PLANET

For Holly,who watches the skies

CONTENTS

Chapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33Chapter 34Chapter 35Epilogue

p 14p 24p 35p 44p 54p 64p 74p 87p 97p 105p 111p 120p 129p 137p 145p 153p 161p 168p 176p 184p 191p 197p 202p 209p 216p 224p 230p 238p 244p 250p 257p 262p 266p 274p 279p 282

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9

PROLOGUE

The moon was so white, it hung blue in the dark. It sat so large above the desert horizon, that even the far hills were enveloped in its reflected light.

“It came again,” Dr. Scarlet Glass said aloud, more to herself than to anyone else. “Again. The same thing.”

She stood with her back to her fellow doctors, dark eyes glazed toward the glass wall looking eastward above the sands.

The other doctors nodded at her statement, not know-ing that everyone else had also unconsciously nodded.

Dr. Shoko Hershey was too busy with the piles of pa-pers in front of her on the battered wooden desk, to com-ment. They had become so used to hearing Scarlet say it, that they didn’t even notice she had said it again.

Dr. Portia See did not even look up from her book and her box of rationed raisins, stationed above the others in her little bungalow in the study.

Dr. Perpetua Amity was also sitting around the books, stacks of books to the ceiling. Her measure of study

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was centered, that evening, around a textbook of old Sri Lankan dialects

Only Dr. Scarlet Glass was still looking out the tall glass window of the saltworks, hands clasped behind her back, still clothed in her uniform.

“Stop looking at the moon; you’ll hypnotize yourself,” Dr. Hershey told her, signing the end of another page. “We can’t afford a hypnotized shrinest.”

“Can’t help it. I think I’ve stared too long at things today.”

Her eyes were full open, unable to blink against the vio-lent white of the moon, hanging so near and bright in the skies. Cut only by the everlasting ring of Skyy, it soared in brilliance through the heavens. She could hardly swallow, staring at its intensity, but seeing only the unnamed shad-ows of her dream, the darkness of unknown places, and the voice. Always the whisper of a voice.

“Who’s making dinner?” Dr. See asked, realizing the hour.

“It’s my turn,” said Dr. Shoko from behind her desk of endless papers and stamps. “Anyone care to do it for me this time?”

“I will,” said Scarlet, stepping slowly backward from the panes of glass. “Apparently I’ve been looking at the moon too long.”

Scarlet didn’t spend long in the kitchen. Supplies weren’t usually the best. Bits of this, bits of that. Offer-ings from the villagers. That was in the old days.

Most of the time they had to be creative. Fish from the river a day ago, spinach from the herb garden in the kitchen, sour cream (a rarity, a little still left), mozzarella, and potato chips (the last of the last of their special sup-ply) wrapped in tortillas. And Coca-Cola. One of the last civilized drinks left in Africa.

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Stores from the shuttle house had finally stopped com-ing. Once the last of the cruisers would be expelled to Skyy, they would be left with nothing but their own mea-ger resources.

Scarlet poured oil onto the fish from the little cast iron pot sitting next to the stove. One of the antiques left be-hind when the saltworks had first been abandoned. Their home of several years was piled with similar abandon-ments -- paintings, boxes of unknown things, old elec-tronic equipment from past centuries, jewelry wrapped in faded papers, furniture from the frills of the Second Aristocracy, when the saltworks had been lit with parties, balls, and galas every night...

But Scarlet’s mind was not on the relics of past days.It always came -- every night. That evening, she had

fallen asleep in front of the great window, unexpectedly. And it had come even then, before the night had officially come. And, as usual, she had walked the halls after it, try-ing to remember. But the more she tried to remember, the less she did. Why it came, night after night, leaving her with the same aftershock of terror, she did not know.

Scarlet set down the knife after the fish had been sliced. She wasn’t hungry. Hunger left her at most points of the day when disturbed by the passings of the night before it.

“I’m going to take a walk,” she said aloud, setting the last of the dishes on the dining table.

None of the others heard her, still too concentrated in their own realms.

“I’ll be out for awhile,” she called over her shoulder as she left the room.

She then took her scarf with her and ran down the three flights of stairs to the south side of the saltworks, as she wrapped it several times around her neck.

The moon led her across the desert floor to the brief

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summit by the river. Cold, crispness of early night. The arc of the space station skimming the milky surface of the white marble in the heavens.

And there she might have stood, as stone, between the desert and the saltworks, looking to the Egyptian moun-tains, forever.

Scarlet had one job at the saltworks. One job. To main-tain the shrine, giving her the official title of “shrinest”. It was a small thing in her opinion. No larger than a card table. It was old, very old. No one knew where it had come from, except the priests who authorized it. But it would protect them from the harm, the bad things that could always happen at any time in such a place, particu-larly in the barren sands of Africa.

Such a place was what little was left of inhabited Earth, slowly abandoned, civilization shuttled to Skyy, the space station circling the planet as a ring, for the past long fifty years.

But maintaining the shrine was not a job that just any-one could handle. Scarlet had been trained, trained for six years, to handle the intricacies, the very tiny pieces, the threading, building, lighting, coloring, everything.

The schooling had been long and hard, but she had en-joyed it -- stationed in the Canary Islands. Everything was remote there, designed to intensify the mind toward the art of shrinery.

She had brought a small library with her to the salt-works three years ago when she had come. So many books in her possession filled with nothing but informa-tion. Information on dyes, seeds, cloths, stones, woods, herbs, plants, sacred images, paints, minerals, fruits, veg-etables, pastes, concoctions, mortars, glues, corals, oils, etc. And all the histories of the world.

And her tool chest, where everything was created. Old

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tools -- a set given to her by her professor -- a squared mahogany chest. Brushes, trowels, picks, graphites, inks, sponges, tacks, pins, vacuums, etc.

The shrine was a miniature landscape, always changing. The other doctors at the site called it The Tel, and the name had become adopted by Scarlet as she worked on it, day by day. It had become an extension of her mind, in a less satisfying way.

But Scarlet’s mind was not on the shrine at that mo-ment of night in the desert. She spent five hours almost every day, working on it. But just then, as was the case for most of her waking hours, her mind was still on her dream -- the unknown edge of it, whispering around her mind in darkness.

Scarlet fell asleep that night with the knowledge that once again, the dream would come to her. Her golden hair spilled in a fan on her pillow. Her eyes were dry and all she could hear playing over and over in her mind was the sound of the wind across the sand and the beginnings of the precipice between wakefulness and sleep.

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15

SALTWORKS

CHAPTER 1

The next afternoon, Scarlet could not remember if she had done anything in the morning, where she had been, what she had been doing. It was, lately,

the all-too prominent evidence that the dream had stolen her thoughts.

“You were out on the rocks for hours,” Dr. Amity said quietly to her. “I could see you from the window.”

Dr. Perpetua Amity was part Portuguese, part Nepalese, and part Dutch. To describe her as exotic, was not com-pletely justified enough.

Her dark strawberry-blonde hair was wrapped in full thick dreadlocks, usually pulled back away from her face, some of which contained glass and ceramic beads, bells, and coins from her many travels.

The most curious thing on her person was the tattoo of a secret order on her neck, which she had never explained to any of her fellow doctors: a bright blue circle set inside a dark yellow circle. On the blue circle was a white rose. On the white rose was a small red heart, and on the red heart was a cross.

“Hurt like death,” was all that she had told them about it, and nothing more.

Perpetua was fluent in the languages of 31 nations, she

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was well-versed in all the higher mathematics and scienc-es, ancient religions and philosophies, and had received honors in martial arts training from ancient organizations in former Korea, China, Japan, and Israel.

But she never talked about herself. The other doctors had only managed to find it all out from her 974-paged documentation before she had arrived at the saltworks three years ago. Required documentation for taking on such an unusually difficult position, and vital position.

There were also rumors that the Queen of England had knighted her just before leaving for an undisclosed sec-tion of space station -- Skyy.

But Perpetua was not behind her instruments that morning. She was behind a book with a red lollipop.

“Was I really out there so long?” “Maybe you need extra rest today.” “I’ll be alright. I have a lot to do. I must be behind.” Perpetua returned to her book and didn’t ask her again. Scarlet had been odd ever since the dream. She

wouldn’t talk about it. “A voice in the darkness,” Scarlet whispered to herself. Perpetua did not say anything, but she kept her eyes on

Scarlet for a few moments before going back to her book. Perpetua had a number of reasons for being at the salt-

works. They were not really saltworks, abandoned salt-works, yes. But there were more important, more danger-ous projects under commencement, than salt mining.

Perpetua was a sort of chemist. She was a cool, quiet sort of person who was responsible for keeping the world cranking, what was left of it.

The land was still there, all of it. But the people had left, most of them, long ago for another place. The space station Skyy. They were beginning to disinhabit Earth.

There was a problem. Something had happened to its

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atmospheric makeup. And Perpetua was there to com-prise a solution, monitoring endless trails of signals origi-nating around the globe and from outer space.

Some days there was nothing more that she could do but read. The signals were so weak. Outdated equipment. Poor battery life. Etc.

And as they all knew, if nothing happened within the next few years, Earth really would be gone. A wasteland. Nothing would grow. Nothing would live.

Scarlet sometimes wondered how Perpetua could al-ways be so relaxed. She was one of the last eleven known scientists stationed in various parts of the world who could actually potentially do something about the prob-lem. It had been coming on for seventy years.

As far as people still dwelling on Earth itself, estimates ranged from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000. If something wasn’t done soon, they would die. There weren’t enough stations built, despite the furious rate they had produced them in the last fifty years from base to base across the sky.

Everyone blamed the gods, the gods that Scarlet pleased with the shrine. The shrine on which she worked, alone, protected the entire continent of Africa. She was well-renowned for her work. She had received many re-quests from stations all over the system, but she had to stay there.

There. The small structured city -- a complex of intri-cacies, steel, pipes, catwalks, strung with lights, various eclectic collections of telephone poles from around the world used for transfiguring electric signals, etc. The train would run past once every few weeks. But no one ever got off to stay.

Most of northern Africa had been evacuated. Egypt, where “there” was, had been closed off to all civilians.

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Scarlet blinked and the afternoon was almost over. She found herself sitting in front of the shrine, hands in her lap. Had she even done anything at all?

Shoko was in the kitchen behind her. “Banana split?” she asked. “Oh... no thanks,” Scarlet tried to sound alert. “When did you eat last?” Scarlet couldn’t remember. “You’re still not alright yet, are you?” “Oh... no. I don’t really know. I couldn’t say.” “We’ll talk with you... any of us. But you’re going to

have to let us know. There’s only so much more that we can do for you.”

“Yes... I know...” Scarlet’s throat was choking closed. “Eat this,” Shoko demanded, and set a small dish of

creamy peanut butter in her hand. Scarlet found herself able to smile. “Thanks.” She did eat her peanut butter at the counter, washed

the dish, and returned to her shrine. As she sat there, thinking, she saw, as was not uncommon, a passing shad-ow of the old dream.

“You’re doing it again, Scarlet.” It was Portia, walking in from the hall. “I know. I can’t stop it.” “You have work to do. We’ll talk this evening, if you

like.” “I should. I should try to talk about it again.” Portia left the room as Scarlet returned to her shrine.

She had a certain corner on which she was concentrating that afternoon. The art of knowing what to alter, what to add, was a secret process.

She could see the other doctors gathered for lunch on the verandah overlooking the Egyptian desert. The wall behind her was all glass. Part of the process of the art

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of shrinery involved the inoculation of the creativity of nature.

What was it that had happened? The dream had hap-pened a month ago. She felt as though she were still re-covering from it. It was piercingly brilliant, but soft and faraway, and (to borrow an ancient term), heavenly, but first and foremost -- dark.

“I can’t do this right now,” Scarlet said to the window. Her reflection whispered to her in the light of desert

sun. As she stared, her vision passed over with the rem-nants of her dream. And she heard the firm call of the illusive voice.

“Scarlet.” Deep. Quiet. Strong. “Scarlet.” This time it was Shoko calling to her. Shoko was from former China. She was Portia’s assis-

tant, responsible for processing most of the papers from the saltworks to the collected government at the Skyy base in Alexandria. But her primary job was looking to all of the provisions of the small remaining crew involved in the project.

“Scarlet, meeting.” Shoko pointed toward the hall. At the end of the hall

was their meeting hall. All glass. It had once been the state ballroom in older days when the salt mining colony had been a thriving city.

She didn’t want to sit through another meeting. Just the four of them reviewing documentation from the past week. It happened every Thursday afternoon. But she had forgotten that it was Thursday. So often, every day meld-ed unidentified into the next.

She changed quickly into her uniform. Protocol. They still stuck with it. Uniforms for the Earth Restoration

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Project (ERP) were basically electric red jumpsuits, de-tailed with tiny national flags for wherever the commu-nicant (as they were called), or in this case they were also known as “Keepers”, had served.

Perpetua, by far, had the most. Shoko came second. Portia third. And Scarlet last. The Canary Islands, her homeland of Thailand, Greenland (where her first brief two-week mission had been stationed), and Italy (her sec-ond mission of several months). Egypt was her third, and most likely her last.

Once ready, she wrapped her hair into a bun (standard dress for women), and joined the other three in the hall.

“Well, ladies,” said Portia. “Let’s cover the basics.” Portia was internal relations, meaning, she held the

keys. She knew all the secret operations. She was basi-cally the guiding hand on the whole mission. Without her, nothing would fit together.

She also guided the train station, refugee passage from all of Africa to the Mediterranean space launch station also in Alexandria.

“Anything new since last week, Perpetua?” “If I had anything new, you would have known by now,”

Perpetua replied. Things weren’t looking good. Perpetua had recently

received reports from seven of the ten other stations, that progress was zero. No one had even heard from the other three outposts in Siberia, the Amazon, and former Northern Canada for the past five months. Rumors were becoming more reasonable that their occupants had most likely succumbed to famine or to the cold.

Portia continued. “That’s what I thought. Nothing to report whatsoever?”

“Not a jot.” “Well then... I was hoping I could keep it more of an

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interesting surprise for over dinner. But I think that they might be here by then.”

The girls sat forward in their seats. “We’re going to have visitors.” “Visitors as in refugees?” Shoko asked. “No. Not refugees. They will be staying here at the Salt-

works.” Visitors were unheard of. Never before during their

mission there, had the girls had visitors of any kind. The refugees were always ushered off the train directly to the sea craft, then thirty miles to the coast where their ship waited. Typically, no one but Portia had any true contact with them.

“Why?” Scarlet asked. “I don’t know everything yet,” said Portia carefully. “I

haven’t been forwarded all of their paperwork. But what I do know, is that they are not soldiers. They have nothing to do with the military, the projects, nothing of a political or scientific nature.”

“Then how are they allowed to come?” asked Shoko. “And which way are they headed?”

“In answer to the first question -- they have been au-thorized by the Department of Supplication. In fact, Scarlet, you may hear word of this before we do. In an-swer to your second -- they are headed south. All the way. To the Cape.”

The girls were quiet for a few moments. The Department of Supplication was a global program,

responsible for pleasing the gods, influencing their good will. Scarlet had not heard anything about anyone being assigned to her quadrant, which spanned the entire conti-nent.

“How are they getting to the Cape?” Shoko asked. “They’ll never get past the line of fire.”

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The line of fire had been created in a massive upheaval of earthquakes, twenty-three years ago. It had only added to the process of the Earth’s imbalance.

The “Line of Fire”, as it had come to be known since the incident, was a breaker of volcanoes, which had essen-tially cracked the continent in two across former Cam-eroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. It had been an enormous upheaval. Active lava flows spanned mile-stretches in most parts of the line.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Portia continued. “I do know that they have no craft of any kind. So how they’re going to make it all the way down there, I have no idea. They must be hoping for a crack in the line some-where. And that, I’m pretty sure, is the least of their wor-ries.”

Perpetua had been silent the whole time. She had her chin propped up by her forefinger, thinking about some-thing significant no doubt.

“How many of them? How long will they be here?” Shoko asked.

“Six of them. And I’m pretty sure they’ll be here three weeks before departing.”

Scarlet felt a little better knowing that they would be staying for awhile. Any new companionship would be ap-preciated. The girls were good company, but with each of them so involved in their work, there wasn’t much time to discuss things, their former lives, travels.

Perpetua was in an almost constant state of hard thought. Sometimes it brought her to the brink of ex-haustion. Portia and Shoko worked hard on all the pa-perwork and administration of things Scarlet didn’t even want to know about. Only her job required more reflec-tion, more slow time. And this brought loneliness.

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S That night, her dream was passed over by a state of flat-

ness and darkness.

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25

BROTHERS

CHAPTER 2

It was time for the sun to rise. On any normal morn-ing, the sun had risen gold and orange. That morn-ing, however, a storm seemed to be on the horizon.

Scarlet could see by the angle of light in the heavens that clouds of gray and black were hovering just above the sea. Storms were not unusual in most parts of the world those days. But Africa, as in old times, continued to be dry and arid. So when storms did come, they were unusual and strong, and lasted for days.

It seemed fitting, then, that the train would arrive early in the evening, hopefully before the storm would arrive.

Scarlet spent her entire morning before the shrine doing very little. She was not inspired. The prospect of company had turned her small world upside down, as it had for the other girls.

The shrine was quiet. It had been weeks since Scarlet had found anything worthwhile to add or arrange on its face. She was beginning to wonder if her inspiration was finally gone. She had heard of other artists in the past who had lost all ideals for their projects, namely Royal shrines, and put aside their tools forever. It seemed un-likely that she could be replaced, given the circumstances.

But she was also beginning to wonder if she even want-

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ed to continue her job there. The space shuttles were few and far between. However, Scarlet new that if she desired to leave the planet and join the rest of humanity above, she would possibly still be given the opportunity to leave, and with honors.

During the whole afternoon, the sands were hot and warm and gold. The winds are almost quiet, waiting for something to happen.

After lunch, the other girls seemed content enough to read the files of the coming travelers, occasionally com-menting on the usual mess of their paperwork. Scarlet, however, could not concentrate for any long period of time, and decided to walk in the desert before the train’s arrival.

Wrapping her scarf around her head, she left the salt-works structures out into the open desert. There were certain places in that country that she loved in particular. One of these places was once known as the Valley of the Kings. If other parts of the country were desolate, this place is even more so. Once the resting place of many pharaohs, it was now quiet and full of stones and nothing more. The tombs had been open long ago, their treasures taken and sold to other parts of the world. But Scarlet liked the place.

From there, she could see across the plains toward ancient Ethiopia and beyond. There was something very otherworldly about it.

It didn’t take very long to reach her destination. Once there she did as she always did -- climb to the top of the ridge -- one of the many which laced the valley.

It seemed such a short time ago that she had been home at the Summer Palace in Thailand. Accompanied by her parents and her two cousins, George and Patrick, she had spent many happy years free of thoughts of wars

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or earth diseases or any other sort of calamity. There, she had experienced the golden years of her young life. She sat on the mount watching the desert, thinking of old times and old places.

The one summer when she and the boys had found a hidden stream several yards outside the garden gates be-hind the palace. They had been each given a bar of choco-late that afternoon. Scarlet, wishing to save hers, decided that the best way to preserve it in the warm air was to store it in a glass jar which she snuck from the kitchen. She put the precious chocolate bar inside the glass and then placed a cork in the top of the jar.

Earlier that evening, she left the gardens and hid the jar under several heavy rocks inside the rushing stream. So it was that for the next two weeks, when the boys were off to play, she stepped outside the gate to the stream inside the jungle, pulled the jar from beneath the rocks, and broke off a piece of the chocolate bar.

From far away there came a whistle. The sound was so familiar, yet so uncommon, that Scarlet’s reverie was im-mediately broken and she rose to her feet.

The whistle spoke of ancient things for Scarlet. Of times so long ago, that none living could remember them. Scarlet heard of them through the other girls, who had stories passed down from their grandparents and their grandparents before them.

Scarlet had never known her grandparents. Her own parents had not lived long enough to tell her much of what had passed in the old world. But Scarlet read much of the old writings, many of which had been in the library at the Summer Palace.

The whistle continued to wade into the wings of an early Egyptian evening. Scarlet prepared to leave the mountain. There was something of excitement in know-

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ing that new faces would soon be amongst them for a time. There would be more food to prepare and more cleaning to be done. However, there would be less time to sit in front of the shrine, less quiet to one’s own thoughts, and there would be new conversation -- news from the outside world. Scarlet found herself walking faster back to the salt works. For a time, at least, the cares of her past would hopefully be forgotten.

S Scarlet arrived just in time to see the lights of the train

coming from out of the sands of the desert. The beacon shone faintly through the haze. White and small against the darkening world.

The train station was as desolate as the contents of the train itself. The structure just beneath the saltworks -- covered now in red and green vines, tattered stamp passes from all over the world, patched on the cracked cement walls from passengers wishing to leave their mark.

Earlier,when Scarlet had been new in her career to the salt works, she had come down to the train station in the middle of the day to wait for passengers. Sometimes she was able to greet them and handed them snacks for their journey to the sea.

Before, when the orchard below the saltworks had still been thriving, the girls would sometimes gather the al-monds and make sweet cakes. These cakes, Scarlet passed to the children on the train. Those were in days of less loneliness. But these were different times.

The train approached slowly, as though it, too, were sad. It seemed to take an exorbitantly long amount of time for the grinding of the gears to come to an end. The

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train was automated. No live conductor was necessary. And thus the door of the old train opened, as Scarlet waited across the track. She hadn’t been told to escort them to the saltworks, but she didn’t mind. It was time to meet new faces.

The first of the brothers out of the door was young and tall. His hair was almost white, his eyes were dark blue, and he wore the garment of a monk of the old order -- brown and plain.

He saw Scarlet immediately, and picking up his one bag from the floor next to the door, he stepped out to the tarmac and walked toward her.

“Is that Ono?” he asked, smiling. Scarlet liked his voice. She couldn’t be certain, but it

sounded like the accent of an old Scandinavian world. “It is,” she said, extending her hand toward him. The great man took her hand and shook it warmly. “It

is good to be here,” he said. “My brothers, my cousin, and my father are happy to visit the last remaining holdout in Africa. We have just come from America, and are quite weary from the flight. We seem to be back in the Stone Age, I’m afraid, in regard to aviation.”

Scarlet found herself smiling. “Agreed. I and the others are here, it would seem, for eternity, as a result of that . Or until the end,” she added quickly.

The tall man saw that she was uncomfortable speaking in regard to the thought always underlined on the mind of every person still living.

“My name is Pelasha,” he said, happy to change the subject. “I hope that we will be able to speak later and explained to you and your friends, in more detail, why we are here.”

“I look forward to that,” Scarlet replied. “Please do introduce me to your family.”

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Four other younger men had also stepped off the train, including the wise figure of an elderly man.

“This is Shekinah,” Pelasha said, gripping the shoulder of his brother. “He’s third in line. I am second. Bakker, here, his eldest. Then after Shekinah is Oceanus. Our cousin is Yesterday. But he is like our brother. He has lived with us since we were all young. But I should have introduced my father first – Father Philemon.”

Scarlet nodded to each in turn and extended her hand. They all appeared to be the same -- white hair, dark blue eyes, and bright smiles. Except for Bakker, whose hair was black, as were his eyes. They did not seem to be som-ber in any respect of the word. Father Philemon, Scarlet could already see, was respected deeply by all five of the younger men.

“My name is Scarlet,” she said kindly. “Dr. Scarlet Glass. But you’re tired. The others will want to meet you as soon as possible. And we will show you your rooms now so that you may rest before dinner.”

S Introductions were made up in the saltworks. Little was

said, however, amongst that group, as all the girls could see that the brothers were tired from their journey. They were shown to their rooms and left to rest until dinner.

The girls put aside their work early that evening to fix a simple, but hearty, meal of fish wrapped in fry bread with cucumbers and tomatoes.

“I realize I should know this,” said Scarlet as she sliced cucumbers, “but where exactly did they come from?”

“Originally, no one knows where they’re from,” said Portia. “However, before they arrived here, they took the

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ship from Sicily, docked after the arrival from America.” “And before that Nepal,” said Shoko, “and before that,

France.” “And we know little else than that they are on a pilgrim-

age?” “Next to nothing more than that. All we were told, is

that the government has given them clearance to go as far as they want into the interior. That’s pretty much it.”

“So they’re issued by the government?” “No,” Portia replied, “they’re not issued by the govern-

ment. But for some reason Africa doesn’t seem to mind letting them pass through. They couldn’t bring any harm to anyone or anything anyway. There’s nothing left to harm.”

“What could they possibly do to harm anything any-way?” Shoko asked. “They’re only a small group of reli-gious men. And from an ancient order. They should have no intentions of disturbing anything.”

“Perhaps not,” said Portia, bent over the steaming fish. “But with the restrictions the government has placed on everything within the past few years, who’s to say they’re not fanatics of some kind? I reviewed their material thor-oughly, and everything is in order. We can only hope that their stay is brief enough that, in the event of some mis-demeanor, there would be no need to question us as to our affiliation with them during their residence with us.”

“You are speculative,” said Shoko. “I’m paid to be,” Portia replied with a smile. “Let’s eat,” said Shoko. Several minutes later, the brothers arrived in the great

hall. The girls could tell that they had washed up consid-erably. The trains were still dirty from the dust and sand of the desert. Little care was taken to remedy the dirt which covered much of the seats and floors of the rail

32

cars. One could barely see out of the windows from the grime of so many years. On the rare occasion that Scarlet had traveled a brief distance from the saltworks to the now deserted city, she found that it was not uncommon to see tiny green plants sprouting in the window wells and among the floorboards.

The brothers took their seats around a long table, the table that has seen so much use in the last years, and very little in the last months. The fine china had been set out -- a mix of various colored dishes, cups, and saucers from the collections of prior custodians. Several large candles of beeswax, which Scarlet had rolled herself the year be-fore, lit the center of the table.

“How inviting this looks,” said Pelasha enthusiastically. “My family and I have seen little, if anything, this refined in our last years.”

“Then let’s eat,” said Shoko. “There is plenty for every-one.”

For the next half-hour, little was talked of other than the goodness of the food, the heat of the day, and the logistics of living at the saltworks.

Soon, the conversation turned to the subject on every-one’s mind -- the purpose of the order -- why they were there.

“We’ve seen your paper work,” said Portia. “We’ve reviewed everything, and we trust that the government has sent us a plausible case,” she smiled assuringly at the brothers. “However, it would be even more satisfactory for our mission here if you were to expand somewhat on your purpose in passing through this desert.”

“So formal,” Scarlet laughed a little. “We do all like you,” she said. “We’re just curious.”

“Of course you’re welcome here,” Portia said hurriedly. “But, yes, we certainly are interested in why you came

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here. Things get a little dull in the desert.” The brothers looked to Bakker to answer. Bakker smiled, dipping the last part of his bread in

the sauce. He paused, looking at his dish, then raised his head. “I suppose things are more simple than you would like. There is nothing very mysterious about our dealings in this part of the world. We are, of course, from a reli-gious order. I won’t go into the details of that at this time, however, we were sent here on a definitive mission. I will say that our mission is a clean one. A moral one. Certainly nothing that will bring harm of any kind, and of that I can most definitely assure you, to this mission or to any part of this continent.”

Father Philemon had been silent, listening to his son explain, to the best of his ability, their purpose in coming. Then he added his own words.

“My son speaks well of our purpose here,” he said. “I cannot add to it; however, I hope that in these next weeks as we prepare to leave, that we are able to aid in any tasks around the salt works that might have gone un-attended in recent years due to, I will say, a grave shortage of custodians. My dears, you have done a beautiful job of seeing to the needs of this mission. But it must be admit-ted that such a great place is a difficult thing, indeed, to preserve in such a harsh climate, and with only four pairs of able hands.”

He looked kindly upon them. “Thanks for that,” Shoko replied for them. “It would

help a lot, actually.” Scarlet could see from the reactions of the others girls

that Father Philemon’s sudden change of topic had clear-ly, but politely, indicated to the table that they were not permitted to speak further on the task before them.

But Father Philemon was sincere in his offer. The rest

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of the evening was spent discussing the various needs of the mission and how the brothers could best serve their hostesses in certain maintenance issues around the salt-works.

And thus the rest of the short evening was spent around hot spiced cider under glass ceilings where Egyp-tian stars spilled above from the heavens.

35

A PULSE

CHAPTER 3

It was the next day that the girls decided to give a tour to the brothers of the saltworks and the sur-rounding areas. All the brothers had expressed inter-

est in viewing the land, despite the monotony of many sites, and the ancient ruins.

So after breakfast of fruit pastries, which the girls pre-pared early in the morning, they filled their packs with many rubber pouches of water and prepared to leave.

They exited beneath the train station, as usual, out into the gritty gold of another Egyptian morning. As they walked, Scarlet fell back from the others, as Perpetua lead the way accompanied by Bakker. Pelasha saw that Scarlet had strayed from the others and walked with her.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.” In such beautiful country.”

Scarlet drew in a deep breath, almost smiling at the thought of Pelasha thinking the desert was beautiful.

“Most people don’t like the desert,” she said, “especially, I would think, people from your place in the world.”

Pelasha laughed, “And where might that be?” “Oh, I’m sorry,” Scarlet replied. “I suppose I assumed

that you were originally from Scandinavia, maybe.” “No, you are right actually. We were born in northern

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Finland. So, yes, we are Scandinavian. However, I remem-ber very little of that place. Cold, white, cold. The desert is almost refreshing in comparison.”

“It is beautiful,” Scarlet agreed. “I’ve loved it ever since I moved here. My work on the shrine has kept me for several years in this place. I had hoped, though, that I would be far away from this place by now.”

“Where?” Scarlet looked to the sky. “There are other deserts,” she

said. “I love the open sky, the clouds. So does Perpetua. Shoko and Portia seem more interested in the landscape. But none of that really matters I suppose. The govern-ment has indicated that we will remain here for quite some time, despite the fact that our tickets expired over a year ago now for most of us. I suppose it’s a good thing, then, that we like this place, even if it is very lonely. For-tunately there are four of us, which sometimes provides interesting conversation. Even though I suppose, in some ways, we know each other like we know ourselves.”

“There are always other things to learn,” said Pelasha. “I learn new things of my brothers and my father and my cousin, daily.”

“True, but there is something really lonely about a place like this. We have reason to believe that very soon, the last of Africa’s refugees will be gone. This includes the tribesmen. We will be the only ones left.”

Scarlet kept her eyes on the clouds. She did not often review that thought in her mind. It was almost chilling.

“We will be here,” said Pelasha with a smile. Scarlet had to smile back at him. His big smile was

catching. There was something cheery about him that seemed to help that strange lonely feeling.

The unusual group continued their walk across the dunes, hoping to arrive at the old temple before midday.

37

Scarlet and Pelasha continued their conversation as they walked, speaking of memories from long ago, times when they were younger. Scarlet found that in this new age, there were less lines of civility involved among strangers. When her parents had been young, proprieties were clearly observed. Rarely would two people who had only met, speak on loved ones, former times, memories. But Scarlet knew, as did the others, that little, if anything, suggested that they might live another year in such a place. Scarlet and the other girls were almost completely resigned to staying in the desert there until the calamity of the world was complete. Their jobs were too important to shuttle them away in a star cruiser at the last minute, because that last minute might just be the very minute where the gods would be pleased enough with Scarlet’s work that they would give the answer Perpetua sought.

Around 10:30 in the morning, they arrived. Somehow, still, it took Scarlet’s breath away to see that ancient site. A temple from thousands of years before -- sanded from wind, loved by open sky. It was not uncommon for Scar-let to visit that place alone, wondering to herself of the people who crafted it so long ago.

“Marvelous!” Pelasha said aloud. “We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Shekinah.

“Fantastic!” Father Philemon nodded slowly, more to himself. They remained there for a time as Perpetua explained

the history behind the magnificent structure. Having been located in Egypt the longest, she had been the one to hear the legends from those still remaining in the city before it was evacuated.

It was a pleasant few hours they spent there among the colonnades. Shoko passed around dried fruit and cashews. Portia spent part of her time still looking over charts,

38

never allowing herself not to be involved in some sort of paperwork in preparation for anything that could happen.

“It still amazes me,” Pelasha said. “What does?” Scarlet asked him. “It’s been here so long,” he said. “For thousands and

thousands of years. They had no real machines, compli-cated tools. And yet they were geniuses. Perhaps man has not come as far in so many millennia as we used to think.”

Scarlet did not reply. The more she heard from Pelasha, the more she came to think that the life of a monk in the order inspired deep thoughts, reflection. She had her own sense of deep thoughts and reflection, but they were limited to that -- her own thoughts and her own reflec-tions. Little of her many hours of quiet in the desert was actually spent in communication with the others. They were all very busy, and had become used to the silence of so many hours in so many days.

For the rest of the afternoon, they walked the sands between the age-old ruins of the nearby desert. Each of the girls had opportunity to speak with all of the broth-ers, which of course included Father Philemon. He was the most quiet of all of them, but there was a sense of wisdom in his words that far surpassed the intuition of the others.

By the time evening had come, the sun was fully red and gold beyond the sea. Scarlet watched it pass over the hills, eyes wide. Whenever the heavens were arranged in such a glory, she forgot about everything else. Even Pela-sha, who still walked beside her, seemed to know that she would not hear what he said if he continued to speak.

S

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Dinner was set and ready back at the saltworks. Shoko had prepared one of the hams which arrived in the ship-ment of supplies, a rarity of all the goods recently sent.

The brothers were almost as enthusiastic about the ham as they were of the ruins earlier in the afternoon.

“Are you really as happy about the ham as you were with our beautiful sites?” Perpetua teased, as all the brothers waited eagerly for their slice of meat.

“We should apologize,” said Pelasha cheerfully. “There aren’t words enough to describe the magnificence of such ancient places. But when brothers such as ourselves, have not seen meat like this in nearly a year, it is almost equally spectacular.”

“This is nothing,” said Shoko. “In the early years, we were sent so much meat we could hardly finish every-thing. Turkeys, chickens, sides of beef, pork...”

“Stop!” Oceanus exclaimed, laughing. “Our mouths are already watering. Keep this up, and we won’t be able to leave here. The fare of our journey will be very limited, nothing in comparison to this.”

“Yes,” Portia said carefully. “I suppose your journey will be long? Will you be traveling to regions where there is little food?”

The brothers looked to Father Philemon, who looked across the table to Portia. He seemed to almost be calcu-lating an answer.

“It will be long,” he said, just as carefully. “We will be traveling from here to Cape Agulhas.”

“Agulhas?” “It is an ancient name,” said Pelasha. “It is no wonder

you never heard it. It has not been so named for over 1000 years. It is the very southernmost point of this con-tinent.”

Pelasha looked at his father, who nodded, returning his

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son’s look with alert dark blue eyes. “I know it, my son,” he said. “We won’t leave them in

the dark for long. In time, in time.” The girls pretended to be busy with the food on their

plates. Whatever it was the brothers had to share with them, they did not want to push them for information. They felt as though their mission was a sacred one, and that it was best to leave the timing to Father Philemon’s discretion.

S The next days fell into a pattern. The girls could not en-

tirely abandon their priority – to see to the well-being of perhaps the last days of the world, pleasing the gods with the shrine, or orchestrating the evacuation of the last of the refugees on the continent. Their work was important enough to disregard even hospitality toward the brothers, if necessary.

