family.”
With my stomach twisting itself in a knot over the thought of another night without food, I sighed laboriously and asked my own question,
“Would you like it if we ate you? Can we do that?”
“Ebon!” Crassus cried, “We can’t eat him, he’s my friend.”
“If he says we can eat him, I don’t think there’s any harm in it. Turtles aren’t like people. Some of them like being eaten. And if he’s your friend, he might want you to grow up strong”
“Turtle,” Crassus said, leveling his head on his hand in front of the creature and dipping his fingers in the bowl of water, “Is it true that turtles like being eaten? Do you want us to eat you?”
He placed his two fingers on the forehead of the turtle, letting the bead of water drip onto it. The turtle twisted its head sideways, letting the water droplet cascade over the ridge of its head as it slowly swayed from side to side. The water splashed in a tiny droplet onto the table, and the turtle considered it, letting its dry beak soak it up. There was no mistaking how Crassus would interpret this. He squealed again, leaping up from his chair and laughing, his eyes still transfixed on the slow creature,
“He doesn’t want us to eat him. I told you, he’s looking for his family.”
“Then put him back outside,” I said clutching my hair between my fingers, “His family isn’t here.”
“But Ebon,” he said, “He’s my friend.”
“Crassus,” I said turning harshly and staring into his misting eyes. That’s when I first saw it - the mystery. It was an innocence, an alien optimism. He had constructed a world where we would bring the turtle with us, and he had done it using nothing but loss, ash, and bone.
Together the three of us would find our families, together we would find home. Or build it. My gaze softened, “His family isn’t here. He’ll have to find it on his own. Help him find the door.”
That sunset as I sat, I remember staring into a hollowed out television set to the tune of his hungered whimpering, marveling at our collective madness.
That was what the fire had left behind. I realized then that Crassus was different from the rest of us. This is why he would ask the Plexis the same question a hundred different ways. This was why he had so fiercely defended our home, abandoning his gentle demeanor when the trial of battle raised its head. This was why he had betrayed us all when offered a chance to build a new world. There was an untamed, innocent hope within him. Euclid’s words alone would never have been enough to turn him. There had to be a genuine belief that it would work. And now he projected that hope onto me, realizing something even I couldn’t understand. I would never hurt him. Powerless, I let go of him.
So that’s where this whole thing should have ended. With my hate eroding away like so much sand, I would feel him place a hand on my shoulder and he would say something hopeful,
“Let’s bring our family back.”
With the bad-guy shot, and the city of villains fallen, we should have just wandered into the wasteland and called back the Plexis tribe. We may have been able to catch them in less than a day if we ran. We could have even taken what we learned from Euclid, understanding that our destiny in the region was to learn how to build a better future from what we had been given.
Rather than Ebon the Waste, Ebon the Builder could stand for more than just simple furniture. It could mean Ebon the builder of cities, Ebon the founder of good laws, Ebon the worthy father of our nation.
That’s how it should have happened.
I felt hands pulling me up. Rough, wild hands. The same I had felt the night I had been brought before the Thakka matriarch. Torn from my fugue, I realized we were not alone. The room had silently filled up with nearly a half dozen of the Thakka cluster’s attendants.
Down the hallway through the open door, I could see the Matriarch staggering forward. She was bruised, dragging her wobbling legs and a high-powered hunting rifle as she shuffled into the room unassisted. With her free hand she was grasping the wall that her bandaged eyes could not see. I struggled briefly as the seizing hands gripped my shoulders tightly, and I felt a noose descend around my head.
“Crassus!” I shouted desperately, “Run!”
He didn’t respond. They had him too, and they were looping a rope around his neck as well.
“Do not kill the traitors,” the Matriarch called out, a note of scorn mingling with her own grunts of exertion as she struggled into the room. Her belly, previously swollen in the last stages of pregnancy was now empty. She heaved leg over wobbling leg and passed through the threshold into the room, sniffing the air like a wild creature, an act her followers could only hope to emulate as they strained their own noses in the still air, “Whose blood is that?”
“It is their mather,” Thurrus, the matriarch’s grey eyed acolyte said from behind me. Thurrus, the man who had promised me my death held the rope around my neck, “The younger one killed him.”
“Euclid,” the matriarch said as one of her attendants took her by the hand and brought her into the room, “Then the Plexis is ours. Remove the veil.”
A younger woman walked up to the matriarch and drew a knife from her belt, gingerly placing her hand on the horns adorning the strange woman’s crown, and slipped it between her face and the blindfold covering her eyes. Pulling with one swift movement, she cut the blindfold off and let it fall to the ground. Reeling from the sudden bright light, the matriarch was dazed, once again being granted the power of sight. Once her green eyes adjusted to the light, she strode up to me. Somehow she knew I was the one she had spoken with before. She knew my fear.
“Already dead,” she whispered, confirming some hidden suspicion she had developed over our few brief conversations as her eyes explored me for the first time, “Your name was Ebon. Ebon the Waste. You came to offer me ashes while you lived in paradise.”
Impatiently, she reached her hand out and snapped her fingers to a nearby attendant. The young woman standing beside her dove her hands into a bag at her side quickly, producing a bundle of leaves. She struck a match with her fingernail and lit the leaves, squinting and covering her own nose with her wrist as a plume of smoke drifted up from the bundle.
She handed the leaves to the matriarch who brought her face close to mine, letting the smoke from the bundle snake in through her nostrils. A gentle pleasure crossed her lips. The smoke was thick, overpowering. My eyes watered and my lungs burned as the wisps drifted over my face.
“Crassus we need,” she said, “Euclid and this one are traitors. Euclid has already died, but the other - Ebon. Do not stain your blade. He will breathe his last gratefully, slain by his own hand. Thurrus, do what you will to ensure that happens.”
“I will see to it,” Thurrus said with a twisted grin, tightening the noose around my neck, “He will graciously fall on the blade when I give it to him. I promise you on my life.”
The matriarch turned to Crassus,
“Ebon's suffering stops when you agree to help us.”
“Help you?” I asked, feeling the breath stolen from me moment by moment as the noose tightened, “Help you do what?”
“What did Euclid want with this place? He was going to turn it into a war machine, wasn’t he? My scouts described the images the walking city was projecting on its screen. It was a glimpse into their past and our own future. Only in our wake, nothing will remain.”
A laconic cheer erupted from the small assembly.
“Burn them all.”
“Time to go,” Thurrus said roughly jerking the noose and dragging me from the room, “Crassus, you follow. We’re going home.”
Within moments I had stumbled and was being dragged behind Thurrus with Euclid in tow. The rope around my neck was already strangling the life from me. I could feel the beating of my heart in my ears, the thickening of my tongue and every vein in my eyes.
I gasped once, but the movement was enough to send electricity through my whole bod
y. I saw Crassus walking behind me, terrified. Another Thakka Cluster attendant was escorting him, walking behind with my hunting rifle poking him in the back. He forced himself to watch as I grasped the air toward him, dragging by the rope around my neck as we reached the elevator and it hummed open, indulging us with gentle music. My shoes squeaked on the floor as they dragged me in.
Inside the elevator our captors jeered, and Thurrus lifted my whole body up by the rope with only one of his arms. I dangled with my feet too weak to actually stand.
“Careful, Thurrus,” the other said, laughter nearly incapacitating him, “He’s about to black out. Can’t have that.” Their laughter gave way to a steady rushing hum. Consciousness fled, and I heard something else.
“Thurrus,” a familiar voice said as the elevator doors opened, “Incredible.”