“This is quite a welcome,” my mother says to me.
The man keeps right on singing as Jimmy walks past him and around the corner and into the gap, as if he were walking into his own home. My mother and I follow. The narrow gap has a blind turn at the end. I notice that the dirt path is trampled as smooth as stone with nicks of horse hooves visible on its edges. When we round the corner, I can hardly believe my eyes. I’m looking at a hidden valley containing a kind of permanent camp. Steep cliffs rise up on three sides. A waterfall tumbles down into a pool and fills a dredged channel that runs through the center of the valley until it reaches the far end and drains out through a narrow gorge, showing just a crack of sky between the two cliffs that hem it in. Multiple wooden bridges crisscross the channel, beautifully constructed with gentle arches and decorated rails. A maze of pathways leads to an assortment of tent-like structures. The narrow slice of sky above washes everything in a sort of magical glow. Torches line the bridges and the walks and reflect back out of the water. Many of the tents glow with the promise of more fires within. I see a fenced corral of horses with their heads buried in feed bins. Another pen contains goats fattened for milking.
I take all of this in with hungry eyes in just a matter of seconds, because when I see the boy standing on the nearest bridge to greet us, I can’t look at anything else. He’s dressed in red robes embroidered with intricate gold patterns. Two men stand behind him, holding the train of his royal garments off the ground. He wears a quilted crown embedded with precious stones, and by the expressionless look of curiosity on his young face, I’d guess that he’s just as comfortable in this gaudy get up as he was in the furs we saw him wearing while on horseback the other day. The old man with one eye stands beside him, overshadowed by the boy and his costume.
My mother nudges Jimmy, and he unstraps the dead rabbits from his waist. We each take one rabbit cradled in our open palms, just like Jimmy taught us to, and walk as a group toward our hosts with our gifts outstretched before us. The boy looks at each rabbit in turn. When he nods, the old man steps up and collects them from us. Then the boy unfolds his heavy robe and reaches up both arms as if to take my face in his hands and kiss me. But when I bend down to accommodate this gesture, he pulls my head to his nose and smells my hair. He repeats this strange custom with Jimmy and with my mom. Then he speaks a few words none of us understand, and he turns along with his procession and leads us over the bridge and into the camp.
He takes us into a large community tent with an enormous clay stove in its center. Several shirtless men work at the stove, their sweat-covered backs glistening in the firelight. They stir pots and turn meat and make small balls of dough into cakes that they fry on a flat, clay cooktop. The smells set my mouth to watering. The old man carries our rabbits to the stove and hands them over to the cook, who takes them one at a time and turns them each toward the firelight and inspects their faces as if perhaps he might recognize them. Satisfied, he carries them off somewhere.
“Looks like you shot good ones, Jimmy.”
“Thanks,” he says. “Those was the fattest I could find.”
The two attendants gather up the boy’s train and hold open his robe while he steps out of it. He’s wearing a thinner, less extravagant robe underneath, and he emerges from the cocoon of the formal robe much smaller than he was while wearing it. I can’t help but imagine how small he’d be if he kept on disrobing, robe after robe after robe. The boy crosses to where a royal red curtain hangs from one end of the tent and sits down cross-legged on a pillow in front of it. The old man strikes a gong, and suddenly several men appear from behind the curtain and line pillows on the floor in a semicircle around the boy. Then the men disappear behind the curtain again, as if by some magic. There must be a door back there. The two attendants, having now discarded the boy’s formal robe somewhere, return and stand on either side of him. Then the old man sits on a pillow and motions for us to do the same. When we’re all seated, the woman who came to treat my mother’s snakebite appears and sits next to the old man. There are a dozen other unoccupied pillows, and one by one people of apparent importance appear from behind the curtain, bow to the boy, and sit. Only when all the pillows around the boy are occupied does some silent signal bring the rest of the village into the tent. They all come carrying their own pillows, and they form into family circles of various sizes until nearly the entire floor surrounding the stove is covered.
My mother watches this all unfold with a look of shocked appreciation.
I lean over and whisper to her, “They sure don’t seem so wild now, do they?”
She smiles and shakes her head.
Someone brings the boy a large decorative cup. He dips his finger into it and then flicks his finger into the air. The old man takes the cup next and sips it with great ceremony, holding it by its base with both hands. When the cup reaches me, my mother stops my hand, leans over before I can drink it, and smells the contents. She shakes her head no. I try to hand the cup back to the attendant, but he indicates that I should do as the boy did, so I dip my finger and flick a drop into the air. Jimmy does the same. My mother drinks. I elbow her playfully.
As soon as the passing of the cup is finished, the food begins to arrive. We’re each given beautiful bowls carved out of tree burls, and then the cooks come into the circle carrying clay platters of food that they present to each guest. We follow the lead of those next to us and hold our bowls in the palms of our left hands and take up food and eat only with our right. The cooks return to their oven and refill their platters. There are meats spiced like no meats I’ve ever tasted, barley cakes stuffed with delicious fat that melts in my mouth when I bite into them, cheese-filled dumplings, venison kabobs, and hunks of fried potato as big as my fist. An attendant seems to always be at my elbow with something to drink. My mother is vigilant at first, allowing us only tea and milk, but as the meal wears on she either tires of checking the cups or stops caring. Jimmy and I begin to get intermittent sips of some fermented beverage that burns my throat, warms my stomach, and makes my hands begin to float.
