“Crap,” Thom said. “Maybe it’s broken. Maybe it doesn’t work with Tree on it.”
They set the couch back on the cart and debated direction in an anxious hush until, battered and frustrated by the other’s faulty reasoning, they decided getting lost one way was just as useful as getting lost the next and moving was better than standing still.
“We’ve got to have faith,” Thom said. “The city will show up, it has to, so the getting lost isn’t really getting lost, it’s letting go of direction so that it will appear before us.”
“You, my friend, are talking out of your ass. I hope you realize that, Mr. Science.”
“Yeah,” Thom said. He scratched his head and sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m new to this.”
Erik shrugged. He pulled a coin out of his pocket. “That way”—he pointed to an uninviting stretch of mountains that seemed eventually to dip into a pass between two peaks—“is tails. That way”—he pointed to a comparably difficult stretch, the immediate trail rockier, wetter, the pass slightly lower—“is heads.”
Tails was thrown. Thom took a turn pulling the cart. His body still worked even if it didn’t feel like his own.
The couch was suffering, as if it were in league with Tree’s illness, the two of them unraveling and disintegrating.
The landscape looked like an angry, roiling sea of lava that had suddenly frozen. Soon their ankles were bruised and bleeding from grazing against sharp rocks. They were constantly out of breath, tiptoeing along the outer outcroppings of the earth.
They paused at the edge of a great muddy basin too thick and deep for them or the cart to pass through. They were debating what to do when steam began to rise from the basin. It spread and developed into a choking, thick fog.
Thom called out in alarm. “Don’t move, Erik! We’ll be lost instantly.” He breathed through his shirt to filter out the fog, worried some poison was spontaneously seeping from the ground. The fog continued to rise though, and under it was clear air. They crouched and could see each other under the roiling white ceiling.
“It’s a—it’s a cloud maker.” Thom watched in amazement as a cloud floated high into the air to join several dozen others just like it.
“Yes, but look at the ground.”
Where there had been a great muddy basin, the soil was cracked and dry like a desert. Erik tested it, and then they cautiously started across. Halfway across, the water rushed into the cracks from somewhere deep below. The ground became unstable, and then a bog of mud.
“Oh hell,” Erik said. “Hell hell.”
They made slow progress, each of them pulling on the cart, struggling to lift their shoes out of the mud. They heard a sound ahead of them like white noise, and the fog began to surge up about their feet, the mud boiling hotly in the process, and they cried out in pain.
Then they could feel the ground hardening and they struggled to keep on top of it, yanking the cart about to keep the wheels moving so they didn’t become permanently mired. The fog rose to their waists. Thom could only see white. He heard a whir and looked down to see the Lug-o-naut 147’s fog propeller spinning at full bore. It gave the cart a small extra push until the fog lifted, and then it went dead.
“So that’s what that does,” Erik said. “And here I thought it was going to be useful.” When the mud dried again, Erik yelled “Run.” They each grabbed a handle of the Lug-o-naut and ran as fast as they could, the mud cracking and crumbling off them. Tree bounced violently about on top of the couch. They saw the water begin to well up in the cracks just as they made it to the rocks. The ground they’d crossed turned into a mud bath again. Fog steamed from the ground, rose above them, and floated off as a cloud.
They crouched, catching their breath, watched another cloud birth.
“This is some place,” Erik said. They continued across the rocks, and Thom began to feel more like himself except for a burning tingling where the bullets had entered. Alive, he thought. Where was my brain when I ran into the bullets? I’m not the hero after all. Azulman went with the Azulman suit. Perhaps it’s not even my movie. I’m the confused sidekick, an extra with an identity problem. I’m not even in a movie, I’m just a guy who has made himself believe things he shouldn’t. He felt simultaneously good and afraid. The air was the purest lung-cutting air he’d ever breathed. The size of the sky and the mountains, the size of everything, made his skin euphoric, his hair stand on end, his neck straighten. The place felt alive in a different way than plants and animals and birds. The very earth felt conscious.
