The Narrator (39 page)

Now, as night is falling, I take several cups of a strong herb mixed with vinegar and return a fourth time to the nest. I peel back my sleeves, take up a stick, and give the exposed nest a strong blow. The groan of the nest swells, the air burrs with their heavy bodies, I feel the flutter of their legs on my skin and immediately pain like a dull knife heated up in a fire lances into my arm—these are the heartier wasps who drank the poisoned blood and survived. That poison is now mixed with their venom.

Crying out with pain I run for the moat, trying to sweep the wasps from my arms and neck—one tumbles down into my tunic and the next moment I feel a pain in my solar plexus that punches my breath out of me—it’s like a stone the size of an apple were rammed into and lodged in me. I’ve traced this route before but I am reeling and flailing with less and less control over myself, and I fight every moment the instinct to shut my eyes altogether made worse by the wasps flitting on and off my face.

Nearly unable to breathe, I throw myself into the water face first, lifting my head out of the water and plunging it back in again over and over, trying to move away from the heavy black darts. Finally I take hold of the far edge. A wasp lands at once and languidly thrusts its sting into my hand. I wail in despair and put my hand back into the water. Bursting with pain it swells and I believe it will drag me to the bottom like an anchor. I can feel the poison like mint in my blood—I have to get out of the water at once. My arms are pin-and-needle numb, stiff. I set them on the bank and drag myself out of the water with them as though they were wooden fakes. The wasps have gone.

My veins and arteries are turning to glass bundles and my muscles are cold as ice, the bones under them ache as though they’ve been hammered out on an anvil. My shivering is painful, and for a moment I wonder if there are wasps inside. Every few moments an unbearable feeling, like a cold tissue crumpling, flares across me. Just ahead of me, a spot of no particular importance lights up brilliantly, as though a gigantic bull’s eye lantern had illuminated it from directly above.

One by one, spots in the landscape light up, and now I’m looking at an irregular streak of clear, colorless light in circles, some overlapping, looking like the sun shining through a leaf that’s been bored by caterpillars. There’s a smell in my nostrils like jasmine, if it came from an animal and not a plant, from a fragrance gland. Like the glandy saliva of a flower-eating animal. And a deep, delicious warmth cracks in a little seam across my chest, starting just above my breast bone on the right side and tearing down toward my abdomen. My arms and legs tingle and the bursting feeling fades. I raise my hands and flip the fingers, relishing the fine control I have of these many joints. I bend my knees easily, and become ecstatic. I get to my feet, and the blood pounds hot in my temples, my whole head goes hot and I stagger. The rest of me feels light and insubstantial.

Like a ghost, I turn and enter the cave where my lamp and supplies are. Lighting the lamp, its glow falls across an oozing paper face, a figure hunched against the far wall opposite the cave mouth. It has come to help me, at my summons. It speaks viscously through its clogged mouth and its words sound in my mouth; I speak, the words flying from my mouth at the top of my lungs. Though they are loud, I don’t hear them, but only feel bright flashes against my ears. In my hand I take the stylus and I write the letters of Pepedora’s alphabet.

*

I put the roll in the tray.

“That’s my end.”

He pulls it toward him on a cord, so that the tray rolls on the loose kernels without disrupting their perfect distribution. His hand shakes in the light.

“Don’t look at it all at once. That’s advice I would give anyone.” I add in Alak, “Did you take the treatment?”

“Yes,” he says, in Alak, reaching for the roll.

“Then don’t look at more than the first character. I set it on a line by itself. You can’t be all that strong yet.”

I hear the roll open. Then silence, for a long time.

At last, I hear a long, irregular exhalation. I don’t ask whether or not the work is satisfactory.

Pepedora sets the charm bottle on the tray, and now it’s my turn to pull it across the floor. The glass is warm in my hand. I can see the tiny, carved figurine of a capering man floating in the viscous stuff that fills it. I turn the bottle this way and that, but the figurine always turns away from me. I can’t get to see its face.

“How do I use it?”

Pepedora seems to have slumped back against a timber, the roll in one hand, the other hand empty on the floor. I repeat my question. His voice, when it comes, seems to emanate from a far away place.

“The outstretched arm will point the right direction. Hold it up, thumb on bottom ... index on top ... right-handed. Hide it away carefully. Tell no one about it. Never turn it upside down. Never tamper.”

Now the voice grows stronger again.

“Never disobey.”

I don’t want to think of anything that might soften me.

*

Makemin, Nikhinoch, the Captain, Saskia, Silichieh, and I go together. The path here is all a dead grey dust, with a wall of black rocks on our right. We pass a black granite stele marked over with characters all blurred by weathering, turning round the stele. A platform house of unpainted grey wood, with a nearly flat slate roof, appears before us, some chickens pecking in front of it in silence. There’s a little smoke coming from behind the house and it sags in the air blowing back the way we came. A huge, malodorous puddle reflects it. Flies tumble in the air over the water and sometimes land on it, dimpling its scum with their claws. I’m breathing hard, feeling stifled again; my face seems to burn against the chilly air.

The front wall of the house, inside the veranda, is rolled aside on rails, and there are a number of old men sitting on the benches that line its walls. Their chins are bare. They wear colorless wool jackets and vests. A murmur comes from them, punctuated by coughing and throat clearing. We are not, it seems, meant to go in, but to stand out here and wait to be addressed. The musty atmosphere in there is not inviting. But, gradually I become aware that the one furthest from us, sitting in the middle of the bench against the wall opposite the opening through which we look in at them, is addressing us, and has been ever since we arrived.

