by Thea Prieto
Mark, Sky yells. Get here now.
And glancing over his shoulder, Sky sees yellow firelight glowing high in the tunnel.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Light bobs into the sleeping chamber so burning Sky blinks rapidly to protect his eyes, everything underground diminished to a flickering pain. At first, Mark is only bodiless legs below intense brightness, but gradually Sky can see the dusty drips trailing his own arms, the mud still caked in the folds of his elbows. Even more slowly, Sky understands Tie as slashes of browns—the shining brown of her washed stomach heaving and rising, her flushed and staring face leaned back against the bowled stones of the cave, and the dark, wet brown on the ground beneath her, dripped sweat turning to mud.
And when Mark crouches near, his lit torch lowers to the ground, and the space between Tie’s legs brightens.
Panic crashes open Sky’s mind.
Can’t, whispers Mark. The word hangs vaguely in the air, hovering Tie.
With a wrenching effort, Sky tears his attention from the bulging pressure between Tie’s legs and looks back at Mark, his stunned face shaking back and forth, his clouded eyes flared wide to the Dark Sickness.
Can’t do it, says Mark, repeating. Can’t take care of Tie or Teller—
Teller, whispers Tie to no one, to the Dark Sickness pressing down.
Hold the light here, Sky finally orders Mark, but what he thinks is Waste while wiping the soiled ground underneath Tie with the rag. Careful to keep his hands clean, he pitches the wad toward the far corner of the cave and retrieves a fresh strip of tarp. This isn’t all bodies give us, Sky repeats to himself, not only waste and sickness and pain, but also memories and stories and Tie’s body is holding Baby.
If we get through this, says Sky quickly, I promise we’ll remember Teller. I promise you his stories, I promise—
Sky continues pitching words into the black void of the cave as he fetches a new rag to clean Tie’s upper thighs, hesitantly moving closer to her groin. His shadow trips so often into the torchlight the most he knows is how swollen and stretched Tie’s become, radiating a heat that frightens him—is this bad, is this fever? There’s liquid, slippery, something dangerous—is this poison? But Teller said—
And then darkness. A choking sob.
Mark, hold the light still, demands Sky.
A cry from Tie grates open, her body clenches, and at the same time the roundness between her legs grows, pushing back against the rag in Sky’s hand.
His hand snaps back like he’s been burned.
Oh—out, says Tie through clenched teeth. Out—
You want us out? asks Sky, but Tie only hisses angrily, her breath sucked in quickly. The firelight wobbles closer. Blood mists out of her skin where it stretches thin.
Darkness.
Mark, I told you, hold the light—
The torch jumps high again. A bulb pushes from Tie— hairs between hairs. A forehead.
The light dips.
Mark, Sky screams.
Tie screams at her stomach.
The light jerks high again, and there are small shoulders kinked between Tie’s legs—Tie gasps another shriek—a bundle of tight limbs drop wet and warm into Sky’s shaking hands. For an instant Sky’s amazement at the strange weight of the baby, the lightness of head and torso, numbs him to the fact that the limbs aren’t moving. There’s no movement, no sound—Teller said Baby has to cry right after—
But as Sky turns the crooked figure in his hands, firelight passes over the new face, and two clear eyes slice open beneath tight eyelids. A small cough. Narrow hips the width of a fist, flinching legs, waking fingers—they clench and sprout a high-pitched whine. Wet and shivering fists, a dark circle in the center of a wrinkled face—Oh, it cries, creaking and rough, Oh, Sky repeats back to it, smiling, relief like cool water, all around him, swimming in the ocean with Green, his arms lifting and supporting Baby, alive and crying—
—crying for something, louder, needs something, What do I do? Little legs tangled in a wet rope, it’s attached to the stomach, attached to Tie—
Tie. Her breath rolls deeper now, face pointing at the cave ceiling, twisted for a final groan. Pink sweat drips into the bowled stones of the floor, and then a knot of cords follows out of her.
Blood, gasps Mark, his knuckles clapped to his bared teeth. Poison.
I don’t know—I don’t think so, says Sky quietly, his eyes tracing back to Baby’s slight stomach. Teller said not all blood is poison.
