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IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
IV: Braided Paths
Chapter 38 Clues and Dreams of Fear
Tuesday, October 13, 2708 Once again I hear the
whistle for aid. Once again I hide my
children carefully before I investigate alone, rifle in arms and a knife in my
boot, med-gear bouncing on my back in case they really mean it. The second time the whistle
sounds weaker, but still I don't answer.
I wouldn't have heard it the third time if I wasn't so close that I
practically trip on the little body huddled in the ferns. Stop the bleeding! I tear back sodden clothes to assess the
wound. Bullet in the back, missed the
spine, thank God. The ribs took the
worst of it. I elevate her to a sitting
position, then tie on a compression bandage so tightly she gasps, and thank
heavens and all good ghosts that this time it works! Then I turn her onto her
side, to press my cheek against breasts so tiny that they're a mere whisper of
a promise, if only she'll survive. I
listen, frowning; the harsh sounds worry me.
I think rib splinters might dig at her lungs, but they haven't punctured
the pleura yet. Quickly I choose sturdy
twigs to bind to her in a kind of corset that will keep her torso rigid for now
and minimize the friction—she's going to have some terrible adhesions inside,
but I think she'll live. Then I raise my head and
see the clear trail of blood leading this way.
I think of every word for excrement in every language that I have ever
learned, then shift my small pack to my front as I hoist her on my back and
crawl through brush in a tangential direction from her path, up a bit of a
bluff, to where I can watch from a sheltered place. She lies heavy on me, her loud breath scaring
me for at least two good reasons, as I pray for the wind to stir up and shake
the branches louder than her rales. Here
in the stuffy undergrowth I can't quite tell whether it does or not; she
wheezes right into my ear and it sounds like the end of the world. Sure enough, soldiers
follow the blood to where I stopped its flowing. They confer; I can almost swear I hear one of
them say, "Looks like she's had help," but I can't tell for sure. Then they start to circle around, looking for
any sign of our travels. I try to
suppress my shivers and assess the situation objectively. They aren't of the same troop that Kiril
escorts; I know all of those by sight in the dark, by now. Just how many government soldiers rove the
land, these days? And how many rebels? And why oh why did I grab a
rifle instead of a blowgun? I could pick
them off now, sure—and the sound would bring twenty of their comrades
running. I sweat under the girl's weight
as one of them finds a twig I broke in passing and a strand of my hair caught
on a bush.—oh, my stupid, too-long hair!
Now they both come this way, bent like they sniff my trail out,
searching for more clues. With quick and
shaking fingers I tape thick pads of bandage over the end of my gun. Now they seem less certain of the trail, for
I make a point of never traveling in a straight line if I can help it. I finish my homemade silencer, but it'll only
work for one shot, if at all, so I unsheathe my knife at the very last
minute! "Over here!" he shouts his
last words, before I shove the knife into the man's throat where he bends over
me, so fast he stares in shock even after his soul escapes, his hot blood
gushing over us. I fire the gun before
he even finishes toppling, taking down his startled companion to share his
final journey. That silencer didn't cut
the noise nearly as much as I'd hoped, but I pray that it suffices, I might
have just enough time to escape. Quickly I strip off the
soldier's jacket before the blood has time to soak all the way through, and use
it to clean up my patient and me, at least enough to not rub blood off on
passing twigs and leaves, before we make our roundabout way back to base. But all the way home I can still smell the
iron tang of it, this forced intimacy with someone I couldn't want to make more
of a stranger to me if you paid me. * * * (Fear. I'm all fear
inside. And with Kiril away it just gets
worse and worse.) (Fear...it's all fear out
here, constant dread, the mountains crawling with rebels like maggots in a
rotten dog.) (I have a secret, buried so
deeply that even I don't know it. And
Deirdre doesn't know it, ‘cause if she did, she wouldn't order...whatever it is
that she hasn't ordered yet. And how do I
even know...whatever it is that I almost know?) ( I search the rocks overhead for gun-barrels
trained down upon us, or poking behind some tree. They can hide anywhere. I've heard that they even have a trick of
burying themselves alive, letting the first soldiers walk on their heads
without moving a muscle—then they burst up and kill the soldiers in the middle. "Eyes forward, Reno. We're marching, not sightseeing.") ("Bring me some water,
Lufti," Tanjin says. "Help me clean off
the blood.") (I hear they've got rebels
that can fly. I hear they've got rebels
that can burst a man's skull with flames just by looking at him. I hear they've got sorcerers in the hills who
can raise the dead with songs and then you've got to fight rotten zombies who
keep on coming and coming after you shoot ‘em, it's no use even trying.) (Of course I'm scared. And brave.