Scarlet, however, who had more free time than the others, did her best to see to their comfort. Breakfast in the morning overlooking the desert. Access to the library during the morning hours. Further tours and history pre-sentations at the natural and man-made sites in the after-noons. And then tea on the terrace with Perpetua-crafted muffins and honey blossom butter as the sun set. Scarlet was beginning to enjoy her newfound job of tour guide.

And while she enjoyed the new faces, the new conversa-tions, they did not fully distract her from the encompass-ing presence of the dream. She was reminded of it every day, as the birds flew in from the north. The complete quiet, the lightness of limb, the whispering mist. And the voice. The deep, still, voice.

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S It was five days later that Perpetua ran into the hall,

breathing heavily. “I’ve just come from the lab,” she explained, doubling

over. She held a small stack of papers in her hands. They

didn’t seem to be official documents, but were scribbled with Perpetua’s eclectic handwriting.

“Well out with it, man!” Portia demanded. Perpetua held up a finger, indicating for them to wait a

moment while she collected her breath. Everyone waited for her answer.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said, “but there’s been a breach. A good one.” She set the stack of papers in Scarlet’s waiting hands. “The calculations for the past four months have finally come together. I never bothered to explain before, because I wasn’t sure they would work, just like all the other ones in the past several years. But this time, a source has been pointed. Here,” she hurried across the floor to the large wall map. “I always thought the pulse was coming just south of Madagascar. Every-thing seemed to point to it. The pulses, well I won’t go into the finer points, but the fact is, that the pulses under the crust of the Earth indicate the spot where the con-taminant has been leaking over the past 70 years. If we find this place, and seal it, or extract the contaminant, whatever it is, and ship it out into space somewhere, then we’re safe. That’s the bottom line. That’s what we’ve been looking for... for years. All that to say, Madagascar isn’t the place I was looking for. Neither are any of the other sixteen dozen sites across the planet, the engineers and

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scientists thought might be the place. It’s here.” She tapped her finger on south Africa. The others

craned their heads forward, some of them walking toward the map to get a better look.

“How convenient would that be?” Bakker said, folding his arms across his chest.

“What do you mean?” Shoko asked. “That’s where we’re going. Why not join us? Or do you

have to wait for the army to accompany you?” Perpetua shook her head. “The army isn’t here any-

more. They shipped out on the last cruiser. After the last few cars of refugees, it’s just us. No need for us to stay here any longer. We can head out.”

No one spoke for a short time. Everyone seemed to be thinking different things.

“Are you completely sure?” Portia asked Perpetua. “Are there any other possibilities beside this?”

“I can’t explain the magnanimity of this discovery,” she replied. “Whatever magnetic field this is, it’s strong. It’s the strongest one I’ve ever seen. The reason it’s been blocked for so long, is because of the counter magnetic pulse between us and that origin, which, until today, was very strong. It has almost entirely disappeared. No other scientist has ever studied below this point on the conti-nent. We were so sure it was elsewhere.”

Portia began to pace the floor. “We need some time to think,” she said. “I know it should be more simple, but for us to entirely leave the mission is quite drastic.” She spoke more to the brothers. The other girls knew already the significance of such a decision. “Father Philemon, I can’t have us imposing on your mission. If necessary, we will leave well before you, in order not to disrupt your... pilgrimage.”

Father Philemon shook his head. “There is no need

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for discussion amongst myself and my sons,” he said. “If you find it necessary to depart for this location, you are welcome to accompany us. It would be a far safer venture if you did. I, for one, find it difficult to believe that the government would allow you to travel on your own.”

“It is not even a matter of government anymore, Father Philemon. The crisis has become so urgent over the last year, that we have basically volunteered ourselves to do whatever necessary to save what we can.”

Father Philemon nodded. “We leave before the rainy season,” he said.

“Would you excuse us then?” Portia asked. “We need time to think this over.”

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45

REFUGEES

CHAPTER 4

Conference hall,” Portia said aloud, as the four girls left the room.

The others knew what this meant. Shoko ran to get her notebook to record the min-

utes of the meeting. Perpetua disappeared to her office for the printouts that would inevitably be shared around the table. And Scarlet left for the kitchen to assemble the tea box.

It was one of those unexpected moments for all of them that almost erased the remembrance of the many years of living there, waiting, waiting for any good news. If it had been a dream, it was real enough that Scarlet could feel the burn of a drop of scalding water as it fell from the tea kettle on her uncovered hand. But even that she hardly noticed, as she clattered dishes together and unwrapped the crinkly paper around a heavy gold sponge cake for their counsel.

“We are the keepers of this mission,” Portia said, as soon as Scarlet arrived with the tea box. “Even if we were able to leave now, we have no vehicle. Even if we contact-ed Skyy, we wouldn’t have a shuttle available for months.”

Scarlet poured tea and sliced cake, while Perpetua handed each girl a copy of the printouts.

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“I think that I must not be as prepared for this mo-ment as I thought I could be,” Portia continued, staring very hard at the rough wooden top of the table. “But here we are. I don’t think that we need to spend long here, after what Perpetua tells us is actually happening. But I feel as though it would be almost strangely rash for us to make such an incredible decision without discussing it first for at least five minutes.” She looked at Shoko who seemed a little apprehensive. “Seven... maybe.”

“I don’t know how to put it another way,” said Perpet-ua. “The magnetic pulse is confirmed over and over in ev-ery machine in my study, as they are in the lab. Seeing as I have not heard from the other scientists in almost eight months now, I think it would be pointless to even pass the data onto them and wait for a response. So it’s not ex-actly going on my word here. It’s going on machines that are about 29 years old, but they still do the job.”

Portia sighed a little, still standing at the head of the table, her fingertips pressed on the top of it. “Shoko? It seems as though our work, as you already said, is about wrapped up.”

Shoko nodded, “I’d say no more than a few days.”“So soon?” Scarlet asked. “How did we not know about

this sooner? Why didn’t you say anything?”“I guess I should have said something,” said Portia.

“But I haven’t received any official word from the govern-ment whether or not they would keep us on here once the refugees were through. Sometimes they do recall managers, and I couldn’t stand telling you and Perpetua that we might be shipped out and it would just be the two of you left. I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I guess it’s kind of obsolete now anyway.”

“So you really wouldn’t ask the government’s permis-sion for us to leave at all?” Perpetua asked, not willing to

47

allow the conversation to become emotionally tinted.“No need,” said Portia. “This is on my head now. I’m

going to have to make that judicial decision. But I guess it still rests on you, Scarlet. You are, after all, the wind of this operation. Without you, the gods would bring us nothing but poor favor. How would you manage with the shrine if we shipped south?”

Scarlet had thought about the answer to that question since Perpetua burst into the library with her news. She rubbed her palms together, which still, after being in the desert for so long, felt silky.

“I will make it work,” she said, determined. “I can’t let you go without the protection of the gods. And I’m cer-tainly not staying here by myself. So if it were up to me, I’d say we leave as soon as possible.”

“Then I have no choice,” said Portia. “If there is any way for us to reach the location of the pulse and extract the contaminants, then why are we waiting here? We might even have to leave before the brothers. If they plan on leaving before the rainy season, they will not be here longer than two weeks more. I guess that would give us time to prepare and shut down the mission. Are we in agreement?”

They were. Shoko closed the minutes, and they ad-journed, perhaps for the last time, from the conference hall.

SThings moved quickly after that noon hour in the des-

ert. The next five days were set aside for shuttling out the

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refugees. There were so few left.“Maybe under four thousand,” said Shoko, who was

used to dealing with numbers much higher.“After the five days are finished, we’ll pack up every-

thing,” said Portia. “Six days later, I hope to be gone. Father Philemon says that they can wait no longer than that.”

He was right. The rainy season was a strange one in northern Africa. It bit in from the Atlantic and the Pa-cific, on both sides, and brought downpours of unusual strengths to the deserts. Because it came up so suddenly, and was always unpredictable, it was sometimes called the Silent Silver, by the natives. But it arrived in the northern desert, and not the south, making it imperative to leave before it came.

Scarlet kept up so little with the rest of the world. Part of her duties of shrinery included a somewhat removed presence from the rest of the culture around her, the hap-penings beyond. But she heard occasionally from Per-petua and Shoko that things were wrapping up, at least in Russia and Europe. North America had been the first to fully evacuate. They had been clean of people for nearly three years, except for diplomatic relations and govern-ment stations. This also made her wonder at the brothers. Why had they only just come from America?

“So what can we do to help you right now?” Pelasha was saying, interrupting her thoughts.

He had just come into the room with soil on his hands, which he was trying to clean off with a rag. His boots were also crusted with the same soil.

“It looks like you’ve already been doing something to help,” Scarlet replied. “What have you been doing?”

Her hands were full into boxes of papers. Shrinery had been set aside for an hour or two that morning to help

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with the last surge of travel documents. Portia and Shoko were already swamped with them. And Perpetua couldn’t leave the instruments, should their indications change over the next days.

“Planting roses,” came his answer.Scarlet stopped, and laughed. “Roses? Are you serious?He smiled.“Pelasha, I don’t think they’ll survive very well out

there. And why bother now? We’re leaving so soon.”She carried a large stack of papers to a table at the win-

dow, and began to sort them.“No,” Pelasha shook his head. “They will live. I planted

them in the greenhouse. Unnecessary, maybe. But I think it must have been a long time since that part of the mis-sion has seen any greenery. They will produce a better amount of oxygen for the saltworks. When you return.”

“When we return,” Scarlet absently repeated. “I doubt we’ll be coming back. You, yes, maybe. But we have a promise to keep here. It is our ultimate responsibility to do whatever possible. If we don’t make it back alive, we don’t make it. But we have to make it there, alive.”

“That is a dark outlook.”“It’s the only one we can have, under the circumstanc-

es.”“Is that why you plan to bring the shrine? Because you

don’t think that you’ll be back in time to continue main-taining it?”

“The shrine cannot afford to be abandoned for more than a night. Rather, the gods cannot afford to be aban-doned. And by abandoning the shrine, we, as humanity, abandon the gods.” Scarlet looked at Pelasha, who was staring back at her with a strange sort of smile. “You don’t know this?”

Pelasha didn’t answer, only just a small shake of his

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head. Scarlet found such a thing difficult to believe.“You will have to explain your religion to me some day,”

he said.Scarlet looked out the window. Eleven stories above

the desert floor. What was their religion anyway? No one really knew much about the gods. A few ancient religious texts from the government libraries. No one was even certain how many gods there were. Buddha was one. Joseph Smith another. Mohammed. Abraham. Confucius. Constantine. Bacchus. There was only one seminary in the world that had mapped out exactly how these gods worked with one another, their origin, etc. But they didn’t know much.

She turned back to ask Pelasha what religion he be-lieved, if he did not follow the universal system. But he was already gone.

SOn the second day, the refugees began to arrive. It had

been nearly five months since the previous installment. Scarlet was at her bedroom window when she saw the light of the train, waving in the dark between swirling desert sands. It was already seven o’clock in the evening, and the girls below were packing paper boxes of meals to send with them. Scarlet hurried downstairs to finish help-ing.

“They’re here,” she said.“On time too,” said Shoko. She tossed Scarlet a waxed

paper package of dried pineapple rings. “Load them up,” she said. “I’m going to get the napkins.”

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Scarlet scattered several rings per box over the three hundred open boxes. Already inside were still sizzling peppercorn chicken cubes, roasted red corn, and a wedge apiece of sunbelt cheese. There were chilled coffees on the side.

“Who thought of chilled coffees?” she asked to herself. “Those kids will be up all night.”

No one was around to answer. Perpetua and Portia were already on the first floor cranking up the dumb-bell for her and Shoko to load up for the first wave.

“Oh! I forgot something!”“What?” Shoko asked, who had just returned with a box

of napkins.“Can you finish the first load? I’ve got to run upstairs.”Scarlet took off to the star sanctuary. It didn’t take her

long to pick up the carton and run back downstairs.“Coloring books,” she said, setting the carton on the

dumb-bell.Ever since the refugees had first started coming

through, Scarlet had passed them out to the children. The books might have been for ten years old, of castles and nights, maidens, and feasts. Scarlet had found them sever-al weeks after moving into the saltworks – thousands and thousands of them. They were unexplained. No one knew why they were there, but Scarlet knew no better way than to pass them along to children, frightened of leaving, and with nothing to do on the long train ride, or cramped together at the dock, waiting for their shuttles.

It reminded Scarlet, again, of her childhood. When she and her cousins were still at the palace. One afternoon, when she was alone on the verandah, her mother had brought her something. She held it close to her so that Scarlet could not see what it was until she placed it into her hands, Scarlet’s eyes scrunched tightly closed as she

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swung her patent leather shoes in excitement. It had been a flat hinged metal case painted red on the outside. It read “Dollhouse” on the outside. And on the inside, were painted four different rooms of a house. Also inside was a bag of magnets: couches, tables, chairs, potted flowers, plates of food, little cats and dogs, and a small family of three. A father, a mother, and a little girl with golden hair, just like Scarlet. Scarlet couldn’t remember having ever received a better present. She still had received nothing better. It stayed, to that day, on the little table by her bed.

“Are you with me, Scarlet?” Shoko asked, still shoveling boxes onto the gurney.

Scarlet whipped back to the present and began sliding boxes at a fast rate down the tables toward Shoko. This continued for another hour, until every last box had been delivered to the crowd in the station below.

“Good job for us,” Shoko said, closing the door of the dumb-bell. She took off her apron and wiped her face dry from the perspiration of the steaming kitchen. “Another one done. Only six or seven more of these to go. This was a light one though.”

Scarlet stood at the glass wall, looking down over the station, three stories up. She saw the little ones nestled next to their parents, heartily rummaging through the boxes. The coloring books sat close to them, ready for looking through, page by page, at morning’s light. They had no crayons or pencils, but the pictures would capture their imaginations until crayons or pencils could be found again.

The brothers were also below, walking amongst the people, talking kindly to them, offering blankets against the chill. Scarlet stood there, watching, until the whistle sounded again, and everyone climbed back on board.

“Are you alright?” Shoko asked.

53

Scarlet shook her head.“You still haven’t said anything to us.” Shoko watched

the train begun to chug away. “If there ever comes a time when you need to tell someone, any of us, you know, will listen. I wish we could help.”

Scarlet pressed her hands up against the glass as the train left. “I know you would help, Shoko. I just think that until I understand better what’s happening, that I need to keep it to myself. We have many long and danger-ous things ahead. And we all have to work on that now.”

Shoko nodded. “True, Scarlet. But if this distraction is going to put you into more danger, then you do need to tell someone. You need to be safe, for all our sakes, in-cluding yours.”

“I know it.”

54

55

THE TEL

CHAPTER 5

The next days were filled with much of the same. Two more sloughs of refugees arrived early the next morning, followed by one more in the late afternoon, and three that

evening. The next day brought six groups total. The girls were having difficulty keeping up with the rush of meal boxes. The brothers became invaluable in distributing not only the boxes, but good cheer to the young ones, and encouragement to the older. And so it happened, that all but 200 of the last refugees passed through the saltworks station in a matter of three days’ time.

Scarlet found Pelasha in the library on the fourth day, reading. The busyness of the last three days had been exhausting.

“Come to study?” Pelasha asked her.“For the quiet, actually,” she replied. “Ironically. As if it

isn’t quiet enough everywhere else here.”Pelasha carefully closed the book over his finger to

mark his place, and adjusted himself in the leather chair so that he could see her better.

“Are you sad to leave?” he asked.Scarlet thought about her reply. “It’s been my home for

several years, but I can’t say I’m sad to leave. It’s a strange

56

thing a place like this can do to the mind. It almost makes one forget what happened before, in one’s previous life.”

Pelasha listened with interest.“I suppose most people feel that these days,” Scarlet

went on. “Every soul has been uprooted over the past ten years. And we’re not the first ones in history to experi-ence it.”

Pelasha set his book on the table next to the chair,and folded his arms across his chest.

“It’s true,” he said. “Still, I’d say that in the time of our grandparents, or maybe our great-grandparents, that events like these were unheard of. First-world countries never had evacuations, certainly nothing in these propor-tions, not in recent times. It does mess with the mind. I remember what it felt like to first leave the monastery and begin our long journey to this place, stopping at so many places on the way. Suddenly the quiet and peace of seven years with my family was almost a thing of another world. In some ways, my memories of the monastery are more dreamlike now, than anything.”

“I suppose it feels better to know that I’m not the only one to feel this way,” said Scarlet. “It’s just better to keep busy more than anything during these times.”

“But what do you think about when you’re busy?”“Childhood,” said Scarlet, smiling. “My parents, my

two cousins, our lives in Thailand. Sometimes I think of my time preparing for this job. I didn’t realize, then, that I would end up here, that my work would become, in a sense, some of the most valuable work in all of the world.”

Scarlet stared out the window into the dark blue of the Egyptian afternoon.

“Are they good memories?” Pelasha asked.“They are,” Scarlet nodded. “My cousins and I weren’t

57

always the best children. We tried to skip out of school as much as possible. We pulled pranks on the cook. Some-times we resorted to semi-unintentional vandalism.”

Pelasha raised his eyebrows.“Oh nothing terrible,” Scarlet laughed. “Once, when

our parents were entertaining the Duke from Japan, we were sent to the garden to amuse ourselves. I think it was George who thought of it. The gardener had forgotten to put away his set of pruning shears, and I’m afraid that we were all involved in the carnage. Somehow, we had enough time to prune every bush in the garden into some horrific shapes.” She laughed, recalling it all. “George was so set on making a spaceship out of the giant bush in the center of the garden, and Patrick was certain that it should be carved into the shape of a dinosaur. I didn’t mind what they decided on. I was too busy cutting a fish out of a hedge.”

Pelasha laughed with her. “So who won? The fish or the dinosaur?”

“In the end, it didn’t matter anyway. Mom had heard their argument from the terrace, and sent out one of the maids to bring us back into the palace.” Scarlet watched out the great window, still laughing to herself. “Oh, those boys. I hope they’re safe up there.”

“When did they leave?”“About three years ago. Their shuttle arrived safely. But

messages are so hard to deliver, and I haven’t heard from them in over a year now.”

Scarlet could already hear the tears, and worked very hard to control her voice. Despite the situation of the world, she was still certain that she could keep good control of her emotions, especially around strangers. She steadied her voice.

Pelasha was quiet, as though he, too, was thinking on

58

relatives or friends long gone.“I think it must be time for tea,” said Scarlet suddenly,

brushing her hands past her face as she walked by Pela-sha, in case he could perhaps see some traces of tears. “Will you come?”

“Certainly.”

SThat evening, the last of the refugees arrived on the

eight o’clock train. This time, Scarlet joined the girls below at the train station, while the brothers carted the boxes onto the dumb-waiter from above. There was something refreshing in helping humanity, something re-lieving to her soul when it was so tempting to think only of her own strange, lonely thoughts and memories, and of no one else.

This time, there was a special treat from the coolers. Shoko had been saving them for the last batch of children through the station: chocolate bars. There were almost just enough left. And because the sun had already set, there was no fear of them melting before being distrib-uted.

“I’m so glad we saved these,” said Perpetua.She was speaking English, as were the other girls.

Sometimes it was easier to speak the common dialect in-stead of stumbling over the rather varied languages of the remote tribes of the continent when the refugees came through. Only Perpetua seemed to have mastered most of them anyway.

“I’ve got to ask,” said Shekinah, “do you think there

59

might be a few left for us?”“That’s not a very brother-like question,” Portia replied.

“Aren’t you supposed to be put away from the pleasures of the world?”

Shekinah laughed. “Perhaps,” he said, “but there are times when temptation is overwhelming.”

“Like when there are fifteen boxes of free chocolate in front of you?”

“That would be a good example.”Scarlet shook her head and smiled, hearing the con-

versation from one of the train cars. Inside, she walked through the grit of the floorboards, passing out the choc-olate bars to the tired children. But they were so happy to see something different, something that didn’t reflect their fear of leaving home. The chocolate seemed to make them forget a little bit of how hard and long their journey had been.

“You are almost there now,” Scarlet said to them slowly, doing her best to speak properly in their language. “Not much farther.”

It did her good to see the smiles on their faces as she said it. She stayed later into the evening, sitting with the children, making up stories with their coloring books, watching the stars with them.

Once the train was prepared to leave, she stood at the station and waved them off, taking in the quiet of the night, the whistle of the locomotive, and the dazzling heavens.

S

60

By morning, Portia made it clear that all of the refugees had departed. Before her, on her desk, sat the last of the

paperwork, sealed, signed, and ready to be mailed.“I didn’t think we’d be here long enough to see such a

thing happen,” said Shoko.“All I can say is, may the gods take pity on their souls, if

there are any left in this desolate place,” said Portia.The responsibility of the last years, the pressure of

overseeing the evacuation, had taken a tremendous strain on her young shoulders. Scarlet wouldn’t say it to her, but Portia’s once perfectly dark brown hair, the color of cocoa nuts, actually had streaks of gray at the base of her scalp. She could only tell when Portia’s hair was pulled up, but lately it had become very evident.

“What next?” Scarlet asked.“The inevitable,” said Perpetua. “Time to pack.”The girls waited a minute together, there in Portia’s of-

fice. Now that the moment of clearance had finally come, it seemed almost too strange to do anything other than what they had done all along. But soon they went their separate ways through the saltworks, putting together lists of what to do.

The amount of work to be done was monumental. There was very little scare of vandals or looters while they were away; however, according to protocol, which Por-tia was loathe to ignore, their waiting chores would last nearly four days.

“Still not enough time,” Portia said to herself several times.

There were not quite 100 rooms in the saltworks. Most of them had been opened since the girls arrived, and many more had only been occasionally explored by Scar-let, who had more time than the others to do such things. These rooms would be left alone. However, the quarters

61

in which they lived were to be cleaned thoroughly, floors scrubbed, windows washed, flat surfaces polished, and all miscellaneous items were to be packed away.

Portia would, of course, organize the supplies which would be taken on their journey, away from the comfort-ing light of the saltworks, away from the land of Ono.

It could have been argued that the time spent clean-ing and organizing the saltworks might have been better spent on travel. Time was passing faster than was good for their quest. And transportation would entail nothing more than the use of their own legs.

But there was protocol in the world, still. The gods would have reeled from lack of care to their house, to their light in the sand -- where each of the four girls there, were its keepers.

The next day saw the groundwork accomplished, much of which was done with the help of the brothers. They were all hard workers, and offered to take the majority of the responsibility of washing the windows, many of which soared two or three stories in length, and scrubbing the floors in every room and hall.

“This isn’t much different from what we did back at the monastery,” said Bakker cheerfully. “Except that all of the floors there were made of red tile.”

“It must have been a simple place,” said Shoko.“It was. There was a garden -- honeybees -- we took

care of the hives in the trees, hollyhocks; it was a quiet place.”

“Just like it is here,” said Shoko.Shoko liked the quiet. It reminded her of her home-

land, Korea, which she had not seen said she was seven.The chores continued. Soon, the floors and the win-

dows were sparkling.“It’s beautiful,” said Portia. “You saved us so much time,

62

and have done a much better job than we could have hoped to do.”

“Our pleasure, Mdm.,” Shekinah replied. “We were glad to help.”

And still, through those days, Scarlet worked at the shrine. Every day she found something more, something little, to inspire her work. Stories about where the broth-ers had lived before arriving The red tiles, the beehives, flowers. It was a different idea than from the thing she was used to doing. She had been trained before in the Ca-nary Islands where she was instructed that the gods pre-ferred decadence, elaborate patterns, colors, lack of sense and radical changes from one day to the next.

With that instruction, Scarlet had become a brilliant shrine creator. She had prided herself on things so un-usual and full of startling colors, that the girls had often teased her, saying that the shuttles could be guided to land by it.

But over the past week, since she had begun to learn more about the brothers and their lifestyle, she began to envy it more. She found that while the bright colors were very beautiful, they were beginning to give her headaches as she sat there for hours in front of the shrine.

So, on the evening of the third day closing up the salt-works, she sat there, in deep concentration. Behind the shrine, and the glass of the great window glittering the early stars of an Egyptian evening. In her right hand she clutched a small trowel. Her grip increased on its wooden handle, the muscles of her arm flexing.

And then, without further thought, she dipped the trowel straight into the heart of the shrine. It took hours. Throughout the night, she peeled and pried, pulling back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, of paint and chalks and so many miscellaneous things, she didn’t even know

63

what half of them were.Hours and hours into the night. A ceaseless expunging

of former offerings.Before dawn, she finished. Setting down the trowel,

she looked at the mess before her. Rubbery piles of paint lay in brilliant patches of color halfway up her to knees. But the shrine -- there it was -- completely bare. Only the basic structure of ancient wood remained. Preserved by the endless layers of stuff, the skeleton had stayed strong. Scarlet wondered how long it would last without some sort of protective coating. But there was something even more beautiful about the plainness of The Tel. So plain. But it was the opportunity for Scarlet to begin again. She would put her tools and materials to a different use, and pray that the gods would be as pleased with her new ef-forts as they had been with the ones before.

Yet Scarlet still wondered, if they had ever been pleased in the first place.

64

65

LEAVING ONO

CHAPTER 6

The next days were filled with much of the same. Two more sloughs of refugees arrived early the next morning, followed by one more in the late afternoon, and three that

evening. The next day brought six groups total. The girls were having difficulty keeping up with the rush of meal boxes. The brothers became invaluable in distributing not only the boxes, but good cheer to the young ones, and encouragement to the older. And so it happened, that all but 200 of the last refugees passed through the saltworks station in a matter of three days’ time.

Scarlet found Pelasha in the library on the fourth day, reading. The busyness of the last three days had been exhausting.

“Come to study?” Pelasha asked her.“For the quiet, actually,” she replied. “Ironically. As if it

isn’t quiet enough everywhere else here.”Pelasha carefully closed the book over his finger to

mark his place, and adjusted himself in the leather chair so that he could see her better.

“Are you sad to leave?” he asked.Scarlet thought about her reply. “It’s been my home for

several years, but I can’t say I’m sad to leave. It’s a strange

66

thing a place like this can do to the mind. It almost makes one forget what happened before, in one’s previous life.”

Pelasha listened with interest.“I suppose most people feel that these days,” Scarlet

went on. “Every soul has been uprooted over the past ten years. And we’re not the first ones in history to experi-ence it.”

Pelasha set his book on the table next to the chair,and folded his arms across his chest.

“It’s true,” he said. “Still, I’d say that in the time of our grandparents, or maybe our great-grandparents, that events like these were unheard of. First-world countries never had evacuations, certainly nothing in these propor-tions, not in recent times. It does mess with the mind. I remember what it felt like to first leave the monastery and begin our long journey to this place, stopping at so many places on the way. Suddenly the quiet and peace of seven years with my family was almost a thing of another world. In some ways, my memories of the monastery are more dreamlike now, than anything.”

“I suppose it feels better to know that I’m not the only one to feel this way,” said Scarlet. “It’s just better to keep busy more than anything during these times.”

“But what do you think about when you’re busy?”“Childhood,” said Scarlet, smiling. “My parents, my

two cousins, our lives in Thailand. Sometimes I think of my time preparing for this job. I didn’t realize, then, that I would end up here, that my work would become, in a sense, some of the most valuable work in all of the world.”

Scarlet stared out the window into the dark blue of the Egyptian afternoon.

“Are they good memories?” Pelasha asked.“They are,” Scarlet nodded. “My cousins and I weren’t

67

always the best children. We tried to skip out of school as much as possible. We pulled pranks on the cook. Some-times we resorted to semi-unintentional vandalism.”

Pelasha raised his eyebrows.“Oh nothing terrible,” Scarlet laughed. “Once, when

our parents were entertaining the Duke from Japan, we were sent to the garden to amuse ourselves. I think it was George who thought of it. The gardener had forgotten to put away his set of pruning shears, and I’m afraid that we were all involved in the carnage. Somehow, we had enough time to prune every bush in the garden into some horrific shapes.” She laughed, recalling it all. “George was so set on making a spaceship out of the giant bush in the center of the garden, and Patrick was certain that it should be carved into the shape of a dinosaur. I didn’t mind what they decided on. I was too busy cutting a fish out of a hedge.”

Pelasha laughed with her. “So who won? The fish or the dinosaur?”

“In the end, it didn’t matter anyway. Mom had heard their argument from the terrace, and sent out one of the maids to bring us back into the palace.” Scarlet watched out the great window, still laughing to herself. “Oh, those boys. I hope they’re safe up there.”

“When did they leave?”“About three years ago. Their shuttle arrived safely. But

messages are so hard to deliver, and I haven’t heard from them in over a year now.”

Scarlet could already hear the tears, and worked very hard to control her voice. Despite the situation of the world, she was still certain that she could keep good control of her emotions, especially around strangers. She steadied her voice.

Pelasha was quiet, as though he, too, was thinking on

68

relatives or friends long gone.“I think it must be time for tea,” said Scarlet suddenly,

brushing her hands past her face as she walked by Pela-sha, in case he could perhaps see some traces of tears. “Will you come?”

“Certainly.”

SThat evening, the last of the refugees arrived on the

eight o’clock train. This time, Scarlet joined the girls below at the train station, while the brothers carted the boxes onto the dumb-waiter from above. There was something refreshing in helping humanity, something re-lieving to her soul when it was so tempting to think only of her own strange, lonely thoughts and memories, and of no one else.

This time, there was a special treat from the coolers. Shoko had been saving them for the last batch of children through the station: chocolate bars. There were almost just enough left. And because the sun had already set, there was no fear of them melting before being distrib-uted.

“I’m so glad we saved these,” said Perpetua.She was speaking English, as were the other girls.

Sometimes it was easier to speak the common dialect in-stead of stumbling over the rather varied languages of the remote tribes of the continent when the refugees came through. Only Perpetua seemed to have mastered most of them anyway.

“I’ve got to ask,” said Shekinah, “do you think there

69

might be a few left for us?”“That’s not a very brother-like question,” Portia replied.

“Aren’t you supposed to be put away from the pleasures of the world?”

Shekinah laughed. “Perhaps,” he said, “but there are times when temptation is overwhelming.”

“Like when there are fifteen boxes of free chocolate in front of you?”

“That would be a good example.”Scarlet shook her head and smiled, hearing the con-

versation from one of the train cars. Inside, she walked through the grit of the floorboards, passing out the choc-olate bars to the tired children. But they were so happy to see something different, something that didn’t reflect their fear of leaving home. The chocolate seemed to make them forget a little bit of how hard and long their journey had been.

“You are almost there now,” Scarlet said to them slowly, doing her best to speak properly in their language. “Not much farther.”

It did her good to see the smiles on their faces as she said it. She stayed later into the evening, sitting with the children, making up stories with their coloring books, watching the stars with them.

Once the train was prepared to leave, she stood at the station and waved them off, taking in the quiet of the night, the whistle of the locomotive, and the dazzling heavens.

S

70

By morning, Portia made it clear that all of the refugees had departed. Before her, on her desk, sat the last of the paperwork, sealed, signed, and ready to be mailed.

“I didn’t think we’d be here long enough to see such a thing happen,” said Shoko.

“All I can say is, may the gods take pity on their souls, if there are any left in this desolate place,” said Portia.

The responsibility of the last years, the pressure of overseeing the evacuation, had taken a tremendous strain on her young shoulders. Scarlet wouldn’t say it to her, but Portia’s once perfectly dark brown hair, the color of cocoa nuts, actually had streaks of gray at the base of her scalp. She could only tell when Portia’s hair was pulled up, but lately it had become very evident.

“What next?” Scarlet asked.“The inevitable,” said Perpetua. “Time to pack.”The girls waited a minute together, there in Portia’s of-

fice. Now that the moment of clearance had finally come, it seemed almost too strange to do anything other than what they had done all along. But soon they went their separate ways through the saltworks, putting together lists of what to do.

The amount of work to be done was monumental. There was very little scare of vandals or looters while they were away; however, according to protocol, which Por-tia was loathe to ignore, their waiting chores would last nearly four days.

“Still not enough time,” Portia said to herself several times.

There were not quite 100 rooms in the saltworks. Most of them had been opened since the girls arrived, and many more had only been occasionally explored by Scar-let, who had more time than the others to do such things. These rooms would be left alone. However, the quarters

71

in which they lived were to be cleaned thoroughly, floors scrubbed, windows washed, flat surfaces polished, and all miscellaneous items were to be packed away.

Portia would, of course, organize the supplies which would be taken on their journey, away from the comfort-ing light of the saltworks, away from the land of Ono.

It could have been argued that the time spent clean-ing and organizing the saltworks might have been better spent on travel. Time was passing faster than was good for their quest. And transportation would entail nothing more than the use of their own legs.

But there was protocol in the world, still. The gods would have reeled from lack of care to their house, to their light in the sand -- where each of the four girls there, were its keepers.

The next day saw the groundwork accomplished, much of which was done with the help of the brothers. They were all hard workers, and offered to take the majority of the responsibility of washing the windows, many of which soared two or three stories in length, and scrubbing the floors in every room and hall.

“This isn’t much different from what we did back at the monastery,” said Bakker cheerfully. “Except that all of the floors there were made of red tile.”

“It must have been a simple place,” said Shoko.“It was. There was a garden -- honeybees -- we took

care of the hives in the trees, hollyhocks; it was a quiet place.”

“Just like it is here,” said Shoko.Shoko liked the quiet. It reminded her of her home-

land, Korea, which she had not seen said she was seven.The chores continued. Soon, the floors and the win-

dows were sparkling.“It’s beautiful,” said Portia. “You saved us so much time,

72

and have done a much better job than we could have hoped to do.”

“Our pleasure, Mdm.,” Shekinah replied. “We were glad to help.”

And still, through those days, Scarlet worked at the shrine. Every day she found something more, something little, to inspire her work. Stories about where the broth-ers had lived before arriving The red tiles, the beehives, flowers. It was a different idea than from the thing she was used to doing. She had been trained before in the Ca-nary Islands where she was instructed that the gods pre-ferred decadence, elaborate patterns, colors, lack of sense and radical changes from one day to the next.

With that instruction, Scarlet had become a brilliant shrine creator. She had prided herself on things so un-usual and full of startling colors, that the girls had often teased her, saying that the shuttles could be guided to land by it.

But over the past week, since she had begun to learn more about the brothers and their lifestyle, she began to envy it more. She found that while the bright colors were very beautiful, they were beginning to give her headaches as she sat there for hours in front of the shrine.

So, on the evening of the third day closing up the salt-works, she sat there, in deep concentration. Behind the shrine, and the glass of the great window glittering the early stars of an Egyptian evening. In her right hand she clutched a small trowel. Her grip increased on its wooden handle, the muscles of her arm flexing.

And then, without further thought, she dipped the trowel straight into the heart of the shrine. It took hours. Throughout the night, she peeled and pried, pulling back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, of paint and chalks and so many miscellaneous things, she didn’t even know

73

what half of them were.Hours and hours into the night. A ceaseless expunging

of former offerings.Before dawn, she finished. Setting down the trowel,

she looked at the mess before her. Rubbery piles of paint lay in brilliant patches of color halfway up her to knees. But the shrine -- there it was -- completely bare. Only the basic structure of ancient wood remained. Preserved by the endless layers of stuff, the skeleton had stayed strong. Scarlet wondered how long it would last without some sort of protective coating. But there was something even more beautiful about the plainness of The Tel. So plain. But it was the opportunity for Scarlet to begin again. She would put her tools and materials to a different use, and pray that the gods would be as pleased with her new ef-forts as they had been with the ones before.

