The watchers still watched. He scoffed at his own stupidity. They would follow the Suzerain for several more days to guarantee the exodus from the Forbidden Lands. He wondered if he, alone and unarmed, could walk down to speak with them. They were the stone gnawers, the Dragons, the Lords of the Storm. They lived beneath the earth itself, or so some believed. It would certainly explain why their lands were empty. They fused the lightning into living creatures. They nearly killed him. Why? He had so many questions.
He knew nothing about them except what all Suzerain learned from the previous summer’s brief Duma. It was good to name that thing, too, the gathering his father once told him would find its own name. It was an old name from the world before. Some folk remembered it in their family histories.
The Dragons arrived dressed in their peculiar manner, wearing armor crafted from black materials that soaked up the sun. They wore helmets carved into fierce faces, each unique, some with long fangs jutting up from their lower jaws, others with high curved cheeks, all in the old style of the oni demons from the distant east.
Or so he was told. Still bedridden from the lightning attack, he lingered in the miniature death that was lasting fever while the tribes negotiated. The Dragons called them Horde. His peoples had refused the old insult, choosing their shared name in a single day. Camdzic came to him each night to share her angry understanding.
“We bow to them. We should kill them for the lives they steal.”
She said the same thing each of the five nights. He learned it did not matter what was actually discussed that day.
“We cannot kill messengers,” he said each time.
She would scowl, and leave, and return at dawn stinking of wild things. He understood. The attack on the Leyevi was one of a counted fifteen such messages. Each time, a trio walked up from the south to greet the first tribe they found. Lightning soon followed. Most tribes were less lucky than the Leyevi. Five tribes vanished from the face of the earth. He suspected there were more attacks they would never hear of. How many peoples were gone forever?
Lundoo brought softer news. He took care to note each comment, share it with Fen, and help him understand. Understanding the Dragons kept him alive. He thought about them night and day while he coughed up black fluid and considered his death. Nothing in all the tribes was as dangerous as these creatures who crawled from under the mountains. Citadels were their homes.
The word meant nothing, even when Lundoo tried to explain. No one could find their citadels. What did it matter? Lundoo tried to help him, Lundoo who came from an island called Angliya far west across the Hollow Lands, Lundoo who now spoke only truth to Fen.
“They ask for nothing,” Lundoo had told him, “except that we decide together which land is ours and which land is theirs.”
Fen knew Camdzic’s fury. To deny all peoples their right to wander far and wide was wrong. The land belonged to itself.
“Where do they say now?”
“North of the wide gobi. The Tibetans, the desert, and the Kobold bind us. They say nothing of the Hollow Lands to the west. They do not care where else we roam.”
“What are the conditions?”
“They will kill the whole tribe of anyone who breaks the agreement.”
Fen paused. He had no tribe left. His father was dead, his mother long gone in a way beyond death, his tribe scattered. Only Lundoo, Camdzic, and Omduro remained. Camdzic’s eye might not heal. She would leave if she lost it.
“We will accept,” he said.
“We will accept,” Lundoo muttered. “Treaties such as these do not end well for those who would live at peace beneath the sky.”
Fen’s sharp eyes darted back to the present and the watchers. He could see some of their features now. There were only ten. They did not seem so strong. He flexed the new burns of his hand and felt a familiar sliding of scales inside the flesh. Good. It grew back stronger.
The air tasted like wild flowers. It would take more than seven days to reach home if the Dara ran as softly as they guarded. Some would die along the way. The girl Mannu would live. His hand might infect, grow green and soft and reek of dying things. It might be an awful journey. He smiled as he chased his growing tribe. There would be no war today.
CHAPTER 23 - ELIZA
I’ve always been a smart kid. Teachers loved me because I could chirp facts back at them. But I just wanted them to leave me alone. Looking back, I was kind of a brat. Still am. My parents loved it, too. My mom, she’s this stunning Pocahontas-looking half Sioux, half Mexican woman, still beautiful, she always told me being smart would take me places. Even Peru, apparently.
