by A. Sparrow
An Urep’o woman came lumbering towards them down the muddy lane, laboriously swinging and planting a crippled leg. She had an authority to her posture that told Tezhay that she was the master of this place—the matriarch. Two dogs spotted her and came bounding across a field.
Tezhay recalled the goatherd who had surprised him and his Nalki liaison, Tarikel, in the act of resealing a barrow. Tezhay’s hand had tensed over his blade. He had secrets to protect.
But a nod from Tarikel put him at ease. Bimji was a friend who had fed and sheltered Tarikel’s raiders and had even assisted once in a raid. Bimji also had an Urep’o wife. Tezhay remembered finding that strange at the time, before he learned how many Urep’o had been exiled to Gi.
Dr. Frank stood frozen like a statue, chin quivering, fingers clenching and unclenching. Finally, this poor man could have his woman and could rejoin the human race.
This Lizbet was a handsome lady. Apart from the bad hip, she looked strong: wide at the shoulders, amply bosomed. Hair like sheathes of wheat spilled from her head cloth.
Tezhay expected Doctor Frank to rush forward and embrace her but he just stood there, quaking like a tree in a stiff wind. Tezhay knew the man hadn’t been feeling well, but was this any way to respond to a long-lost lover?
Bulbous clouds, pregnant with rain, tumbled down the mountainside.
“Go to her,” said Tezhay. “Is this not your woman?”
“I gotta take this slow,” said Doctor Frank. Tears rolled down his face. His knees shook.
Two girls came up to them from the cliff, one of them clearly Urep’o, the other part Giep’o and very likely Lizbet’s daughter. So she had made a life here, unlike Doctor Frank. Tezhay knew that the Urep’o could be bothered by such things, but what could Doctor Frank expect from her, being apart from her husband for so long in a land where polygyny and polyandry were common practice?
“Oh, my goodness,” said the half-breed girl in English much purer than Tezhay’s. “He’s another peregrin.” She turned to Tezhay.
“Who are you people?” she said, switching to fluent Giep’o. “Why have you come?”
“We just visit,” said Tezhay in English “No refuge. We come talk. My friend … he know this lady.” He flicked his fingers towards Lizbet.
“Ellie, who are these people?” said Lizbet. “I thought we told Miles to turn everyone else away. We have too many refugees as it is. How are we supposed to feed them all?”
“They’re not refugees, mom,” said the girl—Ellie. “They say they know you.”
“Know me? How? I’ve never … I’ve … I ….” She stopped a few steps away in the muddy track. Puzzlement creased her brow.
“We never meet,” said Tezhay. “But I know one of your man’s. Bimji.”
“Knew,” said Lizbet. “Doesn’t surprise me.” Her gaze kept flitting over to Frank like a nervous fly. “Everybody and their cousin knew Bimji.”
Doctor Frank raked his fingers through his beard, but he stayed quiet. Tezhay couldn’t believe how the man was behaving. He had come too far to do nothing.
Lizbet’s eyes locked onto Frank’s. “Ho. Lee. Shit!” she said, chest heaving.
“Hi Liz,” said Doctor Frank, his voice choked.
Lizbet blanched. Her eyes flitted and blinked.
Doctor Frank went towards her, but she turned and fled up the lane as fast as she could limp.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” said the girl, hustling after her. “Do you know these people?”
“But, Liz! It’s me,” said Doctor Frank, hustling after her.
Lizbet did not look back. The snarling dogs intercepted Doctor Frank and cornered him against a wall. Tezhay flipped a rock at one to make it reconsider. Lizbet, meanwhile, slipped through a crowd of onlookers and vanished from sight.
“What happen?” said Tezhay. “Why she do this?”
“Don’t know,” said Doctor Frank.
“How come you no stop her?” said Tezhay. “You should have hold her. Why you do nothing?”
“I don’t know!” said Doctor Frank.
“You people,” said Tezhay, shaking his head.
He stared at the barn where the woman had run to hide. Doctor Frank looked stunned. A bank of clouds billowed over the vale and engulfed them. The skies burst open.
***
Ellie took Tezhay in one hand and Doctor Frank in the other and ran through the downpour up the lane. She pulled them into a small barn.
