Semper (New Eden)

by Dudley, Peter J

  What has happened?

  I pull up short, amid the horses, and glance around. Could this be one of Baddock's tricks? The even sound of his rasping breath says it's not—he's been knocked out.

  Surely Lupay didn’t… if she did, where is she? Why won’t she show herself? I walk a few steps this way, then a few back. I sidestep around the tree. The horses seem to have given up their agitation and stand at ease. For ten seconds I look for a sign of where she’s gone. It’s like she just disappeared into the night, dissolving into the air like a ghost…

  A ghost. The thought hits me just as a pale figure appears in the moonlight fifty yards off among the trees, disappearing as instantly as it appeared and leaving me with more doubt than certainty. I start walking that way, then break into a trot, not caring about the twigs that catch at my sleeves and cheeks, looking only into the darkness where the shape had been.

  There, ahead. Three forms of shadow barely deeper than the charcoal night. They flit in and out of the tree trunks, indistinct and momentary. I’m running now, my breath jarring my sore ribs with every thud of my foot in the dirt. I stumble over roots, careen into tree trunks and grasp at branches to steady myself. But the shadows move fast, lengthening the distance between me and Lupay.

  When they reach the road, they pause in a shaft of moonlight. Tom and the other one, plus a third. The third is bigger and has Lupay slung over his shoulder. She's limp and lifeless, bouncing along like a sack of wool on the back of a horse. Her arms hang down, curtained by her long dark hair which glistens silver black.

  They pause only a moment and then run away north, retracing the route we traveled this afternoon. My breath burns in huge gulps. My head pounds like I've been kicked by a horse. It’s useless to chase. I can't catch up. Maybe I could track them, but what would I do if I found them, like last night? I couldn't fight. Now there are three. And they'll be watching for me.

  Before I even reach the road I slow and stop, doubled over and gasping. My heart battering the inside of my chest like a crazed bird caught in a chimney. I feel rather than hear myself wheezing, and fresh scratches on my face and hands announce themselves with sharp edges.

  None of that compares to the terrible feeling in my guts. Lupay. Snatched from me again. I try to tell myself that wherever they take her, it's better than what Baddock planned, what I saw in his devilish grin. I glance back at the camp and its slumbering threats. At least she's alive.

  Or so I allow myself to believe. Her limp body hung like that dead deer last night. But no. They hadn’t killed her then. They won't kill her now. But why? Maybe the ghost-men really do feast on the flesh of the living...

  Stop it.

  An abyss opened within me gapes deep and wide, its insides as black and cold as the bottom of the lake and filled with monsters. I know what it is. It’s the emptiness I feel with Lupay gone. It’s the knowledge that the last day has been pointless. I could have cowered in my nest of rocks by the lake, not followed her, and everything now would be exactly the same.

  No, not the same.

  Baddock. He despises me now, distrusts me. Maybe he always did. Now he doesn't hide his contempt. I am Semper-son, and he is bound by duty to give me respect. Perhaps with Lupay gone, he will return to his proper place. When we get back to Southshaw and he has to face my father, he will remember that he is simply Captain of the Scouts.

  I lean over and retch, my stomach emptying itself on the dirt of the road. The pain in my loins reasserts itself, and I can't hold it any more. Quickly I unbuckle my belt, lower my trousers, and relieve that pressure. But it doesn't solve anything other than one of my physical pains. My belt rebuckled, I turn back toward the camp.

  Did Baddock see the ghosts before they knocked him senseless? No, he couldn’t have. He’d have fought. Even if they overtook him, I’d have heard the scuffle. He must be ignorant of who or what snuck up on him. Not even the horses knew the ghost-men were among them. He only saw me.

  With a sudden urgency, I’m running back toward the camp. Baddock already hates me. He was about to slice open Lupay. He was attacked from behind. He will assume it was I who hit him, I who set Lupay free… all because he thinks I love her. Arriving at the tree where Lupay was tied, I stop and force my breath to calmness even though my body is desperate for more air. Baddock remains motionless where I left him. The horses remain calm and quiet.