Yet Scarlet still wondered, if they had ever been pleased in the first place.

74

75

INTO WILDERNESS

CHAPTER 7

The alarm was shrill. Like rapid chops of sil-ver and glass keys shoveled into one another, piercing the frost of a four o’clock Egyptian morning.

Ono was silent as ever. Not even a wind. Scarlet was shocked awake, her eyes streaming with the watery af-termath of ethereal dreams. The same dream, every night. It never failed to come. And every morning, she remembered less and less of even the shadows around it. The desire to remember it was eating into the flesh of her thoughts, putting forth instead, memories of uncon-nected past events. With every attempt to remember her dream, another memory was put forth instead, of her childhood.

Scarlet clapped both icy hands around the metallic box next to her head. Her first impulse was to send it crashing across the broken tiles of the floor, into the bowels of the train station. But they would be needing that alarm clock every morning.

“Travel by early morning until lunch. Rest for the after-noon. Start again after dinner until late into the night.”

Those were ortia’s orders, once she had confirmed Fa-ther Philemon’s similar traveling inclinations.

76

Scarlet thumped backward onto her bedroll. Her hair was pulled loosely into a knot on the top of her head. Her pale eyes reflected early morning starlight.

“Up,” Portia moaned into her pillow. “Up, time to go.”Scarlet didn’t answer. Her eyes were wide, staring up

to the darkness of the vaulted ceiling. Portia would have little trouble motivating the other girls to arise. Scarlet could already hear the brothers in the other room, pre-paring breakfast.

“We don’t have time for that,” Portia mumbled.But Scarlet knew she was only talking to herself in a

half-awake state. Portia had always been the one to insist that the girls ate every meal.

“If something happens to us out here,” she said grimly, “because of poor diet, then who is to blame? Me. I can’t be responsible for that. I have enough souls to shuttle out of here alive.”

Sometimes in the early morning, Scarlet could hear Portia’s lecture run over her mind, again and again. They never heard anything else but their own voices. No radio, no music, no media of any kind. The little contact they did receive from the outside world came through text.

“Did you pack the dried beef?” Portia said. “Well, did you?”

“Are you talking to me, Portia?” Scarlet rolled over.“Hm.”“I didn’t pack the food. Shoko did, remember?”“She did?”“Portia, are you alright?”Portia didn’t answer. She was asleep again. Scarlet sat

up and pressed both chilled palms into the impressions of her eyes. Slowly, she rubbed herself awake.

“Time to go,” she told herself. “No more waiting.”She pulled herself to stand in the cool shadows of the

77

train station, and began her rounds among the three girls, urging them quietly into waking.

“Breakfast?”It was Pelasha. He handed her a bowl of morning por-

ridge.“Thanks,” Scarlet replied. She looked at it, a little un-

sure.Pelasha laughed. “We are good cooks at the monastery,”

he said reassuringly. “With so much time to contemplate, many of our brothers took up the art.”

Scarlet took a bite, and found that it wasn’t very bad. Pelasha handed her a tin.

“Add a little,” he said. “Cinnamon.”“That’s not from our stores,” Scarlet said, surprised.

“Where did you get it?”“The cinnamon trees. Back home.”“Cinnamon trees, in Italy?”“Home for me is Grenada.”“In Spain?”“No. This is the old island of Grenada, in the Caribbean

Sea. Before we entered the monastery, my parents were plantation owners.”

Scarlet smiled, “For living the life of a monk, you seem to have traveled more than the average pilgrim.”

“We never intended to enter the brotherhood when we were younger,” he said. “My brothers, my cousin, and I. After our mother died, however, our father was deter-mined to become a part of monastic life.”

“There will be more than enough time to talk about this while we walk,” Bakker cut in just then. “Come on, Pelasha. Portia is anxious for us to leave.”

And she was. Already, she was washing out the bowls, throwing water on the fire, and tying down small pieces of equipment to their packs. Shekinah stood at the edge of

78

the camp watching her, his arms folded across his chest.“A little crazy?” he asked Scarlet, standing next to him.“Sometimes.”“Martha,” he said to himself, absently.Scarlet looked to him for an explanation, but he was

already walking away.Father Philemon had shouldered his pack.“On our way,” he called over his shoulder to the others.And with that, they were gone. Away from Ono, the

land of the old saltworks. Likely, Scarlet knew, never to return.

She walked backward from time to time, trying not to trip on the rifts of sand.

“What are you doing?” Bakker asked her.“I want to see the saltworks before we pass over the

ridge, or I might never see it again.”“You will,” he said cheerfully.“How do you know?”“Remember what Perpetua told you?”“She’s not an oracle.”“There are different ways of knowing the future.”“What do you mean?”“Hurry it up back there,” Pelasha called from further

up. “With this pace, we’ll never make camp by the after-noon.”

But Scarlet had to look behind her -- until the crescent edge of the warm sun peeled the edge of the night -- away from Ono.

S

79

Scarlet was quiet and alone for the walk of the early morning. She had refused help in pulling the cart which held the shrine.

“I need to take care of it myself,” she told Bakker, when he offered. “It’s the job of my office -- to be the only one to see after it.”

“Are you sure?” Bakker had asked her. “We can’t have you passing out on the first day.”

“I’m stronger than that,” Scarlet said, smiling. “But it’s in the code.”

She could see that Bakker had further things to say, but he didn’t say them, and continued to walk further ahead, leading the way across the desert sands.

Scarlet found herself frittering in the late morning sun. Seven hours had passes since departure. Pelasha kept them moving forward, only stopping once an hour for five minutes or so to replenish with water and dried fruit.

“I apologize,” he had told her sometime around the eighth hour. “I’m sure this must be stressful for you. But if we don’t walk at this pace or better, we’ll never make it within the next couple of months.”

Scarlet nodded her head that she had understood. It was ridiculous -- they couldn’t even ask for a shuttle to speed them on their way. The process of even requesting permission for the journey in the first place, would have taken just as long. And a shuttle certainly never would have been sent until permission had been given.

Scarlet looked over her shoulder. Despite the relative lightness of the cart, it was already, four hours into the first day’s march, beginning to wear on her shoulders.

The brothers, foreseeing the necessity, had pulled hooks and ropes through the box of the cart, and had padded the ropes where they would pass over the shoul-ders of the person responsible.

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“You must, at least, sleep well for our siesta,” Pelasha had continued. “And by day’s end, use the supply box to find something to rub on your shoulders. Or you’ll be too exhausted to continue.”

Scarlet appreciated the brothers’ concern. They had all offered, in turn, to take over the responsibility from her, but she kindly refused. It was her own burden. She had willingly taken it upon herself when she was first assigned her station in the desert.

Lunch provided welcome relief. Already, the endless sands stretched beyond them. The last of Ono had been hidden in the dark of the early morning as they left -- nothing of civilization remained, nothing of life remained but the bank of their river which flowed upward to the right of their passage.

Shoko passed around the dish of food.“Dates and... grain?” Oceanus asked, sounding almost a

little skeptical.“And plenty of water,” said Shoko cheerfully.“From what I understand,” said Perpetua, passing the

dates to Father Philemon, “the scavenging will be some-what plentiful, once we reach the forest.”

“Hopefully that is true,” said Shoko. “From estimates, at least from the refugees, which would be accurate at least from... seven months ago, the supply should be good.”

“Of what, I wonder,” said Portia, resting her head on one hand and staring at her handful of grain in the other.

Scarlet could see that Portia was struggling over the past days. Now that her position of leadership had ex-pired, by protocol -- once they had left Ono, she didn’t know what to do with her time. She had nothing to do -- no specific job to handle. And Portia’s life job seemed to

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have been delegating.Lunch passed quickly, and before much time had

passed, Scarlet and the others were deep into their sies-tas, resting somewhat comfortable under tiny arid tents, over beds of baked sand.

SThe early evening arrived at 5:00, the tents were

packed, and the small group of pilgrims began the second stretch before night.

The sun was relentless, despite the season. Endless rifts of gold. Midas himself would have been proud of such wealth of brilliance, mirroring skies nearly as white-gold from the heat of expanses of heaven, unfathomable. Somewhere behind that awful shine dwelled most of humanity, looking down upon the last of the swirling blue gem of home.

“Where were you when they called the evacuation?”It was Pelasha, walking beside her.Scarlet pushed her eyes upward to meet the glare of the

sky. The dark brim of her hat only partially shaded it.“What a question to ask now,” she mumbled.“Wouldn’t you say it’s better to remember these things

for later – when we look back on these days and they seem like part of another life?”

Scarlet looked back at the cart, dragging through the sands. The brothers had also wrapped the ancient wheels in segments of flat metal sheets, to act as snowshoes over sand.

“The melon patch,” she said, a little smile wrinkling

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past.“Melon patch?”“My cousins and I, of course. We were still at the pal-

ace then, waiting to hear from dignitaries abroad, what, exactly, was going to happen. But we didn’t really under-stand. We were still kids. Most of our days were spent playing in the garden. It didn’t seem necessary to our par-ents, at that point in time, to keep a tutor. Things were so chaotic in the city, that it would be difficult to find a tutor from the university willing to teach. And our parents were too busy with foreign affairs to take on that role. So... we were out of school for nearly a year. But that day, we were hiding in the melon patch.”

“Hiding in the melon patch?” Pelasha almost chuckled. “Why?”

Scarlet smiled. “Sometimes when the maid called us for lunch, we hid there. She more often than not, served us a dose of fish oil before we were allowed to eat. She vowed that it would keep us healthy. Well, healthy, I don’t know. But the melon patch was the best place to hide, because it had been overgrown with scrub brush.”

“You don’t seem like you would have been the kind of kid to disobey very much.”

“That was the only time, really. The other times, I unin-tentionally got into trouble.”

Scarlet could see Pelasha smile out of the corner of her eye.

“And then, we heard the sirens.” Scarlet held her head low, pressing forward over the sand. “You must remember them too. High, almost like they were coming from above the clouds. I suppose, many of them were -- arial sirens. But where we were, in a part of the world where civiliza-tion was less, civilized, we heard them from the Hill.”

“You say ‘hill’ as though it had some significance,” Pela-

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sha said.“It did. we spent our weekends climbing that hill, my

cousins and I. We liked that place even more than the gardens. From the top, where we’d have our picnic lunch, we could see the world -- millions of miles, it seemed, of brilliant green valleys and more smaller hills. It was like a place I heard of once... in an old book. My grandma used to read it to me before she died. It was about a pilgrim. But I don’t really remember anything about it except for that one part -- the pilgrim was at the top of the great Hill looking across the valley, I think. It was to see some-thing, something he wanted, a place he wanted to go. A wonderful place.”

Pelasha was very quiet at hearing that. So much so, that Scarlet turned to him, waiting to see if he would respond.

“Do you know the story?””Pelasha only smiled, and continued differently, “A hill

above the rest of the world. Many stories of the past have spoken of hills. And there were sirens on that hill?”

Scarlet decided not to ask him further. “There were,” she continued. “It was the strangest feeling I had then. I don’t know if I could describe it for you, but of course, you heard them as well. You must have had similar feel-ings when you heard the sirens. They weren’t shrieking, or screaming. But their drone was apocalyptic. They were right, if that was their intent. But when I heard them, I’ve heard of people talking about their stomach twist-ing into knots, and the metaphor applies. I felt it too. But it was exciting at the same time -- escape, star flight. That’s what those sirens meant. I was a child, and didn’t understand all the dangers. But it didn’t matter. Because I would soon find out anyway. And my ‘dangers’ came in the form of losing my parents and my cousins.”

“But you said your cousins were safe.”

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“They are, but I still lost them. I haven’t seen them in years, I may never again, and my parents... I still can’t talk about them very much in context of their disappearance. I haven’t even talked to the other girls yet about it. But I talk too much about myself. I guess that can happen when you find yourself excessively lonely out here, espe-cially at Ono.”

Pelasha shook his head, “No worries. I enjoy hearing about you and the others. How many, even in this uncer-tain world, have been able to go to places such as where you have been?”

“It sounds as though you have done the same.”“Yes, but I cannot speak on it.”“Don’t say that you have been on secret missions?”

Scarlet almost laughed.“You could call them that, in a certain regard.”“So I may not even ask?”“You may ask, ask all you’d like, but I have promised to

be silent.”“That is disappointing,” Scarlet replied, ending the con-

versation.They had already arrived at their evening destination.

SYesterday had seen it -- the falls.“Hi hi hi!” he called out.This would be his consistent exclamation along the

journey.“What do you see?” Bakker called, from further back in

the line.

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Yesterday had reached the last ridge of sand. Though the bank by the river was level, the dunes began to es-calate only yards away from the end of the bank itself. Yesterday, unwilling to let any part of the landscape go unexplored, occasionally jumped the ridge to see what lay beyond. And this time, he found a gold.

“Falls!” he yelled back. “Only a few kilometers out. Must be from a branch of the river miles back.” He had run back to join them. “Please say, Father, we may rest there tonight.”

Father Philemon was as tactful and considerate as he was wise. He tried to keep back a smile, as he saw Portia cross her arms and hold back an exasperated reply.

“It does seem a good idea to camp where there is fresh water, likely cleaner than that of the river. And while we are there, I may have time to discuss with Portia a plan for her to help me in the coming days.”

Portia, though not inclined to gullibility, could still not avoid brightening at the idea of having a job to perform, and did not protest the early camp being made for the night.

And Scarlet was happy because of it. She had yet to begin any work on the shrine for that day, and an extra several hours of sunlight would be gratifying to her labor.

Over the next twenty minutes or more, she hauled the cart over the ridge. And while she still refused help, she was thankful that Pelasha remained behind with her to see that she was not alone. The others ran ahead, to make camp, in the last blaze of the afternoon. The sound of steadily rushing water made Scarlet pull at the cart even harder. And in very little time, she and Pelasha had ar-rived.

It was a thing of beauty -- a recent chasm off the edge of a small tributary of the river had created spectacular

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waterfalls, plummeting perhaps two hundred feet into the ravine below, where a bluish pool glistened under bluer skies. Scarlet dropped the ropes from her shoulders and ran below to the pool, disregarding the weight of the shrine behind her.

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COLORS

CHAPTER 8

Most of the evening had been spent swim-ming under the falls. Cascades from the Nile branch -- obliterated into desert jewels as it crashed over the rock bed

into soft pools of sand.“Are you sure it’s not quicksand?” Portia had asked, be-

fore stepping in.Shekinah had laughed at her, because he was already

halfway across the pool, stepping deeply into the sand bed underneath.

Scarlet spent the next hours alone, swimming slowly near the deluge so that it was too loud to think about speaking with anyone who passed by. Pelasha seemed to understand that she was finished with their conversation for the day, and swam with the others.

They were all happy to find such a place -- it gave a little hope that even in the midst of harsh desert, relief could be found, if looked for.

S

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That night, they all slept deeply under startling white starshine. It was so brilliant, so ancient. And when they woke up the next morning, as the last of the stars began to fade, they were prepared to continue the second day of their journey.

Once again, the skies were hot of blue and searing sun. The shrine paddled behind Scarlet through the African sands. But her mind was once again removed from the pressing ropes against her shoulders when Pelasha joined her in their walk.

“I never found out about your leaving Thailand,” he said.

Scarlet looked over at him -- dark brown jumpsuit (the usual dress of a monk in modern day), labeled in a similar way to Scarlet’s, but there were no flags imprinted to his uniform. Scarlet noticed, as he spoke, for the first time, the patches over his chest were written in what she be-lieved to be a dead language. His dark blue eyes sparkled in the sun, as he waited for her to answer.

“There isn’t much interesting to say about it,” she said, turning her gaze back to the white-blown sand. “It was very simple actually. My parents, after receiving permis-sion from their executives, disbanded the palace occu-pants (most of which included foreign dignitaries and a few servants) and dispatched us on the North train to the ancient city of New Delhi.”

“And they stayed behind?”“They did. And I will always regret that. It was the last

time we saw them -- waving us off bravely at the train station, as they awaited final orders from the court. They wanted to be certain that we were safe, but they had no authorization to leave. Their original intent was to meet us at the launch station at the 34th latitude. However, af-ter we arrived in New Delhi, we received no further mes-

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sages. I received a wire after waiting there four days, that they had never made the connection at the depot, after they had been given clearance to leave. I felt responsible for my cousins, to make certain that they arrived at the starship. But I couldn’t leave when my parents were miss-ing. And I couldn’t leave my cousins in New Delhi. So I continued with them to Crete. And there I sent them up. I promised them that I would come after I found them. It was heartbreak seeing them go. We were close -- they were my brothers. But I couldn’t do it. I took the train back to New Delhi and waited for a connection to Bang-kok. But by then -- and I should have known this all along -- the borders were closed. There was no way in. They wouldn’t let me pass. At first I thought about sneaking around the barricade. But troops were thick then. There was nothing else for them to guard past that point, and so all the soldiers had collectively moved west. The line of the guard stretched from Siberia to the tip of India. There was no way around. And so I sat in the depot for two days, waiting for something to happen. Anything. A note, a wire -- any sign that they were still there, some-where. And that’s when I was approached by the presi-dent of the University at the Canary Isles. At that point, the islands were still mostly safe, which was why the universities had moved to places like the Caribbean and Oceania. Africa was still alright, etc. He was a very nice man--short, balding a little, and he had a very red face. He was in a hurry, but something I had made on the floor at the depot caught his attention.”

Scarlet paused long enough for Pelasha to ask her, “What was it?”

“The depot was not very clean at that point. The floors were not swept from the debris that blew in from the forest surrounding its outskirts. Rocks, sand, dirt, bits of

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leaf... while I waited, I built little things -- tiny houses, creations I didn’t know what they were. It had expanded into something, I will admit now, which looked very much like an amateur shrine. But it caught his attention. ‘You must come with me young woman,’he told me. I fol-lowed him through the depot to his small cluttered office at the end of the hallway. He talked constantly, muttering to himself about many things, shuffling through papers on his desk. And then he handed it to me -- the promo-tional papers for the University. ‘You would be a sensation there,’ he said. ‘Maybe even a lifesaver.’ I was so young. I looked at the papers. I wasn’t going to board the starship until I found my parents. And even though the Canary Isles were so far away, it was better than being eventually pushed into a starship and forced to leave for a place even further away. Now, I realize that it would have been bet-ter for me to go with my cousins. It would have been so much easier, then, for my parents to find me, they could have checked the registry, and we would have been re-united.”

“Then why haven’t you left to join them there?”“There is still no record of them ever having arrived at

Crete. Or any other depot or airport. I’ve promised my-self through these years that I would never lose hope that they are still there looking for me somewhere. But now, I have no choice of leaving. And I think, that I really will never see them again now.”

They walked in silence for a while. The air was so hot even in the middle of the morning. They could hear Por-tia still talking with Father Philemon about her task of the journey. She was to keep his notes for him.

“Your eyes are better than mine,” he had said. “And your handwriting is not spidery.”

Portia had seen this as somewhat humorous, and imme-

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diately took on the job.Further ahead, Shoko and Perpetua walked together.

Perpetua seemed to have constantly some form of equip-ment or notebook in her hands. Sometimes they were wind instruments. She held them carefully – usually tiny things, small enough to fit carefully into padded cushions of thick foam in smooth leather-covered boxes in her pack.

And beyond them, the other brothers took turns lead-ing their pilgrim group. They could hear laughs from time to time, sifting back in the dead air to where Scarlet walked, trudging step by step through the broiled path.

Pelasha asked no further questions during their walk. Scarlet was glad for that. Sometimes she found that it was better to not speak on things of her past. There were still times that uncalled tears would push behind her eyes. And she would always keep them back. She would let no one, not even a monk, see the grim heaviness that pressed her down from day to day.

“Who can live in a life like this and be happy about it?” she had written once, earlier in her stay at Ono.

There was always something missing there. Something empty.

As they continued to trudge, the river began to widen, reflecting a greenish palor from the reeds which still lined parts of its banks.

“We can’t stop to fish here until we pass the ruins of Ahkbar,” Shoko had said. “Anything we eat here could still contain too much tin.”

Scarlet wasn’t always certain where Shoko obtained her information. But like Perpetua, she was usually always correct. Tin-filled fish wasn’t appetizing. And although the thought of fried fish made her almost stop from hun-ger, Scarlet tried to put the thought out of her mind and

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somehow make raisins and cashews a tempting anticipa-tion for the mid-day meal. And there were cucumbers – a few. Perpetua kept them packed in a silver thermos wedged between the temperature controlled boxes of her instruments. Shoko was saving them for dinner. But she still promised there would be abundant eats once they ar-rived at the forests.

The mid-day meal arrived almost before Scarlet knew the sun was overhead. With her head shaded and her eyes pressed forward, shielded behind “sunnies” -- as Pelasha called them -- there were few indicators as to what part of the day it actually was.

“So we are gathered here on our second day -- safe, still. I think, Perpetua, that we have covered enough miles per day as of yet?” Father Philemon smiled, passing the bowl of raisins to Perpetua.

“So far... after only 30 hours of travel. But it’s Scarlet who has the worst load to carry. How are you doing with it?”

“I’m fine,” Scarlet said quickly.She wasn’t going to complain about her shoulders... not

yet. She knew there would probably come a time when she would be forced to complain.

“When my shoulders have been worn off,” she thought to herself.

“Are you sure?” Perpetua asked.“I’m sure.” Scarlet waved her off.Perpetua saw it -- she knew it was already bothering

her. But they were all stubborn in their own rites. And so she said nothing more.

Perpetua was also quiet about her concerns. But Scarlet could tell when she was bothered by something, like she was that morning. She fumbled with the instruments. She sorted through her pack before their siesta after the meal,

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and didn’t seem to know what instrument to take out next. But Scarlet said nothing. If Perpetua didn’t know what she was doing, none of them did. And Scarlet didn’t want to know about it, if that was the case.

SScarlet didn’t remember the rest of the afternoon after

siesta. She was glad for the relief of cool winds from the river, which continued to widen the further south they walked.

By late night, a fire crackled between their tents on a base of river stones. The brothers had gathered dried reeds buried in the sand for over an hour to gather enough fuel.

Scarlet stretched her aching arms toward the little flames. The others were ready for sleep, but she couldn’t keep her mind from the shrine -- carcass -- there it sat.

“Should I put out the fire now?” Pelasha asked.Scarlet shook her head. “I’ll put it out in awhile. Don’t

wait up.”Pelasha took a seat opposite her on the sand. “So...”Scarlet turned to look at him. “Did I say something?”“Is there something wrong?”“No... not much. Just trying to be inspired.”“That’s not usually something you can make happen to

yourself.”“I know it.” Scarlet stared into the heart of the small

fire. “What do you know about colors, Pelasha? Any-thing?”

“Colors?”

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“What they mean. Symbolic meaning. I’ve read through so many color charts from different times in history and from different cultures. I just wondered if you knew any-thing about them.”

“That’s a funny thing to have on the brain.”“Odd things usually keep me up at night.”“I’d have to agree with you -- if this is any indicator.”Scarlet smiled. “Do you know anything about colors?”“Well...” Pelasha smoothed a portion of sand in front of

him with his hand. “From where we come, there is, actu-ally, a color... code... if you will.”

“You and your brothers always seem reluctant to give any kind of information about yourselves.”

Pelasha laughed a little. “I guess we have enough better left to The Order, for now.”

“The Order...”“But to the colors... I may actually tell you about some

of those.”“Some?”“Which ones do you want to know.”Scarlet stared hard at the dark shadow of the covered

shrine at the edge of the camp. She had to begin with a new color. The empty wood of The Tel.

“Green.”“Generally -- living things, growth.”“That’s usually what it means. Red.”“The presence of... God.”“Gods. Purple?”“Suffering.”Scarlet shook her head. Blue.”“Blue can mean creation, beginning.”Scarlet nodded quietly. That was the color.“Is that what you were looking for?”“Yes. It is.” She folded her hand over the sand in front

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of her, feeling the smoothness of the white grit under her fingers.

“Then I think I’ll turn in.”“Thanks for your help, Pelasha.”Pelasha stood up and nodded. “Goodnight, Scarlet.”Scarlet stayed up awhile longer, tracing unknown pat-

terns in the sand, watching the flames until they slowly glowed away under the heavens.

SBy the next morning, Perpetua was the first to rise. She

stretched to the heavens, pressing her palms toward the still-dark of the early morning. And by the last light of stars, she saw the shrine.

“You’ve started over.”Scarlet was becoming used to it -- someone coming up

to her side as she trudged through the sands. This time it was Perpetua.

“I saw it this morning before you covered it. Should I ask why?”

“It’s my responsibility.”“To do what?”“To keep it.”“Of course. But why begin again?”“You never asked before.”“I thought maybe it had something to do with your

dream. I didn’t want to bring it up again.”Scarlet was quiet for awhile.“Maybe it did have something to do with my dream. I

can never know.”

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Perpetua’s face didn’t change.Scarlet sighed. “I had to start over.”Perpetua continued to walk. “You’re going to need help

with that someday.”Scarlet shook her head. “Unless something happens to

me -- and if it did, then you would all be in trouble -- no one else can carry it but me.”

Scarlet could see the veins in Perpetua’s hands tighten a little as she flexed her fingers. She knew she was pushing the limit of Perpetua’s kindness.

“You know I appreciate the offer, Perpetua. But I can’t.”Perpetua nodded, and began to say something, but

changed her mind and said, “No worries.”

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SANDSTORM

CHAPTER 9

What’s happening with the weather this morning, Yesterday?”

Father Philemon was speaking. The dry heat was crippling, as it had been

the day before. But Father Philemon could sometimes see things that no one else seemed to know.

“It’s the age,” he said, with a wink, when any of the girls would mention it.

“I don’t know, Father.”Yesterday was standing on the sandy ridge along the

bank of the river. Their siesta had passed, and the wind was up. Everyone was gathering together the tent stakes, and preparing to continue the second-half of their travels that day.

“It’s not the time for storms. Not for another week. But it could mean a sandstorm.”

“Not really?” Portia asked.“You would know better than I,” Yesterday replied.

“I’ve only had a few studies in meteorology, but I’ve never lived any long amount of time in the desert. There are things here I’ve never seen.”

But Portia frowned. She knew too well, that the signs of the weather were not exactly right. Though she had

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never experienced a true sandstorm, nor had the other girls, she had heard enough stories about their fury, their phelpsian speed, as they grated across the desert. And when they came, they stayed for days.

“If you’re right, we’re going to have to make camp early tonight,” said Oceanus. “How long do you think we might have... if you’re right, of course.”

“Hard to say.” Yesterday shielded his eyes against the blaze of the west, reflecting off the skies in the east. “We will, at least, be blown southward, if it comes. I think. In the right direction, at least.”

Scarlet kept her head down and rolled the last part of her tent together. She knew that if Yesterday was correct, and she doubted it little, that she would have no cover-ing for the shrine. She hadn’t thought to bring any sort of tarp or plastic to cover it. It would be impossible to wedge it inside the tent with her. It would be exposed to the elements. But there was nothing that she could do about it. They had to press onward.

“There’s no chance we could reach the forest by early this evening?” Yesterday asked Shoko.

Shoko shook her head, without even looking at her chart.

“No way at all,” she said. “We won’t arrive, even at our fastest pace, for another day.”

“Thank the gods for tents,” Portia muttered, closing up the memoirs of Father Philemon in its leather case.

“Pray they stay in their one piece,” Shoko replied.The wind began to belt in bowling waves as they carted

themselves away from their camp. Scarlet looked over her shoulder as they left. Nothing but footprints, holes in the sands from the tent stakes, already disappearing in the curling winds. Within half an hour, their tracks would be swept away completely. No sign that they had ever been

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there. Like the remnants of her dream in her mind.The walk was lessened in its discomfort by the wind.

Though it was still a somewhat warm wind, it disturbed the stillness, and broke the settling dryness of the desert. Anything to refresh the air around them, was appealing under the sizzle of the white ball above them as it galed them across the wilderness.

As she marched, Scarlet called up the usual -- the out-skirts of her dream. And also as usual, the harder she cracked her thoughts against the crystal globe of her dream, the less she could pierce it. And the further bewil-dered she became. She found that time passed in amazing lengths of fragments, the more deeply concentrated she was in the attempt to recall something. Anything.

She closed her eyes to slits against the white grit. There it was -- the milk mist -- pure, soft, whispering in creamy knobs between present and future. Scarlet held her breath as she watched it mixing over the sand before her. And that was the way it always started, the edge, as she called it -- always the only part that she remembered. Nothing beyond it.

Only sometimes she remembered hearing that voice -- the same one every time -- deep and quiet. But it would have shattered a planet at a breath, she knew it. Of course she never remembered what was said to her. Nothing but her name. It was so far away and ethereal in nature. But something about it scared life into her spirit’s wandering during the night hours of the watch. Her sacred, ever-eternal watch, day and night, over the shrine of the gods of the air.

It was at about four o’clock that Yesterday saw the cloud in the east. It was moving quickly, pummeling the air, silencing whatever had lived above the sand. If there was anything living, it would have buried itself into the

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sand to disappear from the boiling mass. No thunder cracked. Only silence in a maelstrom.

“Just what I thought,” said Yesterday, running back from the ridge. “We must have twenty minutes, no more. Hurry!”

“Set up the tents, men,” said Father Philemon. “We will camp ourselves closely together on the bank so that the wind might not pick us off, one by one.”

So they began the process. Packs were tossed together in a heap in the center of their would-be ring camp. Tents were flated together in a tight circle, stakes shoved deeply into the sand by the brothers. They worked as madmen.

“Those stakes aren’t going to hold well,” Oceanus warned. “They’ll be blasted away as the sand recedes. We need something more.”

“There’s nothing else we can do,” said Bakker, cranking tightly the cords of the stakes together. “We’ll just hope on it.”

It didn’t take long for the tents to be fully set up against the embankment. The packs were left in the center, but not before Shoko had received permission from all group members to pull rations from each one.

“It could be hours,” she said, “before it passes over. If not a day or more.”

She handed each person their sack of dried apricots, raisins, and thermos of scalded river water. Purified by fire, tablet, and distiller.

Scarlet took her rations and crawled into her tent, pull-ing herself wearily through the flaps.

“I’ll close you in,” said Pelasha.“Thanks.”Pelasha pulled on the zipper around the tent flap. “Are

you ok?”Scarlet nodded. “We’ve all got our limit on claustropho-

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bia – when you live in the desert. It’s just the way of it.”Pelasha smiled. “It can’t last too long. If it does, I’ll talk

to you from across tents. I’m just next door.”“Talk, above the wind?”“I can bellow if necessary. If you can’t bellow back, then

I’ll just tell you stories. One-sided conversation. It will work.”

Scarlet shook her head and laughed. And then she was closed in for the duration.

SWhen it came, it came with the fury. Wild. Maniacal,

Scarlet thought. She had never heard the shrieking grate of sand upon wind, not in any manner resembling the freak storm outside her tent.

She had heard stories of banshees cries from the maid, growing up. And they would give her tingles. And so the storm had the same affect on her.

It raged for hours into the night, tumbling her restless endlessness into a tangled monster of sleeplessness.

And it hadn’t ended by morning. By the watch on her jacket zipper, it was seven o’clock in the morning, and the storm was still blowing. All morning it continued.

Scarlet skipped breakfast. She didn’t even realize that she was hungry.

And with it, came the remembrance of dreams. Again, the cloaking mist. The voice, so slowly low. So far away. Yet something elementally comforting and human about it. Strong. And something familiar in it. Something she remembered. But didn’t know how long ago.

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Lunch arrived, and then siesta. By three o’clock in the afternoon, she had finally remembered to eat some of the dried fruit.

At four, the wind had receded. It had calmed so slowly, that it took awhile before Scarlet realized it. Half an hour later, she heard a voice from next door.

It was Pelasha.“Hallo,” he called.The wind had died enough for him not to even have to

yell. Although Scarlet could still hear the grit whacking against the tent.

“How is your claustrophobia?”Scarlet laughed. “I hadn’t noticed. Too busy trying to

cancel the ringing in my ears.”“What have you done today?”“Sleep, eat, sleep. Think.”“Think of anything interesting to tell me about your

childhood?”Scarlet thought for a moment. There were always mem-

ories at hand from her childhood.“I have had a memory on my mind today,” she said.

“From time to time. I hadn’t noticed until you asked. But it’s been in the back of my thoughts all day. I don’t know why. I guess when you’re alone, you become more melan-choly.”

“I do?”“You, as in myself.“What was it?”“Back in Thailand, of course... You’ve never been there,

have you?”“Never.”“I remember when I was eleven that I became very

sad one day. My parents had brought my cousins and I

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to the wharf to watch the sailboats come into shore. My dad knew that it would be a special thing for us to have a candy bar there as well. We didn’t see Western food there, very much. And I had been complaining about something trivial -- I don’t even remember what -- and I saw the look of disappointment on my Dad’s face as he hand-ed my candy bar to me, me still complaining.” Scarlet scratched at the shadow of sand striking the tent. “And it occurred to me then that I had a very limited amount of time to be under their care. But there I was -- complain-ing about something ridiculous, and ruining that beautiful afternoon we all had together. I wondered, then, sadly, how many of those days we had left. I found out later that it was only about four more years of them. But I wish that I had spent those years better, instead of whin-ing about things and wasting time. Although I can’t say that I have too few good memories from childhood. They were wonderful years when we were all still together. And I wish that I had them back now. I so wish I had them back now.”

Pelasha didn’t respond.“Don’t you have any more non-secretive memories

from your childhood?” Scarlet asked, cutting the silence. “I feel like I’m always talking about myself. I should know something about you and your brothers.”

“Not many secret memories. Yours are more interest-ing, though, I think. But I like that memory. It does re-mind me a little of growing up in Grenada. Before Mum died. They were... gentle times. Father was always good to us. But there was something he couldn’t replace when she passed. I don’t think he would have wanted to replace that either. And I regret every time I complained to her. Every time.”

They were quiet for the rest of the evening, Scarlet

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remembering more of her past, and Pelasha happy that he could, at least, help turn her mind to happier times while surrounded by something far less pleasant.

With the last of the grating wind, Scarlet fell asleep again under the realization that the loneliness for her family, though no less pained, was less overpowering after her conversations with Pelasha.

SWhen they all woke the next morning, early under

dark skies, the storm had passed, wailing into the west toward places where no one had ever been. The stars were agleam. The moon still waxed in the west, nearly blue from its whiteness.

As they emerged from their tents, Scarlet could already see the shrine -- withered from wind and sand, bared to near bone. But the blue was still there. Even in the star-light, she could still see it. Weathered, yes. But the blue was still true. It seemed almost to wink at her from across the sand.

As she walked over to pull away the mounded sand from its base, she saw Pelasha out of the corner of her eye. He was uncertain about something. She could see it. But he said nothing, as she continued to brush away the sand and smooth the roughed paint of her charge. He only walked back to his tent to roll it up.

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REMEMBER HOME

CHAPTER 10

Several hours later, Scarlet was pulling the same cart across the sands. She hadn’t been able to scrub out all of the grit from the shrine. Look-ing back on it from time to time as she walked,

she could still see some of it, particles blasted into the seams of the ancient wood. And Scarlet felt guilty as she walked -- wondering if the gods would be displeased that their ultimate sacrificial representation had been left ex-posed to the natural elements.

“How is it?”Pelasha again, walking beside her in the aftermath of

the sand-whipped morning.“My arms were pretty sore after the first two days, but

I think my muscles are adjusting. It’s not as hard to pull it anymore.”

