by Kaden, John
With their map stolen, they lose all sense of perspective, all sense of where they might stand in the midst of this enormous landscape, and over every crest they half expect to see the great city rising from the earth. Time after time it does not appear, but as they ascend each new incline that lingering hope bites at them anew and fills them with the expectation that it must lay just ahead, around the next bend, just over the next hillside, so tantalizingly close it seems if they concentrate deeply enough it will appear of its own volition like some desert mirage made real.
A placid river leads them to a cleft between hillsides and they come upon a broad, olden pathway that follows along the V-shaped groove. Jack holds Lia’s hand as they trek through the sharp ravine, and they emerge at the crest of a grand valley. A splendor of wreckage is spread before them, angular and withering, laid out like a sweeping maze that looks to entrap all who enter.
“Remember this on the map?”
“Umm… sort of.”
Jack slumps down on a fallen tree trunk and peels off his boots. Fine, white layers of skin are fraying off his red and blistered heels. Lia sits next to him and they rub their tired feet and give their bones a chance to settle. He eyeballs the sun and calculates their remaining allotment of daylight. However fast they hike, he figures, nightfall will catch them somewhere near the middle of the monstrous labyrinth.
“Maybe over those next hills.”
Lia gazes off dreamily. “I’m not sure this place wants to be found. What if we passed it already and didn’t know?”
“No, it’s ahead,” he says automatically. “We just haven’t gone far enough.”
They lace their ragged boots and tread down into the valley. The languishing suburbia sprawls for miles in every direction, dead neighborhoods, dilapidated buildings with floors collapsed and layered together like geological strata, and in like kind every layer has some lost story hidden within. Pressed between them like autumn leaves are the skeletons and livelihoods of the masses that once inhabited these communities, reduced eventually to parchment fossils and mineral deposits.
They bounce down the way, gravity doing its part to pull them into the confusion below. The entire valley is so overlaid with craggy trees and crooked, slithering vines it looks like a tremendous grotto.
Lia squints around. “Do you feel like… someone’s watching us?”
“No. I don’t think so.” As soon as the words cross his lips he scolds himself for lying.
They pick a spot on the distant ridge for their landmark should they lose their way down in the low-lying areas, where the old roadways slice through the ruins like sunken chasms.
“These people were crazy.”
Jack laughs. “What are you talking about?”
“How come they all had to live right here?” She spins in a wobbly circle with her arms outstretched. “They could live anywhere. There’s so much space. And look at these places, all shoved together.”
“They must have really like each other.”
“They better have,” she says, and gets right up in his face, “cause they lived this close.” She widens her eyes like saucers and leers at him. “Come on, Jack. You’re so quiet today.”
“Sorry, I just—”
“Have a bad feeling?”
“Sort of bad.”
“I knew it. I can always tell. And you don’t want to worry me?”
“I guess.”
“Then stop it. If you’re worried, I want to be worried too.”
Jack smiles tightly.
She flickers her eyebrows and leers at him again, grinning slyly. “Should I worry?”
“Still think someone’s watching us?”
“Kind of.”
“So do I.”
They veer off the broad freeway, favoring concealment over speed, and pick their way through the cramped side streets. Jack chops idly with his machete at the sedge and bracken, and Lia withdraws from her gown a deep green bundle, a huge alocasia leaf packaged and bound with root fibers, filled to bursting with the fruit they’ve picked. She rations Jack out a handful of dark purple berries and palms the rest for herself.
She sneaks little glances at him between bites and he has that far-off distant look about him again—the look that makes her crazy.
She flings a berry and it hits him in the face.
Jack turns his head and raises an eyebrow.
“Well…?” she says demurely. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He scrunches up his face. “So… we’ve been walking five days since they found us. Since they took everything. Five days. If Cirune rode fast enough, he could make it back to the Temple in two and a half days, maybe less. If he even made it there at all—and we have to think he did, right? If they turned right around and went out looking for us again on horses, they could be back on us by tomorrow or day after, I figure. Then I thought, maybe they didn’t wait for anybody to come back. Maybe they just sent out more searchers. And if that’s what they did…”
“Then they could be anywhere.”
“Yes. Anywhere.”
“That’s what you’ve been thinking about all day?”
“Mmm,” he says. “Worried now?”
“Yes.”
They walk down the middle of a long residential avenue, surrounded by straight rows of papery old trees, many with dead trunks rotted out, and their younger offspring are sprouting haphazardly across the open spaces. They pass an unkempt field with a pallid brick building standing at the center. Broken letters on its facade spell El ment ry chool. On a grassed-over blacktop there stands a solitary upright pole. They forage around in the overgrown field and come up with just enough to clear their heads and stop their stomachs from growling.
Thick sunlight beats down on them from a pale sky, guiding them along as they shamble through more neighborhoods. Past a wilted office building that looks to be slowly imploding, they come to a wide intersection. The narrow cross street angles into a long, flat boulevard that stretches far across the valley. An old, rusted track runs the length of it, and the metal undercarriages of the railcars have become a pleasant flowerbed for sprays of yellow violets and purple lupine. Lia stops and picks a few stems and twists them together absently as they walk.