Doctor Frank, listless and dripping, stared down at three shrouded corpses arrayed on the floor, their faces uncovered, staring blankly upward. Foul clucked in the recesses of a loft.
“Sorry,” said Ellie. “We’re using this as a morgue. But at least we’re out of the rain.”
“These peoples,” said Tezhay, waving his hand over the corpses. “From which village they come?”
“Sinta and Xama,” said Ellie. “Cuerti attacked them. We’re worried we might be next.”
“But we saw Crasacs dead in the forest,” said Tezhay.
“They came later … just this morning in fact. My big brother, Tom, took a bolt in the belly. That’s why mom’s all out of sorts.”
“Is he okay?”said Doctor Frank.
“For now,” said Ellie.
“Your name,” said Doctor Frank. “Is it short for Eleanor?”
“Elehem,” said Ellie, her eyes wide and fixed on Frank’s face. “You’re him, aren’t you? You’re Bowen?”
“Frank Bowen, yes.”
“Mom might not want to talk to you, but I sure do,” said Ellie. “She had so many stories about you! You were like some fairy-tale hero. I never imagined I’d get to meet the real Bowen. How did you get here?”
“Not sure,” said Doctor Frank. “Ask him.” He indicated Tezhay with a nod.
“Did you ever re-marry?”
“Why? I’m already married,” said Doctor Frank.
Ellie and Doctor Frank blinked at each other.
“Mom said you probably found someone prettier and smarter and braver than her.”
“Not possible,” said Doctor Frank.
Ellie kept her eyes on Frank. “You realize, that I’m her daughter?”
“Kind of figured that,” said Doctor Frank.
“So, you’re my step-father?”
Doctor Frank forced a smile and nodded. “Your brother,” he said. “If he needs help ... you know, I’m a doctor.”
***
Ellie told Frank to wait in the barn and she would go see if the healers had finished. Apparently they were with Tom, performing some sort of vigil with incantations that could not be disturbed. Frank was tempted to disregard her instructions and follow, but he restrained himself.
This Tom kid could be his own son. Ellie looked to be about fifteen or so. If Tom was a few years older, that could put his birth within a year of Liz’s disappearance. Could Liz have been pregnant in Belize? She’d been having stomach issues when they arrived, but Frank had attributed it at the time to the sketchy water they drank at Rio Frio.
Frank walked over to one of the corpses and peeled back a shroud. It was the body of an older man. He head was misshapen. He had been bludgeoned.
Tezhay poked his head down from the barn loft. “Come up,” he said. “I make some sleeping places for us.”
“Sleep?” said Frank. “Now?”
“For later,” Tezhay. “Come see. Is Good.”
Frank climbed a ladder with a missing rung into the dusty loft. Chickens cackled from the dark recesses under the eaves. Tezhay pranced around in a loin cloth. His wrung-out shirt and pants hung from a rafter. He had heaped together some musty hay into piles and covered them with sacking.
Frank sat down on his makeshift bed and took inventory. His heart skipped and doubled some beats, but for the most part behaved itself. He had shin splints and his knees were a bit stiff, but if anything his legs felt much stronger than when he had hiked out to Liz’s monument in Rio Frio.
The barn door swung open
. Liz entered. Frank’s heart leaped. Had she come here to see him or avoid him? The sight of her astonished him. His eyes teared up.
Liz looked down at the corpses on the barn floor, made the sign of the cross. Frank stayed mum. When Liz looked up into the loft, she was startled to see Frank staring down at her. She had trouble meeting his eyes. She breathed like a cornered rabbit.
“Frank,” she said, her tone subdued.
“Yeah?” said Frank, prompting a fit of coughing.
“Frank … Bowen,” she said slowly, like a spelling bee contestant reciting an unfamiliar word. “It’s really you, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
“This is just too strange,” said Liz.
“I agree,” said Frank.
“You still practice medicine?”
“Off and on.”
“Come,” said Liz. “There’s someone you need to see.”
“Tom?”
“Ellie must’ve told you.”
“I will come too,” said Tezhay, rising from his bed, snatching his wet pants from a rafter.
