by Tim Curran
The children laughed again at this, at the very idea. And, again, Mema merely smiled her toothless, indulgent smile.
“There was a sky beyond the mists, and lights hung in that sky. Lights so very bright and brilliant, brighter than anything you could imagine.”
“But lights hang in the sky now.” Paulph peeked from under the leaf-canopy, up toward pulsating lambent orbs within dark shadow-shapes.
Dark shadow-shapes, undulating in slow courses through murky striations of gray-upon-grayer clouds … the under-seers with their under-eyes … never blinking, never closing to sleep … sometimes shedding forth gleaming beams, sweeping back and forth … eternally watchful, but for what?
“Yeah,” Yunnig said. “and if you look too long, they’ll reel down their suckery ring-toothed tendrils and pluck you up for a snack.”
The younger children squirmed and hid their faces; even some of the older ones made sure to avert their eyes from the cloudy expanse overhead. Lut hunkered beside Mema’s stump-root chair. “I don’t want the under-seers to eat me,” he said. “I don’t want the lights in the sky.”
Mema patted his tousled hair with her long-nailed hand. “Not those lights, no. I meant the lights from before the mists. Oh, such wonderful lights. Why, when the sky was blacker than black, they say a pale shining stone would float high up in it.”
“Stones don’t float,” said a girl named Oalthi, rocking a hollowed bark-log in which her baby sister slept.
“This one did, for it was a great stone of magic. Sometimes it would be round like a paddler’s egg, and sometimes only the thinnest curve, like a shard of egg-shell. The Muen, it was called.”
“Muen,” Tesya murmured. She, as she listened, had idly plucked many long blades of grass and was experimenting with ways of twining and lacing them together.
A weaver, Nemon thought. The girl with the intricate braids might one day become a weaver, a maker of baskets and cloth, an artist of patterns and design.
“There were also points of light,” said Mema, “thorn-sharp, dotted across the black sky, like a vast swarm of fireflies, but motionless, white as bone, clear as water.”
“Stars!” cried a boy who, up until that moment, hadn’t seemed to be paying attention in the slightest. “The stars were wrong, so the gods waited and waited, and then the stars were right and the gods came!”
Nemon caught her breath, but Mema remained calm. “What was your name, child? I don’t think you said.”
He didn’t answer. Sticking his grubby fingers into his mouth, he resumed staring off at nothing.
“That’s Zath.” Anith rolled her eyes and heaved an exasperated sigh. “My stupid little brother.”
“Were they stones, too?” Oalthi asked, when Zath showed no signs of speaking further. “The stars?”
“No one knows, dear girl,” Mema said. “No one knows. But, the brightest light of all, so bright it dissolved the sky-blackness into the clearest and most beautiful blue, was called the Sunn. Which was more than bright …” Mema leaned forward, pausing with each word. “It … was … hot!”
Paulph tilted his head. “What’s ‘hot’?”
“Hot is like warm,” Oalthi told him. “Hot is warmer than warm.”
“Like at the spitting pools,” Shurg said. “Our uncle fell in once.”
“That’s how he got those scars,” Chayg finished.
“Shh,” said Lut. “I want to hear about the Sunn.”
“It was hot,” Mema repeated. “Hot enough to dry, children. Why, there were places so dry, the mud went away, and rain didn’t fall for days on days, and water sank far beneath the ground.”
They fell silent for a moment, pondering this. Even Nemon, in all of her knowledge and all of her training, could barely just begin to imagine what it must be like to be dry, fully dry. Or to walk on sand, not clammy silt-mud sand but Sunn-heated dry sand.
Nor could she quite envision some of the other truths Mema had taught her, truths of places colder than cold, so cold that lakes turned to stone. She did not doubt them, but such a reality would not fit well into her comprehension.
“Never-was stories,” Yunnig said. “I told you she’d be talking of fire and fairies next.”
Or fire … Nemon didn’t know what fairies might be, but Mema had now and then spoken of fire, that it was real, that people had once possessed the secrets of stealing it from sky-storms or springing it alive out of wood and stones. Fire, also bright and hot like the Sunn, also with the magic to dry. Fire, which ate and consumed, which had to be fed, but which could be controlled, and killed.
