by Lev AC Rosen
“Yes,” Dad says, using his careful voice. “But she forgets things, Nick. That’s what the disease is.”
“She’d remember the game,” Nick says. He knows arguing that Mom isn’t sick, not the way they think, will just prolong the conversation. But the information about the meds confirms a new possible alternative to Alzheimer’s. He takes another pancake. He can feel Dad’s eyes on him but chooses not to look over. “So can you answer any of the questions for homework?” He eats as Dad looks it over.
“Well, something she ‘remembers hating about her childhood’ is the food, I know that.”
“The food?”
“In East Berlin, they got only certain brands of food—really cheap stuff, and what they had at the store varied wildly from week to week. And, of course, they were only allowed to buy so much. They used ration coupons, I think. But what there was was crap. Your mom used to have to do a lot of the cooking after her dad got sick.” Dad stops talking for a moment and stares at his pancake. Nick looks over at him. The room feels very hushed now, like the strange quiet of a church. Nick holds his breath, hoping Dad will say what exactly his grandfather was like, hoping there’ll be some clue. “Anyway,” Dad continues with a shake of his head, “she came here, and she was thrilled to be able to cook with all these different, higher-quality brands—all these new foods. That’s how she became such a good cook. I was never allowed in the kitchen—she wanted to do it all.”
“That’s what she hated the most?” Nick asks, annoyed that nothing more has been said about his grandfather. “Not her friends vanishing in the night or being cut off from the world?”
“Well…that’s what she talked about to me,” Dad says. Nick takes another pancake and cuts into it with his fork. The bottom of this one is burned, and crackles as it breaks. Nick takes a different one. He thinks of how the dwarves and elves below Wellhall had nothing to eat but algae and mushrooms.
“Did Mom…protest?” he asks Dad. “I’ve seen some videos online, of people marching and the wall coming down. Was she there?”
“No,” Dad says, and shakes his head. “She didn’t want to get arrested. But she marched a few times, at the very end. She wanted to get out of there really badly, to run away, and she couldn’t do that if she was arrested. Her dad was a cobbler—made shoes. And her mom was a secretary. By the time your mom was ten, though, her dad wasn’t working, so her mom had to work long hours, and it was just her and her dad. And then her mom died five years later.” Nick opens his mouth to ask what that was like, but his father, staring at his pancakes, just keeps talking. “Her life was hard, and really scary. Scarier than you can imagine, I think. That’s why you have to be careful about asking her about that sort of thing. It reminds her of the stuff from her past. We don’t want to remind her of that. Okay?”
“Okay,” Nick says. But he knows that it’s fear that’s keeping her in the home—that’s what she has to overcome. “You and Mom said that Grandpa—Mom’s dad—that he had Alzheimer’s, too, right?”
Dad nods.
“So is that why everyone thinks she has it?”
His father looks up at him, his eyes narrowing like he’s just caught Nick saying a dirty word. “Mom does have it,” Dad says, and stands up. He puts his fork on his plate and takes it to the sink.
“But is that why Mom went into the home?” Nick says, trying to get the conversation back on track. “Even though she’s not that sick? Was taking care of her dad hard? Does she just not want that for me? Because I don’t mind taking care of her if she forgets her car keys or something. I can start putting that stuff away, so I remember where it is. And we had fun cooking the other night, so she doesn’t have to do that anymore. I mean, you probably shouldn’t try pancakes without me….” He trails off, staring at his father. Dad’s back is to him, but Nick can see his shoulders hunch over, slowly, like stone settling after an earthquake.
“Nick,” he says, without turning, “just trust that we know what’s best for you.” Nick can’t see his dad’s face, but his voice isn’t angry. It cracks like the old ropes of Bridgefall, creaking in the wind, holding up a great weight. Nick’s desire to fight back, to demand answers, fades at this. He is left silent.
“Let’s see,” Dad says in his normal voice, turning back around. “What else is on here?” He sits down at the table and picks up the questionnaire again, and Nick stares at him for a moment. He won’t get answers this way, he knows. He’ll still have to find the answers on his own.
