IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume VII: The Burning
Chapter 13 Our Past and Future Ghosts
Thursday, April 8, 2709 (I can hardly wait for the dawn, shivering in my
wet things, walking back and forth to keep some life in my limbs. I’ve
been this cold before, I remind myself, and lived through it with my usual
panache. At least it isn’t snowing. I take in my fellow campers. Once I would have called them a rough lot,
but who isn’t these days? Most of them
sleep in cars or tents; only a few of us, shadows in the dimness, pace the
night out, hoping to rest at last in the warmth of daylight. I notice Kara, the woman who shared fish with
me, tending a fire in some sort of makeshift stove, complete with a bit of
chimney directing the smoke up and away.
I walk over, hugging my damp blanket around me. I nod to the rainproof contraption and say, “Clever
of you, my dear.” “I used to be a janitor,” she says. “I still got some tools in my gear.” I squat down beside her, grateful for the warmth. “However did you make this?” “It’s an old car muffler. Tinsnipped an opening, drove in some holes,
threaded a couple springs into the holes for hinges, propped it up with stones,
and there you have it. The stones hold
heat—that helps, too.” “Oh, well-done!”
She uses a rod to open the door just a bit to push some wood in, the
glow orange on her weary face against the predawn blueness all around. I stuff my hands into my pockets and
encounter the old poems from my past in there.
On impulse I almost toss them in, but Kara stops me. “No you don’t, nope, not here! They’ll just get stuck in the flue.” She gestures with her head. “There’s an open fire over there where you
can burn those.” “Of course.”
I go over to where I see some coals glowing under the protection of a
fender propped on bricks. A young family
sleeps snuggled close beside it—man, woman, and two blonde little girls with
square faces much like Cybil. I kneel
down and lay the pages on the embers and watch them blacken and curl. It feels fitting, somehow—there goes the last
shred of my childish hero-dreams. I’m
not a hero, not even with superpowers.
I’m a failed agent stuck in the ruins of mission-collapse. I’m a tired woman in rainsoaked clothes
huddled in a homeless camp. I’m Zanne
Charlotte, but what does that even mean anymore? I feel kind of relieved to let it all go.) (I wake slowly, just watching the dust particles
sparkling in the beams of light coming through the window, golden on the
wood. I sneeze, stirring Jake enough for
him to pull his arm off of me and turn over. Window?
As in square window, not a porthole?
Where are we? I remember.
Storm. Island. Guy with a lantern. I sit up, sneezing again. We have all fallen asleep on a bare wooden
floor as comfortably as if we’d lain down on beds. Dust lies all over everything; apparently
isolation has made Lantern-Guy lax with the housekeeping. Don woke up before me, sitting crosslegged by
the lantern, a grim look on his face.
“Want to see something weird?” he asks.
I nod and he pushes the lantern over to me, as dusty as everything else. I look in and there’s a cobweb inside the
chimney, and not a drop of oil in it.
“It’s the only one in the cabin.” “But…nobody’s lit this for quite some time,” I
say. Obviously. Wallace stirs from where he’d lain. Straightaway, as though sleepwalking, he goes
over to the only cot in the cabin, where the blankets clearly mold around our
host. Except I don’t see a head on the
pillow. I see a skull. Sadly Wallace says, “Just like my father. Nobody to take care of him when he got
sick. I wonder how many little islands
around Toulin have ghosts just like this one?”
And at that Jake and George wake up.) The first thing I notice in the morning, before I even open my
eyes, is the scent of the leaves into which we’d nested for the night. I’ve smelled autumn leaves like these before,
sweet and earthy…where, though? And
when? Last Charadocian autumn found me in the lowlands
where the seasons don’t change. Before
then…I seem to have missed out on autumn—Once?
Several times?—always in the wrong hemisphere for it. The last time…was it in Duerlongh? Or one of the little missions around that
region? I breathe in the aroma. Pear leaves.
I last smelled this in an orchard somewhere around Duerlongh, several
years ago. I open my eyes, staring up at the feral pears still hanging in the
trees, that we’d missed in the darkness of the night before, and I stretch in
the crackling leaves, grinning with luxurious satisfaction. “Hey kids,” I say as the others start to stir around me. “Looks like we’re going to have breakfast!” (I wake with the family by the campfire,
surprised that I could nod off at all.
The woman stares at me mutely, her husband’s arm around her
protectively, his other arm taking in his children, who look back at me more
curious than afraid. I stand and curtsey. “Thank you for the lovely hospitality of your
fire,” I say. The woman still stares
with wide, terrified eyes. A stout old Hispanic woman comes by with a pot
of posole. “Don’t mind Daphne,” she says
with rough kindness, handing me a bowl.
“She hasn’t been right in the head for awhile now. She means you no unkindness.” When she sees my hesitation she says, “Go
on. The hominy didn’t come from a
can. I dried it myself before the
troubles, and a cousin smoked the ham.
