Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (40 page)

Sensing the hesitation, Ope-shed asked, “Were you part of a more?”

“More people?  Not exactly.”  Another long silence.  “How do you know my language?”

“It is the language of the gods.  Reserved for priests and holy women.”

“Are you a priest?” Alex asked, thinking about his book on religion and all the meanings the word could have.

“I was.”  Then, sensing Alex’s reluctance to say anymore, he continued, “Please, let me tell you our story.  Three lifetimes ago, we left our homeland, a cold land far to the sunless sky.”

North
, Alex thought.  “Why did you leave?”

“There was a great divide about our laws.” Answered Kefku.  “There were two minds.  Mind one said that tradition must rule.  Mind two said that people should be free to make new traditions.”

“Which mind were you?” asked Alex.

“My grandfather believed that a man owned his work.  He believed that not everything should be shared, and that some things should be kept.”  She accompanied this with both hands, palms in and fingers touching, brought to her chest and held there.  “He broke with tradition.”

“So mind one was tradition?”  Alex asked, continuing the use of Kefku’s phrase.

Ope-shed answered.  “In mind on
e, everything must submit to priests.  Only we can know who deserves.  But our forbearers disagreed.”

Alex frowned for a second as he tried to formulate his question in the simplest way.  “You are priests.  What do you do now, since you broke with tradition?”

“We… guide giving,” Kefku said.

“Guide giving?”

She nodded, not understanding that Alex was repeating it as a question.  Ope-shed, however, picked up on the nuance, and said, “We help decide who deserves.”

“I think I understand.  Who else helps decided who deserves?”

“Everyone.  He who does most, gets most.”

“What about the sick or children?”

“We are a family.  We help he who cannot do himself, but no more.”

Alex nodded.  He was going to have to look back on that politics book of his.  “So what happened since you left tradition?”

Kefku spoke.  “We were very small, less than we are now.  Others left too – minds who felt tradition was not tradition enough.  They went into the setting sun.  We went into the midday sun.”

So, west and south,
Alex concluded.  “Wait, west?  They went into the setting sun?”

“Yes.”

Alex was now convinced that these people before him were not the dunomads or even mistaken as them.  “Were traditions harsh?”

“
Harss
?” Kefku didn’t know the word.

“Cruel?”

“Cruel.  Yes.  Traditions were cruel.  No things were kept, not even people.”

This seemed kind of vague to Alex but he assumed such a practice would indeed be cruel.  If a person was not
kept
, which he took to mean: his or her own person, then there weren’t really any rights in their traditions.

“So when a person can keep, he is kept?”  But not sure if he made his point Alex restated it, “A person cannot keep a thing, unless he keeps himself.”

“Yes.  Very Yes.”  Kefku seemed pleased, the way a person does when she feels she has truly been heard.

Alex turned to his mother who didn’t seem to be following the conversation at all.  She was always looking over her shoulder, literally and figuratively.  He turned back to Kefku and somehow felt closer to her for the wrinkles in her face, darkened by the shadows of the coals.  She seemed wise to him even in her outer-most appearance.

“Those of the first mind… what ever happened to them?”

“We do not know.  They we
re so strong with tradition, we suspect it was their death.”

Alex nodded.  “Do you have any tradition left here?”

“Very yes, yes,” Ope-shed added eagerly.  “We have many, but only those that fit.  And because of that, we would not ever be accepted by our ancestors.”

“So
this is your new home?”

“No,” Ope-shed replied.  “We are still searching.  But Kefku believes that we are closer.”

“How will you know when you find it?”

Assuredly, Ope-shed closed his eyes and nodded. 
He straightened his posture and breathed in deeply.  “We will know.”

“My mother and I disagreed with tradition too.”

“Then we are the same.” Ope-shed smiled.  “Please, tell me about your home.”

Alex shrugged, trying to think of a way to describe Teleopolis to someone who lived in a tent in a canyon.  “It looked nice.  Almost no one ever went hungry, all the children went to school, and all the adults had a say in the laws of the city.”

“All of them?  How many were you?”

“Our population was strictly capped at one million.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“We could have no more people after a certain number… so that there would be enough for everyone.”

“
Hanak-olah
,” Ope-shed said in astonishment.  “What if a family had more childs?”

“You weren’t allowed to,” Alex said matter of factly.

“But, how?  It is the most essential tradition.  How could you deny a family that?”

“Well
I
didn’t do it.”

“But everyone had a voice in tradition.  Was this your people’s voice?”

“We each had a
little
voice.  And it was tradition.  People didn’t like the idea of having to pay for someone else’s ten kids.  It was a drain on society.”

Ope-shed didn’t really understand since Alex, in his frustration, spoke quickly and didn’t choose his words for the sake of his listeners.

Ope-shed began anew.  “So you left?”

“Yes.”

“How far away is your city.”

Alex thought about the odometer on the hover car for a moment.  “About six hundred miles from here.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“It’s very, very far.  It would be impossible to walk there.”

“Your floating basket.”

“It’s called a hover car.”

Ope-shed nodded curiously.  “And you had many things like this at your home?”

“Yes.  Do you need it for anything?  Maybe we could help you.”

“
Alex
,” Olesianna hissed.

He ignored her and looked expectantly between Ope-shed and Kefku who seemed to be having their own tacit conversation.