They crossed a wide, shallow river, the river rocks were sharp against their shoes, and entered a valley with deep scars through it. Ravines twenty feet wide, crevasses with no discernible bottom, so that they traveled far out of their way to cross them at the narrow end.
Elusive, fickle trails wound everywhere. Paths would carry on for fifty feet and then stop dead without a trace, as if a spontaneous abduction had happened there. In this way they wove back and forth across the great valley toward the slope. Anxiously scanning the hillsides for anyone, friend or foe, looking for any niche that might conceal a live or dead city, inspecting each rock with a new eye: boulder or building block? Rock or ruin?
They broke for food, staring up at the gray cover across the sky. Thom pulled close the wool poncho that Rosita had given him to ward off the cold. A freezing rain started, and they piled the meager collection of their rain gear over Tree and put the hoods up on their ponchos. Huddled together next to the cart they took swallows of trago and split a hunk of bread while the ice accumulated over them.
“This is fucked.” Erik sidearmed a rock into a nearby puddle, breaking the sheen of ice. “We don’t have a clue where we’re going. It’s not like there’s going to be a four-star hotel over the next ridge. Our food sucks. It’s almost all rice and beans that we have to cook. Tree is the cooker. I hate cooking.”
“Let’s just make it up to that pass. We’ll have a vantage point then.”
Erik went to take a leak, and Thom packed up the food. The clouds opened up and let a terrifically bright beam of sunlight through, and the valley lit up with rainbows. Thom counted six.
“Do you see that!?”
“I see it,” Erik said. “It’s amazing, but the place spooks me. Let’s keep moving. We’re sitting ducks.”
Thom reluctantly harnessed himself to the cart. He felt he could stay and watch the sky forever. The whole dome above them was painted with color, a localized aurora borealis, the rainbows no longer conforming to rainbow shapes. The arcs slowly twisted, stretched. Bands of color broke free and painted the sky. The rainbows and light carved a bright, narrow streak out of the valley. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think the way was being painted for us,” he said.
Erik looked up from cinching the food bag on the cart and nodded his assent.
I can follow omens, Thom thought. I’m carrying a magic couch, and now I’m allowed to search the landscape for what I think it’s telling me. What else do we have but these signs, what clues can I steal from my surroundings? He felt ridiculous and happy and sick for allowing himself to trust their survival to a colored path in the sky.
The rain started to fall in earnest, and the sky turned to dark shades of gray again. Too tired to talk, they plodded until just before nightfall, deciding the territory was too dangerous to walk at night. Thom looked back to try to see where they’d originally come from. The terrain was foreign and unrecognizable, and the sky had gone back to being itself.
Erik struggled for an hour with the dry wood that the village had packed for them, finally getting the blaze strong enough to withstand the downpour. They fixed a cup of broth for Tree, who was barely conscious enough to get it down. Thom was soaked through and miserably wet. He hunched as close as he could to the fire while he cooked. After an hour, the rice was done but the beans hadn’t budged from jawbreaker status. They salted the rice and ate it plain, swallowed it down with icy cold water, too tired to make anything else. Thom resolved
to camp earlier tomorrow to get a head start on cooking the beans.
At first light Thom wriggled out of the tent to take a leak and stumbled onto a human skeleton bleached white. He yelped, and Erik came running. They stared at it for several moments without talking. There was no sign of anything else, no clothes, no tools, just the white skeleton lying on the rocks.
“Not an encouraging sign,” Erik said.
“Hmm,” Thom said. Brain calculated the rate of decay. “Funny that it’s not buried.”
“Funny?”
“Should we bury it? We should bury it,” Thom said.
“I’m not touching it. You don’t suppose it was some guy looking for a cloud city?”
Thom stared at the crags in the distance.
“Let’s get out of here,” Erik said. “Let’s get you kids your dosages and pack up.”
They walked along the jagged plain of rocks for several hours and eventually stumbled onto a ravine invisible until they were at its edge. It ran as far as they could see in either direction. Fifty feet deep and fifty feet wide with squat trees lining the bottom. A wide trail led into it.
