Out of Exodia (20 page)

OUR SORRY
PANTHEON

NOT RED DRUM

MOUNT, MY LORD
DICTATE

LOAD TENTS

TEN ABREAST
SNOWFIELDS

COTTON DOVE

What if I twist these
strange puzzles into phrases even more confusing? My pulse must be
at two hundred. I slow my panting breaths, take a couple deep ones,
keep my eyes on the ground and focus on Blake and Josh’s questions:
“
What happened? What took you so
long
?” But I can’t seem to answer. I feel
less dizzy though and lift my head. Some turn away as though they
cannot bear to see my face. The old men drop to their knees as if
in worship. I’m sickened by the gesture. “Get up,” I say. I give
them instructions to build a barricade. I want to tell them more:
that they’ll die if they step foot on the mountain, but my tongue
cleaves to the roof of my mouth. I look high up the mountain and
see the fire burning there. The smoke doesn’t rise as it should,
instead it drops, hides the fire and threatens to block my
ascension. I find my voice again and smoothly utter a couple more
things then turn, hold my breath, and pass through the black smoke.
I only need to walk up maybe forty feet or so to look back on the
camp. From here the smoke acts not as a screen but as a magnifying
window. I see farther than I should. All twelve groupings of Reds
appear in varying shades of new colors, ones I’ve never been aware
of before and yet I know their names in some heavenly
language:
nursoudavet, shonet, diret,
crigonecet
…

I hear their voices, too, but the words
are shrill and penetrating. I wish for deafness and briefly feel
God’s hands on my ears. The jarring screeches slack off and men’s
and women’s voices diminish to what must be normal for other ears,
my gemfry gift subdued. The new colors fade as well, their foreign
names forgotten.

I watch the men drag logs to fence off
the mountain. This will take time.

* * *

By late afternoon the work was done.
The barrier kept even the most adventurous child at bay. The Reds
milled about and mingled with their neighbors, laughed and joked,
and forgot their petty quarrels, their irritations with one another
pacified by the strenuous work. They waited for Bram to return;
even the Mourners were expectant though a few of them became
restless.

“
There he is!” The first
one to spot a foot emerge through the black fog alerted the
rest.

“
Open the gate.” Teague’s
command was carried out by Josh and Blake.

Bram walked through. His face, though
still shiny, looked more like he had worked hard and perspired
profusely. The glowing aura that had frightened the judges that
morning was invisible to them now.

“
Stand up here,” Harmon
directed. He had built a high platform in the most viable spot. The
rod was leaning against the ladder. Bram climbed the ladder and
pulled the rod up when he reached the top. He stood above the mass
of expectant Reds. He cleared his throat twice then held the smooth
black tablet above his head in one hand and the rod in the
other.

The smoke that ringed the mountain
broke away and flattened itself twenty feet above their heads
without barring the sun’s light. The black ceiling hardened into a
reflective surface as smooth and shiny as the tablet Bram
held.

“
We have instructions,”
Bram began. “There are ten rules. Just listen.”

He flipped the tablet over and the
first phrase appeared. Those closest beneath him strained to read
the glowing letters, then gasps and whistles turned everyone’s
attention upward. Like an ancient billboard the letters appeared
above them as well and a voice unlike any they had ever heard
boomed around them.

“
I AM YOUR GOD.”

Instantly there were bolts of lightning
on the mountain. Thunder exploded. Between the rumbles there was a
high vibrating note that sounded like a trumpet, a sound those born
after the Suppression had never heard before. The letters snapped
into the right order, but the Reds panicked. Those farthest back
turned and ran. Others scrambled to follow. They shouted to Bram
their fear at hearing the inexplicable voice.

“
NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME.
NO IDOLS.”

Bram held the tablet tightly and
watched the words swirl into sense. He thrilled at the sound of the
voice; its mystifying resonance no longer frightened him. When he
saw the people’s panic and finally registered their shouts he
lowered the tablet and pointed at them with the rod.

