by A. Sparrow
Miles’ panic grew with every step he took father from his car. The bars on his phone dwindled to none; the radio signal degenerated into a quivery static. He had hoped the track would widen or lead him to a paved road, but it remained indistinct as he descended and crossed no other paths.
Miles was tempted to return to his car and hunker down before darkness fell, but the fear of spending another night alone on those creepy moors made him press on in hopes of finding some semblance of civilization, some sign that that he wasn’t alone in this world.
Now he knew why lost kids never hugged trees.
The path plummeted, angling close to a crystalline brook bedded with pale sand and studded with pink and beige boulders. Miles was in no mood to appreciate its beauty.
“What an idiot!” he said out loud. “You shoulda called the police, the fire department, anyone. But no, you had to handle it yourself.”
Could he be faulted for not expecting a mere rock to send him into exile?
Something flashed high atop a ridge, startling Miles, making him stumble. He squinted through the trees and spotted something squat with something shiny on the roof. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? What was it, a cell tower? Approach lights for an airport? It flashed again, many times, in a stuttering pattern that varied in brightness and breadth.
Relief bloomed deep in his breast. He was not as alone as he had feared. Now he had a beacon to follow.
He made a bee-line towards the tower, veering off the path down to the brook. He hopped from stone to wobbly stone to cross it. The opposite bank was blocked by a cordon of brambles with tightly woven branches. They resisted his attempts to breach them. He kept trying until, exhausted, he gave up and crossed back over to the path. Maybe downstream he would find a path already blazed.
He hurtled on, almost ignoring a patch of stumps and brush piles—signs of recent logging. Human footprints in the mud and twin indentations from the wheels of a vehicle made his heart surge anew. Now he was getting somewhere.
The human prints were shoe-less, and the wheel tracks had no tread and followed hoof prints. Could be someone roughing it off the grid—hippie homesteaders, maybe. The signs were enough, anyhow, to obviate the need to bust his butt trying to reach that flashing tower.
The muscles cramping his neck loosened. His breaths came easier as his worries shifted to matters fiscal and bureaucratic. He only had a little bit of cash and a Discover card in his wallet. He hadn’t traveled out of the country before. He had no idea whether merchants in Canada even took Discover.
If they did, and there was an airport nearby, maybe he could buy a ticket home. Worse came to worse, he could have his mom wire up some cash, or better yet, book him a hotel room and buy him a ticket on-line.
If he was indeed out of the country, how would he explain his presence in country? He was hiking and got lost? What if he needed a passport to clear immigration? Maybe he would luck out and this place would turn out to be Maine.
Would the insurance cover the loss of his car? Good thing he paid extra for the comprehensive.
The track took a sharp curve around a grove of ancient oaky-looking trees to the head of a meadow dotted with sheep and goats and huge, shaggy cows. The grass flowed down to freshly plowed fields bordering a river, dotted regularly with little tufts of green. Across a causeway, the track joined another road, unpaved but much broader and it ran through a tight cluster of huts, some square, some round an all with thatched roofs. Miles’ stomach lurched. Somehow, this did not look like British Columbia or Maine.
Miles stopped and listened. He heard wood being chopped with an axe, goats braying, a bell clanking intermittently. Nowhere in the aural ambiance could he detect the sound of a single internal combustion engine.
He continued down the road and found some people gathered at the junction of two briar fences. They—two men, one woman—interrupted their conversation to turn and stare at Mile as he approached. All were shortish, with dark hair, olive skin. One of the men wore a gauzy kerchief, or was it a veil? The woman ran her fingers lightly over the hilt of a machete strapped to her waist. Or was it a sword?
As Miles neared them he waved. “Hi!” he said. “I’m lost. Anyone speak English?” He forced a smile.
No one answered him. They just turned to each other and whispered, punctuating their deliberations with glances. Miles spied a motion across the fields. A man who had been plowing behind some oxen came jogging over.
Miles lingered until the awkwardness became intolerable. He pursed his lips, nodded and sidled away, continuing on towards the causeway.
