Antioch

  “Looking at Margot.”

  “You shouldn’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, that’s spying. It’s wrong.” Michael sighed and drifted into a memory of Margot’s embrace, an innocent hug from her, but it felt good. He’d always liked Margot.

  Then he imagined climbing the tree outside her window. There she was, the cider mistress. She opened up, but didn’t throw an apple at him. Instead, she invited him in with a wicked grin, and he smelled her hair and held the soft weight of her flesh in his hands and tasted her skin. Ooh, filthy beast. It was an intoxicating fantasy. And oh, what’s this? Intriguing, someone’s opening the door. We’ll be discovered! Scandalous… Who could it be? Fergus!?

  Michael grimaced and shifted where he sat, coming back to reality.

  Marabbas was off on his own as well. Spying is wrong, don’t do it. But, he’d no sooner had the thought than it slipped away from him like a fish in the river. If it’s wrong, don’t do it. Wrong means bad. But why is spying bad? I like it. Margot doesn’t like it. Margot threw her apple at me and I fell. It’s bad to get caught spying.

  Marabbas said, “I like looking in Sarah’s window.” That part of the tree had better cover.

  “Marabbas!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t do that! It’s… inappropriate! God’s mercy, she’s a little girl! You should be ashamed of yourself! Don’t do that ever again!”

  “Ok.” Don’t spy on little girls…

  Michael frowned, but understood it was only the gunder’s natural curiosity. Marabbas didn’t mean any harm. And, after more thought, Michael realized that Sarah wasn’t a little girl anymore. She must be sixteen years old now. Marabbas was only ten. Though mature for a gunder, Michael thought it not unusual for a boy of that age to spy on a sixteen year old girl. Then he imagined himself in the tree outside of Sarah’s room. She giggled and opened the window. Oh, how naughty it was to climb in and be alone with her. But wait, who’s this opening the door? Why, it’s Margot…

  Michael lost several more guilty minutes to thoughts of Margot and her daughters before his conscience once again presented him with Fergus. Fwah! Samuel was right; it was foolish to remain celibate if he was going to break the most sacred vow anyway. Celibacy was a precaution, a way of ensuring his priorities, as were his vows of poverty and obedience. They were meant to keep worldly concerns from compromising his silence. Without silence, the other vows were meaningless.

  It would be easy to find a wife... He was the most powerful and important man in Antioch. There was no use in pretending otherwise. Everyone needed him to survive. He imagined there would be a hundred women lined up at his door with fresh baked pies if he made it clear that he was out and about. He could have any of them. He could have all of them for that matter, if he wanted, and the fellowship couldn’t say boo about it. It would be their suicide to shun him. In fact, he could have Margot…

  No, no. Those are just fantasies.

  It would be their suicide to shun me… He remembered the man who refused hospital earlier that day. No thank you! Michael frowned, seeing the man’s pretense of sacrificing his life for his beliefs as a foolhardy and selfish gesture, inconsiderate of the consequences to others. It must have come from ignorance. No one could know about the bauran and hold to such a principle. Michael had wanted to break that man’s neck at the time, not open the way.

  Then he thought of a man willing to sacrifice any number of lives for the sake of his beliefs. Salem will rot before I break my vows. Michael envisioned driving his caligan through Abraham’s head in the hallway, pinning him to the wall like a holiday decoration. It made the most satisfying sound - whock. Hanging from the sword, Abraham’s corpse spoke: Without strict, inhibiting law, that’s exactly what you’ll be, a devil.

  Michael shook the image from his head. He couldn’t keep violence out of his mind any better than he could keep Fergus out of his fantasies. It would always be there. Assuming every man had such a willful and disturbing imagination, and that actions were what truly mattered, he whispered, “No, no, Abraham… they’re only my thoughts.”

  Marabbas looked up. “What?”

  Michael said, “Ah, nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”

  The idea amazed Marabbas. He wondered if all men could do that. Then he started to wonder if they could “listen out loud” too and tried calling the man’s name telepathically. Michael? Can you hear me? Michael…

  Michael pulled his brush back out of the bucket. The milk was a dark, scummy gray. He stuck his finger in it for a taste. It was revolting, but it didn’t fizzle. “Marabbas, when was the last time you dipped your brush in the milk?”

