IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume VII: The Burning
Chapter 12 Welcomes
CHAPTER 12 Welcomes Tuesday, April 6, 2709 We come to the very edge of ash and desolation, and there we stare
across the water between us and paradise.
We shall have to cross a wide river to reach the living lands. They tantalize us, just the other side of
that sparkling flow, as we scout the shore for some way over. (I think
I can see the skyscrapers of Nuvelle Parie ahead!) We dare not try to swim; we don’t know how
much lye has polluted the river, but dead fish float stinking through it,
looking half-dissolved already. (Yet I smell something bad and I roll up the
window—that can’t be good.) It might
have washed clear by now, but we can’t be sure.
(I tell myself that it might have
been a dead animal. A big animal, like a
cow.) And I curse in my heart, for
even though the fire stopped here, the damage will go on and on, carried by the
very barrier that thwarted it. (Even so, I remember that crazy couple who
threw my old poems into the car, reminding me that the antidote hasn’t reached
everywhere.) I don’t know whether
those trees show the normal foliage of the season, or if poisoning has killed
them. (And new poisonings in the meantime, continue.) (“What are you guys up to?” Don asks, as
Wallace, George and I change the tack of the sails. “Trust us,” I say. “We know what we’re doing.” He opens his
mouth to argue, then I look at him and
he shuts up. Eyes wide, Randy takes him by the arm and says,
“They don’t know what they’re doing, but I think you’d better let them do it
anyway.” The salt wind sharpens on the skin of my face,
tossing my forelock on my brow. The
sails snap and ripple till we set them right and change direction altogether. And the sunlight drops into shadow as the
first swift clouds thicken overhead “That’s farther out to sea,” Don points out. “I know.”
And suddenly I do know.) (I reach a huge suspension bridge over a river, of
the sort that would point to a big city nearby.
Citizens have pulled themselves together enough to clear the innermost
lanes of wreckage, so I can carefully navigate my way through, slowly enough to
hear the oboe that someone plays. I
notice that people have moved into some of the abandoned cars, hanging curtains
made from old clothes, stacking tires on hoods to hold container gardens. Fishing-poles extend off the bridge’s sides,
along with the occasional bucket on a rope.
Laundry flaps gaily from lines strung between cables on the upwind side,
while fish dry on the downwind side. It’s
a tidy system. Not bad, altogether, as apocalyptic villages go. I wave to some as I pass through, and they
smile and wave back at me. I almost feel
disappointed when I reach the other side.
But these people don’t seem to need an agent to help them find their
way. A barrier makes me stop, with a sign saying “TOLL”. I cheerfully hand over bottle of pepper-sauce
and a small smoked chicken. Just as
cheerfully they raise the barrier and let me through. That could have gone much worse, I think as I
drive on. They could easily have robbed
me for all I had. Encouraging, that they
didn’t.) At last we find a small metal suspension bridge. Carefully we inch our way across the supports
on either side, clinging to the railing, the charred timbers between no longer
apt to hold up even our frail weight.
But we make it to the other side.
The first trees do indeed look dead, but we find others beyond
them still with vigor in them, even sleepy with the season as they are, and the
weeds grow lush between the trunks. We
can feel the difference; it tingles beneath our skin. No one has ever set a more grateful foot on life-rich humus than
we do on the hour that we finally reach the shade of living trees. No one has ever breathed more deeply of the sap-sweet
forest air, nor looked up so reverently at the towering trunks. We bless even the cashew-vine as we skirt
around it. Lufti dances one final spin, his head tipped back, looking up and
up at ascending layers of autumn leaves.
