Vessel

by Lisa T. Cresswell

  “Maybe there’s another way. We could find you a hat.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Tingrad was a huge city in the Darkness. There’s no doubt we could find something there to hide your hair.” Recks smiled and gave me a reassuring pat on the arm. “I think we’d better lose the horse too. If Dine recognized it, others might.”

  I wasn’t especially sorry to hear that, still sore from riding the day before.

  “Do you think he’ll come after you?” asked Recks.

  “I don’t know,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “My guess is he will. A man doesn’t part with a pearl like you easily.”

  “If he does, it’ll be because his wives can’t get all the chores done by themselves. I’m sure Shel is happier with me gone.”

  “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “Dine hid you not because you’re ugly but because you’re beautiful.”

  A snort escaped my nose at such nonsense.

  “There it is!” said Recks.

  “What?”

  “A smile. I knew you could do it.”

  I shook my head at his silliness and ate the food he offered me.

  “I never really asked you … do you want to go to Lhasayushu with me?”

  “That place sounds too good to be true, like a dream world. But I’d like to go to the East to be among my own people. There’s nothing for me here.”

  ***

  We finished breakfast, packed up what little we had, and headed for Tingrad. As we got closer to the city, the path became wider, more of a road, made of black gravel with weeds pushing through here and there. Tall poles dripping with wires lined the road, as well as hunks of rusted metal in various colors. Recks said Kinder told him the little metal boxes with small windows were called “cars.” According to Kinder, the machines were used for transportation before the Dark Times, but I didn’t see where they hitched a horse to them. They sat like boulders scattered along a riverbank, forever motionless now.

  By midday, we came across a farm. Rather than trying to sell the mare and raise suspicion, we left her grazing in the field. She was more than happy to eat fresh grass and be rid of us. We continued on foot the rest of the way toward town. I’d never seen so many buildings or such tall ones. The castle was the largest building in Roma, but these structures dwarfed it easily. Recks suggested we climb into one to rest for the night.

  The towers seemed uninhabited. We hadn’t seen anyone all day. I followed Recks up several flights of stairs littered with rotting papers and other belongings abandoned long ago. Finding an open door at the top of the stairs, Recks ducked inside but reappeared instantly.

  “This room’s no good. It’s been looted.”

  We continued down the hall, already dim in the late afternoon. The only light filtered in from a dirty window at the far end of the hallway. Recks checked another room and found it acceptable. The west-facing windows flooded the room with afternoon sun. I sank down on a dusty couch while Recks went through all the cupboards in the tiny kitchen.

  “Empty … empty,” he muttered, letting each cupboard door fall shut. “Wait a minute.”

  Recks reached deep into the last cupboard and pulled out a small glass bottle of something black. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed the contents, making a face.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Don’t know.” He handed me the bottle. The red and black label bore white markings that meant nothing to me. Decoration, perhaps? The smell of the contents was harsh and somewhat dust-like.

  “A spice. I smelled something like it once at the market.”

  “There’s no food here. I hoped we might get lucky,” said Recks. “Let’s see if we can at least find you some clothes.” He walked down another narrow hallway into another room out of sight.

  “Will someone be coming home?” I worried. I followed him, not wanting to be alone.

  “No one’s lived here for ages,” said Recks, opening a closet door and rifling through the garments he found. He pulled out a heavy shirt and a pair of blue pants that looked about my size and offered them to me.

  “Might be hot during the day, but they’ll keep you warm at night. Try them on. I’ll wait out here.” Recks pulled the door shut behind him, and I saw someone on the back of the door who made me scream. Recks jerked the door open again.

  “What is it?”

  “On the door … ” I pointed.

  He closed it and examined the reflection of us on the door.

  “Is it glass?” I asked.

  “No, a mirror. You’ve never seen one?”

  “No,” I whispered. My fingertips glided over my image, half normal, half abnormal. I’d never seen it so clearly.

  Recks found a hat somewhere. He twisted my hair up and shoved the hat over it.

  “See? It might work,” he said. I tucked the loose ends of my hair under the hat, still mesmerized by my reflection.

  “Maybe,” I said, wanting to please him.

  “It’ll be safer for you.”

  As night fell, lights flickered on here and there across the city. Recks said it was how you could tell where the people were. From our perch high above the ground, we saw a growing fire by the river near a bridge. And out on the east horizon, there was an even larger glow, like ten thousand fires. I couldn’t imagine how it could be so bright this far away.

  “What’s that?” I asked Recks. “Another city?”

  “I don’t know. That by the river is probably a Cleansing. They have them a lot.”

  “A Cleansing?”

  “A burning. The Reticents burn things to make an example, to scare people mostly.”

  “And sometimes execute people.” I remembered how close Recks had come to being in one.

  “I should go check it out. See if I can find some food.”

  “Down there?”

  “You can stay here. I won’t be long.” Recks put on a jacket with a hood, which he pulled over his hair.

  “But what if something happens to you? If you don’t come back, how will I find you?” I clutched the soft sleeves of his jacket and looked into his green eyes, forgetting how I must look to him. His hands on my arms were gentle like a summer breeze.

