The Shattered Gates

by Ginn Hale

  “I’m sick of the fucking shelter. I just want to be somewhere else.” Bill closed his eyes. “I want to go home.”

  Laurie wrapped her arms around him and he leaned into her. Their small bodies were almost lost in the folds of their gray wool coats.

  “We’re gonna go home,” Laurie said. “We’ll have pizza and macaroni and cheese and beer and hot showers—and we’ll watch movies.”

  “Any movies I want?” Bill asked.

  “Any movies you want.”

  “Even—”

  “—Erotic Coven II,” Laurie finished.

  “You’re the best, you know that?” Bill said.

  “Yeah, but I’m glad you do too.” Laurie kissed the top of his head.

  “I don’t think I even care about stupid Erotic Coven II anymore,” Bill said. “I just want to breathe. I just...”

  “I know.” Laurie pushed his hair back from his face. “It’s gonna happen. I promise.”

  “Behr,” Ravishan had to crouch down to get his face as low as Bill’s, “when I become Kahlil, I promise that I will return you home. I’m sorry that I brought you here.”

  “You didn’t bring us. We—” Laurie cut herself off when she saw John’s expression. “It just happened.”

  “That’s how it would seem to you, but I prayed to Parfir for an entire year. I asked him to bring me a new teacher.” Ravishan glanced up at John. “I begged him to bring me someone who would help me.”

  “Well, we’ve certainly been a lot of help for you so far,” Bill said.

  “You have,” Ravishan said. “Before you were here, I dreaded every day. I only thought of the pain.” He touched his bandaged arm lightly. “When I thought of crossing through the gateway, and when I imagined the pain of it, I nearly cried. I’m ashamed of myself now, but then I even thought of running away.”

  “You still get injured when you cross,” John said.

  “It doesn’t seem so bad,” Ravishan said. “Now I can’t wait to wake up and practice my skills and bring you things and talk with you out here. And now I know that I will be Kahlil. You are my sign that these little cuts aren’t for nothing. Someday, I will return you all to your home, and I will defeat the Fai’daum in my own world.” Ravishan smiled, one of his truly handsome smiles. He seemed to glow with belief and happiness.

  It was this kind of pure enthusiasm, John thought, that inspired the Children’s Crusades in the Middle Ages. Only someone young and inexperienced could so completely and easily give himself over to faith and sacrifice. Ravishan wanted to believe this, and he would believe it. He had not yet learned that a coincidence could be just that, or worse, that adults around him might use his faith for their own needs.

  “You know,” Laurie’s voice was soft, “when we first came here, I knew it had to be for a purpose.”

  “You were brought for me,” Ravishan said. “I’m sorry that you’ve had to suffer, but I give you my word that I will take care of you.”

  Laurie’s smile was nearly as childlike as Ravishan’s. “I knew there was a reason for all of this.”

  Ravishan straightened. He looked up at the sky and frowned.

  “I have to return to Rathal’pesha. Ushman Dayyid will expect me early today since I was late yesterday.” He began to lift his hands in peace then paused. “Behr, I will see if I can find a medicine for you. There is a drink that our healer, Hann’yu, gives us when our lungs are torn. I’ll bring it two days from now.”

  “Thanks, Ravi.” Bill raised his hand in the symbol of peace. “Tumah.”

  Ravishan smiled and returned the gesture to all three of them.

  “Tumah,” he said, and then he closed his eyes and was gone.

  John waited a few minutes in silence. He didn’t know why, except that he couldn’t quite believe that Ravishan had simply gone. Some superstitious part of him worried that atoms of Ravishan still lingered in the air, listening and watching.

  “You shouldn’t encourage him to take responsibility for us being here,” John said at last.

  “What do you mean?” Laurie asked.

  “I mean that he has enough problems in his life. He doesn’t need to think that he did this to us on top of everything else.”

  “How do you know he didn’t?” Laurie asked.

  “Because I was there when we went through that gateway. I was the one turning that fucking key, and I’m the one who lost it.” John didn’t raise his voice. Instead, he stepped closer to Laurie. “I did this to us, not him.”

  “How can you be so closed-minded after everything that’s happened?” Laurie demanded. “We don’t know what brought us here, and we don’t know why. Maybe Ravishan does.”

  “She’s got a point, man,” Bill said.

  John glared at Bill. “Ravishan did not bring us here. He’s just a teenager.”

  “Children can have tremendous psychic energy, John,” Laurie said, “particularly teenagers. A lot of people believe that the conflicted energy in a troubled adolescent can even create—”

  “This isn’t some tarot reading at a strip mall!” John cut her off. “This isn’t some New Age feel-good movie.”

  “Hey—” Bill began.

  “Shut up,” John snapped. “This is a place where they burn people alive. This is a place where they cut the shit out of Ravishan and whip him for disobedience. He could be killed for what he’s doing for us. We have no right to make him take total responsibility for us!”

  “I didn’t say he had to take total responsibility,” Laurie shot back, fire in her eyes, “but we don’t know why we were called here. Maybe we were the answer to his prayers.”