Frank beat Tezhay to the ladder. He forgot about the missing rung and ratcheted down, thudding against the barn floor.
Liz stood there, arms folded, eyes shifty, fidgeting. Frank reached out to embrace her. Liz twisted away, knocking her shoulder against Frank’s chin.
“Liz, I don’t understand,” said Frank, his arms frozen in an empty embrace.
Liz lurched out of the barn. Tezhay came down the ladder with his pants half on. Frank stood befuddled.
Tezhay glared at him. “Why you wait? Go, go!”
Frank hustled out of the barn and caught up with Liz in the muddy lane. The rain had stopped. Streaks of blue showed between the clouds and the mountains had been scrubbed free of mist.
“So how’ve you been, Liz?” said Frank, desperate to open some channel of communication with her.
“Oh, just peachy.”
“It’s good see you,” said Frank. “I’ve missed you.”
Liz’s face betrayed no emotion. She kept her gaze fixed forward.
They came to a house with a broad porch. Ellie whipped around the corner and stopped abruptly, startled to see them. “It’s clear,” she said.
Liz scrunched her eyes. “What’s clear?”
They followed a slick, clay path around back to an ad hoc addition to the main house. A trio of unveiled men and woman huddled just outside, conversing quietly. They parted to let Liz and Frank through a doorway sealed with a flap of oiled canvas.
Inside, was a small room with a single, narrow bed. The air was thick with incense. Earthenware oil lamps glowed in every corner.
Pegs on the walls held snares and fish traps. One wall bore smears of brown pigment that looked like a cave painting of a pickup truck. In one corner sat the broken remnants of a homemade toy truck, with wheels of fired clay and long handle for pushing.
Tom writhed on the bed, his hair all tousled and matted with sweat. Smears of dried blood stained his blanket and mattress. Liz brushed Tom’s hair back and bent to kiss his brow.
Frank’s heart, which had been behaving, threatened to trundle off like a skittish donkey, but its chaos stayed within bounds.
Liz’s son. My son? He wondered. They had talked about naming their first born Thomas, after Liz’s beloved grandfather.
Ellie and Tezhay entered the room.
“What happened to him?” said Frank. He went to the bed and pulled back the covers.
“He took a bolt in the belly,” said Ellie. She reached for an object on a low platform by his head. “This one.” She handed it to Frank.
Frank rolled it in his fingers. It had a thick, black shaft, with tight fletching. Its head was barbed and made of a dark bronze. “Wicked,” he said.
Tezhay pushed between them. “Oh! This boy does not look good.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” said Frank.
Frank touched his forehead. No fever yet. He pulled up the rags they had used to hold on mats of something that looked like bleached moss. He peeled the moss back to find a jagged puncture wound. It looked recent. No sign of puss, no inflammation other than that induced by the trauma itself.
“That thing has barbs,” said Frank. “How did they get it out so cleanly?”
“Our healers are good with hooks,” said Liz. “They get way too much practice in these parts.”
Frank peered into the boy’s eyes. They were open, pupils dilated, but unseeing. Tom gave no indication that he knew the face of a strange, bearded man was hovering inches from his own. “Is he drugged?”
“The healers gave him something for the pain,” said Liz.
From the way Tom writhed, the kid still hurt plenty. The drug simply blunted his ability to express it.
“Has he coughed up any blood?” said Frank. “Any hissing from the wound? Foamy bubbles?”
“None of that,” said Liz.
Frank straightened up. “From where it entered, I don’t think it punctured his GI tract, thank goodness. Might have nicked his spleen and liver, and God knows what else. When did this happen?”
“Just this morning,” said Liz.
“The bleeding’s probably stabilized, then. Whatever you do, don’t let him get up or move too much. He might tear a clot and bleed all over again. That and septicemia, I’d say, are our biggest worries right now.
“Septicemia?” said Liz. “It’s been a while, Frank. Remind me.”
“Bacterial infection,” said Frank. “Blood poisoning. Don’t suppose you have any antibiotics?”
“You mean … like penicillin?” said Liz.
“Yeah.”
“Nothing like that around these parts,” said Liz.