His pulse pounded. Dew collected beneath his shirt. Where the hell was he?
Down at the causeway—a strip of blocky stones laid across the current—the man who had been plowing caught up with Miles.
“Arripu para grin?” said the man, curly locks and beard pouring from a headband and veil.
“Huh?” said Miles.
The man pulled down his veil, pointed to his eyes and then to Miles. “Arripu,” he said. “Oca nay Lizbet.”
“Sorry,” said Miles. “I don’t understand. What language is that?”
“Lizbet.” The man took Miles’ hand and tugged.
“Hey!” Miles yanked it back. “No touch,” he said.
The man flicked his chin and pointed downstream. “Oca nay.”
The man seemed earnest enough. Miles suspected he was only trying to help, so he followed downstream along a path tamped into the plowed earth. The soil was dry, clumpy, as if hadn’t rained in weeks. Smoke permeated the air.
They passed countless rows of stubby stalks topped with dark green rosettes. White tubers protruded where the soil had been churned.
Over the next rise they reached the source of all the smoke: not a cook fire or a chimney as Miles had imagined, but a smoldering pile of blackened rubble. A man and woman raked through it. A small boy carried handfuls of dripping, wet leaves into the embers, reached down and dragged out a small, furry carcass.
Miles’ escort stopped and engaged the people in subdued, sympathetic tones. The man with the rake stared vacantly at Miles. He looked haunted and weary.
They continued on to the edge of a village where a group of children of various ages stood warily, slings and pointy sticks at the ready. The man stopped and chatted with them. Miles noticed another half-burned hut with one wall collapsed, thatch spilling down. There seems to have been some trouble here. His nerves notched up another gear.
A little girl came up to Miles and gazed up at him. Her interest was serious and contemplative, the way an anthropologist might study an interesting tribal rite. She was a pretty little thing: dark curls and a bronzed face with unusual angles of chin and nose and cheekbone. She wore an oversized and extremely weathered burgundy dress, not much more elaborate than a pillowcase with armholes, muddy about the hem but carefully mended.
The man tapped his shoulder and pointed down the road. He wanted Miles to follow these children. The oldest boy kept nodding and taking sharp intakes of breath through his teeth. Some sort of signal. His eyes invoked no nonsense.
“Cho!” said the boy, flicking his chin.
A bump knocked Miles, off-guard, off his feet. The plow man had knocked his shoulder against Miles.’ The older boy thrust out a hand to brace him, while the other children laughed. The plow man waggled his eyebrows at Miles and headed back to his fields.
The little girl took Miles’ hand and they followed the older boy through the village and across another causeway. The valley widened. Fields now sprawled on both sides of the river.
From another cluster of huts, a dog with an odd, flattened snout and short, pointy ears ambled up to Miles and sniffed. At that point, if the mutt had reared up and spoken to him, Miles would have taken it in stride.
The older boy led them to a house with mossy thatch and eroded mud walls. A withered old man sat cross-legged in the dust, whittling a piece of hardwood with a hooked knife. Pieces of a crossbow lay strewn around him. He seemed sp
ry, despite his skeletal appearance. He grinned as Miles approached.
“Hadya doo?” he said.
“Oh my God!” said Miles. “You speak English!”
The man’s expression was as immutable as a stone.
“Listen, are there any larger towns nearby? Cities? I need to find … like minibus … or internet. You know internet? Or even a telephone that works. You know? Telephone?”
“Gudafta noon.” said the old man.
Miles’ looked at him and sighed. “That’s all you know? Niceties?”
The old man clapped his hand over Miles’ sneaker. He spoke gruffly to the children in their own tongue. The little girl jumped up and down, and the others chittered excitedly. The old turned back to Miles.
“You peregrin,” he said. “Peregrin ... is for Lizvet.” He swept his hand towards the children. “You go … Lizvet.”
“Lizvet? What’s that? A town?”
The old man did not answer. He seemed to be waiting for some kind of acknowledgement from Miles. Not knowing what else he could do, Miles nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Take me to Lizvet.”