Scores of field rabbits dart away quick as light and Jack briefly contemplates the length of time it would take to stop and trap a couple of them. Maybe toward dusk, he figures, when they settle down for the night and make camp. He is deep in such ruminations when Lia places the yellow and purple crown upon his head.
“King Jack.”
“I don’t want to be king.”
“But you’d make a good one. And it looks pretty on you.”
He fights the urge to yank it off his head, and instead laces his fingers through hers and declares her his Queen, to which she consents, and they bound down the vast boulevard, hands clasped between them like lovers on honeymoon. They carry on with the same comfort and ease they once found in their old home village. They make conjectures about the customs and ways of the long-ago people, the unknown lives that were once lived on these very same streets, and now lay buried beneath ever-compounding layers of topsoil. There are two worlds surrounding them in tandem, they see. One world which deconstructs steadily back into the fine particles that once formed its constituents, and another which takes those fine particles and rebuilds itself one minuscule piece at a time until it blooms abundant. In the trees and wildflowers rest the bodies of the folk who once traversed these paths in olden times. Growth and decay everywhere, melted together so seamlessly they look inseparable.
Shapes in the hazy distance catch Jack’s eye and he turns. Several dirty gray wolves carouse down the middle of the road. They dig their muzzles into the earth and sniff around fastidiously, then jog ahead with such grace they are almost prancing. Their advance is unhurried, but deliberate.
Jack grabs Lia and pulls her flush against a leaning half-wall. They crouch down and watch the wolves.
“Are they fr
om the Temple?” Lia asks through a clenched jaw. “Are they already here?”
Jack flicks his eyes across the roadway behind the wolves. Empty.
“They look wild,” he says. The pack is several blocks off now and gaining. “Come on.”
He hops up onto the low wall and Lia hitches her leg up and climbs on after. They jump down the other side and work their way across an uneven rectangle of toppled posts and weeds and concrete. The far wall has collapsed outward and they stumble across it toward the next street over. As they turn the corner, one of the shabby wolves leaps atop the wall and watches them dash away. It slinks down and sniffs cautiously over the ground they just trod. The rest of the pack soon joins in, stealing out onto the street and sneaking down the way.
Jack leans out and spies them.
“Are they coming?”
“Yes.”
The wolves pick up speed as they weave and lope down the street, matching their pace precisely. He grabs Lia’s arm and races away.
“They’re hunting us.”
He stops in the middle of the street and roars at them and brandishes his blade. They slow down and skulk along the edges of the gutter, watching him dumbly with cocked heads. Lia screams and yells alongside him. The wolves sit motionless and wait for the exhibition to end. Jack advances on them and they retreat a few paces, but as soon as he turns and walks back they rise and follow him.
“All right,” he says, “that’s not working.”
They veer into a narrow channel that runs between rickety storefronts then sprint away as fast as they can. The wolves creep out onto the road and follow at a distance.
Jack pounces on Lia and drags her suddenly to the ground. He lies on top of her, panting and swiveling his head around.
“Jack!”
“Shhh. I thought I saw someone. A man.”
They slide back into a nest of foliage and look around wildly. The coast ahead is clear, and behind them they see only the steadily approaching wolf pack.
“Where did you see him?”
“Over there, I thought.”
Lia shakes her head, eyes widened with primitive fear. “I don’t see anything.”
“Okay,” he says, heaving himself back to his feet, “let’s see if we can lose them.”
They run ahead and the wolves pursue. The pack plagues them for blocks, pressing the two forward with their relentless advance.
“They’re trying to tire us out,” says Jack through hitching breaths.
“It’s working.”
“We should try to climb someplace they can’t get us, one of those trees maybe.”
“And then what?”
“Wait.”
“I don’t know, Jack.”
“There’s nothing else to do. They’ll kill us.”
They break for another corner, hoping to find good cover or a high place to hide. Sitting at the end of the short alley is another wolf. It scrabbles up onto all fours when it sees the two. Jack looks into its eyes and freezes. He hears a clapping sound from down around the corner and the wolf shoots off out of sight.
They shy away from the alley and keep on the main avenue. The confident wolves are loping ahead and closing the span between them. They run past shaggy palm trees with layers of dried husks hanging from the slender trunks and they make for a stately old oak that grows up through an enclosure of rubble. Lia scales the mound of detritus with quick agility and Jack clambers up and over behind her and they nearly throw themselves at the lowest hanging branch of the oak and start to pull themselves up.
A low roar sounds from the street, too deep to belong to any wolf, and Lia whisks her head around to face Jack.
“What is that?”
“Just keep climbing.”
“There it is again.”
Beneath the baying of a solitary wolf rises the throaty growl of some enormous creature. Jack pushes with his legs and hooks onto a higher limb. From this height they can see out onto the street. It is desolate of wolves. The barking has stopped. Jack bends his neck around and moves a well-plumed branch out of his sightline and looks off the other way. Nothing.
“Where’d they all go?”
“Down there,” says Lia.
A great, brown bear trundles down the roadway toward their hideout. It yawns its mouth wide and sways dumpily as it walks.
