Mr Wicker

by Maria Alexander

  Drunos examined Quintus blearily. Lathed with buttery streaks and threads of silver, the druid’s hair and beard lay in shaggy shanks about his head. Drunos noted the amazement on Quintus’ face as he examined the cataloguing. “It is not half finished.”

  “So that’s why the numbering is so mysterious.”

  “I don’t mean the catalogue.”

  “You mean—?”

  Drunos nodded and sighed. He coughed noisily, his lungs soaked with rheum.

  “Drunos, I cannot afford any more parchment. If you would like wax tablets, I can arrange for those.” His eyes locked with the druid’s and guilt dampened his eyes. “Caesar is very interested in what you are writing. He would supply you with more parchment, but he wants to know what has spurred such blasphemy.”

  “I am in deep gratitude to you, Quintus. But I shall never give Caesar the pleasure of knowing,” Drunos replied. And then the Jura rose behind his eyes, its rocky shoulders draped with a thick fleece of clouds and snow. At the feet of the Jura stretched thousands of acres of burned Helvetian farmland. An endless sea of ash. “I must return home,” he whispered.

  “It is time.”

  Drunos suffered those days as he crossed through the Sequani territory on his way back to the Helvetii. Tara Nis showered him with early winter rains that numbed his face and feet. The baptism of exile. Drunos accepted the cleansing and humbly licked the droplets from his lips. Before bedding for the night, he checked the hundreds of parchments tightly bundled in lambskins to keep out the lament of nature. His precious athenaeum. Keeper of memory.

  His Sequani cousins gave him no trouble as he passed. The speckles of his druid robe attracted offerings of food and passionately sworn lugjoi of devotion. Drunos accepted the offerings and oaths. Everyone asked what the druid carried in his cart, but he responded that he brought back personal belongings of Gauls lost in the battle at Genava. This they believed readily as many of them were already corrupted by the Roman consumerism: the need for things to define life rather than the simplicity of nature.

  Drunos knew what a dangerous situation awaited him if he returned with the blasphemous cargo. But who would know what the parchments contained? Who could read, much less decipher Latin? Thousands of lines had been transliterated from Gaulish to Latin letters. Still, not a soul would know. Nor would he tell them. But could he lie? And would they feel betrayed by his Roman writing in the face of their defeat?

  Where else would he go? A wanderer with cursed luggage. No rest. His precious parchments to be pillaged by rival tribes. No, he must return home and convince his tribe of their imminent extinction.

  The druid’s cart rumbled into a blackened field, the razed cornstalks crackling under the heavy wheels. Smoke drifted in vague patches over a village at the far end of the valley. Drunos guided his horses toward it in the autumn’s early morning. Three young women on white mares rode out to greet him, the horses’ hooves silently cutting the burnt ground. Spirits of Eponâ. Goddess of fate. Guide of the dead. As they approached, faces and hands dissipated like candle smoke. Even the flesh of the mares dissolved in the winds.

  The village was inhabited by about fifty survivors of the migration. They recognized Drunos and offered him what wine they had left. A young woman made him a place to sleep in the corner of one of the larger huts. “I need to see Litu,” he said to her. When she placed an icy hand on his cheek, he realized that a sickness boiled under his skin.

  “Litugenalos?”

  He nodded, half faint.

  “You sleep,” she said, returning to the fire where others sat and talked. “We will find him.”

  He reached out to her. “And my cart—please.”

  “Drûis, what would you have us do with it?”

  The world dissolved in his eyes like the earth spirits.

  For the first time in his life, Drunos could not tell how long he had slept. His body no longer kept the hours. Nor the nights. When he awoke, hard hands seized his shoulders, arms, and legs, upending him from the bed. Someone pulled his robes over his head and yanked them from his body. Rugose, scarred faces with filthy beards and red eyes leered into his as someone twisted his arms behind him and wound heavy ropes around his hands. Feverish numbness gave way to the clarity of danger as Drunos struggled against the mob. Once they had properly bound him, they tied a rag over his eyes.