Then he falls dizzily onto a crackling mound and sinks into a deep and
instant sleep, as though upon a long-lost mother’s breast. Wednesday, April 7, 2709 (The Nor’easter hits us in the dark. George has the watch and wakes the rest of us
by singing, eerily in the lightning flashes and the roaring winds, about our
danger. Nice way to end it all, if end
it we do, thank you Jesus—but I’d rather live if it’s okay with you. I shiver in the icewater rain and the saltwater
slaps as I stagger across the rolling deck to my station at the rudder. Jake, George, and Wallace take control of the
sails, moving in synch, ignoring Don’s shouts over the gale that they’re doing
it wrong, the wind’ll tear the sails! Instead the boat shoots forward, racing on the
wind just a razor-edge from ripping, as our oracle and proto-oracles find the
unexpected path between destructions to keep us on course to whatever
destination they have in mind. Meanwhile it’s not just the boat’s wild pitching
that makes me dizzy. I feel the
link. I feel the boat’s motion from
three perspectives besides my own, two of them untrained oracles still quite
capable of telepathically roping me in, the third one tearing from all the pressure
on the weak point in his Gift. Oh God,
he can’t break his oraclism! Their combined force makes me move the rudder as
they will. I take shuddering breaths
till I stop resisting, and send one thought back. DON’T TAKE JAKE!) I wake, gasping, and clutch Lufti to me, crackling through the
leaves that bury us. He wakes, too, murmuring,
“I can help. Let me help, copper
lady. Save the bitter licorice-man from
lunatics like me.” And I feel power rush
into me, strengthening my connection to Jake, holding him fast, holding him
together, keeping him from…something. I
wonder if I dream all this. “Yes and no,” Lufti gasps and clutches me still more tightly. “Lufti’s in trouble!” Kiril
cries as she wakes, too, groping for both of us in the dimness till she can
embrace us together, binding us even tighter.
“What’s going on?” “Magic,” Lufti whispers,
the sweat beading on him like seaspray.
And I feel my connection with Jake expanding back into places it had
torn away from, with… “…golden swirls of other matter does it matter? Yes, it’s fragile stuff, gold, but it’ll do
in a pinch, the bowl weeps for joy that it ever broke. Hold fast my heart!” (“His heart!” Jake cries, and falls to the deck,
clutching his breast. “He’s too young
for this! If I can’t stabilize his heart
he’ll die!”) “Mission accomplished, “ Lufti murmurs, and suddenly falls limp
into my arms. Have his lips turned
blue? I can’t tell—everything looks blue
in the predawn glow! Anxiously I feel
his pulse while the others, waking all around me now, look on as much as they
can in so little light. At first
alarmingly irregular, the beat stabilizes, strengthens, and so help me finally feels
completely normal! He opens his eyes,
smiles, and says, “We’re healed.” And
then falls back asleep. (“Land ho!” Don cries. I look up from where I kneel beside Jake, not
even remembering abandoning my post, but it’s all right, Wallace has the
rudder, and he steers us towards an old dock on the unexpected island, as
surely as if he had trained in his father’s trade. “I’m okay,” Jake says, gazing up at me in the
dawn’s first glow. “Never better.” “Who’s he?” I ask. “The he whose heart’s too young for something
or other?” “What are you talking about, Randy?” “Uh…never mind.” The storm rages on, hurling us into the padded
pylons with a jolt and a loud thunk. Don
and the other two quickly secure the ropes and drop anchor for good measure. I help Jake up, we grab some supplies, and
run through the rain towards the shelter of the man waving a lantern and
pointing where to go.) (Wheeee!
Nuvelle Parie, here I come! I
make myself skip the first exit into the outskirts of town, picking up speed,
headed for the city’s heart. Gathering
stormclouds to the northeast make the
air feel heavy and cold, but I don’t care, I roll down the windows and relish
the wind in my hair, just because it feels so free, even though I promised
myself I’d arrive flawlessly coifed. I
can always put it up later. I’ve got my
lipstick on, violet perfume dabbed behind each ear, and a grin stretching my face
to spoil the entire cool look that I had envisioned for this moment. Gates, who cares?) I smell smoke on the air.