“It’s a terrible cart. I oiled the gears on the wheels before we left, but it doesn’t sound like it’s helping too much.”

The rolling squeak of the ancient wheels behind her never ceased. Scarlet had become used enough to it, that she had forgotten the creaks and rattles until Pelasha brought it to her attention.

“It’s not a problem. I’m sure a squeaking cart is the last

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of my problems right now.”“Nothing bad has happened yet.”“Nothing bad? The shrine is blasted. I can only pray the

gods don’t make things worse for me because I was so ir-responsible with it.”

Pelasha looked over his shoulder. “Are you going to repaint it?”

It was the first time Pelasha had officially referenced the shrine.

“I haven’t decided yet.” Scarlet looked sideways at him. “What would you do with it?”

“I am no keeper of shrines. So I can’t say what I would do.”

“You are very vague.”“I pride myself on that.”Scarlet sighed. “But it doesn’t always make for very in-

teresting conversation.” She caught herself from continu-ing. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t right. I just can’t justify always telling you about my past when you have so little to say about yourself in return. Sometimes I think that you must be an agent spying on my progress with the shrine.”

“And if I was, there aren’t many resources in the way of tattling on you. None, in fact. I’d say that Perpetua is closest to having contact with the rest of humanity than any of us. And I’m pretty sure she has nothing more than wind instruments.”

“But you aren’t, are you?”“A spy? No,” Pelasha said, laughing. “You really are a

wary one.”Scarlet just shook her head, wondering at how the

strangeness of living so almost alone in the desert for so long, had tangled her social agreeableness. She fi-nally laughed at herself for it, as they continued onward through the sand.

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SBy early evening, Scarlet had decided to repaint The

Tel. After the second attempt, the blue in her paint glass-es would be gone. She had mixed the color carefully the first time, grinding the chalks, the small rock, into a pow-der, and mixing in the paraffin, the little water... it had to be perfect. She knew that. How many times had she been chided for her lack of interest at the university.

“Your work is incredible, fabulous -- you don’t know how amazing it is!” her Ukrainian professor had praised her. And then in the same mouthful, “But you have no interest. No interest.”

And then she would shake her head and cluck and move onto the other, even less-talented creatures under her instruction.

So Scarlet had tried harder. She took a little more care in the details of her work. Because there were no big parts to that job. They were all details, tiny incandescent things that had to be fitted perfectly around one another.

SBy the afternoon, the river had begun to change. The

rapidity of its rhythm had begun to lessen.“We’re about to arrive at the tributaries,” said Yester-

day.“We’re close then,” said Shoko, “as I expected. If we

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make it to the forests by this evening, I think we’ll be ok.”

Portia seemed happiest out of all of them at such news. The sandstorm had bothered her the most, even more than Scarlet thought it might effect her. Portia was strong in administrative organization, but in withstanding the difficulties of travel and natural elements, she was not as strong. And Scarlet could already see it pressing on her.

“How are you doing?” Scarlet asked her, as Portia began to lag behind next to her.

“It’s not what I expected this would be,” she said, al-most a little miserably.

Her step was slow, and her pack even looked heavier from Scarlet’s point of view.

“Too hot for you?”“Maybe. You were the one always out in the desert. I

hardly left the indoors except for high tea on the terrace. Even when the refugees came in, I don’t think I left the train platform.” She scuffed through the sand. “So this is what it’s like to live under the sun. I’m almost regretting leaving the saltworks.”

“It’s good you came. It would have been so lonely for you there.”

Portia nodded, but didn’t say anything. Scarlet won-dered how things would be weeks later, when they were further into their journey. She wondered if Portia would last long under such circumstances, if they hadn’t even begun to enter dangerous territory.

Scarlet was experiencing the doldrums herself. Five days across the sands tugging at the withering leather strap-covered chains around the chunk of wood tying her down to the desert floor. It was enough to drive one mad. Even after only five days.

Scarlet began to faintly imagine the cooling green

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shadows of the forests, cold clear waters of streams, soft patches of moss and ferns, over-arching pines... Scarlet had little idea of what a forest of Egypt might be like, but it was the one that returned to her mind -- the everlasting jungles of Thailand. The high green hill that tapered into a cliff overlooking the forested valley. And as she thought about it, her skin cooled a little, even under the cotton sleeves of her suit.

And then, as she pushed against the blaze, she heard a shout from the front. This time it was Bakker.

“We’re almost there!” he called back in the death quiet of the hot air. “Look at the gray haze over the horizon. That’s the wood.”

Shoko immediately ran to the ridge where Bakker stood and returned to Scarlet to share the news.

“He’s right,” she said, encouraged. “We won’t make it quite by dark, but if we start again early in the morning, we’ll be there after a few more hours of walking, I think. I’d say we should continue through the night with the lanterns on, but I don’t want to push you any harder than you’re already pushing yourself. We’ll break camp.”

Scarlet took in a deep breath to refill her speech capac-ity. “No,” she said, “we should continue. We could even sleep longer into the next morning, with shade overhead to continue. Don’t keep us camping out in the desert an-other night just because of me.”

“And you wouldn’t accept any help if we continued after dark?”

Scarlet shook her head.“I’ll just have us make camp at the normal time, Scarlet.

It won’t make that much difference.”“It would, Shoko, you know it. Perpetua and Portia

would agree with me. There’s too much threat of wild ani-mals, heat lightening. Look at those clouds. No, bring us

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all the way to the wood. I’ll rest tomorrow.”“Alright,” Yoko replied with much hesitation. “But you

have to promise that you’ll tell me as soon as you need us to stop, whether we’re already at the woods or not.”

“I promise.”

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THE WOOD

CHAPTER 11

As it happened, Scarlet was crippled with pain by the time the wood loomed in violet shadows against the desert night. But she wouldn’t say a word. They were too close.

Too close to relief from the dry, hot bake.And as her head was bowed to the dark floor, it came

upon them -- majestic, soaring. The trees of lost pre-historic forests. Cryptically straight and dark, solid and perfect black. Not a movement, not a whisper in their branches, as though they had been carved from ebony.

They were all standing before the entrance of that wood, which had suddenly risen from the desert -- so sudden -- in fact -- that the trailing moss and soil of the dividing lines seemed to grow out of the sand.

“Gasp,” Shoko choked out, almost comically. “Who cre-ated these monsters?”

Father Philemon chuckled at her remarks. “These are ancient places,” he said. “Many things in these parts of the Earth are unexplained.”

Against the black of night sands, Father Philemon’s box lantern glowed like a firefly. He stepped forward toward the carving gloom and shadow of the other world in their path.

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As the others began to follow Father Philemon into the bowels of the wonderment, Scarlet hesitated. She wasn’t frightened to enter it, but there was something so very old about it, that it made her feel the need to pause even longer, for further observance of its awe.

“Are you coming, young lady?” Pelasha called from over his shoulder.

Scarlet nodded, in the glow of the trail of lanterns, and continued the crawl into the collection of giants.

SShoko almost immediately requested a stop for camp,

once they were several meters inside the wood. Father Philemon was in agreement, seeing that the others (par-ticularly Scarlet) were eager for a night of rest.

Father Philemon seemed to be the least tired of them all, despite his age. He had been very strong on the last five days of travel. Quiet, strong. And always wise. He never seemed to need much to say. His silence usually spoke more. And with these things on her mind, Scarlet fell asleep as soon as she laid down inside the tent.

SNever before had any of them there seen sunlight in

the way it rose the following morning. Glowing palettes, whippling between branches -- dark green -- and so thick

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and clustered together, that the light did indeed seem like shook sunlight, as if the forest were a reef of coral under the ocean. The floor of the forest was nearly as colorful. Red, blue, yellow, and deep purple lilies, large as platters, had grown for so many years, that they wound their way up the trunks of the trees to reach the shaded light of the sun near the forest top. Trailing ivy, full of nut, berry, and butterfly, covered not only the trees, but the rocks -- lichened with yellow and orange, and tiny tissue-thin mushrooms. The butterflies were as large as Scarlet’s hands put together, a blue brighter than the Egyptian sky, and lined in black. The perpetual shade of the tops of the trees, afforded brilliant rays of sunlight, hundreds upon hundreds of them, reaching back into the far dark extents of the wood.

“How does it exist and we’ve never heard about it?” Shoko asked aloud for them all.

But they were not all very amazed, not as much as some of them. Perpetua seemed more interested in the reading of the injured instrument before her. Despite her care, some of the endless script of the desert had embedded itself within the computer plate, and she was trying to fix it.

The brothers, too, were more interested in packing up the camp. Only Scarlet, Shoko, and Portia seemed at lack of words for the beauty before them.

But Scarlet still said nothing. The only thing that seemed out of the ordinary, since the brothers arrived, was Perpetua. It seemed, almost, that she was one of them.

But the amazement of the wood was not completely lost on the brothers. Scarlet did notice that Bakker had been gone early in the morning to walk on an extending branch of the path -- if it could be called a path -- and

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returned sometime later with a bag of blackberries. They were blackberries enough around their encampment. It seemed, rather, that he had left more for a moment of exploration or meditation, than he had for breakfast.

And breakfast was good. Four or five types of ber-ries, salad of mushrooms and herbs -- Shoko knew which ones were edible -- and the last of their water which had cooled under the force of the night.

“The tributary will soon branch into streams,” said Yesterday. “Our water will be more than plenty when the river has settled back into purer waters.”

Most of the morning, at least for the girls, excepting Perpetua, was strangely enveloping and ether-like.

“If fairies never lived here,” said Portia, “at least the gods must have, at some point in history. Forests like these are unnatural.”

The others had to agree. But there was Perpetua, still studying the instrument.

“Are we ready to move on yet, Father?” Pelasha asked suddenly. “It’s ten o’clock just now.”

Father Philemon nodded, already shouldering his pack. It was time to enter the true heart of the forest.

Scarlet was already minorly concerned. The path in front of them was full of weathered roots, overgrowth from centuries, perhaps even longer. Some of the impend-ing plants bore trunks of crusted bark, not easily removed by human hands. She knew there might be trouble when Oceanus and Bakker, both, removed machetes from their backpacks.

Pelasha saw the look on her face as Bakker slid the leather sheath from the knife. “Don’t be too dismayed,” he said laughing. “Most of those ruts won’t bother the cart. I know it’s old and ailing, but I think it shouldn’t be too bad.”

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“That’s what you think, until you have this harness strapped around your shoulders for the next five hours.”

“You want me to take over for you?”“No, no, no. I can’t let anyone... I was joking.”“That’s what I was afraid of.”“It’s not going to kill me.”“It might.”Pelasha only laughed.

SAs day led into night, Scarlet remembered something

-- something sweetly imbedded in the shadows of her dream. Where before, the mist had been deep and white and shaded in blue, she now saw something. It emerged in form as she continued her walk. And when it fully became visible in the past of her mind, she stopped in the packed dirt of the ancient path.

“Ah,” she whispered aloud, and only to herself.But Perpetua heard it. “What?” she asked, just as sud-

denly.“I know it now.”Perpetua waited, silent.“Just something little, but I remember something from

my dream. A tree. No...” Scarlet closed her eyes tightly for a moment. “No, more than one. There were several. I think it was a wood, much like this one.”

Perpetua still said nothing. She was stoic. But Scarlet could see the intensity behind her emerald eyes.

“It’s nothing, isn’t it?” Scarlet asked.Perpetua shook her head only slightly as she turned

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around to continue on the path. “It’s something,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m sure it will help.”

And Scarlet followed, at least a little happy that, for the first time, she remembered something of the dream that had haunted her for those years in the desert. So subtle, so unmonumental. But she had remembered.

S“We must remember, as we travel these woods, to be

quiet, and vigilant,” said Father Philemon.They were seated around a tablet rock that evening.

Dusk entered the forest at an early hour, and Shoko was anxious for as many containers of mushrooms and berries, as possible, to be collected while they still grew in abun-dance. Hence, the also early meal.

“Quiet,” Father Philemon continued, “to be careful of spirits...”

Oceanus stifled a small laugh at this remark, which he apparently thought was funny.

“And to be vigilant,” Father Philemon went on without a pause, “for our own protection.”

“Pardon me, Father,” said Portia, “but what... things, might hurt us here in these enchanted woods -- goblins?”

Oceanus, again, clapped a handful of blackberries into his mouth to hold back a snicker.

“No goblins,” said Father Philemon, with a smile. “But these are ancient places. There are few parts of the world left such as these. It has been long since man stepped foot on this path. And there is little to tell what has lived here since.”

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Portia shivered a little, despite herself. But she said nothing.

Father Philemon saw this and continued, “It is nothing to be fearful about. I do not anticipate any trouble. How-ever, lack of observation often leads to unnecessary ill. And so I caution you.”

Scarlet noted this as she finished her meal. There was something odd, mystical, if it could be said, about the forest. Bakker had pointed out to them earlier that day -- ancient graffiti -- carved into the trees and grown over in mosses and time. Some of them were very intricate -- scrollwork, hieroglyphs -- almost certainly unreadable, and some were equally simple -- a small symbol of a heart. He also showed them where several of the carvings had been painted so long ago, mostly in reds and yellows. And so many more of them had been overgrown with the lil-ies and the ivy, which grew more thick, the further they walked into the interior.

And the wood had become increasingly dark. The only light to emit over the endless sentry was the series of patches -- chords of golden light, or white light, from the steel canopy of pine and cinnamon.

“They are fantastic,” said Pelasha. “These cinnamon trees are by far older than anything we ever harvested on the plantation.”

“What was the name of that place?” Scarlet asked him.“Ah. A question I can finally answer,” he said with a

smile. “Saint David Harbor.”“Saint David Harbor? Who is that?”“I suppose you haven’t heard the name of David be-

fore?”“It does sound like a very old name. Maybe... I don’t

know.”

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“It is an old name. And it was a beautiful place. Picture a forest of cinnamon trees. But not like this one. These were straight rows for over a mile. Mown grass between the rows. No other plants. Just the cinnamon trees -- spread out over the hills down to the harbor. Perfect blue sea. Hardly ever even a sail on the horizon.”

Scarlet could see it in her mind. “Your childhood seems equally appealing.”

“Compared to yours?”Scarlet nodded. “Green hills, a view to the sea... quiet.

Even if it was sometimes lonely. Sometimes the wonders of nature can overpower the sense of being alone.”

And Pelasha agreed.That night, even the light of the moon paroled the for-

est air with a pearl so white with ancient luster, that Scar-let felt herself slip into the realm between reality and the dream world in an effort so simple, her thoughts politely tossed themselves back and forth across its chasm. Time was short before she entered the other side of the great divide. And her endless dream began again.

SScarlet’s heart pulled the rest of her body forward in a

rush of energy. She felt it before she saw it. The adrena-line and cold sweat of a midnight dream. Her black eyes snapped open -- both arms, stretched intensely forward to the path in front of her. And out of her eye’s corner, she saw the flick of a shadow disappear into the wood.

The dream has ended. But there she was -- standing in the path -- far from the camp. She could faintly see the

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amber burn of its fire far back in the trees.She pulled both hands to her face. Never before had

she left her bed at night without knowing it. But there it was -- the dying pitches of her dream. As always. But this time, something was different. The wood was more real this time. She was certain that it had been there in her dreams all along, over those years. But what it meant, she did not know.

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121

VIOLET RED

CHAPTER 12

It was all through the next day, that Scarlet was silent -- remembering it. The wood in her dream. And as she walked on, she knew that she had been running through that wood. Her eyes

closed against the path again, as she pulled The Tel and pushed her thoughts to settleness in remembering the feeling. The hard packed dirt under her feet. The silk of something light and soft against her arms. It seemed that she was wearing a gown. And as her thoughts returned to the endless run through that ancient wood, she saw the color of that gown. Mistily. It was a dark color. Of red violets.

Her eyes popped open. There was the forest still before her as she walked. The trail of the other pilgrims before her under canopy of leaves so green, they were blue. And the silent float of the butterflies in the light of glistening heavens, obscured.

It was so quiet. Just like it had been in her dream. But why had she been running? Was she running to see some-thing good, or was she running from trouble? Or running to help? She couldn’t know.

Scarlet forced it from her mind as she treaded the packed dirt. Leather boots on the same path of her

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dream. But it was almost impossible to forget it. Ev-erything of the forest reminded her of it. The more she looked around her, the more she remembered. And it seemed almost certain that the forest of her dream was the same as the forest she was passing.

“Someone’s falling behind,” she heard Pelasha saying, several people ahead of her.

Shoko, who was just ahead of her, turned around to-ward her. “Are you alright?”

Scarlet nodded, already somewhat out of breath. “Good, I’m good.”

“Your face is a little white,” Shoko said, uncertain.“I’m good.”Shoko didn’t say anything else. Scarlet was getting tired

of being offered help with The Tel.The passage of the wood was widening. Whereas the

path had hardly been marked at first, it was becoming a trail more defined, less overgrown. Roots of trees were few, if any, a mile at a time.

And while there was never any indication that they were headed toward any place in particular -- no markers, no signs -- Perpetua seemed to know something of where they were going. But she still figured with the instru-ments, frowning to herself when she thought no one was watching.

That afternoon, Scarlet was able to talk with her while everyone else rested in their siesta.

“Where are you off to?” Perpetua asked her.Scarlet had one of the bright aluminum containers in

her hands.“Not tired. I’m looking for things to put in The Tel.”

She looked down at the smooth rounded container in her hand. “Want to come?”

Perpetua nodded and rose to follow.

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The dim was cool and sharp blue. Even the fireflies were alive and glowing, whispering through tangles of ivy and lilies.

“I remembered part of my dream again last night,” Scarlet said slowly, as they crossed a fallen tree.

Scarlet looked her in the eye, but said nothing.“It is this wood. The wood in my dream. The very same.

It came to me completely this morning. And I know I was running through it.”

Scarlet was still quiet, following.“I don’t know if it means anything at all.”They walked for a few moments in silence.Then Perpetua spoke. “Is there anything that stood out

to you -- anything of significance?”“No... nothing very. But I was wearing a gown. Some-

thing like they might have worn in very old times. And it was a color I don’t see often -- a sort of reddish purple. Reddish violet.”

Perpetua did not reply, but Scarlet knew she was think-ing about it.

Soon, Scarlet found what she wanted. When it came to The Tel, she always knew what worked perfectly, and what wouldn’t. She knew as soon as she saw it. And the tiny plant in front of her was perfect.

“Aloe,” said Perpetua.“It signifies healing,” said Scarlet, kneeling next to the

stout little plant. “It will sit in the nook at the very top of The Tel. A few of them, once it has taken root and spread out.”

Carefully, she pressed her hands around the soil. The tiny trowel from her tool chest loosened the clay beneath the deeper, softer black of the soil around its base. And the plant was lifted into the container, temperature-con-trolled.

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“What else do you need today?” Perpetua asked. “Or is that all?”

“Two things more, maybe three.”The girls continued their walk through the denser

growth of the forest, further away from the path, and from the camp. The light was brighter there, less into the interior.

“There it is,” said Scarlet, finally. “Both of them.”Growing side by side at the roots of an ancient oak,

was a spreading plant of brightly colored leaves – orange and red, yellow, and some green and darker red. Next to it, winding up toward the bark of the tree was a smaller, more delicate bunch of sage.

Perpetua helped her remove a portion of each plant, both of which were placed in the remaining sections of the aluminum container.

“Your care of The Tel is remarkable,” said Perpetua.And that was all she would say on it.Walking back, Scarlet could see more visibly the tattoo

on the side of Perpetua’s neck. The colors were brilliant – the white of the rose, the red of the heart, the blue and the yellow. They had asked her before what it meant. But she had never given a full answer.

“It’s a seal,” she said.“Of what?”“Ancient things,” she said, usually with her eyes buried

twenty lines into the page of a book, or crazily writing numbers into her notebooks from the instruments in her lab.

There was no getting a straight answer about it. And so they had stopped asking.

“You don’t know how to get there, do you?” Scarlet asked suddenly.

Perpetua turned around. “What?”

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Why she had said it, she didn’t know.“Do you really know where we’re going?” Scarlet said

again, less sure.“Why would you ask?”“It’s as though you’ve lost the signal, and you’re waiting

for something to happen to show you that you’re going the right way.”

“So I’ve been under observance,” Perpetua replied, con-tinuing to walk back to the camp.

“I am probably not the only one to have noticed. Do you know how to get there?”

“It comes to me... when necessary.”And that was her only reply. Perpetua was not a cold

person. She was stoic, calculating, watchful. But she wasn’t cold.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Scarlet, as they reached the cir-cle of their camp. “But it has been a long seven days. We need sleep. Try to, if you can now, before we leave again.”

Perpetua returned to her tent. But Scarlet stood in the ring of the camp, holding her container. She was still not tired. There The Tel sat, behind her tent. Blue and brazed. Waiting for something living.

There was no accurate way to describe the detailing of shrine work. How things were implanted, painted, removed, etched, etc. Somehow all collective materials came together in an art unheard of. And Scarlet possessed the creative to see it done.

Two hours later, the little plants, so carefully removed from enchanted soils, were a part of The Tel. And no one could know, exactly, even if they had seen Scarlet work, where plant blended into wood, and wood into paint. It was seamless.

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SThat night, Scarlet sat around the fire with the others,

rubbing her shoulders with balm. They were anxiously waiting for the completion of dinner.

Oceanus had found a large squash buried in the ground. Only one of them. Maybe from the stray seed of some unknown, ancient passerby. But it was golden on the outside, free of bruise, and bright orange and fresh on the inside. So they sat around the fire as it lay wrapped in ashes in the center of it, waiting for it to finish cooking.

Scarlet burned her fingers several times, rushing to eat all of the crisp, melting buttery-ness of her portion. Each slice was flavorful and filled her with warmth as she bit into their centers.

“Do you think we’ll find anything this good again on our journey, Shoko?” Oceanus asked.

“Who can tell?” she replied. “I had no idea such a for-est of this extent grew here. If this place is possible, we might find all manner of good things to eat on the way.”

When Scarlet was the last to finish, she gathered their small collection of dishes, and left for the stream to wash them with a small cleansing tablet. Pelasha followed, car-rying the rest.

“You have been very quiet today,” he said.Scarlet slipped the dishes beneath the surface of the

cold water.“What are your thoughts?”“What do the colors mean, from where you come -- for

yellow?”Pelasha took a seat next to her on the bank. “Yellow

can often represent gold -- which presents heaven.”

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“The skies?”“In a manner.”“And white?”“Purity. Holiness.”“Holiness. When is that word ever used?”“It is an ancient one.”“Many things seem to be ancient with you and your

brothers.”“We are, after all, an ancient order.”“And...” Scarlet paused, “is there a meaning for a color

that is purple and red. Together?”“Odd that you would say that,” he said, looking careful-

ly at her. “It’s one of the more rare colors -- more abstract you could say -- and similar to the meaning of purple, when you asked before.”

Scarlet raised her head from the water. “Pain, suffering.”“Although on a more... intense, level. Why do you ask?”“No good reason.”Scarlet began to wash the stack of plates.“Would you like me to help with anything?” Pelasha

asked.Scarlet shook her head. “No. Thanks. I’ll finish here.”“I can carry some back.”“I can do that.”“Are you sure?”Scarlet nodded and continued to scrub at the first dish.

“I’ll be back soon. Don’t leave without me.”Pelasha laughed. “No worries, Dr. Glass.”And he headed back into the wood.

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SWhen Pelasha woke those two hours later, the first

thing he saw was The Tel. He took one look at it and walked off to the stream to refill all the thermoses. Scarlet wondered why he showed next to no interest in The Tel.

Only Portia, and often Shoko, would show any rever-ence around it at all. The most respect any of the broth-ers had shown was to offer to pull the cart for her, which housed it. And Father Philemon had never once ad-dressed it. It was not yet blatant. But it was curious.

Their walk took them further into the labyrinth that afternoon.

“We are nowhere near the end of this,” said Shoko. “And I think that we must have taken a smaller cut through only a branch of this mammoth, if the old maps are at all accurate.”

By evening, the foliage was changing. The trees were no less great in height. But their textures, their natures, were transforming.

“Jungle,” said Yesterday. “We are coming to the cross-over. A rougher trek from here now, I think.”

He was right. While the path was still the same com-pacted red earth, the overgrowth was intruding. Drink-ing vines, as Bakker called them, and tangled elastic vines that crossed over the path and threatened to stumble.

But the stream still ran to their right, shortly next to them. And it seemed, often, to grow stronger, as though they might eventually come to another river.

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INSCRIPTIONS

CHAPTER 13

By next morning, Scarlet was ready to continue. Pelasha had given her new ideas about the col-ors of Perpetua’s mark. But as far as the color of the gown in her dream, she was concerned.

Maybe it was insignificant, and nothing of the dream meant anything of worth. Scarlet had sometimes heard of people having dreams in the past when under great stress. But what possibly concerned her even more than the gown’s color, was the idea of the dream possibly being prophetic.

It was illegal to have a prophetic dream. In fact, it was more than illegal. It was worthy of excommunication. And as she walked that morning, she shivered. She could not say that the dream was, in deed, prophetic. But it bordered. It dangerously bordered.

If Scarlet, the African and Asian counselor of Shrines, was found guilty of a prophetic dream, her consequences would be unmentionable. Only priests were permitted to have such dreams. It was blasphemous against the gods to be involved in any way in predicting the future, on pur-pose, or in mistake. And because her rank was so high, her punishment would be far worse. She didn’t want to know how deep her consequences could reach if she was

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found guilty.Suddenly, as she marched, Scarlet became very afraid

of Perpetua. Without thinking, Scarlet had told Perpetua about the wood in her dream. And it occurred to Scarlet that maybe Perpetua had said so little in response, be-cause she was already thinking about how to explain to the court when they returned, that Scarlet would have to be locked away. Her black eyes shifted between Perpetua and the others. Would Perpetua really do such a thing? She had never done anything to harm Scarlet in anyway. Never to any of them.

But then again, Scarlet sighed to herself, what did it matter? The probability of their return was remote. And even if they ever did return, some of them would prob-ably expire along the way, maybe even herself. There was no hope of them all returning alive. The country was wild.

What had Perpetua told her at Ono -- that they would make it back alive. Something cryptic, as usual... Scarlet’s thoughts raced a little when she remembered it. Perpetua had almost accused Scarlet of something, as if Scarlet should have known the same -- that they would return alive.

It all confused Scarlet. Perpetua was never one to ex-plain things before she thought it was the right time. Not even if begged. But it wouldn’t be like Perpetua at all to turn her in. She would keep things quiet, Scarlet was cer-tain.

Scarlet turned her attentions to the wooded rafters of their cathedral march. So silent. Unusually silent. There were no birds. No birds at all. That was what had been so funny about it. Scarlet had never heard of a forest with-out winged creatures. Yet, there it was -- all around them. Scarlet wondered at this, but again, kept the thought to herself. It was a forest that shouldn’t have existed. That’s

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what Oceanus had said that morning.

SIt was at about noon that Father Philemon called an

early camp.“There is something ahead, that I think we should see,”

he had said. “Let us camp early, and travel until dusk. At that point, we will have arrived for our second camp. I think you will find it an interesting place.”

This speech took the girls by surprise. All, that is, of course, except for Perpetua.

“He’s been here before?” Portia whispered to Scarlet. “Do you think?”

Scarlet shrugged her shoulders, both eyebrows raised toward Perpetua.

“I’ll ask Bakker about it,” said Portia. “They never fully explain themselves. I thought no one had been in these parts for over hundreds of years. And what’s this about spirits here anyway? The priests expelled all the spirits from the old times.”

Bakker was predictably silent.“Oh, Father...” he said. “Well, he’s been around the

world a number of times. I suppose it’s possible he’s been here before. In the distant past. We’ve never been here, though. Not that I know of.”

“You’re no help,” said Portia. “I guess the other broth-ers will only tell me the same thing. It would only be expected.”

“Probably the same speech, exactly,” Bakker said with a wink.

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Portia left, a little miffed.“Don’t worry about it,” Scarlet told her. “They must

have their reasons for not saying anything. Maybe it’s for our own protection.”

Portia shook her head and took out Father Philemon’s notebook to continue with the records.

SAfter they broke camp and walked another few hours,

they approached a clearing. Father Philemon smiled to himself as they broke through the jungle growth. It was certainly as though he was remembering being there be-fore. But with his smile, came the lines of regret. Scarlet could see it plainly there, in the wrinkles. He was remem-bering better times, that had passed, and been replaced with gone times, lonely times.

“We are here for the night,” he said, looking about him. “It seems to have grown over, Pelasha. Hardly a surprise, is it?”

The brothers, all of them, removed their knives. Scarlet couldn’t see what part of the shackled forest needed to be removed, and what it was hiding. But she soon found out.

As she and the girls began to set up their tents, the boys hacked away at the southwest corner of the clearing. Even the sharpness of their blades took an hour to clear the several thick feet of vines blocking the entrance. The entrance to a cavern -- black, and deep. Penetrating the forest cover in silence.

“Cold,” Shoko whispered to herself, as she walked to the entrance.

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It was cold. From the bowels of the far deep came a chilling breath of extinguished air, as though a ghost had left its prison, held in confinement by wooded growth for a thousand years.

“Nothing lives in there,” Pelasha said to the girls, stand-ing over Scarlet’s shoulder. “I promise.”

“How can you be sure?” Portia asked. “You’ve never been here.”

“I just know,” he said, walking back over to the camp circle.

“Cocky,” said Portia.She had been in ill humor all day. And the other girls

knew that it was best to leave her alone when she was, and generally agree with whatever she said.

But it was time to prepare dinner. Shoko always took primary responsibility, with Oceanus usually helping. That night it was dried beef and wild strawberries cooked in a simmering stew. And as they worked, the brothers sat around in a circle, talking with them.

“After dinner, we’ll light a few torches and explore the cavern,” said Pelasha.

“I’m not,” said Portia, stubbornly. “Wild beasts live somewhere in there, I know it. You can’t say they don’t, Pelasha.”

“Have you even seen one wild beast since we arrived?” Oceanus asked, with a snicker.

Portia ignored him. “Maybe skeletons then. Evil spirits. Ghosts. Father Philemon spoke of spirits.”

Father Philemon smiled as Oceanus laughed out loud.“There are spirits as you see them, and spirits as I see

them,” Father Philemon said to her kindly. “You have nothing to fear in there.”

“It’s an old diamond mind,” said Bakker. “It has never been used for anything else. That growth was four feet

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thick, at least. No one has been in there for ages. I don’t think you have to worry about finding anything more frightening than a diamond.”

Portia seemed more inclined to smile at that comment, but insisted that she was doing nothing more for the eve-ning except for documentation, and going to bed early.

“I have a headache,” she said.And that seemed to settle it.“You don’t want her along if she’s this bad tempered to-

day,” Shoko whispered to Oceanus. “It would be a pretty unpleasant experience.”

So as it turned out, Portia remained with Father Phi-lemon to document his thoughts of the day around the campfire, while the others picked up torches from the fire.

With the help of Perpetua’s knowledge of fuels and res-ins, they fashioned four separate pieces, ready for several hours of use before self-extinguishing in the cool air of the cave.

“Hope for no cave-ins,” said Pelasha cheerfully over his shoulder.

“Now you would mention that,” Shoko said with a laugh.

“Too afraid?” Oceanus asked.“Never.”“Well, then we’re ready,” said Pelasha, and entered the

abyss.

STwo hours into their march, and Scarlet admitted, only

to herself, that she was a little worried. The entrance, just

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inside, had been a marvel. Writing on the wall from an-cient people -- languages of which she had never heard, and dates from many times in the past. From times so old, she didn’t know their history in the old books from her years of school.

“1931,” she whispered, tracing the etched stone with a finger.

“Fabulous, isn’t it?” Pelasha said. “So old. And someone, probably much like ourselves, carved that, all those years ago.”

“It is amazing,” said Scarlet. “But most everything here I can’t understand. Nothing but the old English. Do you know any of these languages?”

“One or two,” Pelasha answered her, holding the torch to the walls. “This one here is in Finnish.”

“Finnish?”“Old country up north in Europe.”“And this one?”“Spanish.”“It doesn’t look familiar.”“It’s an old form.”“This one?”“Russian.”“Are you making this up? Do you really know?”Pelasha laughed. “No. But I do know this one.” He

pointed to a faded mark near her eye-level.“What is it?”“It’s ancient Greek. Whoever wrote it, must have been

a scholar.”“What does it say?”“It says... and I’m roughly translating here. ‘The heav-

ens declare the glory of GOD, and the sky above pro-claims His handiwork ‘.”

Pelasha was quiet.

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“It must have been written in the age of Monotheism,” said Scarlet. “But it sounds very good.”

Scarlet walked on, leaving Pelasha to look over the in-scription.

“What was that all about?” Shoko asked her.“He was reading one of the marks on the wall.”“Oh, come on. He doesn’t really know any of this. No

one reads these old dialects.”“That one he did.”They walked on. Nothing spectacular was found. No

diamonds, certainly. But a spade or a pick, usually broken and heaped atop a pile of rubbish stones and grit.

“Nothing here,” said Oceanus. “They cleared out all the glitter already.”

“Eerie place,” said Yesterday, holding the torch further down the cavern.

“And time to go,” said Pelasha. “The rest of this place is going to have to stay unexplored. Maybe on our return.”

“If there is a return,” Scarlet thought to herself.But the passage back was long and dark. And several

more hours had passed. Scarlet felt the heavy sleep of her black eyes, slipping further and further to a close. Several times she thought she had momentarily fallen asleep, though still walking, and she was snapped once again awake. The day had been long again, and strained from the pull of the cart.

“You alright?” Shoko asked her, repeatedly.Scarlet only nodded, and kept the walk. The strange

contortions of night were on her, bringing her stomach to knot over itself as she wondered whether she would ever see the end of the mine, and the light of the camp’s fire.

And then everything was dark, and she faintly remem-bered the cool, rough floor of the cavern fall against her face.

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RELINQUISHMENT

CHAPTER 14

Thought we might have to send you back for awhile there,” said Pelasha.

Scarlet opened her eyes, finding herself staring skyward. She swallowed, trying to

remember what had happened.“Did I fall?”“No,” said Pelasha. “But I think Father has something

to say to you about it.”Everyone in the little circle gave her room as she tried

to sit up.“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Father Philemon, taking a

seat on the ground.Scarlet propped herself up on her elbows, seeing that

she had been laid on a tarp against the cooling ground of the night.

“What happened to me?” she asked quietly, feeling the remnants of a dizzyness.

“You’ve been overworked this past week,” said Father Philemon. He smiled at her. “I understand that you find this your responsibility, and your responsibility alone. But young one, if you insist much longer to handle this com-pletely on your own, we will, likely, find ourselves very delayed in reaching the sea in time.”

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Scarlet laid back and pressed both hands to her face. Somehow, in all the tensity of the past days and the prep-aration for travel, it had not occurred to her overworked mind and body how far the consequences could carry.

“How much have you been holding back for me?” she asked Perpetua, sitting close by. “Tell me, Perpetua.”

Perpetua held her hands together loosely in front of her.

