Chapter Two
Jack awakens in a cage. Thick, straight branches lashed together with ropes, two long poles extending from the top, which the warriors use to carry them, like demented pallbearers. His head is throbbing as he opens his eyes to slits and looks around, searching for his mother, for Lia. There are only children in the cages, at least from what he can see. He is situated near the middle of this morbid caravan, cages stretching out in a line to his front and rear, sounds of crying and screaming all around.
He peers through the wooden slats—off to the east the sun is rising, brilliant pink gossamer clouds spreading out in a herringbone across the azure sky. Billows of smoke from his still-burning village creep over the canopy of trees.
The soot that camouflaged these warriors in the nighttime makes them look strange and unearthly in the daylight, like demonic wraiths marching lockstep through some enchanted forest. When he turns to look at the man holding up the back of his cage, Jack finds him already staring through the rough wooden bars, his gaze cold and accusatory.
He trembles to hold back tears, but cannot—his cries join in with the rest of the chorus as they bounce along in their little cages. The worst are the babies. Their cries pierce the tranquil morning and send forest creatures scurrying to their burrows. No words are spoken.
They are heading north, this much he knows. Jack has seen this landscape before. They are not a far walk from the village and he yearns throughout his body to run there now. He slides his hand along the bottom of the cage, to the corner, and tests the rope bindings there. A rough hand pries his fingers away. Jack looks up. The stare is unwavering.
He withdraws and huddles in the corner of his cage, watching the horizon bob up and down with each step taken, feeling those unforgiving eyes burn into the back of his skull. They march on like this for some time, leaving the land of his familiarity and entering unknown territory.
They pass by copses of thick, tall trees and move down a shallow ravine with a burbling stream running through at the bottom. The procession halts and the cages are set down on the sloping bank. The warriors step away, shuck their loincloths, and walk slowly toward the gentle waterway. They wade out into the waist-deep stream and scoop up handfuls of water and slather themselves with it, their flesh streaked with running darkness.
There are no longer sounds of weeping. The children are catatonic as they watch this bizarre spectacle. For one brief macabre moment nearly all of the warriors are submerged at once, thrashing and scrubbing the soot from their heads, and the surface of the water appears molten and boiling. Tendrils of black emanate from each man and cloud the narrow stream. The Nezra leave their filth swirling behind them and emerge tawny and dripping.
The cleansed warriors climb the bank and dress themselves in simple attire. One returns carrying a wooden bucket. He moves down the line, allowing each of the children to take sips from a cup that he dips and then offers through the narrow slats. When this brief respite is complete, they heft the wooden cages and continue along through the forest.
Through their tears the children gape at the gargantuan trees towering above, with auburn bark and trunks as big around as Jack’s whole cabin. He thinks briefly of the little statue he and Lia found, and longs all over again for his ruined village and his mother.
Haylen is in the cage in front of him. She looks terrified. She and Jack shoot each other furtive glances, the expression behind her eyes always carrying the same question—What is happening to us? He desperately wishes he could talk to her, comfort her, but he dare not make a sound.
The crying abates eventually, only the occasional low whimper breaks the serenity of the beautiful forest morning. The steady crunch of footsteps and birdsong are the only other noises. Overhead, the sun reaches its zenith. Warm light dappled by the leafy canopy strobes across their faces.
And still they move forward.
Their northward trek has been arcing to the west gradually, and as the sun begins to fade toward evening they find themselves marching straight toward it. They make a tight turn up a rocky hillock and Jack can see the front of the convoy. The two forward warriors are mounted, riding the backs of some magnificent beast he has never seen before—tight, dark brown coats with flowing manes, thick muscular haunches.
He scans the cages looking for Lia, to no avail. She must be near the back of the line, he figures.
When the mounted warriors reach the top of the small hill, one of them raises his hand stolidly in the air and brings everyone to a halt. He dismounts and flashes quick signals to the rest of the men and the cages are once again placed quietly and softly on the ground. The warrior takes a bow from his back. Another joins him, also armed, and they hunker down and slink over the mound.