“I’m only telling you of our once-world,” Mema said. “When the land itself was larger, and the waters not so deep. Much of it, I learned from my grandmothers down through the ages. More, as I said, we have learned in our travels. Why, we have been from the fog-forests of the mountains to the rocky salt-shores. We have seen the hoof-prints of the goat-folk stamped into the soft black loam, and we have seen the deep-folk swimming toward the endless waves.”
“Ohh,” Paulph said.
“And we have seen the immense clay-mounds formed by the colonies of one will and mind, clay-mounds ever-growing in chambered tunnels around the rugose and oozing nodules of their Masters. They devour their own dead, you know. All waste is cast into the rendering pits, and flows into the food-trenches. If babies are born thought-deaf, of no use to the colony, they too are thrown into the pits. Yet, even they—even they, dear children—were once like us. Oh, yes. Long ago, when we were of one people, and this was our world.”
“Our world,” Tesya said, sounding wistful. “Was it pretty?”
“So very pretty. Plants of so many kinds … flowers of every color, flowers that smelled sweeter than sweet-nectar … fruits too big for one person to eat … trees as tall as the clouds …”
“Were there animals like now?” asked Lut.
Mema patted his head again, ruffling his matted curls. “Far more than there are now. Some ran faster than anything. Some had fur, not wet and oily fur but thick and soft. And there were birds, not just paddlers and waders but birds that flew all the time, flew high and far—”
“Without getting snared by the under-seers?” Paulph’s wide eyes widened further.
“There were no under-seers then.”
“You can’t know any of that,” Yunnig said.
“But we’ve seen them, in ancient make-arts, and in the relics.” Mema’s old eyes twinkled. “Would you like to see, my dear ones?”
“Yes!” Tesya bounced up and down.
“Pleeeeeeease!” Lut added.
Those two were the most eager, capering in their excitement. The others ranged from interest to skepticism, but they did crowd closer. Only Zath, sitting slack-mouthed with a vacant stare, appeared oblivious.
“Now, let me see …” said Mema, rummaging in the folds of her voluminous scrap-hide robe. She drew from within some inner pocket a small item, pinched in the yellow spirals of her nails.
It was the figure of a bird, unmistakably a bird, but like no bird any of them had ever seen. No squat pond-paddler, nor gangly stick-legged wader … this bird was sleek-bodied, feet curled into claws, head cocked, beak hooked, and wings outspread in magnificent sweeps.
Even Yunnig, the most skeptical, was momentarily dumbstruck. They all simply gazed at the bird, at the intricate precision of detail, each feather, each tiny eye, so lifelike they might have expected it to flap and flutter in Mema’s grasp.
Tiny flecks of pigment in the deeper crevices suggested it had once sported full glorious plumage, but the colors had been weathered away by the ages until only the shape remained, the shape in its strange substance and solidity, its strange uniform opacity.
She held it out to Tesya, who hesitated and curled her hands shyly against her stomach.
“Oh, it’s quite all right, child,” Mema said. “You won’t damage it.”
The girl, emboldened, extended cupped palms and let Mema drop the bird-relic into them. As she
examined and felt it, her confidence grew, and she looked up at Mema with wonder.
“It’s so light!” Tesya said. “But so strong! Not wood, not stone, not … I … try it, touch it,” she added, turning to the others.
When those brave enough had tested their nerve, Mema brought out another figure. This was larger, vaguely hound-like in form, but with upright points of ears, an erect posture, un-bowed limbs, and a tail resembling the bushiness of a chaff-frond about to go to seed. More pigment remained on this relic than the bird, showing a gray hide with whitish undersides and darker grey markings.
She showed them still others: a lizard that went on two strong hind legs and had gaping, toothy jaws … a graceful-looking creature with flowing hair along its neck and a single twisting horn … a chubby figure with huge round head and eyes, a pale face and belly, and the faded vestiges of dark stripes.