“Be honest with me,” said Scarlet.“I think we could have made an extra ten, maybe twelve

miles per day. Shoko?”Shoko only nodded briefly, avoiding a look at Scarlet.“I’m so... sorry,” Scarlet tried to say, sitting up on the

tarp.Portia held her steady.“I don’t know what to say.”“Let us help you,” said Father Philemon.“We will all take our turn,” said Bakker. “None of us

mind it.”“You need rest,” Pelasha added.“It’s too old of a tradition, a command,” said Scarlet,

still holding a hand to her head. “I don’t know if I have that option. I don’t. I don’t have that option. The priests, the gods, would remove me from my position. In dis-grace.”

Father Philemon took Scarlet’s hand. “Scarlet,” he said with authority. “What you carry behind you is a creation made by the hands of man. Do you think that man, cor-rupt and low as he is, as mortal, could ever make some-thing satisfactory enough to please immortal God?”

Scarlet looked sharply at him. Had he said “gods” or “god”? She also saw Pelasha stiffen, if she wasn’t mistaken.

They were all there around her in the firelight, waiting for an answer. And she realized, with a little warmth, that

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they meant it not only for the good of the mission, but also for her sake.

She stared at the fire for a moment, swallowing hard. What came out of her mouth nearly choked her with its finality.

“Alright,” she whispered, almost too low to be heard.Father Philemon shook her hand with both of his own.

And, as though nothing significant had just taken place, the little camp dispersed for the night.

“Are you well enough to go to your tent now?” Shoko asked her quietly.

Scarlet only nodded, sickly. She felt as though she had just abandoned her livelihood.

SScarlet wasn’t sure how she finally fell asleep that night.

By morning, after the few hours of sleep that she had received, she wasn’t sure if her dream was only a memory of the same dream the nights before, or if she had truly experienced the same dream yet again. In endless cycle.

“How are you?” Shoko asked her.Scarlet held up a hand in recognition. She couldn’t talk

about what had changed so suddenly. In the matter of seconds it took for Father Philemon to speak, her confi-dence in the majesty of the gods had faded. From only the few words he had said.

After breakfast of more dried fruit and cold water, they were ready to leave. Scarlet took her pack from the cart, which had sat comfortably next to The Tel on the cart for the past week.

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Pelasha had offered the first stretch. Every mile they would switch.

So Scarlet gathered her shattered purpose, to keep the shards for later repairing, and followed the others back into the jungle.

SFor the next twelve days, that was the way of it. Scarlet

said little during that time. Pelasha tried several times to talk with her, as did Shoko and Perpetua. Even Portia tried to be more cheerful toward her.

One evening Scarlet overheard her speaking with Fa-ther Philemon.

“I think you’ve broken her will. That is her one purpose -- to please the gods with the work of her hands.”

She could not hear Father Philemon’s response, but it seemed to somewhat satisfy Portia, whatever he had said to her.

Scarlet had become negligent with the shrine. Her eyes remained riveted to its skulking silhouette as it rolled through the forest path ahead of her. She would never walk in front of it. If nothing more, she would at least be its constant shadow.

“I’ve saved you something,” Pelasha said to her one night around the fire.

“Oh?” Scarlet asked absently.He put the small, rough object in the palm of her small

hand.It was a diamond. Tiny and uncut, but it was a kind

gesture.

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Scarlet tumbled it between her fingers, wondering what it would have looked like if polished.

“Will you be alright?” he asked her.“I’m alright,” she said, almost to herself. “I had a shake

up. But I’m fine.”“Sounded like more than a shake up for you. If I were

to guess, it was a very good rattle.”Scarlet smiled at the way he said ‘rattle’. “Somehow it

doesn’t seem to matter as much over the last few days,” she said.

“I’m glad to hear it.”And she did feel better. As the endless trek of jungle

remained the same, so did her thoughts.She remembered what Father Philemon had said to her.

Over and over she had pressed it out in her mind. It was a wrinkle, what he had said. And it was a new thought.

Scarlet had never thought much about evil. She knew there were evil people in the world, sinful people. But she had never thought of herself as that poor of a creature. She offered her arts, her thoughts, her life, to the gods. It was the best she could give. And Father Philemon had labeled it “corrupt”, had labeled herself as corrupt. She didn’t understand.

But as they continued their passage, her body became less burdened than her mind. Pulling the weight of The Tel behind her, eleven to twelve hours less per day, was a miraculously lifting.

By the end of their twelve days in the jungle, Perpetua believed that they had just crossed the ancient border of Egypt.

“Should we celebrate?” Oceanus asked, being the more fun-loving brother in his order.

“No time,” said Portia.“Martha,” Shekinah whispered again to himself, shaking

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his head.It was not the first time she had been called that.But Oceanus had ignored Portia, and that night, there

was blossom wine passed around, hand-pressed by Ocea-nus himself. It wasn’t very good, but it was something dif-ferent, something a little unusual compared to the endless meals of dried fruit, berries, roots, and mushrooms.

SThe next day, Scarlet found herself walking in step with

Pelasha.“Thank you for my diamond,” she said. “I never got to

say that before.”Pelasha smiled. “It’s not a very pretty thing, is it?”“It will be one day.”“Do you have something to do with it?”“I was going to put in on The Tel, but it seems as

though it should be used for something more special. Maybe if all of this is successful, when we return.”

Pelasha pretended to be shocked. “Are you saying to me, Dr. Scarlet Glass, that you have found something more important than that dilapidated block of wood, yonder?”

Scarlet laughed. “I never said it was the most important thing in the world. Although I might have almost said otherwise at an earlier point in my life.”

“What is more important, then?”“My parents, my cousins, you all here... any form of

humanity.”“Anything else?”

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Scarlet was quiet a moment. “The afterlife.”“Ah, and what do you believe about the afterlife?”It was Scarlet’s turn to be surprised. “Why, what ev-

eryone else believes, of course,” she said, looking at him. “That we will one day live, each of us, on our own planet in the universe, and be attended by the more lowly of us.”

“Who are the more lowly?”“They will be slaves.”“And who are they now?”Scarlet looked hard at him, wondering if he really did

not know about what she was saying. “Those who never try to do good,” she said.

“And will you be slave or master?”“Master. I hope...”“You’re not sure?”Scarlet’s eyes slanted as she continued to look at Pela-

sha. “Why do you try to change things?”“Change what? I’m only asking questions.”“But you always act like you know something that I

don’t?”“You’re a confident person. You shouldn’t allow my con-

fidence to bother you.”“That seems a little cruel to me.”“It wasn’t intended that way.”They walked in silence for a little while.“Tell me another story of your childhood,” said Pelasha.“Are you sure you’re not a spy?”“Maybe,” Pelasha said with a wink.Scarlet crossed her arms and looked at him suspiciously,

but she couldn’t help but smile. Pelasha was too kind-hearted.

“What do you want to know this time?”“Hmmm...” Pelasha said, shifting the pack on his back

a little. “What was your favorite thing to do with your

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cousins when you weren’t in school?”“That one is easy,” said Scarlet, picking up her march.

“We went diving.”“In a pool.”“Oh, no. Never a pool. We were in paradise. We dove in

the sea. And it was perfection there in that harbor. Wa-ters so clear, they were blue and green. Zebra fish, puffer fish, brilliant coral, fish that were silver, bright blue, or bright orange. Red fish and shining purple and green...”

“Did you ever find pearls?”“No... But we saw the oyster beds. They were owned by

the government.”“Ah. So you, at least, obeyed the government. If not the

maid.”Scarlet laughed, pretending to punch at him. “Do you

want to hear the story, or look for chinks in it?”Pelasha laughed back at her. “Go on.”And their march continued into the ever-glistening,

the ever-abundant green of the jungle where few men had trod.

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FIELD OF SUN

CHAPTER 15

So it was nearly three weeks into their long trav-els, that they crossed into the former country of Sudan, still deep in jungle growth. When the travelers came upon the ancient city.

It came over them suddenly, with no warning. Cut from blocks of stone, quarried, perhaps, from further south and carried upward upon the river several miles, Yester-day thought, to their east.

They might have passed by it, completely unseen, if it hadn’t been for Bakker. He had been straying on the uncut path to their left, several meters over, and so stum-bled over the gated path.

“Not exactly a gate,” he said to them afterward. “But it might have been at one time. I’ve never seen a structure like this, never in Africa. You’d think it had been built in southeast Asia. Come look at it.”

Scarlet jumped a little when she heard him mention the realm of her old country.

“It is close enough to our afternoon camp,” said Father Philemon. “Let us see this place.”

Scarlet saw that, once again, he did not seem surprised at the city’s existence.

“Don’t worry,” Yesterday told the ever-tense Portia.

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“I’m sure it will be safer to make camp in the city, than out in the open.”

But Portia shook her head. “More chance of wild beasts in abandoned buildings.”

“You haven’t seen it yet. It might not be that closed in.” But Portia was not easily pleased. Several minutes of whacking through the undergrowth,

following Bakker’s light trail through the jungle, they reached its perimeter.

“Oh, suns!” Portia cried out for them all. It was a colossal city. There was no way to measure its

border. Half of it had been eaten by the jungle, coy as it was. Mounds of painted stone, sealed upon one another in perfect measure, soaring to the heavens past the carnal vines and trees of the forest.

“It must have been large enough for ten thousand citi-zens,” Yesterday said, in amazement. “Father, you never spoke of such a place before.”

Pelasha caught his eye, and shook his head. Yesterday didn’t say any more.

“There are many things in these places, unknown to most men” said Father Philemon.

Bakker walked forward across the slick foliage of the jungle floor. His boots sloshed through the ring of thick black mud puddles.

“The rain is not more abundant here,” he said. “This city is not near a stream. It must have been irrigated well.”

The brothers followed Bakker toward the entrance to the city, while the girls remained there, standing in awe.

Its height was sculpted in tiers, much like The Tel had appeared before Scarlet had deconstructed it. As though it had been shaped exactly from a cake pan, its dimen-sions and pinnacles, its minarets, and molded towers,

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were perfect. And though the onslaught of centuries of vines had retaken it, pulling it back into the jungle, it was easy to see that it had once been a magnificent city, piled together over many generations.

And in the center of it stood the prowess of the city’s finest structure -- a ziggurat laced in what was left of its gold-bricked covering. Bakker had been right -- such plac-es Scarlet had seen in the jungles of her own home back in Thailand. Elegant palaces of peaceful beauty, watched by priests.

“Beautiful,” she whispered to herself. The brothers were already walking up what once must

have been the main street. “Come on, girls,” Pelasha called from the end of the

group. “We’re going to look around.” “Is it structurally sound, do you think?” Portia asked

him, standing with her fists planted on her hips. “Oh, Portia, don’t be so silly,” Yesteryda told her, walk-

ing toward the city. “We could hide here and never find each other again,”

said Oceanus. “It’s that giant of a city.” But they continued to walk. Deep into the interior. And

though Portia was concerned that lunch and their siesta would be terribly postponed, Father Philemon was able to reassure her.

“Think, Portia, that we might be able to find something of use to us, to continue our survival on the way.”

“I don’t see what can be of any use to us in this place,” she said, a little sourly. “We can’t eat anything that is so old.”

But Father Philemon only smiled. Sometimes it was best for Portia to see, than to hear.

It was further under crusted streets and stone arches, with lichen and jungle molds, little plants that Scarlet had

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never seen. Scarlet was careful not to touch any of them. “You can never be absolutely certain,” Pelasha said.

“Some of these are poisonous.” About an hour later, they were near to the ziggurat. If

it had only still contained all of its gold leaf, the structure would have still sparkled. But the trees were far too dense in most of the areas of the city.

“Do you know who they were, Bakker?” Yesterday asked him, as they began the climb up the slope. “Did you ever read about anything like this?”

“I’ve never heard,” Bakker replied. “But if they were im-migrants from southeast Asia, as the structures indicate, it could be very well that this magnificent place was built during the times of our mid-histories. So long ago...”

“What mid-histories?” Portia asked. “I’ve never heard of such an era of time.”

“It would have been during the time, I think, of the early Romans. Maybe a little while after that.”

“Then why is it called the ‘mid-histories’, and not early history. We have nothing much recorded before that time.”

Oceanus held back a laugh, again. “You really believe that?” he asked.

Portia was indignant. “Why are you always laughing at us? As if you know something we don’t.”

“Such were my thoughts,” Scarlet said quietly to herself as she slipped beyond the group, to walk by herself.

The Tel had been far less a commodity of her thoughts, in those past brief days. And as such, she found her mind more alert to things that normally would have been left unnoticed.

That was how she next found the garden. It was only a chink of stone left missing in the wall, but she caught a picture of something red on the other side. Only a glint.

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As she knelt to level her eyes with the hole, she drew in breath. A garden.

And not merely a garden. Vegetables. So many veg-etables, clustered in rows so overgrown with roots and herbs and dirt-crusted beans, that there was little room for anything else.

It stretched for eternity, it seemed, in the late morning light. Enough food for armies, for the entire city, perhaps. And it was all there for free taking.

S Somewhat over an hour later, they were once again

returned to the camp, in time for an hour siesta, loaded with fat potatoes, peppers, lentils and beans.

“Funny they had potatoes in there,” Pelasha said, as he dumped the fair load next to his tent.

“Why is that?” Scarlet asked. “If Father was right, this city wouldn’t have seen pota-

toes until some time after the ancient Christopher Co-lumbus discovered the Caribbean islands.”

“There were no potatoes here before that?” Pelasha looked over at her. “You girls need to review

some history lessons.” Scarlet ignored him. “I’m going to work on The Tel

now.” “No siesta for you?” She shook her head. “I want to take care of it now. To-

night, I’ll be too busy helping to prepare dinner.” “Make it something good,” Pelasha called over his

shoulder, as he entered his tent. Scarlet opened her box again, inspired by the creation

of man’s hands enveloping the forest. Her little box so full

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of tiny instruments had come many miles with her. And as she opened it, the cedar of the inlay of its lid, whis-pered to her of former times.

For the rest of the hour, Scarlet began an intricate construction of a miniature ziggurat and several smaller stone buildings. Things so tiny, crafted to such detail, that a magnifying glass would not capture its brilliance. And so many of them, little pieces. Put together into a semblance of magnificence.

Once again, the craft of her hands proved to be descrip-tionless, and stone wove brush and with paint and chisel.

S That night, there were fried slices of potato, and fish

from the stream. “Nothing like fish and chips in a jungle wilderness,” said

Oceanus in deep contentment, rubbing his stomach. Shoko seemed to be a genius of the kitchen to all of the

brothers. Garnish of red pepper, of which there had been plenty in the garden. Cracked black pepper. Oil from the olives, which had grown in a smaller portion of the sprawling landscape. And a variety of smaller green herbs.

“What a chef you found for us,” Bakker declared, with a wink to Portia.

Scarlet agreed silently. She remembered what it was like for awhile, living in the Canary Islands -- the only time during her life where she had consistently lived the life of Western civilizations: burgers, fries, pizzas... it had been so long since she had had anything even bordering on similarity, that the fish and chips in the bowl before her, made her wish to return to those times, as lonely as they had been.

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“It’s a night to gaze upon the heavens,” said Yesterday, setting aside his dish. “Who will join me?”

Several of the others followed him to the clearing of the city. But Scarlet stayed behind that evening, washing the dishes, watching over the night.

She prepared herself for the night, thinking on all of the things before her of the past weeks. And she won-dered, if it would be soon that something new would come to her dreams. She was beginning to think, that even in some small way, their success depended on it.

S Scarlet woke from a chill. Once again, her dreams had

brought her back into the forest. But through the forest, and up to the city. Arms stretched before her to the quiet.

The forest was blue with night around her, and heavy with early morning dew -- fluorescent pearls quivering upon green. And the moon’s glow washed her arms, still, perfectly still, shining from the minaret, in gleams of white-torched gold.

Her arms dropped quickly as she nearly tumbled for-ward on the path. A wrenching pain tore at her leg. She pulled away the cloth of her suit, afraid to see what had happened.

A stream of blood had dried against it, where a gash lay, the length of six inches. It was pretty deep, Scarlet could see, as tears from pain bubbled over her warm face.

She looked behind her. No blood on the trail. How long had she been wandering in sleep, in such pain, oblivi-ous to the wound? And how had she received it? Had she done it to herself?

The pain was starting to cripple her. She braced her

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hand against the rock wall before her. She had somehow to get back to the camp. She took a step, and knew she could put no weight at all on it.

She must have fallen. From where, she wondered. And why? Was she that incoherent? Had something in her dream made her do it?

Her dream... Her dream had changed again. Every night in those last weeks, her flittering shadows of dreams had centered on her run through the dim, endlessly. In the same gown. The same dark color every time.

But this time, the color was bright, bright as sun.

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IN THE GARDEN

CHAPTER 15

Perpetua!” Scarlet came limping into the camp,

breathless. How long it had taken her to return, who could say. Dew of midnight clung to her bare arms and her hair. Her

dark eyes a little wild, reflecting moonlight through the canopy. And the wound of her leg was deep red through the brighter red of her suit.

“Perpetua!” Perpetua tumbled out of her tent, the corners of her

eyes creased with sleep. “What, Scarlet? What has happened?” Scarlet fell forward as Scarlet held her up. “Pelasha, Bakker!” Perpetua called. Within moments, everyone was around the fire. Scarlet

was laid on a bedroll near the flames, as Shoko did her best to look over the damage, consulting with Bakker.

“I’ve only had a semester of surgeon’s instruction,” Bak-ker said with regret. “We’ve nothing to sew it up with. Shoko?”

Shoko looked grimly. “I don’t know how much blood she’s lost.”

“It’s not much,” Scarlet said, in perpetual wince. “I saw

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the trail behind me. No blood there.” Shoko seemed somewhat relieved. “Where were you?” Portia meanwhile demanded.

“What did you cut your leg on?” “I don’t know,” said Scarlet, beginning to float in and

out from the pain. “I walked in my sleep.” “Have you ever done that before?” Portia asked. “Peace, Portia,” said Shekinah, drawing her away. “This is why I oversaw everything at Ono,” said Portia.

“Things like this didn’t happen then.” Shekinah comforted her while Bakker and Shoko con-

tinued to work together. The last thing Scarlet remem-bered before passing, was Pelasha pressing a cool cloth to her forehead.

S “How are you, dear little one?” Scarlet opened her eyes to the streaming emerald sun-

shine of the late afternoon, still lying on the forest floor. She rubbed at her eyes. “Is my leg still there?” Father Philemon laughed softly. “It is, Dr. Glass. See it

there,” he pointed. “Bakker and Dr. Hershey were able to fix it up right.”

There it was -- her leg wrapped carefully in white cloth, bandaged. The cloth of her red suit had been wrapped up above it, and her boot pulled up just over the bandage.

Perpetua walked over to sit with her as Father Phile-mon poked the fire.

“How are you feeling?” “A little weak,” I suppose, said Scarlet, swallowing hard.

“Will I be able to walk?” “Bakker things so. After a day or two of rest. He says

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the wound was deep, and it might be painful to walk. We could have you sit next to the shrine...”

“No,” Scarlet replied, shaking her head. “Never. I will not. It is too sacred. I will walk. No one can help me with that. You might be able to remove the shrine from my care. But I will walk on my own. That, I have to do.”

Perpetua nodded, understanding. Scarlet laid her head back on the bedroll, closing her

eyes. She heard Father Philemon rise to leave. “The dream, Perpetua,” Scarlet said softly. “I remember

another part of it.” Perpetua looked around her and knelt next to her on

the ground. Scarlet breathed deeply, and pressed her hand to her

face. She felt feverish just then. “I was still running through the forest as I had for

weeks, every night in the dream. And then... the forest ended. It just wasn’t there anymore. And I found myself standing in a gold field.”

Perpetua looked at her closely. “Gold?” “I think... they were sunflowers. And there was a voice,

Perpetua.” “Again?” “But this time, I understood it better. It was clear. And

the voice called me by my name.” “Was it a human voice?” “I think that it could have been.” “Who do you think it was?” “Someone from beyond, maybe.” Perpetua sighed, looking back toward the camp. “Did it

say anything else to you?” “No. Just my name. As though he was calling me to

see something. And it wasn’t the field. There was some-thing after that, but I couldn’t see what it was. Perpetua...

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it scares me. You know what they say about prophetic dreams. I can’t have one.”

Perpetua nodded. “Don’t let it bother you,” she said, speaking very low. “We won’t know if it’s really prophetic unless we arrive at a field of sunflowers.”

“And if we do?” “We’ll take care of it then. Sleep, Scarlet. There’s noth-

ing you can do about it.” Scarlet’s heart began to pound a little less as she tucked

the blanket around her. But she was still in a cold sweat, and the pain of her leg, she knew, would not recede for some time.

At some point in the tossings of her sleep, she heard Perpetua speaking with Pelasha.

“If only she had been sleep-walking and told me then. She probably would have forgotten all about it. And I might have caught her before she fell.”

“I don’t know how much longer you can protect her,” said Pelasha.

But the mists of her mind closed over the conversation, and when she woke the next morning, she thought that it had been only the shadow of another senseless dream.

S It took three days for Scarlet’s leg to heal enough to

walk, at least on her good leg. Bakker had made her a pair of crutches for use when her leg bothered her more than at other times.

And on the fourth morning, Scarlet insisted on joining Shoko and Pelasha in another vegetable hunt before they left, despite all protests.

“This is fantastic,” said Shoko. “If only there were a

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better way to dry them while we continue our journey. I should have saved sand from the desert. It would have dried them quickly.”

“At least we’ll have stew for a few days,” said Pelasha cheerfully.

Pelasha and Shoko continued to talk about vegetables. But Scarlet was still dazed from her injury and the dream, and stayed in her own corner of the ancient garden, pick-ing beans.

She was not distracted enough to disregard the beauty of the expanse before her. Rows of pods, lentils, beans, root vegetables, pumpkins, squashes, cucumbers... Enough for the army and citizens who must have at one time lived in the abandoned city.

Scarlet had seen such places before, growing up in Thai-land, visiting sacred sites and long-forgotten structures in the forests of her childhood. How often had she and the boys climbed the ruins of the unknown tribes far into the green hills? But a place of such magnitude, she had never seen before.

She heard Shoko call over her shoulder that she was headed back to camp with her pot of vegetables.

“We’ll come soon,” Pelasha said to her. “I’ll help Scarlet. Careful on your way down.”

Scarlet looked down the overgrown row of sweet pota-toes, where Pelasha was busy piling onions together. He always seemed to calm about everything.

Little had been said, at all, in reference to the state in which they, and all humanity, found themselves. In some ways, it was easy to push away the awful finality, but in other ways, it still revisited Scarlet in terrifying moments as they walked the path to the sea. There was little to re-assure any of them that they could hope to be successful in such a mission. And yet Pelasha always seemed to be

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confident, though he never said a word about it. “What are you going to do with so many onions?” Scar-

let asked him, continuing to harvest the beans. “Wouldn’t it be better to take back something more filling?”

“Maybe,” he said, still piling the onions. “But I think you’ll find that if we can dry them, they’ll add future fla-vor to a possibly more bland diet in future weeks.”

“Weeks...” Scarlet shifted the weight of the pot of beans and set it

back on the ground. “Another memory,” said Pelasha. “What have you got?” Scarlet just smiled and shook her head. “Aren’t there

more serious things to think about right now?” she asked. “Of course,” he replied. “But maybe not as important as

a memory, for right now.” Scarlet raked through another bramble for more beans. “I think I was seven,” she began. “We really didn’t see

much of the Western world growing up. So anything that came from that place, from America, or Europe, we were always fascinated with it. So one day, Dad came back from the Former Republic of Scotland. And he had a gift for all of us. A red balloon. Just one red balloon. But we had never seen anything like it before. Not even in pic-tures or drawings. I don’t remember how long we played with it before it eventually popped, but it must have been several days. It just amazed us that anything made out of mostly rubber could be so light that it could fly. We took it up to our green hill, once, and dropped it off the edge. We watched it float to the ravine. Somehow, it didn’t pop then. It was just kind of fun to watch it float away...”

Pelasha nodded, finished stacking his onions. “I’m done here,” he said. “Let me help you pick the rest of the beans. Father wants us to leave within the hour. I’ll give you a hand down the hill.”

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S It was always as simple as that. Whether Scarlet was

pressed into the mold of her dream, or the condition of the world, or grief of her missing parents, remembering her childhood, and now the added injury of her leg, with the encouragement of Pelasha, helped her get through another hour or two of each day.

When she and Pelasha returned to the camp, every-thing was packed. And they were off, once again, through the interior.

Scarlet looked over her shoulder toward the city. “I wish we could have stayed to explore it,” she said aloud.

“On the way back,” said Pelasha. “You just won’t admit that we might not make it back,”

said Scarlet. “Oh, sure, we might not. But we can hope for it. I’d like

to see the inside of that tower, myself.” Scarlet looked back to the shrine. Once again, her in-

spiration was failing, despite the revelations of unearthed places, buried so deep in time. Nature was not as inspir-ing as she hoped that it might have been for her.

As they continued their trod, Oceanus took up a song. The brothers knew it. But the girls did not. It was an un-familiar language.

“What is it?” Scarlet asked Bakker, who was walking next to her.

“It is a very old tongue,” he said. “We are descendants of the Visigoths, and that dialect was preserved through a few number of families over the centuries, including our own. Although no one knows it as well as Oceanus.”

“Does he know all of the words, then, that he is sing-

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ing?” “Most. It is an old hymn.” “Oh... to the gods, then?” Bakker looked carefully away, as though he knew he had

said too much. “In a manner,” he said. Scarlet knew there were many things the brothers did

not tell them, and wouldn’t. But it was becoming more and more curious as to why there were so often conversa-tions that ended in blankness, because a question could only be vaguely answered.

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A CONVERSATION

CHAPTER 17

The jungle took a plunge about noon the fol-lowing day. A descending path, becoming less marked by the hour, into the valley below.

At first, Yesterday had become excited. Signs indicated a ledge ahead, and he had run ahead to get a view of the future landscape. By the time they had caught up with him, however, the reflection of the end-less green just below the cliff, confirmed his disappoint-ment.

“Are you sure your charts are right, Perpetua?” Portia asked.

“I anticipated this,” Perpetua replied, unaffected. “Then why didn’t you say anything?” Portia asked, with

a huff. “To keep your spirits up, Martha,” said Shekinah, walk-

ing past her. Portia seemed to pretend not to hear and stared out

over the vast greenness of the sloping valley, extending toward the horizon of deep blue. But it was good to see the sky again. Even Portia had to admit that. The clean, unriveted globe of the heavens.

Scarlet wearily stopped there, to look over the land-scape. She had relinquished, as well, her responsibility of

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pulling the shrine. She would, likely, Bakker warned her, never be able to pull it again.

“Does it remind you of Thailand?” Pelasha asked. “A little, yes.” And it did, in a way. Scarlet could have stared over the

valley for awhile, remembering former times. But there was no time for that.

Father Philemon, after consulting with Perpetua, had decided to descend, and then make camp later in the afternoon.

It wouldn’t have taken long to reach the bottom of the cliff, if it wasn’t for the shrine. And for Scarlet’s leg, which continued to ache.

The brothers cut stout vines to make a sort of loose basket. They were hearty enough to fold over one another into a thick weave.

“I feel like a woman at her loom,” said Yesterday. “Did you really just say that?” Portia asked with a laugh.

“Women haven’t been at the loom for thousands of years. Is that where you came from then?”

“Where?” “The Second Dark Ages?” Yesterday only laughed. “The Age of Feminism has

ended, doctor.” Portia just scolded at him as he continued to work on

the basket. Half an hour from beginning of construction to end,

the shrine was suspended above the valley floor. Scarlet could nearly feel her eyes dilate as it swung too

close to the edge on several occasions. There was her masterpiece, shorn, but still her masterpiece. Inconsider-ately swung over a precipice, a smash away from its doom. But she couldn’t take her eyes off its blue hull until it was safely rested on the soft path in front of her.

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“All’s well?” Bakker called from the edge to where Pela-sha waited.

“All’s well,” he replied. Scarlet’s descent was less complicated, albeit painful. “I wonder,” she had thought to herself, “if the red violet

represented the suffering I would endure from injuring my leg.”

She could only hope that there was no further pain to follow.

And once again, the small group of travelers prepared to reenter the mouth of the living forest. Still no sound of birds or wild beast -- only the float of butterflies, though no longer quite as many, and the occasional flourish of a shadowed creature burrowed beneath stumps of trees.

“Those are black squirrels,” Oceanus had explained. “I’ve never seen one till now. Should we stew one for din-ner?”

Scarlet shivered a little. Their glowing yellow eyes winked back at her from the dark places.

“Not if we can help it,” she said.

S The solidarity, the quiet, had begun to officially take its

toll after weeks of monotony. “I don’t feel as though we are really on a quest to res-

cue humanity,” said Portia that evening around the fire. “Nothing very thrilling like the old sci-fi projections we used to see in school. Or the ancients’ ideas of saving the Earth with man-made glaciers. This is not even exciting.”

Perpetua shook her head, but said nothing. “You have to remember, Portia, said Oceanus, “we’re

not here for the fun of it. You’re not either. None of us

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are. We’ve all, I think, been trying to keep a happier at-titude than what really befits our situation. Nothing is guaranteed.”

“So we should try to enjoy what we have, while we have it, make it a little more interesting,” she replied, with almost a pout. “This is going to slowly push us over the edge. I don’t even know if Father Philemon could handle this forever.”

Father Philemon smiled his common, wise, smile. “Which is why we will not be here forever, Portia,” he said. “You will be surprised how quickly we come to the end of the woods. We are not far from the interior.”

“The interior of what?” “You mean the center?” Shoko asked, suddenly more

alert. “The real center of Africa?” Father Philemon nodded. “What are you talking about?” Portia asked, suddenly a

little concerned. “What’s at the center?” “It happened about forty years ago,” Oceanus answered

for her. “You’ve probably heard from your parents or grandparents, about the Shaker, the earthquake that spanned from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic?”

Portia nodded. “The Shaker is the quake that struck Africa in two.” Portia looked back at him blankly. “So we’ve actually

come to it already.” She sighed. “How bad is it, to cross, do you think?”

“Well, of course the lower half didn’t float away,” Ocea-nus went on. “But the line where the plate cracked, is a full river of lava. A floe that spans from former Somalia, to Nigeria. It can’t be very thin in any part, I don’t think.”

“And how are we supposed to cross it?” Portia contin-ued. “I had almost forgotten about its existence until now.”

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“That,” said Bakker, “is what we have been discussing every evening.”

“Have you come up with any solutions?” Shoko asked, “Because I don’t think that any of us have any good ideas.”

“There is, of course,” Bakker continued, “always the option of cutting toward the East coast and skirting it by boat. It would take minutes, maybe, if we built a raft and put it to sea outside the skirt of the lava floe into the ocean. Of course, you can only imagine the time it would take to cut back east to the coast, when The Cape is fur-ther to the west. And we do know that the floe spills at a much higher increased level on the west coast. No craft we could build would last us that long traveling around it. At the moment, there is no good solution until we arrive. We have no materials that are resistant to those kinds of temperatures.”

Scarlet half-listened to the conversation. She was tired. Their pace had quickened in the last days, so much so, that she could hardly keep her eyes open half of the time in the evenings around dinner.

She looked down at the dish in her lap -- chunks of sweet potato, beans, and yellow squash. And fresh mush-rooms. Their food resources called for meat. But even if she hadn’t been cautious of eating black squirrel, the brothers had little means of capturing the creatures. They were too fast, and most of the time disappeared long be-fore they made their entrance along the path.

And so, her thoughts loosened, weaving together in the presence of the flickering flames, bending over one another in silent motions of silk. She was soon lost to the ether worlds of her field of gold.

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S Once again, Scarlet’s eyes snapped awake. The familiar

cold sweat beaded on her arms. The air was crisp with the alertness of her thoughts. Perfect quiet, darkness of the wood, blushing coals of the low fire. Everyone had gone to bed, but she heard voices. Someone was still up, keep-ing an eye on the camp.

She slipped back against her bedroll, feeling the roast-ing heat still floating across the camp.

“At least I can no longer easily walk in my sleep,” she thought to herself.

Scarlet closed her eyes against the scene, to see if she could quiet her mind. She listened hard to the voices out-side the camp. Nothing about the language was familiar to her. So distant and foreign. But then, she knew what was even more strange. As the voices increased in loud-ness, the longer she put aside all other sounds around her, the better she could hear that a woman was speaking, to a man. Perpetua.

Scarlet sat up, eyes now watching the camp circle. What was Perpetua speaking? Scarlet and the others knew that much of her file had been classified when she arrived at Ono. It would not be improbable for her to speak another language. But this language was old. Scarlet could tell. And why would she know it, and it would just happen that one of the brothers would know it as well.

She sat there for a short while longer, wondering if she should try to leave the fire, and find them.

It didn’t take her long to decide. She walked carefully with only one of the crutches, her leather boot pressed si-lently against the soft green carpet of vines on the forest bed. She slipped outside the camp circle, following the

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drift of sound against the perfect silence of the wood. And then she saw them -- Perpetua seated on the

ground by a hollow of old bush, speaking intently with Bakker -- leaning against the broad trunk of an ancient oak.

Scarlet still did not understand a word they spoke. For a moment, she was going to walk up to them and ask what was going on. What were they hiding from her?

But then, too, she knew that Bakker wouldn’t breathe a word of what was going on. He, like the other broth-ers, wouldn’t reveal anything. He would shrug it off and continue back to the camp. And Perpetua -- Scarlet knew nothing of what she would say in answer to what was go-ing on.

Scarlet slipped back into the shadows. They had not seen her. She went back to her chair and sat there in front of the fire, watching the blaze of blue star between the lighter cover of the wooded rafters. Whatever was going on, she would have to find out in another way.

She covered her blanket back around her cool shoul-ders, and fell asleep, back into her dreams.

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THE TOMB

CHAPTER 18

Scarlet saw it first -- the yawn of black rock just past the hedge of rhododendron, silky and dark red. And not only on one cavern, but several, crumbled away from the hill face, equally over-

grown in trees and shrubs, blackened like burnt founda-tions into the hill of rubble and vines.

“There,” she said, directing Pelasha toward the orifice. “What do you think it is? I would have said tombs, may-be. But they aren’t sealed. And unadorned as well.”

“I would have to agree with you, Dr. Glass,” he said, pulling the cords of hanging moss away from his view. “They would be tombs.”

“But why here? We are nowhere. They wouldn’t really be buried dead from that city so many weeks ago.”

“Could be.” “Maybe we should have everyone remove the camp

some distance past this place. It isn’t safe to be here.” “Ah, the superstitious. I could have said there was a

trace of it in you,” Pelasha looked back at her with a wink.

Scarlet was surprised. “This is not superstition, Brother Pelasha. It’s part of the religion. Superstition and reli-gion together. It’s a way of life. How could you not know

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that?” “Enlighten me.” “You really don’t know?” Pelasha gave a half-shake of his head. “Tombs are of the bad place. Anyone who has died,

must live there always, until the day when the gods pull them out, whenever that might be, and judge their good deeds against their bad. Until then, they are sealed there. We have no way of knowing if these people were good souls, or bad.”

“It looks like they might have escaped,” Pelasha said, straight-faced.

“It’s not really very funny,” said Scarlet, rather con-cerned. “I’ve heard of all kinds of stories about people who lived near cemeteries, old tombs that had been dis-turbed. Unpleasant things happen. Things we can’t have happen to us.”

“What kinds of things.” “They were too awful to talk about.” “And where did these stories come from?” “The priests.” “Ah.” Scarlet looked at Pelasha, almost a little irritated. But

she didn’t want to say anything further about it. Nothing that would give him more fuel to add to her fire.