“A trail,” Thom said. He tried to spot footprints.
“As in, who made it?”
“Yeah. Animals?” Thom said.
“What animals?”
“I guess that’s the question.”
But at the bottom of the ravine the trail disappeared and their only option was to try to make their way across the mini-forest and hope that a trail led up the other side. The trees were only about fifteen feet tall, and their trunks were narrow, crooked, and barkless, stretching up like serpents. Tree jostled around unconscious on the couch. They discovered an opening and made their way in, only to find it too dense to get the cart through. Thom swore. His wet clothes chafed and he was shaky with hunger. They retraced their steps and found another opening, struggled to get the cart through it.
Then the butterflies came. They appeared everywhere in the forest, the air filled with them, small white butterflies so thick in the air that Thom dared not inhale.
“Popcorn!” Tree was suddenly awake on the couch. “I dreamed this.” His eyes were wild and yellow and bloodshot. He raised his head unsteadily.
“Great, great. Hi, Tree. Do you know which way to go?” Erik wiped sweat off of his forehead.
Tree stared in wonder at the butterflies. “Follow the butterflies?”
“Which one, wiseguy?” Erik cursed and looked up to see that all of the butterflies were moving in one direction, a butterfly funnel through the forest. They spun and spiraled around themselves like a twister on its side through the trees.
Thom trudged forward in a trance, pulling the cart behind. The forest opened up to allow a thin trail, wide enough for the cart if they walked in single file. The trees joined overhead so they could only see the sky in narrow holes through the canopy. The narrow tail of the butterfly twister was always just ahead, turning corners, winding through the forest. From the cliff above, the forest had seemed just a swatch of trees, but the path wove long enough for them to lose all sense of direction.
“Are they leading us, or fleeing us?” Erik said.
“They’re so beautiful,” Tree said.
The last of the butterflies whipped out of sight, scattering through the forest, a thousand feathers drifting away. They’d been led to a tiny clearing over which the trees hung down so steeply it was impossible to see the cliff walls above. The clearing had six identical paths leading out already. Thom couldn’t remember which way they’d come.
Erik swore. “Hello? Hello! Maybe you meant to bring us a little farther? Fuck!” He pulled his hair, reared back and kicked the base of a tree half a dozen times. “Yoo-hoo! Cloud city! We’re here with your . . . with your shit, hello? Payment C.O.D. Come and get it!”
The forest absorbed all sound.
Erik turned on Thom. “Really though, why can’t we just leave it here? There might not even be a cloud city. Did you hear them talking about it? Nobody has an effking clue!”
“Per seemed to think there was one.” Thom smiled. He felt fine. He was alive, there were butterflies, they were going to find Per’s city. Who knew what was going to happen next? Maybe the trees would turn into people. Maybe they’d learn how to fly. Maybe they’d learn the origins of humans, all history made clear in a flash. The cloud city would know. Everything seemed magical. What was wrong with Erik?
Erik sat on the ground and scratched furiously at his head and face. “Tree, you’ve got to help us out here. I’m sorry you’re sick, but buddy, you’re the navigator. This is your job. We don’t know fuckall where we’re going.”
There was no response from the couch. Tree’s mouth was open slightly, his face red.
“Would you wake him up? Seriously, we can’t just keep stumbling around in the wilderness expecting something to happen. Thom. You know what I mean?”
Thom smiled again. “Yeah. I suppose so.” He wondered why he felt so good. It was usually his job to worry. He didn’t feel like waking Tree, he felt like carrying on. Picking a path at random. Or maybe cooking some beans. That’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to eat something. Thom removed the cart harness and went back to Tree, shook him lightly. “Hey, amigo, wake up. You want some beans?” Tree didn’t feel as hot. Maybe the fever was receding. Thom shook him again, a little harder this time. There was no reaction. “He’s pretty out, Erik. You sure you want me to wake him?”
“Yes! Am I the only one with any sense left? We absolutely must get an idea of where we’re going. Remember the skeleton? Now picture three of them.”