Time passes and they wait.
Jack becomes mortified, wondering what ghastly murders they are committing on the other side of the hill.
The sunlight grows dusky and still they are not back.
Finally the two disappeared warriors crest over the top of the hill, one of them carrying a small deer around his neck and shoulders like a shawl, its limp head swaying back and forth. More hand signals and the cages are again hoisted, but only momentarily. They arrange the little wooden prisons in a circle around the small clearing and set them back down.
For the first time since morning the children are left alone as the warriors huddle and whisper to each other, the first real verbal communication any of them have witnessed among the strange clan. Several of them splinter off with knives and begin butchering the animal, and others walk off into the darkening forest for tinder. Most remain to watch the cages.
“What are they going to do to us?” Haylen whispers.
“I…” Jack’s throat catches—the thought of her question sends a new ripple of shivers down his spine. “I don’t know,” he finishes weakly.
From the vantage of this new arrangement, Jack can see more around him. He realizes for the first time that there are women along on the caravan, probably kept back at the tail end of the procession. They pick up the babies from their tiny baskets and begin nursing the ones that will feed, then bouncing and cooing the others to quiet their mewling. The women are pretty, not altogether dissimilar from the women he knew in his own small village.
He again courses his eye across the circular row of cages. There is a shrouded form bundled on the ground just outside the ring, containing the clan’s only casualty. Behind him is Lathan, a boy of five. His face is drawn back in a stellar rictus of shock. Jack tries to get his attention but the boy stares off in a daze. The children are all mangy and reeking of their own filth. They haven’t been let out of the cages once all day. They are starving. He can see the hunger in them and feel it in his own belly.
Five cages behind him he sees Lia. She is already looking straight at him, her big brown eyes still glossy and moist.
Are you hurt? she mouths, pointing to her temple on the identical spot where he feels a bruise throbbing on his own forehead.
He shakes his head. Are you?
No.
What she does next breaks Jack’s heart. She moves to the front of her cage, gripping the bars tightly, and just looks at him. Tears well up as he scoots forward and does the same. They stare at each other, simply and intensely, while the nightcalls of nocturnal creatures echo through the thick primeval woods, the last frail glimmers of sunset fading fast.
Several Nezra warriors materialize from the shadows carrying sticks and branches in their arms. In the center of the ring of cages they construct a smaller ring of stones and stack their kindling and branches there. One of them strikes a flint across a flat rod and in several moments the tinder catches a spark.
Jack holds Lia’s stare as the warm firelight oozes across their faces.
The campfire grows and the men come back with hunks of flesh skewered on sharp sticks and begin holding them over the flames. The smell is overpowering. The bucket is brought around again and they are allowed another drink.
The warriors and the several women they have brought along eat and drink in silence around the fire, while a halo of petrified faces look on with hungerlust. When they have eaten their fill they pass scraps and half-eaten bones through the slats of the cages. The children gnaw on them like wild animals, cleaning every last bit of meat and scraping at the marrow.
Settling in right next to the cages, the warriors lie down to sleep. The man carrying the back end of Jack’s cage throughout the day lies down facing him, letting his dreadful stare linger before his eyelids finally close and he falls asleep.
The next five days pass much the same as the first.
On the seventh morning, overwhelmed by fatigue and hunger, Jack is only remotely aware of the sensation of being lifted up and carried off. Sleep has been scant and tortured. He lies curled in a fetal position, the wooden bars digging into his sides, a prickly numbness spreading through his worn body. He stares in hopeless resignation as the beautiful panoramic vistas glaze by.
The terrain here is steep and the caravan cuts switchbacks through the scraggy brush as they climb the foothill. Their progress is slower today and the tired crew takes frequent breaks to unload their burdens and rest, panting and letting the slight breeze cool the sweat from their drenched bodies.
