by Jeffrey Ford
Beaton told him everything was fine and that they would stay one more night to see the lights. All day they moved through the tunnels again, searching for some sign of humanity. Near evening, Mayor Bataldo’s uncle, Joseph, found something in one of the passageways. It was a small gold coin with an imprint of a coiled serpent on one side and a flower on the other. After showing the others, he put it in his pocket and joined them for some salted caribou meat and turnip root.
My head nodded more and more with fatigue as I continued with Arla’s account until I must have fallen asleep reading, because it was precisely here that the words of the text suddenly swept up off the page, turning into the snaking arm of a sea creature, and pulled me down beneath the surface of paper and ink. There was a minute of gasping for air, and then I, Cley, stood next to the huddled miners asleep on the street of Palishize. Even Moissac, who was supposed to be keeping guard, was firmly rooted in dreams. I leaned over and studied the face of Beaton as a young man.
“Cley,” said a voice a few feet down the street. At the curve where the cobbled shells disappeared around the base of a building, there was a woman. She wore a veil over her entire face.
“Arla?” I whispered.
She waved to me to come to her. I moved cautiously away from the miners. As I approached her, she reached out to me, and I instinctively took her in my arms. I kissed her through the veil and we fell to lean against the slope of the mound. She was breathing heavily as my hand ran up under her skirts, along her thigh, toward paradise.
The next thing I knew, we were standing in front of the sleeping miners and Arla was pointing down at Joseph.
“He has my coin,” she said to me.
“What coin?” I asked.
“It runs my child,” she said. “The Master has taken my son and automated him, made him into a penny machine. I was given four coins to put in a slot in his back. When the coins drop in, he will be alive for an hour. He moves stiffly and sometimes I can hear the gear-work humming, but I love him. I foolishly have used up three of the coins already, and the one that man has is my last coin. There are no others like them; the Master poured the metal himself.”
I tried to nudge Joseph with the toe of my boot, but it passed right through him.
“I don’t think we can do anything,” I said.
“Tomorrow, we can,” she said. “I’ll bring up the red lights for one more dawn, and then tomorrow night we will have him.”
“What do you mean, ‘have him’?” I asked.
She took my hand and put it to her breast. An instant later, it was the next night and she was relating her plan for me. I was to play a little flute she gave me and lure him awake and around the corner where there was a small alley. She would be waiting there.
“I can’t play,” I told her.
“Blow hard,” she said.
I did, but heard nothing. Nevertheless, Joseph awoke from sleep, stood up, scratched his stomach, and then came toward me. Although I was amazed, I began backing up the street to where it turned into the alley. We were halfway there, when I saw Moissac sit up, crossing his legs in front of him. He watched intently but made no move to interfere.
Arla stood a short way down between the structures. As I brought Joseph around the corner, she stepped forward.
“My coin,” she said, putting her hand out.
To my surprise, the miner turned and looked at her. He shared a strong resemblance to his nephew, only thinner from the rugged journey.
“I haven’t got it,” he said, bringing his hands together as if in prayer.
“Where is it?” she asked, the veil rustling slightly with the breeze of each word.
“I lost it,” he said. “Today in the tunnels, I took it out of my pocket to look at so many times, I must have dropped it.”
She stood like a statue. I could hear the distant waves of the sea. Then she lifted her arms and put her fingers to the bottom of the veil. As she lifted it, I closed my eyes and turned away.
I heard Joseph make a noise, a furious exhalation as if the breath were being sucked out of him. When I finally opened my eyes, the veil was dropping and the miner lay dead at my feet. There were as many holes in his flesh as there were openings in the mounds of Palishize. Arla vanished, sifting into the sound of the surf.
Somehow, I was still present in my ghostly form the next morning when Beaton and the others discovered Joseph was missing. They went in search of him. Moissac found him almost immediately and called to the men. Whatever spell the red lights had cast over the expedition, it suddenly vanished in the face of Joseph’s wounds.