  Baddock’s thugs snore and rustle in their blankets around the remains of the embers. If I’m here when any of them wakes, I'm dead. They're used to fighting off bears, sleeping in snowdrifts, eating bark to survive. If Baddock tells them to kill me, not a one would hesitate.

  I must get home, speak with my father. He will know what to do.

  I take one step toward my own blanket to get my pack, but I can't risk it. Instead, I grab the rope tethering one of the horses. She’s a lean beauty, Whisper her name is, and Baddock won’t be happy that she’s gone. He’ll assume I fled north with Lupay. But he’ll be wrong.

  Quietly I lead Whisper away from the camp, north through the woods to set a false trail. When reach the road, I clamber up and set her to gallop south. I focus only on the power of Whisper's muscles under me and shut off my thoughts. We'll be home by midday, and if Baddock follows my false trail north, so much the better.

  When we reach the first farms along the upper edge of the outer town, I let Whisper slow to a walk, watch the steam rise from her shoulders and listen to her snort from the thrill of her night run. For a moment I share her blissful exhaustion. She has no idea how she’s helped me, only that she was allowed to race home and that a good meal and rubdown await her.

  The sun has crept up over the far peaks. We made better time than I expected, and it’s only mid morning. We saunter past quiet houses, meadows dotted with sheep and goats. Ten miles it is from the first house, the Tanden farm, to the center of the village where my father’s home watches over the plaza. As we go, the houses are less spread apart, but something seems wrong.

  It’s not until we’re only a mile from the village and we pass the home of the baker that I finally realize what has been bothering me. Not a single house has smoke rising from the chimney. Not a single person has come out to greet the Semper-son on his way past. It’s like all the people have been spirited away.

  Here and there a dog lolls in the sunny dirt outside a house. From time to time from an open window I smell the remains of a breakfast left untidied. It is unlike Southshawans to leave food out after a meal. Laws forbids it. In the old days, such remains would bring wild animals and rats, and one could never tell if they carried the Radiation.

  A quarter mile from my home, the houses begin to huddle together closer to the road, where families built close over the generations. Smaller houses, some with intimate gardens lush with the greenery of spring and brilliant blossoms of all colors. Doors are closed, but windows are open in silence. It’s the eeriest feeling I can remember, wandering through the empty town.

  When I pass the house of Kitta, a tall girl with startling blue eyes, flowing golden hair, and ample, round breasts, realization hits me. Kitta is one of the ten Verges. Of course. The entire town would be at the center already, preparing for tomorrow’s ceremony. They would be decorating, readying food, setting up pavilions, rehearsing presentations. No wonder the houses are all empty.

  But even the streets approaching the town center lie vacant. Worse, a chilling murmur begins to rise in the distance. Fear and anxiety hidden deep within me stir at the unnatural noise. It’s the sound of hundreds of voices moaning.

  It’s the sound of mourning.

  Whisper is walking slowly now, and I can’t bring myself to spur her on. The awful moan rises and falls like wind before a storm, uneven with crescendos punctuated by a few singular, high-pitched wails. The screeches make Whisper twitch, but she walks on until we reach the entrance to Church Hall. I slide off her side and wince when my feet thud on the dusty ground, more from the sudden sound than from the pain that jars my hips.
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  The moaning creeps out from inside the church, around the church, over the church. The center square must be full of people. Only one thing could create such sorrow. I grasp at Whisper's bridle to steady myself.

  My father. My mother.

  One, or both, is dead.

  CHAPTER 9

  I don’t know how long I have been hanging on to Whisper. I gather myself, let go of her, and shuffle toward the gaping church door.

  Out of the warming morning into the dimness of the unlit church I drift. The moaning seems to seep from the timbers of the thick doorway, as if the ancient wood itself is groaning.

  In the dusk, my distracted gaze pauses on items lit up by golden sunbeams dropping through high windows: The stark, wooden pews lining the left edge of the room, where the smallest children fidget on Sunday until they are called to study Truths with the First Wife. The floor before my own feet, where metal drains cleverly hidden in the woodwork have removed the water of thousands of Arrivals and Decons. Farther away, straight down the center aisle and overshadowing the dais, the Bomb stands fourteen feet tall, painted with blood red and death black. It towers over the pulpit, cold and soulless and everpresent.

