Alexander C. Irvine

by A Scattering of Jades

  Prescott called out, interrupting Stephen’s reverie. “What’s down here?” he said, dropping to his knees in front of the branch passage that led to the bottom of Bottomless Pit.

  Damn, Stephen thought. Why’d I bring him this way? But he knew the answer to that question. Because you needed a reason, that’s why.

  Stephen had hoped that the chacmool’s fears about Prescott were groundless, but now Prescott had perked up like a dog seeing a squirrel both times he’d passed a direct path to the Mummy

  Room. He could sense the chacmool somehow, and it knew that. More than knew: the chacmool feared Prescott.

  “That hole, I’m not sure where it goes,” Stephen lied. “It’s a big cave. Lot more passages I haven’t been through than ones I have.”

  Something odd struck him then, as he walked back to where Prescott crouched. The front of Prescott’s coverall was moving. It twitched as if something alive was inside, trying to get out. Had that been happening when he’d looked down into Bottomless Pit? Stephen was certain he would have noticed if it had, but then again it was awful hard to not look at one of those torches, throwing light on walls no man had ever touched.

  That’s how he does it, how he senses the chacmool. Some kind of charm around his neck.

  “Is this where you found it?” Prescott asked, like he hadn’t heard Stephen before.

  “No, like I said, I’ve never been down there. Come on, Mr. Prescott. The place you want to see is farther ahead.” And please don’t you call this bluff. Don’t make me do something I don’t want to do.

  Prescott looked up at him then, saw Stephen’s gaze focused on the front of his shirt, and clapped a hand over whatever was wriggling inside. “It’s a—a magnet,” he stammered. “Must be some strange metals near here. The mummy, it reacted strangely to magnetism, so I thought …” His voice trailed off.

  Sure, we’re under three hundred feet of limestone, and he’s got a magnet that jitters like water on a hot griddle, Stephen thought. “Come on, Mr. Prescott, what you want to see is up here,” he said, trying to keep the urgency from his voice. He reached out and laid a hand on Archie’s shoulder.

  A dam broke in Stephen’s mind, and a torrent of voices exploded into his head. All of them, laughing and yelling like they hadn’t spoken in years, their words flying by too fast to catch. Stephen reeled away from Prescott, numbed by the endless clamor in his mind and one single thought cutting through: He brought them back. The chacmool hushed them, but Prescott brought them back.

  The rush of voices faded to a murmur as Stephen broke contact with Prescott, but they didn’t go away completely. Like they had from the moment he’d first stepped into the cave as a seventeen-year-old boy, the voices flowed in a steady undercurrent through Stephen’s mind, a muttered chaos of languages that made him feel at home again.

  How can I kill him now?

  He realized he was staring at Prescott, and fumbled for something to cover up his strange behavior. “Lost my balance there.”

  “Ah,” Prescott said, his face giving nothing away. “Right. Well, let’s go see the ch—”

  “This way,” Stephen said. He helped Archie to his feet and led him deeper into the cave.

  Steven continued pointing out and naming the cave’s prominent features, but he seemed distracted, performing the role of guide almost as an afterthought. And the names began to sound like grim jokes: River Styx, Lake Lethe, Purgatory.

  Even the boat ride along the River Styx and Lethe gave Archie a chill, with Stephen rowing quietly and the water like liquid night. I’m so glad he isn’t poling, Archie thought. I don’t think I could take it.

  After they had left the river complex behind them and begun a gentle ascent, Archie asked Stephen how much farther they had to go.

  “Oh, I imagine it’s another four miles yet. You tired, Mr. Prescott?”

  “No, just curious. How long will it take to get there and back?” Stephen appeared to consider the question. “Should be out right around sunset,” he said finally.

  Archie was glad that the river had proved low enough that they could continue past it, but he wasn’t fool enough to think that he could retrace the route they’d taken without Stephen’s help. I’m going to have to tell him soon, Archie thought. He saw the talisman moving on my chest—he must know something out of the ordinary is going on. Probably I should have told him right away, and just taken my chances. It was too late for that, though; there would be quite an interesting conversation whenever they did stop for lunch.