Mark’s face pales, looks away, and Sky carries Baby and the corded sack to the bucket of wash water, moves a new wash rag gently over Baby’s scrunched face, between the slight, folded limbs. As he washes the strange bundle, he is reminded of the inside of his cheeks and the underside of his tongue, but Baby’s small palms are more familiar, fingers pulled into weak fists that tremble open as she bawls, shaking—she is a She.
When Sky carries Baby to Tie, the lit torch has tipped low and Mark is gently petting Tie’s hair.
Please don’t die, whispers Mark.
Dead? asks Tie, with confused tears leaking into her hair. Green, I’m so sorry, she pleads. I don’t want to die.
She is still whispering when she rounds her arm, as Sky brings Baby close, wails still ejecting from the small ribs. Propped in the crook of Tie’s elbow, Baby’s eyes slowly peer open, the thin cries finally curling into surprise at Tie’s touch, her fingertips gently exploring feet never dirtied, knees never scraped, the fine, lopsided eyebrows unfurrowing. Slowly, Tie quiets Baby against her heart, and in their exhausted silence and the flickering dim, Sky’s hands are empty again.
Sky asks, what should I do about—
But words fail to describe the rope still strung to Baby’s stomach, the raw bundle now resting dark and wet at Tie’s side.
Leave it, says Tie with eyes staring beyond the cave. Yours fell off later.
Sky’s gaze traces the cord attached to the middle of Baby’s stomach, then touches his navel, the protruding knot in the center of his own belly, an Oh mark in his skin, an Oh realized again in his mouth—we were all tied to the cave once.
The burning torch, now no more than a smoking plug in Mark’s hand, dips, and this time Sky lets it, laying himself flat against the ground. The stones feel damp and cool, a smooth hollow accepts his body, a roundness—the round object Mark found in the tide pools. Instead of crushing Teller’s skull, Tie is pulling the globe in half with her parting knees. Instead of spreading pebbles across a stone floor, seeds fall across Teller’s muddy body, plants rising out of the wet so green, for Green, the life stings Sky’s eyes and dries his mouth. Teller and Green and Mother—a buried memory of a mother’s voice—remember me tomorrow.
Sky wakes from the dream with a dry throat and Baby’s keening loud again, worry vibrating though his body only half-crawled from sleep. Edging through the blackness of the cave to Tie, feeling her ribs rise and fall, he lifts Baby from Tie’s arms, disturbing a rich human smell. Sky grabs the last rag from the wash water to clean the waste between Baby’s legs and from Tie’s lap before replacing her tutting back in the bend of Tie’s arm.
By that time, Sky’s mouth and eyes are parched to sand. Even some of the blisters on his feet have wrinkled thin. Since Mark is still asleep and Baby has quieted, Sky elects himself to the storeroom, for water and for time to himself. Time to think, Green used to call it. The main passageway is black—it is long past sundown—and the summer storms have gasped themselves into a rare quiet, allowing a faint moonlight and a ground safe to walk. In the storeroom, Sky’s fingers swap the loose brick for the glass shard, the dim light revealing once again the tipped-over water drum and the disturbed floor of dried mud. It makes the remaining water drum, the white hairs of the summer roots, and the closed container draped with tarps glow with the word Vital.
And the word Rich, thinks Sky, grateful for their remaining supplies. Carefully, Sky retrieves three roots from the buried container and a jar of drinking water, daily provisions, a
nd before returning the brick to the wall, he finds himself staring once again at the old writing lit barely by the trickled starlight. He also examines Mark’s counting symbols, eyeing the water left in the single drum. Counting back on his fingers, Three, Two, One—if one jar holds water for one day, can we survive the summer? Enough for twenty dormant days, maybe. Enough for Tie to get strong again, for them to try the fog net and the last of Green’s evaporation jars. Mark knows the counting symbols best, but Sky sees fullness instead of emptiness, the voices of the past alive in clay, stored memories to drive them forward.
To the side of the water drum is a sharp piece of tin, the tool Mark uses for counting and tracking. The grip of Mark’s counting tool narrows to a square point, for punching marks in the wall, so at the far end of the cave, where the simplest writing is stamped in clay, Sky makes an indent below Tie’s name for Baby. With his littlest finger, he rounds the square impression into a circle, into an Oh. It makes Baby’s name stands out from the rest. Special, thinks Sky, remembering Teller. Like mothers.