“Run, now,” said the foliate, caressing Beaton’s left cheek.
He yelled, “Run,” and they did. As they dashed out through the gates of Palishize, they could feel the thing following them. They made their way back through the forest, moving like deer over the fallen trees and bursting through the undergrowth. Not until they had crossed a frozen river did they feel the invisible terror take its gaze from them. Once on the other side, they lay down on the bank and gasped for breath while all the time the frozen water snapped and cracked against my spine and the moving ice moaned, “Cley, you worthless fly turd, it’s time to mine sulphur.”
18
The gas lamp suddenly came up, casting out the darkness, and I staggered to my feet beneath a torrent of expletives. The corporal wielded the cane with a blind fury. As I undressed down to my underwear, my arms and back bleeding from the assault, I heard Matters say, “What is this nonsense?” I turned around to see him lift the manuscript pages of the Fragments off the bed where they had fallen through the night.
“This won’t do,” he said, gathering the pages into a pile and clasping it beneath his arm. “You’ll dig double your roll for a week for this, you sorry ass of a dog.”
“Drachton Below said I was permitted to bring these pages to Doralice,” I said.
The corporal reached out with the cane and struck me hard on the side of my neck. The blow staggered me, and I went down on one knee. He had caught the bottom of my ear, and it stung unmercifully.
“Do you think that will prevent me from burning this in my fireplace tonight?” he said. “I don’t even want to be touching it. There should be no room in your head for this air. The mine is the mind, and I don’t want it littered with frivolity,” he said, swinging the cane across my back.
I came up off the ground so quickly, he did not have time to react. My fist, fueled by the thought of the Fragments reduced to ash, drove deep into his soft stomach. I could smell the Rose Ear Sweet as his breath exploded out. Before he could straighten up, I came across with my right hand and hit him squarely on the side of the head. Blood came from his mouth. He tottered for a moment or two and then began to fall. As he went down, I grabbed a handful of hair and the whole ratty coif came sliding off his scalp, his hat dropping next to him. Two more kicks to the head put him out, and over his face I dropped the black wig.
I dressed quickly and then set about turning the corporal over in order to fetch the manuscript. I rolled the pages into a tube and tied them with the piece of string they had come bound in. Instead of taking his sword, I grabbed the monkey-headed cane. Putting my fist around it gave me a sudden sense of power. I so wanted to thrash the slumped form of Matters, I had to grit my teeth in order to forgo my revenge. Instead, I bolted from the room, stumbled down the stairs, and fled the inn.
I tried to follow the sound of the ocean down to the beach, but I could never seem to get there, trapped as I was in the maze of dunes. Running through the sand was tiring me out, and I began to fear that the corporal would have awakened and would soon be on my trail. I stopped in order to think and listen more closely to the waves. That is when Silencio came bounding over a dune.
“I’m breaking out,” I told him.
He stopped before me, clapped his hands, and did a back flip.
“Get me to the beach,” I said. “My only chance is to go up the island.”
He took my hand,
and we began walking. In two quick turns, we were standing staring at the long expanse of beach that led down to the shoreline. The sky was beginning to lighten, and I could see flocks of white, long-legged birds running back and forth at the water’s edge.
I was a good way up the beach when I heard a faint scream and looked back to see Silencio waving. The horizon was hatching a brilliant red sun, and my mind was swimming with freedom. I hoped that in the daylight I would be able to think more clearly about my predicament. A few rash moments of action, and now there was no going back. Having smelled the Rose Ear Sweet on Matters’s breath, and held the black mop of hair, I was convinced that the corporals were one and the same twisted individual. Not only had I thrashed him, but I had also exposed his charade. I was sure the punishment for this would be death.
As I strode along through the ever lightening day, watching the fins of the sharks circling a quarter of a mile from shore, I racked my brain for a plan of, first, survival, and then escape. “If there could only be trees at the other end of the island,” I thought, “then I might be able to fashion a raft and set out for the mainland.” I needed to return to the Well-Built City, to rescue Arla and make things right. I realized my suffering would change nothing. Action was the only thing that could eradicate my guilt.