Does it smell like ham? No. Then Kiril looks at me and grins. “That’s corn mush. Somebody’s frying up corn mush for
breakfast!” and we all start laughing for sheer joy. The cobbler’s children smile, their eyes luminous
with hope, as though this is the first time in their lives that they have ever
smiled. They look at each other, then at
me and Kiril, and then each other again, then finally join in the laughter. (I pass the second exit that leads into a
residential district. More traffic fills
the road, coming and going, zigzagging dangerously in between old wrecks and
not slowing down. Rain starts hitting
the windshield and my arm by the window; I feel the slickness of the road beneath
me, but I can’t slow down. The
mechanical tide cuts me off from the third exit as we hurtle towards downtown. Oh well; I wanted to head there anyway.) The first village we come to has blocked the road with a
barricade, marked with a skull and crossbones—a real human skull, and real
femurs. For those who can read, someone
has painted below: No Refujees! No Soljers! No Rebels! We Shoot All Stranjers! Apparently they aren’t averse to other modes of execution,
however, for from the limbs of trees beside the road we see bloating examples
of each, dangling neck-first from ropes: A young man in government uniform, an
older woman who probably would have died of her burns anyway, and a boy crisscrossed
in (empty) bandoliers. No doubt they
didn’t want the message lost on the illiterate. The new kids stare at the corpses in a kind of dull wonder; the
shadowed tension under their eyes looks like holding them so wide all the time
has exhausted them. I can feel that
these children had never been outcasts before, not even on the schoolyard
level, had never even considered the possibility. And now they feel too tired to register the
shock. (Did I just see a skeleton driving one of the
cars? Oh Gates! I don’t get it; I’ve been eating clean food! Oh wait…are these people still so
magentine-poisoned that they’re overwhelming my telepathy again? And the rain pounds harder and harder, and the
road grows more slippery even as traffic speeds up and the wrecks become more
numerous. I don’t dare take my hands off
the wheel to roll my window up, shivering as the wind hits my wet shoulder.) The wind changes; we gag on the odor and slip back into the
forest. We soon become aware that two
huge dogs escort us, between us and the village’s outer bounds. When we step too close to that side, they
growl. Lefty asks, “What do they feed big brutes like that on, if they
haven’t got food enough to share?” “Manflesh,” Marduk answers.
We say nothing more for the next few miles, until the dogs recognize a
territorial boundary and sit down, still watching. Marduk turns around and stares them
down. They stand and bark until he turns
his back again. (I see her coming straight at me, waving her arm
out the window at me, her square face framed by her rainsoaked, short-cropped
hair—Cybil Tamor! She swerves around a
wreck and into the lane going the opposite way before another car can crash
into her. “Zanne!” she shouts. “Zanne!” “Cybil!” I shout back “I don’t know where you live now…” she cries as
we pass each other, before the traffic forces us apart again. I veer for the next exit, determined to make
it this time, hoping she has the sense to do the same. A car sideswipes me, but my fast reflexes
compensate, but the tires skid, yet I can still sort of manage the skid,
careening sideways into the exit while other drivers scald the air with curses
till I get my bearings again but then another car rams me and sends me flying
off the road, but by now the embankment’s low and I land bone-joltingly on my
wheels. I can barely limp to a
parking-lot, leaking vile-smelling fuel as I pull over. Frantically I grab food and water and throw them
along with Tshura’s box into my bedding, gather it all up and run out of there
with it all bouncing on my shoulder like St. Nicky’s bag of toys before the car
explodes behind me. Well, driving was
fun while it lasted, but we can’t have luxury every day, now can we? I assess my surroundings. Makeshift shelters fill up the lot and ragged
people stare dully at my arrival. Some
go over to ignite slivers of lumber at the fire of my wreck to bring back to
their encampment. Nobody seems
particularly surprised by anything anymore. This seems as good a place to wait for Cybil as
any, though I can look forward to a cold night as the rain soaks my
blankets. But maybe I can find somewhere
sheltered yet airy enough to dry it with some fire of my own. “Do you want a fish sandwich?” a tight-throated voice
squeaks at my elbow. I turn to see a
woman with rain-darkened blonde hair straggling from a rag-turned-kerchief, too
bent and strained for someone her age.
“Only I got no bread for it. But
it’s a sandwich if we both agree it is, right?” she says without smiling, her
dark eyes beady and intent, as she holds up a dried fish with a bite taken out
of it.. “Marvelous, darling!” I reply, smiling for both
of us as I lower my “bag” on a weedy spot as much out of the mud as I can
manage. “And I shall provide the bread as we split it.”) |
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