by Hickey, Greg
The midday meal came and went. The colonists navigated the perimeter of the hall to retrieve their cakes and returned to their previous seats against the wall to eat in silence. Samuel ate and traced his foot against the edge of a seam in the floor surrounding the nearest set of table and chairs. He noticed that these strange lines drew a square around each set of furniture in the entire hall. He had just finished the last bite of his meal cake when the woman with the copper eyes entered the meal hall. She stalked up and down the length of the room, her soaked tunic dripping a trail on the floor as it dried. The other colonists watched her from lowered eyes as they crouched deeper into their own bodies. She ignored them. Samuel watched her as well, and a rather pleasant, cool, exhilarating feeling crept up from his stomach. The woman paced for several minutes—back and forth, back and forth—her eyes focused on the empty air a few feet in front of her. When she came to a stop, her body seemed to grow straighter and more rigid, though she had not stooped over at all as she walked. She reached into the pocket of her tunic and dug out some crumpled fragment of thin material and studied it in her hands. The colonists murmured to themselves in broken phrases tinged with obvious distress.“
“walkingwalkingstopwalkwalkingstopwalkingwalk…”
“…notherewhyhernothernotherewhyhere…”
“…gowaygowaygowaygoway…”
Samuel eased to his feet as the woman resumed her pacing, her light steps carrying her effortlessly across the great hall as she wove a straight path through the bolted-down furniture without ever appearing fully aware of its presence. She stopped in the center of the hall. The murmurs ceased. The woman glanced at the colonists strewn around the edges of the room, as if just noticing them for the first time. It appeared to Samuel—though he could never be sure—that her eyes rested on his for the briefest of moments, that they flashed that now-familiar glint of copper, and that her icy veneer was momentarily broken by a faint grin. She moved to the door. Without warning, it slammed shut in her face and she stopped in her tracks. A muffled creaking sound filled the room. The woman stepped to the door and pushed it open and the noise stopped. She slipped outside and was gone.
Throughout the hall, the other colonists resumed their bowed-head meditations with evident relief. Samuel walked to the door, clumsily dodging the furniture in his path, and blinked away the rain as he stepped outside. The sticky odor of sweet detritus struck him instantly. Everything was dead slate fog, the rain droplets materializing out of an earthbound cloud. The mountains were invisible. The few short trees oozed jadeite boughs to the muddied meadow that squished under his feet. Samuel could barely make out the distant figure picking her way across the slick turf. He wiped water from his brow and set out after her.
Upon first glance, the woman appeared to walk with no particular direction in mind. She meandered between buildings, ran her hands over their walls, stopped to stare at the sky. Yet her steps were quick and decisive; her gaze never wavered from its target. Samuel followed her without knowing why. The rain continued to fall in slow sheets. Even through the thick grayness, the woman must have noticed his presence, for despite his best efforts Samuel was less than stealthy in his pursuit. But if she did see him, she paid him no mind. At one point, her gaze passed directly over him and he felt his feet rooted to the soggy ground. But she looked away without reproach and they both went on, and Samuel felt the slightest bit encouraged at not being rejected.
Samuel followed the woman all around the dreary meadow. When they had traversed the entire field from fence line to fence line, crisscrossing over each of the little wooden footbridges that spanned the river, the woman returned to each sleeping hall in turn. She studied the buildings in detail, tracing circles around their perimeters and tugging at the locked doors. Samuel watched from a distance, crouched behind the corner of the nearest hall. As she moved toward the third sleeping hall, he rose from his hiding place and glimpsed a swath of muddied white cloth and the flash of little brown heels as another colonist turned the corner at the opposite end of his building. He came out into the open meadow, glanced over his shoulder and saw another woman following a path roughly parallel to his own. They walked on together through the unrelenting mist, and Samuel soon realized they were both following the same woman.