The sun climbed in the sky, growing less red and more brilliant. Its warmth penetrated my bones and cleansed the persistent shadows from my eyes. Above me, the sky was perfectly clear and infinitely blue. Every now and then, I had to spin around in order to take in the full scope of the ocean and dunes. Although I was drunk on the beauty of Doralice, I kept it in mind to cut a path through the fringe of the surf so that it would quickly wash away my footprints.
Around noon, I left the beach and headed up into the dunes to find a place to lie down. The salt air was like a drug to me. I could hardly keep my eyes open. At the top of the tallest dune, I found a small plateau of sea grass, and in the center of it was a sandy depression, like the palm of a cupped hand. That is where I lay down and closed my eyes, resigning myself to fate.
Hours passed before I awoke. The sun was still high in the sky, the day still beautiful. The wind had picked up somewhat, and when I strolled over to the edge of the dune, I could see whitecaps on the ocean. I turned to look up the beach to see if anyone was coming and found it empty.
I had to hold tightly to the Fragments after untying the string for fear of the wind. Leaning back on my warm throne of sand, I fingered through the pile of pages looking for where I had left off. Matters had made a bitter mess of it, but it was not long before I found the image of the two miners and the foliate adrift on an ice floe in a near-frozen river.
Moissac was weakened by the intense cold. He lay on the ice, wrapped in a black coat, grunting and rolling slowly from side to side. All of his leaves had shriveled to brown, littering the surface of the floating island of ice. His face was barren bark, and the fire of his eyes was distant.
Beaton kneeled next to the foliate. Behind them stood Ives, the youngest of the original expedition. He held his rifle aimed, ready to fire, waiting for demons that weren’t there. The wind blew fiercely. The sea was iron and the sky, dull.
“When I die, you must cut a hole in my chest. Inside, you will find a large brown seed with thorns. Take it with you and plant it in the spring,” said Moissac.
Beaton wanted the foliate’s thorny hand to release him.
“I will do that,” he said.
“I have been to paradise,” said Moissac.
“Tell me what I will find there,” said Beaton.
“You will never get there; it is the paradise of plants. Humans have their own paradise.”
“What is it like?” asked Beaton.
Moissac writhed back and forth wildly, and then a shudder began at his roots. Like a wind, it moved through his legs, his chest, and extinguished his intelligence. Small trails of smoke came snaking up from his thatched sockets, but still he managed to say, “Like this,” the words echoing up through Beaton’s wrist.
He pulled out his knife and hacked away at the branches of Moissac’s hand. The fingers still gripped him tightly like an elaborate wooden bracelet. It took him some time to chip and splinter the rest of it to pieces without cutting himself. When he was free, he plunged the knife blade into the chest of the foliate. Twigs cracked and flew as he sawed a hole in the chest. He lifted out the panel he had cut and found beneath it the promised seed.
That night the temperature dropped so fiercely that Ives could no longer keep the rifle in his hands. The ice floe came to a halt and Beaton realized that the river was freezing solid. He knew it was their only chance, a dash across the ice before the sun came up.
“Soon we are going to run,” he told Ives.
“What about the demons?” asked the young man.
“There are no demons,” said Beaton.
I rolled up the pages and retied them with the string. It was late afternoon before I got on my way, blazing a trail through the dunes. I swung the cane in my left hand and this helped me keep a brisk pace through the loose sand. For the first time, I felt some relief from the idea that Matters might hunt me down. I thought that if I was careful I could easily avoid him. The beating I had given him reminded me of some of those brutal encounters when I had been a Physiognomist, First Class, and it clearly brought back those dirty fighting skills. I was sure that in hand-to-hand combat, I was his superior.