“So, you see,” said Mema, “our people knew all these animals, and many, many more. More kinds than you could count. Some were hunted for food, yes, like now. Some were tended for their eggs, the way you might visit a paddler’s nest again and again. Some even gave milk that people could drink!”
“Eew!” chorused several of the children. “Milk from animals?”
“Milk from animals. Others did work, the way our beasts pull our sledge-rafts, and some let people ride upon their backs. Still others, people kept as friends and companions, and taught them to do tricks.”
“Oh!” Tesya clapped. “I found a little oil-fur once, all lost and alone. I wanted to bring it home, feed it, take care of it …” Her face fell. “But everyone said no.”
“Where did they all go?” Lut asked. “All the animals?”
“They died and drowned and got eaten by the under-seers,” Yunnig said. “Tff. Hoot-head. Duh.”
“Many did, that’s true,” Mema said. “But, there are places, my dears … magic places, wonderful secret places … hidden far beyond the reach of the new gods. In these places are chambers filled with seeds, and pods, and eggs, and sleeping unborn babies of every animal that ever was … waiting … waiting for a time when the stars change again.”
She paused, glancing at Zath, but the boy still seemed far off in some secret place of his own. Then she continued.
“When that happens, the mists will lift … the lands will rise from the waters … the Sunn will shine in a blue sky by day and the Muen in a black one by night … and the world will be renewed.”
“You mean, the gods will go away?” Paulph’s voice wavered like a strand of sea-kelp caught in an uncertain current.
“And our own gods will return?” Tesya added. “The kind ones who love us?”
Anith snorted. “The gods that look like people! Sure they will!”
Mema brought forth another relic, the torso of a goddess-figure, one who could be none other than a goddess of eternal beauty and youth. Ideal, ideal to perfection and beyond … high-breasted, the narrowest tapering of waist, smooth loins. Where a head might have been was a slim neck ending in a rounded knob. Empty sockets showed at the shoulders and hips.
“We’ve found many of these, across the land, from the mountain edges to the salt-shores,” Mema said. “None complete, but all identical in form.”
The color of the idol’s substance was a vivid peculiarity for which Nemon never had found fitting words. It reminded her of the innermost surface of a speaking-shell, or the fleeting blush at the heart of a just-blooming lily, or the raw-meat slice of a wader-bird’s flesh.
“Our goddesses looked like that?” Yunnig glanced from the idol to the girls around him, raising his eyebrows. Anith flushed, tugging at the front of her knotted sedge-grass dress.
“Identical?” Oalthi asked. “How can that be? No two things are exactly the same! No two leaves, no two stones, no two seed pods—”
“No two twins,” Chayg put in, and Shurg nodded.
“—or frogs … nothing grows that way!”
“They didn’t grow,” said Tesya. “They were … made.”
“Nothing is made that way, either,” Oalthi argued. “Nothing can be! No two mud-pots, no two stick-houses—”
“These, we believe, were hero-gods,” said Mema, bringing out two smaller figures. “Mighty warriors, fighting evil. You can see how very strong they were, how muscular and powerful.”
Anith stuck her tongue out at Yunnig. “Our gods looked like that?”
Tesya traced the supple curve of a design upon one of the figure’s chests. “We … we had symbols? Of our own?”
“His looks scary,” said Lut, pointing at the other.
“Like the wings of a gloom-gaunt,” Shurg said. “Our uncle saw one, once.”
Chayg nodded. “It had little horns that stuck up like that, too.”
“Our own symbols.” Tesya shook her head, amazed, thin braids swinging. “Did we have … were we allowed … books?”
“Oh, stop it.” This time, it was Yunnig who threw a mud-clod at her. “It’s only stories, no more real than the Cities of Lines!”
“But the Cities of Lines are real,” Mema said. “We’ve seen them. What remains of them, their ruins. Cities of the gone-world, our gone-world. The waters have not yet claimed everything. Structures rise above the shallows, structures of stone and stuff harder-than-stone. Crumbling, yes. Rotting like carcasses from strangely-bleeding skeletons. But real. In some places, paths can be seen, paths that do not meander for hill or hummock.”
“In …” Paulph swallowed, throat making a thick gulping sound. “In lines? You don’t mean, they really do go in lines?”