I must be brave. I look down at
Deirdre, sleeping in the straw, as Tanjin wipes her arms off, and know that I
would do anything for her...I just would. Whatever she orders, I will
go forward with it, secrets or not, no matter what it does to me. For her and Kiril. Oh Kiril—if only I could hug you just one
more time!) ("Eyes forward! Gawd—I'd say you act like a scared little
girl, but I won't insult Kiril, here, with the comparison. Now pull yourself together, soldier!" Up yours, Sarge. You don't know half of what's going on out
here.) "Deirdre? You okay?"
I open my eyes to the moist touch of a damp rag on my cheek. I find myself in a barn stall, sweet with
hay, but cold in the night with the absence of the livestock that the army
requisitioned. Tanjin bends over me,
concerned. "I just fell asleep, that's
all." "You're exhausted," he
says, "and shivering, to boot." With his
arm and a half he tucks a blanket around me.
The blanket smells like the horse that used to wear it. "Come on over with the rest of us—the farmer
has some chickens left, and killed one for our soup." Sounds delicious. To stick by the no-dinner rule when so generously
offered would offend against hospitality.
I rise on stiff legs. "I guess
the trip back took more out of me than I reckoned," I say apologetically. My nerves still shudder at the thought of
that crouching run, always wondering if enemy sights had found my back, just
like they'd found hers before. "No big
deal, though," I add hastily, as I catch Lufti looking queerly at me—what am I
thinking, showing weakness before my troops? "All the same," says Tanjin,
"I think you could use this." He hands
me a home-bottled ale, the farmer's best brew, after pulling the cork out with
his teeth. I've seen grenades primed
like that. I don't argue. I nod my thanks and hunker down around the
brazier that's all the heat we dare without setting the barn on fire. "Bijal," I ask, "could you brew some rosehip
tea for our patient?" "I already did," he
says. "She's sipping at it now." Tanjin says "Relax! You're off duty. Everything's taken care of already." I take a swig from the
bottle, and then another. The ale goes
off like the gentlest explosion, radiating its warmth swiftly from my empty
belly to my weary brain, obliterating care and its pinching grip upon my
muscles as I wait for my bowl of soup. I'd dreamed something about
fear... (I'd dreamed something about fear…) (Civics class. I could so easily fall asleep, right here at
my desk.) (I don't ever want to sleep
again.) (I dutifully take notes on Toulinian scale voting, in the properly
cramped, paper-saving script they use around here.) (They've sent me my ballot once again. I try to concentrate on it, pushing aside all
of the other written demands on a headmaster's time, clearing a space on my
desk back to the old, nicked, polished wood, and center the document
there.) (Each voter must rate the
candidates by number of preference, #1 being the most favored; the larger the
number, the less desirable the candidate.
The candidate with the lowest tally wins.) (I try to rate the names, knowing nothing,
really, of the politics behind them. I
haven't kept up on that sort of thing, yet I ought to do my civic duty.) (Numbers given must not exceed the tally of
candidates, lest the ballot-counters throw them out. Thus, if you decide to get cute and give a
politician you really hate a score of 20 with only ten hopefuls running, your
vote becomes a zero, increasing his chances of winning. Likewise repeat numbers get thrown out for
both candidates.) (I rate them, one to
five, then look again. Seven
candidates. There are seven
candidates.) (Et cetera. I yawn.
Nobody gets to vote before age thirty, anyway.) (I try again, and rate them one to five, then
realize that I have again left two blank spaces. Rapidly I pencil in six and seven, not
looking at the names, Something feels
wrong, terrifying, about those names—I must not even try to read them. They have some connection with my bad,
forgotten dreams.) "Come on, Deirdre, wake up,
honey. Just have some of this soup. Please.
You could use it." Mmm...warm in the mouth,
delicious chickeny goodness, nourishment spreading in my chest when I
swallow...but then I feel him take the bowl before I drop it, I feel him tuck
the blanket around me again, and I wonder when my eyes closed and why they
won't open now, but oh the relief... (I feel nothing but relief when I feel the paper ridges of the
latest crumpled message nudged into my hand.
Let's hear it for a break in the monotony!) (I get a paper-cut shoving the ballot into
its cylinder. Angry, I pull it out,
crumple it up and throw it away instead.
Who says I have to vote, when I haven't even heard of any of these
candidates? How exactly is it my civic
duty to skew the results on ignorance?) (Saved by the bell! I can't
wait to get out of here!) (I can hardly
wait to get out the door for my evening walk around the grounds. Guiltily, I realize that I have wasted
paper. M…somebody, somebody would have
smacked my hand for that.) (Jake, Don and I shrug on our coats and caps, wrapping scarves
around our necks, pulling on galoshes.
