IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
IV: Braided Paths
Chapter 1 A
Penitent's Last Refuge
“Whatever.
Ready to
continue?” Justín asked Deirdre. She
nodded, firmly gripping the magentine rod and sinking
into the trance that
would suck from her all the concentrated memories that
she longed to leave
behind... Friday, August 14, 2708 Leave it behind, the burnt
and bloody slope, follow the llamas loaded with fresh
supplies and the wounded
and the mercy of the poppy. Listen to
the keen of hunting birds in the distance and the
crunch of frosty gravel
underfoot. Notice
things that have
nothing to do with bloodshed. See how,
for instance, the wind sculpts ever-changing curves
and ripples into the fabric
that Malcolm wears, grown so loose on him that he
looks like a lord of the
highest caste in all that blousing—if lords belted in
the excess with
rope. Still
big, of course, but much,
much healthier. Lose yourself in details,
Deirdre, don’t think of the boy who looked almost like
an elf. You
hardly even knew him, and you’ve lost so
many closer to you than that. And don’t
think of the waste of the revolution’s most talented
spy. That
would insult the dead, to remember him
mainly in the context of his use. Don’t think of the wounded
in our train. Don’t
listen to the moans
when their injuries get jostled by the roughness of
the road, just sniff the
wind and wonder if that’s new grass you smell growing
beneath the old.
No, it couldn’t be. The equinox
won’t turn the night hours
towards the day for another month yet, and spring
comes later still in the high
country. No,
Deirdre, you’re just
sniffing for any wisp of hope that the air might carry
your way. It comforts the heart to
know almost no one in this troop, just Malcolm, Kiril
and Lufti. And
in the recruitment runs on the way back,
I won’t have time to get to know anybody that I add to
the force, either, handing
them off to others as fast as I’ll get them.
Fewer to mourn, that way, if it comes to
trouble. Keep
your distance, Deirdre, don’t even get
too close to yourself, if you can help it.
If they might as well be ghosts today, it won’t
hurt so much when they
become ghosts in fact tomorrow. Lufti comes up to walk
beside me. “Know
what I’m gonna do when
the war’s over?” he asks me. “What, kidito?” “Write all about it. The war.
Those of us who know how to read and write
should put it all down on
paper.” He
pulls himself up, all
important, but his face doesn’t look proud, he just
stares far into the
distance, eyes at once wide and weary, seemingly
astonished by all that he’s
seen in such a short life. He hasn’t
had
a haircut since we left the old school, and his curls
now hide the notched ear. “That’s good, Lufti. Maybe you’ll
inspire future generations.” He shakes his head. “It’s not
that, exactly. I
want to scare them.” “Scare them?” “From making the same
mistakes.” Neither
of us has anything to
say after that. Malcolm leads; he has
intelligence of a source of supplies not too far out
of our way. Maybe
even antibiotics—human kind, not just
veterinary. He
says that there’s a
monastery in these hills that the government won’t
touch. He sent a message ahead of
us, by way of our swifter-traveling smuggler, after
giving him every bill and
coin in his pockets—a surprising amount, but when
could he spend it,
anyway? It
went far to mollify the man,
who in any case wanted an excuse to escape his
captivity with us.
The note also promised reimbursement at the
other end, from the monks themselves, to keep our
scoundrel honest. * * * (The message arrives first, of course. I uncurl
the paper from its cylinder, still a
little damp and blurred despite the best
precautions. That
happens, when letters travel far by sea. Legible enough, however.
The agents have departed the eerie shores of
Til, taken a shuttle to
Istislan Capitol, and now sail up the coast to
Toulin. They
should arrive in
time for enrollments.
But the postal trimarins travel faster than
small student boats, and these agents must pass for
students, after all. So…the young agents will pose as
Lumnites, will they?
It makes sense.
People will attribute any mistakes they make
to isolation from the mainstream. Poor Lumne boys! I always
have a soft spot in my heart for the few students
that we’ve ever seen from
there. I
understand isolation, better
than they realize, perhaps more than they do,
themselves. Everyone has heard of Lumne, the island
farthest out to sea, but
Ishkal might as well have been; no family save for
ours dwelt on that
wave-swept rock, with its patches of salt-grass and
garden, its sand and
weathered stone, its little house of cobbles from
the beach, its homegrown food
sprung up from homemade soil, giving nothing without
hard work. Only
my father had the boat, which he needed
to fish, to market the fruit of his nets, and to
bring in such supplies as the
meager island couldn’t give with any amount of
labor. And
this took months at a time. We felt so
alone…
No more of that,
Wallace! You
are far from alone,
now. You
have the school.
You will never be alone again.) * * * After a turn we ascend a
steep valley, a gouge of the rock high in the flank of
the mountain, as though
some monster had raked her mineral flesh with a
skyscraper-sized claw.