  “Or maybe we were fucking around with something, and it just happened,” John replied. “Maybe Ravishan should have run away, but now he thinks that he has to stay and suffer to save us.”

  “How can you be so negative?” Laurie demanded.

  “It’s called realism,” John replied.

  “It’s pretty negative realism,” Bill put in.

  “Look,” John shoved his hair back from his face, “I don’t care what bizarre ideas you choose for your own life. I don’t care what you say when you’re helping your beautician clientele decide what hair color resonates with their higher powers. I don’t give a damn about that. But this is Ravishan’s life. If he needs to get the hell out of that monastery, then he should be able to. We shouldn’t be stopping him.”

  Laurie didn’t say anything. She just stared at John like she was about to cry.

  “You know, John, you can be a real asshole when you’ve got a crush on a guy,” Bill said. “I never noticed that before.”

  “That has nothing to do with this— and I do not have a crush on him. He’s a kid,” John snapped.

  “Yeah, whatever.” Bill shrugged. “Laurie and I should probably get back to the shelter and start dinner.”

  Bill struggled to his feet. Laurie got up quickly and helped him. John suddenly felt like an ass.

  “I’m not trying to—” he began, but Bill cut him off.

  “It’s okay, Toffee. We get it. Nobody is gonna feel good about anything ever. Don’t worry.”

  “I didn’t say that,” John said.

  “No,” Bill said. “You don’t need to say anything more. We stupid flakes can only take so much of your super-smarter-than-everyone-else Realism. We’re just gonna go back home and pick our butts like we always do.”

  “I didn’t say you were picking your butts,” John said.

  Laurie made a weird noise like she had been crying and then laughed. Her hair hung over her face. She wouldn’t look up at him.

  “I’m sorry,” John said. “I am an asshole. I’m just really worried about Ravishan.”

  Laurie pushed her hair back. Her eyes were red, but there weren’t any tears.

  “It’s okay. You’re right about pressuring him.” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “But, you know, sometimes it really hurts when you won’t even consider what I have to say. You just put all of my beliefs down like
they didn’t mean anything.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” John knew this was all he could say. He couldn’t make himself say that he was wrong.

  “So, are you staying out tonight, or are you coming home?” Laurie asked.

  “I’m staying out.”

  One of the strong points of their friendship had always been that they could be apart for a long time and still remember each other and their fondness. Until now they had never had to test their friendship under the opposite circumstances. Eight months in one tiny shelter was more than some marriages could endure. They needed time apart.

  “Here,” John grabbed the reed basket and handed it to Laurie, “you should have these tonight.”

  “Thanks,” Laurie said. She and Bill started back through the trees.

  John lay back, concentrating on the feel of the ground beneath him. It didn’t have the strong, rich smell of the earth he was used to. The soil of Basawar seemed emaciated by comparison. It responded to him with eagerness and desperation, rolling up under his fingers, curling close to his body. He traced the slight rise and fall of the earth as if he were stroking the skeletal ribs of a hungry dog. He knew that this was where his sense of reality came from. If he were honest with himself, that was just as absurd as any of Laurie’s beliefs. Still, he felt it so keenly and so very personally that he could neither question this communion nor share it with anyone else. This was his private faith.

  Overhead, thin black branches arched up against the pale blue sky. Even on clear days like this one, the skies of Basawar were never bright blue. They, like the soil, were drained, exhausted. They reminded John of the bleached remains of dying corals or of cut flowers, all their vitality and color bleeding away into a vase.

  John frowned at his own morbid turn of thought. Bill had been right about his negativity and about his feelings toward Ravishan as well. John did feel a stirring of attraction towards him. But John had no intention of allowing that pang of desire to affect any of their lives. He was just lonely—and Ravishan…

  John considered the way Ravishan smiled, how radiant he seemed when they walked together or stood close. In another man, John would have found those glances and smiles flirtatious, but he refused to believe that Ravishan could be knowingly seducing him.

  Life in the monastery had deprived Ravishan of normal human affection, and so he probably had no idea how easily his responsiveness to John’s attention could be misconstrued.

  But John would never allow himself to cross that line. Never. Not only was Ravishan just a kid, but also far too much depended on his continued generosity to risk alienating him with the complexities of adult desires.

  John closed his eyes, feeling tired of this foreign place.

  In his own world, when he felt this miserable, he could lose himself in the richness of the earth. It seemed to nourish him just with a touch. He tried to recapture that sensation. He relaxed and spread his fingers into the ground. A sense of motion rushed over him. He could feel his hands holding the dirt, his back pressed into the ground. But within his mind there came a dreamlike sense of whipping over the ground like a breath of wind.

  He rushed out to the east, skipping across the surface of the water. He felt the rending break of the chasm walls as they dropped for miles straight down to a cold, dark ocean. The black walls of the chasm hurt him, like the edges of an open wound.

  John flinched from it, and suddenly he was rushing north. He whipped over the soft shoots of grass and grinned as they tickled him. He swept up and dived between the thick stands of trees. Then he seemed to break out into a clearing.

