IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume I: Welcome to The Charadoc!
Chapter 22 THOUGHTS UNBEARABLE
Friday,
March 13, 2708, continued (Humiliation! Oh, the deep, deep, deep humiliation jolts
into me rhythmically with every step, as I sway in my hammock like a trussed up
beast on a branch between Alysha and the captive-woman. Does Kanarik see me here, with feet too
swollen to walk? Of course she sees me,
but does she keep looking, or do I only imagine it? Alysha had every right to scold me, to
protest that I should've reported to her first, she could've found something to
shield my feet, even as she told Rashid to poultice them. But I had to go and play the hero; she's
warned me about that before. I grew up listening to too many legends,
that's my problem. Everybody in my
village turned out like that, memorizing the old tales for generation after
generation, till they made us all too bold, till the Purple Mantles wiped us
out like a nest of mice, so that now only I remember all the tales, and if some
remained that I hadn’t heard, mold and the roots of plants now shut the lips
that could've told them to me. Oh Kanarik, I so wanted to play the hero
of your epic! My dear, dear Kanarik, I
wanted people to sing ballads about us!
How can you even look at me right now? Bush and trunk shudder by me like a
sideways dance and all I can think of is Kanarik dancing once in moonlight, to
a tune she hummed herself, leaves and flowers in her hair, when she thought us
all asleep. I had not thought to find
her there. I had gotten up to empty a
full bladder, and I came back a different way, and stopped when I heard the
humming. And just then the moon came out
from behind the storm-clouds that had rained on us all night, and every droplet
on every leaf turned into a star, and there I spied her, fabric wet and
clinging to her body so that I glimpsed what she had hidden there before, the
delicate buds of new-formed breasts. And
her bared arms waved over her head like branches in a wind, and her head tipped
this way and that, starlight jeweling the raindrops caught in every straying
lock, while her hips swirled ‘round the way that water does, and the music
dissolved all the breath inside my chest till it hurt and I felt I had to faint
or something, couldn't stand another moment of her beauty. So I slunk away, ashamed to see a sight
too good for me. I went back to bed, but
something happened that night, something in my sleep. I dreamed of her. I dreamed such exquisitely daring dreams, unpermissible
dreams, beyond a peasant like me to imagine yet somehow I had the gift of them
all the same, so that I woke with my face wet for tears of gratitude, for a
moment that no one could take away from me even if it never really
happened. Then I discovered that more than my face
got wet that night. How scary, the fear
that someone might find out! I took such
pains to wash my bedding out alone, let no one see, let no one laugh, wink,
nudge me in the ribs about it. I knew
what it meant, all right--I’ve heard the big boys talk. But I didn't want a single human being on the
planet to say a word to coarsen that dream, or the waking vision of Kanarik
dancing. So, if it means, as they'd say, that I
have begun to become a man, how come I feel so boylike helpless, swaying here
between two women twice my strength, unable to even walk?) I
see what Alysha means. We march slower
than before, taking our time to adjust to the thinning air, through jungle that
also thins before us (yet thorny, tougher, fibrous leaves, the kind you can
hardly even chew let alone hope to eat) but the way goes steeper and steeper
from this point on. When the branches
part I can see the pass we aim for, miles beyond and above, between two peaks
that the thunderheads war over with crash and spear of light. I keep catching myself staring up at that
thing and the rocks that tooth it. We've
gone up and down this mountainous country for weeks and weeks now, but of all
the passes that they've dragged me through none looked so intimidating as this. Not even in height--we pass through foothill
ranges here, nowhere near the summer snowline--but for sheer inhospitable
steepness it catches my breath. Kiril,
who holds my leash today, gives me a shawl to fend the harsh wind from my face. Silly little chain--I could jerk it from the
child's hands in an instant if I wanted.
Does Alysha really have to bolster her sense of control with these
inconvenient tokens? If she found me so
unwilling, would I cooperate to the extent of enduring these poles grinding
into my shoulder to carry the injured boy?
Maybe with a knife to my back or something, but would I point out to
Rashid as I do now the herb with the berrylike leaves that will drive off
mosquitoes for us all? * * * "Hold it, please. Stop the tape." "Hunh, wha...? Oh.
Okay. Got it. Got it. It's okay." Bleary-eyed, the debriefer fumbled for the
switch till the trance-music went off.
Silence cushioned them like the calm of awakening after too intense a
dream. "What's up, Deirdre?" She rubbed her forehead piteously. "I've got an awful headache. I can't go on like this." "I've got something to help that..." "Not..." "Just a little salicylic, with some
caffeine to speed up the action. That's
all." "You wouldn't sneak in anything more
potent?" He drew himself up as steadily as he could,
straightening his rumpled shirt.