The wind grows fiercer, constant, a forced
moaning through its narrow passage; the blast has
carved the pale sandstone all
around us into curves that swirl against each other
into sudden sharp edges,
rippled in bands of sallow hue. Here the
eternal gale has stripped down whatever vegetation had
survived aridity; all
that grows here waves lacy, ragged leaves which the
wind blows through.
The trunks of the trees all twist down to
grovel on the ground before its force. Those of us with hoods
pinch them tightly over our faces. Those
of us without wrap rags about our heads for
protection. With
stinging eyes we squint into air full of
sand and push against an invisible power to fight for
every step. At last we turn onto a path
off the road, almost unnoticeable at first, and
steeper, entered by a squeeze between
boulders that Malcolm couldn’t have made when I first
met him, into a wider
space. But
it doesn’t take long before
faint ruins of walls to either side protect us just a
bit, built of the same
stone as the surrounding cliffs, their edges sanded
down by the unrelenting
blast. Hints
of what might have once
been manmade stairs give such aid to the climb as they
still can. Many
an observer would not have even noticed
a human hand in these artifacts. I
figure that the path must lead us to the monastery. “Can they quarter all of us
tonight?” I ask Malcolm.
“I’d hate to
leave even one of us camped out in this weather.” “They will quarter none of
us,” Malcolm says.
“That is not their
way.” “Ways can change,” I
protest. “We’ve
got wounded! How
dare they...” “They will lower medical
supplies down from their walls for us, along with
blankets, food, well-water,
whatever we need, whatever they have.
But don’t ask for shelter.” “No—that’s not enough! What kind of
people would leave hurting
children out to sleep in a gale that can scour
mountains down to grit?” He turns dark eyes to me
and growls, very low, “You have no idea what kind of
monastery this is, do
you?” and suddenly I remember how much bigger he is
than me, even now, and how
not-quite-sane. “I, I don’t know,
Malcolm. Explain
it to me.” He turns away again and I
exhale. “We
have come to the Cloister of
Pederasts: part of a penitential order.
No child is allowed inside. No
monk ever leaves.
Few such monasteries
exist in all the world.”
(And those
few hide in countries with high, isolating
mountains–just my luck. No, not
luck, entirely.
Didn’t that very thing first attract me to
the Charadoc, the mountains that I thought I could
put between me and him?) He sighs,
and the sense of danger
passes. “They
lead productive lives
within their quarantine, walled off from temptation. They offer
up their longings to God and pray
day and night for their victims.” I fall silent at that. I will not
press my point. We
don’t say another word to each other, in
fact, for miles.
Finally Malcolm says,
“There. Up
there.” And
he points to a structure like a castle
squashed low, worn-down and humbled. I
could have missed it, the wind-blunted stones blend in
so well with the rest of
the mountainside, what with the dust continually blown
in my face and all. He turns to those who
follow us. “Set
up camp over there,
behind the screen of those boulders and the pines all
around them.” To
me he says, “I will go in and talk to
them. Don’t
worry; I’ll come out and
spend the night here with the rest of you.” “Malcolm, you don’t have
to...” “If you think for one
minute that I want to spend any more time in there
than I have to, you are
sorely mistaken.” “Do you want me to go up
with you, then?” He smiles grimly with only
half his mouth. “You? You have no
idea how old you are, do you?” “Well, I...” “Tilián!” He shakes
his head. “I’m
not sure, either, but I’d bet money you
don’t quite qualify to ignore the ban.
Even if you did, you look young enough to cram
the monks into their
confessionals from now till Christmas.” I don’t know what to say to
that. As
soon as I see the gate close
behind him, I turn to do my best with whatever we can
set up in the lee of the
boulders. It’s
not so bad, over here,
and better when we rig up wind-breaks to either side. Soon I lose
myself into the constant task of
trying to make the wounded comfortable. (I don’t know what I
feel. I
don’t know what I should
feel. He’s
paying for his sins—the best
he can, anyway.
Some debts run too high
for anyone to pay but God. Rough walls hem us in,
though the place has space enough. Rough
robes hem in the monks, ropes tight around their
hungry waists.
This is no place for a fat man, I can’t help
but think. Of course he comes out to
see me. Running. Sandals
slap on stone, across a courtyard so
wide that I have time to think about how he used to
special-order angora socks,
saying that his sensitive feet felt the pinch of
cold more sharply than most
people could imagine.
But no one wears
socks in this monastery, not though what little
moisture remaining in the air
now blows over the walls in flakes of snow. “Malcolm! Malcolm!
I’ve been worried to death about you, boy,
I’m so glad you...”
