by Adam Holt
“HIGH GRAVITY TRAINING: WALK THE EARTH LIKE A KING!”
“EARTH PROPERTY FOR SALE. FIND THE BEACH OF YOUR DREAMS!”
“WE ARE THE ASCENDANT. WE ALWAYS RISE.”
Seconders were better off than Firsters. They didn’t look so overworked or move off the street as we approached. Instead, the Ascendant at this step leaped over one another. I figured it out pretty quickly: if you were going up the street, you nodded toward the sky. Then you leaped over the alien in your way. If you were going down, you kept walking.
It was “dusk” now, I guess. Not much Jupiter light left in the sky. I placed Bacon in my tunic, hiding him in a fold.
“Hey, buddy, keep whispering the names of the signs?” I said.
“As you wish. THE SALTY SERPENT RESTAURANT. CAESAR’S FINE TUNICS. BRUTUS’S FINER TUNICS, THE BLACK STAFF EMPORIUM...” Little Bacon continued his monologue.
We walked for a few minutes, hopping the Ascendant as we went along, trying not to land awkwardly or on top of someone else. If you had been playing “hop the pedestrian” your entire life, it was probably easy, but we were rookies. I almost landed on a muscle-bound Thirder at one point, who turned around and mumbled something at me in Greek.
“He called you an undersized ripplebacked scalefish,” said Little Bacon. “I believe that is an insult.”
“You think?” I asked.
BWAAAAAAAMMMMPPP.
The sound knocked Sunjay sideways, and Janice gasped. All of the Ascendant, whether they were going up or down the street, stopped immediately, put their right hands over their hearts, and turned toward the alien Alamo.
“We are the Ascendant,” a loudspeaker announced.
The Ascendant took their hands off their hearts. Then they raised their hands in the air with the palm facing up.
“We always rise!” they shouted.
It was the first time we saw the Ascendant Salute.
All of them headed up the dark street toward the Alamo. We stayed near the back of a crowd of Firsters, as far from other Thirders as we could, and avoided potholes in the concrete street. In no time we found ourselves standing in front of a perfect replica of the Alamo. Another loudspeaker boomed an announcement.
“Dear Ascendant, the Great Leaving is almost upon us. Before we leave, we shall celebrate. Tomorrow night, the Lord Ascendant’s Royal Theater Academy will perform Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.” No one looked terribly excited about this announcement at first. “The performance will take place in the Fifth Step Theater, and will star our Earther friend, Tabitha Tirelli. Dear Ascendant, for this performance you are all invited.”
The crowd went absolutely roasters, cheering at the tops of their lungs, hugging one another, tears streaming down their tattooed faces. It was like they won the lottery. A few Thirders stood near us, and they looked surprised but not “I just peed my pants” excited like the Seconders. High in the air above us we could just see the edge of the Fifth Step spiraling around the other side of the newel. It occurred to me that the Seconders had won the lottery. This was Europa’s version of a cool Hollywood New Year’s Eve party—right before they left to take over our home planet.
I nudged my dad and he nodded. We shared the same thought. In one day’s time, we knew exactly where Tabitha would be. The Ascendant crowd dispersed after, of course, the Ascendant Salute. Place hand on heart. Then palm up over the head. Shout “WE ALWAYS RISE!” at the top of your alien lungs.
We continued down a broad yellow street lined with sand colored apartment buildings until we reached the end of the Second Step, but not before I spied, on the low wall surrounding the Alamo, just small enough to make them difficult to see in the fading light, another set of wings carved into the stone.
THE INK SQUAD
The distance between the Second and Third Step was a bit farther. Once again, it was take a trolley or be tossed by a black staff. We stuck with the trolley, full of Thirders happy about returning to their homes and the royal invite to see a play on the Fifth Step. They spoke pretty good English mingled with Greek, so I got the gist of their conversations about Romeo and Juliet and the “Earther girl” even without Little Bacon’s help.
The Third Step itself was full of the Ascendant enjoying the last light of our solar system’s largest planet. Trees, statues, and streetlights lined the wide cobblestone streets, and blue marble fountains were erected at every intersection. The smell of grilled seafood wafted out of open windows in tall blue apartment buildings. In the distance, the newel rose above us, taking on a rainbow of colors in the fading light.