As the little bit of light coming in from the open tent door fades, and as the flames of the cook stove diminish to coals, lanterns are lit and covered with colored-paper shades that cast the entire scene in a royal rainbow of soft light. Laughter and talk comes from the other circles, but ours is entirely quiet. I get the feeling they are not speaking out of respect for us not being able to understand them. Two little sisters come by with a basket of sweet candy made from honey. When they get to Jimmy, they stand back and blush until the older sister pushes the younger one forward. Jimmy takes a candy, pops it in his mouth, and smiles. The little girl runs off giggling with her basket. I guest flirting is flirting in any language.
When the meal is finished, our bowls are taken away and removed from the tent. Then the cup is passed again. The man who was singing when we arrived appears again with his odd fiddle and stands beside the boy. He plays and sings with such power and beauty that when he finishes, you could hear a pebble drop. Then two men step from behind the curtain with eagles on their arms.
“See,” Jimmy says, nudging my ribs, “I told ya I shoulda brought mine.”
The men release their birds into the tent. Each swoops off in the opposite direction, hugging the interior walls to cross within inches of each other at the other end, then circling back to cross again. They keep circling, faster and faster, until they whip by and cross right above us in a flurry of golden-feathered gymnastics that manages to stir enough wind to move my hair, as short as it still is. The boy sits on his pillow, watching with an enormous smile. Each time the eagles crisscross in front of him, he claps his hands and giggles. It’s the first time I’ve seen him act like a child. The birds make their fastest pass yet, and it’s a miracle of aviation that they don’t collide and fall to the floor. Then they slow and cross once more as they return to their masters’ arms. The men bow their heads and carry their eagles out behind the curtain.
The boy rises abruptly, as if signaling that the dinner is over, but the woman healer—whom I have come to believe must be his mother—rises with him, takes his hand, and leads him around the circle to say goodnight. He stands in front of each of us where we sit and leans to smell our hair again. Then he turns once to the entire group and bows before taking his mother’s hand and following her from the tent.
As soon as the he’s gone, the mood lightens. The musician, who had been eating a quick meal while the eagles flew, picks up his fiddle again and plays a more upbeat tune. The others drag their pillows over and circle up around us until we’re all one large group. Most of them recline, with their fingers laced behind their heads to watch the lanterns play colors on the ceiling, or cross their legs and bob their feet and heads to the music. A larger cup comes around.
Then the old man calls out something to the group, and everyone backs several feet away from him with their pillows. An attendant sets a chest down in the open space now in front of the old man. I wonder if he plans to charm a snake like I’ve read about in books. But he opens the chest and removes a pointed stick and a brush, and then he tips the chest over and dumps a pile of sand onto the floor. He sets the empty chest aside and smooths the sand with a pass of his open hands. Then he picks up his stick again and begins to draw in the sand. We all kneel on our pillows and lean forward to watch.
He works the stick like a paint brush—drawing clear lines one moment, flicking his wrist for a shadow effect the next—and he composes an image of such realistic beauty that I forget entirely that I’m looking at a pile of sand. He draws a picture of a city, complete with skyscrapers and streets. He draws a pair of happy faces greeting one another in the foreground. Then, with a slight embellishment from his stick, he makes the people look up. And now in the line of their sight, he draws a missile descending toward the city from the sky. Then he grabs his brush and sweeps it across the sand, erasing the city and its people. There is an audible gasp from the villagers watching this slide show of sand.
Next he draws an image of ruin—smoke billowing above the city, buildings collapsed to rubble, people burning in the streets. This picture he also erases to begin yet another on the clean slate of sand. His art is so masterful that I find myself forgetting where I am, my mind filling in the details he so gracefully suggests. I sit and watch the story unfold like a film before my very eyes.
He tells of a devastated people rummaging through the wreckage and migrating to the clean and unblemished hills to start a new life. He tells of hardship and toil, celebrations and joy. And then he tells of drones appearing in the sky like great mechanical birds of prey, slaughtering entire villages. He tells harrowing tales of survivors and of fresh starts cut short by new slaughters. And as the people thin, he tells of their constant search for shelter from the drones and of their eventual migration to these cold mountains for the safety of their clouds and cliffs. Then he draws a woman standing on a wall, facing down a drone. Here he stops and points with his stick to my mother and smiles.
The room is silent, the music having long ago stopped as the fiddler came to stand and watch the story himself. But now the old man lays the chest on its side and pulls the sand into it, sweeping the remainder inside with his brush. Then he closes the chest up and signals for it to be taken away. He pinches a bit of sand between his thumb and finger from the remainder on the hard-packed dirt floor and throws it over his right shoulder. Then he claps his hands and calls to the musician. The musician picks up his instrument and begins to play again.