  The aspect of the cave began to change around them as the riverine passages dropped away behind. The spacious, ovoid passages that made up the greater part of the Main Cave had given way to narrower, high-ceilinged canyons. In crevices, Stephen pointed out gypsum flowers, tiny delicate tendrils of stone that looked like a million snowflakes all in a row. At times Stephen and Archie straddled protruding shelves on either side of such a passage and made their way ahead with the floor lost to sight below.

  Archie had a growing sense that while the halls nearer the entrance were laid out in some kind of comprehensible pattern, these winding canyons formed a many-leveled maze. Several times he thought they passed a section of cave that he’d seen before, only to have it dip or curve in an unexpected way. The floor grew muddy again, and small pools gleamed occasionally in the light of Stephen’s lamp.

  Abruptly the passage they were following doubled back and shrunk into a crawl. Archie hesitated, feeling panic begin to nibble at his composure again, but Stephen reassured him. “This one’s quite a bit longer than Winding Way,” he said, “but it’s not so tight. And what’s on the other end makes it worth your while.” With that he scrambled in, pushing the lamp ahead of him.

  Archie followed, his knees already raw, locking his gaze onto Stephen’s light so he wouldn’t freeze at the thought of the ceiling an inch above his head. There was plenty of lateral room, though, unlike Winding Way, and he fell into a rhythm—elbow, knee, elbow, knee, and don’t look up.

  Standing again, Archie found himself smiling. His fear had broken, or been transformed into exhilaration. After all, how many people had done what he was doing? Some, to be sure, but crawling through miles of muddy cave was hardly a commonplace activity. And the subterranean beauty was growing on him, seducing him by its stark, gloomy grandeur. “There’s no other place on earth like this, is there?” he said.

  Stephen grinned. “You think that now, wait another few minutes.”

  Over the next mile or so, they passed three giant domes, each one causing Archie to stop dead and gape at the sheer size of them. They towered farther than the lights could reach, and dropped away below the rocky lip Archie and Stephen traversed, their far walls barely shadowed. “Good place for a bite to eat, don’t you think?” Stephen said at the last dome. They had climbed down into it, stopping at a level place with tremendous stone blocks standing like monuments around them.

  “Oh, yes,” Archie breathed, and Stephen unshouldered his bag, taking out paper-wrapped roasted chicken and a block of cheese. He nipped at his flask and offered it to Archie, who again declined. There was something about this place that made him want to experience it without the filter of spirits.

  Now I’m beginning to understand how a man could spend so much time down here, Archie thought. Perhaps I’m beginning to understand Stephen a bit. This hint of common ground cheered Archie, giving him a feeling of camaraderie. It was time to explain a few things; Stephen would understand.

  “Have any … well, strange things been happening near here recently?” he asked.

  “Cave’s always full of strangeness,” Stephen replied between bites of chicken. “Get people under the ground, away from light, it’s like sailors alone at sea. They start seeing things. People tell me all the time they can see in the dark when I put out the light. Maybe they can. I can’t, but there’s times in the dark when I feel like a bat must feel, making pictures in its head when it can’t use its eyes. You ever been in absolute dark, Mr.
Prescott? Dark with no glow from a star or gaslight or anything else? Five-miles-deep-in-a-cave dark?”

  Archie shook his head.

  “Tell you this, you can feel it. Feel it touching your skin. Even the tiniest light takes all the weight from darkness, but down here it’s heavy. Pushes in from every direction. I read Plato once, you know that? The allegory of the cave.” He savored each syllable. “Bet you didn’t think slaves could read.”

  “I know quite a few whites who can’t,” Archie said, but Stephen didn’t seem to hear him.

  “Plato said that the people chained in the cave saw only shadows of the real things outside. Well, I been chained to this cave since I was a boy, and I get the feeling sometimes that the shadows down here are what’s real. All that up there,” he said, waving at the darkness over their heads, “they’re the shadows. They hide what’s real. It stays buried down here like it’s waiting to be born.”