My dad saw a little more. He was smarter than her. No, that’s not right. They were different kinds of smart. My mom was street smart. I hate that term but it works. She knew everything about everything. I swear to you, she could talk with you about living with the Norse or what it’s like to be sacrificed to the rain gods and you’d think she had been there because she had just lived so much.
My dad was book smart. Crazy smart. Literally crazy. He, uh, we think it ran in the family from his side. There’s signs, if we go back and look, but back in your time I guess people didn’t call it dementia or Alzheimer’s. You had the spirits or the demons or you just died. Bet you could probably tell all kinds of stories about stuff like that.
But he was smart, and kind, a little distant. Have you known anyone like that? They kind of vanish into their heads because they’re thinking about other worl… Huh. She was an accountant for this big company in Sioux Falls and he was a high school teacher, amateur astronomer. We did okay. That’s where my sister and I grew up. Alyssa. She’s younger than me. Was younger.
My dad always taught me that being smart wasn’t enough. You had to take care of yourself and take care of other people. He always said, “Pray for rain but dig a well.” You have to work your ass off. I think my mom just instinctively knew this. Alyssa was like her, mostly. They knew how people worked. They knew when to send holiday cards or bake pies or make donations or whatever. I think my dad had to learn, so when he saw how much I was like him, he knew I’d have to learn. I learned to work my ass off. Never figured out the rest.
Anyways, I went off to college to be an engineer. Hated the hell out of that and undeclared my major. That’s not really a thing. I just didn’t know what to do so I took a ton of classes. Found my way to biology instead of chemistry and I loved it. And then I found archaeology and sociology and all these things that explained why people are how they are. I ate it up. At least someone could tell me, now.
Biology was all of life and archaeology was the Why. It’s geckoes and birds and protozoa and evolutionary mechanisms and virology and social trends and flood patterns and the history of written language. It’s life. It’s you and me. I loved it. Completed my real undergrad in six semesters and started grad school.
My dad started slipping at some point during my high school years. I guess Alyssa was, what, eighth grade? I don’t remember. He went out driving for no reason and got lost. Some kids helped him. My mom freaked out because of his family history and insisted he see a doctor. Early onset dementia. Genetic, apparently. I got tested and was clean. Alyssa got tested. Fifty-fifty chance. My mom added tons of fish oils to their diet and Alyssa went to counseling. Life moved on.
Uh, my mom, she, uh. Alyssa, she, she... my mom found her. She had, uh, taken… my mom found her. You said it was like someone else described your dream to you? This is like someone else told me their dream so well that it feels like mine and now I can’t get the little shit to move out of my mind. She set up camp and bitches at me, all the time. I see it every time I think about Alyssa or when I see alarm clocks or just be-fucking-cause or right now and I… no, it’s fine. Thanks. Are you sure we can’t just stare into the volcano? We could jump. I won’t stop you.
Fine. You’re a chickenshit. My mom found her. It was the summer after her sophomore year. Mom thought she’d snuck out to drink. High school kids do that, apparen
tly. I didn’t. She tried to wake her up but Alyssa didn’t wake up. She found this bottle of pills, uh, Ambien. It’s a pill to help you sleep. No, it wouldn’t help you. She took a lot of them. All of them. We thought it was an accident.
My dad found the note. Poor Dad. Mom wouldn’t go back in the room. They moved like right away. Couldn’t sell the house for months since some girl died in it but they took a loss and got rid of it. She, uh, didn’t want to live like this, she said. Wondering what would happen and when. She didn’t want to have young kids and just forget them one day, or be driving and lapse out and kill someone. I don’t think her brain was right. Maybe it was already happening. Mental stuff runs through my dad’s side. Maybe my mom’s, too. I don’t know much about their families. She didn’t talk about them. She’s always been about Now.