“But . . . he said he didn’t know the way.”
“That’s his job. They said that we’ll find the city the same way we made it as far as we had—and that’s Tree’s doing.”
“But if he doesn’t know the way? Come on, Erik. I don’t think he’s lying.”
“He’s going to know. Wake him up.”
Thom sighed, regretted disturbing Tree. He shook Tree again, a bit harder. The kid was really out.
And then a terrible fear wracked Thom. He felt for Tree’s pulse and couldn’t find it. There was nothing. Not in the neck, not in the wrist. He put his head to Tree’s chest and couldn’t hear a heartbeat.
“Erik!” he screamed, and Erik jumped up ready to fight. “Erik!” Thom yelled again. He thumped Tree’s chest with his fist.
“What? What!? What are you doing?”
Thom blew a huge breath into Tree’s mouth and was deceived by the chest heave. “Tree!” he shouted. Then Erik was pushing him out of the way, yelling at him to calm down.
Thom sank to his knees, put his head into his hands, and cried. Erik was acting the skilled medical professional. The rhythm—blow blow blow—thump thump thump—blow blow blow—went on for a bit, and then there was silence. Thom looked up to see Erik fleeing into the forest.
Thom stayed where he was. Head back in his hands, not wanting to look up, not wanting to see anything. Hoping he’d look up and see Tree breathing. He had just had a fever, for fucksake, maybe he had pneumonia too? Could you have both at once? He couldn’t be dead. He thought about looking for a pulse again, maybe they’d just missed it, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch Tree again. Thom realized he didn’t even know how old Tree was.
“I don’t even know how old you are,” Thom said without looking at the body. Thom thought of getting up and running into the forest as Erik had, running after Erik. They could just run and disappear from this. He didn’t move. Kept his eyes covered. Heard no sound. Tree had dreamed the butterflies. No wonder the dreams had stopped after that; there was nothing more to dream, there was no future for the subconscious to ponder. He remembered Tree saying he didn’t have much time. Why couldn’t they have hurried? But for what? “For what!?” he yelled. Maybe Erik hadn’t tried long enough, maybe there was still time. He could resuscitate him, yes, mouth-to-mouth.
Thom leapt up and put his mouth over Tree’s, plugged his nose, blew air
into him, watched the chest rise again. He did this four times, then beat over Tree’s heart, two-handed blows, the cart and couch jerking from the shock, Tree’s slim body buckling with each hit. Then four more breaths of air. Four more beats. Four more breaths. Four more beats. He tried past all hope. Nothing. There was just life here. He beat on Tree’s chest. There was just life here! How could it go so easily? Like trying to pump life into a hundred and thirty pounds of soil.
Thom remembered the medicine from Rosita. His eyes stinging with tears, he dug through Erik’s bag until he found the vials, and tried to distinguish one from the other. He uncapped one and poured the liquid into Tree’s mouth until it ran down the sides of his face. Swallow, swallow it! He threw the empty bottle as high as he could into the canopy of trees.
The couch. The couch would bring him back—when Thom died they put him on the couch and he’d lived, right? But Tree had been on the couch, Thom realized, he died on the couch. He gripped Tree’s arm, ready to yank him from the couch, feeling the seconds tick away. He felt for a pulse in Tree’s wrist and found nothing.
He knelt back, sat on the ground beside the couch, jabbed his palms into his eyes.
He didn’t know how long he was there. When he looked up, it was dark. The forest murky and frighteningly quiet. A weak moon casting dim shadows in the clearing. There was no sign of Erik. There were no signs.
He glanced at Tree’s body. Still not moving.
Thom tried to think clearly. It was several day’s journey back to Patul. Tree had been dead for some hours. The boy was gone. Rosita couldn’t bring someone back three days after death, right? He pulled a shovel out of their gear, avoided looking at Tree, and began digging a hole. He dug with fervor. His sweat dripped onto the shovel, into the soil. He’d seen a photo of Incan mummies; they buried their dead in the fetal position. He worked at the hole for hours.
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