  Archie began to feel that Stephen was playing a game with him again, that he was intoxicated by the reversal of power that had taken place sometime since they’d left the surface. What has he seen? What does he know? Archie wanted to stand up and shout, “Where’s the chacmool, Stephen? What has it done with my daughter?” But he was helpless, completely at the mercy of Stephen’s knowledge of the cave, and all he could do was nod silently and wait to see what Stephen would do next.

  “I’m not a scientist,” Archie said.

  “I know. What are you, Mr. Prescott?”

  “I’m looking for my daughter,” Archie said in a rush. “She’s been—stolen away, and I think she’s here. I know she’s here.”

  The words hung in the air for a long time. Archie waited for Stephen to react, certain now that he knew something. But how much? What was his role in all of this? He fell back on Tamanend’s words again, picking them apart in the hope that they would offer some guidance.

  Seek the Mask-bearer. He is torn, and you must give him peace.

  Give him peace. Why was he torn? What could Archie do to give him peace? Stephen remained silent, brooding over the struggling glow of his lamp.

  Now or never, Archie thought. “Stephen, I need to see the room where you found the chacmool. It has my daughter, and I mean to have her back.”

  Seconds passed, stretched into the sort of moment in time that could only occur when important words hung unspoken: a moment pregnant with an awful imminence. Archie was conscious of everything around him: the invisible vastness of the dome over their heads, the smell of smoke from Stephen’s lamp, the chill of the rocks on which he sat, the sound of his own voice in his head saying again I mean to have her back. Still Stephen sat, as if he had become mummified himself, rooted to the cave floor by the passage of that endless moment.

  Finally he stood and shouldered his satchel. Gesturing with the lamp, he said, “Up here. There’s something up here I think you should see.”

  A few minutes later, Stephen halted Archie. “This is what darkness is,” he said, and put out his lamp.

  Archie closed his eyes, heard the sound of water falling, opened them again. All he could see were bright images of the lamp flame, and those faded in a few seconds, leaving him in a darkness more absolute than he could have imagined. He could feel it, just as Stephen had said he would, a gentle weight resting against his skin, reminding him of the way the breath of the cave had seemed like ghostly, inquisitive fingers. But this darkness asked no questions. It knew the answers already.

  He felt in the midst of an immense space, supported by the press of the dark. He couldn’t feel his own weight, couldn’t tell where his feet ended and the floor began. This is the darkness of a child in the womb, he thought, or of a soul loosed from its body. He thought that if a light were suddenly to return, he would see himself exhaling darkness, watch it trail away into the shadows. Light was an absence of dark, he realized, not the other way around.

  Stephen lit a match, its eager flame like a hummingbird sun. He lit three cotton torches and used a stick to fling them away onto ledges high up on the walls of a mammoth series of domes. Five, Archie counted, forming a semicircle each higher than light from a torch could reach. He saw the stream of water he’d heard, separating into jeweled drops as it fell through the light to patter on the rocky floor.

  “I’ve never been here before,” Stephen said. “Heard it. Knew it had to be big, but never came this far.”

  The torches burned low, bringing the dark out to reclaim the majesty of the domes. “I like to show visitors a little virgin cave,” Stephen said. “You got a feel for the cave, Mr. Prescott. You’ve done better than most.”

  “It’s like a cathedral,” Archie breathed, as the torches faded to afterimages in his blind eyes. “If this is where you found the chacmool, I understand why it chose this place.”

  “Chacmool’s all through the cave, Mr. Prescott. Everywhere. It’s in the darkness you feel and the peculiar grand gloom you see. This is the chacmool’s place.” Stephen’s voice floated into the space, coming from no fixed point.

  “It can have this place,” Archie said. “But it can’t have my daughter.”

  After a pause, Stephen answered. “No, it can’t have this place, Mr. Prescott. Your chacmool is all through this place, but it’s my place, too. The world, up there, doesn’t know that. Nothing up there is mine. But there’s a new world, waiting to be born.” Archie heard his feet scuff on the dusty stone floor.