One of the men carrying Haylen’s pen loses his footing. There is a small cascade of dirt and rubble, followed by a dull thud as the cage hits the rocky upslope. Haylen lets out a startled screech, the first noise any of them have made all day. They are growing accustomed to their new reality, the futility of weeping having finally dawned on them. The men lift her off the ground and climb upwards.
After much grunting and heaving, they reach the pinnacle and lower the cages. Beyond the remote landscape the crisp gray line of the ocean collides with a pale blue sky. Most of the children have never seen the ocean before, some of the youngest have never even heard of it, and they regard it wearily.
They descend the hill as they climbed it, switchbacking relentlessly, hairpin turns creaking the wooden bars against the bindings and tipping the exhausted children at severe angles. They are cargo now, dead weight.
Down the hill and through more woods they trudge along. Jack is certain now that this expedition will never end, that he will live in this cage forever and never die, eternally roaming the forest in a tiny prison with the unrelenting glare of a maniac trained on him throughout. The last bit of adrenaline in his spent body fires off at this extreme notion and he scrunches his face tightly, trying desperately to stop existing.
The gradient levels off and he feels sunshine on his skin. He peeks at his surroundings, delirious, and what he sees makes him sit up and grip the bars, taken aback. They are parading down the center of a long straight passageway, overgrown with tall grass and shrubs, mounds of rubble rising up on either side. The piles are tremendous, flat-faced and angular. They do not look like natural rock. Crooked rectangles are cut through the stone and metal, dissolving away and collapsing, their shapes only just recognizable. A surge of realization floods his clouded mind.
This is the old world.
This is what they have spent eerie nights around the campfire fantasizing about. He’s only ever seen glimpses. It floats by like a fever dream.
They cross an intersection and Jack looks down another long, linear grass field, lined with disparate heaps of wreckage that reel off into the distance, a few facades still standing against all hope. He tries to imagine them the way they were, tries to imagine machines swirling in the sky, to see people walking on these avenues in whatever fantastic clothes they might have worn, living their daily lives here, and he can only just barely. It all seems simply impossible.
Trees grow up through some of the ruins, their branches extending from the square openings and becoming part of the very structures themselves. They pass through a monumental shadow, cast down from the tallest building any of them has ever seen, ten rows of paneless windows extending upwards, ending in a jagged mess at the top. Deteriorating concrete held together by rusting steel, fragile as a house of cards, as though the whole edifice might shift in a strong gust of wind and crush their meek procession under an absurd pile of rubble.
Their cages are set down at the next cross street. Again two armed warriors crouch with weapons drawn and creep along the cracked facades, making their way down the neglected avenue. A family of boars root and scurry around the brambles down the next block, digging their snouts into the dense underbrush. A large male disappears through the overgrown doorway of a forgotten building, while the rest mill about and move further down the way. The warriors stay sleek against the broken walls, taking cover when they can find it.
As a half-grown female trundles across the street an arrow flies, silent and straight, penetrating her side just behind the shoulder blade. She lets out a horrid grunt and tries to scamper off around a corner. A second arrow pierces her hide and she slows, zigzagging a drunken weave. The other boars are running hectic, shrieking and grunting, terrified, their squeals an offense to the peaceful afternoon. The huge male stumbles out onto the avenue and surmises the danger. He shuffles hotly, then turns tail and tears off with the other stampeding boars.
Walking slow, nonchalant, the warriors encroach upon the dying hog and slice her open with a dispassionate jerk of the wrist. They drag her carcass back and the caravan proceeds, marching on as the day grows long.
The ruddy haze of dusk sets on them and they repeat their nightly ritual, circling the cages and building a camp. The fire’s orange glow plays a freakish lightshow on the crumbling ruins, their shapes seeming to morph before the children’s eyes. A few of them cower and shield themselves as the strange shadows form phantasms that dart and flicker, looking like specters of the old world come back from their fiery ruination to seek unholy revenge.
At first light, in the crisp morning, they move.
The traces of civilization become sparse, odd mounds here and there covered with weeds and field grass. The procession turns north. They wind their way through more ruins, squat moldering buildings with a few standing outliers, then struggle up a barely worn and treacherous path until they emerge atop the high plateau.