  Marabbas looked from one end of the table to the other, thinking about time.

  Michael waited. Then he said, “Is it still working?” but that caused the gunder another bout of contemplation. “God’s mercy, Marabbas, smell the brush. Is the smoke dead on the brush?”

  A quick snort and Marabbas said, “Yes.”

  Michael thought about it. Marabbas had scrubbed nearly an entire banquet table with one dip. The milk was strong.

  ***

  On the lonely street outside, a frightened young man approached. He was coughing, rubbing his eyes and holding a torn note. Knowing what had happened in the Cauldron and that it was filled with deadly devil smoke, he stood far away from the open door to call through, “Michael? Are you in there?”

  Michael answered from inside, “Ah, don’t come in! Don’t come in! I’m coming out!” He emerged, wiping his hands with one of Fergus’ rags. The young man handed him the note. It read: I am at the Cauldron - Michael

  Michael’s expression went flat. He offered hospital. When the young man woke up, Michael was kneeling next to him with the bucket of scummy milk. Marabbas crouched nearby. Michael dunked the young man’s hands in the milk and told him about its strength.

  Michael said, “Tell everyone about the milk. It’s important. It’s something anyone can use to protect themselves from the smoke.”

  “Yes, sir. I will. Thank you, sir.” He started to go.

  “Wait!” Michael slapped the note into the young man’s wet hand and gave him a look of stern disapproval. “Put that back on the door of my church, please. It’s not doing anyone any good over here.”

  “Oh! Yes, sir. Sorry, sir!” He scampered away into the night.

  Michael hoped no one was waiting at the church, having missed that note. He didn’t often call names and wasn’t one to say dumber than a gunder, especially considering his company, but removing the note was such a remarkably poor decision. Michael thought of Drake and borrowed a word from Ditch. “That boy is a dookus.”

  Marabbas said, “What’s that?”

  “Hmm? Ah, It’s a word the sailors use to mean foolish.”

  “Is it dumber than a gunder?”

  “Marabbas… don’t say that.”

  “Why?” Marabbas cocked his head to one side. Everyone said dumber than a gunder.

  “I don’t like it when you say that.” Michael went to put a friendly hand on his shoulder but Marabbas flinched at the motion, ready to flee. Michael linked his hands behind his back. “It’s a bad thing to say. It’s wrong to call gunders dumb and to make light of them. It’s… it’s just not right.” He went back inside. Marabbas followed, in a trance of thought.

  When they’d finished milking the building, Michael locked the front door and moved back through the kitchen to leave. He imagined the Cauldron would smell like the biggest, nastiest sailor in the morning. At the back door, he remembered to reward Marabbas for the help.

  “That was a fine hind you had this morning. Did you have your fill of it?” Marabbas looked confused so Michael tried to clarify. “You had that deer. Did you eat it?”

  “No. I don’t like it raw. I took it back to the greer.”

  “Ah, that’s right. They do the hunting, don’t they?”

  “Yes. I like the greer.”

  “I’d imag
ine you do. You should be careful, stealing their kills away so often to Fergus. Surely they’ll thrash you for it one of these days.”

  Marabbas thought about that. Then his face squinched up with glee and he laughed. The sound was as harsh and startling as the sudden braying of a mule. Michael took a step back.

  Marabbas didn’t laugh often among men. The way they spoke confused him, often meaning more or something other than what they said. He understood this time though, and it was ridiculous! His long, sharp teeth showed in his smile.

  “No! The greer like me!” He was his pride’s Apoc. He kept the other gunders away. The greer wouldn’t attack him… not unless he startled them.

  Michael had never spent so much time alone with a gunder. The evening had been enlightening. “I see. Are you hungry?”

  All mirth vanished instantly from Marabbas’ face, replaced by a focused, animal intensity. “Yes.”

  Michael took another step back. “Ah… Fergus told me, to thank you for helping, if you did, that you can have whatever you want from the smokehouse. So, have at it.”

  Marabbas’ eyes popped and he shot out of the kitchen.