I thought it would kill my dad but he was so strong. He kept my mom together. The sounds she made. She would call me and just moan. I went to the funeral, sat up front in the honor seat because some jackass thinks it’s an honor to be in the honor seat at your sister’s funeral, and she wailed. This sound, Charlie. I don’t know what you’ve seen in your lifetime but this sound, I’d bet it would be the worst thing you or I ever heard. This moaning, dying sound, like physics itself broke and now we get to watch it all melt away because this woman is in so much pain… sorry. Just a minute.
I stopped visiting or calling. My parents were strong enough to live through that and keep moving but I ran away. I graduated from grad school. Don’t remember much. School was more interesting than this torture. I had found a kind of niche field, anthrobiology mixed with heavy history and archaeology, some linguistics, kind of an adaptive specialty to my weirdness that let me learn about the things I cared about. That’s where I met Helena. She took me in and helped me learn, until she figured I didn’t need her anymore and she went walkabout for your cult up here in the mountains. You know what’s funny? I haven’t really been thinking about her since I’ve been here. But I do need to find her.
It’s so fascinating. I loved it. Love it. Maybe the only thing I know how to love. I almost lost all that because some asshole in my dissertation defense thought that… you know what? It doesn’t matter. I flipped my shit. That’s what matters. I almost blew it with the last thing I had that I loved. And now… dammit, now…
Part of me thought about medical school. Maybe I could help study this disease that killed my sister and would kill my dad. Maybe I could help. But I couldn’t look at it. I was staring into the abyss and it was staring back at me and I blinked. Nietzsche wrote that. You’d like him, I bet. Übermensch and all. Will to life. Not that you know much about that. That wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.
My dad’s pretty bad now. I haven’t seen them in a while. I’m a horrible daughter but I can’t take it. He tells my mom stories. Always the same stories but he spices them up with these cute little lies, like how he’s had his eye on her for months and wants to ask her out. I think he knows. Deep down in there, he’s trapped and is trying to make it easier for her. This is a bad story. Are we done?
Me? I just told you. Oh. There’s not much to me now. I study and teach. Well, I have to teach. I don’t want to. Because the kids don’t care, man. You’ve never taught. I don’t want to hear it. Yeah, some of them. Tim is a good kid. He’s the big dopey football player. Ruined his knees. He’s… he’s been helping me. Taking care of me while we try to…
You know damn well why. Everything here is about you. He has the hots for me. Not a book smart kid but steady, thorough. He grinds away at stuff. He’s been asking some good questions about how you could exist like you do. What would happen if a species kept its evolution internal to the generation instead of reproducing? I said it’s impossible. The mutation would kill the individual. And cancer would, if the mutation didn’t. That critter would need to somehow embrace mutation, embrace cancer, but only keep the good bits. Or have a way to reset with only the lessons learned. Here you sit, I guess.
That’s what Rachana sees in you, that cure. But Tim found the thread all on his own and pulled on it until we connected the dots back to Rachana’s work. He saw through to that insanely simple question. It’s so foundational. We accept sexual reproduction because of its obvious advantages but we do know about some exceptions. Just never at a level this complex. You’re unique, Charlie. No, you are. Those other people are only interesting. They’re not like you. No one is.
I run. It sucks and I hate it but it’s made me stronger, I guess healthier. I study and teach. I spend my time here now. That’s me. I’m not interesting like you are Michael or those fertility ladies or the guy I can’t look at because my eyes just slip away or the Greek god Alejandro. I’m a regular person.
Yeah, I worry about it. My sister killed herself and my dad’s going. Hell, my mom might be going just because of the burden. But she’s okay. We do talk, sometimes. She’s doing well. She calls or emails or texts me every two weeks. I need to call them. She’s annoyingly positive about it. Something about the path less traveled and appreciating the time she had, or has.
But she won’t talk about Alyssa anymore. There’s only that one thing to discuss, that one moment where she walks in the room and the alarm clock is flashing 09:42 and the sun is beaming through the window and there she is. I hate all those things now. I’m reminded every time I wake up about that moment. Can we stop?