“
Don’t be
afraid!”

But the people kept distancing
themselves.

“
He’s come to test you,” he
said.

People shook their heads. Teague raised
an age-spotted hand to his heart and spoke, “You tell us, Bram.
We’ll listen to you. But don’t have Ronel or God, or whoever that
is, blare at us. It’s too painful. We’ll go deaf. We’ll die from
this torture.”

* * *

I nod at Teague’s request and hand the
rod down before I descend the ladder. The tablet shakes in my hand,
its surface a dull black now. There’s a lingering pulse in the air,
but the smoke has cleared and there’s not a hint of it in my
nostrils. In fact, I realize that the scent that came with the
smoke was neither sharp nor sweet, just aromatic, like a musical
tone. A tone that would dance in the air partnered with the color
gold. I look around at the people. Most have stayed. They watch me
with peculiar stares, some still pressing hands against their
ears.

My equilibrium is off and with my first
step I stumble into Harmon. His right hand grips beneath my left
elbow, upholds me.

“
Are you all right,
Bram?”

I straighten, frown at my brother, and
hand him the tablet. I pull up my sleeve and twist my arm, bend my
elbow. I can’t see my tattoo.

“
Is it gone?” I ask. I tap
the round starry splotch on my joint, the spot that used to be blue
when I lived in Exodia, the spot that when I was sixteen faded to
reveal the underlying scarlet tattoo.

“
As red as ever,” Harmon
says. He gives me that concerned look. “Why would you think it was
gone?”

Someone shouts from the
crowd. A child cries out. A mother hollers back. Hands wave for my
attention. More voices join in and they begin to chant their
wishes:
Go on! Tell us what God
says!

I sag and even Harmon’s strong arms
can’t keep me from lowering myself to the ground. I kneel, drop my
forehead to the earth, and dig my fingernails into the
dirt.

“
Bram. Have you gone crazy?
Get up.” He pulls at my sleeve, jostles me with a foot, and enlists
Blake to help him raise me. But they don’t know what is hidden in
the people’s chant. And I don’t want to tell them.

They help me back to Harmon’s tent; the
crowd parts like the spreading of a butterfly’s wings. The chanting
has stopped, replaced by whispers that ripple out like leaves in a
breeze. We enter the tent and I wobble to the center.

“
Give him some water. He
probably hasn’t had any food or drink in days.”

I sip the warm water Marilyn offers me.
She keeps one hand on her stomach as if to keep the baby inside.
She’s not going to like what the chant reveals. I’m dizzy again
with the implication.

“
What’s the matter, Bram?”
It’s Lydia’s soft voice right next to me. Her even softer hands
pull me down onto a blanket. She sits beside me while Harmon and
Teague and Blake and Marilyn block the tent’s opening. I’m glad the
light is behind them and I won’t see their expressions when I tell
them we are turning back.

“
We have to turn
southwest,” I say.

“
But Ronel’s camp is
north.” Blake lifts an arm to point.

“
It doesn’t matter.
We go on as gladly southwest
.”

“
We can’t just walk in
circles, Bram.” I look up at Harmon. He’s never questioned me
before.

“
Harmon’s right. We might
as well go back to Exodia.”

“
You’d like that, wouldn’t
you, Teague?” Harmon’s jaw sets in that defiant way of
his.

“
Everyone, please,” Lydia
twines her fingers in mine. “Bram gets these messages. Trust
him.”

“
What about the rest of
those rules or directions that are in the tablet?” Teague has a
point. I thumb the tablet and the words scroll across.

“
See?” I tap each word and
show them what each jumbled phrase really means. Marilyn gasps at
number eight,
load
tents
, and then lets her breath out when I
speak the solution.

Number nine makes Teague’s
anger rise again. “We can’t go southwest. Don’t you see?
Ten abreast snowfields
is clearly a reference to the north. Ronel himself told me we
have to continue north.”

