IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume I: Welcome to The Charadoc!
Chapter 18 LEARNING
The transcriber selected a peppermint toothpick
before beginning the next entry. She
considered actually dipping one in pepper-sauce, some flavor so strong it hurt,
to distract herself with burning in the mouth so that the words wouldn't burn
her brain. Then she told herself that
she had a mind much too strong for that, she shouldn't even pay attention to
what passed from the page to Archives.
So she propped up the crumbling diary and fit her fingers to the
smoothed-out keys with the letters long ago worn off, one more thing that she
no longer needed to make note of. Monday, March 9, 2708 I woke to a searing headache and a pool of molten
metal in my belly; I can't say which hurt worse. I went to roll out of the nauseously swaying
hammock, and out tumbled a flask, shattering on the floor in pain-bright
shards. The sound tore like
shrapnel. I looked down there at the twinkling mess and I
realized that I couldn't step down there in my bare feet, but my stomach surely
wouldn't let me stay here any longer.
Gingerly I stretched my foot to where, if I stood on tiptoes, I could
position myself to reach my shoes. Then
the fumes of chaummin wafted up and I remembered the whole aching day and night
before. I struggled with excruciating precision for my
shoes, suffered one cut, then limped to where I could take care of it while
sitting in an old wooden chair. I left
blood on the floor, probably a lot more blood than the few drops we spilled
yesterday. I repeated that to myself
several times, as if it would do any good. Ah hell! Why
break the Law of the Prophet if it doesn't block the memory like it's supposed
to? I pulled a sock on my bandaged foot. I'm inexperienced at drinking, that's the
problem, sips for social occasions, keep up appearances, but never much and
never strong, no faith to keep me from it anymore, more propriety than anything,
though at first I told myself that it was no real sin, not if one avoids
intoxication. Well, I certainly avoided
nothing of the sort last night, for all the good it did me. It takes time and effort to dissolve the
memories. I eased the foot very carefully back into the
shoe. Appearances don't matter now. Nothing counts but pain. When I looked up again Sanzio stood in the doorway,
eyes gentle on me this morning. He
glanced at the floor. "I'll send
the girl around to clean that up."
Another white shirt gleamed unstained upon him; the girl must have done
his laundry. Glass crunched under my
shoes as I joined him for a cold breakfast, waiting outside on the
veranda--fruit, bread, and cheese. I
wondered if I could eat. He cut a slice of cheese, then bread, and handed
them together to me. "You'll feel
better for it," he said softly. I
kept staring at that big, ugly knife, gleaming in the morning sun. Just a smear of cheese on it, nothing
worse. He kept it as clean as his white,
white shirts. The cheese and bread tasted surprisingly good,
comforting. I felt the coal in my belly
cool down to a nagging little smolder. I
didn't touch the fruit; I didn't recognize that coral-red drupe, but it had
dimples on it that might, if I looked too closely, resolve into a face, a
cruel, inhuman face, and I did not feel ready, yet, to eat the scalding fruit
of Hell. Sanzio ate several in a row; they smelled like
honeysuckle when he bit in. "The
first time," he said at last, "everybody makes mistakes. It's okay." He cut more cheese, surgically precise. "You’ve got to learn sometime." Learn? I've
got to? I cut myself another bit of
cheese, a wavering line, an uneven slice.
"Did this bring us any closer to Deirdre?" I asked him, my
voice cracked to my own ears. "Did
that poor bastard know one tiny crumb of anything?" "Him?
No." He poured himself a
glass of water. "He was exactly as
he said, a passing thief--wandered into the wrong town, robbed the wrong
kid." My stomach clenched all over
again, like every word of his blew on the coal below my heart. "But that's a clue, you know. That's useful." He put a hand on my arm, kindly. I couldn't afford to flinch away from his
torturing fingers; I needed him to find Deirdre. "We know that a child had Deirdre's
opal, and we know what village she passed through. Cyran recruits only children, don't you know." I needed his kindness. "No.
I didn't know." I needed the
sympathy of a fellow torturer. "Yes."
His eyes glinted as he licked red juice from between his fingers,
slowly, deliberately. "Even little
girls. That's one obscene little fact to
keep in mind about our enemy." He
glanced inside, towards the basement door visible from out here. "That man we dealt with yesterday? At least he was a man." *
* * Even
weary children will play, given the chance.