  “You brought the voices back, Mr. Prescott, and for that I know you’re a good man. And you’re trying to save your daughter cause she’s all you have, isn’t she? Well, this new world is all I have, and your daughter’s only one girl.”

  The darkness folded around Archie as he realized what was happening. He’d been right yesterday. The chacmool had laid a trap for him in the cave, and he’d walked right into it. “Stephen, please …”

  “No, Mr. Prescott. I can’t give this up.”

  Something clattered hollowly against the rocks near where Stephen stood. “If you are what I think you are, that’ll lead you out. I was supposed to kill you, but I can’t do that.”

  “My daughter, Stephen. Please.” Archie held out his hands and found nothing to support him. “Please don’t leave me here.”

  Stephen made no reply. The quiet crunch of his footsteps faded away.

  “Don’t leave me, Stephen! Stephen!” Archie’s voice rose to a broken scream. He kept screaming Stephen’s name, paralyzed by the crushing darkness all around.

  Fifth Nemontemi, 1-Grass—April 2, 1843

  Stephen felt like he was sleepwalking as he passed the mouth of the cave on his way to the toolshed. Ground fog lay heavily among the trees and obscured the path, but his feet seemed to know their own way. The sun had just risen, but the dawn had no freshness. Its light seemed like another strange kind of fog, clinging to things, dripping from branches and twisting birdsongs into unrecognizable murmurs. He hadn’t slept again, lying awake next to Charlotte with his mind cluttered by gabbling voices. Twice during the night she had rolled against him and begun stroking his stomach, trailing her fingers through the curly hairs that grew there. Both times he had stopped her before she went any further, emasculated by the tumult in his head and his conflicted conscience. He had felt like warning her away, saying I’m one small step from a murderer, blossom. One very small step. And then he had burned with desire to make love, crush her to him, and when she had fallen back to the edge of sleep, speak to her. Justify himself: If it’s not just for me? If it’s for our children, for every black child who could be born and live and be able to say I am free?

  Would that make it all right?

  Maybe he had slept. In the darkest hours, anyway, he hadn’t exactly been awake. At times the voices had subsided into a quiet rushing noise like faraway rapids; at other moments he’d had to hold the blankets tightly to remind himself where he was. Fires had sprung up in the corners of the room, then faded out, leaving a stinking roasted odor behind. Charlotte muttered sleepy complaints and tossed on
the bed, uneasy but not alarmed enough to wake up.

  It had not been sleep, Stephen decided, but he hadn’t been awake. He’d passed the night somewhere in between, in a place where he could see and smell dreams that weren’t his own. And somewhere deep inside he was certain that no living man had dreamed those dreams.

  He hadn’t been able to return from the place, either; it was still all around him as he popped the shack’s door open. The chirp of warped wood set off a fresh flurry of voices, but he couldn’t pin any of them down. Prescott brought the voices back, Stephen thought, but I can’t understand them anymore. Was that because of Prescott or something in Stephen himself?

  I am not a murderer. I do this for the Bishops and Bransfords who aren’t yet born. Her life is not worth all of theirs.

  Jane’s appearance shocked him. Her skin had grown nearly transparent from days without sun and her eyes blinked feverishly deep in their sockets. She was so thin that Stephen could see the pulse under her jaw. The blanket he’d brought her lay flung in a corner, wrapped partly around a rusting shovel, and she hadn’t touched any food in at least two days, since the dried apples. The rest of the food he’d brought her lay exactly where he’d left it.

  Worst of all were the scabs. Stephen had seen fading scars on her face and hands when the chacmool brought her, and even then she had been picking at the scabs, but they had been few and small—just normal from the itch of a healing burn. Now the scabs had grown to cover one entire side of her face, nearly closing one eye and pulling the right corner of her mouth into a smirk. They covered her hands as well, fusing the fingers together into single crooked hooks. Still she stroked the green quetzal feathers, and the feathers stroked her back, leaving fresh lumps of scab wherever they grazed unblemished skin.