  “Do you want to come?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then put on these clothes and hide your hair,” he said, leaving the room. I did as I was told, pausing only to see how thin my undressed body was in the reflective surface on the back of the door, the outline of my bones clearly visible beneath the skin of my chest. I struggled into the musty clothing, baggy on me but not a bad fit. I hoped I could wash them somewhere in the near future. I even found a pair of rubber-soled shoes that felt good on my sore feet. My sandals from Roma gave little cushion for all the walking we’d done. Twisting my hair up, I tucked it back into the hood of my pullover and joined Recks in the outer room.

  Recks didn’t look up. He was hunched over, studying the thing in his hands intently.

  “What have you got?” I asked, kneeling on the floor next to him.

  “Kinder called them books. Look.” Recks handed me the small, rectangular thing “I’ve never seen so many in one place before.”

  The rectangle fell open in my hands to reveal something like cloth but rougher. My fingers made a soft scraping sound along the edges. On this rough cloth were dozens of little black markings, very small and close together.

  “What’s it do?”

  “Do? Nothing. Kinder said people put down their knowledge in them so others could learn what they knew.”

  “Is that what this is? Knowledge?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s so much. But what does it mean?”

  “Don’t know. No one does anymore. I think Kinder tried to figure it out. I like the ones with pictures.” Recks smiled as he handed me another book open to a view of a turquoise-blue body of wa
ter. “That’s the ocean I told you about.”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “And we’re going to see it, you and me.”

  I felt a smile, a real smile, spread across my lips.

  “You make a good boy,” said Recks, watching me. “Just don’t let anyone see your eyes up close. And don’t talk. That’ll give you away for sure.”

  “What’s wrong with my eyes?”

  “Too pretty for a boy.”

  His words sent a rush of heat through me. He thought my eyes were pretty.

  “Take this,” he said, handing me a slingshot from his pocket.

  “What for?”

  “For protection if we get separated. It’s sort of a weapon.”

  “A lot of good it’ll do me,” I said, shoving it in the front pocket of my pullover.

  “Do you know how to use it?”

  “Of course.”

  I’d caught plenty of small game with a similar slingshot of Dine’s. Never thought I’d be using one on a human.

  Recks and I walked along the street hand in hand, our feet crunching on the gravel in the dark, the acrid smell of smoke bending around us the closer we got to the bonfire. Shouts ripped through the night, mixing with the roar of the fire. Soon, Recks dropped my hand. Even in the dark, someone might see and suspect us. With the same eyes, I passed for his little brother if I kept quiet. I followed him as close as I could, trying to walk the way he did—comfortable, as if he wasn’t a wanted criminal. It didn’t seem to bother him that the crowd gathered by the fire was close to screaming. Nervous, I stooped to collect a few good pebbles should I need to use my slingshot after all.

  Like Recks predicted, they threw things into the flames and shouted: “For Mother Sun!” It wasn’t wood. They threw metal things, machines, I assumed, and small waxy squares of plastic and glass. And then I saw the books. There was a pile of them almost as tall as me next to the fire. I longed to open them, feel their pages, and hunt for pictures of the ocean.

  Suddenly, the shouting died and a priest, a Reticent, appeared. I froze when I realized it was Anders, still in scarlet robes that reflected the light of the flames.

  “Mother Sun thanks you for your offerings. She knows every heart, every fear, and she knows those who would betray her,” said Anders, raising a book into the air above his head. “The men that made these things, these profane, vile, disgusting things, did not honor Mother Sun. They made more and more until the whole world was littered with their junk. You see it around you every day: their plastic, their glass, and their metal boxes. Mother Sun grew impatient with their obsessions. To cleanse the world, to wash that away, she bathed us in fire. She killed the machines and the obsessors, leaving only the faithful: the farmers, the sun worshipers, and you, my friends. And so, we honor Mother Sun by continuing to cleanse the world of machines, of objects of obsession. Once the old is gone, mankind will bask again in the glory of her light.”

  Anders swung his arm and let the book in his hand fly into the flames. The crowd responded by throwing objects, big and small, into the fire. I’d heard these sermons before, but all the objects of obsession in Roma were destroyed years ago. We threw symbolic wood on our fires, but now that I knew what a book was, I felt confused. It didn’t seem like a terrible thing, an object of obsession. If they really were a way of sharing information, couldn’t they share Mother Sun? I stared until I felt Recks shove me into moving again.

  We drifted down empty, dark alleys, Recks looking into windows here and there.

  “That was Master Anders,” I whispered.

  “Who?”

  “The Reticent who came to Roma to try you.”

  “Looks like he’s keeping busy,” said Recks, still poking around. Movement down the street caught his eye and mine.

  “Get back,” he warned as he motioned to me. I melted into the shadows, something I was used to doing. A gang of boys moved down the street toward us, some running, some walking, none well-off enough to marry by their looks. The sight of them didn’t worry me, but the twitching of Recks’s hands at his sides told me there was something to be wary of.

  “Hey!” the tallest one called to Recks. “This is our street. Fug off!”

  “I’m just traveling, looking for food.”

  “You won’t find nothing here. Unless you wanna work for it?”

  “How’s that?”