“Not much to be done then. Keep him still. Boil his bandages. Pray his immune system can fight off the infections.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do?” said Liz.
“That’s all I can do without a medical kit,” said Frank. “All I have is my bare hands.”
“Where’d you leave it?” said Liz.
“Belize,” said Frank. “Rio Frio.”
Liz looked like she had been slapped. Her face flushed red. She stomped out of the room.
Frank felt like he had been punched in the gut. He felt worthless. Had all those years of medical school and practice been wasted?
“Don’t feel bad,” said Ellie, whispers. “The healers pretty much told us the same thing. They’ve done what they can and the rest is up to Tom and prayers.”
“What is this … kit?” said Tezhay.
“Medicines, bandages … doctor tools,” said Frank. “I left them in the back of my rental car … in Belize.”
Tezhay’s lips tightened into a faint grin. “Maybe I can find you some kit,” he said.
***
They left Tom’s room and went out into the fading light. The clouds had been gashed open and split wide. It would rain no more that day.
Tezhay looked up into the mountains. Though some of the more distant peaks looked familiar, but the lower slopes gave him little bearing. He supposed he could always navigate using the pinnacle, but it would be better if he had a guide.
“Miss Ellie. Tell me, how you go to graves?”
She turned, eyes quizzical. “You mean the barrows up in the hills? You know someone buried there?”
“Not exactly,” said Tezhay. “Not someone.”
Ellie’s eyes turned hard.
“Miss Ellie. These are no secret for me. I am involve with this.”
“Are you a friend of Mr. Tarikel?”
“Yes, I know Tarikel,” said Tezhay. “You show me?”
Ellie clammed up as Liz came careening past them from the cook shack, a pair of steaming bowls sloshing in her hands.
“You fellows want soup, better get it while you can,” she said. “No second chances for meals these days.”
Liz shoved a bowl into Ellie’s hands. She went off her mom into the main house, though she glanced back at Tezhay
with a serious look in her eye.
The porch resounded with slurping and clanking of spoons. Doctor Frank’s eyes drifted after Liz. He looked dazed and docile. Tezhay redirected him towards the soup queue.
Tezhay chose two bowls found a stack of dirty ones left on the ground. The veiled man at the cauldron filled each with a ladle of watery broth with bits of greens floating. They went over and sat on the edge of the porch. A young girl was picking a tune on the family instrument.
“Ah, what a pretty sound she makes,” said Tezhay, between slurps, tapping his spoon in time.
He could never resist a good instrument. He put his bowl down and went up to the girl. “Do you mind … if I try?” he said, in Giep’o.
The girl smiled and handed the instrument up to him. Tezhay handled it like a hollowed egg. Once he had it secure in the crook of his arm, he flailed at the strings with some violence and whined the lyrics to an old Sesep’o folk tune. He ended with a flourish and handed the instrument back to the girl.
“Is beautiful,” he said, to Doctor Frank. “So resonating. Is a good one.”
Tezhay looked at the bowl cradled in Doctor Frank’s lap. The man had yet to take a spoonful.
Chapter 17: The Raid
Ara had hoped a walk would help soothe her nerves. She paced the breadth of the encampment, treading through tufts of hip-high grass still damp from the rains. Though the evening was calm, she found no peace. She regretted ever suggesting this expedition and dreaded what lay ahead for her compatriots.
Most of Feril’s fighters slept where they sat, some not even bothering to unpack their bedrolls or prepare shelters. Feril had them encamp on the back side of the ridge to avoid being seen from the Mercomar. He allowed no fires.
The fields were abuzz with crickets and rumors. Some of the fighters seemed convinced that this was only a training exercise.
Ara detected Vul’s baritone at the uppermost edge of the camp. Did she hear him say ‘folly?’
She followed his voice and found him crouching next to Pari at the crest of the ridge, gawking at the fires girdling the mountain. Fire light glinted off the heliographs’ mirrors and silhouetted the bulky tower that housed them.
“You think this is foolish, eh?” said Ara.
Her sudden appearance startled Vul. He sputtered before he could conjure an intelligible word. “No disrespect intended, comrade, but—”
“None taken,” said Ara. “You may be right.”