“Bears climb, don’t they? Don't they?”
“Yes…”
Here is where panic sets in. Jack fumbles his way across the high branches frantically, electric shocks bolting through his guts, searching for a course that will give them some headway.
“Lily!” a man’s voice calls out.
Jack grips the bark and Lia seizes his arm. The voice sounds again, low and gravelly.
The bear pauses and looks around.
Footsteps shuffle nearby, and soon enough a man comes into view. He is clad in buckskin from head to toe—rough trousers, sewn together with crudely dimpled seams, and a dark leather mantle around his shoulders, covered in tears and stains and trimmed with fox fur. He looks into the branches of the oak and smiles at the boy and girl that cower there.
“They’re gone,” he says. He is deep-creased and bearded, with hair colored the same dingy gray as the wolves’ and skin as tanned as the various hides he sports. “You can come on down, it’s safe.”
Jack and Lia sit still and look at him.
“B… bear…” Lia manages.
“She won’t bite you. Least I don’t think. Of course you’d be in the jaws of those wolves right now if not for her. You could say thank you.”
Jack watches in awe as the old man walks right up to the bear and ruffles her light brown fur and throws his arm around her neck. She sways her head around and nuzzles against him and the simple action nearly knocks him to the ground. Jack swings down a few branches to get a cleaner view. The stray wolf is there, too—the one he had seen alone in the alleyway. It looks up at the old man like an obedient servant and the man reaches in his satchel and draws out a length of dried meat and slips it into the wolf’s mouth.
“It’s all right, young man. They’re civilized.” He looks not to have washed in years. The bear seems cleanest of them all.
Jack hops off the lowest limb and climbs atop the rubble pile and looks down at the odd collection of wanderers. The bear watches without a flicker of emotion in her small eyes and the wolf regards him with only slightly more interest. The old man gazes back with a troubling sense of familiarity.
“Have you been following us?” asks Jack, realizing stupidly that he still wears a wreath of flowers on his head.
“I’ve watched your passage,” the man says curiously. “This is dangerous land for young one’s like yourselves. I thought you might be lost, or out of your minds altogether. Which is it? Lost? Or crazy?”
“Neither,” says Jack, pitching his crown into the bushes. “We’re just passing through.”
“Oh. I see. You have a name?”
“Jack.”
“Jack. That’s a fine old name. Never known a Jack. And your friend, there?”
“I’m Lia.”
“Lia, pleased to know you.”
“What’s your name?” she asks, hopping off the tree limb and sidling up next to Jack.
“Called Miles,” he says crisply.
“You walk around with them?” asks Jack, nodding toward the animals.
“Only friends I’ve got.” Miles waves them down off the mound. “She’s Lilith, and here’s Ruck. Come here, let ‘em know you’re friendly. That is, if you are friendly.” He angles his hand toward the machete that hangs at Jack’s hip and looks at him expectantly.
“Stay here,” Jack whispers, then ventures down into the street and takes a few steps toward them.
Miles leads the wolf forward and lets him poke his muzzle around Jack’s boots. He tentatively reaches a hand down and Ruck drags his warm tongue across it and looks up pleadingly.
“That’s enough, Ruck. Sit down.”
The
wolf sits. The bear rises from her haunches and walks a half circle around Jack, then stretches her neck out and touches her pointed snout lightly to his elbow. He turns to wave Lia down and finds her already standing behind him. The bear scopes her out in similar fashion then sulks off behind Miles and looks dully around the neighborhood.
“So…” begins Miles, “passing through, you said? Where you headed?”
“Nowhere really. Just wandering.”
“Ahh, struck by wanderlust. Kindred spirits.”
“Are you headed somewhere?”
“I’ve destinations in mind, but not of the definite sort,” Miles replies. Jack squints at the unfamiliar lingo he employs. “Say, those are some well-made shoes you’re wearing. Haven’t ever seen any like that. Where are you two from?”
Jack inhales but makes no comment, recalling how their boots almost got them killed. He looks at Lia and finds her just as speechless.
“Don’t care to talk about it? Just as well,” agrees Miles. “None of my business where you’re from or where you’re going. Just making conversation.”
“Do you live here?”
“I live everywhere.”
“How long have you wandered?”
“A long time, Lia.”
“And they go with you?”
“For several years now. Raised them since cub and pup.” He scratches his fingers through his straggly beard and looks up at the sky. “I’d come upon a terrible sight, three dead wolves, ripped to pieces, and a lone pup curled up next to them. Then I saw the bear, crying and bleeding out. They’d killed each other protecting their young, you see. I found the little bear cub not far off, crawling around scared and I couldn’t bring myself to leave her, so I took the babes and raised them as my own.”
“I’ve seen tame wolves,” says Jack, “but never a bear. How do you know she won’t kill you?”
“I don’t.”
Their conversation lulls and each party merely stands and drinks in the strangeness of the other. Boy and girl, bruised and bloodied, facing the old man with beasts for companions.
“Gonna be dark soon,” says Miles. “I’ve got some fish strung up at a little spot not far from here. It’s not much, but I’ll share it.”