I speak the four word
anagram which challenges his bold-faced lie: “
Don’t bear false witness
, Teague.”
The old man snorts, his chiseled face masks his feelings, but he’s
been chastened.

I finish with the tenth condition of
this odd agreement. Blake leaves to gather the other judges and to
find whatever he can to write these rules on.

* * *

Blake returned with a large aerial map,
coated with a shiny laminate on one side, but backed with a papery
substance, easy to write on with the tattoo ink still in Mira’s
possession. A young boy, just old enough for a fuzzy upper lip, had
swiped the airport map with another purpose in mind, but gave it up
in exchange for a promise from Blake to take him on the next
scouting adventure.

Blake entered the tent, unintentionally
woke Bram, who was sleeping in Lydia’s arms, and set to work
copying the ten decrees. The three of them discussed in hushed and
clipped words the trouble with changing their northern course to
southwest.

“
Harmon’s already said he
and Marilyn are staying behind until the baby’s born. The midwife
and her family have agreed to stay. Mira, too.”

“
What about their food?”
Lydia pressed. “What if the bread and meat stop falling
here?”

“
They’ll have to hunt.
Harmon can have the nano-gun. There are rabbits and squirrels and
deer. They won’t starve.”

“
We’re not leaving
tomorrow, are we? What about all that work we did to make a barrier
to the mountain?” Blake said, peeved that they labored so hard for
nothing.

Bram shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t
know. I just know we’re going in a new direction. Maybe the cloud
will lead us tomorrow. Maybe next week. We’ll have to wait and
see.”

They finished the writing on the map
and Blake stood up, held the words to the light and read them aloud
while Bram concentrated on the side facing him, the map itself. He
picked out Exodia, the river, the monument, the airport, the
expanse of ground that hid the cave-dwellers’ city, the mountain,
the old rail route, highways, villages, a national forest. They’d
made half a circle of the area and now if they went southwest they
were bound to arc their journey back around too close to Exodia. He
never wanted to go there again. The memories … the murders. Yet if
the circle hooked back sooner they’d pass by the Lunas’ ranch and
he could see his sons.

Lydia watched his face as he studied
the map.

* * *

The cloud didn’t move the next day or
the day after that. On the third day Harmon and Marilyn had a
son.

It was another month before Malcolm’s
box hummed and the cloud moved. When the sun cascaded over the
mountain its rays danced in the center of every drop of dew. Loaves
fell. People ate. The air smelled of damp pine and yeasty bread.
And the Reds were ready to leave. The morning held no curl of
dread, but stretched out straight, the southwestern path back-lit,
the shadow of the mountain pointing a new way. Some were still
frightened that the powerful earsplitting wonder would be repeated.
They followed closely on Malcolm’s heels. Harmon’s baby boy was
strapped to his mother’s chest to start this leg of their broken
journey. Harmon walked proudly at her side the first hour and then
carried the babe while she rode their well-packed horse.

At noon they trekked past an eerie
ghost town. Small pre-fabricated houses lined the road, scabby
looking, all with broken windows, front doors hanging open,
unwelcoming. Trash piled high in the weedy yards did nothing to
entice the Reds to impose themselves on the once quaint village.
They walked and rode on quietly.

The muddy ribbon of road held pools of
rainwater, reflecting the guiding cloud above until the tromping
children and the weary horses splashed them dry.

“
This isn’t so bad,” Lydia
said. “We could clean this up and make a nice little city of our
own.”

Blake’s wife, Onita, who was leading a
horse next to Lydia’s mare interjected an expression of surprise,
“Oh, this seems familiar.”

“
Familiar? Like
how?”

“
We had a little house. I
remember it had round solar windows in the roof like that one. But
we had to leave … when I was five … my family and all our neighbors
were marched to Exodia. I had a baby brother.” Her voice cracked.
“But when we got to Exodia I didn’t.”