  They carried him from the hut into the darkness and heaved his body into a caged cart. Drunos fell into the straw and his shoulder struck a board with an ominous crack. The cage door swung shut like a thunderclap before someone dropped the iron pin in the lock.

  The cart rumbled for some way before it shuddered to a stop at the edge of a massive gathering. The Gauls’ voices blurred into an indistinct rattle of conversation as the tang of freshly cut wood spiked his nostrils.

  Not just wood. Wicker.

  Over the chanting of the sprawling crowd, Litu censured Drunos for his blasphemy and his crimes against his people. Two stout Gauls carried him up a steep staircase onto the narrow scaffolding. Chickens, hares, pigs, and other animals squawked and shrieked as they frantically battered cages with wings and snouts. A wicker door creaked open and Drunos was heaved forward into a wooden box. He scrambled to his knees. Someone tore off his blindfold.

  Welts swelled across Medudorix’s deformed features. A deep scar swept from his forehead into his withered eye socket and thinned at his jaw line. “The Romani fattened you while Rosmerta and Arctosa died from rape and torture. How could you betray us? How could you give them our sacred words?”

  “I did not betray you, Medu! I swear with my blood!”

  Medudorix spat on Drunos’ cheek. He slammed the wicker mesh door and the other Gaul dropped the lock pin into place. So many times had Drunos witnessed criminals burn to death in the towering wooden cage with its faceless head, the legs and arms crowded with sacrifices and kindling. Dry wood heaped around the feet of the giant wooden man.

  “You are isolated here, Medu!” Drunos shouted after him. “Our people are dying! Our tribes are vanishing.” Drunos stopped as Litu stood below him, using his a ceremonial staff to bless the sacrifice to Tara Nis.

  I bless the face.

  I bless the mind.

  I bless the breath.

  I bless the flesh.

  I bless the bone.

  I bless the blood.

  I bless the soul.

  He pointed the staff at Drunos. “But you—I curse. Yet no curse can cast you far enough from mercy.”

  “Litu, you condemn me with no trial! You would kill me for power!”

  “May you be a keeper of the most baneful memory—”

  “I DEMAND TO SEE THE COUNCIL!”

  “—a prisoner forever removed from the journey of souls.”

  He laid the tip of the ceremonial staff in a slave’s torch and then touched the woodpile with the staff. Soon the crowd behind him was illuminated by the flames of condemnation, revealing more druids from the Sequani and Boii standing with hands raised in sacred pleas to Tara Nis. A council of sorts had gathered during his fever and condemned him. In absentia.

  So few remained. As the smoke climbed the lattice of his prison, Drunos remembered the morning that he mounted the mare in the caravan camp, thousands of Helvetii forming a river before and after him. Arctosa standing on her brother’s steed and jumping to his arms.

  Little Bear.

  The great noise is just the voice of Tara Nis the Thunderer. He always speaks during times of change.

  Drunos collapsed back on his haunches and howled until the sound hollowed his soul. Flames blistered his cheeks and lips. As smoke engulfed his convulsing body, Drunos wept not only for his family, but for the death of Gaul. In the swirling cinders, he had visions of Roman legions that swarmed like angry bees as they steadily crushed one uprising after another until all of Gaul had been consumed by Caesar.

  Gaius Julius Caesar.

  Chapter 44

  It was early evening by the time Alicia’
s flight landed at Burbank Airport. As far as Alicia could tell, Los Angeles never grew dark. Autumn was green trees, coral-covered rooftops, and grainy hillsides faded with the haze of damp and dreams.

  She wore almost no makeup as she trudged through the compact airport. Her eyes found people of every shade, but none like her angel of cinder and secrets. She wore a black sweater and jeans, her nails filed down. Her overnight bag sagged heavily with the book. She didn’t plan to stay long.

