The Secret City (4 page)

It’s then I notice the stone I’m sitting on seems to be part of a wall and there’s a symbol carved there, weathered away to almost nothing. I’ve forgotten my own language and writing, but I remember this. It’s the syllable
ath
. An entrance marker. My people
have
been here. How can it be they were here so long ago as to have this sign almost completely worn away? Or is the symbol only half carved because my people were snatched home before they could finish it? Were they like me and didn’t want to leave?

I follow the wall farther up and see another symbol. This one I’ve forgotten. The farther I go, the higher the wall, and I see more of my people’s syllables.

Excited as I am, I’m too hungry to look farther. I roll up the poncho and hide it and the knapsack in a gap behind the wall and go in search of breakfast.

I find a patch of Solomon’s seal, find a digging stick, and scrabble at them until I dig up the roots. I eat them raw and unwashed, crunching dirt. Then I follow the stream lower and find the elderberry bushes I’d seen as I came up the night before. It was getting dark and I was too tired to pick them. I eat some and then wet my shoulder and sit beside the stream where there’s an overhanging bank. A good place for fish. I sit so quietly all sorts of little creatures come out right beside me, a chickadee, a pica, a marmot…. Not everything has gone south or lower down. Not everything is hibernating yet.

ALLUSH

H
E WAKES YELLING
. I
ALMOST JUMP OUT
F
ROM
behind the wall to see what’s wrong, but I don’t want him to see me until I find out more about him. And people from the Down have guns. (We do, too, but no bullets anymore.)

After he hides his things, I take them and hide them in a spot of my own, but first I examine them. The jacket is worn out and ugly. They call that corduroy. The sweater is worn out, too. It has different colors. It reminds me of when the old ones dressed as tourists. Our parents wore glasses even though they never needed them, and they always had field glasses and cameras and flowery shirts and bright sweaters like this one. I liked when we dressed like that. I used to have a flowery blouse my parents brought me from the Down. If I ever get back there, I’ll get myself another one. You need money down there, though. I wonder if there’s any somewhere up here or did the old ones use it all up. That’s another way to make us have to stay here.

After I examine his things and hide them in a place of my own, I follow where he went, down towards the stream. He limps and leans on his cane. He
is
lopsided. I wince when he eats seal roots without washing them. After that, he heads straight to the elderberry bushes as if he knew they were there. He stuffs berries into his mouth.

Reaching is evidently painful to him. He doesn’t use his left arm much. Probably that’s also burned but I can’t see under his shirt.

After gobbling berries … it’s got to be including stems, I’ve never seen anybody this hungry … he stops by the stream, takes off his shirt, wets it and holds it to his face and shoulder. As he sits and soaks himself, he watches the fish that always rest under the ledge. I suppose he’s thinking how to catch them. Then he sits so still in the shadows of the blowing leaves, I almost don’t see him anymore. I sit still, too, (our second lesson) and watch.

Our first lesson was the freeze. How
not
to ever use it. I never understood why not. I don’t think the stare that immobilizes is unknown here. Why is it forbidden? Also I wonder—if it’s never practiced—can it still be there at all? I know I have it. I’ve tried it a few times—on animals that is, but never on people.

LORPAS

W
HEN
I
COME BACK TO PICK UP MY BUNDLE, MY
few belongings are gone. My matches, my flashlight, my pan, my sweater….

I hid them well. Someone must have seen me. I hate to think what the night will be like without my tarp or without matches. I had been looking forward to cooking the Solomon’s seal next time and to roasting a fish. And who took it? I hope one of my own kind.

I follow the wall I slept next to, yet higher, slowly, looking for my bundle, but also at everything else. I use my cane to probe likely spots where my bundle might be. Farther on, the wall is almost as high as my head. I pull away some of the brush and see the faint tracing of an animal. A
lorp
. I remember what it’s called in my own language because it’s the beast I’m named for. Mother drew it for me often. Side view just like this, its feathery topknot raised, its mouth open in a grin of warning. Though small and usually friendly, it was fierce if need be. It was used to guard entrances, sometimes in the real and sometimes, as here, in effigy. Mother said we were too civilized on our world to need them in the real anymore. Besides, she said, our people only had towers now. All of them looking as if they’d lift into the air at any minute, unlike anything on this world.

If there’s a
lorp
, there should be an entrance nearby but I don’t see one.

I climb the wall with the aid of a sapling growing next to it. Several steps beyond there’s a tall doorway with trees right in front of it. It’s of stone. I can’t budge it. I knock. Foolishly. I actually knock on rock and scrape my knuckles. I examine it more closely. It’s part of the granite cliff it’s set in. Why would anyone make a huge phony doorway in the forest directly behind trees so you can hardly see it?

I go on. I find a stone gateway (flanked by
lorps)
and go through it. Just beyond it, on a fallen log I find my pan, and in it there’s a small piece of dried meat. Looks like squirrel or gopher—or maybe rat.

I sit beside the pan. I look. I listen. Silence, except the general rustle of the forest. Ground squirrels, juncos, jays.

I say, “Thank you.”

I’m glad my voice is husky and low like all my people’s.

I chew on the stringy meat.

Then I hear a sound high in the top of the trees. My kind were never known for climbing. We’re strong but chunky, heavy people. Awkward at such things. I look up. I can’t see much but there’s somebody up there.