I step back when he tries to embrace me. So that’s
what I feel. “Hello, Uncle Donal,” I
make myself say in as noncommittal a voice as I can. I force my
eyes from his blue-tinged toes to
his face; I watch the joy crumple into shame, and
know that my staring makes it
happen, and yet I cannot stop myself.
“Thank you,” I force myself to say, “for
saving my life.” He grins uneasily and
fidgets. “Well,
it was the least that I could do. That
monster didn’t hurt you, did he?” “He tortured me.” Uncle,
Uncle—calling someone else a
monster? “I
got over it.” “But...you’re all right
now?” “Better than all
right.” I
thought of you, Uncle.
Dare I tell you that? “You didn’t really...I
mean...did you...?” “It was war,” I say. “I killed
a soldier who threatened a woman
with rape. He
marched with those who
shoot and torture children.” I look
away
and say, “I don’t know how many he’d killed himself,
personally, if any.”
I look back and Uncle blinks at me. “I’ve
confessed it all to the revolution’s
priest.” “The revolution’s...” “Yes, Uncle Donal.” We stand there in silence
for a moment. He
stares down at his feet
and I wish to God his toes weren’t so cold; somehow
that complicates
everything, that he leaves them bare in memory of
me. At
last he says. “This...revolution. Is it what
you want, Malcolm?” “It’s what I believe in.” Faintly he says, “I never
could deny you anything. You know
that.” “I know.” Why do I
feel shame in his presence? He feels
shame enough for both of us, and
that’s just as it should be. I tell
him,
“I can’t stand by anymore while the government hurts
children,” I hate the way
that I lock his gaze and won’t let go. “No. I don’t
suppose you could.” “Will you take me to the
Abbot? There’s
so much that we desperately need,” I
say to the man with no socks in the snow. “He’s already gotten your
message. I
talked to him, myself.
We’ve packed all the supplies, ready to go.” I look up to see the
bulging baskets lined up on the walkway of the
ramparts, each one with a
llama-wool blanket tucked in over the food and
medicine. I...I
hadn’t counted on so much, not nearly
half. They
must have gardens, huge
gardens, in the back, sheltered from the wind, with
mirrors to catch what sun
gets past the rock.
Of course.
They would do as little trade as possible
with the outside world. I look around at all the
monks looking back at me. They know,
every one of them, who I am in relation to Uncle
Donal, and they all feel so
very, very sorry.
“Thank you,” I say from
the heart, and like always I hate myself for feeling
gratitude to him for
anything, and then I hate myself for feeling that,
too. “Malcolm,” he says, then
hesitates. “Have
you lost weight?” Something changes in me,
right this very minute, and I shall remember the
instant of change to my dying
day, I’m sure of it.
I’d hardly registered
my weight loss, till Donal mentioned it just
now—imagine that!
As if it couldn’t be real till my Uncle saw
it. I
look down at all the loose and
flapping clothes that used to pin me in so tightly
that I could hardly
breathe. Can
I have altered so
profoundly? Yes! Yes I can.
I smile for real this time.
“Yeah, I’ve lost weight,” I tell him.
The sun didn’t come out from the clouds, but
it feels like it did—I
suddenly feel lighter in soul as well as body. “I
don’t feel so hungry
anymore.” Shame
burns off like calories. “Then God bless the
revolution,” Uncle says, and crosses himself. I nod to him and turn to
go, amazed to find myself full to satisfaction with
something that you cannot
eat. Uncle
didn’t give me that.
Uncle didn’t have one damned thing to do with
me losing weight—and that means that I no longer
need to punish him with fat. I turn before reaching the
gate. “You’re
doing the right thing,
Uncle Donal,” I call out to him. Then I
swallow and say, huskily, “I forgive you.”
The least I can do, a few words, never spoken
to him before.
Who knows what my own soul will need before
the end?)
I turn at the sound of the gates grating open
again. As
Malcolm comes out I see hands placing
baskets atop the broad stone wall. I
motion our oldest to join me to receive them, hoping
for the monks’ sake that
our bulky wraps and ponchos hide our bodies from the
aerial view. One monk lowers down the
laden baskets, wind groaning in the ropes.
I look up, not so very far, into the face of a
sandy-bearded man, his
visage as weathered into planes and curves as the
surrounding cliffs,
dusty-looking, like the blown dirt made it through and
through, the wind could
scour for centuries and whittle him away before it
could blast him clean.
The eyes look as dull as sandstone and just
as dead. I hear his voice, worn down
to a whisper by the distance and the weather, faint
and dreary in his litany:
“It is a disease.
We have an incurable,
communicable disease.
I got it from my
father; he caught it from a babysitter and she from
the neighbor next
door. We
are sick, and quarantine is
just. The
monastery is sweeter than the
prison. I
can live here. It’s
not bad, here. My
brothers understand.
Only children catch it. We all were
children, once.” |
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