  She drove between the legs and over the bellies of sleeping, grassy giants as she made her way down the highway toward Simi Valley. She felt the embers of his passion, a burning seed blown from the hand of Death to her dry lands. Desire was turning her bones to ash and leeching reason from her wits. She would drink the poison of his sweat. It was no sane thing, but neither was playing Marco Polo with a book. She saw from the highway a train tunnel boring into one of the giant’s verdant hips and her fingers once more felt the softness of his cheek, her soul the pain from those pale green eyes.

  In time the ink shall sing.

  In her childhood, roads were a fiction, something only adults saw and used. But now, as she drove up that old hill to her grandparents’ house, she realized that children don’t really see roads as much as they feel them. She felt the road and the driveway and the house face itself, and put names to those feelings that she hadn’t before: chaos, warmth, horror, love, and despair. The gravel road rolled beneath her rented compact and she pulled into the circular driveway before a large Spanish ranch-style house. The driveway cracked with age and quake as if one of the sleeping giants had lifted a lazy finger beneath. The house rested alone against the hillside. Elm trees in the front yard bowed to the strong Santa Ana winds. A “FOR SALE” sign loomed on the lawn.

  The sprawling, green field from her hypnosis sessions adjoined the house’s open lot. The nearest neighbor was about a quarter mile away. In the distance, the deadly train tracks rolled into the hillside.

  She sat in the car gathering her courage. She missed Dr. Farron. But she had done so much alone, she could not imagine having help. That’s just how you get yourself through things: alone. Men are useless. Family members are absent. Doctors are unreliable. And love? She’d never had it when she’d needed it most. Not from her father or her husband, and certainly none of her miserable lovers. (Why do people call them “lovers” when it’s just lust?) And there was no chance James would understand what had happened with either Dr. Sark or Mr. Wicker. Even if she already felt something deeper for James than she could admit—something more real and palpable than her interactions with the Librarian—he would not understand. Could not. She would face only his rejection.

  Alone. She definitely had to be alone.

  She didn’t bother to lock the car. Simi Valley was still provincial. With a bag slung over her shoulder, the Book inside, she went to one of the windows and peeked through the curtains.

  Her almost-seven-year-old self danced in the living room. A vivid phantom of memory. Little Alicia pranced out of the living room toward the kitchen in the back. Alicia tried to see more of the living room through the curtains. Some of the furniture had changed, and so had the carpeting. But the white stucco walls, from foyer to family room, were covered with oil paintings. Alicia wished she could examine every sweep and swirl of the bitter, dry landscapes lapped onto these canvases.

  Her grandfather’s paintings.

  Had they always been so dark?

  Alicia wandered past the garage to the side of the house. While walking down the side alley to the backyard, she noticed the kitchen window was open. The phantom of Little Alicia sang with her much younger, thirty-years-ago Phantom Grandmother. Alicia marveled at how happy her grandmother looked, how fresh compared to what she remembered from the last ten years or so. Grandma clutched a bowl of half-mixed potato salad at her waist as she sang alternate lines of the song.

  “N-G-O!”

  “B-I-”

  “N-G-O!”

  “And Bingo was his name-oh!” they sang together.

  “Yay!” Little Alicia cheered, clapping and spinning around.

  “Now,” her grandmother said, “why don’t you go play outside with your sister while I finish making lunch?”

  Alicia’s heart seized mid-beat as she bowed over the edge of the chasm of memory, arms out, on tiptoe.

  Little Alicia nodded and skipped toward the sliding glass door that led out to the patio.

  Alicia wondered where her grandfather was. The workshop in the garage! She doubled back and found the dirty window. She had passed it, thinking it too dim and knowing that Little Alicia would not go in there. Oh! Her grandfather. The bittersweet thought of seeing his phantom seized her with regret. Perhaps this was what she needed: to see him as he used to be.

  The window was so dirty; Alicia wiped it with her palm. She cupped the sides of her eyes and placed the edges of her hands against the glass, blocking out any glare. His paintings and works in progress hung or were propped up around her Phantom Grandfather. He sat painting, sipping scotch from a tumbler. He looked relaxed and introspective, putting the finishing touches on a painting of her that she’d forgotten about: Little Alicia wearing a rosy dress, surrounded by blooms. He must have sold it—although, given the way he gazed at it and lovingly attended to the details, he surely mustn’t have wanted to. It must have been out of necessity.