  The pulpit where my father preaches each Sunday.

  The wail of a woman flies in through the open back door, above the layered murmuring, and it echoes around the empty church. My mother's voice.

  My feet move, and soon I am running for the back door, ignoring the Bomb which I should rub my hand on as I pass. I stumble out into the glare of the courtyard, rudely bumping into the back of a tall, sturdy parishioner. He is thick and dressed in plain black. He turns without anger, his eyes lost in the deepest sadness I’ve ever seen. I swallow hard and dry. My tongue feels like summer hay. I want to look away, I can’t.

  His distant sadness evolves into perplexed confusion, followed closely by recognition and concern. He puts his hand to his mouth, stifling a gasp. He extends his other hand to my face. He touches my cheek, traces his rough fingers along my jaw and neck, rests his heavy hand on my shoulder. His eyes again fill with cold, unfathomable sadness.

  I recognize him. He comes from the east, from the lake town among the ruins. He is a good friend of my father’s, but not a man I know well. I can’t remember his occupation, only that he used to tell me stories when I was young, stories about the time before the War.

  He wants to speak. He’s trying to find words. His lips contort into a frustrated grimace, then open as if silent words pry them apart, then close again after only a sigh. He closes his eyes, breathes deep. He whispers, “Come.”

  I follow him back into the church, past the Bomb, and off to the left toward the Scout barracks. He pushes through the hidden door behind a stand of votives and leads me along the tight, undecorated hallway. I know this hall; I pass through it every Sunday following my father to his place in the pulpit. It connects the Semper’s dressing chamber directly to the church and is known only to a handful of people. Not even Baddock would know about this passage. My mother may not even know of it.

  We arrive in my father’s antechamber and a dead silence. Here, the man turns to me and puts both his hands on my shoulders. I can feel in his trembling grip the bottomless grief of the throngs outside. His fingers dig into my shoulders with a subtle rhythm, a physical echo of the moaning that we can no longer hear.

  “Son,” he says, his deep storyteller’s voice cracking and fading. “Dane.” A pause. A deep sigh. He has an accent in his voice, an old way of forming the words that hints of wide oceans and violent ancestors. “Dane, your father is dead.”

  I breathe in an icy nothingness that fills my chest, soaks through me. My aching legs weaken and shiver. I slump into his arms. My eyes fill with tears as the world blurs around me. No. It cannot be. Not my father. He's strong, happy, loved. How could he be dead? How could this happen?

  From my dry mouth croaks one word into the man's coat. "How?"

  "It was peaceful, Dane. In his sleep, last night."

  I look up into his face, see the tears streaming along his sharp cheeks and dripping from his chin.

  "Why?"

  "Oh, Dane." His legs go weak as mine, and we sink to the floor and kneel together. His warmth against me seems wrong. How can there be warmth? How can the world not crumble to pieces and disappear into blackness?

  After a minute, he sniffs, wipes his face on his sleeve, and stands. He drags me upward, with an iron grip on my shoulders. With his stiff cuff he swipes at my cheeks.

  I want to go out. I want to jump on Whisper and gallop north, find Tom and the others, find Lupay. He must know my thoughts because he does not let go. If he does, I'll bolt.

  He faces me, his grip like a bear trap, his gaze like a noose. At first I look for sympathy in his eyes. It has gone, and in its place is a grim grayness, a stony stubbornness. I want to defy him, want to shove him away and run. But I don't.

  I stand and let his determination wrap around me. I anchor myself to this rock, and I push aside my grief.

  His stubbornness relaxes, his grip eases. He studies me now, wary but relieved.

  My mind has cleared, slowly, like the valley under morning lake fog.

  I had known. I had known since my mother's wail pierced the church. I had known, but I had denied.

  I want to hate this man, but he’s done me a favor. He’s done my father a favor.

  I control my breathing and wait until it’s even enough for me to speak without faltering. “Thank you.”