The Temple looms before them.
A monumental palace, built of smooth off-white sandstone, enormous blocks nearly as tall as a man. Each ascending tier sets in a bit further, its tapered apex leveling off flat with a colonnade of redwood beams enclosing an ornate rooftop terrace. It cuts an imposing silhouette across the gorgeous natural landscape, stark and trapezoidal. Two wings branch off from the side, one of them still under construction, connected by high-vaulted arches formed by a labyrinth of trelliswork. Semicircles of palms radiate from the Temple’s grand entrance, framing a lavish staircase that fans out onto the grounds. At the head of the staircase, covered by a redwood portico, two enormous wooden doors stand wide open, large enough for a giant to pass through.
The plateau overlooks the misty valley, where the ruins of the old cities spread out below them in a fragmented grid. They march across the grounds. An elaborate garden encompasses the palatial structure, lush greenery, manicured trees and shrubs, with gravel paths meandering around the carefully arranged landscape. From the veranda at the base of the opulent staircase, a shallow reflecting pool stretches across the garden, its footprint expansive, its surface tranquil and cool. Several grooves funnel water through small fountains that trickle lazily in the afternoon sun.
There are people milling about. They do not scream and run for their lives when they see the murderous warriors approaching. They smile.
The children look apprehensively from their cages. The people gather around them, gawking through the slats at the grimy, terrified children curled up inside. A few of them wave. A handful of the children, bleary-eyed, wave back.
Jack peers out curiously as a man wearing a shirt of rough linen and simple black leggings jaunts down the staircase, surrounded by a small entourage, and strolls casually across the sandstone veranda, stopping frequently to greet people, moving always in the general direction of the procession.
There is now a chattering corridor on both sides of them, the throng collecting more new faces steadily. The children, independently, are each thinking roughly the same odd thought—they all have such nice smiles.
Small cottages are scattered about the gentle hillside, puffing out light smoke. Behind the Temple, built on the rise of the hill, is a broad sloping terrace with stone benches ascending up the natural rake of the terrain.
The cages are carried through an entrance just to the side of a broad, crescent-shaped stage. The heavy wooden door slams shut, leaving the giddy crowd outside—only the man in the linen shirt enters with them. He surveys the cages and moves about the warriors affably.
“Welcome back,” he says, softly embracing each man he encounters.
He looks in at the children, little more than a cursory glance, and they are all transfixed by his strange features. The man’s eyes are clearest blue, a trait lost to the Ages and rarely seen for many long centuries. The children did not imagine a person could be born with eyes of such a color, so bizarre and unnatural they seem.
The nursemaids carry their little baskets past him and he beams warmly at the infants, taking a few miniature hands into his own and playfully nuzzling them. The women give a swift curtsy and sweep their little bundles off to some other location, taking the smallest toddlers with them as well, and the man with blue eyes escorts them out.
The warriors set the cages down in the center of the cavernous room. Jack’s tormentor on the long voyage kneels by his side, tapping the slats with his knuckle. Jack is breathing deeply, hoping if the man aims to hurt him that he will get it over with quickly.
He grins, then slowly rises, holding Jack’s eyes with his own, then collars a fellow warrior and they hustle out of the chamber.
More stewards enter the holding area and start untying the ropes that lash the cages together. Their practiced hands make quick work of the task. A couple of them notice the shrouded form laid out on the cold stone floor and hurry to it, pulling back the cover and revealing the purple, death-frozen face beneath.
“Oh, Vallen, oh no,” moans an old woman. “Oh, his poor mother. How did this happen?”
“This one here.” The warrior hits the slats. “This one killed him.”
Jack peers up earnestly from his cage.
The old woman’s mouth gapes wide, shocked as she looks on Jack in horror. Gradually her expression softens and she releases her suspended breath, regarding him now with something akin to pity.
“Well,” she resigns, “I guess that’s what you should expect from a boy raised by savages.”