Alien children leapt out of third story balconies and made for the town square, where they played something like lacrosse. They used small black staffs to throw a ball-and sometimes each other-through a soccer goal suspended fifty feet in the air. The game involved all sorts of mid-air acrobatics and combat, including leaping off the sides of buildings. It looked fun.
“It smells like lavender,” said Janice. “And all these fountains! Some of these signs are French, not Greek. I think each of these steps has a theme.”
In the distance I could make out a triangular skeleton of a building. It was taller than the nearby apartments. Even though I only saw the tip of it, the structure was unmistakable.
“Stars, it’s the Eiffel Tower,” Janice said. “The Third Step is France.”
“Then I guess we just left Texas,” I told her.
Bacon kept reading signs. “PEARL WHITE DENTISTRY. FANTINE’S FINE FRENCH CUISINE. THE INK SQUAD...” My dad slowed his pace when he heard the last sign.
“Follow me,” he said, crossing the blue cobblestone street toward the neon 3D image of an Ascendant flexing his tattooed arms.
We walked through the entrance and found ourselves in a small black box. My dad frowned, then reached his hand forward, and like magic, his hand disappeared. It’s a virtual curtain, I thought. We stepped through it into a bright room. I expected chairs, like in a barbershop, but there was no furniture, just a white floor, a glowing white ceiling, soft music, and the walls. Wow, the walls. Lined with every tattoo imaginable, all of them in motion. The tattoo parlor swirled with beautiful images, and at the far end stood the tattoo artist.
He was about 6’2”, my dad’s height, and not as musclebound as many of the other Ascendant. He didn’t turn around to greet us, but his tattoos did. His entire body swam with snakes. They curled around his arms, showed their fangs and rattlers, and hissed at us as we approached. I almost forgot why we were there. He finally greeted us in Greek. Janice responded.
“You want to use English,” he said with almost no accent. “Well, nice to meet you. I am known as Ekphrasis. My English is almost as good as yours, isn’t it? I practice a lot. It is our duty to practice. Few Earthers will not understand our Greek – they do not know our beautiful language. They do not know how to decorate themselves like we do, my friends. Can you imagine their surprise when I open up a shop in Paris and show them all of this?”
“That would be a surprise,” Buckshot said.
“It will be,” he said. “I will open the shop, and I cannot wait to pick out my apartment near the Eiffel Tower. Maybe I can offer its owner a free tattoo before he is relocated.”
With his back to us he gazed at the wall of tattoos, envisioning his new apartment and tattoo parlor. Not me. I pictured the poor family that would lose their home. Where would they stay? What would they eat? Would they live on the streets or did the Ascendant have some relocation plan? I imagined how the colonists treated Indians in Early America. Yeah, that was our future.
Then he laughed, and his tattoos changed. The sea of writhing snakes melted away momentarily. Beneath them I thought I saw the feathers of a bird. Cold scales replaced the feathers in the blink of an eye. Did he have several layers of tattoos? Stars, I guess that made sense. He was a tattoo artist.
He finally turned around and we saw his face. He was young, probably in his alien thirties, with deep laugh lines below his eyes. He also observed us for the first time. Fi
ve strangers in his shop without a single tattoo. He took a step back, then steadied himself, and clucked his tongue.
“In the name of the Galilean moons,” Ekphrasis said. “All this naked skin! You cannot all be engaged to a promised one…wait, where are your numerals?”
“We need some,” my dad said.
“No one walks the streets unnumbered,” he said. “The Lord Ascendant says so.”
The Ascendant looked over our shoulders, and so did I, expecting to see black staffs storming into the shop behind us. Had he pushed an alarm? I could see the answer on his serpentine face. No. He was alone, and we had him cornered. Nobody was on the street behind us. Nobody was coming to help him.
Suddenly Little Bacon spoke up. A sign across the street caught his eye—and mine. “SEE THE EARTH BEAUTY TABITHA TIRELLI IN ROMEO AND JULIET. ONE NIGHT ONLY.”
“Talking tunics!” yelled the tattoo artist, creeping toward the back of his shop. “What kind of wizardry is this?”
The tattoos scrawled across his lined face—a viper wound itself around his neck. “Leave my shop this minute. I will give you nothing. Give me one reason not to report you all.”
“Sure,” Buckshot said, leaping forward. In an instant he had the tattoo artist in a headlock and jumped to the ceiling with him, slamming his head into one of the lights. They landed lightly, the Ascendant dazed.