  The man lets a wisp of a frown crease his bushy brow. I don’t look away from his eyes. He’s not like Baddock. His probing gaze holds no threat, only compassion now. I can see in his face that he’s puzzling something out, but I’m finding it difficult to care much.

  “We must clean you up.” He lurches to motion, quick for his gangly frame and awkward size. He fills a basin from a pitcher nearby and undresses me. He produces wet cloths, soap, dry towels, clean soft shirt and trousers. Within minutes I look clean, if still not very good. I haven’t seen a mirror in days, but various pains and thicknesses tell me I have a fat lip, a blackened eye, multiple scratches on my cheeks and forehead, and a deep, black bruise in my thigh.

  “Better,” he mumbles, as he drops the towels to the floor. There’s already a pile of other towels there, and I force myself not to think about what they were used for, even though I know this is where they would have prepared my father’s body for presentation in the square. He steps back and asks, “Are you ready?”

  “Ready?” It’s been a long time since I felt I was ready for anything. I wasn’t ready to meet a girl at the edge of the lake. I wasn’t ready to track and fight ghost-men, or to collapse inside an ancient house. I wasn’t ready to have to flee the captain of my own Scouts, only to find my family destroyed and my future very different from what I had envisioned just two days ago.

  “Yes.”

  He nods with the a twitch of the smallest grim smile, then beckons with a flick of his chin. He strides out through the door into the main house, and I follow him through the halls and rooms until we reach the door to the plaza. We stop here, the thick wood shut against the grieving crowd outside. When I step through, I will confront hundreds of people, in front of them rather than behind them where I bumped into this man.

  “Now,” he says, adjusting the shape of my soft, pale green wool shirt, “you must take charge. You must act like Semper.” He fixes me with his gaze but does not elaborate. “You must declare three days of mourning, and you must postpone the Wifing.”

  This is the first good news I’ve had in days. I would like nothing better than to postpone the Wifing indefinitely.

  “Darius has been speaking this morning. It is not good,” he says as he pulls the latch on the door. “Be very careful, Dane.” The door opens, and his hand pushes my back like a battering ram, shoving me into the midday light.

  The moaning stops in one great gasp, and then there’s silence all across the courtyard. The silence echoes off the clo
sed shutters of other buildings, ripples in the glassy pond, presses down on the upturned faces of the people. I should speak. I should yell out something leaderly. I should lead my people. Instead, I look from stricken face to stricken face. I see an empty hunger in their eyes, a great thirst for my words. But I only reflect their own startled distraction, my voice choked to silence.

  I am raised up on the porch of Semper’s house, an outdoor dais. Before me stands a table, and on the table lies a man clothed all in white. His ashen hands are folded across his chest, and his face is paler even than a ghost-man’s. In the noon sunlight, he appears to glow, and heat comes up from him and shimmers in the courtyard air. The spring morning is heavy with the scent of flowers and soap and people.

  I step to him, counting the three steps. I rest my fingertips on his hand, feel the rough lifelessness of his dry skin, the cool metal of his wedding ring. The ring makes me think of my mother. I glance around to see her sitting in the shade of an overhang in the back, to the right. Where she should be. Her seat for festivals and sermons. She is dressed all in black, with a black cloth hanging from her hairband and draped across her face.

  I can see her eyes through a woven mesh, the only part of her visible. Even her hands are covered for mourning. They rest on her lap in black gloves, and I’m struck most by how motionless she is. I can’t even detect the rise and fall of breath, though I can see her eyes are wide and intense as she looks at me. What does she see standing here? Does she know how I’m crashing and crumbling inside? Can she see my terror and uncertainty? Has she divined the truths I've discovered in the last two days?

  “Dane.”

  A man's voice hovers in the silent air like a hawk on the wind. I search for its source, but it came out of nowhere and now exists only as a phantom in my ears.

  “Dane.” It’s a plea, and I look again to my mother. A man emerges from the shadows behind her and stands next to her. He reaches down and takes one of her gloved hands, and she does not resist. Her hand rises passive in his like that of someone in a charmed sleep. He holds it gently, lovingly.