They go over the questionnaire for about an hour, but Nick doesn’t feel like he learns anything new. Maybe a little about East Berlin, but nothing about Mom. People were poor, the secret police were terrifying and controlled not just the people but also the information that got into the country. The news was twisted so that capitalism always looked like it was failing. And that all sounds awful, but Nick doesn’t know what it has to do with Mom.
“That place was like a disease,” Dad says. “That’s what your mom used to say. She said East Berlin was like a disease.”
“Okay,” Nick says. He leans back in his chair. There’s one pancake left, but Nick doesn’t want it.
“Is that enough?” Dad asks.
“I’m supposed to talk to Mom about this,” Nick sighs. “I know you’re trying to help. But this is about Mom, not you. Can we go see her?”
Dad picks up Nick’s plate and walks it over to the sink. “I thought we’d give her a day to rest up,” he says, putting their dishes in the dishwasher.
“Rest up from what?” Nick asks.
“Well, just seeing us,” Dad says, closing the dishwasher and not looking at Nick. “It can be a little exhausting, you know, hosting people you love after you’ve moved.”
“She saw us every day until a week ago,” Nick says.
“It’s different now,” Dad says, turning around. His voice is steelier.
“Fine,” Nick says. “I’m going to go play my game.” He gets up and walks away from the table. He feels the ragebrew again, the prick of the needle a clear throbbing on the back of his neck. He rubs at it as he walks up the stairs.
“And do your homework!” Dad calls after him.
Nick ignores this, walking up the stairs with heavy footfalls, like a marching soldier. The questionnaire is squeezed into a spear in his hand. He opens the door to his room and slams the door shut, making his room cave-dark. He doesn’t know why he’s so angry, or even who he’s angry at. He knows he should feel a hundred other things—sadness, fear—and he does, but somehow the anger always comes rising to the top, red and boiling. He feels it swell up in him like a tide, and so he takes a deep breath, sits down in front of the TV, and turns on the game.
THE UNDERCITY skyline seems to be made of small glowing eyes. Every building in the huge cavern—and there are easily thousands of them—is outlined in dots of light that quiver in place. But they’re only little oil lamps, Severkin sees as they walk through the carved arch that marks the border between cave and city. A few dwarves with large axes and full metal-plate armor stand on either side of the gateway and eye them warily, but Reunne flashes her guard badge and this seems to appease them.
“Where do we drop off the package?” Severkin asks.
“I want to show you something first,” Reunne says. “Just follow me.”
Reunne leads him through the undercity of Wellhall. The buildings and the cavern towering over them are all the same brown earth color, and the oil lamps keep the city in perpetual twilight, carving shadows into every corner and street. Severkin’s instinct to hide tells him this would be an easy place to do so. The shadows are thick as wool. He could already have passed a dozen invisible people, all watching him, and he wouldn’t have known. They hadn’t spoken much after Reunne had mentioned the Sword and Shield at the farm colony.
Something about the way she had talked of the Sword and Shield made him nervous, and unwilling to continue the conversation as they made their way to the city. He doesn’t feel much safer here,
but she does, apparently. He wonders what she wants to show him.
Almost everyone here is a dwarf. Severkin feels the hairs on his neck stand up. He’s been in dwarven encampments before, of course, but he was always lurking, invisible. And none were ever as big as this place. He can’t see the ceiling, just oil lamps growing smaller and smaller above him, like winking stars.
Reunne leads him past the blocky buildings, all confusingly alike, down street after sand-and-dirt-covered street. Windows are tinted, muffled brown glows with only fuzzy shadows behind them. Severkin can’t tell if he’s actually being watched or if it just feels that way.
He notices there are fewer dwarves on the streets Reunne leads him down. They’re emptier. The windows in these houses aren’t glowing, and it’s quiet enough to hear every footfall. Severkin spots a few other gray elves, but they don’t look up. They scurry around, keeping their heads down like slaves.
“This is the gray elf district,” Reunne explains. “And this is my home.” She pushes open a narrow gate and gestures for Severkin to go inside. They are in a small courtyard, better maintained than the rest of the neighborhood, with a bench and a low, bubbling fountain. The house at the end of the courtyard is very dwarvish-looking—square and narrow, more like a guard tower than a house.