"I'm a professional, Ms. Keller, same as you. For that matter, I believe that an agent
would be more likely to drug someone against their will than..." "Okay, I'm sorry. Just please get me the headache remedy." "Right here," he said, as he pulled a
couple white pills out of a drawer and refilled her water glass. She
doesn't want to see the truth, he thought, and even as he thought it he
wondered if she unconsciously picked that up. * * * "So
all you have to do is rub it right on your skin, if you have the fresh
herb." I explain to Rashid as he walks beside me. "If you need to carry insect-repellant
some distance away from where it grows, though, you have to prepare. You get a bottle of the strongest liquor you
can buy--imported vodka or primera is the best, but make do with what you
can. You pour about a third of it
out..." "Or
drink it," Branko throws in, and everybody laughs. "Or
drink it," I agree with a grin, "but don't let the party get out of
hand so you forget what you're doing.
You've got to save back most of it." Even as we speak Rashid rubs on the
herb--fairy-globe they call it around here--releasing an oregano-sharp
odor. "What you do is stuff into
the bottle as much of the herb as you can fit.
Pack it down hard with a stick or something, bruising it as much as
possible. You let it sit for about a
month that way. The liquor should turn a
ruddy brown color.” For some reason the
thought pops into my mind, No decoction
will quite work. No amount of alcohol
will dissolve the memory. No maceration
of the facts will reduce to naught the sound of a snapping spine. But I pull myself out of that morbid fantasy,
wherever it comes from, to add, “Then you pour it out, straining it, into
another bottle. It won't be fit to drink
anymore..." "Aw
gee!" "Alright,
Branko--maybe you're not so particular.
But for the rest of us, a splash or two of that on your skin and insects
will fall all over themselves trying to get out of your way." Rashid
says, rather stiffly, "My mother already taught me about decoction, and
expressing essences and stuff. She
taught me everything about herbs." "So
tell me about that poultice that you used on Damien's bee-stings." (She
acts like she cares, like she's interested.
I remember the anthropologist. I
remember him asking Mama all kinds of questions about what the quaint people do
when sick and too poor to go to the hospitals.) I wait, but he says nothing, his young brows
crinkling like he’s trying to remember. (I remember he took an interest in me, just
like this lady does. I remember the
compass that he showed me and the maps, so proud to teach me things, to
establish who had knowledge and who had ignorance, but then he found out that I
could already read, I could name the mountains and the cities and the rivers
when he pointed to the letters on the map.)
This is taking too long--is there something wrong with the boy?
(Then he left sooner than he'd said he would. Then the Purple Mantles came, saying that
they, too, just wanted to ask my mother a few questions.) “Uh...Rashid?” "Figure
it out your own freakin' self, if you know so much!" the boy shouts at me
out of the blue, then storms back to the rear of our company, hands clenched in
fists like he'd beat something up if only he could grasp it long enough to hold
it down. "Don't
mind him," Alysha says to me, when I look at her, bewildered. When she turns her head her bruised face
looks about three decades older than it is.
And have my own bruises healed up yet?
I have no idea how I look right now.
(So, when you get right down to
it, it was all my fault. I just had to
show off what I knew. I killed my
mother, just by reading names off of a map.)
"He's just young and hurt." I
ask, "Have you no adults in the movement besides Cyran?" She
shrugs, and the poles jolt on my shoulder.
"Here and there. We have
lots of adult sympathizers who help where they can, but only a handful of
full-time marching members." We work
our straight poles around the curve of a great trunk, our feet picking through
the tangle of roots that hang over a steep bank, dry stream stones about five
meters below, bearded with the pale and dormant moss that waits a change of
weather. "They lead rebel cells,
usually, when they can, but of course a number got too ruined to do much good
for anybody, us or the bosses either one, before they came to us." She snorts, not quite a laugh. "Cannon fodder. Hardly anybody of much use ever gets
away. At least the mad ones put up a
good fight before they die." (I killed my mother.) "But
the children can break away." "Their
parents often send them to us." We
both have to duck low to get under some branches, then stop, crouching there
half-bent with the weight on our shoulders, because Damien's hammock caught upon
a thorn. "What,
to go hungry out in the woods?" I ask, waiting, aching, while Kanarik
disentangles the hammock for us.
"Wouldn't they do better, even in virtual slavery, with regular
meals?" "Are
you out of your mind?" she snaps.
"We only lose a couple to malnutrition every year--on the farms and
in the mines and factories that's the chief form of birth-control." (I
killed my freakin' mother!) "Why
didn't Jee join you, after her husband died?
Why'd she become a prostitute?"
Now we have to lift the pole high above our heads as we wade through
shrubbery, snagging our own clothes with every move we make--who’d know, to
look at him, how heavy the boy could be?
(When we go out into battle, I
hope I hope I hope I die out there.) "You
think Jee had a choice? A beautiful
woman like her? They took her as soon as
her husband couldn't rise from bed. She
just made the best of the situation." |
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