  Michael shook his head and laughed. He leaned against the doorway, listening to the ravaging of the shed. The snorting, grunting and munching were pure. That lusty gunder doesn’t worry about anything. He just takes his meals as they come. Michael felt a small pang of jealousy and then laughed at himself as well.

  ***

  The sun hid under the trees, just on the rise, and Marabbas was stuffed. A wobble from the cider in his stride, he made his way home through the deep forest to the north, to the pride.

  The pup, Barabbas, lounged in the bushes with his brother. Both of them were lean and shaggy-headed with long, toothy faces. Neither could grow a gunder’s beard yet. They had bright, blue eyes as well that wouldn’t turn amber until they matured. Barabbas smelled his father on the wind and perked up. “Apoc is coming!”

  His brother said, “Let’s get him!”

  They stalked the trail that led to the men. Their pupils were wide, black disks in the bordering leaves and their faces twitched toward any movement. They could see quite well at night, but they didn’t see Marabbas. They held their breath to listen…

  In a moment of dead silence, a sudden roaring and horrifying doom barreled through the leaves between them. The pups shot straight up into the air, twisting, hissing and screeching for their lives. It wasn’t until their father’s barks and snarls became his braying laughter that they stopped ripping through the brush to escape. Even then they stayed hidden, quivering from the icy fear he’d just poured into their veins.

  Marabbas said, “Ha ha, pups! You can’t get me… you’re a dookus!” He moved on the tree, cackling like a drunken jackass.

  Barabbas popped up and shared a look with his brother. Then they followed after their father, pushing each other into the bushes and mimicking his frightening roar.

  The greer, six adult females, heard Marabbas coming from far away. He made sure of it. When he arrived, they were resting quietly around the roots of a tree as ancient and twisted as Daniel’s oak. They were braiding each other’s hair, sewing deer skin into clothing and relaxing, preparing to sleep through the morning and afternoon. They looked similar to women until their teeth.

  Marabbas stopped in front of them, yawned and scratched. He had nothing to say. They looked up at him without anything to say either. So, since all was well, he vaulted up to his branch and made himself comfortable.

  From a distance or in the dark she appeared to be a girl of Sarah’s age, but Naila was only three years old. She’d been in season for the first time that summer and her belly was round with Marabbas’ pups. She said, “Apoc smells like milk and mushrooms.” It was an unnecessary thing to say, but she was young.

  Barabbas’ mother, Diana, stretched, flexed her thick fingers and toes and extended her smooth, hidden talons. Then she humored Naila with conversation. “That’s man’s food. The men feed Apoc.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Apoc is strong and clever.”

  Marabbas settled into the crook of his bough and looked up at the leaves, hands behind his head. He thought about the word wrong. It was one of the more confusing words. Michael used it a lot. Michael said spying was wrong and dumber than a gunder was wrong. Betheford said it was wrong to feed gunders. Fergus said it was wrong to use shortening instead of butter. The word meant, don’t do it, but it also meant why. It was the why in the word that made Marabbas curious, because that seemed to change from man to man.

  Barabbas climbed up, crouched on the bough at his father’s feet and said, “Apoc, what’s a dookus?”

  Marabbas lifted his head to look down at his son. Then he put a foot on the pup’s face and pushed. “Get out of my tree.”

  Barabbas scrabbled to hold on, hissed and fell, crashing through the leaves to the forest floor. Marabbas reclined into thought as his son mewled below and the pride brayed like a herd of donkeys in the darkness.

  17 Funerals

  The sun reddened, low in the sky, as the fellowship hurried for home. Michael stayed in the street, answering questions in the thinning crowd. He would clean the Cauldron with Marabbas later that night. Andalynn, Biggs and Ditch stood together on the steps of Betheford’s Inn.

  Andalynn said, “I was surprised you confronted Fergus like that during the assembly.”

  Ditch said, “Yeah, I kind a’ lost it, man. I was just sittin’ there, thinkin’ about how he tossed Drake out, starin’ a hole in the back a’ the guy’s head, you know? And that’s when he turns around and starts yappin’ about whatever and sayin’ he knows how we feel.” Ditch couldn’t believe Fergus’ timing. “We just keep dyin. I didn’t think this place was real, but it is, and it doesn’t matter. We keep dyin’ anyway. The stupid church splits up, makes it even worse. I’m gettin’ the murks, man, bad.”