  Huge walls, cut from the face of a mountain, stretched up. He rushed over them, sweeping across terraced steps of farmland, bent men and women pushing seeds into the soil, and heavy-coated sheep. He swept over another wall into a maze of cramped, narrow streets. Men on heavy bicycles crowded the thoroughfares, and the scent of cooking fires filled the air. The smell clung to John, and he went higher, rising over hundreds of steep steps that wound up to the peak of the mountain.

  With a surge over a last tall, white wall, he dropped down into an open courtyard. Dwarf trees twisted up from alabaster planters. Latticed walls of pale stone wound along pathways. The air smelled of incense and pine.

  Without even considering, John knew that he gazed upon Rathal’pesha, the monastery of the white mountain.

  A figure in dark gray robes sat beside one of the dwarf pines. The figure looked up, and John saw that it was Ravishan. He smiled and then lowered his head again in prayer.

  John felt a deep relief to see that Ravishan had gotten home safely.

  Then he opened his eyes and found himself lying on his back, staring into the dark night sky. He must have fallen asleep hours ago, he realized. He’d been dreaming.

  John started to rise, but stilled when he heard unfamiliar voices. There were men in the woods, a little to the north of him. John could see them by the light of their fire. Twenty or more, dressed in rust-red coats, armed with rifles. They sat in a circle, a few of them facing out into the darkness, keeping watch.

  They were being addressed, it appeared, by a large yellow dog.

  To Be Continued…

  A short list of Basawar Words and Grammar

  and ---------------iff

  animal / it --------shir

  asshole -----------wahbai

  bark (tree) --------istana

  bee (honey) ------behr

  best ---------------sho

  black -------------yasi

  blonde hide ------jahn

  blood -------------usha

  blue -------------- holima

  bone -------------sumah

  bones (holy) ------issusha

  book --------------lam

  brothers ----------ashan

  but / however ----hel

  chasm ------------kubo

  city ---------------tamur

  cold --------------polima

  dead --------------maht

  deer (mount) ---- tahldi

  delicious ---------mosh

  dog (tame) -------kohl

  dog (wild)/wolf -- sabir

  exhausted --------renma

  fast (speed) -------sam

  fire --------------- daru

  food ------- ------nabi (grain)

  friend ------------pashim

  from / of ---------in

  fuck --------------faud

  goat --------------fik

  good / pretty ----domu

  grain plant -------taye

  green -------------ibaye

  harm -------------ratim

  hawk -------------alidas

  hill ---------------rousma

  holy --------------ushmana

  hot ---------------niru

  how / because ---ahab

  idiot --------------bai

  joy ----------------amha

  key ----------------hala

  key, death-lock ---maht’tu hala

  knife --------------halaun

  lazy ---------------pom

  little / diminutive ---iri

  lock ------------------tu

  lost ------------------gasm’ah

  love -----------------mohim

  man/ male --------- vun

  meadow ------------pivan

  meat ----------------nabi’usha

  medicinal tree ------yasistana

  monastery ----------ushmura

  money --------------jiusha

  mountain -----------rathal

  no -------------------iss

  noble ---------------gaun

  none ----------------illin

  orchard -------------umbhra

  peace ---------------tumah

  place ----------------amura

  quiet ----------------itam

  rain -----------------parh

  red ------------------daum

  river ----------------fai

  road ----------------nur

  run -----------------sango

 
sacred books ------- ushmana’lam

  sacred drink --------fathi

  same ----------------kin

  shit -----------------jid

  similar --------------ro

  sky ------------------loshai

  snow ----------------pelima

  solitary -------------jath

  speak ---------------vass

  spill -----------------ra

  spoil ----------------lafi

  still ----------------- tash

  stop -----------------nahara

  strike ---------------bish

  terrible -------------tehji

  time / year-----------ayal

  to be lost --------- --gasmya

  to drink ------------siraya

  to eat ----------------nabiya

  to harm -------------ratimya

  to kill ---------------rashiya

  tree (fruit) ----------isma

  tree bark ------------istana

  ugly/ bad ----------mulhi

  unholy /unclean --korud

  water/drink --------sira

  weasel -------------ganal

  what ---------------bati

  when --------------bayal

  where -------------bamura

  white --------------pesha

  who ---------------ban

  why ---------------bahab

  wine --------------- vishan

  witch --------------tahjid

  woman/ female ---vur

  yellow /gold--------jima/ ji

  yes -----------------du

  Pronouns

  he him -----------vun

  his -----------------vun’um

  they(all male) -----vun’im

  she/her ------------vur

  hers ----------------vur’um

  they (all female) ---vur’im

  they(mixed) ------ pun’im

  theirs --------------pun’um

  I/me ---------------li

  mine ---------------li’um

  we/us --------------li’im

  ours ----------------lim’un

  you ----------------yura

  yours ---------------yura’um

  you (plural) ---- ---yura’im

  yours (plural) ----- yura’un