Chapter 10: Lizbet
The children led Miles down what seemed to be a well-traveled road. They fanned out in an almost tactical formation, a boy with a sling walked ahead and alone. A girl and a boy flanked Miles, wielding their pointed sticks as if they expected tigers to leap from the shrubberies at any moment. The smallest girl clung to Miles’ hand, while the oldest boy brought up the rear.
This felt like progress. At least when the falling sun finally fell he would not be stuck alone on some moor but among people—helpful, friendly people. At least he was out of the wilderness, travelling down a broad, sunlit road. He would have preferred to see a truck or at least a tractor go by, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Until the boy with the sling waved back to the others and disappeared down an overgrown path.
“Where the heck is he going?” said Miles, peering down the trail that was more like a tunnel through a dark and swampy hell.
When the little girl tugged Miles towards the same path, he balked, looking longingly down the wide, open road.
“Can’t we go that way?” he said.
The little girl dug her heels in and tried to drag him towards the shadows.
“Lizbet. Lizbet!” The older boy laid hands on his back and pushed him towards the side path.
Ignoring his deepest instincts, Miles went along with the children’s will. They were very insistent, and besides, they had those sticks whittled to sharp points and fire-hardened. He figured he find his way back to this road if the Lizvet/Lizbet place didn’t pan out.
Each step deeper into the dense canopy made Miles’ stomach clench tighter, but the children’s good cheer and calm confidence drew him onward. He hoped that this Lizbet place came with a roof and a bed and a hot meal. A satellite dish and an internet café might be too much to ask for, given he had yet to see any power lines.
He prayed for a nice paved road with taxi or minibus service that could haul him to a place that did have electricity, and he could take the next step towards extracting himself from this place, wherever it was, and however he had gotten there.
The trail brought them to a junction with several other paths below a stack of fractured, mossy ledges. He could hear but not see a waterfall trickling down somewhere behind a tangle of green. They walked straight into the bottom of a cliff and veered up a diagonal fracture in its face.
Halfway up, they switched back up another crack and emerged onto a sunny, little hanging valley that looked like it had been carved with an ice-cream scoop. It looked like a pocket version of Yosemite. Smooth granite walls curved up both sides and a peeling monolith of basalt towered over all. Fields advanced in tiers to either side of a dirt road leading to a group of houses and barns that looked less primitive than the huts down by the river, but far from the boom town Miles was hoping for.
“Lizbet?” said Miles.
The children expressed their affirmatives with a boisterous mix of pantomime and local lingo.
Miles opened a zipper in his pack and peeled off a Starburst for each of the kids. They held the little cubes in their palms, astonished. Miles had to demonstrate what they were by eating one himself. The little ones followed his lead, but Miles saw the older boy pocket his candy.
Someone in the fields paused to stare, before turning back to their work. Miles heard a faint tinkling sound coming from the huts.
Miles took a long, exasperated breath. He felt like going back to the other road. This one looked like it dead-ended at the end of the valley where the land began to rise. But the children seemed insistent on him having a closer look so he obliged them.
The tinkling grew louder as they climbed. It startled Miles to realize that this was not only music coming from a plucked instrument, but that he recognized the tune. This really got his heart thumping. He stepped up the pace. The little girl had to run to keep up.
The instrument sounded like a cross between a samisen and a mandolin. It plonked with no sustain whatsoever. It must have gut strings. The tune was one of those O’Carolan melodies that he could never tell apart. An O’Carolan melody never sounded sweeter.
Miles charged past the next terrace, reaching a set of crude barns being used as animal shelters. A sprawling, one-story house with a wide porch came into view. Its roof was shingled with weathered shakes instead of the thatch he had seen used everywhere else. A pair of yellow dogs, much like Rhodesian Ridgebacks, came running up, wagging tales belying their growls. The children deployed their sticks and kept them at bay.