“Nice,” Severkin says.
“There’s another place like this for sale just down the road,” Reunne says, unlocking the front door, which seems to be made of woven roots. “It’ll need some fixing up to get as nice as mine, though.” She opens the door and walks in. Severkin follows. Inside is a strange melding of dwarf and gray elf: the traditional gold-and-brown stone tiles of the dwarves and walls strung with gray elf tapestries, not dwarven weapons. A fire is already burning in the hearth.
“I have a maid who keeps things tidy while I’m away,” Reunne explains. “She’s the only one who stayed when they opened up Bilrost Hall and we could go to the overcity. Most of the elves left.”
“But not you,” Severkin notes.
“I’m going to show you why,” Reunne says, walking to the back of the entry room they’re in. There’s a stairway leading up, but Reunne walks around it to another stairway, leading down. Severkin follows her downstairs to a small room that reminds him of the gray elf shrines to the god Wodea. There are dried flowers strung from the ceiling and a ceremonial staff sticking up out of the center of the floor. The dirt smells smokier here, and floral from the incense. He knows many gray elf families have shrines like these in their homes, but usually there’d be an altar of some kind. Here there is only a huge stone wall.
“This is my family’s memory wall,” Reunne says, gesturing at the wall. It’s a huge slab, and carved into it is a pattern of some sort. Severkin walks up to it, careful to sidestep the small incense burners on the floor. “We’ve kept track of where we come from, for generations, since the split.” Severkin examines the carvings. They’re ornate, with names carved in high gray elf script, connected by lines, and surrounded with flourishes and small symbols Severkin recognizes as representing birth or marriage.
“It’s a family tree,” Severkin says. The names are carved in feather-fine lettering, and they go on forever—hundreds of names. A few feet from the bottom is only one, though: REUNNE.
“We don’t have trees down here,” Reunne says. “Roots, but no trees. All the gray elf families who stayed have memory walls. Many left them behind when they went to the overcity. I couldn’t. This is my family, my history. This is everything I am.”
“I see,” Severkin says. But he doesn’t, really. He had no parents, no sense of family aside from his late mentor. He’d always been alone. But looking at the wall, Severkin still feels a strange tug in his chest, as though it’s somehow calling to him. He stares down at Reunne’s solitary name. He doesn’t think it would be hard for him to leave it, but maybe he can see how it would be hard for her to. “It’s powerful,” he says. To know your place, to be a part of something—he has never had that.
“I just wanted you to see. I know you find me an oddity. A lot of people do now. Since the cities were connected, so many elves went back up top. But I wanted you to know I have my reasons for staying, and I wanted you to know that though we may have had different upbringings, we are kin.”
“Kin?” Severkin says. The word feels strange.
“Aye,” Reunne says. “I know you weren’t raised here, but look—” Reunne reaches forward and touches her name. “This is me,” she says as she follows the lines up, name after name, tracing them with her fingers so quickly that Severkin feels sure it is something she’s been doing since she was a child. “This one, he helped create the original device that put the giants to sleep. This one is Morara, the warrior priestess who single-handedly fended off the Orcish invasion….” Her hand traces up and up, her wrist gently spiraling like breath on a cold day. “And here,” she says, touching a name on the top, “is the one we call the Grayfather, who founded Wellhall, over a thousand years ago. All gray elves can trace their lineage to him. So can you, even if you don’t know it. We’re kin.”
Severkin knows the legend of the Grayfather, though he’s not sure he believes it. But at that moment, watching Reunne’s hands—old hands, worn like porous cliffs by the sea—and seeing her fingers tap the name of the Grayfather, he wants to believe in him. Wants to believe that he’s found family after so many years alone—that he’s found kin. The desire swells in him like being hit with a heavy charm spell, but like a charm spell, the connection feels unwieldy—too much too soon. And, after all, the Grayfather is just a myth.
“I just wanted you to understand,” Reunne says. “We’re not so different.”
