Authors: Jeffrey Ford
Cley had not slept, but was fully dressed, wearing his black hat and the yellow coat. His bow and quiver were slung over opposite shoulders. In his left hand he carried a rifle, and there was a pistol in his belt. The new pack that Curaswani had given him was filled with some food, the book cover, his fire stones, and as much ammunition as he could carry. He stood in the darkness of the compound, with Wood at his side.
As the soldiers came from the door of the barracks, limping into boots and buttoning their uniforms, Curaswani, dressed in full uniform and bearing all of his medals on his chest, issued them rifles and pistols he had gathered on the ground in a heap. He directed them to where he wanted each to take up a position on the catwalks.
Cley saw in the young men's faces that they knew something portentous was about to happen. One or two had tears in their eyes, and nearly all of them were trembling. No one questioned the captain, but all moved quickly to their assigned posts. On his way to the great door of the fort, Weems passed the hunter and slipped a pack of cigarettes into his hand.
“For luck,” said the young man, and was gone.
From the barracks came Willa, carrying Wraith in her arms and a pack on her back. Morgana walked with them, her arm wrapped around the new mother's shoulders. They moved next to Cley in the middle of the compound.
Once his men were in place, the captain approached the hunter and women.
“Cley,” he said, “if I were you, I'd head east to where the settlers had their homes. I believe a few of those structures are still standing. Finish the winter out in one of them and then move on if you must in the spring. It seems you are immune from the Beshanti ire thanks to your marking. Perhaps they will not change their minds and will leave you alone until the weather gets better. If I can, I will send some men in the spring to check up on you and fetch back Mrs. Olsen.”
The hunter nodded. He was about to speak, when one of the men up on the eastern catwalk shouted, “Beshanti at the tree line.”
“How many?” asked Curaswani.
“I can't count them, sir,” came the reply.
Then, from each of the walls came the same news, “Beshanti at the tree line.”
The captain handed Morgana a pistol, and yelled, “Open the door.”
Weems pulled the timbers back, unlocking the oak barrier.
The captain reached down and petted Wood on the head as Morgana leaned over and kissed the baby.
“Good-bye, Cley,” said Curaswani.
“I'll see you in the spring,” said the hunter.
“To be sure,” said the captain.
The sun had begun to rise as Cley and Willa walked through the entrance of Fort Vordor. Wood took up the lead. They moved quickly, saying nothing, across the field toward the eastern tree line. Ahead of them, at two hundred yards, there was gathered a veritable sea of Beshanti warriors. Cley leveled the rifle in front of him in case he needed to fire it. When they reached the middle of the field he put his free arm around Willa as a sign to the natives that she was part of him.
As they approached the vast war party, Wood ran forward and the warriors fled from him with shouts of fear as if he was some kind of evil spirit. This created an opening in their ranks. Cley whispered to Willa, “Don't look at them. Just keep walking.”
The hunter was overwhelmed by the great number of men he continued to pass, even though they had made the tree line and were now moving into the forest. Finally, after another fifty yards, they were alone among the birches.
Minutes later, there suddenly arose from behind them a deafening shout, like the very shout of the earth. Wraith woke and screamed at the noise. Soon after, there was the sound of gunfire in the distance. Cley made for a hill he had often seen from the eastern catwalk of the fort, peering over the tops of the forest trees. He and Willa and the dog climbed the gentle slope. When they reached its peak, they turned and look back.
The fort was under attack. There was the distant report of rifle fire, and the hunter saw puffs of smoke appearing everywhere along the battlements. Dozens of bodies lay strewn on the field between the tree line and the walls of Vordor. Some of the Beshanti were scaling the walls with long ladders made of tree branches. He looked for Curaswani and found him on the catwalk, his sword blade catching the sunlight, his white hair and beard making him look at that great distance like the image of Father Time.