“That was not necessary,” my dad said.
“Sorry, just wanted to make a point,” Buckshot said.
“The point is to keep a low profile,” my dad said. He peeked out the window, then flipped a sign that must have said “closed.” The entire front of the store turned blue as if it were a wall. After a few minutes, the artist regained his senses.
“What did you do to me?” he said.
“Something unnecessary,” said Buckshot. “Now about those tattoos…”
“What did you do with yours? You don’t even have numerals. How were they removed?”
“Not important,” my dad said.
“If they track these tattoos to me, they will kill me,” Ekphrasis said.
“Look, I don’t wanna do anything else unnecessary,” Buckshot said, cracking his knuckles. “Now they might kill you later. Who says we won’t kill you now?”
The artist stood, shook the cobwebs out of his mind, and straightened his tunic. He was about Sunjay’s size and no match for us in a fight.
“Ekphrasis, we mean you no more harm,” my dad said. “Simply do what we ask and we will leave.”
Ekphrasis sighed and adjusted a band on his wrist, and then reached into his pocket. He produced a black pill and gestured to the walls.
“Well, let us not waste time. Who’s first? Pick your style and then taste the ink,” he said, holding out the black pill. None of us moved to grab it. “You don’t know how this works? Ah, now this is starting to make sense. You’re criminals or fishermen from the Outlands. First time in the Rathmore, and you’ve decided to conceal yourselves among us. These numerals are your first-class tickets to the Earth.”
“It’s not your business,” my dad said.
“You do not want to wait your turn to get to Earth. I can’t blame you. The ocean is dying. It is not fair that they make you leave last.”
“Yeah,” said Sunjay, “geysers shooting off everywhere and hungry sea monsters.”
Ekphrasis eyed Sunjay. His eyes weren’t just blue. They were flecked with purple and red, too. He studied Sunjay like he was trying to solve a riddle. I didn’t like that look at all.
“If only the Earthers had not stolen the Sacred, we could stay. Ah, but now to your tattoos—every good boy and girl in Rathmore knows that you take this pill. It’s called ‘tasting the ink.’ After that, I program your tattoo. If the boys and girls do not like their tattoos, they return to the store and I change it. For a fee.”
“It’s not permanent!” said Sunjay. “Good. Dad won’t kill me.”
“Ah-ah-ah,” he said, shaking his finger at Sunjay. “The numeral will be permanent. It burns into the skin. Surely you have heard the saying, ‘You never rise above your step.’ You might make your way higher someday—if you’re lucky—but everyone knows where you started.”
My dad had heard enough. He reached for the pill and turned toward Buckshot. “If anything happens to me, you know what to do.” Buckshot cracked his knuckles again and looked at Ekphrasis, who didn’t want any more trips to the ceiling.
My dad swallowed the pill without a moment’s notice. Nothing changed at first. Then the Ascendant adjusted his glowing purple bracelet. Dad winced like something stung him. Then he looked at his right calf. The numeral three appeared there.
“Voilà, you are now a Thirder,” the Ascendant said. “Now choose your ink.”
My dad pointed to a scene: of a lion and cub with a meteor shower in the background.
“Ah, a wise choice. The artist Phaedrus designed this tattoo before he died. See how the lion turns his head toward the meteor shower, but one of his paws covers his cub’s paws? The lion watches the meteor shower, but he still watches over his cub. This is a popular choice among fathers, especially those of the Fifth Step.” The Ascendant put his heavily-tattooed hand on my dad’s chest. Then he backed away. We saw a black dot appear where his hand had been.
Then my dad fell to the floor, writhing in pain. Buckshot jumped toward the Ascendant, but he held his ground.
“I didn’t say it was pleasant,” said the Ascendant.
I rushed over to my dad. He held up a hand, as if to say he was fine. Soon he settled down. The black dot swirled, expanded, and morphed into the scene on the wall, scrolling across his arms. Meteors streamed from his temple to his chin.
He regained his feet and stood in front of us as a different man, an alien.
“Wow, Commander, those things really move,” Sunjay said.
The Ascendant’s eyes darted toward Sunjay again, so I punched Sunjay and whispered, “Stop talking.”