We have a study-break and we don't need to study, but for all intents
and purposes we are cutting classes to step outside into the rich, autumn air.) (The rose garden looks depressing, watching the leaves turn brown,
the petals all gone from the useless orange pips, soon nothing left but pips
and thorns.) ( Slouching shoulder to shoulder, looking thoroughly delinquent
and a little dangerous, we make our way to the brown-leafed tree with that gap
in the trunk like a scream in wood.) (It started in a rose garden.
The dream or a memory or something.
I hasten out of there. But that,
too, happened—I had found a clue and hastened out of the rose garden, eager, on
to the next thing, not knowing my danger.) (Oboy, a clue! I reach into
the rotten wood and pull out the paper.
"Red in spring, now thorns sting.
(17-x)2=22. (2+y)3=12. Northwest tops the page." Jake says, "The next clue waits in the rose garden." Don adds, "X would be 6, and y would be 2." I put in, "Using the northwest edge of the rose garden as the top
of a page of graph paper, that would mean the 6th rosebush of the 2nd
row. Simple.") (I don't follow my usual route at all. I wander, absentmindedly, into the herb
garden, stop at the rue, feel my face flush, and walk out of there rapidly.) (We reach the rose garden, finding the next note, carefully hidden
close to the base of the designated bush, in a crumbling clump of leaves, stuck
to a thorn. Don reads, ‘Flavor for some, tonic for others, we all had such
plants, grown by our m___'" Jake frowns. "Can any of
you figure out what fits in the blank?" I snap, "It doesn't matter, Jake.
It's obviously talking about an herb garden. What's the next line, Don?" "It says, "A document in madness.' " "Wait," I say. "Wait…that's
from Shakespeare. But they don't teach
Shakespeare anymore, not here." Thoughtfully, Jake says, "Come to think of it, we haven't had a
single literature lesson—even though they teach us British and American English
so that we can read the classics. But no
classics." We all stare at the paper, stumped. Frustrated, because we're not used to
anything stumping us. Don murmurs. "We ought to
remember Shakespeare." "I do," I say. "Only…only
in tatters. Bits and pieces." "Rosemary!" Jake
exclaims. "The line has some connection
with Rosemary…and pansies." We head for the herb garden, feeling the wind turn just a shade
colder, rattling dead leaves. Don says,
"George knows that we have familiarity with Shakespeare. It's not taught in class, and it's not what
anyone would expect from an ignorant Lumnite.
Do you suppose he suspects what we are?" "Hurry up," I say, "before that wind blows in another rainstorm." "No," Jake says. "He's
following intuition. Nobody would ever
suspect that the headmaster would invite in agents from the Tilián—the
unexpected path, steered like a true oracle." "Well, the boy certainly suspects something about us," Don grumbles.) (I find myself standing by the old, abandoned well. We should have capped it long ago. I ought to give orders to that effect. I touch the ancient rope, leading into
unfathomable darkness. I feel an urge to
pull on it. I dismiss the urge. The rotted old thing must have dropped its
ruin of a bucket long ago into the mud.
Time I went indoors and stopped all this nonsense. But my feet don't take me inside.
They take me to the gate. And
before I can stop myself I lean on its thick and ancient wood, a bronze strip
cold against my cheek, tears welling in my eyes, yearning for the outside world
with all my heart.) (The rain begins to patter on us, softly. We find a thick rosemary bush and, digging
our fingers in on the side next to a row of pansies, discover the next
clue. All it says is, "A very deep
subject." "Well, well, well!" Don laughs.
"He has certainly paid enough attention in English class to remember
that old pun.") (But I don't deserve to go outside into the free world. Never, ever, ever! I followed the clues, I found the pirate's
treasure and all its pretty damnation, and…good lord, man, why dig up that
past? Forget everything and march right back
to your post!) (We pause at the garden wall, peering around just in time to see
the Headmaster going inside from his evening constitutional. Six AM and six PM, like clockwork. He wouldn't punish us, of course, but for his
and our sakes we must appear to fear discovery, so we wait until we hear the
door close in the distance, then stroll over to the abandoned well. There, hidden by the old rope, we find a much sounder
fishing-line, slimmer but more sturdy.
We pull up three flasks, gurgling and clinking against each other, tied
at the necks, glossy in the light despite a little mud. The well still holds some moisture, though
not water per se, and so the ink has blurred slightly on the labels, for George
has stripped off the top, glossy layer of the labels and on the fuzzy white
paper beneath he has penned our instructions: One bottle for each of us. We read about drinking the contents all at
once, at a place soon to be revealed, on whatever date and time that George
shall mext select. We must not waste a
precious drop of the herbal elixir that he went through such pains to gather. Thoughtfully Don asks, "I wonder what herbs he puts into this?" Jake uncaps and sniffs his.
"Rosemary," he says, "Among others.") |
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