“Enough,” said Willa. She took Cley by the hand and pulled him toward the other side of the hill. As he descended back into the Beyond, he felt himself leaving behind a great sorrow. He remembered how much he truly was a man of the wilderness. As the sounds of the battle faded, a new emotion grew inside of him. It was neither joy nor grief. He could not describe it, and he was content that he had no word for it.
the knife
Tomorrow I return to Wenau under dubious circumstances, and because I have been too busy in recent weeks to revisit my vision of the Beyond, I feel I had better take this time tonight to recount another chapter in Cley's journey. The future, it seems, a phenomenon which had for so long been a certainty of dusty books and quiet, solitary contemplation, has become an empty page, itself waiting to be marked by those events that have yet to transpire. Its perfect blankness fills me with trepidation and at the same time pleases me with its enigmatic possibilities. I go to town as a sign of good faith in my humanity and hope to find, in return, a similar sign from the citizens there. As the beauty slowly percolates my mind toward transcendence, I will explain.
After my initial visit to the schoolhouse, word had apparently gotten around that I was not such an angry monster as had been advertised for so long. Those who had been present that night, Feskin and his friends, had obviously convinced more of their neighbors that I was to be trusted. Because of this, as soon as two days following, I began to receive guests at the ruins. On the first day, there were only a few, but I was pleased to find that these folks were not among those I had met at the schoolhouse. Yes, they also brought their weapons in order to ameliorate their fears, but they came in good humor and were inquisitive and friendly. I led them around the ruins and entertained them with snatches of historical, architectural, and technological information.
Every day following, more and more visitors came, on foot, on horseback, in wagons. As the days progressed, they did not bother with the weapons. They conversed with me openly without fear and told jokes, and I came to see that it was a mark of status for those who could engage me in conversation or make me laugh out loud. That part of me that loves myself grew beyond all measure with this realization, causing me to act more flamboyantly the role of scholar and raconteur. It also dawned on both myself and the visitors that the ruins were a large part of their lives, tooâthe shattered remains of the eggshell that had given birth to their present culture and community. The distance of time now allowed them to look upon the Well-Built City with more curiosity than dread.
Each day, I improved the tour I would give and honed my store of anecdotes. Instead of writing at night, I spent my time wandering the ruins in search of more and more interesting locations to which I might guide my visitors. Early on, I added a trip through the underground, which culminated at the site of the wrecked dome of the false paradise. I also no longer hesitated to show them the corpse of Greta Sykes, Below's original werewolf. Having dispatched her with my bare hands years ago when ridding the ruins of those onerous creatures, I had had the wherewithal to preserve her carcass in a glass vat of formaldehyde in a laboratory on the remaining second-floor structure of the Ministry of Science.
Since many of those who came for the tour were interested in Cley and his role in the downfall of the city, I took pains to include a visit to his office. Although the building that housed his living quarters was now in too dangerous a state of disrepair, the front having been torn completely away and the staircase leading up to his rooms having been obliterated, I would offer to fly anyone who wanted to see it up to the height of the rooms and let them gaze in upon where their hero had spent his domestic hours.
One evening, I gathered all of the remaining intact blue spire statues, which had once been living miners in Anamasobia and were brought to the city by Below, together in one room in the remaining quadrant of the Ministry of Education. They made a powerful display, at the site of which I had an opportunity to wax philosophical on the dehumanizing tendency of a state-run economy. I fatuously enjoyed my own speech, but I believe the tourists preferred the spectacle of intricate beard stubble turned to stone. I could hardly blame them.
Every tour ended at my own Museum of the Ruins. This had become the highlight of the visit, and many would ask me anxiously at the beginning if they would get a chance to see it. How could I refuse to show them? They walked among the shelves and gaped in awe, for through that collection one could really get a sense of both the social complexity and technological prowess of the once mighty metropolis.