They eyed each other across the meadow, glancing back and forth from the copper-eyed woman to one another, until they gradually shifted their attention away from their target. Though there was some coarse polish to her movements, this new female was but a child learning to walk in the shadow of its mother in comparison to the grace of the copper-eyed woman. Soon they lost sight of her in the veils of silver mist. They followed a rough estimate of her course for a few minutes more until their paths drew closer and closer and finally intersected. They stopped and faced each other. The rain pitter-pattered on the leaves of the tree next to them. This new woman seemed to be about Samuel’s age, perhaps a year or two older. Her eyes were large and black, rather empty and without any spark. But though they emitted no light, they appeared to draw the world into them, collecting all the rays of light reflected by the objects caught in her gaze.
Samuel spoke first. “Hello.”
The woman’s big eyes grew even wider and she seemed to fade away from him, although in actuality she did not step back one centimeter.
She frowned furiously. “Hellohoweryou?”
“Goodtha—” Samuel began to reply and then stopped. That was not right. He tried to speak again, but his tongue and lips felt heavy and sluggish. “How… how are… you?” he managed.
Her face drained of emotion. “Goodthankshoweryou?” she said.
Now Samuel took a slow step backward. The woman opened her mouth but no words came out. She jerked a hand up mechanically, as if to grab his arm, and then just as quickly returned it to her side.
“Fine,” Samuel answered, as he took another step back. He skidded in the wet grass and looked down to catch his footing. Slick, brown mud bled amidst the sodden and broken turf. The woman started toward him, then hesitated and slowly retreated. She turned and scurried away. Samuel watched her flee across the meadow until the sheets of rain erased her fading figure. His waterlogged tunic clung fast to his skin and weighed heavily on his arms. He turned in the opposite direction and walked to the nearest meal hall.
* * *
The copper-eyed woman returned to Samuel’s meal hall late in the day. For about an hour the sun had been low enough in the sky to cut through the ashen shroud, but as it sunk lower the scarce light in the windows faded and died. The people ate their evening meal in dazed, perfunctory motions. Samuel ate and walked the hall while his clothes finished drying. Crumbs of food from the day’s previous meals dotted the floor and he brushed at them idly with his bare feet. He was still pacing when the woman entered. This time, he was sure her mouth was twisted into a private half-smirk, though this expression faded as she stepped inside and gazed around at the colonists seated against the walls. Samuel stopped in the middle of the hall, transfixed by her presence.
“Come,” she said from the doorway.
She turned and walked swiftly out the door into the rain. Samuel looked to see if the others would follow, but they all remained in place and avoided his eyes. He gave his tunic one final wring and started for the door, driven as much by his desire to pursue this woman as by a sudden distaste for the other colonists seated around him. Their eyes bored into his back as he exited the hall.
The woman was already well across the meadow, and he quickened his pace so as not to lose sight of her. She walked to the nearest sleeping hall and turned back and stared at Samuel through the distance between them, a gray shadow against the hazy backdrop of the hall. Then she rounded the corner of the building and was lost from sight. Samuel followed her to the hall. The door was open. He went inside, dried himself with the blankets from one bed and fell asleep in the bed next to it. He did not notice the second woman, the one with the large dark eyes, enter the hall about an hour later and curl
up two beds over for the night.
He awoke the next morning from a dream of the copper-eyed woman. The first rays of sun peered through the high windows of the sleeping hall. The rain had stopped. The image of the copper-eyed woman remained fresh in his mind, and with it a single word seeped out of the deep folds of his subconscious. Hero. The copper-eyed woman was a hero, and thereafter Samuel would remember her as “the First Hero.”
V
Samuel did not see the First Hero again for some time. The woman simply seemed to disappear from the colony. About a week after her departure, the toilets broke down. At first this problem was scarcely noticeable, but within a few days waste began to accumulate in the toilets and the stench around the buildings became overwhelming. One morning the next week, the colonists approached the meal halls to find the doors locked. Few realized that the sun had just slipped over the horizon and the bells had sounded well in advance of mealtime. Sometime later, it stopped raining entirely, and the grass in the meadow turned brown and the trees began to wilt. Every one or two weeks a new incident arose: the doors of the toilets were locked, the beds in the sleeping halls disappeared, the meal and sleeping halls were not cleaned (although few of the colonists realized that they had ever been cleaned at all), and so on and so on.