“They will settle down soon. You know, Earther tattoos are not like this. They are like stick figures drawn in a cave. Very primitive. At any rate, I have decided that you are definitely not Outlanders. The English is too good. You’re from some other Chaos. Conamara maybe? Oh, or from a flexus. I met a slave from the Delphi Flexus once that spoke like you. He had never been to Rathmore before, never seen the City of the Seven Steps or heard of the Purple Tower.”
“There are only six steps,” Sunjay said.
“The Sixth Step fell,” he said with a sad smile. “It’s lying at the base of the city. You do not know this? Have you been frozen in geyser ice for the last ten years? Did you know that the Sacred has been stolen? Surely you have heard this.”
We all nodded.
“Are there any other employees?” my dad asked him. Ekphrasis shook his head no. “Then we’ll be sleeping here tonight. You will tattoo the rest of us in the morning. First, I must ask you some questions about the Fifth Step.”
Ekphrasis wanted to object, but he looked at my dad’s tattoo again and thought better of it. One of us watched Ekphrasis in the backroom while the rest of us developed a plan to rescue Tabitha the next day.
My dad took the first watch on Ekphrasis while the rest of us slept in a heap on the floor with the tattoos on the walls as our nightlights. It was slightly better than a giant crab cage. No one had energy for small talk. Of course not. Janice had been launched into the sky by a geyser. I had been inside a serpent’s mind and then killed it. Sunjay had befriended the most beautiful alien on the beach and survived Janice’s wrath. Buckshot cold-cocked a tattoo artist, and my dad now looked every bit like an Ascendant. And we now knew where Tabitha would be tomorrow night.
I laid on the parlor floor, closed my eyes and let sleep, that persistent boulder, crush me. Before it did, I saw Tabitha’s face gazing from that purple tower high above me. And saw the image of the wings and heard that name—Icarus—as if it should mean something to me.
In the night a deep rumbling jolted us aw
ake. I heard Ascendant yelling outside, the sound of shattering items. Hopping to our feet, we prepared for some sort of attack, but our Ascendant captive just sighed.
“Since the Earthers stole the Sacred, Rathmore shakes like a fish out of water. It’s only a matter of time before…never mind. Just go to sleep.” We didn’t argue with him. We saved all the arguing for the morning.
“NO OUTLANDER”
“I would rather die. You may murder me now. Just let the big one do it so it’s quick.”
This was what Ekphrasis said when my dad told him the next morning that he would guide us to the Fifth Step. It made sense for us. The fewer Ascendant that interacted with us the better. If our tattoo artist could also be our guide, that was best. Also, Ekphrasis knew Rathmore from top to bottom. “The tattoos will disguise you, but there are certain checkpoints where they will scan your voice and eyes. Those are points that you shall not pass. Trust me. I do much of my tattoos on other steps.”
Still, there was nothing we could say to convince him to take us, so my dad shrugged his shoulders and asked for the rest of the tattoos. That shrug scared me.
The others tasted the ink first, so I watched as they received their tattoos: Sunjay a beach scene, Buckshot a desert full of scorpions and rattlesnakes. Ekphrasis explained the history behind each tattoo like a docent at a museum would describe a painting. Janice listened to each one and finally picked one with beautiful buildings all lit up at night.
“Oh, this one’s lovely,” he said, “but let me take a look at this cut. Sometimes the ink can heal, too.” Ekphrasis touched her eye. She winced, but after her tattoo was fully in motion, the swelling began to go down. I wasn’t paying much attention though. I was watching my dad.
He was deep in thought, probably reviewing our plan to recapture Tabitha. Ekphrasis had described the Fifth Step in perfect detail, so he (and I) was visualizing the route. But something troubled me. If Ekphrasis refused to guide us, he was another loose string, like Jason and Typhon. Only he was much closer, and much cleverer.
“And last but not least,” said Ekphrasis, interrupting my thoughts. “It’s an old English phrase. It means your turn.” He gestured to the wall behind me, and with the sweep of his hand the tattoos shimmered like jewels. I walked over to the wall and stood beside him. There was an ocean scene with a sea serpent swimming in deep waters. It reminded me of the one I had to kill. Sort of a sad moment in Tully history, I realize, but it was a way to make my own memorial to the serpent. I pointed to it, and as I did so, Ekphrasis gasped. He stared at my scarred hands, which I hid behind my back.