man said, chuckling. In a lower voice, he said something else I could not hear distinctly, but thought he might have said, “A kingdom killer.”

  I had moved far enough away and was angling back toward the highway when the man said, loud enough for me to hear, “. . . questions answered. I can take you to Avendaño. He wants me to bring you to him. How else would we know you’d be here?” he said.

  It took extreme amounts of self-control not to bellow But who sent the coordinates? Did you? And why? But I did not. I could not believe him about Avendaño.

  I watched his flashlight beam closely. When it turned to an area of scrub and scree in the opposite direction of where I waited, I made my move, dashing across the highway and down the soft slope to the white flat plain. I could not tell if the gulley was between my bike and me but I kept moving, crouched until I was thirty meters away, and then stopped, to listen and watch.

  I could see neither flashlight now, only the red lights of the van. I moved parallel to the highway, angling slightly away when I found the gulley by slipping down the side of it with a tumble of rocks. Things happened quickly then.

  Heavy breathing like a dog’s approached; I heard the grunt of a man and then his own corresponding clatter of falling rocks. A black shape rose and grew and in the faint light I could make out the second man, his head pivoting about in the dark, his hands raised and misshapen. No . . . Not misshapen, holding a pistol.

  I made myself small, crouching, gathering myself. I centered my weight, took a deep breath, held it. What happened next would decide my fate. He had to come close enough to me without being alerted. I tried to access that pause of time that Avendaño had talked about, that I felt when hurtling through space on the motorcycle—the collapsed-time, the fermata. I felt as though I might pierce it, and then the man moved forward, close to me, and I launched myself forward and brought the corvo across his face as hard as I could. He fell backward, making a wordless, congested sound, liquid and bubbling. I threw myself upon him, lashing out with the hooked knife again, flailing at his raised hands and, when they fell away, his dim and wetly moving face.

  He stopped burbling and gave a long sigh.

  I put my face next to the ruin of his. No breath. The eyes gathering moonlight, open and still.

  I had done this. Whatever other things I had and would become, I am now a killer.

  I spent an eternity breathing into the man’s ruined visage, trying to commit it to my memory. We kill part of ourselves with each loss of innocence, Avendaño had said once, at the Café de Soto. Earlier, there had been luchadores and vampires, and a girl who went from a white rose to a blood-spattered and befanged virago.

  Pushing away, I pulled my gloves off, now sticky with blood, and searched the ground until I felt something hard, with straight edges. Metal. My finger found the trigger and I rose. I tucked my gloves in my belt and moved away from the body of the second man, heading toward where I thought the motorcycle still lay.

  I chose the wrong direction, switched back, and searched the other way until I found it, exactly as I had left it. A huge sigh of relief escaped me. If I had a home on this earth at that moment, it shared a point with that machine. How easily we become attached to objects. How easily we become attached to people. How easily we become killers.

  I pulled my backpack on, over my shoulders, and righted the motorcycle. Legs shaking, I pushed up the rise, out of the gulley, onto somewhat level e
arth. The van still sat on the road, some hundred meters away, lights burning.

  “Miss Certa!” the man yelled into the darkness. He stood in the lights of the van and was looking in the wrong direction. “Where do you think you’re going? We will find you! Step into the light!”

  Before I could stop myself, I yelled, “There is no we!” and brought up the pistol and fired at him.

  The bullet whanged off the van and the man dropped to a crouch and quickly put the vehicle between himself and me. I had the impression that he’d marked the muzzle flash. I didn’t care.

  “Your man is fucking dead! I killed him!” I yelled, rage filling me. I imagined cutting him, torturing him, as if I were Sepúlveda and he were my Avendaño. I thought of opening up his body cavity and seeing what sort of thing might ride out of that red gullet into the world. I thought about the man lying in the gulley, his burbling last breath.

  I was as mad as Avendaño.

  I needed to leave, fast. I would kill the other man if I had to. But I did not want to.

  I started the motorcycle—its roar was like some wild animal’s yawp, a vicious creature that prowled the salt flats—and tugged the helmet on, and then I fired the pistol twice more at the van and rode into the darkness.

  * * *

  I turned on the flashlight and returned to the highway once the van was out of sight. I couldn’t take the road past the van, so I threaded my way through the nearby town, biting my lip, hoping the Mageran army hadn’t set up a roadblock. I was a murderer now, in addition to being an exile, and possibly labeled an enemy of the state. Vidal and his regime did not appreciate the educated, and my doctorate labeled me as problematic.

  Whatever had driven me through the events of earlier in the night—adrenaline, self-preservation, anger, hatred, the lure of the secrets of the Opusculus Noctis—it fled me now and I felt weak, and cold. I shivered. I searched for my gloves but must have lost them somewhere after the frantic struggle with the man I’d killed—cut to bloody ribbons, Isabel, you left him unfit for an open casket, that’s for sure—along with the weather-bleached blue dress.