They dart around like hungry little birds; they even shrill like
birds. Marduk, Alysha, and I have our
hands full keeping them steered away from the trenches where our future rations
steam, wrapped now in moist leaves and buried under coals. I'd step livelier at it if the chain didn't
drag upon me so, clattering and clanking on every root and rock. (Even
here, in Toulin Academy, children will play.
Organized games, all things in their proper turn, no indulgence in
anything so chaotic as the sort of pretending that I used to do in my preschool
days, fancying myself a colonist, a pirate, a hunter, an agent of the distant
Tilián. Odd thing for a man in my
position to recall—odd and dangerous.
But then I had no idea of the dangers of imagination then, and my naive
parents never guessed. Ai—how long since
I've even thought of my father and my m—no more of that. A headmaster must not allow himself to wax
maudlin over anything.) Periodically
we sweep the coals to one side, carefully pour more water on the leaf-wrapped
paste, flinching away from getting nasty steam-burns as we do it. Then we pile more branches on top of the
hissing mess, and shovel the coals back on.
Pity the rain has stopped, for now; I wouldn't mind leaving this task to
nature. (The rain has begun; no more snow for awhile. They dance about the uncontrolled and
spreading puddles, or splash right through them, perilously wild in the spirit
of the game, almost as if abandoned to nature, one with the ungovernable
skies. Perhaps I should step in, remind
them to return to their studies and save their energy for the classes in
physical culture. But I stand as rooted
as if nature has gotten hold of me, as well, and turned me to a tree.) Alysha
says we have to do this final steaming before the actual drying, an extra
precaution that she learned to make the stuff safer to eat. Alysha can read; her grandmother taught her
in secret. The old woman used to sneak
her all kinds of goodies and kindnesses until her son got her a legitimate
heir. (How they sneaked in the ball, I don't know. I don't think I want to know, when it comes
right down to it. Harmless thing. But what goes on, over there? In that corner? A knot of students parts for a moment; I catch
a glimpse of larger boys holding a smaller one against the wall. I hear the laughter. Wild, untamed laughter.) Catawlba's
a terrible bother to prepare, not commercially worth the effort and so left to the
poor. But Alysha teaches me everything
we need to make it food. Once you grind
it to a pulp, she says, boil and leech and steam the paste, roast it dry, and
then crumble it again to a fine meal, it can survive the rainforest impervious
to moth or mildew. Alysha gives me a
taste of some left over from the old stores, not enough to bake into a single
chip, a mere dab upon a fingertip. It
does indeed have a slightly bitter, turnippy flavor, but if it had status
attached to it, if it didn't grow in such abundance, I could see the rich
making a gourmet relish out of it, I could see parents teaching their young
debutantes to like it. Alysha says that
no one ever gets the toxins out perfectly, and they can accumulate over time,
but starvation kills you faster. (“We'll teach you to like it!” someone
shrills. Time to intervene. Their parents pay me a considerable salary to
intervene, to tame these beasts and make them gentlemen. I shove through the mob and liberate the
little first-year student, spitting out the worms that his peers had stuffed
into his mouth. I should have stepped in
sooner. All kinds of things can go wrong
when you let the children play.) Tuesday, March 10, 2708 We hit the road again, always the road. I find it cleaner out here; the monsoon
washes us continuously. I just let it
pour down on me, naked to the waist like a peasant myself in the torrid
weather--I could use shower after shower after shower. Sanzio keeps his shirt on like it's the only
thing left to hold his soul in place, even here with just the two of us. Everything I own now rattles and bounces in the
saddlebags on my mule--a weary rhythm, the pace of something tired moving home,
except I have no home. A change of
clothes, a knapsack, some cooking gear, a handful of books--and this diary, and
my pen. Money, more than enough to see
me to my objective, by Magar's grace. A
machete and a knife. I shudder when I
think about the knife, yet I used nothing so sharp on that dreadful, dreadful
day. Oh, and a bottle of chaummin. We mustn't forget the chaummin, the first
time in my life that I ever actually purchased liquor myself, not merely sipped
it at another's behest. Sickening stuff,
sweet and harsh, but it's cheap, it's plentiful, it's sometimes all you can get
around here. I must learn how to drink. I shall learn, if it kills me. I will never get to Paradise, anyway. There is no Paradise even if I could. For so long I've merely pretended faith; now I don't dare believe. So I shall drink every night, maybe even mornings if I feel like it, if I can get used to the choking swill. You don't get blackouts till you've been drinking for quite some time. |
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