  Biggs said, “Did pretty good today, considerin. Just need to watch our step.” He put his hand on Ditch’s shoulder. “Not us, remember?”

  Ditch nodded. “Yeah, not us.” Andalynn said it as well. The three of them drew comfort from one another and went in. Bauran seemed impossible there, in Betheford’s clean, red and white checkered dining room.

  Despite the general rush to get home, to prepare for the inevitable siege of devils, the common room at the inn was full. Some had stayed behind out of shock, others were too scared to go outside but most just couldn’t help talking about all that had happened that day. A group of sailors had gathered at one table.

  As the three marines sat down with them, Biggs said to Andalynn, “Sure you don’t wanna go on up? Figured you’d wanna be alone or sump’n.”

  “I am starving, actually, and I do not wish to be alone at all.” The infection aside, she would not have survived such serious injuries in the old world. In the new, she could be mauled by monsters and go out to dinner the same day.

  Ditch said, “The food here sucks, you know.”

  “I believe I can withstand the experience.” She smiled briefly, drawing in as she felt the scars in her expression. Ditch and Biggs smiled back but then drooped with pity.

  Locals rarely ate at the inn. The sailors ate better on the boat. Gray and salty clumps sat on their plates, some of it indiscernible as animal or vegetable. Andalynn said it could be loosely referred to as sustenance. Ditch said he’d told her it was going to suck. Biggs said it was free.

  Instead of complaining about what was in front of them, a few sailors started exchanging stories about Drake. Some of the things he’d said and done seemed funnier then, looking back, than they’d been at the time. He’d been tolerated more than loved, but he was one of them and he was gone. Dinner that night became an informal funeral for their lost friend. In that way, they’d eaten many dinners like it.

  The number of sailors in the dining room rose to twenty-four as they ventured away from their hosts in anticipation of such a gathering. Welles said, “Ditch, you knew him better
than anyone else. Why don’t you say something?” Many agreed and called for Ditch to say a few words.

  Ditch stood up. “Yeah, alright. Uh, I don’t know, man. I knew him from back home, you know. Just some dopey kid hung out at the gym. If I could a’ picked somebody to bring with me, he’d a’ been like, way in the middle a’ the list. But it was him…” He trailed off. It was difficult.

  The sailors looked around at each other. The tradition was to say something nice when someone died.

  Ditch raised his glass of milk. “Kid had guts, you know, heart. Drake was a fighter.” It was the strongest compliment he could give.

  They all raised glasses of milk. “Hear, hear!” None of them drank.

  Some later arrivals whispered at another table:

  “How did it happen?”

  “How do you think? Andalynn.”

  “Up to her old tricks.”

  They didn’t know she was there. She let it go. Biggs did not. Angry, he stood up and faced them. “What’s that s’posed to mean? Huh?” The whisperers were too surprised to answer. Everyone stared. Biggs said, “Yeah, thought so. When’d any a’ you ever get off the boat? What’d any a’ you ever do, ‘cept take a ride? Y’all got some big mouths.”

  Ditch hadn’t heard anything, but he put his milk down, his arms out and said, “Yeah, what’s up!” It wasn’t a question. If Biggs was in a scrap, he was in it too. Ditch felt like stomping somebody anyway.

  Then one of the whisperers got up, rubbing his mouth. “Mmmhmm, we all know how it is with you guys. You think you’re better than everybody else, don’t you? Well guess what, we’re not on the boat anymore. Let’s go.”

  Andalynn recognized him by his voice. It took Ditch a little longer to see who it was. Bo wasn’t wearing the mask he’d been known for on the Grace and he was groomed and dressed like a local. Only his volatility and his hatred were the same.

  Ditch said, “Biggs, wait, that’s Sue’s guy.” Sue had been the first of them to die.

  Biggs groaned and withdrew. He didn’t want to hit Sue’s mourning lover. He didn’t really want to hit anybody and felt stupid then for having stood up in the first place.