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IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
IV: Braided Paths
Chapter 19 Parallel Marches
Sunday, September 6, 2708 (“Uh, Zanne...what’s your ethnicity?” Cybil
asks in a pained voice. “And what is
your religion?” Not the sort of
questions I expect when out with a woman-friend on a morning spree downtown,
amid all the pretty windows and the lively city sounds. But then she’s been acting uncomfortable ever
since she picked me up after church.) We pass around the little
bits of potato bread and grieve that we have none to give Kiril. We pass the bottle of sour wine aspiring to
be vinegar, and Kiril can't take a sip with us. We pray for her as though our prayers could
light her way home on this cloudy, sunless dawn, but it all seems so futile,
everything futile! (“Both are rather...complicated,” I answer. “I guarantee you have no equivalent of either
in your country.” She frowns. “That could be
a problem.” She nods to the lines to the
matinee—parallel lines, for different categories of persons, who don’t look all
that different to me. I laugh, “My dear, I’ll be whatever you are for the day. I’m a trained infiltrator, after all.”) Infiltrating, she whistled. Taken prisoner, yet she doesn't want rescued
just yet. Cool-headed, that one, almost
too cool for her own good. And too smart
for her own good, too, for somebody her age.
I think of Jesse—dead so young. I promised her I’d never
leave her again! Stuff that, Deirdre. The child left you. She took off after spices that you didn’t ask for,
without a by-your-leave. This isn’t your
fault. Children don’t always have
much impulse control. Even the geniuses. Especially the geniuses; sometimes their thoughts distract them from common sense. But damn if we don’t make the same mistake,
over and over, of expecting them to think like miniature adults. I just plain forgot to watch over her. I of all people should have known better. (Even now, sometimes, the mindchange can make me impulsive. I wink at Cybil and murmur, “You know, you
can join a different group, too, if you want,” and I take her hand, heading
towards the shortest line of light-skinned people. But she blanches and pulls away, saying, “I
don’t think I want to see the movies, anyway“ and vanishes into the crowd. I scale a boulder and scan
for the campfires of the enemy. Over there,
marked by thin columns of smoke. They
took the other fork in the road. We’ll
have to go out of our way, then, to follow close behind. Okay, good as done. We can subvert the villages along that route
as readily as this. And that will
mean...no. Don’t think that way. Don’t assume that we’ll go so far
off-schedule that we’ll need the greenfire to catch up again. We have no schedule. We have no need, whatsoever, for the
loathsome leaf that Rashid so kindly provided for us, just in case. I take a deep drag on my
cigarette and gaze out over the tumbled miles that we'll have to cross. I feel a sore throat coming on; I shouldn’t
smoke. Stuff that, too; I’ve few enough
pleasures as it is. I listen for bird
calls, but only hear the natural keen of raptors native to these peaks. I won’t leave you,
Kiril. I promise. Monday, September 7, 2708 (He caught me! I put down the bread that I’d been stuffing
in my mouth out of turn, but crumbs still cover the coat they gave me. I didn’t gobble it fast enough and now I feel
I’m gonna choke! “Hungry?” Sarge asks, just
standing there at the opening of the commissary tent. “I didn’t mean any harm!” I
blurt, but it’s no use—there’s no excuse for eating more than your ration. “Of course you didn’t mean
any harm, sweetheart!” He comes straight
over to me and kneels down before me, his hands on my shoulders, a painful look
in his eyes. “You’re skin and bones,
girl—half-starved, are ya? I felt your
ribs clear through your clothes when I took you down from that tree.” He picks up the piece of bread. “Here, this is too dry as it is—let’s see if
we can find some jam to spread on it.” “You mean I can...” “The cook can help herself
to anything in the cook’s tent.” I stare
all around me, at crates and barrels of food piled up so high that they make a
maze of walls.) No reason we can’t play
with the troop along the way; what’s a guerilla for, otherwise? We brainstorm as we go, all of my band coming
up with new, inventive ways to tweak the soldier’s nerves and bleed away
morale. They say that with enough
mosquito bites you can kill a moose. I’m
not sure what a moose was, but something big, I gather. We can do small things at first, so they
don’t blame their change of fortune on Kiril—and not yet, wait a few days,
though my heart burns with impatience as though I chew on greenfire instead of
on regrets. (“Do you ever have regrets?” Joel asks Don. I’m not supposed to hear. I’m not supposed to watch them between the
books, over in the other aisle of the library.