After closing off the storeroom from the outside, Sky finds his bright happiness too quickly at the pale entrance of the cave, listening to the distant shush of ocean waves, a fingernail of golden moon peeking from the south. Mark did as he was told—Teller’s body is heaped just beyond the cave’s mouth. In the night shadows, Teller’s broken nose and sideways jaw appear coated with black, the long burn wounds up his stomach and thighs a splotched gray. His hardened muscles have latched his limbs at odd angles, upsetting Sky’s memory of hands that used to reassure him and shoulders that used to support him, Teller’s body reduced to a tangle of elbows and knees lit dimly by the stars.
And with the food and water held in his arms, his heart just moments ago filled with joy and hope, Sky is ashamed. His voice can still speak for itself, and it fills only with the words Teller gave him, who was given voice by Green before him and Song before him, Mother before her, and all the others who ever left their mark in the storeroom.
Determination and hope, says Sky, gripping the food and water and also the memories, grasping at the future that was given to him.
From the main passageway, leaving the warm nighttime air, Sky carries the roots and water jar low into the ground, into the tight sleeping chambers where Tie and Mark have awoken and are whispering quietly to each other.
So glad you’re alive, says Mark to Tie.
His words—they turn without sourness, without wanting. They sound like Please. They feel like Peace.
Silently, Sky pushes the roots into Mark’s hands that are still shaking, and Sky helps Tie recline so she can drink and eat with Baby asleep in her lap.
Thank you, Tie says afterwards, and it is her own voice speaking again.
After a number of silent sips, Sky breaks the quiet with a whisper.
We need to take Teller to the ocean, says Sky gently.
More slow breaths.
I want to be there, says Tie.
Not safe to move you, says Mark.
I have to know, says Tie.
To remember, thinks Sky, nodding in the darkness.
When at last he moves to take Baby and help Tie to her knees, Mark stands to lift her to her feet. With Tie’s arm around Mark’s neck, they all move so slowly toward the upper caves and rest so often that Baby only stirs once they reach the heat of the main passageway. By then, Tie’s breath sharpens with every step, and settled against the wall of the cave entrance, the moonlight shows her face creased tight with pain.
Tie doesn’t move, though it is a long time before Baby’s anger from being awoken silences in Sky’s arms, longer for Tie’s pursed eyes to reopen, and even longer for them all to pull their stares from Teller’s body knotted against the rocks.
So sorry, says Mark with a coiled whine, kneeling near Teller’s feet. He repeats the words to Tie, to Teller, to the hot, cracked ground.
Sorry, thinks Sky. The word is the tiniest drop of water blinked into the sea, a gift to an Enemy Ocean never satisfied, always hungry.
Sky glances from Teller’s body to the distant beach, measuring the ocean’s wave up the sand. He guesses the moment when high tide’s retreat will allow them to push Teller’s body, like driftwood, out to sea, and Sky even opens his mouth to ask Mark about the tide, impulsively seeking Mark’s orders.
But with Mark’s face and eyes bent low to Teller, Sky notices how clouded Mark’s eyes have become, from all the daytime work he’s risked, alone while everyone else remained asleep underground. I don’t want to do the work alone, Mark once said, but that’s exactly what Sky and the others asked of him.
It’s almost time, says Sky aloud, but wonders how much time is left until Mark is completely blind. It is past time, he knows, when Mark can take care of the work on his own. We will unravel the fog net tomorrow, knows Sky. We will haul the fabric out of the cave and I will repair the fog net while Mark takes care of Tie and Baby.
Tie finally speaks, reaching for Baby.
More than anyone else, she says, Teller would have wanted a eulogy.
When Sky returns his stare from the beach, both Mark and Tie are watching him. Baby’s mouth is quiet against Tie’s breast, but Tie and Mark are asking Sky something, begging him with their eyes.
Teller’s favorite was the story of Moon and Bear, says Tie. He liked how the progeny spoke like us.
Tie stares out to sea then and Mark bows his face, unable to look at Teller without crying. With hesitant steps, Sky moves into the night, his fingers outstretched over Teller’s body in the traditional way.