There’s no poison in it.” I learn that she’s called Luzita, has an actual
home near here, and helps folks out from her stores. They in turn haul water for her, now that the
plumbing doesn’t work. She owns a
shotgun and makes her own cartridges, but so far nobody has ever tried to rob her. She did bag a fat Rottweiler, though, that
had terrorized the neighbors; he
provided the “ham”. I feel grateful for
the quantity of chili in the posole, burning my mouth; dog meat has never been
a favorite of mine. Kara joins us with more of her dried fish. I dig up the last of the bread out of my
bundle and pass it around—it wouldn’t last much longer anyway. Others join us for breakfast with their own
contributions. I set Tshura’s box out
where she can enjoy the hospitality, even if she can’t taste the food. And I feel happy.) We march in better cheer than we have, chewing on pears as we
travel, sweet and juicy, still quite hard yet fully ripened, not mushy in a
grocer’s bin. All of our eyes half-close
in pleasure, making the autumn light seem shimmery between our lashes. We could not have been happier if fed on
ambrosia. Soon we find a rutted country lane, and travel becomes easier, and
pleasant. Sun shines into it and on all
the golden leaves, making it a path of light with walls of shadow framing
it. After he licks the last of the juice
from his fingers, Damien swings his harp around and starts to strum it as we
travel, playing something merry, something not a dirge. How I treasure such moments! (We give our host a proper burial, scratching
his name into a yellow plate by way of a headstone. Roger Eberson
he is, or so says an invoice for galvanized bolts and nuts, twine, and a
jar of brass polish. As I dig the grave
into the sandy island soil, I notice the greenness of the grains. Commonest form of magentine—weak, unstable,
and all over the planet, but sufficient to take on imprints of souls enough to
imitate the real thing. Roger must have
died longing for visitors, and left behind a fantasy of welcoming. Do I blaspheme to pity these imprints that feel
so real to themselves? Maybe now he can
rest and let go. While stitching the bones into his shroud,
George suddenly says, “There’s five more.
Each on their own islands, awaiting their funerals.” Wallace looks at us, pleading. “We have to find them and settle their
spirits. May we do that? Please?”
Jake looks at Don and me and says, “It’s not
like we’re on a schedule.” “Fine,” Don sighs. “Let’s become house call morticians.” And he takes his turn with the shovel. After suitable words over the grave, we take what
still looks usable from the larder—baking soda, sugar, and some pickled fish
now quite well-cured. Wallace seems
especially pleased with the discovery of coffee. I’m sure Roger wouldn’t mind. “Let’s get out of here,” Jake says.) We hear the tanks and scatter into the foliage. The new kids dive into the same bushes as
me. I can see a tendril of cashew-vine
tickle against Chaska’s shoulder where her blouse has slipped. She sees it, too, and doubtless feels it, and
doesn’t move. The children scarcely
breathe. Braulio keeps looking towards
his little brother, Kuchi, who glares out from beneath the leaves with a feral
intensity. Feral–it feels so different
from wild. It’s the pampered pet
suddenly trying to find his way out in a world with no food bowls, no blanket
by the fireplace, no roof or walls or anything comforting and familiar. I have to do this. The test
of blood must follow swiftly. I am a
monster. Marduk has learned by now precisely where to shoot to de-tread a
tank. He freezes all three of them. We run out screaming from behind, where they
can’t swing their cannons around before we can clamber up over the metal
flanks. Chaska shrieks like a
rape-victim as she runs on the attack.
Kuchi sounds as crazy as Lufti.
Braulio’s voice cracks around his battle-cries. I fire and fire at the hinges till they give, then pry open the
hatch. I grab Chaska by the scruff and
shove her forward before she has time to hesitate. “Do it!” I shout. Bullets come out of the hatch and she dodges
back, but I shove her forward again. She
fires and fires until she empties her gun, eyes burning, lips pulled back from
her teeth. I hear the screams of the
caged men. I see the red spatters hit
Chaska’s face. I see the gory streak
where a bullet grazed her cheek and ear.
Then, panting, she looks at me, all her shooting done, and I see anger
in her eyes, terror and triumph and sickness, all intermingled with the posture
of a sheltered girl waiting for approval from the only available authority
figure. I am indeed a monster. She has to learn how to survive.
We all become what we have to be. Firing still goes on.
Braulio had hesitated and the soldiers got their chance to climb
out. They look insane, themselves, their
uniforms dirty, their faces unshaven, no mercy left in those war-inflamed faces
anymore. Braulio fires when a bullet
hits Kuchi, turning white and clammy as the rifle jars him where he
stands. I can see by the pattern of the
spatters on the smaller boy that Kuchi also passed his test of blood. They are rebels now, full and truly. No turning back. Good ghosts took our side today.
Kuchi also has a graze, not full penetration, in his shoulder. I clean his wound and Chaska’s, bandaging
them up with as much mother-tenderness as I can muster, while Hekut loots the
tanks for ammunition. Then we set about burying the dead. Braulio runs off into the bushes to throw up,
as he had not done when we faced the rotting corpses on the day before. When he comes back, wiping his mouth, I say
no word as I hand him water, but I briefly put an arm around his shoulders as
Lufti dances on the new-laid graves. I
honestly don’t know whether that boy does desecration or reverence. And then we move on. Lufti
goes off the path around about sunset, and we follow him to an abandoned
moonshiner’s still, concealed from all but an oracle. He locates one of the jugs still hidden in
the bushes—much more and stronger than the little wine we shared before. Our new recruits experience their first night
of fullblown drunkenness. I taste none
of it, but stand watch over my children. Monster, monster, monster! |
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