But with every few crises, new heroes sprang up one by one from the uniform anonymity of Pearl’s population to meet the tests facing the colony. And one by one they all disappeared. Only those few, like Samuel, who were perceptive enough to realize they were different from the other colonists, ever appreciated them. They would be seen one day, striding coolly from the site of the most recent incident, their movements quick and precise, their faces aglow with some inner vitality, and the next day they would be conspicuously absent, with no hint as to their whereabouts.
Yet the fact that each of the many challenges was solved in relatively short order did little to subdue the fear that began to permeate the whole of the colony. The colonists continued to avoid one another, no longer engaging in idle play or lovemaking. They spent their days creeping across the meadow from hill to tree to hall, sometimes slipping to the stream for a drink, which they would take in several short sips, lifting their heads in between to gaze around them guardedly. They scurried over the open field, trying their best to keep a safe distance from anything that might possibly harm them. No one had any idea where the next crisis would originate, and so very often two colonists would find themselves averting some phantom terror, creeping backward into the protective shade of the same tree or hall, only to collide with one another in their blind fear and turn on the supposed intruder with the growl of a cornered feline.
At meal times, each colonist received his cake and slunk away to hide in a secluded corner or behind a shaded hill and eat with ravenous desperation, body hunched around his food, eyes wide and furtive. The people returned to the sleeping halls earlier and earlier each night. Some took their meal cakes to a bed against one of the walls where they could eat while keeping watch over the entire hall. They slept lightly, and many seemed to dream, waking at the least sound with a short, sharp cry and wild, staring eyes.
Yet Samuel never fell prey to the collective panic that embraced the rest of the colony. On the contrary, he remained calmly confident, buoyed both by some mysterious faith in the skill and ingenuity of the emerging heroes, and by some hopeful belief that the colonists as a whole were not so lost, not so helpless as they might seem. After his encounter in the rain with the First Hero, he took to following the other heroes around the colony. He enjoyed the sight of them at a distance as they slipped across the meadow or stood in quiet contemplation of the bleak façade of some inscrutable hall. And though their eventual departure always saddened him a bit, this feeling never lasted very long, because he was quite certain—though he knew not by what assurance—that no harm had befallen them, and was equally confident that the colony would never be at a lack for individuals such as these.
As a result, Samuel began to grow apart from the rest of the colony. Little by little, he became one of those figures whom the other colonists eyed warily as he passed, although Samuel ignored their stares. His thoughts were now devoted only to the heroes and to the peculiar female he had encountered while following the First Hero. Sometime later, he would come to call her Penny, but for now she remained a nameless woman who had captured his attention. He saw her occasionally as they shadowed the heroes, and their eyes would meet briefly across the empty expanse of kempt grass and silky sky, but they did not move nearer to each other, did not speak. Finally, weeks after their first meeting, Samuel found her by the river and approached her.
He came up behind her as she knelt to drink, and when she sensed his presence, she arose with a start and whirled to face him. Perhaps because she did not immediately recognize him, perhaps because some part of her was still bound by the fear that engulfed the other colonists, her black eyes at first widened with animal terror and a low sound began in her throat, part growl, part muffled shriek of fear and surprise. Samuel recoiled at the sight of this face, so unlike that of the woman he had first met some weeks ago and so much like the faces of all the other colonists.
But then she recognized him, her face softened, and she cast her eyes downward as her cheeks turned the faintest shade of pink.
“Hello,” she murmured. “How are you?”
Samuel exhaled with relief. “I am fine, thank you. How are you?” He had been carefully formulating these few words ever since their first meeting.
“Goodthankshow—” she began to answer but stopped. Her thin, pale lips widened and parted to reveal two rows of small, brilliant white teeth. She continued gingerly. “I’ve been… very well, thank you.”