“Let’s leave,” she said. “We shouldn’t be here.” “As you wish, my lady.” Pelasha followed her back to camp, humming a tune to

himself. Scarlet did not bother to speak to him again until they reached the camp.

“I think we should leave,” she said to Perpetua. “There are open tombs not far from here. We can’t stay here.”

Scarlet couldn’t help but notice that Perpetua took a quick look over at Pelasha. “How far are they?” she asked.

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“A quarter mile, maybe less.” Perpetua stoked the fire blaze. “I think we should be

alright here, Scarlet,” she said quietly. “How can you say that, Perpetua? You know what sorts

of things happen.” “I think we’re fine, Scarlet. I understand it’s a fear, but

nothing lives here.” Scarlet stared at her. Things was slipping. Her sole

responsibility of the shrine, her thoughts on the gods and spirits. Perpetua wasn’t herself. Things were strange.

Scarlet turned around and walked over to her shrine. There was nothing more to say. If the spirits wreaked havoc on them that night, at least they would know that she was not to blame.

S Scarlet spent the afternoon trudging through the

woods, collecting roots, able to rely on her own power now, and not that of the crutch. But the pain in her leg was always there. Nothing would make it pass until she was able to lie down for the night.

She had other thoughts on her mind then. It had come to her during the quiet hours of the afternoon, what to do next with the bag of wood in offering to the gods -- she would make it into her dream. She had added the plants from the wood. She would mark her path, running through it, in yellow.

“Yellow can mean cowardice,” Pelasha had told her earlier.

And somehow, that fit. Why she was running, she didn’t know. But something had scared her, scared her through the wood to the field of gold. And if she ever arrived at

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that field, and she hoped she never would, then she would add it.

But there was the rub. If she lived to see that field, her destruction was inevitable. Portia would have no other option but to report her, and she would spend the last of her days sealed in a cement block room, with a keyhole of light to the outside world. That would be how it would end -- at its best.

She would never see The Tel again. Once again, however, she put that thought from her

mind and pressed on with her collection of the forest vegetable.

Oceanus was singing again, a haunting melody. Probably another hymn, she thought to herself. Something about it was cathedral, monumental. And she found that she forgot about the unpleasant things ahead, the more she listened to it, and watched the trees above her, the path before her, and the thoughts behind of her. Of better times and places.

S The lighter thoughts were dispelled as they made the

fire that evening. For most of the day, Scarlet was able to forget the gaping sores of the open tombs in the cliff face. But as she helped strike the fire for dinner, she heard a crash of brush as Oceanus returned from bringing more firewood.

“Another open tomb back there,” he said. Too casual, Scarlet thought to herself. Why would any-

one be so casual about something so sinister. “Where?” she asked him. “A kilometer straight back or so,” he said. “Going to see

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it?” “Maybe...” All it took was one step back into the dark wood for

Scarlet to forget that she might be something akin to brave. She forgot everything but the urge to perhaps prove to herself that maybe the priests had been incor-rect. And maybe the spirits were no longer present in their tombs. Maybe they were just empty hollows.

“Going somewhere?” It was Pelasha, and it took everything for Scarlet not to

jump. “Where did you come from?” “Camp. I had an idea you were coming back here, Mad-

am.” “It’s hard for me to trust things anymore, whenever

you’re around,” Scarlet said with almost an irritation in her voice. “Maybe the priests were wrong about the tombs as well.”

“I haven’t said much.” “You’ve said enough, Pelasha. You make me think too

much.” “That’s a bad thing?” “I think you know what I mean.” Scarlet continued to walk away. “You shouldn’t lose faith in something just because of

what I tell you.” Scarlet heard his emphasis on “I”. “How are you doing these days?” Scarlet decided not to mention her new idea for The

Tel. “Well, aside from the... burden of keeping The Tel safe and in good condition at all times... and looking after my crippling state... I suppose most of my thoughts are no less uplifting. And so, you could say that I am doing about as well, if not a little less, than I was before we left

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Ono.” “I wish I could find something to help with the pain,”

he said kindly. “Perhaps if we focus on mental distraction, it will be helped.”

Scarlet looked sideways at him. “Are you one of the leg-endary counselors we always hear about and never see?”

“Not the sort of counselor you’re imagining,” he re-plied. Then, pushing aside the brush, he said, “We’re here.”

It had come up so suddenly. Scarlet sucked in breath, as it also seemed the crumbling tomb did before her. She crossed both hands over her chest in protection. Pelasha didn’t laugh, but Scarlet thought he was trying very hard not to do so.

“Nothing will hurt you here,” he said. “Rocks falling from the ceiling, yes. Maybe.”

Scarlet’s eyes were sealed on the opening. “I can’t be-lieve that,” she whispered.

The fear was gripping for her. Never before would she have dreamt of coming within a mile, on purpose, of such a place.

Pelasha took a step forward. “You’re not going in there,” Scarlet spit out in horror. Pelasha turned around. “No worries,” he said with a

smile. Scarlet couldn’t move. Pelasha walked through the en-

trance of the tomb. It was still quiet, cool, black. “How far back does it go?” Scarlet asked. “Can’t say for certain. Eternity, looks like.” “What can you see?” “A host of bones. I can see their evil red eyes glowing

back at me. Looks like they’re out for the hunt.” Pelasha returned to find Scarlet with her fists on her

hips.

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“Nothing but dirt, rocks, and maybe a hand bone,” he said. “As I said, ‘No worries’.”

Scarlet followed Pelasha back to the camp. No spirits, no curses, no chilling voices. It was as quiet as the rest of the wood, undisturbed. And she wondered to herself, as they sat around the fire that night, why the priests had said such things. If it was meant to frighten, and in fright-ening, silencing questions, they had done their job.

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177

THE GIFT OF TREES

CHAPTER 19

Scarlet saw it first -- the yawn of black rock just past the hedge of rhododendron, silky and dark red. And not only on one cavern, but several, crumbled away from the hill face, equally over-

grown in trees and shrubs, blackened like burnt founda-tions into the hill of rubble and vines.

“There,” she said, directing Pelasha toward the orifice. “What do you think it is? I would have said tombs, may-be. But they aren’t sealed. And unadorned as well.”

“I would have to agree with you, Dr. Glass,” he said, pulling the cords of hanging moss away from his view. “They would be tombs.”

“But why here? We are nowhere. They wouldn’t really be buried dead from that city so many weeks ago.”

“Could be.” “Maybe we should have everyone remove the camp

some distance past this place. It isn’t safe to be here.” “Ah, the superstitious. I could have said there was a

trace of it in you,” Pelasha looked back at her with a wink.

Scarlet was surprised. “This is not superstition, Brother Pelasha. It’s part of the religion. Superstition and reli-gion together. It’s a way of life. How could you not know

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that?” “Enlighten me.” “You really don’t know?” Pelasha gave a half-shake of his head. “Tombs are of the bad place. Anyone who has died,

must live there always, until the day when the gods pull them out, whenever that might be, and judge their good deeds against their bad. Until then, they are sealed there. We have no way of knowing if these people were good souls, or bad.”

“It looks like they might have escaped,” Pelasha said, straight-faced.

“It’s not really very funny,” said Scarlet, rather con-cerned. “I’ve heard of all kinds of stories about people who lived near cemeteries, old tombs that had been dis-turbed. Unpleasant things happen. Things we can’t have happen to us.”

“What kinds of things.” “They were too awful to talk about.” “And where did these stories come from?” “The priests.” “Ah.” Scarlet looked at Pelasha, almost a little irritated. But

she didn’t want to say anything further about it. Nothing that would give him more fuel to add to her fire.

“Let’s leave,” she said. “We shouldn’t be here.” “As you wish, my lady.” Pelasha followed her back to camp, humming a tune to

himself. Scarlet did not bother to speak to him again until they reached the camp.

“I think we should leave,” she said to Perpetua. “There are open tombs not far from here. We can’t stay here.”

Scarlet couldn’t help but notice that Perpetua took a quick look over at Pelasha. “How far are they?” she asked.

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“A quarter mile, maybe less.” Perpetua stoked the fire blaze. “I think we should be

alright here, Scarlet,” she said quietly. “How can you say that, Perpetua? You know what sorts

of things happen.” “I think we’re fine, Scarlet. I understand it’s a fear, but

nothing lives here.” Scarlet stared at her. Things was slipping. Her sole

responsibility of the shrine, her thoughts on the gods and spirits. Perpetua wasn’t herself. Things were strange.

Scarlet turned around and walked over to her shrine. There was nothing more to say. If the spirits wreaked havoc on them that night, at least they would know that she was not to blame.

S Scarlet spent the afternoon trudging through the

woods, collecting roots, able to rely on her own power now, and not that of the crutch. But the pain in her leg was always there. Nothing would make it pass until she was able to lie down for the night.

She had other thoughts on her mind then. It had come to her during the quiet hours of the afternoon, what to do next with the bag of wood in offering to the gods -- she would make it into her dream. She had added the plants from the wood. She would mark her path, running through it, in yellow.

“Yellow can mean cowardice,” Pelasha had told her earlier.

And somehow, that fit. Why she was running, she didn’t know. But something had scared her, scared her through the wood to the field of gold. And if she ever arrived at that field, and she hoped she never would, then she would

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add it. But there was the rub. If she lived to see that field, her

destruction was inevitable. Portia would have no other option but to report her, and she would spend the last of her days sealed in a cement block room, with a keyhole of light to the outside world. That would be how it would end -- at its best.

She would never see The Tel again. Once again, however, she put that thought from her

mind and pressed on with her collection of the forest vegetable.

Oceanus was singing again, a haunting melody. Probably another hymn, she thought to herself. Something about it was cathedral, monumental. And she found that she forgot about the unpleasant things ahead, the more she listened to it, and watched the trees above her, the path before her, and the thoughts behind of her. Of better times and places.

S The lighter thoughts were dispelled as they made the

fire that evening. For most of the day, Scarlet was able to forget the gaping sores of the open tombs in the cliff face. But as she helped strike the fire for dinner, she heard a crash of brush as Oceanus returned from bringing more firewood.

“Another open tomb back there,” he said. Too casual, Scarlet thought to herself. Why would any-

one be so casual about something so sinister. “Where?” she asked him. “A kilometer straight back or so,” he said. “Going to see

it?”

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“Maybe...” All it took was one step back into the dark wood for

Scarlet to forget that she might be something akin to brave. She forgot everything but the urge to perhaps prove to herself that maybe the priests had been incor-rect. And maybe the spirits were no longer present in their tombs. Maybe they were just empty hollows.

“Going somewhere?” It was Pelasha, and it took everything for Scarlet not to

jump. “Where did you come from?” “Camp. I had an idea you were coming back here, Mad-

am.” “It’s hard for me to trust things anymore, whenever

you’re around,” Scarlet said with almost an irritation in her voice. “Maybe the priests were wrong about the tombs as well.”

“I haven’t said much.” “You’ve said enough, Pelasha. You make me think too

much.” “That’s a bad thing?” “I think you know what I mean.” Scarlet continued to walk away. “You shouldn’t lose faith in something just because of

what I tell you.” Scarlet heard his emphasis on “I”. “How are you doing these days?” Scarlet decided not to mention her new idea for The

Tel. “Well, aside from the... burden of keeping The Tel safe and in good condition at all times... and looking after my crippling state... I suppose most of my thoughts are no less uplifting. And so, you could say that I am doing about as well, if not a little less, than I was before we left Ono.”

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“I wish I could find something to help with the pain,” he said kindly. “Perhaps if we focus on mental distraction, it will be helped.”

Scarlet looked sideways at him. “Are you one of the leg-endary counselors we always hear about and never see?”

“Not the sort of counselor you’re imagining,” he re-plied. Then, pushing aside the brush, he said, “We’re here.”

It had come up so suddenly. Scarlet sucked in breath, as it also seemed the crumbling tomb did before her. She crossed both hands over her chest in protection. Pelasha didn’t laugh, but Scarlet thought he was trying very hard not to do so.

“Nothing will hurt you here,” he said. “Rocks falling from the ceiling, yes. Maybe.”

Scarlet’s eyes were sealed on the opening. “I can’t be-lieve that,” she whispered.

The fear was gripping for her. Never before would she have dreamt of coming within a mile, on purpose, of such a place.

Pelasha took a step forward. “You’re not going in there,” Scarlet spit out in horror. Pelasha turned around. “No worries,” he said with a

smile. Scarlet couldn’t move. Pelasha walked through the en-

trance of the tomb. It was still quiet, cool, black. “How far back does it go?” Scarlet asked. “Can’t say for certain. Eternity, looks like.” “What can you see?” “A host of bones. I can see their evil red eyes glowing

back at me. Looks like they’re out for the hunt.” Pelasha returned to find Scarlet with her fists on her

hips. “Nothing but dirt, rocks, and maybe a hand bone,” he

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said. “As I said, ‘No worries’.” Scarlet followed Pelasha back to the camp. No spirits,

no curses, no chilling voices. It was as quiet as the rest of the wood, undisturbed. And she wondered to herself, as they sat around the fire that night, why the priests had said such things. If it was meant to frighten, and in fright-ening, silencing questions, they had done their job.

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185

BROTHERS OF THE CROSS

CHAPTER 20

I’m sorry.” Scarlet wasn’t looking at Pelasha. He was star-

ing at her, sitting by her side on the great white rock of the circle the night before.

Scarlet had slept there that night. Her mind had been filled with so many things by overhearing the conversa-tions around that rock, that she could not bring herself to return to the camp. She sat there in stunned resistance, waiting for morning. For the pure morning light of reason to fall again over the wooded glade.

Pelasha had been unwilling to leave, and finally passed out into sleep a breadth away from the rock, hoping that Scarlet would not leave while they slept that night.

Scarlet could not move from the rock, let alone leave the entire camp. The condemnation written on her face remained into the next morning. So many things had been hidden from her, and from Portia and Shoko, that she needed hours to think everything to pieces.

She heard the others still climbing the trees, gathering more fruit, shouting to one another, some laughter.

“Do Portia and Shoko know?” she finally asked, choking back her anger.

Pelasha jumped to respond. “Perpetua has just ex-

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plained to them this morning.” “And what do they say?” “They don’t know yet, what to say, I think. Of course,

they weren’t in the same position to be compromised as yourself.”

“You’ve been laughing at me, I’m sure, all this time, all of you.”

“Of course not.” “And you really think that the gods were invented by

the priests?” “I do.” “And that it’s all a farce, all these things. The shrine, the

afterlife, everything we were taught in the schools.” Pelasha nodded. “Then why continue?” “There is a God, Scarlet.” Scarlet’s eyes flashed at him. “What makes you so sure?

If the rest of the world believes in the gods, then why can’t you?”

“There are more people out there than you know, who follow this Order. It is an ancient one.”

“Like everything else you know.” Pelasha pulled a book from his pocket. It was worn and

the leather cover had been roughed around the edges and patched.

“It may not be a good time for you,” he said carefully. “But I think that I’ve wasted enough time already. If you will, read it.”

He set it softly on the rock next to her and stood to go. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and walked back into the for-

est.

S

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Scarlet had no words left to say that day, or the next, or the next. By the afternoon, she had moved back to the camp with the book. By the evening, she had read a quar-ter of it. The next day, she returned to picking fruit, but she was still reading. Two days later, still camped in the orchard, she finished it, from the very beginning, to the very end. She finished the last page in the middle of pick-ing blackberries.

Carefully, she folded the cover back against the bulk of the book, and sat.

“So that’s that,” she finally said to herself. That evening, sitting there around the fire, she ate her

dinner, dazed in an expanse of creation and heavens, an-cient deserts, conquering kings and civilizations, apostles, and parables.

“So where did you find this book?” she asked Pelasha. “I’m so relieved,” he said, wiping his forehead with the

sleeve of his shirt. “I thought you’d never speak to me again.”

“I shouldn’t.” “Of course not.” “Patronizer.” “I don’t mean to be. But I’ve been at fault. I freely ad-

mit that to you.” The circle had cleared. There was more fruit to be

picked. Scarlet circled the spoon in her bowl around the last of the herb stew. She set it down and looked Pelasha in the eye.

“You should have told me,” she said. “You should have yelled it to me in my face.”

Her voice was hard, and her eyes were colder. Pelasha said nothing at first. “You should have told me every day,” she said. “Again,

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and again.” “Would you have listened?” “Would it have mattered if I hadn’t?” Pelasha hung his head a moment. “No,” he said, quiet

for a moment. “But, Scarlet -- you must know that in bringing you with us, without saying anything to you about our Order, about your dreams, and the prophe-cies... our ultimate intention was to save as many as we can. If we were successful in bringing you all the way to the Cape, and your dream showed us where the trouble is in the first place, then we would have all the time in the world to tell you about everything.”

“And what if there hadn’t been enough time, and you never told me. I’d be in your hell, then, wouldn’t I?”

Pelasha was quiet. “You are right,” he said finally. “There is no excuse. We were wrong, all of us. I’m sorry for that.”

Scarlet looked back at him. But he had been right as well. She had put her life, just then, above the lives of so many people, waiting, unknowingly waiting for their journey to end, and with the guiding light of her dreams. And she had to turn her head away with the sudden surge of guilt.

“I’ve split too many hairs,” she said, rising from her seat. “What matters now, is arriving at the Cape. If my dreams are really prophetic, then we should move again quickly. We’ve spent enough time here. It is time to go.”

“Agreed,” said Perpetua, returning to the circle with a basket of apples.

“Scarlet, if I can some day... I wish there were a better way to apologize. We did, underhandedly, kidnap you.”

Scarlet laughed. “I will think this is funny some day,” she said, “if it isn’t already funny. I guess I was kind of kidnapped.”

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She shook her head and walked back to her tent, too confused to think straight anymore for the rest of the night.

S Scarlet kept to herself as they left the overgrown or-

chards the next morning. Suddenly, the beauty of the shrine was less so.

She read Pelasha’s book again over the next days, as she walked, head bent, following the person in front of her out of the tops of her eyes. And though she didn’t fully understand everything that she read, she understood more than she had the first time she had read it.

By the third day on the path, Pelasha had migrated further back in the group, and they began to talk again. Just a little at first, but it grew. And by the end of another week, their conversations lasted from morning till night.

Portia and Shoko were not quite as interested in what Scarlet was reading. Shoko was more concerned with con-servation of food. Portia was just irritable and spent less time talking with everyone, and more time writing Father Philemon’s memoirs.

Perpetua also became involved in their discussions, as did the other brothers from time to time. It seemed that Perpetua, when she had first seen Scarlet in the throes of her dream back in Ono, had noted something about the dream that Scarlet had not remembered.

“Every dream ended the same way for you,” she said. “You would walk through the hall, which was a little eerie, I admit. And at the end of mumbling to yourself over and over about things I did not understand, you said, each time, ‘There it lies, at the Cape. South of the fire, south

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of the blue river, south of the white valley.’ I knew from my charts that you were speaking of the Cape of Agul-has. It was the only one of which I had every heard. So I contacted Father Philemon on some of the last remaining frequencies at Ono, before they were drained.”

Father Philemon turned out to be Perpetua’s godfather. And already having planned to journey to the spiritually uncontaminated realms of the earth, to pray, he thought it would be best for them to accompany the girls on their trek southward.

“And your instruments were all a farce then?” Scarlet asked.

“Not completely. It wasn’t uncommon for me to find stronger frequencies from the south, but there were so many of them that I was never able to find one in particu-lar more strong than the others.”

“You wouldn’t make a good mystery book,” Scarlet said to the both of them. “Telling me all of the answers at once half-way through the story.”

“But they haven’t even begun to be answered yet,” said Pelasha. “We are hoping that you will bring the very im-portant answers that we need in the next weeks.”

S That night, Scarlet dreamt of sunflowers.

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PROPHECIES

CHAPTER 21

Sunflowers. Why would you dream about sun-flowers?”

Pelasha was walking next to Scarlet that morning. It was Pelasha’s turn to carry the

shrine. “Well, maybe they weren’t sunflowers. I don’t really

know what sunflowers look like. I’ve never seen one in person. Only in a drawing once. But they look like suns, anyway.”

“Never seen a sunflower,” Pelasha said, shaking his head. “You did grow up in isolation, didn’t you. More so than even a monk like myself.”

“Admittedly. And as to your question, I wouldn’t know why I would dream of sunflowers.. If Perpetua is right, that these dreams are prophetic, then we should hit a yel-low field soon, and very soon.”

“So what did they look like, exactly.” “Large, black centers, maybe dark brown. And rows of

bright yellow petals.” “They do sound like sunflowers.” “But here’s the inevitable question -- how are these

places thriving, a prehistoric wood, orchards, gardens, and possibly a field of sunflowers, completely exposed to

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the outer atmosphere. How are they still growing so well here? Europe, Asia, the Americas... all of those places have already been hit so hard. I don’t see how it’s pos-sible.”

“I think,” said Pelasha, “that Africa has been so under-populated. Think, that for the past, maybe, three hundred years, the cities have all dispersed. Too much disease, too much foul water, etc. They’ve all been dying off for so long. Even the tribespeople. So with less people drawing on the resources, less oxygen necessary, less clean water needed... it all goes back to the plant life.”

“That is depressing.” Pelasha nodded. “Even the animal life is diminished

here. Notice, we’ve seen only squirrels so far.” “I don’t know how we’re going to be able to reverse

anything now. It’s got to be so far gone. Even with the animals shipped out to Skyy, I don’t know how much it’s going to help. It’s like a second Noah’s Ark, only less well-planned, I think.”

“You’ve picked up some things,” said Pelasha, with a wink. “I think you’re going to rival Father soon, in Scrip-tural knowledge.”

“No, no,” Scarlet replied, shaking her head. “Never your father. I think that would be impossible. He seems to know all. How is it that he knows these places, as though he lived here. He couldn’t have been all the way to the Cape before -- not past all of the old securities.”

“Father knows his ways to places,” said Pelasha. “But he hasn’t seen the Cape since he was a boy himself. His memories, he will tell you, are like tissue. Very thin here. Images he will remember, certain thoughts. But so much of it has changed.”

“And you don’t know what he was doing here when he was a boy?”

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“Father has his secrets also, doctor. Things we may pos-sibly, my brothers and I, never know.”

They continued their walk for the day, discussing such things. Perpetua was deep into her instruments, calculat-ing wind currents, changes in atmosphere, etc. Her worry lines were increasing, for every day that they marched.

S The following day, toward the noon hour, Bakker called

for them to make camp. “The forest is thinning,” he said. “I’d bet it all to say

that we’re coming to the end.” Portia smiled at this. “How much farther then, do we

know?” “I’d say we might be a quarter of the way,” said Per-

petua. “It is fortunate for us, however, that the Blue River will, at some point, take us half-way down the continent, saving us months of travel.”

Portia still seemed disappointed. “What comes next, then?”

“Father?” Perpetua looked to him. “The landscape has altered since I came last,” he said.

“Even the woods are not all the same. There will be more desert. But before that, I could not say. This route has been altered.”

Portia did not seem much comforted. By the night camp, the trees had turned to shrubs and

weeds. “Let us hope by mid morning, that we are out of this

place,” said Bakker. “I’ve had enough of green.”

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S “Someone can see the future,” said Oceanus the next

morning. They were all standing at the edge of a towering cliff,

broken, dry dirt and rock. Nothing left of the greenery from the weeks behind them.

Scarlet’s throat was dry. “Maybe we should listen to you more often,” said Yes-

terday. Beneath the cliff, and stretching for miles under the

white sun -- a field of gold. Yellow gold, waving quietly together. Hundreds of thousands of them, whispering to the sky.

“Sunflowers,” was all Scarlet could say aloud to herself. They were, indeed, sunflowers. Brilliant. So many of

them. “Well, at least we’ll have a little more protein in our

diet,” said Shoko, always thinking of supplies. “This will keep us moving once the fruit has thinned, I think.”

“What?” Bakker asked, a little surprised. “Their seeds, of course. We’ll harvest them along the

way.” Bu Scarlet was too full of wonder at that moment, to

pay further attention to the conversations around her. She turned her attentions to once again figuring out how to thread the shrine the down the hill. And not only The Tel, but her weary self.

“We could just leave it here, you know,” said Yesterday. “Would that be too much of a crime? It’s only a burden, really.”

Scarlet looked a little blackly at him. “I was joking,” he said. “Mostly. Don’t worry. We’ll make

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some sort of basket for it... again.” The basket was made of vine, as it had been construct-

ed in previous weeks, many vines, which were some of the few living things remaining on the outskirts of the cliff face. And within the next hour, the crew, and The Tel, were lifted, all, to the flowered floor below.

“I didn’t realize that Ono was so much more elevated in comparison to the country further south,” said Por-tia. “We’ve dropped steeply, and twice, if not sloping all along.”

“It occurred with the quake,” Father Philemon replied. “It has not long been like this. That is why I say that the landscape has changed since I was a boy here.”

“And a fantastic land it has made, as a result,” said Bak-ker. “The reason, I think, for the flower bed around us now.”

“And how would that be?” Portia asked him. “Change in altitude. Lower to the level of the sea. And

the currents of air have also altered in recent years. So, you see, while most parts of the world have begun to die off, places such as these have not yet been contaminated.”

“So that explains a little of it,” Scarlet thought to her-self.

She watched the trail of the shrine, tagging against the sunflowers as it passed. Yesterday led the trail, hacking against the threaded stalks of flowers stained the color of the sun. Scarlet knew that by the time they finished crossing the great field, the sides of her precious Tel would be worn smooth and worn away from the blue.

“Feeling sorry for your shrine?” Pelasha asked her. “It does seem as though it’s going to be whacked to bits like this.”

“Not my shrine,” she said. “No longer.” “You mean you’re giving up on it then?”

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“I don’t know if that’s the right choice of words. I can’t leave it behind. It’s been too great a part of my last years.”

“But why keep it? What will you do with it?” “Donate it to a museum, maybe?” Pelasha laughed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet,” said

Scarlet. “It seems ridiculous to bring it through all this. It’s going to slow us down. But...” She thought for a mo-ment to herself. “I should leave it here now, shouldn’t I, Pelasha?”

“That has to be your decision,” he said, after a pause. “I can’t really tell you what to do with it. All I’ll ask, is, is there anything of value in keeping it? Is there anything in it that might help us in saving the world? Anything at all?”

“You make it sound like a comic book, don’t you?” “If we keep a light mood, we might get there faster,

wouldn’t you agree?” Scarlet nodded, and walked ahead toward the shrine,

limping as ever. She wasn’t certain that she should answer Pelasha’s

question just then. There was still something of the loy-alty remaining toward the box traveling before her.

What The Tel held, was more than just a sacrifice of creativity to the gods. It sat there within -- a black cake of mystery -- a brick never opened, not in so many years, Scarlet could not even know. She could not have removed it, even if she had desired to do so. Locked in the center, the black brick, in a way she could only have removed it by destroying the work of her hands, so sealed was it.

All Scarlet knew was that she had to hold on to it as long as possible. Because if there was an answer inside The Tel, it was her responsibility to save it until the right time.

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THE BLACK

CHAPTER 22

The wind was cold on her face, as Scarlet woke in a bed of night sunflowers. Sweat beaded around her eyes as she looked above her to the glitter of the heavens.

It was the dream. But this time, it was dark. As if flying through the skies

above the yellow field, she saw it pass in masses below her, and then... a river of fire. Sheets of molten white and orange, bursts of red. Beyond that, a spin of desert... and then she saw the creeping drudge, a bulge of funneling black, coiling and spitting on itself in a wreath of sinister spirits. Flicking bolts of blue light from its center.

That had been its climax, as she woke in a breathless terror.

Her lantern lay at her side. And with the light of the fire placed within its hold, it glowed against the whole-ness of the world.

Scarlet looked around her. The tents had been left un-folded in their packs. They had cleared enough room only for their blankets on the leveled stalks, and the ring of fire in the center of their small camp.

Scarlet lifted her lamp and held it toward the skies. So vast and black and engulfing. And though the lamp aided

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little, she thought that perhaps it made more clear the ring of light around the Earth. And as she had hoped for night upon night, maybe there her parents watched her, with both her cousins, hoping for her arrival one day, and one day before long, if they were successful in their jour-ney.

S The blackness persisted through the next day. For the

first time in a long while, the skies were visibly gray, from horizon to horizon.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen anything very dark,” she said to Pelasha, deliberately ignoring the wine dark color of the gown she still wore in the dream. “It was evil, I know it. Nothing good. Nothing good about it at all.”

“And you spoke of a voice before...” “Yes, always a voice. That, I always hear.” “And you never know what it says?” “I’ve never tried to understand it. I was always afraid

that it might be one of the gods, angry with me for some unintended crime.”

“But you haven’t even tried to listen to it, now, not since the orchards?”

“It’s a habit of my dream, now, I guess. In my uncon-sciousness. It’s not always lucid.”

“But does the voice still frighten you?” “I suppose it’s more of a comfort, really.” “The voice?” “Yes. Perpetua thinks that, it is possible, that it is the

voice of God.” “Do you agree?” “How can I say?”

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“But you must have an idea.” “I think that if it were the voice of God, I would know.

Something about it would make me more alert about it. I think that it would be impossible not to know. If that makes any sense.”

“Interesting thought.” “What do you think?” “I think that we’ll have to wait on it. For now, I think it

is more important that you saw the lava floe directly after the field of sunflowers. And if it’s true, I think we have our work cut out for us.”

“But the black... being.” “You are certain it was alive?” “There was no specific dimension to it, but it

breathed.” “We’ve spoken of demons before...” “But I don’t know if that’s it.” Pelasha sighed. “I wish I could help you more, Dr.

Glass. And you now we’ll do what we’re able. But it is se-rious, crossing this fire. We should probably concentrate on crossing it, any way that we can. As of now, we have no methods prepared.”

“How could we not have thought of that sooner?” she replied.

“Our minds are too consumed with the hope of find-ing an answer. It makes it doubly difficult that everything seems to be so vague.”

Scarlet was visibly concerned. “Don’t worry, doctor,” said Pelasha with a smile. “We’ll

be given an answer. We won’t make camp at the fire for-ever without crossing. Something will happen. Be sure of it.”

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S That night, Scarlet kept the same dream. And for the

next three nights. Its haunting rhythm stirred her waking hours, mixed them with thoughts of home, of her cous-ins, and her parents. Her dark eyes shone with it -- the contemplative collective.

“You alright?” Perpetua asked later in the day. “Am I ever exactly alright?” “You’ve been better lately.” “I’m trying to concentrate on the lava floe -- how to get

across it.” “We’ll find a way.” “I was hoping there might be an answer in the dream.” “There might be. Give it time.” Scarlet stared at the bright tattoo on Perpetua’s neck,

always wanting to ask about it, but never coming around to actually asking. Some things were meant, she thought, to be let alone for good.

“Will you help me?” Perpetua asked. “Of course. With what?” “The seeds.” Perpetua and Scarlet spent their hour of siesta collect-

ing seeds of the sunflowers, enough to prepare for drying in the small solar oven by dinner. Yesterday carried it in his pack.

“Did you and the brothers see much of each other growing up then?” Scarlet asked, ruffling through another flower.

“It wasn’t much like what you had with George and Patrick,” she said. “No, we didn’t see much of each other. My family lived in another part of the world. And Bakker, of course, I never saw. Because he was their cousin, the

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few times I visited Father Philemon and the brothers, we were too young. Bakker had not come to live with them at that time.”

Scarlet laughed a little. “I do find it a little funny that you able to hide the fact for so long that you knew them. But did you really think that I would try to run back to Ono, tugging The Tel behind me? And being half-crip-pled?”

Perpetua smiled in spite of herself. “I didn’t much think it. But, there was the possibility, even if it was only a lit-tle. And I was, admittedly, trying to keep you as unaware as possible. I hoped that all could have been explained after it was all over. But it wasn’t a good thing. I admit that as well.”

Scarlet stared upward to the ring around the Earth. “Do you think we’ll ever get there, Perpetua?”

Perpetua kept her eyes to the flowers. “Keep hope with that,” she said. “There are interesting things ahead.”

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RING OF FIRE

CHAPTER 23

It was on the evening of the following day that the field of sunflowers suddenly ended -- at a near perfect line.

“Funny...” Scarlet heard Portia say to herself. “What’s the deal with this place anyway? It’s as though someone planted this field on purpose. Who plants sun-flowers?”

“You could explain that, Father,” said Bakker. “He knows about these places.”

“Why the flowers then, Father?” Portia asked. “Why are they here like this?”

“You’ll find,” Father Philemon replied, “that not all the tribespeople of Africa live only in tents. They were, many of them, cultivated in the past millennium. They built fantastic structures, only a few of which you have seen on this trip. And they cared for the land in an extended way. Sunflowers were used for food, for fuel, even for drink, medicine, and for scent.”

“This field, here, was planted by native men?” Portia asked.

“Many of them were.” “And what happened to them, Father?” “Some say they retreated into the earth,” Oceanus re-

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plied, with a laugh. He failed to notice his father looking at him, meaning-

fully. “What?” Portia looked to cracks in the ground, as

though they might reemerge at that very moment. “No one lives underground. There isn’t room enough there.”

“It is the legend.” “And you all believe that?” Portia turned around to ask

all of the brothers. “You do take things seriously,” Yesterday replied, laugh-

ing at her. Portia kept walking, talking to Shoko about the possi-

bility of civilizations living underground. “We don’t live in an age where Jules Verne has become

reality,” she said. “Not yet anyway.” Pelasha came around to Scarlet’s side, pulling his hour’s

share of the shrine. “Do you think the opened tombs were part of that soci-

ety?” Scarlet asked him. “They were kind of chilling. You saw the marks on the walls.”

“They could have been made by raiders. You noticed there was nothing left in them. Except bone. Nothing of value. Only gravecloth, in red.”

“Red? Are you sure it was gravecloth?” “What else would it be. But the marks were left by raid-

ers, I am sure.” “Maybe...” Scarlet replied. She shivered -- remember-

ing that priests, as well, were buried in red graveclothes. “But,” she continued, “raiders don’t tend to leave their marks. And what raiders would have been out there, in middle of no place, looking for tombs? We are close to nothing out here.”

“You ask many questions, doctor. And I cannot provide the answers.”

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“It just all seems so very unusual. And no one, at least no one I’ve ever known, aside from your father, has ever heard of these places.”

“But does your father have the answers?” “Does it matter anyway, Dr. Glass? Aren’t there more

crucial things at stake these days? If we don’t find the source, no one will be left here to solve your riddle.”

Scarlet kept further questions to herself, as they passed from sunflower back into endless expanse of desert.

S “You’ve been quiet about memories lately,” Pelasha said

to her later in the morning. “Haven’t you heard them all?” Scarlet asked with a

smile. “Isn’t it your turn now to speak, now that you’ve re-vealed all of your secrets of the Brothers of the Cross?”

“Oh, never all the secrets. I thought you might have more thoughts on your childhood.”

“There are always more.” “Tell me.” Scarlet smiled. “I had forgotten,” she said. “Until I

heard the brothers singing in the wood a few weeks ago. The music. I hadn’t heard music from home in so long. No music at all, really.”

“None?” “None. We didn’t have anything at Ono for that. I don’t

know why. I never thought about it before. But we never had anything very Western growing up. It was mostly tribal. A sort of metallic and strings, pipes. I can’t de-scribe it well. If you heard it, you would probably tie it to Southeast Asia.”