“In lines,” she said, nodding gravely. “In straight lines that meet in right-angles and squared corners. There are steps, steps stacked one atop another atop another, climbing toward the clouds.”
They listened, some agog and some askance, as Mema continued describing the ruins of the old-places. Bridges and towers, circles and arches, and other words all but meaningless. Even for Nemon, who had seen for herself, much of it sounded impossible. That there had been such cities … that there could ever have been, and were … cities built by the hands of people … their people … people who had symbols … idols and art and lore of their own …
That they could have had all that, and done all that, and lost it forever …
She watched as the full, awful extent of that loss and horror sank into Tesya’s eyes like a stone dropped into a deep pool. She watched Lut’s chin began to quiver, his lower lip down-turning.
Those two, yes, those two. Their minds could envision, could imagine, could invent and create. Could think in clever ways and try various ideas. It had not yet died from them, not yet been pressed and crushed by the drudgery of simple survival.
If they lived, if they were allowed to live and to grow, and to thrive … if that difference of other-thought lasted …
It would be them, ones like them, who’d be chosen. Who’d be led to the secret places of which Mema had spoken, the chambers filled with all the waiting treasure-troves of the world’s renewal.
Zath, who had been quiet since his earlier outburst, staring vacantly off into the mists, voiced a sudden shrill cackle. It made the rest of them jump, even Mema.
“Cities!” he cried. “Rich cities, sin cities, great vain folly cities! Lines and order from chaos, nature cut to man’s whim! Sky-scrapers, sub-ways, transit-stations! Palaces of crystal and streets paved with gold! Chicago! Paris!”
Uneasy shudders crept through Nemon with each of the boy’s utterances. His words tingled along her nerves and in her marrow-bones, resonated in the deepest caverns of her mind.
“Miami, Cairo, Istanbul!
“Hush, now, child.” Though she tried to sound soothing, Mema’s voice stretched taut with tension. “Hush, now. That’s enough.”
“Are those … names?” Tesya asked.
“Machu Picchu! Quebec! In their houses at Parliament, at Congress, they die dreaming! Tokyo and Boston! The wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round and all roads lead t
o Rome!”
Oalthi’s baby sister began to wail, waving tiny fists. Paulph backed away, eyes nearly bulging from his head, rubbing fitfully at the flap of skin between his forefinger and thumb. Tesya trembled from head to toe.
“What’s wrong with him now?” asked Shurg.
“He’s not making any sense,” Chayg said.
Nemon saw that Mema had taken on a sickly pallor, the sagging wrinkles of her skin hanging from her skull. At the old woman’s temples and in the center of her forehead, veins pulsed like unearthed worms. In the sunken hollow at the base of her throat, something seemed to throb.
“They come from Memphis and Madrid. They go to Sydney, Dubai, Saigon! Next stop all aboard! Vienna!”
Yunnig gave Anith a dig in the ribs. “He’s your brother, make him stop!”
“Za-a-ath, quit it!”
“The city, the city, the city that never sleeps! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas! London bridge is falling down, falling down!”
“I mean it, Zath! I’ll tell—”
Ignoring his sister, he turned to Mema. His smile was pure innocence, but something rippled in his eyes. In them, or behind them. A shifting, shimmering veil. “Did you think no one would notice you, old woman?”
Mema went paler yet, clutching at her thin chest. “Wh … what?”
“Moscow nonstop New York! Did you think you were unknown, unseen?”
“He’s scaring me,” Lut said, clinging to Mema’s knee.
“She means to steal you from your home, you and Tesya there, steal you from your home and take you away forever, but I am scaring you? Copenhagen, Glasgow, Buenos Aires! Look on ye works, o mighty, and despair—”
“Zath?” Anith asked, sisterly severity giving way to genuine worry.
“I don’t think he’s Zath right now,” Tesya said.
“Stop him,” said Mema, in a harsh whisper. “He must be silenced.”
Nemon took a step toward the boy, but before she could take another, he sprang away. His strange, rippling gaze met hers with an intensity that stunned her to the core. For a moment, he seemed calm, even reasonable.