by Thea Prieto
With light, says Sky, and the progeny watched as Moon jumped to the earth, determined to help Bear and let there be light.
Bear felt the world quake when Moon met the earth, says Sky as he stands. Bear rushed outside her cave and the first thing she saw, glowing in the darkness, was the round and shiny shape of Moon. At Moon’s feet, a strange plant sprung up from the ground—
Baby coughs open a thin wail so suddenly Sky kneels near Tie while Mark hovers, eyebrows raised. Tie quickly readjusts Baby against her breast, her eyes darting and searching when Baby rejects her once, twice. The motion of Tie’s arms turns to swaying then, slowly changing Baby’s outrage into loud interest.
A flower, whispers Tie, correcting Sky as Baby’s irritation trips into curiosity.
The plant was a flower, says Sky, pulling the story back to Teller. The flower was streaked with red when the full Moon gave it to Bear. When Bear took the flower, her stomach grew round and large, and it grew so large so quickly that Egg dropped from her body a moment later. When Egg hit the ground it split in two, and a huge red brightness leaped forward.
This is your new sun, Moon told Bear, naming the young and hungry baby. The sun was so hot it stole the sharpness of stone and the hardness of iron. Then came angry storms and fires that covered the world, so Moon quickly grabbed the red sun and jumped it into the sky.
Sky glances upward again, watching the nighttime darkness that named him. While Baby’s voice settles, Sky’s own story flicks to mind, of coming into the world unmoving and silent as Mother was dying, many summers ago. His deepest dreams still carry the sound of a woman’s voice, but never a face or eyes. Instead, Sky’s earliest memories are of a distant crying—Mark’s, perhaps. He also remembers Green’s strong hands and Tie’s smiling teeth, but those memories came later. The day Sky was born his eyes only opened at the last minute, the ocean water startling his voice awake, almost too late, as he was being pushed out to sea with Mother’s body.
The sky was the first thing you saw, Tie once told Sky, and it saved your life.
Teller, his body broken in the sand—it was Teller who saw Sky’s eyes blinking open at the last moment, who looked for hope until the final instant. Teller, who needed the stories to be true, who dreamed of rescue and honored the others, naming the past to keep it alive.
And I didn’t save him, thinks Sky miserably. In the end, the Enemy Ocean took Teller instead. Sky’s voice, always late, did not open in time to save Teller.
Sky steadies the tremble in his throat, the cold guilt in his heart, to give Teller back his voice.
Moon still chases the sun, says Sky over Teller. Everyday their chase grows quicker, melting the days into one, bringing the heat closer. Sometimes Moon grows unhappy and so tired of the constant work. Sometimes Moon jumps from the sky and disappears in the tide pools, leaving everything behind—
Tie glances up, recognizing Green in these new words Sky has poured into the story. Sky hopes she recognizes Teller in these words, too, the way he held the group together with his voice, by threading their stories into the past.
Someday, continues Sky, the sun will move so slow and hot that whole lives will be spent between morning and evening, and at that time Moth will have no stars left to circle. That’s when Moth and Bear will join together, and instead of us, Toad will sleep in the caves once more. Someday, when the Enemy Ocean and the sun eat each other, the world will be reborn through fire and flood. That’s when Teller said all the old stories will begin again.
After a long silence filled only with the distant pound of the ocean waves chewing the beach, Sky takes hold of Teller’s ankles and Mark hesitantly reaches for Teller’s shoulders. Tie waves once, her fingers half-straightened, as they carry Teller down the dark sand dunes. After checking their foot wrappings, they cautiously cross the plastic-littered beach and the slippery rocks of low tide, until they settle Teller’s body in the surf. Here we will feed him to the ocean, thinks Sky, the same ocean that swallowed Mother and Song and so many others, all returned to the largest cave to wait for the sun.
But even as the surf foams up around his kneeled body, Mark does not let go of Teller’s hands. Sky has already stepped back, his palms filled forever with the touch of Teller’s still skin, but Mark does not let go of Teller, his grip held fast, his words mumbled.
Can’t, won’t do it, don’t want to—
And this, knows Sky, is how Mark holds grief, how Mother has been stored inside him for so long. Carefully, more full of care than he ever has been, Sky reaches for Mark’s shoulder. Sky expects his hand to be knocked away, expects Mark to strike, but even as Mark tries to shrug off his touch, his clouded eyes remain wide, empty, and now incapable of anger. Slowly, Sky urges Mark away from Teller.
This isn’t how he would want you to remember him, says Sky.
Will always remember him this way, says Mark, his blind hands trembling over Teller’s face, brushing a crushed and silent mouth.
Sky frowns at the surf already pulling at Teller’s legs.
You can remember more than this, says Sky.