“I’ve heard some music from that part in the world. Do

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you miss it?” “I do. I didn’t know it until recently.” “Then that is the first thing you’ll have to do when

we’ve finished here. You’ve really been without music for three years?”

“Yes. Longer. We didn’t have music at the school ei-ther.”

“What a quiet world.” “It was quiet. Almost as quiet as now... Oh heavens...”

Scarlet couldn’t speak. The rest of the group had stopped still too. They could

see from maybe a few miles off -- the steam of miles -- ris-ing in sheets to the sky. A barrier of misted matter be-tween their desert and the next.

“The ring of fire,” said Bakker. “We’ve reached it at last.”

S “Have we really come so far? We’re half-way there?”

Portia asked as they stood in amazement, trying not to be too delighted.

“My dear Dr. See,” Oceanus said, trying to speak calmly to her. “Please understand that we haven’t even begun to enter the places where we really could be in trouble. For example -- the boiling mass of lava just ahead.”

Portia ignored his sarcasm. “For once, I’m going to be optimistic,” she said to everyone. “We’ll find a way to cross it. And if I could read the future, I’d say that Scarlet will find an answer for us.”

Scarlet was pleased for Portia’s confidence, although she didn’t tell her so, because the confidence, she knew, rested more in her dreams, than in herself.

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As she stared toward the wall of steam, she could only see the gown of violet red in her mind, wondering if the fire might represent the pain its color represented, in ad-dition to her injury.

“Let’s get to it,” said Bakker. “It’ll be a site to see by night.”

S And it was. Illumination of glass and fire, baked in stars

and frothing mirrored constellations of flames and burn-ing red. Scarlet had never seen anything so perfectly gold and white, red and glowing orange -- an everlasting lamp to light the desert.

“There seems to be little we can do to cross,” Yesterday spoke for them all, as if none had already known it.

They had made camp just at sun’s set. “And why didn’t we follow the coastline?” Portia asked

him. “Impractical. The Cape where we’re headed is too far

west for us. We would have wasted weeks, skirting our path that far.”

“I don’t see how that makes any sense.” “He means,” said Shekinah, “that we would have had to

made a loop around the pits of black sand. They’re like sinkholes, sinking sand, you might call them. Hundreds of miles across paralleling the sea. And we have no sea vessel to skirt that great a distance.”

“So what are we going to do now?” “That, madam,” Shekinah continued, “is why we’re call-

ing a think tank tonight.” It was a serious problem. Their dinner circle was almost

complete silence, as they ate a stew of dried fruit.

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The ring of fire was no less than a eighth-mile of thun-derous lava. The earth continuously bubbled with fresh bursts of molten rock, tumbling over itself in thick mass-es of orange fat. No vessel would take them across. Noth-ing they could make with their hands.

“I can’t believe you didn’t think of this before,” Portia scolded the brothers, collectively. “How could you not have known it was so wide?”

“The river has been expanding since I was here last,” said Father Philemon.

“I should have checked Skyy images before we came,” said Yesterday regretfully. “It’s too late now.”

“Of course it’s too late,” said Portia. “We have nowhere to go, and time is running out.”

“Peace, Portia,” said Perpetua. “It’s time to call it a night anyway. Maybe something will come to us in our sleep.”

As Scarlet tucked herself inside her tent, safely away from the bubbling river, she only hoped that things would not worsen if they were able to safely pass.

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ANSWERS

CHAPTER 24

I know.” Scarlet found herself speaking before she knew

she was fully awake that chill dawn. “What do you know?” Pelasha asked, scrubbing

his eyes with both fists. “Tell me quickly, or I may fall asleep again.”

“We travel by air.” “If only we were able. Any other ideas, doctor?” Pelasha

asked, lying back down on his bedroll. “Listen, Pelasha. In my dream last night, it was all same,

except that this time, I saw a balloon.” Pelasha sat up from his bedroll. “And what did it look

like? Was it red, like the one you dropped from the hill when you were little?”

“No,” Scarlet replied with a smile. “This one was white. Like...” she rubbed her fingers against the outside roll of her tent.

“Oh, no. Not seriously.” “Yes, seriously. I think we’ll be living without tents for

awhile.” “Scarlet, wait. Even if you could make a balloon big

enough, there’s nothing to propel it. You need certain fuels for that.”

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“That, is one of my secrets.” “I didn’t realize you had any.” “Come out and I’ll show everyone.” It didn’t take long for everyone to gather there in the

tent circle. “What’s your secret?” Shoko asked. “And let’s hope it

works, whatever it is.” “Follow me,” said Scarlet, beckoning them to follow. “Would you just tell us, first,” Bakker called after her, “if

this is something you saw in your dream?” Scarlet only turned around with a smile.

S The walk took them back toward the east. “We didn’t come this way,” Pelasha called to her in the

morning wind. “That’s why we missed it.” Within a walk of twenty minutes, they arrived at a

rough cliff face, pocked with small caverns. “It’s just how I saw in my dream,” she said. “Could one

of the brothers climb to that cave?” She pointed upward to one of the larger outcroppings. “What is this, Scarlet?” Bakker asked. “What did you

see in your dream?” “You should find a large canister, made of steel,” said

Scarlet with determination. “And I know that whatever it holds, is the fuel we need to cross the lava, to make the balloon fly.”

Bakker looked carefully at her. “Doctor, why would anyone leave such a thing in this place? Likely, no man has ever been his way before.”

“Remember the sunflowers,” said Oceanus.

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Bakker looked back up to the cliff face -- set so high above them.

“Come on, Pelasha. Help me with it.” For the next half hour, the brothers climbed, gripping

the rocks and nooks above them. Scarlet kept a close watch as the others paced, waiting for the news. Only Father Philemon seemed perfectly at peace. But this was nothing foreign.

Finally, both brothers entered the small cave, hunched over, the ceiling hung so low.

Scarlet waited, hands clasped together beneath her chin.

Then Bakker stuck his head back out the opening. “You must always be right, Scarlet,” he said.

Scarlet let out a breath. Within the next part of the morning, the brothers were

able to fasten the canister with rope and lower it to the desert floor.

“I don’t understand it,” Pelasha said, still breathing heavy from his climb. “Who would leave it here? There’s no reason for it.”

“There doesn’t always have to be an answer for us,” said Perpetua, looking over the old canister. “I think, for now, that it has provided us another answer.”

“Will it fuel a balloon across the fire, Bakker?” Scarlet asked, confidently.

“It will be complicated,” said Bakker, “but what else can we do? We will make it work.” He knelt next to the can-ister. “Give me an hour or so,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, Shoko, do you have a pair of scissors?”

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S Over the entire morning, the tents were taken apart,

piece by piece, cut into as few pieces as possible by Sho-ko’s one pair of scissors. The cloth was strong, resistant to water, and flexible, light, created for the blast of desert sand.

Once Bakker had designed his plan, he orchestrated the sewing circle.

“I’m a little scared of this idea,” Portia said, predictably. “Will this actually hold all of this?”

“It doesn’t have to,” Perpetua replied, threading the first of the three available needles. “Only two. Bakker to guide it, and the other one to be dropped off on the other side.”

Portia shivered a little. She, Perpetua, and Scarlet were the seamstresses, while Shoko held the cloth pieces to-gether, as tightly as possible. Bakker oversaw every stitch.

“This is going to take us forever,” Portia said aloud. “As long as it works, I don’t care,” Bakker replied. Shoko, who managed the supplies, had several rolls of

waxed thread, as strong as steel, she had been told. “How is this even going to be airtight?” Portia pressed

on. “Don’t worry. We’ll have a good sealant,” Bakker prom-

ised. “Fortunately for us, tar sometimes comes with lava territory. There’s a patch just over the hill. I saw it as we walked.”

The rest of Portia’s questions were answered over the afternoon, and the next three afternoons. By the time the balloon was completed, nearly everyone’s hands were red and rough.

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“I don’t think I can hold on to the balloon,” said Yester-day. “Not with these hands.”

“Won’t need to,” said Pelahsa. “While you were working on sewing, Father and I built the basket.”

Portia made an audible sigh of relief. The basket had been tightly woven from ropes and stalks. Pelasha had hiked back to a grove shaded at the base of a small hill, where he found enough reeds and branches to weave with their rope into a basket large enough, just only, for two people.

Bakker sat back and seemed pleased with their efforts. “Tomorrow tells us,” he said, as the firelight began to

die around dinner. “If not, we’ll be a handful of crispy creatures.”

“You and someone,” said Portia glumly. “If it doesn’t work the first time, I won’t be coming.”

Bakker only laughed.

S The next morning was crisp white light. Bright and hot,

shadowed, ever, by the band of space city to their north. Even Bakker was nervous. Scarlet could see only a hint

of it behind his friendly eyes. But there was enough of it there for her to wonder, seriously, if he believed it was likely they would cross in safety.

“There isn’t enough fuel for me to test it,” he said. “We will have to take off immediately once the balloon has filled. So... which of the brothers plans to accompany me on the first flight?”

It would be Pelasha. “Are you...” Scarlet stuttered. “I mean, have a safe flight.

I don’t know what to say. If you don’t come back... Rath-

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er, if I don’t see you on the other side. Well, I won’t look.” “Dr. Glass, the feeling is mutual.” He put both arms around her shoulders in a gripping

hug, and left to help Bakker fill the balloon. It didn’t take long. Once the puff of white was

plumped, Scarlet could imagine it sitting like a large des-ert mushroom on the floor of the fiery field.

“Go, go,” Bakker called to Pelasha. Both were in. The brothers let go of the ropes. And

they were above the ground, quickly, and easily. True to her word, Scarlet would not look. Not for Pela-

sha’s travel across the divide, nor Oceanus’, nor Shoko’s, nor any of the others. She had volunteered to be last.

“I can’t have you going last,” said Bakker. “Let one of the brothers. If we run out of fuel...”

“You won’t.” “Dr. Glass,” he said in a low voice, “I am commanding

that you allow the others, now, to come after you. If you are lost, the dreams are lost.”

Scarlet nodded then, and stepped into the prickly bas-ket.

The rise into air was shifting and light. She had never risen above the ground in such a way. And as the sand be-low her melded from granules into patches of brown, she closed her eyes.

“You’ll like to see while we pass over it,” Bakker said. “Hold on to me. You can’t fall out. Just watch. It’s beauti-ful, actually.”

And it was -- rolling glass -- as though a sunset had been captured and washed into a mixing dough of reds and oranges and golds.

“Amazing,” she whispered. Bakker nodded. As he dipped the balloon to land, Pela-

sha and Oceanus caught the ropes.

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“Oh be careful on the way back,” she told Bakker as she alighted.

“I will, Scarlet,” he promised. As he sailed back for the others, Scarlet found a new

appreciation for him. For his knowledge, his bravery, and his assurance.

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217

RIVER OF BLUE

CHAPTER 25

And then they saw the desert – continued in folds of sand. Dunes to gulf cities. Scarlet dipped her hand into the soft sculptures of the desert, sifting the mellow gold grit

through her fingers. But Scarlet didn’t see it -- she had forgotten something.

She strained her eyes across the fire “Bakker!” she cried. “The Tel. We left The Tel!” She ran to the lava’s edge, pushing her hands through

the rising steam. “Whoa!” Pelasha exclaimed, catching her by her arms.

“You can’t fall in, not after all that trouble.” “Bakker!” she called again over the orange rage. “I can’t bring it!” he called back. “Not enough fuel, doc-

tor!” Scarlet clapped her hands together and squeezed her

eyes shut. She knew what she had to do. “Bakker!” she called back again. “Break it apart. Break

it apart with anything you can find.” “What?” “Trust me. Just hurry, or you won’t make it back.”She could see the confusion on Bakker’s face. He quick-

ly anchored the balloon as best he could to the ground,

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and looked around for any sort of instrument. There was nothing.

Finally, Scarlet could see he had decided what to do. He started to run, away from The Tel.

“What is he doing?” Portia asked, as though he were crazy.

“He’s had martial arts...” Yesterday said. Bakker suddenly pounded back across the desert, with

no regard to the beauty of the masterpiece before him. With a leap across the ground, he soared for a split mo-

ment through the air. A resounding crack split even the garish grind of the lava floe.

When Scarlet was able to reopen her eyes, she had to sit down. The Tel was splayed in thousands of shards, spreading color in an explosion of glitter across the sand.

“What am I looking for, Scarlet?” Bakker yelled back across the rush.

Scarlet choked. “The black brick. Bring it with you.” It had ended so suddenly. Bakker was soon by her side.

He handed her the small black brick, as she tried to swal-low the lump in her throat that wouldn’t leave.

“Peace, Scarlet,” he said, comforting her. “The Tel served its purpose. You knew you kept it around for that. And if you have to have it, on our return... we’ll find it again for you. We’ll collect the pieces.”

Scarlet strained her eyes, watching the heaven blue mingle of color across the melting chasm.

“Oh, Bakker,” she said, still slipped to the ground. “How could I have forgotten?”

Bakker knelt by her on the sand. “You know it can’t help you anymore. It’s not going to save humanity. It’s not so important anymore.”

“I know. But...” Scarlet pushed her fists into the sand. “It was so much of everything. My life was circled around

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it. And it seems such a waste if I leave it behind now.” She knew the others were trying not to watch, not

wanting to make her uncomfortable. “I know,” Bakker said gently. “And we will come back

for it on our return. I promise that. Then you can sell it to a museum after we glue it back together. Become a wealthy woman.”

Scarlet laughed, sliding a tear off the tip of her finger. “Come now,” he said, holding out his hand. “We have

things to do.”

S Scarlet tried to forget the best that she could about the

miserable mistake she had made. Her head hung toward the sand as she tried not to be frightened of the punish-ment for leaving behind such an object, broken by a com-mon man.

If the priests were to know what she had done... that the mandrake of all Africa had abandoned the portal to the gods... she would have been silenced eternally, and in horrific manners.

For the rest of the day, she was let alone by the others. If ever they knew she needed quiet, it was then.

“I should have left it on my own accord. I should have made the decision myself without being forced to leave it for lack of fuel,” she told Pelasha later. “It’s cheapened this way. It’s not as...”

“Dramatic?” Pelasha finished for her. “That’s not very kind.” “Sorry,” he said, trying not to smile. “But it doesn’t have

to be significant. It’s already bothered you enough. You know that, when it came down to it, you wouldn’t have

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risked Bakker’s life to have him cross the gap two more times than necessary.”

“No...” Scarlet replied, realizing that he was correct. “I wouldn’t have.”

“So, basically, you did leave it of your own accord.” “You do know how to help me forget about my mis-

takes.” “Not forget,” he replied. “Just a different perspective.

That’s all.” Their evening continued with a conference around the

dinner fire, and straggled circle of once-pristine tents. Somehow they had managed to craft them back into some semblance of usability.

“We must be close to the tributary,” Perpetua was say-ing. “I don’t see how we can miss it now. Even according to modern reports, and the old Skyy images, the river springs near here, at least it begins to collect from the stream we followed in the wood, and others. If we contin-ue at this degree, and arrive at the tributary, the current will be in our favor.”

“We’ll float there now?” Portia asked, hopefully. “We will, if there are no obstacles. Of course, the river

will take us only part-way to the finish. We will still have a number of miles to walk before we arrive at the Cape. The Blue River eventually channels east, not west.”

But everyone, including Portia, was comforted by the news.

Bakker confirmed Perpetua’s prediction, and they spent that night hoping for a view of water the next day.

S “Oh, magnificence!” Portia cried, when she saw it.

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“Beautiful current!” It seemed at the moment of arrival at the tributary, that

everyone collapsed in happiness. Though Father Philemon was as perfectly steady as

always. He only smiled, wrinkled wisdom around his ice blue eyes, watching the gurgles of the water, remembering earlier times.

It didn’t take long for the brothers to invent the struc-ture for the necessary rafts to conduct them down the waterway.

“Two per raft,” Bakker instructed. “No more.” And because of that, the inevitable three days were

necessary to construct reliable vessels. “Marsh reeds are the ticket,” Shekinah had announced,

as soon as they had arrived. “Nothing else living in this part of the world.”

He was right. Little more than water and reeds off which to subsist. Fortunately, their dried fruits and vege-tables, and seeds, would see them through till they arrived in greener lands again.

Bakker delegated the weaving. “You must sit pretty still,” he said, just before launching

day. “Leave fishing until we dock for the night. We can’t afford to spill over, particularly when we pass through more rapid currents. For now, the water is tranquil enough to get a good launch.”

And with that, five narrow rafts were spilled into the river, with ten inhabitants, with little to steer them but the willful current of the river.

Scarlet had been distracted during the making of the rafts. She knew it was a sign of the weariness and urgency of the mission indelible on their minds, that led them to make little comment of the color of the river.

“Perfect blue,” she said to herself.

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Oceanus thought it was a result of minerals. Bakker thought that that it was more likely a natural chemical. But that was all they said on it. Whatever the concen-tration, it soared in patches of turquoise and sapphire through the course of the tributary. And as they floated upon it, Scarlet could only stare at its beauty.

“Eyes on the river,” Pelasha told her at one point. He had the seat behind her, doing his best to guide the

craft. It was a demanding position. They spoke next to nothing over their first several days of travel.

At night camp, it was much of the same. They were all even more so tired from working the rafts on the stub-born currents, that conversation was almost nill. And after a portion of stew, apiece, and sometimes fish, they crashed into their tents for hours until dawn.

And so things progressed over the next weeks. Little broke the monotony of their passage, but for the passing of the sun and the moon, spreading light in varied angles along the heavens.

S Scarlet was not unimpressed by the hours spent on the

waters. She still had Pelasha’s book, and found herself rereading it over and over again when the river was not as rapid.

“I don’t mind the water stains,” Pelasha told her. “Read it as much as you’d like.”

And as she came through the various passages again and again, she found herself prepared to receive baptism.

“How convenient we’re traveling on water,” she said to Pelasha.

He nodded. “Name the place,” he said, “and Father Phi-

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lemon or one of the brothers will baptize you, and gladly.” But Scarlet had not yet found the spot. The right place. That night, her dream was folded in river blue. But

there was something else that time...

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225

BAPTISM

CHAPTER 26

And that was all?” Pelasha asked. They were on the river the following

morning, having broken camp in the cold stiff winds of an early orange and dark gray

dawn. “That was all. A well in the ground, shaped like a cross.

But all branches of the cross were equal in length.” “I’ve seen a place like that before,” he said. “A picture of

one. Father brought it back. But it was in northern Af-rica.”

“Who built them? Maybe they migrated south and built more.”

“Maybe. They were built by the ancient church. The very ancient. It’s possible, I suppose, that they built an-other, and we just never found out anything about it.”

“Unlikely though,” Scarlet trailed her hands to the side of the raft. “Something wasn’t right about that place.”

“No?” “I thought that maybe it was a bad sign, so I didn’t say

so at first. Wouldn’t anything with a cross necessarily be a good thing?”

“Not absolutely.” “It was that same darkness I told you about earlier. It

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creeped around the place... I think, it was coming out of the cross.”

“This is interesting,” said Pelasha, staring straight at the horizon. “If we come to such a place, we’ve been warned.”

And that was all they spoke on it. Pelasha was too busy guiding the craft through the river to be distracted by much.

The drift continued -- steadily -- over those next days. Miles passed in rapidity. Perpetua seemed pleased with their progress. When they had left Ono, instruments indicated wide time-frames as to how much longer the air could be breathable for their part of the world.

“We’re not the ones who have concern right now,” she said that afternoon. “It’s up north that’s the problem. Eu-rope, Asia. The North Americas. We can only hope that they’ve all been completely evacuated.”

They were still nowhere near figuring the actual cause of the trouble. It had crept on the world so slowly, the toxin. And, still, no one had an explanation. An element unknown to man. No source. No cure.

And though Perpetua assured them that they were alright as they were for some time, she still looked to the silver band around the sky. Scarlet could almost hear her thoughts as she looked up to the rest of humanity struc-tured in space above them.

S Scarlet’s dream repeated itself, each night, the coil of

black increasing in size, and slipping further and further out of its cross den. Several of those nights, Scarlet found herself jumping awake in her sleep, cold sweat rippling down her face and arms. But despite the blackness, the

227

greater it grew, the stronger the voice became, calling her by name. And that was all it would say.

“I don’t understand it,” Scarlet told Perpetua that eve-ning. “It’s not the voice of God. I know that.”

“Do you know whose it could be?” “I know whose I would like it to be.” “Whose then?” “My dad’s.” Perpetua waited for an explanation. “I don’t know why. He has nothing to do with this. I

must be melding memories with prophecies.” “Or he does have something to do with it,” Perpetua

replied. “I suppose it won’t help to analyze now. Just keep reporting.”

Scarlet did admit that her role was much like a report-ers by that point in the trip. And though she didn’t know why she had been the chosen vessel to carry such messag-es, she could only hope that it would all come to a swift end.

S Things were passing more smoothly than could have

been expected, even on the river. “Where’s the trouble?” Yesterday asked one afternoon.

“When is it coming? The beasts, the spirits, the catastro-phes. It’s putting me on my nerves just thinking about what I’m going to do when it gets here.”

Everyone was starting to feel the same. The eerily per-fect quiet, but for the water. No creature, no insect, even.

“I thought we’d be seeing clouds of mosquitoes by this time,” Yesterday had continued.

Not one.

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“I want to see birds again,” said Portia. The quiet was so very quiet, that the expectation of

inevitable trouble began to eat at them, in a manner more effective than the mosquitoes could have managed.

Day passed day, and nothing had happened. Still. Instead, their trouble was building into a storm further

down the river, waiting for their arrival, a whisper, so subtle, only Scarlet’s dream could have anticipated it.

S It was three more weeks down the bends of the endless

river, that Scarlet found her place. “Why there?” Pelasha asked. “It’s not very different from the rest of the river,” said

Bakker. They had pulled the crafts to the bank of what Father

Philemon had called Green Island. “What stands out?” Scarlet said. “Nothing, except the

most important part. In my mind anyway. Today is the first day the sky has been perfectly clear. Blue of heaven. And blue of heaven in the water. Both earth and sky at once. It couldn’t be better.”

And so she went down to the river at that hour, after the rafts had been tied along the bank of sand.

“Pelasha, would you baptize me?” she asked him. Pelasha seemed very surprised. “Why not have Father?” “It was you who caused me to be baptized in the first

place. I want you to do it, if you would.” Pelasha was quiet, and nodded. “I’d be honored,” he

said. “You have a beautiful day for it,” Bakker whispered to

her as she went down to the water.

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And moments later, dipped in the blue, she heard Pela-sha say, “...in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

“Welcome to the Order of the Cross, doctor,” Bakker congratulated her afterward, extending his hand from the bank.

S At the end of that full month, they dispatched the rafts

downstream, unattended, and continued on the sand.

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231

SHADE

CHAPTER 27

The way of the desert was long. They left Green Island just as the summer was ending, nearly three months out from Ono, and the tributary began to cut to the east.

Perpetua’s instruments were beginning to fail. It wasn’t uncommon to see her tapping at them, refiguring wires and panels, still trying to find the signal that had been so strong at Ono.

“It’s becoming stronger,” she said. “But the waves are disproportionate. It’s almost like they bounce off of each other to confuse us on purpose.”

“It couldn’t be man-made, could it?” Portia asked. “The signal?”

Every time someone asked that to Perpetua over the next days, Scarlet saw her do the same thing -- look sky-ward and pretend that the question didn’t need an answer. Perpetua said nothing about it. She only continued regis-tering her measurements and calculations in a thin, black book.

Scarlet had little left to do as they walked. Her leg had long been exposed to only the cloth of her suit. It had healed without infection over the last months. But the pain, Shoko told her, likely, would not leave. Not unless

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there was hope of surgery one day at Skyy. But that was not mentioned.

It was on the fourth day of their walk across their third expanse of desert, that a dark speckle darkened the hori-zon.

“Too low for a storm,” said Bakker. “Maybe a herd of some desert animal,” said Shoko. “Unlikely,” said Yesterday. “We’ve seen nothing living of

any significant size.” “And it doesn’t move,” said Bakker. Even through the low watery haze of the desert floor,

it did seem to sit stationary. Like a statue -- rising into the heat of the late afternoon sky. As the evening slipped away, the speckle turned into deep gray, and disappeared into the black night.

S By the middle of the next morning, they began to see

the shape better against the blue sky. “A tree...” Portia said aloud, seeing it first. “But it’s

enormous. And how could it grow here? We’re not near a source of water large enough.”

Even Yesterday didn’t have an answer for her question. It seemed impossible. No water, full sun. For the arc of a tree so tremendous, the branches, each, could have sup-ported an elephant.

“How? Oh, how?” Portia asked for them all, as they ap-proached it.

It was not a tree, but a statue of tree. Smoothed gray stone.

“It can’t be stone,” said Oceanus. “No piece this size could be quarried, moved here, and chiseled. It’s impos-

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sible.” The trunk of the enormous plant could be circled only

if they stretched their arms around it, holding hands to-gether. There was simply no explanation for its existence. In the center of sanded lands, no knowing how deep its statued roots ran into it. The branches sat perfectly amongst themselves, silent, still.

“I don’t understand these people,” Scarlet whispered to herself.

“Why not?” Pelasha asked. “Who creates things like this? Why?” “Why did you make The Tel?” “But these are so much more on a massive scale, an

unimaginable one. I can’t even understand these. What would make hundreds, maybe thousands of people, work together to make something this beautiful, but so use-less?”

“That, my dear doctor, is called totalitarianism.” Scarlet brushed her hand up against the stone. If not

smooth from man-made means, it had been blasted long enough by wind and sand to become nearly silk.

“Let’s climb it!” Oceanus called from the other side of the tree.

“He was always like this when we were growing up,” said Pelasha, hurrying over to the other side.

Scarlet quickly followed him. “He scaled every tree on the island,” he continued. “I’ll

give you a boost up, Oceanus.” “Thanks, brother,” he replied. And with a toss upward, Oceanus grasped easily the

lowest branch. With little trouble, he headed skyward, hand over hand, listlessly.

“What a monkey,” Shoko said with a laugh. “He’s quick. Watch him reach the top in a minute or

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so,” said Pelasha. “Maybe there’s something up there worth coming up to see.”

Oceanus had quickly come to the top. “Ahoy!” Yesterday called up, with a laugh. “Anything

worth seeing?” “The view!” he called back. “Come up and see.” “We’ll toss you a rope, and then we’ll come,” Yesterday

called back. “No way to get a foothold, you monkey.” Oceanus slipped back to the first branch and tied a

knot in the rope. When offered to be the first to ascend behind Oceanus, Father Philemon held up one hand, laughing, “My sons, you are very humorous. A man my age is better planted to the ground.”

“Are you sure?” Bakker has asked with a smile. “We could make a sort of elevator for you.”

Father Philemon shook his head. “I will prepare us a little lunch. On your way, young men.”

The trek across so many miles had made the physical fitness of everyone there, much stronger. Even Scarlet, with her injured leg, was pretty easily able to climb the rope to the overspreading branch, and given a lift by Bak-ker to stand on it.

“Good view just from here,” she said. “Maybe I’ll sit here until you all return. Heights are a little... not some-thing I appreciate.”

“Oh, come on,” Pelasha encouraged her. “You’ve hardly ever been off the ground before.”

Scarlet clapped a hand to the branch above her. “If I fall, you’ll have to warn Father Philemon before I land. That might not be a very pretty thing to see.”

Pelasha laughed. “No worries. I’d give him plenty of warning.”

So Scarlet followed the others, in the middle of the wrapping line through the branches, toward the top of

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the stone monster. The wind wept there. Pushing and pulling around

them. Scarlet clung to the branch, increasing her grip on the finely fashioned limb. Her eyes closed against the mass of wind.

“Thought I’d surprise you all,” Oceanus bellowed. “Nice storm, isn’t it?”

“You might have had one of us blown off here!” Bakker shouted back.

“You’re crazy!” Yesterday yelled. “Let’s go back down!” The wind was breathtaking. Scarlet loved it. Such a

change from the feathered whilsting of the dry sand airs. “Come on, doctor!” Pelasha grabbed her arm. “I’ll come in a minute. Go on!” she called back. Pelasha closed his eyes against the wind. “Don’t fall!” “I won’t!” The other girls followed the brothers. But even Scarlet

could stay only for a few minutes longer. The wind was terrifyingly strong there. Only the difference of one level in the tree, from light breeze, to gail-force winds.

“The world is changing,” said Bakker. “It’s the atmosphere,” said Perpetua. “It’s going to be

acting like this more and more until it’s fixed.” Scarlet still understood very little of what was wrong

with the world. The idea of a contaminant being lose in the atmosphere, one that no man could find the source, or label the contaminant, was strange, for a world that had become so very advanced.

“I can’t tell you how many scientists are working from Skyy, and have found absolutely nothing unusual to help us. Nothing from Skyy images. Nothing at all,” Perpetua had told them back at Ono.

Scarlet found that hard to believe at the time. “Some-one must be covering this up somewhere,” she had said.

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“Nothing’s that impossible to figure out.” Perpetua had just shaken her head. Scarlet couldn’t of-

ten tell when she agreed or disagreed with what she said. But nothing had come of it.

“Look at this!” Scarlet heard someone say above the wind.

She could see them gathered below her on a flattened portion of a branch below her, looking at something on the thinning height of the trunk’s mass.

Pelasha looked back up to where she was beginning to climb back down. “Come see this, doctor,” he called to her.

Scarlet joined them with a small hop from the last branch.

“What do you think?” Bakker asked, pointing to the trunk.

Scarlet scrubbed at her eyes a moment, to adjust from the bleary cold of the wind. And then she caught her breath. “Oh, no. I know that mark... I do. It’s on The Tel. Was.”

“What do you mean?” Bakker asked. “The same inscription. It’s on there. Underneath. I’ve

only seen it once back at the university when they were cleaning the brace lock on its base.”

“Do you know what it means?” asked Shoko. Scarlet shook her head. “It’s only understood by the

priests. It’s their most secret of inscriptions.” “Then it answers why this monument stands here,” said

Pelasha. Scarlet shivered just then. “It is not a symbol you

should have seen,” she said. “I was only permitted to see it because I was the Master of Africa, the Head of Man-drakes. If they knew...”

“You don’t have to be afraid of them anymore,” Pelasha

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said. Scarlet shook her head. “It just isn’t a good sign,” she

said. “Let’s leave this place before I see anything else.” They listened to her, worried, and left quickly. “Do you really think they could put a curse on you?”

Shoko asked, as she followed behind her. “They don’t even know you’re here, Scarlet.”

“It’s not that I think they’ll do something. I don’t think they know. It’s just almost scary knowing that they built this thing in the middle of nowhere, with what and how, I don’t know. And why? Doesn’t that bother you a little?”

“It may be blasphemy,” said Shoko, “but I never trusted the priesthood.”

“I begin to agree with you,” Scarlet replied. “There’s more than religion involved with them.”

“Unless it’s fanaticism,” Shoko said quietly.

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239

HIEROGLYPHS

CHAPTER 28

No one climbed the tree again. When Scar-let explained to Father Philemon about the sign on the tree, he only looked above him for a few moments, up to the branches.

“It is a high place,” he said, when she had finished. “It only means that this land, also, had been tainted with their eye. They are known for such places.”

“And we thought so sure that the city and garden, and the tombs were from the same people who made this,” said Portia.

“Are you certain they weren’t?” Father Philemon asked. Scarlet clutched at her throat. “Do you mean, Father,

that all of those vegetables, the fruits, even the seeds... were planted at the hands of priests.”

Father Philemon only nodded. Scarlet doubled over, pulling her arms around her stom-

ach. “Why, Father? Why didn’t you say something? You know that anything planted or built by priests... it is so far more dangerous to eat something from their hands. Whatever comes from it is a blessing for priests, and a curse for anyone else. We were walking on priestly lands.”

“That’s why these places are still living,” said Portia, almost accusingly. “We should have known they were spe-

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cially blessed. Why did you take us this way?” “We will never arrive all the way now,” said Scarlet.

“They will send something after us when they see where we are.”

“Syncretist,” said Yesterday with a scoff. “Quiet,” Bakker ordered. “Peace, doctors,” said Pelasha. “Nothing they do

should frighten you. We are coming to help. They can’t be against that. They suffer as much as anyone will if we can’t fix this.”

“There are no more priests here anyway,” said Shekinah. “They’ve left on the shuttles.”

“They can’t all be gone,” said Scarlet. “They wouldn’t, most of them, ever leave, until the very last second.”

“If ever,” said Shoko. “They are very dedicated to their own. They hide themselves well.”

“I thought you told us that the last of the refugees were gone,” said Bakker. “We saw the last of them leave our-selves.”

“Priests are not to be included among the natural peo-ple,” Portia replied.

“Just how deep have they roped you in?” Yesterday asked. “This is absurd.”

“Maybe for you,” said Scarlet. “This is what we grew up with. This is the way it is. I can’t imagine you all went completely through life without knowing about the priesthood.”

“Grenada is a free territory,” said Father Philemon, breaching the conversation again. “It will do little to argue about these things now. We should continue our travels for today and camp elsewhere tonight.”

When Father Philemon spoke, everyone listened, and they were soon on their way. The others turned from time to time to watch the silhouette of the branchy monster

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disappear over the sanded horizon. But Scarlet would not look. It felt like an eye to her, watching where she stepped next.

“I wish you weren’t afraid,” Pelasha spoke to her later. “It seems like I can’t fix that for you though.”

“It’s just the way we are,” said Scarlet. “The sign on the tree, the city and the tombs... it is all so much worse put together.”

“But why do they care so much? Why would it bother them if you ate fruit from an orchard their ancestor priests must have planted and abandoned hundreds of years ago?”

“Their rules are stayed. They don’t change. It’s been that way for several thousand years. And to disregard them, means to bring punishment upon yourself.”

Scarlet saw the dance of violet red before her eyes as she spoke, as though the color were beckoning her on toward a new dream in the night.

“They’re not here. They don’t know you’ve been here.” “They have eyes in places you would never know.

Maybe even in the tomb we visited. They are silent. You would never know they were around you. Even in the open desert.” Scarlet shivered again. “It becomes more eerie to me, the further we come. I would turn around if it weren’t for the dreams.”

“And for that, we thank thee,” said Pelasha. “You do seem to be our light of hope here, doctor. At least in the eyes of Portia.”

“Portia?” Pelasha looked to her, surprised. “You haven’t noticed?” “What?” “She prepares all of your meals at night. She adds herbs,

spices, things I’ve never seen before. She calls them dream remedies. Potions to make your dreams more

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vivid, more memorable.” Scarlet looked to the figure of Portia, stumbling

through the sand next to Father Philemon. “I can’t be-lieve she would do that.”

“She wasn’t trying to harm you.” Scarlet laughed. “Imagine Portia putting her hopes in

me. At Ono, she was always so skeptical of what I did. I’m not sure she ever thought my job was a very worthwhile one. Of course, she never would have said anything, for her own safety. I suppose she ended up being right in the end.”

“It served purpose.” “Building the shrine?” “In some manner, yes. And even if not, you wouldn’t

have been here to dream the dreams and save all of man-kind.”

“Oh, patronizer.” “It’s true though, in a way. Aside from that, I think

there is something about The Tel that you haven’t told us yet. You would have been more upset leaving it, if there wasn’t something else. Such as... the black brick?”

Scarlet shot a look sideways. “That still has to be my own concern. You won’t get an answer, Pelasha. Some things, still, have to be kept secret.”