  Alicia turned from her grandfather and the grime on the window to see if she could spot the rose garden. Just as she thought of it, Little Alicia was sliding the patio door closed as her grandmother said, “I’ll call you two when lunch is ready.”

  “Okay!” Little Alicia said, and then bounded outside. Cupping her hands to her mouth, she called out, “Marco!”

  Dr. Farron drove straight to Oakland Airport and got on standby for Southwest, as they had flights leaving every fifteen to forty-five minutes. It took five minutes of internet sleuthing to find Alicia’s grandparents’ address. A location website sold him the skip trace for a reasonable fee. When he got the Alamo rental car, he sped off as fast as he could, relying on the general laxness of the Los Angeles County police to patrol the freeways. Highway 5 was crawling even at six-thirty p.m., which made him sweat until he reached Highway 118. He knew it would be a long, slow waltz over asphalt until he reached Simi Valley itself. He tried everything to slow down his mind as it raced. He wondered if he should have called the police. He wished he’d thought of it because the local police could have gotten there much faster than he ever possibly could. He could still call. But what would the police do? There had been no crime and she was not a missing person.

  Perhaps it was meant to be. Maybe Mr. Wicker told him to help her because he was the only one who could.

  That is, if anyone could.

  Alicia gauged the backyard territory. Everything was as it was labeled on the treasure map, including what had escaped her memory so completely:

  The circular arena of roses.

  Come into the garden, Maud.

  She heard his voice as she held out the book, the pencil scribbles tracing her path as she took childlike steps toward the circle of roses in the corner of the yard. There was no string of memory that she could tie to her ankle to find her way back. Little Alicia had disappeared. As Alicia approached the circle alone, the stiff stems of two blanching roses hung their blighted heads, Gog and Magog, as they arched across the opening to a circular concrete arena. Their stout stems bowed toward one another as they crossed like pikes, thorns murderously cuspate, preventing casual entry. Like the fairy woods in her book, the roses entwined above and below, a mass of mingling vegetation.

  As she approached, her grainy dream intercut with her vision of the rose garden. She realized that her dreams were never memories about the past at all, but rather visions of the future. Of this very moment unfolding.

  “...Polo!” she heard from within. A child’s voice.

  Holding the book against her with one hand, Alicia grasped the head of Magog and p
ulled the watcher from its post. The sentry fought her, like a child turning from its parent’s hold to seek some forbidden wonder, but she snapped its pulpy arm down at the base with her foot. She crushed the rose head in her palm, releasing its sickly perfume. She dropped it and, watching Gog, slipped beneath the sylvan girdle.

  Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes...

  She entered a rippling circle of wildishness and found Gog and Magog had marked both entry and treasure. October breezes rifled the blossoms, ripping their silken skirts from bare waists, as the aging blooms wove a tattered tent around the concrete where a young girl with mousey brown hair sat, humming as she posed her half-naked Barbie dolls. The roses’ fragile faces sagged from stiff necks, nodding at her as they wept petals.

  Squinting at the sun, the child upturned her sweet face to Little Alicia, who was filled with both sibling love and competitive rage as she knelt on the concrete and placed the book beside her. “Lilly! Gimme my dolls! They’re not yours!”

  The book pages waved on the cement behind her and the parchment blotted words from the air onto the numerous blank pages. A dark waltz began. Piano and sweet sopranos. Alicia realized with alarm she was no longer the obedient audience of memory but prisoner to the scrawls frantically scratching the book’s pages. She had become Little Alicia again.

  “You don’t play with them,” Lillian answered, her silvery medical alert bracelet dangling from her wrist. She was prone to seizures. Not as classically pretty as Alicia, her eyes were more deeply inset, her face broader and fatter. One eye strayed just a bit starboard while the other focused directly on Alicia. “You left them by my bed.”