  The crowd of boys stood all around Recks now, but none of them noticed me. “We were just going down to the river to see what we can find. Maybe you can help us.”

  “There’s a Cleansing going on. I came from there,” said Recks.

  “Heard they were burning someone down there tonight. Distractions always help. I’m Tiber. This is my tribe.” The tall, thin boy waited for Recks, sizing him up, as if deciding whether to accept him or not.

  “Recks.”

  “Where are you from?” asked Tiber like it was a test.

  “West of here … Buchen.”

  “You don’t look like anybody from Buchen I’ve ever seen,” said Tiber, scrunching his forehead. The boys around them laughed even though there was nothing funny.

  Recks shifted his weight. “Do you know where I can get some food or not?” he asked impatiently.

  Tiber narrowed his eyes and glared before answering. “Yeah. You can be the decoy. C’mon.”

  As Recks followed the boys away, I saw his hand signal for me to stay put. We hadn’t made a plan for this, but I wasn’t about to be left behind in the darkness. I waited until they rounded the corner and then silently followed. I wished Recks had hidden with me. He was far outnumbered, and Tiber’s tribe didn’t seem all that friendly. I guessed these were the people Recks wanted to hide my femaleness from. I wasn’t so sure he was any safer than I was. If we got out of this city together, I made up my mind to tell him next time we should forage in the woods. I could at least find edible plants there.

  As we approached the Cleansing fire, I realized the crowd was hushed again. They stood still in stick-straight rows around the flames, watching a procession of Reticents carrying someone tied to a stretcher made of logs and cloth. Is this an execution? My horror was like a hard chunk of bread I couldn’t choke back down my throat. I looked at the victim long enough to make sure it wasn’t Kinder and then focused on Recks’s back, determined not to lose sight of him.

  Tiber’s tribe moved slowly now, trying to avoid being noticed in the crowd. Try as I might, I lost Recks. I searched the dark crowd, growing frantic. Everyone looked the same. But then I found him with Tiber close behind, almost as if he was guiding Recks by the arm. I scurried behind the crowd to keep up, focusing only on Recks and not the man on the stretcher about to be executed. I couldn’t help seeing the man lifted upright to face the flames.

  It wasn’t Kinder, but it could’ve been. He was old like Kinder, with a full head of shaggy, gray hair. He slumped forward, held up only by his restraints and the people lifting the stretcher. He looked beaten, and I prayed he might already be dead to spare him the pain the Reticents planned. I remembered the hot oil on my face and tried not to imagine that feeling over my entire body. There was no doubt they’d tried to kill me, and I probably would’ve died if Master Dine hadn’t cared for me. The man on the platform wouldn’t be so lucky.

  “This man,” began Anders, “has defied Mother Sun’s law. He made machines. He taught others to make machines. He must pay for his crimes. The price? His life.”

  The crowd began to sing an old hymn, a funeral song without words, only the somber sounds of human cries. Tiber worried me. Was he taking Recks to Anders? Why would they come to a Cleansing to steal food? Why walk through the crowd when they could be hidden from it?

  Then I saw it—a shop on the edge of the square the tribe was creeping toward. The curb out front had a small grill with skewers of stringy meat hung over the flames. A man tended the skewers, turning them this way and that while watching the Cleansing from a distance. He must’ve ex
pected customers after the show.

  The people on the street made it easy for me to get close to Recks and Tiber, but I strained to hear what Tiber said to Recks before shoving him toward the vendor. The shouts of the crowd grew again, drowning out everything else.

  Recks didn’t hesitate. He ran up to the vendor and grabbed the man’s arm, gesturing toward the crowd. Then I heard Tiber shout.

  “Move!”

  Members of the Tribe I hadn’t even noticed sprang out of the crowd, running behind Tiber. They descended upon the vendor, his cries going unnoticed in the roar of the crowd. The prisoner was in the flames now, and no one heard the vendor. In a second, the grill was emptied, and the tribe disappeared into the dark streets. I ran after them, unable to see Recks, to get away from the screams of the dying prisoner. Somehow I heard his screams above everything else. I knew what it was like to feel your flesh burning off. I wished him a speedy death as I ran.

  ***

  The rubber-soled shoes wore my ankles raw as I dodged the garbage and the metal carriages littering the street. The last of the Tribe ran into a dark building through a broken window, shards of old glass crunching under their boots. Was Recks even with them? Had he gotten away?

  My blood pounded in my ears, thankfully the only sound I heard now, finally far from the crowd. I stepped into the building where the Tribe had disappeared and froze, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the inky darkness. A light flickered on in the distance, and I realized the building was enormous. This was no house. Perhaps it was a place machines were once made? Pipes and machinery filled the floor space, ominous in the eerie glow, the high ceiling invisible in the gloom. I crept closer to the light, straining to hear the excited voices growing louder.

  “What was that?” shouted Tiber.

  “What was what?” The sound of Recks’s voice soothed the ache in my head, but it didn’t sound quite right. I peered through some machinery for a better view. A fire burned in a barrel. Two boys held Recks by the arms while Tiber kicked at his stomach. Recks doubled over, and the boys let him fall on the ground next to the barrel. He groaned.