No. I haven’t noticed any signs yet. Except the jerk in my head who will not shut up. I always thought about it like panic or anxiety but it’s… it’s different now. Since I’ve been here. It’s right here, just where my spine meets my skull, this pressure, the manic thing that screams at me. It’s usually just annoying but now. I don’t know. It seems focused. Like part of me is doing some thinking outside the regular thinking I do. It still screams like a brat but it’s screaming about what’s going on. It’s probing at the core issue. It’s showing me how to probe. Tim, well, I guess he taught me something.
I need to stop being surprised by that. He taught me about having an anchor. He used the ol’ three-dimensional Cartesian origin as an example. You know, zero-zero-zero. They didn’t teach geometry in Tenochtitlan? It’s where all 3D models start. It’s where everything starts. It’s what you go back to when everything’s messed up and you don’t know what to do. Find your origin. Wow. I guess that’s what you wanted me to help you with.
We’re all upset. We don’t want you to leave. It’s like tunnel vision but helpful. Kind of. It overwhelms me. I can’t breathe and I freak out but it helped this time because you’re finally here, finally awake for a minute, even though I didn’t really understand that you were sleeping until you had already woken up. Now it’s your turn to tell me who you are.
That’s it. That’s all of it. That’s me. I’m Eliza.
CHAPTER 24 - PEACEMAKER
The Tibetan horns sang their eerie elephant’s song throughout this day and every day since the Ten Finger Duma gathered at Ulanbatar. Each day more tribes arrived than departed. The caravans stretched to all horizons in lines so long that a tribe’s outriders could set their tents and find some dinner before the last folk realized Ulanbatar was near. Other tribes arrived all at once, like larks banking together to rest atop a single barren tree, on the plain outside the long-destroyed capital city.
It was the first Duma in this place for as long as anyone could remember. A cobbled patchwork of wizened old folk and pink new children tittered, sharing stories about the mighty Khans who once rode free across the whole world.
Some tribes still waited at distant Karakorum where the Khans once held their courts. They would miss the Duma. No one agreed on a location. More tribes chose the ruined capital of the nation that once ruled this region than Kublai’s capital, so the Duma was here, not there.
Those who arrived earliest now hated the horns. They discussed halting them. More than enough people had gathered. Now was the time to talk. Cautious scouts watched the skies for any hint of lightning. Too many humans in one place
could tempt the ravenous sky beasts and this was more people than had ever gathered anywhere. The skies were clear today.
No one would halt the lowing horns. If they stopped then the chain of horns that reached across the peaks of northern Beria, far east to the edges of the Kobold, west as far as the Uralskiye, and in a hundred other directions except south would fall silent. Then no more people would come. Those on the trail would lose their way. Spring was here, those already at the Duma told each other as they drank their fermented milk to sate the real hunger in their bellies. They could endure a while longer.
Ten was something like a holy number. This was the tenth Duma since the Suzerain named themselves. For ten years, the seed of an uneasy peace grew into the sapling that took root here at Ulanbatar. It could grow into a lasting alliance, one day, with the Dragons. Ten was the number of fingers given to most folk when born. Ten meant all that could be made with your own two hands. That was everything.
Fen considered all this as he watched the Duma from a distant ridgeline. It provided a sweeping view of every nation on the earth. No, he thought, not every nation. The Dragons were a nation. So was Angliya, dead as it now was. If Lundoo’s knowledge was true, then so was the Cradle buried in the walls of a valley in distant Africa. It was impossible to know how many nations, tribes, and peoples lived in the world. It was too large.
The nations he did know sprawled across the distant plain. Uncounted tents of brilliant colors and patterns faded into one variation of another. His sharp eyes saw people carry their children on their shoulders but his mind saw a single pulsing creature. The Duma was alive. He grinned. This was what he worked for. This was what he gave his own life for. This was the reason Camdzic hated him now. He committed himself to preservation, not only of the Suzerain, but of that living creature that colonized the distant plain. The better part of a decade saw him travel across the wide face of the Steppe to preach respect for the agreement. To preach life. Ten was the number of what could be.
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