“I won’t ask again,” he promised.

S Camp was set that night under full glowing heavens. “We might have a shower of meteors soon,” said Yes-

terday, lying on his back in the sand. “Maybe in the next week or so. I remember reading about it before we left.”

And in skies so perfectly clear, despite the contami-

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nant, which was purported to be colorless, the night skies melted in stars, some of which burned pale reds and blues and greens.

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245

ACROSS DRY LAND

CHAPTER 29

The walk became notoriously hot. The first of the deserts in Egypt claimed nothing next to the scorch of the more southern desert. Channels of seething dry winds crossed their

travel from the late morning until late in the afternoon. But at night, the land froze.

“I can’t keep warm,” Portia said one morning, huddled inside her tent during their early breakfast. “I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

They had begun the old pattern of rising early while the stars were still out, and breaking equally early for siesta in the highest heat of the day. But Portia was becoming sick from the cold.

They noticed it the night before, when they laid their bedrolls just outside their tents to watch the shining of the meteor shower spread above them in the heavens.

“You feel a little feverish,” Shoko said. “We can’t have that. You’re going to have to rest tomorrow.”

“I’ll hold us up.” “We don’t have a choice. You can’t collapse on us. We

have no medical help. The best I can do is give you some weak tea and keep you still. If only we had some shade.”

And though she rested through the night and the fol-

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lowing morning, it didn’t seem to help. “I’m going to head south for a few hours, Father,” said

Bakker. “If there’s more water, shade, anything... she’ll recover faster.” He lowered his voice. “We don’t have a lot of time to stay here.”

Father Philemon did not take long to answer. “Take Pelasha with you.”

Bakker and Pelasha were packed, almost immediately, and left across the desert. Scarlet didn’t even see them leave. She sat by Portia inside her tent, trying to keep her forehead cool.

“I’ll be fine. Don’t waste the water on me,” Portia pro-tested.

“Nonsense,” Scarlet replied. “Your health is just as im-portant as the rest of ours. We have to get you better.”

“I can walk. I might move more slowly, but at least we’re not sitting here.”

“No, Portia. We can’t wear you down. You insisted when it was time for me to stop pulling the shrine by myself every day. Now it’s time I prevent you from harming yourself.”

Scarlet could see the fever in Portia’s eyes, but she still spoke clearly.

“I haven’t been the best passenger on this trip,” she said slowly. “I wish I had done better for you all.”

“We’ve all had our share of complaining.” “Not as much as I’ve done. I don’t know why I came,

really. I didn’t want to be alone, I guess.” “Portia, you give yourself too little credit. You’ve kept

Father Philemon’s notes. You’ve helped to carry the shrine for many miles. You’ve gathered food, helped sew together a balloon... you shouldn’t have any regrets in that department.”

“But I am sorry.”

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Scarlet nodded, and laid the wet cloth back on Portia’s forehead.

S Portia wasn’t doing well. The brothers had still not re-

turned by late afternoon. “What happened to her?” Scarlet asked. “I don’t know,” said Shoko. “She hasn’t had anything

other than we’ve eaten. I don’t know what kind of virus she could have picked up out here.”

“Did she overwork herself?” “I don’t think so. She hasn’t been keeping a higher pace

than the rest of us. I really don’t know.” Scarlet said nothing. She knew Portia, and probably

Shoko, were thinking the same thing. They had brought the wrath of the priests, if not the gods, on them. And if it was true, that the priests had found them out, there was little they could do.

The priests had hands on unseen formulas that could have been released in the drop of poison in Portia’s can-teen while they slept. They could steal across the desert in crafts so light and soundless, they would never know they had visited their camp in their sleeping hours. It made Scarlet sick to think about it. But there was noth-ing she could do.

S Night came. The other brothers were restless. They

spoke with Father Philemon, to ask permission to leave to find Bakker and Pelasha. But Father Philemon was not

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inclined to allow them to go. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.” But the girls were also becoming anxious. Portia’s fever

wasn’t breaking. She wouldn’t eat. She mostly tossed and turned in a sweat.

Shoko finally left the tent to sit by the fire. The cold winds were coming up from the south.

“I don’t know any medicine,” she said. “Nothing but for herbs, and we have none of those.”

Scarlet raised her eyebrows at this. “No herbs. Shoko, Portia has them.”

“What?” “Pelasha told me so. She has some in her pack. I

thought she was carrying them for us all.” Shoko rose from her seat immediately to get Portia’s

pack. She returned quickly. “Everything. She has every herb in here I’ve ever heard

of. In capsules. Why didn’t she say anything to us before?” “I don’t think she wanted us spending too many of our

resources on us,” Scarlet replied, trying to think of an other explanation. “

But Shoko wasn’t listening. She had already retreated to the inside of her tent to make a poultice, which, in no time, was being put to use.

S An hour later, Portia’s breathing was more regular, and

her fever had broken. “Am I going to be alright now?” she whispered, on her

bedroll, eyes still closed. “I think so,” said Shoko. “Don’t talk right now though.

Sleep for awhile.”

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Scarlet got up to leave the tent. It was late into the night, and she was very tired. As she opened the flap of her tent, she heard the call of Pelasha across the desert, where a lamp swung from his hand.

“We’ve found shade,” he said. “We can be there by tomorrow afternoon,” said Bakker. “What kind of shade did you find?” Scarlet asked, dish-

ing stew into two bowls. “I think you’ll like it,” said Pelasha. “Wait until tomor-

row, and see.”

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251

THAILAND

CHAPTER 30

When she saw it on the horizon, Scarlet already knew that Pelasha was right. She would love it. Rising from the desert, a mammoth of some unknown

force -- a mesa of incredible size. “It’s almost frightening,” said Shoko. “Like the tree

-- something so enormous in the middle of such a waste-land.”

“It’s a reverse island,” said Portia, leaning on Shekinah’s arm, still a little weak. “I’ve never seen a place like this before.”

“It’s like from home,” said Perpetua. “In Thailand. Only not as green...”

“I thought you’d say that,” said Pelasha. “In those words, almost exactly.”

Scarlet gazed upward in awe. It had been so long since she had seen anything mountainous, that even the desert brown cliffs of the structure before her, nearly made her eyes water with a missing of home. Her parents, and the boys. She saw, instead, before, her, the great high green cliff from her childhood. And it brought a little comfort on that late morning in the early African autumn morn-ing.

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“We’re going to climb it before lunch,” said Pelasha. “Who’s coming with me?”

“We don’t have time for that,” said Shoko. “It would be a fantastic view though.”

“We have to make time, this time,” said Bakker. “If we want Portia to finish this trip back to her own strength.”

Shoko nodded acknowledgment. “Enjoy your summit,” said Portia. “If nothing else good

comes from my illness, at least you’ll have an afternoon off for rock climbing.”

“And for that,” said Yesterday kindly, “we thank you.”

S The ascent was steep. Almost perfectly vertical. Bakker

and Pelasha led the group crawling up the side of the face, facing northwest, which seemed to offer a greater variety of footholds, securing tethers along the way with metal plugs into the deeper crevices of the mesa face.

Shekinah and Father Pelasha remained below with Por-tia.

“She’ll be waited on like a queen,” said Bakker. “Sheki-nah will probably already be brewing tea and fixing fruit stew.”

“It will be nice for her,” Scarlet said to him. “She was always the one back at Ono to watch over all of us.”

So while Portia rested, they laboriously made their way in random patterns from the base of the monster. There were few places to stop along the way. Several hours in, they were near exhaustion. The heat was dry, but fortu-nately still not directly above their heads.

Scraggles of skeleton grass were the only hints of for-mer life, mixed with the rock and dirt and stone of a

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place so old. Finally, with a last lift of his powerful arms, Oceanus

grappled himself to the ledge. “Oi!” he cried loudly, rolling onto his back. “I’m up!” “Give a hand then, brother,” Yesterday called, just be-

low. Within the next quarter hour, they were all gathered

together on the top. The view was exhilarating to Scarlet. All the memories of Thailand rushed toward her in

the winds of the desert. Though warm, she remembered the cool. Though brown, she remembered the green. She spread her arms toward the east and closed her eyes against the wind. And it was almost as if she were, again, home.

Her remembrance was shattered with the call of Ocea-nus across the mesa.

“What the heck is that?” he almost shouted, pointing a long arm to the south.

“Language becoming a brother,” Shoko replied to him. “What do you see, man?” Pelasha asked him, joining

him at the edge. “You don’t see that?” “What? What am I looking for?” “It’s the only thing out there.” Pelasha pressed a hand to his head, shielding the blast

of African sunshine. “I don’t know. Your eyesight has al-ways been better. Wait -- oh, right. Right. I see it now.”

Scarlet crossed the curling dust to where they stood, and also put a hand to her forehead.

There it was -- all too clear to her against the deep scalding blue of the sky.

“Pipes,” she whispered. “It appears so,” said Oceanus. “Enormous pipes. I wish

we had Father up here. What in all creation could they be

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for?” No one knew what to say. They had seen sanitary sta-

tions from the old days before. Mines. Fuel stations, etc. But never anything so enormous.

“This land just seems to be created for giants,” said Shoko. “Everything is so much larger.”

They stood there, watching the haze of the horizon mingling around the city of pipes.

“Are we near the sea?” Shoko asked finally, as no one else had broken the silence.

“We are,” said Perpetua solemnly. They looked around at one another in a near state of

shock. “Then could that place be on the shore?” asked Ocea-

nus in disbelief. “It’s possible.” “Unbelievable. How did we not all know we were so

close?” Yesterday asked. “I was uncertain until early this morning,” said Perpet-

ua, less visibly happy. “The instruments are beginning to cooperate today again.”

“You always did keep things as surprises for us,” said Shoko, almost overwhelmed with relief.

The brothers clapped each other on the shoulders, and Yesterday did nothing less than shout from their fortress to the rest of the hearing world.

But Scarlet was feeling cold. She did not participate in the celebration. The more she looked toward the city of pipes, their salvific shore, the colder she became.

Perpetua saw this, but said nothing. Scarlet wondered if she, too, knew that something was wrong with that place. And suddenly, Scarlet was less eager to arrive at the sea.

But the brothers were jubilant, as was Shoko. “We have to get down to Father and the others,” said

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Yesterday. “And now. We have to tell them.” And they did, indeed, leave immediately. Scarlet could

hear them whooping off the edge of the mesa, calling to their father. But she watched from the edge.

“Come on, doctor,” Pelasha said, extending his hand. “Time for a much-needed lunch.”

“I’ll be down in a little while,” she said. “I need a few minutes to think up here.”

“Of Thailand?” She nodded. And, in part, it was true. But there were

other things in her thoughts as well. “Well, call then, when you’re ready to come down,” said

Pelasha. “And Doctor Amity too. You girls are certainly ones for your moments of contemplation. Almost done now, doctor,” he said, “Almost to the sea.”

Scarlet held the tether as he went over the side, and watched to be sure that he had landed on the desert floor. He waved back up to her and left to join the others.

Perpetua still stood at the edge of the giant, looking toward the scape of pipes against the sky. Withered grays and silvers. Scarlet passed across the toasted brown of the mesa. They stood there together for a time, only watch-ing.

“Do you know that place?” Scarlet asked her. Perpetua nodded slowly. “Heard of it, only. Never seen

it until now.” “What is it?” Perpetua sighed. “It’s where our trouble is going to

come from. It’s the city of the underground.” Scarlet looked bewildered back to the horizon. “The

underground?” “The pipes you see are only the bi-product of what is

happening under the earth.” “There are still people out there? Who?”

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“The priests.” “Oh, Perpetua...” Scarlet was askance. They stared ahead in silence.

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LILY OF THE VALLEY

CHAPTER 31

It had also been noticed from their perch that day, a field sketched white along the desert floor. At first they thought it to be no more than the natu-ral coloring of the earth, but they soon found

differently. Once Portia had fully recovered from the stragglings of

her fever, they pressed ahead. Scarlet and Perpetua said nothing more to each other, nor to any of the rest of the party, on the city before them.

Father Philemon, Scarlet had little doubt, knew what the pipes meant. Likely, it was he who told Perpetua of them. But he, too, said nothing. It wasn’t until the next night, that Scarlet’s concerns became worse.

It was around the campfire that Perpetua had, at least, presented her thoughts to others regarding their direc-tion.

“The Cape is just east of the construction of pipes,” she said. “If we continue in that direction, we should arrive at the sea and, maybe then, the instruments will indicate better which part of the land is expelling the contami-nant.”

And so it was settled that they would head to the origi-nal capital point of The Cape. But Scarlet’s foreboding

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increased as she lay awake in her tent that night. This became full evident when she closed her eyes and passed into the world of dreams.

S Scarlet woke in a full scream. Immediately, when she

came from her tent, she was surrounded by the others. Perpetua held her back. Scarlet was unconsciously on

her way to flee the camp. “Wake up, Scarlet!” Shoko cried. “Wake up! It’s alright!

It’s alright!” Scarlet was revived with cold water, which Portia

pressed on her face with a cloth. “Oh, Perpetua, my dream!” Scarlet cried. “My dream!” “Tell me, Scarlet. And tell me everything. It may change

much if you tell me whatever you can remember.” “It was the black mass, Perpetua. It came out of the

cross this time. But this time, there were faces in that mass, coming with it. The black began to coil around the Earth, endlessly, covering it all. And the ring in the sky was also covered.”

Perpetua’s face was stone. She had set her teeth. “And the voice, Scarlet.”

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember.” Scarlet folded her face in her hands, shuddering.

Perpetua placed her hand on Scarlet’s shoulder. “Is there anything else? Anything at all?”

Perpetua uncovered her face. “I think we have to go to the pipe city,” she said, very quietly. “I saw the cross, Per-petua. But inside the cross, were pipes, many pipes. And the black mass came from one of them in the center.”

Perpetua pressed back her red hair with one hand, star-

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ing in concentration to the ground. “Are you sure?” she asked. Scarlet looked to Father Philemon, standing behind the

fire, hands pressed together beneath the folds of his robe, looking carefully at her.

“I’m sure.” “Then we go to it,” said Father Philemon steadily. Perpetua rose and looked to him. “You don’t have to

come, Father,” she said. “I’ll go. And whoever else will come. Stay here and wait until we are finished there.”

Father Philemon shook his head. “It will all be well, Perpetua.”

They divided in the night, back to their tents. Scarlet slept, and tossed, and slept, between the reoccurrence of the black mass, seeping further into the skies, wondering if her dreams would continue as they were, forever.

S The next morning, some of the darkness of the night

before, had been forgotten. But in lingered. She could nearly feel the black coarse grit of the silent black mass, funneling past her to engulf the world.

And as much as she tried to remember, she didn’t know if she had heard the voice or not. The black was so terri-fying to her, that any other entity would have been for-gotten in the nightmare of the hour.

And so she packed her tent, as every morning, and fol-lowed the others.

Their enthusiasm had been little dampened by the impact of her dream the night before. Oceanus almost jumped as he walked, so anxious was he to arrive at the end. Shekinah was more quiet, still walking beside Portia,

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should she need someone nearby. But Scarlet was silent, as was Perpetua. It was difficult,

most of the time, to understand Father Philemon’s si-lences. He had never once shown alarm along the journey, nor shown any form of weariness. If he was frightened, or even concerned at all, about their approach to the city of pipes, he showed nothing.

“He was once a shepherd in his younger years,” Pelasha had told Scarlet once. “He’s fought off wild beasts, ma-rauders...”

“Marauders?” Scarlet had asked. “On a small island?” “In other places. He wasn’t always our father.” He was more mysterious, she thought, than even Per-

petua, who had still spoken so little of her relationship to the brothers, or to anything outside of their journey across such withered lands.

But Scarlet soon forgot all else, as they passed over the desert. Because the desert was suddenly no longer full of brown, but of white.

“Lilies!” Portia had whispered in delight. A carpet of pure white. They saw it early in the light of

the following day, in the gold skies. “They are lilies of the valley,” Shekinah told her, brush-

ing his hand over the endless shine of white. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” she said. Scarlet had to agree with her. Despite the looming

gray blotch of pipes upon the horizon, the loveliness set before their eyes, rippled in luminous glows across their path. Perfectly white, shimmering from their emerald stalks in a blend of heaven and earth.

“It seems as though we shouldn’t cut through it,” said Shoko. “I don’t want to crush any of them.”

“But their scent will be aromatic once you have,” said Portia.

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Their dawn walk was christened with the perfume of the valley of lilies.

And it was not until their siesta that afternoon that they set camp, without their tents, amid the trembling bunches of pearlescence.

“It almost makes one forget about the terrible things,” Scarlet said quietly to Perpetua, as they laid their bedrolls carefully between the blossoms.

Perpetua nodded, almost more to herself. Then she turned toward her, looking, for a rare moment, directly at Scarlet.

“Don’t be frightened about tomorrow,” she said. “If we find tragedy, then it was meant to be. But I am confident, that, despite the tragedy that might come to some, or all of us, that we will be successful.”

Perpetua turned back to her bedroll, and was soon asleep. Scarlet thought over her words. Perpetua’s inten-sity of mystery and confidence in things of other worlds, was electrifying to those around her. And it did no less good for Scarlet.

Within the next moments, she passed between the lands of alertness and sleep, into dreamless hours under heavens of blue.

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CITY OF PIPES

CHAPTER 32

It was on the afternoon waking in the bed of lilies that Scarlet knew what had to be done. The city was so close just then. The haze of the heated hours in the middle of the day had passed. And

though she hadn’t received the dream again in her sleep, she knew, just then, whose voice, for certain, it was.

Everyone else was still asleep. Quietly and slowly, she rose from her bedroll.

In the top bed of her pouch, sat the last remnant of the shrine, sealed in black brick, unopened for a millennia or more. Bearing only the seal of the priests at the dawn of their monarchy. She didn’t know what lay inside it, but somehow she knew she would need it. And so it went in her pocket. And, looking around her one last time, she left her friends there, to do what had to be done.

By the middle of the morning, she had crossed the field of lilies. Her pace had been quick, despite the increased pain of her leg. But her mind was not on the pain. Her mind was riveted, body and soul, to the responsibility before her. She knew well that she had no idea where to

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go once she arrived, what to do, what dangers she might meet. But the effect of the dream compelled her forward, or the ribbon of darkness would fully eat the world, en-tire.

The wind had lightened. The sun was the color of corn in the blue of her sky. And as she walked forward, with the weight of worlds upon her shoulders, the monomity of pipes soared into her vision.

Her body crawled with singing stings as she beheld the city. Pipes of every height and length, grays and blacks, steaming and whispering with hidden machines and tun-nels of wind. Crusted, mostly, in lichen, mosses. Most of them rose into the heavens, simmering with waves of heated air under the sizzling sun.

She stood there, motionless, on the gravely dirt road which ran around the silent city. If there were souls about, she saw nothing of them. Her heart pounded louder than they, if they were there.

Her arm was pressed against the box in her pocket. Something pushed her forward, into the humming mass of giant-sized pipes. Where the road left, she began to crawl over and around the steaming giants. No living creature graced them. Only grasses and bushes. No in-sects. Nothing.

It was then that she saw it -- the faraway blue and end-lessness of the sea. Purely blue, truffling in waves about the cliffs housing the city. So beautiful and stirring. She was impressed with its beauty, and stood watching.

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And beyond it, a small island, surging upward into a mesa, thin and tall. Upon it, blinked the blue of a light, caged above the ground on a post.

She stared toward it. Toward the light above the sea. And as she did so, her arms bristled with an impulse, and she pressed further into the mangle of pipes.

She knew, just at that moment, what she had been look-ing for, in unconsciousness. Because then she sat it -- a half-mile into the rubble of pipes. It was seeped into the ground -- the outline of brick, in the shape of a cross.

Scarlet did not even draw breath at the sight of it. It was as if she had been placed, then, in her dream. And though the dream had spelled the mass of black to come from its center, she was not afraid at that moment. Some other force had her walk toward it. Toward its center, where the largest of all the pipes in that city, spit straight into the sky.

How she got through the mess of pipes, jammed to-gether into the hole where the cross was laid, she did not know. But she arrived at its center, balanced on the upper ends, not thinking whether or not she would be blasted with boiled air or water from their depths.

Instead, she saw only the door there. Sketched into its side -- unopened -- perhaps for many years. But with the touch of her hand, she pulled it aside, and entered, leav-ing behind her the ghostly city in the scratchy light.

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THE CLOAK

CHAPTER 33

Pelasha sprang awake that morning. He knew, even before his eyes, that something was wrong. As he tossed aside his bedroll, he saw that Bakker was also awake.

“Scarlet’s gone,” said Bakker. “She left everything.” Pelasha held his head, reeling from the sudden awaken-

ing. He strained his sleep-stained eyes around the hori-zon. Nothing.

“What time is it? How long could she have been gone?” “Can’t be said. She might have been taken by someone.

Would she really leave on her own?” “If she dreamed it. If she thought she was supposed to

go.” “Whatever took her, her tracks are through the lilies.” “Tell Father. We’ve got to go.” Under a minute later, Pelasha and Bakker were running

through the field of white and green. The others would gather the gear and follow as able. But there was no stop-ping Pelasha and Bakker. There was no time.

Within the hour, they stood before the city, bending over with the wind of breath taken from them.

“So she did come here after all,” said Pelasha, barely able to speak.

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“Someone had to have taken her,” said Bakker. “Who would come here on purpose?”

“I think Scarlet would have.” Bakker pressed both hands to his head, trying to gather

his vision from the run. “Where do we start?” Pelasha never answered. As Bakker turned around to

him, he, too, was knocked flat on his back. And his vision closed to black.

S Scarlet followed the stair in the pipe. It ran a circle

around the center of the pipe -- seething with steam and fuels, channeled in smaller pipes, together toward the center. Crumbling lampposts lit the dripping spiraled chamber, as she walked deeper and deeper into the earth. Passing the stains of earth-rutted wells and linings of rock, metals, and molds.

The further she walked, the more silent she became. Beads of cold sweat collected near her eyes. But further she walked, listening to the everlasting rhythm of the pipe, chugging some unknown gaseous substance from the deeper rungs of the earth.

Her mind was above it, though, into the ether of the world above. She saw little of the darkness below her. In-stead, her thoughts were on her cousins, her parents, the rest of her party back in the valley of lilies...

In the last flickering light of the tunneling spiral, she reached the door at the end.

S

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Above, in the city, both brothers lay motionless on the ground. A heathenish whisper came from the mouth of the figure standing over them. Inaudible. It circled them both, almost as if it was uncertain it had found the right ones.

“Stand silent!” a voice commanded from behind it. The figure whirled about, staff in hand. “Stand still, Zeus Julius, or I will strike you still.” Father

Philemon spoke loudly to the cloaked figure before him. On his side, stood the other brothers, looking grimly

toward Pelasha and Bakker. And the doctors. “You have been here long enough,” Father Philemon

said with authority. “It is time to release the others. Put away your weapons. And join the very last of the shuttles to Skyy.”

The cloaked figure’s eyes gleamed at Father Philemon. “You don’t remember us very well here, Philemon. Our weapons will be the last to fall.”

“You know what we’ve come to do,” Father Philemon replied. “We will not leave until then.”

The cloaked figure laughed. “You will not end that, Philemon..”

His grizzled eyes still glowed in the light of the late morning.

“I would have thought the years might have dealt more kindly with you, Zeus Julius,” said Father Philemon. “I would have hoped that your days of terrorism would have ended by this time.”

“Don’t try to convert me,” Philemon. “You have wasted enough of your time here. Why didn’t you leave with the others? You escaped from us once. Why did you return? There is nothing that you can do.”

“I think differently,” Father Philemon replied calmly. “It is a sad day for me to revisit this place. I do not intend to

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stay. Once we have finished here, I promise you -- we will never return.”

Zeus Julius laughed again to himself, turning toward the Cape with his staff stuck into the ground.

“Is it really worth this to you, Philemon? The death of your sons?”

Shoko gasped a little, but Father Philemon put out his arm to her to hold her back from the brothers.

“My sons have more hope than you have. I had thought that one day, you might have the same. But my sons are not afraid to die. Threaten as you must.”

Pelasha gave a small stir from the ground, and then lay still again.

“Then murder is on your hands today, old friend,” said the man. “It will do you little good to see your sons for the last time this hour.”

Father Philemon bowed his head, and lifted his hands toward the priest. “May you be forgiven for your deeds today.”

The priest, Zeus Julius, bristled.

S The door of the tunneling pipe was easily opened. Scar-

let pushed it aside and found herself blinded by the light of the late morning. With one step, she found herself on the rocky shore below the ledge of the pipe city. And not only was it the ledge of the cape’s high cliff. But it was the outlying island, only a fathom from where the line of the continent hit the shore. Her walk through the deep had taken her under the sea.

Scarlet didn’t know what she was meant to do. But her answer lay from the rocky face of the island before her.

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Equal in height to the shore. A vertical mass of black rock climbing into the sky, having a diameter of only several yards.

She held the back of her neck with one hand as she struggled to gather the height of the pinnacle, realizing that it was the same which held the strange blue light that she had seen from the city.

The crunch of the gravel and rocks under her boots seemed to hardly penetrate the rush of the ocean wave. She walked a few steps around the thin shore, to see if there might be some new passage to the top.

And there it was -- the only way up. A single knotted rope hanging from the precipice. Nothing more. She quickly skirted the tiny island, looking for some other way. There was none.

Already, the pain in her leg had increased from the walk downward. But her arms were strong, and without anoth-er thought, she grasped the end of the weathered rope.

S “You were so foolish to run away from us,” said Julius,

walking back and forth before Philemon. “With the snap of my finger, I control the force of tens of thousands. All will spring to my command if I but whisper for their as-sistance. You are grossly outnumbered.”

Father Philemon was silent. “I would give you one final chance. Come with us to the

underground. We have need of your mind, your intellect. Your ideas would further our civilization. You would no longer need your ticket to the outer ring. You would be gladly returned to your place among us.”

Father Philemon looked up to the priest from where his

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eyes had formerly rested on the blue sea. “That will never happen,” he said firmly. “As much as you would ask, Zeus Julius. You serve false gods, to your own pleasure, to your own demise. You have read the books, and you know it’s true. But you continue to live this way. To serve yourself over the inevitable death of billions.”

The priest smiled, if only bitterly. “It is too late for that. If you had only given us passage to Skyy. We would have given the cure. But now, you will die like the rest old man.”

Shekinah had heard enough. He bolted forward. And out of nowhere, the city of pipes erupted with the clang-ing staffs of thousands of priests, waiting at the ready.

Shekinah faltered, and looked to his father. “What will we do, Father?” he asked. “They are puffed with the airs of futile shelter,” Father

said to him. The priest scoffed. “They were once denied, two hundred years ago, the

privilege of living amongst the stars in the global station,” Father Philemon continued, “because of their acts of ter-rorism. And when they refused to give up their religious fanaticism, they were condemned to remain here, even after the escape of the contaminant.”

The priest laughed again. “And that’s where you begin to loose your understanding,” Philemon. “

He snapped his fingers, and several priests stepped for-ward, dragging forward with them, a man and a woman, hands bound, and sedated.

Father Philemon gripped his walking staff tighter. But he said nothing.

“These two, here,” said Zeus Julius, walking over to them, “are only a small part of the whole problem. It’s their kind that refused us passage. Refused us admission

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to the only place on Earth where we could be closer to the gods, closer to communication with them.” He stared angrily at the man and woman. “And the world govern-ment denied it to us. Our destruction of the infidels has been authorized for thousands of years. They cannot stop us from it. But as you know,” Zeus Julius looked back to Father Philemon, “the world government didn’t think that this was... ethical. So my father and his generation of priests began the construction of the underground. There we have remained these many years, constructing the toxin that would eliminate mankind from this planet, leaving it to us. Leaving it to our own hands. Only we will live here, under the earth. And when the gods have seen our work, our insatiable devotion, this, our perpetual shrine to them -- they will reward us and destroy the ring in the sky. Only then, will we eliminate the toxin destroy-ing the Earth, and restore it.”

Father Philemon shook his head. “This is not new information, Zeus Julius. That is why we came here. One way or the other, you will be removed.”

The priest almost cackled. “Take your vermin with you,” he said, shoving forward the bound man. “They have missed their last shuttle to the heavens. They can die here with you.”

Father Philemon’s eyes were still on the horizon, watch-ing the faint shadow of Scarlet climb, hand over hand, the knotted rope.

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THE END OF IT

CHAPTER 34

Scarlet’s hands were raw. Her injured leg was nearly useless in her climb. The rocks below were sharp, sharp enough to slice. But she con-tinued. One hand above another, into the blue

of the afternoon. She grit together her teeth as tears began to cluster around her eyes from the strain of her arms.

With the last ounce of her strength, she pulled herself to the ledge, gasping at the thin air above the sea. She lay there only moments. The site above her was so luminous.

Caged around it, the blue light glowed silently, and ominously against the black sea of cloud in the southern horizon. There seemed nothing to do about a light. Was it a warning light to ships at sea?

But then she saw it -- there was a lock on the face of the cage, sealed into the cage itself.

Scarlet knelt there, by the cage. Suddenly, the weight of the small black brick pulled her to the earth.

Slipping it out of her pocket, it felt more as though it were made of lead.

Something pressed on her to do what she did next. She lifted the brick above her head and out toward the open ocean. With a smash, she threw it into the post of

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the light, as the glittering shards of black fell apart in her hand.

And amid the rubble of the ancient seal, there was the final answer to the last piece of their mission.

S The priest, Zeus Julius, had seen her. The glint of the

small knife at Scarlet’s belt had all too easily given her away in the morning light.

“Why is she there?” the priest demanded, whirling back to Father Philemon.

“If you know as much as you say,” replied Father Phile-mon calmly, “then you should be able to tell me so.”

“Tell me, Philemon!” his voice cracked over the pipes. Father Philemon was silent. The priest looked hard into the eyes of the father. Then

a realization came over him. “She has the key, does she not? She found it in the shrine. After all of this time. The key to open the light.”

Suddenly, the priest seemed greatly disturbed. “Does she have it?” he cried again. Again, Father Philemon said nothing. “Tell me, or I shall kill them,” he declared, raising his

staff above the lifeless forms of Bakker and Pelasha. “She has it!” Shoko cried, running forward. “Maybe not

a key. But she has something from the shrine.” The priest’s face grew almost black as the lightening of

the far storm illumined his ugly face. “She cannot have it!” cried one of the priests near his

arm. Zeus Julius struck the priest’s face. “Impudence,” he de-

clared. “She can do nothing with it. Prepare your arrows.”

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With a speed of silence, half the priests abandoned their stations around the party, returning with sheaves of arrows. Within seconds, each had fixed one to their bows, aimed across the slim divide to the light where Scarlet sat.

“Scarlet!” Perpetua screamed across the winds. “Scar-let!”

S Scarlet did not hesitate when she saw the key in her

open hand, what was left of the black brick. She leveled her eyes to the horizon where the storm had concentrat-ed.

With a swiftness, she plugged the key into the lock and swung back the cage door.

Humming, the blue light stared at her, uncompromis-ing. It would sit there as it was for all eternity. But that was not how it could be.

Scarlet glared at it. “Time for you to end this madness,” she said. And as she pressed her hand forward to remove the

light, with the voice of Perpetua on the wind, a crack of arrows flew toward her. Then -- an explosion of fire so great, the world rattled.

S On the other shore, the brothers and the girls stood

dazed, staring on the aftermath. The priests had disap-peared in the blackened hole before them. Nothing but the thunderous whisper of the rippling surgence of explo-sion waving across the sea.

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The bound man at their feet then opened his eyes, wea-rily. He was weak.

But he said something in his feverish listlessness. “Scarlet.” Perpetua bent toward him, masked with disbelief at the

sight before her. “What did you say, sir?” “Scarlet. Do you know where she is?” “Do you mean...” “Our daughter,” the man said with difficulty. “Dr. Scar-

let Glass.”

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QUADRANT HOLII

CHAPTER 35

Scarlet sat back against the cushion of the seat. It was soft and blue. She looked out her window to the ground below. Sand and everlasting sand. But it had always been sand, and it always would

be. It was Ono. Scarlet looked back to the inside of the small craft. The

pilot and co-pilot were just in front of her preparing for take-off. Several rows back sat the others -- Father Phile-mon and the brothers, and the three girls. Her parents. Alive, well, thrilled over reunion with their daughter.

They had fully recovered from their kidnapping at the hands of the priests, so completely bent on serving re-venge in any form.

Scarlet had wanted to sit closer to the front of the craft that late afternoon -- to see better through the glass of the front of the shuttle.

Her thoughts still played on the heavenly garden brought to her dreams as the pipe city reeled in the volu-minosity of the explosion.

Once she had smashed the blue light, the Ghost Light, as it was called,the turbines of the pipe city had stopped producing the contaminant, immediately shut down. The reaction was too overwhelming for the system, expelling

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the compelling acids of numerous underground compart-ments into the same air, resulting in the catastrophic meltdown.

And though some of the priests’ arrows had met their mark, Scarlet was spared the effects of the explosion, and had healed in the clinic at Ono.

Skyy had seen the explosion, sending a craft immedi-ately to survey the site at what was later called Telescope Point. What they found was miraculous. The contami-nant had disappeared, completely thinning into the atmo-sphere, and further to the realms of outer space.

Life would begin again on the planet. “How do you think life will be for you in Quadrant

Holii?” Pelasha had asked her, while she rested in the clinic.

“Until Earth has been refinished,” Scarlet replied, “Quadrant Holii will be a good home. As long as my par-ents are there with me, and my cousins.”

Scarlet looked happily back to the group gathered be-hind her.

Her leg was never going to completely heal. She knew that. But after the pain she had seen those long months in the silence of so great an expanse, where life had once lived, it didn’t matter to her any longer. She would still feel better, and increasingly so, once surgery had been performed.

“Ready for take-off, miss?” the pilot asked her. “I guess so,” Scarlet replied, with a smile. “This is my

first ride.” “Well, then. We have a treat for you, ma’am.” The engines glided in silken rolls of power, spinning to-

gether in a furious speed, until crashing down the desert runway, they leapt into the sky.

There, they rose into the heavens like a god, into the

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fiery worlds of stars and glory. “A gem, isn’t she?” the pilot asked. Scarlet’s breath left her, and she could only nod in re-

turn, gazing downward in unspeakable awe at the deep blue pearl beneath her.

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EPILOGUE

It would take time. It always took time, to put things right.

The magnetic pulse of the Ghost Light had steered a small group of determined monks and keepers to a place long-forgotten by the rest of the world.

And with the demise of the priestly world, opportunity was brought to the Brothers of the Cross. A new chapel was made in Quadrant Holii. And outside its gate, Scar-let planted red violets to commemorate the suffering brought upon the world, in order to renew things former-ly forgotten.

Restoration teams expanded in millions across the planet’s surface to aid in the reviving of ancient lands, long in need of nurture.

And Scarlet spent many further happy days with her cousins, who thought that it must have been the best day of their young lives, when, several years later, they were readmitted to Thailand, their home, and stood together on the old high green hill, watching the light of the blue sky blend with the setting sun and the shimmer of south-ern stars.

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LEGEND

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THE KEEPERSDr. Scarlet Glass

Dr. Perpetua AmityDr. Portia See

Dr. Shoko Hershey

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THE BROTHERSFather Philemon

BakkerPelasha

ShekinahYesterdayOceanus

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