“I understand, Reunne,” Severkin says, reassuring her. He smiles.
She reaches out and pushes some of his hair back behind his ear, then quickly pulls her hand back. “I haven’t had another elf in here in years,” Reunne says, shaking her head.
Severkin stares at the memory wall, his eyes falling back to Reunne’s name. It’s alone, no brothers or sisters, and her mother’s name has a mark next to it showing she’s passed on. But her father has a symbol next to it he doesn’t recognize.
“Is your father living?” he asks.
Reunne stares at him a moment, then looks at the incense burners on the floor. “I’m not sure. He disappeared.” She picks up one of the incense burners from the floor and looks inside it. “Empty. I’ll bring it up.” She heads back to the stairs, and Severkin follows. He wants to ask about her father, but she clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. As they leave the place, the cloying smell of old roses fades and Severkin feels colder, a little more alone. He watches Reunne walk up the stairs and wonders if maybe they are kin—not in the way she means—but in their spirits. Her loneliness resonates with his, and that might mean more than lines on a wall.
Reunne places the incense burner on the upstairs mantel. “I guess we should deliver this,” she says, patting the satchel on her belt. “You want to come? You can apply for the guard while we’re at it.”
Severkin purses his lips, remembering what Rel had told him about applying for the guard in the overcity, not under.
“Actually, you can do that alone, if you don’t mind. Can you take me to the…staircase? The way to the overcity?”
Reunne looks disappointed but nods. “Rel warned you off Elega? Probably wise. She’s not so bad once you get to know her, though. And you’ll have to talk with her eventually if you want to advance in the guard.”
“Still,” Severkin says, tilting his head slightly, “perhaps if I can delay that meeting…”
“Good idea,” Reunne says, one corner of her mouth turning up. “I’ll walk you to Bilrost Hall.”
Reunne leads him out of the house and locks up before taking him back into the labyrinthine city. This time she leads him to a new part of town, one that looks different. There are statues here, and large open squares with fountains. The buildings are wider and have domed roofs covered in gold tiles.
“That’s the guardhouse, where Elega is,” Reunne says, pointing at a particularly sharp-looking building with a huge carved snake coiled over the door. “And that’s our palace,” she says, pointing at the largest of the buildings, one with a courtyard and fountain out front. It seems softer than the other buildings, and the gold tiles cover all of it, so it looks like a huge mountain of treasure, studded with gems here and there above the windows.
“Impressive,” Severkin says.
“And here we are,” Reunne says, stopping at what seems to be a small wooden door placed haphazardly into a huge wall of natural stone. It’s practically hidden amid the intimidating buildings that surround them.
“Seriously?” Severkin asks.
“When the lower city shut themselves off, they put up this wall. Through there were guards, traps, beasts, and another wall. Now it’s all dirt.” She opens the door and Severkin follows her, hunching over slightly to get through the door. There are a few guards standing just inside, but they don’t say anything. In front of them is what looks like another courtyard, but as Reunne said, it’s just dirt. Reunne walks across it to another wall, and Severkin follows. This is a more ornate wall, with huge metal doors, already slightly open.
“We should take down the outer wall,” Reunne says with a sigh. “It would make trade between above and below easier. But some things are slow to change, even now.” She slips through the opening in the metal doors, and Severkin follows. “Some things change too fast, though,” she says.
Severkin looks up at Bilrost Hall. Hall isn’t really the right term, he decides. It’s a tower, completely filled by a spiral staircase wide enough to lead eight horses up, side by side. But the scale of the staircase isn’t as fascinating as the material it’s made of—it looks to be carved from solid white opal, and it glimmers in pearl and rainbow hues, glowing from within. Set up along the outer wall of the staircase, against the edge of the tower and ascending with the stairway as far as he can see, are stalls displaying jewelry, spices, dried roots, fruit, all calling out to Severkin to buy them. Most of the merchants here are elves, selling fruit and vegetables from the overworld, but most of the people purchasing are dwarves. Severkin remembers that dwarves ate nothing but algae and mushrooms for centuries. They must find the apples and leeks from the overworld to be exotic.