He sits in the obscurity, leaning a little forward, his eyes closed, head a little back, speaking without pausing. It’s a series of admonitions about the interior. I begin to translate: don’t drink any water that isn’t clear and that means perfectly clear, don’t cut or burn green wood, don’t trust anything seen from a distance, only fruit from plants with white blossoms is safe to eat, don’t catch or eat game, don’t in any way molest any hares we might see, no fires bigger than a few feet across and never set one before dusk ... a bewildering stream of mumbled advice coming out too fast for me to catch it all. The recitation is relentless, the speaker and the others, who continue to mutter amongst themselves, seem bored. Perhaps they don’t believe we’ll venture to go after all. Or they might set so little store on our chances that they don’t think there’s much point in concerning themselves with our safety. The effort of hearing and translating drains me quickly, and I begin to feel so tired I want to plop forward onto the steps. I can’t possibly catch everything I hear.

Saskia shakes my shoulder nearly knocking me down.

“You’re babbling!” she says with a jab of her head.

... Further down the road, the column has gathered. Another group of Clappers appears as we rejoin the other soldiers. They have a cart filled with long rolls, one for each of us. They’re thick leather bags, big enough to hold a man.

“What are these?” Makemin asks incredulously.

One of the locals seems appointed to speak to us, introduces himself to me and gives Mushwit as his name. I translate.

“You will need them. We have that on the word of the last one to come back.”

“Someone came back?” Makemin’s eyes harden, looking first to me and then to the other. “Who? Where is he?”

Mushwit’s face alters in slight surprise as I relay the question. “I heard he strangled himself—didn’t he?” He turns to his companions. They nod slowly.

“Did he say anything else?”

“No, not that I remember.” Again Mushwit looks to the others, who remain long-facedly silent. “He didn’t speak much to anyone when he got back.”

Makemin seems uncertain, looks at me. He gathers his mouth up.

“They’re not heavy. All right. Silichieh, see to it everyone gets one.”

I take mine, watch Silichieh dole out the others. These preparations for what we’re about to do only make it more unreal. The early morning light, my lack of sleep, my hatred for Makemin, seem to flay me. Last night I dreamt of her round arms again—a woman I never knew. I am gazing into soft eyes through a veil.

Now we’re marching again, and the grey men by the house are watching us go with blank baffled faces. I think of the story I was told, and I don’t believe they get it right when they say the Pepecaui left war behind to go into the interior. Perhaps it was different then.

I feel as though I’m going toward war, that towers vastly above around and behind its pawns, the enemy soldiers, and us. War fashioned the interior. The war story is waiting to be lived again and to make all of us into its own characters. We will step into our places while the overture plays a medley of themes that will play out in full and in order later on. It’s magic, because I
do
what I don’t
want
to do, and there’s no power that I can feel being brought to bear on me. If a hand had me by the collar, and I were being dragged away, I could struggle. If Makemin or Saskia would only point at me, order the others to catch or kill me, or even only threaten me, I could run. But there is no power here to resist. I simply go along. Hating, and rebelling at heart. Something like the sweeping power of the tides sets everything all too smoothly in motion. I feel war’s unreal presence, like blank mindless insanity shining happily from these rocks, watching us bring ourselves to it, for its delectation. We’re going to kill and die at war’s fiat in this beautiful place, nothing more.

My eyes cling to what they see around me. Everything says to me, “you will never see us again.”

I am trying not to clutch at the charm, seeming to want to squeeze it into the flesh of my hand and absorb its powers, if it really has any. In a flash I see Pepedora scheming with Wacagan to get rid of us, set me up with this charm of his. But how does that make sense? Leave his town open to invasion? I shake my head—this is foolish thinking. Makemin is the one dragging us into the interior, against the orders of the Predicanten; Pepedora had nothing to do with that.

Our standard is wobbling in the air. Jil Punkinflake struggles forward, and his dog is there at his heels, tripping him up. It takes the tails of his tunic in its jaws, braces its legs, and pulls him back. He curses and kicks at the dog. We are stealing in between the slopes. The land is still—you can hear the air move through it. Silichieh marching with his head flung back, a look of exaltation on his face. He and Thrushchurl are walking together for the first time, and I can see wild expectancy flicker across Thrushchurl’s features. They both want to see the magic for themselves, no matter what. Thrushchurl in particular seems completely at home, even a little oblivious, as though it were already entirely familiar to him.

White vapor sifts in the air on the trail ahead. The ground is spotted with mirror puddles that reflect the sky. There’s the white passage up there. The wind goes through me as though I’m not there. Thrushchurl gazes at the passage and says “Death.” I hear a shot and the entire column jerks—Jil Punkinflake stands over the body of his dog with the standard in one hand, pennant shaft end braced against his hip, then holsters his pistol.

Cinnamon ground, the powdery earth here is saturated with rust. The passage takes us high into the mountains, the time goes with the passage and we are threading along a rocky course. Glance back and I can make out the remote, crumpled form of the dog where he died on the path behind us. The sounds we make, our voices, are muffled. Makemin stops us and sends a man up a shingled incline toward a house standing alone there against the rock. It seems to suck the breath out of my lungs; the house seems to stand outside time. It is plainly as it always was, an octagonal brick house with small-paned windows. The man comes loping back down to the column breathing hard. He explains that the house is on the far side of a chasm that runs down out of sight, hidden behind this mound of shingle. He saw signs there was a stone span there once, but the house is now completely inaccessible. He called to it, but there was no answer. A light burned in the window. Makemin strides up the slope to see for himself, and returns quickly, his face pale. With a terse order we are set in motion again.