Lethe

  Chapter 22: Dilmun

  We walk along the beach. Sabonis struggles to maintain dominion over his limbs. One arm hangs limp. The other flings out and whacks me. His Shade keeps leaking out, and when it does he loses control of the afflicted limb. We stop frequently so he can pull himself together.

  Not all his problems are spiritual. He bleeds from the broken arrow protruding from his neck. His face is paler than pale and tinged with blue. I don’t see how he can afford to lose any more blood. But this is Lethe, where health means something different than what it meant on Earth.

  We keep close to the base of the cliff. Sabonis glances over his shoulder constantly to see if we are being followed. I am worried more for him than me. I feel invincible after emerging from the waves intact and after Alecto’s act of mercy. I hope I’m right.

  The bluff curves around to a channel separating us from the long mound of dune and scrubby hills Sabonis calls the Cape. It’s not attached to Lethe so it’s technically an island, though the strait separating it looks waist-deep at most. Sabonis says the Guides call the place Dilmun, but that name seems to irritate him.

  Dilmun is not much to look at; a collection of spits and dunes and low hills covered with stubby conifers. Though not exactly verdant, it contrasts starkly with the barren wastes we have just crossed.

  The tide, if that’s what I can call the slosh of water in this strange sea, has ebbed as low as it gets. Sabonis leans on the sand-carved, salt-bleached pole he is using for a walking stick and stares across the channel. He shivers like a scolded dog.

  “You okay?” I say.

  He gives his head a brusque shake. “Gotta keep going,” he says. “Don’t cross now … never will.”

  The channel looks shallow, but carries a current as swift as a river. A stew of flotsam hurtles by: mats of sheared off kelp, evergreen branches rusty with death and even a palm frond or two.

  “Palms,” I say.

  Sabonis ignores me, keeping his eyes fixed ahead. He pushes off his staff and into the channel. An elbow comes undone and peels away from the flesh. He jabs his staff into the mud and whacks it back in place with his good palm. “Get back in, you bastard!” he says to his elbow. “I'm taking this body with me whether it wants me or not. It's mine. I earned it.”

  His staff topples over. I snatch it before the current can carry it away. Sabonis stumbles as I hand him back his staff. The current tugs at my legs. I stay within arm’s length of Sabonis. I can picture him falling and being swept out to sea.

  We emerge from the channel a good hundred yards from where we entered. Sabonis rises up a gravel bank and sways drunkenly. I put a hand on his side to brace him. His flesh is squishy from the bits of Shade that don’t quite match up with his physical form. I yank my hand away as if I touched maggots.

  Sabonis glares. “Stop looking at me like that,” he says.

  I look off across the channel. Away from the obstructing cliffs, I can see all the way up the lava slopes to a smoking cinder cone. Sabonis lumbers off.

  We pass quickly over gravel banks onto a wide field of dunes ascending in ranks as we move in from the channel. Most of the dunes are overgrown with shrubs bearing waxy, blue berries, but some bare their gleaming sands framed delicately by encroaching lichens and mosses.

  The dunes quickly transition to a series of rumpled and wrinkled hills. Small ponds hide deep in the hollows between. The stone underfoot is far different from the pumice and lava of the wastes. We tread mostly over crumbly shale and chunky conglomerates studded with shells and quartz.

  Sabonis leads us down into a hollow undulant with tall grass and vetches, treeless but for a few venerable and scarred specimens, stout with broken and stubby limbs. Jagged splinters bleached grey crown ancient trunks whose canopies seemed to have been twisted off.

  A vague crease in the greenery marks the trail. We pass a stone wall and a collapsed foundation with cracked timbers and piles of rotting thatch.

  “A village?” I say.

  “Prospers,” says Sabonis. He squeezes his wayward elbow against his side to keep the Shade limb contained. “Quentin and Ruby. Before my time, but Andali knew them. They were a couple. Both died old, found each other here. Had a baby, even.”

  “A baby?”

  “I know,” says. “Bianca denies it ever happened. Says it’s impossible. But like you and me both know … mistakes happen.”

  “Was it … alive? I mean … not like us now. But how we were … in life?”

  “Not sure,” says Sabonis. “But her name was Diamond. Guides wanted them to give her up. They refused. Andali says this monster storm came, a 'pounder' he called it. Tore the place apart. I mean, you see these trees. Strange thing … it didn't touch any other part of Lethe. Only here. Sounds fishy to me.”