The dunes of Doralice seemed endless. When night fell I finally just crawled to the top of one of the taller ones and lay down among the sea grass. The stars were magnificent, so perfectly clear you could see the space around them. I held the monkey cane across my chest and wondered what had happened in the mine that day, who had finally turned to salt and how it might have affected Matters’s mind.
It was all very amusing until I heard the first howl. After the fifth howl, I could tell the dogs were drawing closer and closer from every direction and seemed to be converging on me. I grabbed the pages under my arm and held the cane up in a defensive posture. In moments, though, I could see the absurdity of my position. I had to get off the dune or I would be trapped.
I slid down the side and landed softly on the sand below. Once I had my feet beneath me, I began to run. The valleys of the dunes echoed with the barking of the wild dogs, and I had no idea where I was going. All I could think of was the demon attack I had been through with Bataldo and Calloo, and the sounds of the approaching beasts filled me with terror.
I expected at any moment that one would leap out of the sea grass at me as I rounded the turns in the sandy labyrinth. My leg muscles were burning, and I could hardly draw breath, but I fled until I tripped and landed with my face in the sand. I could see nothing, but I heard the low chorus of dogs begin to build around me.
As I stood, I waved the cane in front of me to ward them off. They began to snap and growl. Clearing the sand from my face, I saw what seemed a hundred pairs of yellow eyes bobbing in the shadows. Their upper incisors were like down-curving tusks, and their ears came to sharp points. They leaped forward. I shouted and swung the cane, and they jumped back. I had to keep turning inside their circle to try to stare them down all at once.
It became clear to me very soon that they were more than willing to let me stew there until I was weakened by fear. I had no choice but to comply. To make matters worse, a few had begun running laps around the outside of their circle, always counter to the direction I was turning. Trying to keep them in view made my head ache. I could hear them breathing heavily, a kind of weird, hungry laughter.
I turned for hours, to the right, to the left, and then I turned inward, spinning a glimpse of Arla moving amid the dogs. When I blinked she disappeared, but soon after her, I saw young Ives fall through the ice. I could feel the pack sense my confusion, because things got suddenly quiet. Trying to keep my sanity, I cut to ribbons with the cane a phantom of the mayor as he lurched out of the night, arm reaching forward, a perfect black hole in the m
iddle of his forehead.
It leaped on my back, driving me to the ground. I could feel it snapping at my ear, trying to get to my throat. Covering my face with one arm, I rolled over and stabbed it with the end of the cane so hard I heard ribs cracking. It yelped and leaped off me. The next one was already on its way. I heard it running before I could turn to see. There was just enough time for me to hoist the cane up like a club and swing. The ivory monkey bit down into the dog’s eye as my boot came up for the jaw.
I had sustained quite a few bites and scratches, and also wounded a good number of them, but near dawn, a shot rang out from the top of a nearby dune and the explosion chased off the dogs. I wasn’t sure at first if it was another apparition or really Corporal Matters and Silencio coming toward me. The corporal wore no wig, and through his closely cropped hair I could see a suture that cut a longitudinal hemisphere across his scalp. He carried two pistols, both of which were aimed at my heart. Silencio followed close behind, carrying a rope.
“You’ve got a mother lode of sulphur to dig, Cley,” said Matters. He looked down at Silencio and said, “Tie him up.”
The traitorous monkey tied my hands behind my back and then wound the rope three times around my neck, leaving a long leash in front by which he could lead me. When he was done with the job, he clapped and did a back flip. Matters ordered him to bring the cane, which was covered with dog blood. Silencio tugged me by the neck and brought the corporal his stick. I thought he was going to cry when he saw the condition it was in.
“I’d love more than life itself to beat you this very moment, Cley, but I’m saving you for something finer,” he said, controlling his obvious anger. He walked close behind me with one of the pistols trained on the back of my head. Silencio led the way, the end of my leash over his shoulder.
“The monkey tracked you for a case of Three Fingers,” said Matters. “After you’re gone, he’ll need it to console himself.”