A young man about Miles’ age, maybe a bit younger, sat on the porch picking at a something that looked like an elongated mandolin. He had an odd way of playing, with double stops and drones, but no full chords.
He was tall and pale, with long dark hair pulled together and tied up with beaded string. He put down his instrument and hopped to his feet when he saw Miles. The children rushed over and spoke to him rapidly and excitedly. The young man looked on, stone-faced and nodding, and making that sound with his teeth that Miles had heard the older boy make. He turned to Miles.
“You speak English?” he said.
Miles felt a chill at the sound of own language. He hoped this guy knew more than the old man.
“You betcha!” said Miles.
“Mom!” The young man called into the house. ”We got company.”
The young man came over and held out his hand, palm facing the ground. Miles gave it a stare, then took the hand and shook it.
“I’m Tom,” he said.
“Tum?” said Miles.
“Tom,” he said elongating the vowel this time. “Tomas.”
“I’m … Miles. You wouldn’t happen to know how to … how to get to Connecticut from here, would you?”
“Kuhnetta what? Oh, wait … that’s one of the fifty states, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It is,” said Miles.
The young man grinned, revealing bright but misshapen teeth. “My mom made us memorize them.”
“I take it ….” said Miles. “This isn’t … America … or anywhere near?”
“Nope,” said the kid.
“Know how to get there?”
“You can’t get there from here,” said Tom. “You’re a peregrin. You’re here to stay.”
“I’m a what?”
“Peregrin. That’s Uncle Gennadi’s word. But don’t worry, you’re not alone. My mom’s one. So’s Misty.”
Another yellow dog joined the pack and stirred up a new round of snarling and barking.
“Better come up here before our dogs eat you,” said Tom.
Miles climbed up onto the porch. The children started to follow, but Tom snapped at them in that other language, words rattling out like machine gun fire. They backed away, beaming and giggling. They little girl blew Miles a kiss. They turned and dashed en masse back to the cliffs.
A middle-aged woman li
mped out of the house, holding a steaming mug. A younger woman followed close behind. She yanked up a veil when she saw Miles.
“Well, will you look at that?” said the older woman. “Misty and I were just talking about all the nasty goings-on in Raacevo. Heard the Venep’o just got done with a big round-up of exiles. I wondered when some of y’all might come around. Um. You speak English?”
“Yeah,” said Miles.
“You are coming from Raacevo, aren’t you?” she said.
“Never heard of the place,” said Miles.
“Really?” she said. “Where’d you come from, then?”
“Greymore,” said Miles. “I’m from Greymore, Connecticut.”
“Lookit his clothes!” drawled the younger woman. This one’s a newbie alright.”
“Well, what do you know?” said the older woman, fingering the logo patch on Miles’ REI pack. She extended a calloused hand. “Name’s Liz. This here’s Misty, my wife. Would you like some tea?”
Chapter 11: The Vale
The women invited Miles onto the porch and sat him down on a wicker chair cushioned with a sheep skin. The chair was low slung and rickety, but it felt good to sit down after so many hours on his feet. The porch, easily the size of the rest of the house, had posts of tree trunks still retaining their bark. A double rail of split logs hemmed the creaky decking.
Misty went off to fetch some hot water for tea from a smaller structure holding a hearth and a clay oven. Liz lowered herself gingerly into another chair.
“Tom, go fetch your sister,” said Liz.
“Where is she?” said Tom.
“How should I know? Check the barns. Maybe she’s up in the meadows.”
Miles struggled for something polite to say. “Nice farm you have here.”
“Why thanks,” said Liz. “It’s a bit of a mess these days. We’ve been kind of bit shorthanded. Ellie’s dad went missing about a month ago.” She looked down. Her eyes moistened. “And it’s not looking good.”
“Sorry to hear,” said Miles.
Misty returned with some bowls and a hot kettle. Liz reached for a basket and removed out a brown wad that looked something like a poorly digested cow patty.
“Just pull off a chunk and drop it in,” said Liz. “The hot water goes over the top. Be prepared, though. The stuff has a kick to it.”