The old man scoots over to Jimmy and me and looks at us with his one eye. I do my best not to let my gaze drift to his empty socket. He reaches into his fur and produces his jade bottle and palms it to me with what I think is a wink, but it’s hard to tell since he blinks with only one eye too. I look at the little bottle in my hand and remove the stopper carefully. A fine brown powder rests in the spoon that comes out attached to it. The old man signals that I should sniff it, as I’d seen him do that day on his horse. I hardly get the spoon to my nose when I feel my mother’s strong grip on my wrist. She pulls the spoon toward her and inspects it, even leaning down to smell it. Then she nods and releases my wrist. The snuff stings my nose and sets me coughing. The old man pats me on the back and takes his bottle back. He hands it to Jimmy. Of course, he doesn’t cough. Then the old man points to my neck. I look down and see my father’s pipe on the lanyard that Jimmy made me. I take the pipe off and hand it to him. He inspects it in the low light as best he can, holding it close to his one good eye and running his rough fingers over the butterflies carved into the bowl. Then he heaves himself up from his pillow with much effort and walks off with my pipe. I rise to go after him, but Jimmy grabs my hand and pulls me back down.
“But he took my father’s pipe,” I say.
“He’ll be back with it,” Jimmy says. “I think they only consider it a gift if you hold it out to them with both hands.”
Sure enough, the old man returns a few minutes later with his own pipe and a small wooden box of tobacco that must be a treasure in these high and hidden lands. He loads both pipes, hands me back mine, then reaches over and lights a small stick of wood from the flame of a lantern, and hands that to me as well. As I puff my pipe lit, my mother just smiles and shakes her head.
We sit in the dim-colored light and drink and smoke and listen to the music while just the tiniest patch of starlit sky is visible in the ceiling smoke hole. The old man puffs his pipe and strokes his beard, his one eye closing and opening, as if he’s having a hard time staying awake but doesn’t want to sleep either. Jimmy has found one of the eagle masters and is deep in conversation with him, their communication comprised entirely of gestures. I puff my pipe and look at my mother. She must have had her share from the cup, because she’s lying back on her pillow with such a peaceful look of contentment on her face that I only wish I could find a way to paint it there forever. If only my father could be here to see this. The moment is so perfect that it almost feels like this entire life has been one big dream and that I’m finally in the real Eden. I blow a smoke ring and watch it come slowly apart as it rises toward the ceiling until it disappears out the smoke hole and into the night.
“I’ll always love you, Dad.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, hi, Jimmy. I was just thinking out loud.”
Jimmy flops down beside me on his pillow. I try to hand him my pipe, but he shakes his head. The music plays on, quieter now than before, and soon others around the room begin to chant softly along. The acoustics of the tent mix the voices together into a lofty harmony that tickles my scalp.
“I think your mom’s sleepin’,” Jimmy says.
I look over and see that her eyes are peacefully closed.
“Did you get some good pointers for Valor?” I ask.
“These guys are no joke, man. I’ll bet I have him huntin’ in less than a month.”
Jimmy’s comment sets my mind to wandering. Will we even be here in another month? Where would we go? What would we do? We couldn’t possibly live on the run from drones in these mountains. Or could we? These people seem to have things figured out pretty well. And this valley sure seems like a safe place. Then I remember the serum. My mother and Jimmy and I will all live to be nearly a thousand years old, but none of these people will. The entire length of that history he wrote in the sand, nine hundred years plus since the War, forty-five generations of these people, that would only cover our lives. How could we ever grow close to anyone? Are we fated to live a nearly eternal life of sadness like Finn, burying our loved ones and our friends? I wish now I had thought things through a little more before taking that serum. Sometimes a gift too good to be true can turn out to be a gift too true to be good.
Jimmy and I are lying side by side with our heads propped on our pillows. A red lamp behind casts outsized shadows of our matching silhouettes against the canvas in front us.
“Hey, Jimmy.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever think about how long we’re going to live?”
“No,” he says. “Not really.”
“Well, why not?”
“I dunno. Guess I’m too busy livin’ it to think about it.”
I clamp my pipe in my teeth and nod. Sometimes he says the damnedest things that make me wish I was more like him. A little later, I have another thought.
“You ever think about Red?”
“Sometimes,” he says.
“Do you feel bad about it?”
“There was no way to know we wasn’t comin’ back.”
“So we just do nothing, then?”
I see Jimmy’s shadow shrug.
“You gotta cook the bird you shoot,” he says. “At least that’s what my pa used to say.”
I listen to the chanting and the music and watch our heads swell and shrink on the canvas with the flickering of the flame.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I finally say. “Maybe there is nothing we can do.”
I puff my pipe but it’s gone out.
CHAPTER 25
A Message in the Sky
The short days of winter give way to longer days of spring, and the snow recedes into the shadowed folds of the mountain.
My mother spends most her days in the shelter in front of that mindless screen, working on some boring project I don’t even pretend to understand. I try to watch over her shoulder, but she always stops and tells me to go out and play.
State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy Page 19