“We do not want to be in your debt anymore.  Life is hard, but we will survive.  The river has saved us.”

Alex could tell his chances of becoming part of their tribe were fading.  “Yeah, us too, I guess.”

“We will stay here only another season before we continue on.”

Alex stared at the coals and tried to think of something to say.  He had discovered an entire civilization, but for some reason his mind was blank. 

Kefku felt saddened by what she knew.  They could not support any more people in the tribe.  She wanted to see the bright young boy smile again and so she asked him.  “Does your home have priests?”

“I guess.  We had the will.”

“What is will?” she asked, now genuinely intrigued by his answer to a question asked initially out of pity.

“The will is the way of things.”

“Ah, like the path.”

“Yeah.  Well no.  It’s just its own will.”

“What is?”

“Here, it’s like this: when something happens it happens because it is
the will
.  And you know it happened that way because it was
the will
.”

Kefku nodded, likening it to her own divination abilities as priestess.  Though, as many people do when attempting to surmount a cultural barrier, she was quick to see the foolishness of an unfamiliar idea without the slightest inclination to reexamine the foolishness of a familiar one.  If Alex possessed only one noble quality, it was that he had a propensity to reexamine the familiar.

“It was stupid,” he said suddenly.  And it felt good to renounce it openly, satisfying a rebellious urge in him, one that had few other outlets during his daily task of surviving.  “It was just a way to control people.”  It was a simplistic critique, one he would revisit before the end.

T
he night progressed and soon everyone began to fall asleep.  Only Alex and Ope-shed remained awake, with Olesianna lightly dosing a few feet away.

“When I first saw your brother and the others, I was very scared.”

“They were also.  One thought you were from the tribe of the setting-sun.  An outcast who had come to find us.  They speak only in the language of tradition.”

Alex recalled the one man among the group who seemed to speak for him when they came upon the girl at the river bank.

“I also felt relieved.”  Alex paused and Ope-shed waited for him to continue.

“I didn’t think I would ever see another person out here.  My home has a story about how all things began, and it said that there were no other people but us.  I thought I was going to die alone in the wilderness.  But for some strange reason I kept going on in search of something.”

“I understand.”

Alex felt a shiver from those simple words spoken from the stoic man by the dying red coals.  He had made a connection with another person in the most unlikely circumstances imaginable, and it made him feel closer to the world than ever before.  “It’s amazing isn’t it?  That we come from such different places and yet we have shared something.  Where do you think your people came from?”

“My people grew up from the ground.  We were resurrected from the earth after being buried thousands of years ago by our ancestors.”  Ope-shed drew a circle with a line through the middle in the dirt next to his blanket.  “It is the symbol of our birth.”

Alex was sensitive enough to Ope-shed’s conviction not to question his beliefs.  “It kinda makes you wonder how society starts, you know?  Like when everyone came together, what was that first conversation like?”

Ope-shed thought for a moment.  “We need each other to live.  We are a people of families.”

Filled with trust and hope Alex felt an admission rising up in him, about to slip out.  At the last moment, not knowing if it was the right thing to do or not, Alex spoke.  “We didn’t leave my city…  We were banished.”

Ope-shed looked intently at Alex.

“When I was younger, I snuck out of my home and discovered knowledge.  But that knowledge wasn’t allowed among my people.  Many…
suns
later, the warden of my school found out.  I fled that place and went beyond the city again to hide the writings of that knowledge beyond his reach.  When I returned home…” Alex started to choke up but then felt the emotion become too powerful to feel.  It became surreal, like someone else’s story.  “The warden had gone to my house and in a struggle with my mother, he burned it down.  My sister was sick and couldn’t escape.  She died in the fire.”  Alex took a deep breath and then stared at the coals for a while.  “At the trial, the warden blamed my mother for the fire, but I knew it was a lie.  The people said we had to be banished.  It was
the will
.”

“That is a terrible thing,” Ope-shed finally said in the dim light.

“We can’t go back,” Alex said resolutely.  Ope-shed saw the determination and the will to survive in the boy.  He admired it, and the mother too for all her suspiciousness.

Suddenly, Olesianna stood up and left the tent.  Alex watched her leave and felt a terrible guilt at having exposed their story to strangers.  He felt as if he had betrayed her.

“I am sorry Alex, my families cannot support any more people.  It is like your city.”

Alex’s heart sank and he tried to keep his lower lip from shivering.  Ope-shed’s sudden declaration had brought every dormant emotion to the surface at once.  He couldn’t bear to think what it would be like to return to the wild. 

Ope-shed leaned in over the coals and they reflected warmly on his face.  “But if you wish to live with others, I do have hope for you yet…”

T
he following morning, Alex woke to a commotion outside the tent.  He threw off his animal skin blanket and walked outside, the sound of children cheering growing louder.  There, parked much closer to the village than before, was the hover car, and around it, nearly everyone in the village.  The children jeered and cried out at the floating vehicle and ran around it touching the smooth, sleek sides.  One even tried to put his hand under the car but found that as much as he tried, the strangely thick haze under the vehicle could not be penetrated by his little fingers.

Olesianna stood protectively by the driver’s side door and when she saw Alex, called to him.  “Come on Alex.  It’s time to go.”