Can’t, repeats Mark. I can’t, how? How—
But the questions release Mark’s hands from Teller, his fingers clutching at nothing as he stands, his grief as hungry as the ocean.
I’ll help, says Sky.
Mark drops his heavy arms over Sky’s shoulders, leaning in his sobbing weight, his ear pressed into Sky’s neck. Forgiveness, thinks Sky, as his arms wrap Mark’s wide back and sorrow rises Mark’s ribs into his. Family.
When Sky walks Mark back to the entrance of the cave tunnels, Tie is still watching with Baby sleeping in her arms, the ocean wind skimming over both their faces.
Teller, asks Tie, and Mark nods his face low.
A flash of inspiration, blue brilliance—the word Oh.
Stay here, says Sky, as he bounces back into the cave. In the darkness of the lower chambers, he shuffles his feet across the cracked floor, his toes kicking lightly against the kindling pile—no—the charcoal pile—no—and then Yes, his toes find it. He crouches to drag his fingers over the empty wooden shell, his other hand searching and finding the second half of the broken globe Mark found in the tide pools. One half is still sticky with Teller’s blood, but both halves feel sure in Sky’s hands—heavy and vital. Sky quickly fills the two bowls with flecks of kindling and flint, just like Egg must have held fire, and his legs fly him back up the sharp stairs to the cave entrance.
Pay attention, he says as he rushes past the others, out onto the sand dunes and running higher, making his way steadily across the headlands. His feet carry him over a path of burnt bricks and wedged stone, up a trail that narrows between the blackened basement of One, Two, Three—the house with one standing wall and three intact windows—and past the cliff edge at Three, Two, One— the hole where a house crumbled into the ocean in perfect thirds. The familiar path and wind-whipped structures keep Sky’s piercing loneliness low, reminding him he is not far from home, not in this place where Green kept the last of his hopes, the sheer edge of the bluffs standing sharp against the sea.
At the brink of the cliff, Sky recognizes the collapsed foundations through hazy moonlight, the toothed concrete ringing the circular fire pit. The Observatory, he remembers—that’s what Green called it. As Sky approaches the hollow, peeking over the lip, he squints to see chunks of ash lumped at the bottom of the crater, and slowly, next to long and jointed sticks, he makes out an unfurled pelvic bone, a blackened skull—the parts of Green beyond poison, living in fire. With a certainty that steadies Sky’s trembling hands, he places the Egg halves near Green’s remains, igniting a small streak of smoke and then a jumping flame.
Green believed in the bonfire more than anything, Teller once said, Teller who wanted Green and the bonfire to make the stories true. Stories—the spoken symbols of remembering. Not gifts from the gods, but words to remind us of what was, to connect me to myself, my name, my memory that can Save Us with sounds and scratches of language
, protecting the past and present and my family— Mark, Tie, and Baby watching from the caves below.
The fire leaps and spirals in the wind, lashing its pale smoke upward, into the stars that might be watching. Moon, Mars, Venus, and Moth—if they exist, they might be observing, might know I’m here. Beyond the cliffs is the Enemy Ocean, an ongoing horizon broken only by the remains of Old City. The single building has been knawed to its steel frames, driven open by the summer storms— so many hundreds of terrible storms—but three stars peer brightly through the square bones. Three stars, and then four, the fourth star moving steadily across the others, blinking and Radiant—a Walking Star journeying through the night. A Walking Star, or perhaps Moth itself, drifting overhead until the time comes, as sparks from the fire perish in shadow and flare once more, flashes of light thrown upward and remembered, while the darkness everywhere waits for the stories to begin again.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There’s a river near where I grew up and every spring, when the water level is highest, people dare each other to jump off the bridges into the river far below. Writing From the Caves was somewhat similar, I think—a jump away, a plunge towards. I want to thank my friends and family who waved from the bridge when I moved to Oregon to return to writing, as well as the people who hailed me from the riverbanks: my peers and mentors at Portland State University, my fellow writers at the 2015 Tin House Summer Workshop, pacificREVIEW for anthologizing the first chapter, and the editors and novella contest judges at Red Hen Press. I also want to thank the people who were midair with me throughout the writing process: the many wonderful readers who discussed my early and later drafts in classrooms and living rooms, especially my husband, who was suspended with me the entire time and in many ways. Matt, I am so grateful for our conversations on writing, your saintly patience, and your unyielding support these last few years.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Thea Prieto is a recipient of the Laurels Award Fellowship as well as a finalist for the international Edwin L. Stockton, Jr. Award and Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers. She writes and edits for Poets & Writers, Propeller Magazine, and The Gravity of the Thing, and her work has also appeared at New Orleans Review, Longreads, Entropy, The Masters Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches creative writing at Portland State University and Portland Community College. From the Caves is her first book.