For the first time in his life, Samuel truly laughed. He threw back his head and his body shook with the sheer joy of this connection with another human being. Penny waited, quite obviously pleased with herself. Her next words were more stilted, and her brow creased as she ground them out.
“I’m glad to… see you… again.”
“I’m glad… to see you again too,” he responded.
She brushed at the feathery grass with a bare foot and wrung the edge of her tunic in her hands. Samuel imagined himself crouched by the stream, trying to drink from his cupped palms before the water slipped between his fingers.
“I’m glad to talk to you too.” He forced the words out urgently.
She looked back up at him and bobbed her head. Behind her, the sun grew larger as it descended in the sky, and its last desperate rays outlined her body in fire.
“You follow them too,” he said.
“Yes, yes,” she replied. “Like… you.” Her face creased with the strain required to make even this simple statement, but it lit up again once she had done so.
They stared at each other in silence. The wind picked up and swirled through the meadow, throwing up little wavelets in the stream and bringing a welcome chill to the air. There were so many things Samuel wanted to ask. Instead he merely asked, “Why?”
But she shrugged her shoulders gaily, and the lines which had furrowed her face and brow melted away. The tightness inside Samuel ceased all at once, as though a blow to his chest had robbed his lungs of air. He knew the moment was gone. He made the slightest motion to turn and go. She stepped forward, fell in step beside him and they walked together along the river bank. He followed her lead, though the pleasantness of her company now seemed just the tiniest bit hollow. For her part, she smiled carelessly as the river murmured softly beside them and the sun bloomed pink and orange and then wilted and died, and the sound of bells rang out across the colony.
* * *
They entered the nearest meal hall in the fading light and ate their evening meal together. Then she left him and scrambled away across the meadow, turning back once to wave goodbye. Samuel walked in the near darkness for some time, alone with his thoughts. When he made his way to the nearest sleeping hall, he found the hall door closed. A group of colonists
milled about the entrance in little circles and murmured to themselves. Others sat cross-legged on the grass, their chins in their hands. Samuel wove through the small crowd and went to the door. He pulled hard, but it did not budge. A soft moan of defeat escaped the lips of one or two of the colonists. The rest of them lay down in the grass with an air of resignation and tried to fall asleep.
VI
The doors of the sleeping halls remained locked for several days. Samuel spent each night outside of one of the halls, hardly sleeping as he awaited the arrival of a new hero. During the days, he roamed across the colony, visiting each of the five sleeping halls in turn, then starting all over again at the first, hoping to spot this new champion. For he never doubted that someone, somewhere in the colony would step forward and resolve this latest problem.
On the fourth day of this routine, Samuel stretched himself out comfortably on the sunny grass outside one of the halls to continue his vigil. A few colonists still lingered outside the building, either too weary, discouraged or wretchedly bound to the faint hope that the doors would somehow open of their own accord in the very near future to do anything else. As he lay there in the soft grass, Samuel began to grow restless. He stood up and strolled around the hall, unsure of why he was doing it other than that it seemed more appealing than lying in the sun and waiting and watching.
He made a few slow trips around the building, gazing up at the walls as he went, then stopped in front of the door. Samuel tugged on the handle but it did not open. He pulled harder, shaking the locked door against its frame. The low rattling was enough to disturb the few people around the hall, and they looked up at Samuel and murmured to themselves and shied away. Samuel ignored them, gave up his struggle with the door and stepped back. A strange feeling arose in him, something he had not quite experienced before. It reminded him of when, as a child at play, another child had accidentally knocked him to the ground and he had felt a heat rising from his neck and shoulders, tightening the muscles there and warming his face. Yet his emotion now was not directed at another person, but at the door of this very hall. The feeling tempered quickly to a controlled simmer; his face cooled, his muscles relaxed, and the wild chaos of his mind from that initial rush of emotion condensed into a single, purposeful thought.