CHAPTER NINE
The story of Moon and Bear, says Sky, starts when the Great Fires began—
His breath skips, the weight of the others’ gazes crowding the air in his mouth. It was a promise he made low in the caves, though, a promise spoken to everyone and to himself, so Sky pushes his breath forward, finds it growing strong and steady as the words come—downhill stones gathering speed. From Sky’s own tongue, even as his child’s voice cracks high and low, Green’s descriptions carry a sadness that shines and fills. For a floating moment, Teller’s rhythms and repetitions in his own mouth take Sky from his thirsty grief, from the staggering age of the world and its dangerous hunger.
When the Great Fires began and Moth flew into the sky, continues Sky, the Enemy Ocean crawled over all the cities and daylight died in smoke. Then the lights in Old City went out and the Walking Stars stretched out of reach and everything was very dark. But above the smoke, the progeny circled the world on the back of Moth, and they talked of a time when the world was young. The progeny could live for a hundred years, so old their hair turned white, and since they had a lot of food and water and cures, they had the time to talk. They would wash themselves with drinking water, they would tell old stories, and they would remember the past.
There was Venus, says Sky, the name like a burning spark in his mind. Venus liked to talk about people caring for each other.
Do you know what love is? says Tie, murmuring the clever voice of Venus out of habit.
A beautiful thing? asks Mark, half-heartedly giving the response of the progeny, his words slightly high-pitched, the way Teller gave voice to the progeny to make everyone laugh. Mark sniffs his wet nose.
No, says Tie, giving Venus’s answer. Love is the child of plenty and hunger, always learning and always wanting.
There was also Mars, says Sky, continuing the story. Mars liked to talk about people fighting—
—and about war, adds Sky, remembering Teller’s word.
Do you know what a mushroom does? says Mark, his back straightening to give Mars a gruff voice.
A cloud weapon, thinks Sky, or at least that’s what Green once told him. A plant from the Garden of the Gods, Song said years ago. Sky presses both memories together, but Mush Room still doesn’t sound like a weapon or food to him.
Tie hitches her voice even higher than Mark’s, playing the voices of the progeny.
It stops problems? squeaks Tie,
and Mark bows a small smile.
No, says Mark, giving the answer of Mars. Mushrooms stop everything, good and bad.
But Moon, says Sky encouraged by the others, was the only one who spoke of Bear, about how the world below was dark and old and dying, how Bear was living in a cave while the progeny were safe with Moth, doing nothing to help.
So Moon grew lonely for Bear, says Sky. Moon told stories of Bear and deep down in her cave, under the faraway stars, Bear told stories about Moon to her children, when smoke hid them in darkness, when the cave was most lonely.
Lonely, remembers Sky, the word swirling the missing parts of the story, the hollows Teller would have filled with his low and powerful voice. Teller starting stories with his face raised to the ceiling of rock, ending with his head bowed—if Teller’s mouth could speak, words would be vibrating against stone walls, ringing throughout the tunnels. If Teller was alive, he would still be praying, hoping for the progeny, for Moth to save them from a world dead everywhere but in his mind.
Poor Teller, thinks Sky. No caring Moon to remember him, the Dark Sickness turning his stories to responsibilities and whispers before begging hands and eyes, all of it demanding, every moment, his determination and hope.
Fists clenched, with Teller’s body at his feet, Sky points his voice up into the nighttime, sending his words south, beyond the pale beach, the black mountain ridges, toward the bright haze surrounding a weak sliver of moon.
Finally Moon spoke, insists Sky, because in the beginning were words, creating something from nothing.
How do worlds begin? Sky asks, making Moon’s question to the progeny low and serious.
Tie and Mark speak at the same time, sprouting a quiet happiness in Sky’s chest.
With blood, says Mark, giving Mars’s answer.
With love, says Tie, giving Venus’s answer.
When Sky gives Moon’s answer, he opens his dirty palms, the same way Teller used to open his hands whenever he told the story. Instead of raising them into the air, though, Sky places his palms on Teller’s sticky chest and forehead. In this way, I will remember you, promises Sky. Words for you—not for Moon, not for Moth.