The only time that the hordes of visitors diminished instead of grew was last Thursday when it rained hard. On that day, I had only a small party show up. In fact, it was but two people; an old woman and her son, a large hulking fellow with dim affect. They had made the trip from Wenau in a wagon. When I greeted them at the walls of the ruins, the woman nodded curtly but did not offer her hand in greeting. The young man never changed his expression throughout the entire visit, but presented the same bland, bowl-of-cremat face, no matter what wonder I revealed to him and his mother. The woman, on the other hand, made many different faces, all seemingly disapproving. I did my best to be gregarious at every turn, but her nose remained constantly wrinkled back as if she were smelling something noxious. As I remember, she did a good deal of head shaking, as if saying a silent “No” to everything I told her. Dressed completely in black and wearing a black hat and gloves, she had become, for me, by the end of the tour, like a sick shadow of guilt I could not escape.
I did not bother taking her into the underground, and since she seemed repulsed by the remains of the monkey who had written “I am not a monkey” five hundred times, I also passed on a viewing of the wolf-girl's corpse. Finally, we arrived at the Museum of the Ruins, and I gladly left her and her dullard son to look around on their own while I went off to make myself a cup of shudder.
I did not stay away long, and when I returned to escort them back to the wall, I found that they were gone. The rain had increased, but I took the initiative to fly over the ruins. I spotted them in their wagon, moving as if fleeing across the fields of Harakun. “Strange,” I thought, and then, “Good riddance.” She was one neighbor I felt I could certainly live without.
It was not until that afternoon, when I returned to the room housing my museum, that I smelled the absence of an object from one of the displays. The woman had taken something, I was sure of it, but although I made a cursory inspection of the shelves, I could not ascertain what it was. Thievery was an aspect of the human condition I had never pondered too deeply. Its implications gave me much food for thought. I, myself, had stolen cigarettes from the villages, and that fact prevented me from becoming too self-righteous over the incident.
The following day, the sun was once more bright, the sky blue, and the number of visitors was again what it had been. Then, as the days that led into this week passed, the numbers of people began to diminish, and then trickled down to nothing. I wondered if I had done something offensive, searching my memory for a situation that could have been construed as lacking in taste. I decided that it must have been Greta Sykes's remains that put the tourists off. “Maybe I recounted the tale of dispatching her with too much relish,” I said to myself. “Perhaps, in my eyes, as I spoke about her, they could somehow see that I had once made love to her.”
Two days passed without even a visit from Emilia, who had come twice in as many weeks. I was a wreck, admonishing myself for my crudeness. I then wondered if the fly to my pants had been unbuttoned at one of the tours, and I kept walking around in solitude, checking the buttons every minute or so. Putting my hand to my mouth, I tried to smell my own breath. I stared into the mirror for hours on end, searching for the clue to my undoing in my own physiognomy.
Luckily, Feskin showed up on the third day and ended my miserable self-torture. He roused me from a nap on that makeshift coral chair at the pinnacle of a pile of rubble. I woke to the sound of his voice calling me and flew down to greet him.
“Misrix,” he said, and put out his hand in as friendly a manner as ever.
I was happy to have him there and told him so. “I was beginning to think that I had offended your people in some way to make them stop coming to see me.”
“There is a problem,” he said, pushing his spectacles up his nose. I unthinkingly did the same.
“No,” I said.
“Yes, but I think we can use it to our advantage,” he told me.
“Was it Greta Sykes?” I asked. “The fly of my trousers?”
He laughed. “Not exactly.”
“What then? I must know,” I said.
“Well, do you remember a woman coming to visit you a few days back? I believe it was on the day that it rained,” he said.
“Less than pleasant,” I said, and shook my head as she had done.
“You don't have to convince me,” he said. “She is Semla Hood. It was to her that Cley left his second manuscript about your adventures in Below's mind. She knew Cley well, and her husband Roan was a close friend of his in Wenau. Her husband was one of the casualties of the beauty. He had been cured of the sleeping disease with it, and then when the supplies of it ran out, his addiction had caused him to take his life because he could not conceive of an existence without it.”