IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE

by

Dolores J. Nurss

Volume I: Welcome to The Charadoc!

Chapter 11

FAR FROM CIVILIZATION

Ash Wednesday, February 19, 2708

We leave before the dawn.  I get just a glimpse, as they bind my hands again, of tile roofs and trees, silhouetted against a blue-violet sky, before they cinch the blindfold back on tight against my bruises.  In renewed darkness the crowing of roosters sounds loud, almost frightened, like today's the day of the axe.

"Here," Cyran says.  I feel something crumbly shoved towards my mouth.  "Breakfast."  I try to eat it without choking, as e pushes it into my mouth because they have bound my hands again.  It doesn't taste bad, some kind of tangy berry pie, spices and sugar in the flaky crust, but it's still so hot from the oven that the filling burns my tongue.  I beg for water and a metal cup hits my teeth.  I try to drink it tidily, but some spills down my front, cold in the morning chill.

"You get the last of that fabric sold, Alysha?"

"Yeah, but some of the shopkeepers wondered where I got it."

"Give me their names later.  We won't protect them."

And then the vertigo hits, all over again.  Of course e drugged the food.  At least this time e wrapped the marijuana in carbohydrates, though, so the hunger won't pinch so badly.  Children's hands spin me around a couple times just to make sure I can't tell north or south from Heaven or Hell, then they drag me stumbling over vegetation, branches slapping me in the face, leaves cold and wet all over me, and hard roots hidden in the soil hurt my feet.  Yet minute by minute I feel it less and less, the bruises on me fade from sensation, the fear and uncertainty become negligible.  (It hurt to say goodbye to Aunt Jee--she hugged me so tight that I felt the bones of her arms nearly cut me.  Rich as she is and she had to go and get the Wasting Disease.)

Cyran says to Alysha, "I'm glad we shed those rags--time we got back into the forest."

"As much as you spent drugging the doxie, we barely made a profit at all."

"They raise the Tilián in a playground for illusionists.  You can't mess up their sense of direction any other way." 

Hands shove me out of the path of a tree trunk, probably.  A child's voice says, "Watch out for the branch," and I dodge, but go way off balance and would've fallen if they hadn't pushed me back again.  (She laughed, though, when she told me.  She said that by now every rich bastard and their sons, all those who run the mine and factory, and the cheating company store, must have the Wasting Disease from her.  Because of that Uncle Tangley will forgive her when they meet again.)

"Fortunately, we won't need the weed anymore after today," says Cyran.  "We're taking our guest so far from civilization she'll think we dropped her on another planet."

Don't bother, Cyran.  I'm there already.

Wednesday, February 19, 2708

I waited till Soskia and her household left for their Ash Wednesday services, then I went out to the alley to the right of her mansion, the one down which they must have taken Deirdre, and there I met him.  The Purple Mantle. 

He didn't look so dreadful, quite young in fact, the mustache still soft, as though he’d only started to shave a couple years ago.  An overbite gave his face a disarming look, sensitive, almost apologetic or imploring, and he had large, chocolate eyes.  A smudge of ashes centered his brow like any other good believer here, shriven of his sins for one more year.  He wore street clothes, the "mantle" being only a small serapelike oval that in summertime stops mid-chest; he could have doffed it in a minute if he hadn't wanted known.  He wore his sleeves full enough to show some authority, but the long cuffs kept the fabric out of the way, the shirt as clean and white as a choirboy's.  Good; he seemed to know his business.

We met each other's eyes.  I made the gesture which Magar had taught to me: first fan out the fingers of the left hand, like stretching, and close them again, then the same with the right, then clasp my hands together loosely in front of me, hanging below the waist.  I felt supplication in this posture, standing there, waiting for acknowledgement.

He nodded, then turned to walk down the alley as I followed.  Humidity pressure-cooked the odor of garbage around us, and the sky looks iron-hard--the monsoons seemed ready to resume at any minute.  And that pleased me; I felt in the mood for thunder and lightning and hot, angry rain—I pictured it blowing Soskia and all her prayerful household skyward on their way home, whisking her up flailing into her heavens, stripping off every petal of her gown, leaving her to clutch her wizened arms around her nakedness.

But fantasies, even fantasies of revenge, fell flat when I saw what my companion nudged with his toe.  I knelt to take up the crimson satin slipper, made narrow at the heel but broad at the toe on a combination-last, for a slightly uncommon kind of foot.  I cradled it against my breast, and my own hot tears darkened the dusty fabric even as the first drops fell from the sky. 

"We start here," said my companion, unperturbed by the increasing rain.  "My name is Sanzio D’Arco."

* * *

They rest me more often now, allowing me some leniency as I recover from my beating.  I think they spare me far too much, in fact, perhaps not knowing my mettle.  Far be it from me to argue!

Lent begins today, if I remember my count of days correctly.  Doesn't matter; fasting has become the norm.  And chains beat ashes any day as a sign of humbling.

They no longer bother with the blindfold, this deep into the uncharted forest; I squint at my surroundings through the swellings of two black eyes, against the dripping rain.  Trees tower above trees, leaves veil leaves from sight, tangles of underbrush block me from further tangles--half the rain doesn't even get through to our level.  Miles and miles of beauty imprison me, and my heart nearly tears in two between the glory of the sight and its implications for my isolation.  Birds sing strange songs that I have never heard before, and my feet crush scents from herbs that smell nothing like the hiking-paths of home.  Even the rocks look strange to me, the deep-colored outcroppings with their paler veins.

But hiking I know, wherever I go in this world.  I know that the halt ends when they haul me to my feet, but they don't have to drag me behind them, I feel the hiking-rhythm possess my legs, I feel the gladness of muscles doing as God meant for them to do, I feel the heightened circulation and the opening pores.  Left, right, left, nature scenes change with every bend like I turn pages with each stride.  Each twist of branch, each sway of greenery, each sparkle of the rain renews me.  I may not know the ways this forest grows, but at least I know how to take it in.

Thursday, February 20, 2708

          My bare feet hurt.  By now no trace of the drug remains to cushion the pain, but I've felt worse; I can keep up.  The forest abounds in twigs, rocks, roots, biting insects, and sometimes grass so thin and fine that it slashes skin.  And the march goes on.  I work to distract myself, on deep breaths of the woodland scent, on admiration for the curving shapes of branch and bough, on scanning for some possibility of escape.  But every so often a step reminds me just how much my feet do hurt, without possibility of tending them.  And then I shove the awareness back again.

          To Cyran beside me I say, “You're not the first person to field child soldiers, you know.  A great criminal on Earth, in a land called Uganda...”

          “I know all about Kony!” e snaps.  “I can read a book.”

          “Yes, I suppose anyone who can read knows about the worst child-predator in the history of the worlds.”

          “But I'm nothing like him,” e insists, his voice softer.  “He couldn't get anybody to support his cause unless he took them prisoner in childhood and brainwashed them.  Lots of people support me, but they can't get away, so they send their kids, nothing but kids, the little ones who can escape.”  Desperately e says, “I want adults.  I really do.”

          “So you never kidnap minors to raise them in your cause?”

          “Never!”

          “You never force girls to have sex with your soldiers?”

          “Are you kidding me?  If any of mine forced himself on anyone else I'd shoot him, myself.”

          “You never make children slay their parents to bind them to you with guilt?”

          “Of course not!  I wouldn't have them kill anyone but a legitimate military target.”

          “Still, for a child that must feel...”

          “...just.  After all they've been through, it feels just.  Ask them.  I didn't do the traumatizing.”

          “And you've never thrown them into battle hopped up on drugs?”

          E answers nothing.  Not a word.