But I might as well wait for Jake here as somewhere else. “Regrets? About what?” “Coming to this school.
Leaving Lumne behind. I’m an
island-boy, too. I miss the sea.” “Do you now? I…I love the
sea, too.” Don steps closer, facing
Joel. “I miss the surge beneath my feet,
I miss the rush and sigh of waves, the salty air, oh God I miss it all! The curving green, the rippling blue, the
sparkles of light…” I see sudden tears
streak silently down his face. “I miss…I
don’t know who…I don’t know what I miss.
I want to embrace…the water. I
want to embrace the water!” “I am here, Don. We can
remember together.” I watch the arm
steal around Don’s shoulders, and I feel a stab of…jealousy? Yet I have Jake! “I have friends,” Don murmurs.
“So why do I feel so…so lonely?” Joel presses his forehead to Don’s. “Me, too.” Don’s tearstained face looks confused, wide-eyed, but he doesn't
resist the hand that cups the back of his head, the first brush of exploring
lips… “Maia Angelina,” Jake intones, suddenly joining them. And at once Joel straightens, his hands dropping to his side,
staring off as if in a trance. Quietly
Jake leads Don away. I join them exiting the library, out into the blustery air
threatening to rain. Don asks, in a
shaky voice, “Why did you say that, Jake?
Maia Angelina. What does it
mean?” Jake’s brows knit for a moment.
“I don’t know,” he says at last as we stroll under a cloudy sky. “It just felt like words of power. Like it had to be said.” Then he shrugs and says, “Let’s get inside
where it’s warm.” Why do I feel that we should have remembered some other name as
well? And...it’s a name?) The good news is that the
army seems headed downslope (where we’re supposed to go anyway) to warmer
climes—the Midlands. I peer over the
edge of my worn-out scarf at a landscape of white that I wouldn’t mind putting
behind me for awhile—how recently I fancied that the Charadoc could never get
too cold! I pull down the scarf for a
moment to breathe in air that doesn’t smell like dirty cheir, then regret it
the instant the ice hits my lungs—particles too fine for snow swirl in a
faintly sparkling mist around us, getting thicker by the minute. Doesn’t do my bum throat any good. The children around me march on doggedly; I
think they could keep stumbling forward in any climate, terrain, or condition
by now. They have grown up enduring. Tuesday, September 8, 2708 Here’s the first village
we’ve come to since that sulfur-miner’s town, and here I’ve got laryngitis so
bad it hurts to whisper, though I itch to try out the songs that Damien taught
me. Only one inn, but it barters an
herbal tea gathered up especially for throats like mine, common in these hills,
in exchange for the beeswax that we carry for trade when the coins run out,
courtesy of the hives of Koboros.
Gratefully I sip the steaming, aromatic brew and let it do its stuff—the
first painless swallow I’ve enjoyed for days. Chianti, a young mountain
beauty who owes her life to Rashid, flirts with a man on her left, who turns
and smiles till he sees the eyepatch on her right. At his changed face she glances down and
blushes. He apologizes for his gaucherie
and takes her hand, as she shyly (subversively) murmurs how she lost the
eye. Chianti’s my age or maybe even
older; she’s fought for the cause longer than most of us can imagine, and she
knows her business. I kick back and sip
my tea, discreetly admiring her technique as sedition and chivalry flare in the
eyes of hormonal youths all throughout the common-room. Why should I think it all has to ride on my
shoulders, all the time?
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