I say, “Thank you,” again, then, “Please come down.”

It holds stone still. That’s like one of us. But natives can do that, too.

“Please.”

But it won’t.

I wait a bit more, then take my pan and go on. Listening, watching, looking up.

I find a grand stairway—must be twelve or so, wide but low steps, and behind it, another great doorway with a whole row of
lorps
across the top. Though it looks more real than the other door, I can’t move it.

As I turn back I find the jacket lying on the steps. I sit beside it and look up. As before, there’s somebody in the trees.

“Come on down. I won’t hurt you.”

As I sit, I see what might be a window, low and narrow, and only about five or six inches above-ground. I notice it because the glass catches the light when the leaves blow. Just beyond, there’s what might be a chimney. It looks to be made out of a rusty tin can. There’s a wisp of smoke rising from it.

I go to examine the window. I lie down and try to look in, but it’s too dark. Definitely a window though, made from an odd-shaped chunk of broken glass. Just beyond, I find what might be a doorway. I think, here, at last, may be a door I can enter, but that, too, is fake. I can open it, but it goes into a mass of tree roots. Impossible to pass beyond them.

I hear a noise, look up fast and see someone close above me. Clearly one of my own kind, wild red streaked hair, a dirty face. Doesn’t this place have combs or washcloths? She … I think a woman … ducks out of view.

“Thank you for the meat.”

I hear the cracking of branches as she moves, in a hurry, farther away. I say, “Be careful.”

Maybe if I talk more.

“My name is Lorpas. I saw the
lorps
in the doorways.”

I know she can see I’m one of us, but I say it anyway. “I’m one of us. From Betasha. A Betasha Bob. Or Boob.”

No answer.

“Did you call yourselves Boobys like we did?”

From the sounds, she has come closer. Then I think she’s here and I carefully don’t turn to look. But then I do, fast, and it’s just a ground squirrel.

I get up to explore further. I trust she’ll follow.

I come to a great avenue. I pace out its width. Here are the largest trees, as though it had once been tree-lined, but there are so many other big trees growing from the middle of it that only an examining eye could tell, or an imagining mind would guess.

I check another grand staircase on the far side of the Avenue. There’s carvings across the riser of every step. At the end of the steps there’s a sort of spire. For sure supposed to be at the top of a tower. It doesn’t look like much on the ground.

All this is trying to look like what Mother meant by her “white, shining, flying cities,” though I don’t find anything more remarkable about it than what’s on this world. And these buildings are ponderous and more gray than white because of the granite they’re carved from. Mother had talked of spires where … “flying sails” she called them … moored … but here, in order to hide, there can’t be anything taller than the trees. I suppose it’s unfair to compare this town with what it was trying to imitate.

I go on. I push at doors and only manage to open one and that one, huge as it is, opens to a narrow hall. There’s a pallet as though someone slept there, in the dark, windowless cupboard.

As I come down the steps, I scare a deer and wonder that it’s still up here in the cold. Then I see it limps as I do and then I see it’s hobbled. Perhaps part of the larder for later.

I’m doing the right thing by ignoring her. She wants to be noticed. She starts dropping pinecones on me. I sit on the stairway and let myself be pelted.

I talk again.

“How well you climb. I always thought our kind wasn’t good at that.”

Silence.

“How well you throw. You never miss.”

“…. “

“Down below, with the hoodwinked, my name was Norman North. Do you have a native name?”

“….”

“I’ve lived my life below with all my food store-bought. All my clothes, too.”

I say that because hers aren’t. What I could see of them looked pieced and patched. And that tough piece of dried meat…. I couldn’t guess what it was.

“I don’t know what it’s like to live up here. I wouldn’t know how.”

She doesn’t come down.

I get up to do more exploring. The pelting stops but now and then I hear her above me in the trees. I keep to the avenue. It’s hard unless one watches for what might be the curb. I come upon a park. It’s surrounded by a low wall that has intaglio portraits of odd plants. The wall is pink tuff. The stones would have had to have been brought from the pink cliff far below. I kneel and study the carved flowers. Mother drew several of these for us but some are new to me. I start naming the ones I know out loud. When I get to
allush
, I hear her drop—a safe distance away. I don’t look. This time I know it’s not a ground squirrel.

Allush
, a tiny flower that grows in clusters and only opens in the light of the blue ice moon when that moon is full. Its fringed leaves have a yellow center and blue outside. It was one of Mother’s favorites.

I say, “Allush,” again.

I turn around, carefully staring at my feet. I sit on the wall. Then I look.

She’s cross-legged on the ground a few yards away.

I haven’t seen any of my own kind since my parents died, my sister left, and I went off on my own without an address. I’m fascinated. I’m trembling with…. I hardly know what. Anticipation? Joy? Yes, joy. This whole place. The secret city that I’ve always wished for, always hoped really did exist. And now this woman.

She’s dressed in tan leather, lines of green and red stitching all over it, holding it together, but also forming symmetrical designs. It imitates pine needles and helps to hide her in the trees. On her feet are moccasins exactly like the Indians of this land used to wear. Her great mop of black hair is streaked with the red typical of my people when they get in the sun. It’s matted and tangled. Have they gone completely wild up here? But how could they not?