  “You mean—”

  “I think They done it. Someone up there. I heard Guides talk about Cleansings. Don’t think they were talking about bathtubs.”

  “You'd think there'd have been a tidier way of handling it.”

  “How?” says Sabonis. “Collectors?

  “Just … let her grow up and die like the rest of us. Why not?”

  Sabonis’ eyes alternately blacken and brighten. “Maybe they were afraid of what she might become.”

  My eyes drift to a little wooden box embedded in the clay, moss-covered and rotting. I flip it over. It’s a little toy cart with a single cracked wheel.

  Sabonis coughs and once he starts he can’t stop. He hunches over, racked with paroxysms that rattle his Shade loose. His face loses what little pink had managed to overcome the gray. I expect his Shade to come busting out at any moment, leaving his body to collapse like a pile of meat.

  But he keeps it together and moves on, past the remains of the Prospers’ homestead, into the thick scrub on the side of a hill. We round the hill to find another hollow, this one with glinting at us with ponds for eyes and a lagoon for a mouth protected from the sea by two mandibular arcs of sand. A floating quay bobs in the lagoon.

  We descend and Sabonis steps up the pace. He careens off trees, stumbles over their roots. The path veers towards a round mud-walled hut with a central post and a thick thatched roof. He pushes open a crude wooden door and stumbles in past a hanging partition that bisects the interior. He collapses on a lumpy mattress below a small curtained window.

  “Didn’t think I’d make it,” says Sabonis.

  “You gonna be okay?” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll be fine.” But his tone belies uncertainty.

  It’s dim inside. I can’t see what’s happening to his Shade. I stand at the partition, ogling his eclectic collection of detritus, each item weathered like they had spent months or years floating in the sea. There’s an old Sony tube TV, plug-less, its wire frayed; a row of barnacled children’s bath toys, a blue turtle, a red beaver, a yellow duck; chunks of yellowed Styrofoam, plastic bottles and poly bags.

  “I need … water,” says Sabonis. “There’s a spring … out back.”

  I grab one of the least dingy bottles and head outside. Behind the hut, where the hills start to rise, there’s a little sandy seep, dug out to create a clear pool. I fill the bottle and bring it in to Sabonis. He drinks noisily, like an old man slurping soup. Much of it runs down his face into his lap. I see that his Shade has come unmeshed at the lips. He has two noses again.

  My fingers touch something crinkly. I look down. It’s a magazine: a dog-eared and water-warped copy of the international version of Newsweek. March 12, 1974. Old news for me, but maybe not for Lethe.

  “Where'd you get this?” I say.

  Sabonis’ eyes lift open a crack.

  “Delgado.”

  “He gave this to you?”

  “Took it,” says Sabonis. “From his stash.”

  “Holy shit,” I say. The address label reads: Hector Delgado, 1137 Puerta del Cielo Blvd., Santa Clara CA.

  Sabonis grimaces and writhes on his mat. “Can you give me a hand with this
arrow? It’s killing me.”

  “Um … I’m really not good at that kind of thing,” I say. “I’m kind of squeamish.”

  “Fuck squeamish,” he says. “You’re dead. Get your ass over here.”

  I comply sheepishly.

  “It’s wedged in really tight, I think the barb’s caught on bone. If you push it in and down, I think it’ll come free.”

  “Why don’t you do it?” I say.

  “Because I haven’t got any fucking fingers,” he says, thrusting up a dangly fist, Shade fingers erect like a rooster crest.

  I try to be gentle. I take the broken shaft daintily in my fingertips and twist slightly. Sabonis moans. I back off.

  “Push the damn thing in!”

  “I’m trying!” I wiggle the arrow again. He screams.

  “Enough! Get away from me.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I tried.”

  Sabonis whimpers and squirms on his mattress. I retreat back behind the partition. The magazine tucked under my arm is a screw boring into my heart, a powerful sign that a passage to confound death might really exist. Something dark and heavy settles into my low points and smothers the little ember of hope I harbored for returning to Gina. Nothing’s going to happen without Sabonis.

  “Kid?” His voice is weary.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m gonna try and … sleep this off. There’s a spear under the eaves. Get it … use it … to keep the Collectors away. They know I’m weak. They’ll be coming for me tonight. I just know it.”

  I duck outside and find the spear tucked behind a post. It’s a head taller than me with one long, tapered point and a second point curving down like a hook. A surge of anxiety flushes away the heaviness in my heart. I grab the spear and retreat inside the hut.