FORTY-TWO
The sun beats down on the open deck of the warship. Most of the men are huddled beneath makeshift shelters strung along the starboard rail. The less able are below deck, squatting in ankle-deep water. An eerie emptiness flowed in the wake of the storm which had blown us west from Troy, and our ship was trapped in the endless calm. We have not felt a breath of wind for many days.
“Do you ever regret not staying and fighting?” Aeneas and I are sitting in the rear of the boat, keeping an eye on the unmoving tiller.
“In which battle?” I ask.
He makes a noise in his chest that might have been the start of a chuckle. He fumbles for his water skin, takes a tiny sip, and then offers it to me. I am not thirsty, but I take it nonetheless and pretend to drink. We have to conserve what little water we have.
Our boat is leaking, and too many of the men have fallen prey to sun sickness. Our vessel is a warship, not a transport, and it was never meant to be the home for the number of men it currently carries. Though, in a few more weeks, our company might number so few that we won't have enough strong men to work the oars.
“The Achaeans were inside the gate,” I say as I hand the skin back. “Priam's spirit broke when Hector died. What would our deaths have accomplished? Killing a few hundred more Achaeans?”
“What else is there for fighting men such as ourselves?” Aeneas asks.
This is not the first time he has asked this question, and I have tried to discern the answer that he seeks, but I fear my responses have never been suitable enough.
I hesitate before answering this time, glancing over at Aeneas. His skin is much darker after weeks at sea—as is mine—and our bodies are thin and wiry. We have stopped wearing our armor. It fits poorly now, and carrying the extra weight on board the boat is a foolish proposition. Very few of the men have shown any aptitude for swimming.
“I don't know,” I say, unable to muster the enthusiasm to craft different rhetoric.
“Nor do I,” he admits. “We have always turned to the gods for our answers, haven't we? When do we plant the crops this year? Let's ask the gods. Is tomorrow an auspicious day to smite our enemies? Why, yes, the gods think so. Shall I marry this buxom wench? The gods appreciate the offering her dowry will afford.”
“The gods always appreciate a bountiful marriage,” I point out.
“But we have no temple out here,” he says, waving a hand at the sky.
I remain silent, already anticipating where this conversation is going.
“Before the men grow too weak to row, we should ask for a sign,” he says.
“And how would we find this sign?” I ask. “We have no goats or pigs to offer as a sacrifice.”
“We have no hope either,” he says, looking at me.
“If I do this, we stray from the path we have known. We will no longer be the men we were.”
He laughs, a sick wheeze hiccuping out of his chest. “We are strangers already.”
“Who are we then?” I press him, seeking some sign that he was not gripped by the madness that came from too much sun.
“That is the question I want you to ask of the gods, my friend. Who are we destined to be?”
He offers me his knife and, on unsteady legs, I clamber down into the damp hold. The men, instinctively sensing I am on an errand none wish to witness, make way for me. Many of them flee for the upper deck even though they are too weak to withstand the sun's heat for long. In the darkest corner of the hold, I find the few men who have tried to crawl as far away from the others in preparation of dying. Only one of them is conscious enough to be aware of my approach.
“What is your name?” I ask.
“Tymmaeus, my lord,” the sick man responds. His shoulder is festering with a foul blackness. I remember him. He had taken an arrow in the shoulder as we were boarding the boat. We had tried to get the tip out, but hadn't been successful. His wound hadn't closed, turning red and then black as rot set in. Tymmaeus tries to sit up, but he hasn't enough strength to do much more than breathe shallowly. His body is hot with fever, and his skin is slick with sweat. He was a young man when he came aboard the boat, but he looks much older now.
I show him Aeneas's knife, and he squints at the blade.
“It is a warrior's death,” I tell him.
Licking his lips, he nods and tries to arrange his body to make my task easier.
“Close your eyes, brave Tymmaeus,” I instruct him. “You do not need to see this death coming.”
“I already—”
I don't let him finish, sliding the knife into his heart so that he dies as quickly as possible. I withdraw the knife and slit his belly.
His guts burn my hands, and I root through his viscera until I cannot withstand the pain any longer.
Aeneas has ordered the men to the oars, and when I emerge, red-handed, from the darkness of the under deck, he shouts to me. “Which direction?” He is standing beside the tiller, leaning toward me, eager to hear my augury. Eager to know that the gods have not abandoned him.
I raise my hands, puffy and swollen. Red with Tymmaeus's blood. The sun beats down, its rays inflaming my hands. I don't know how I can feel anything through the pain, but I do. It is the gentlest of caresses, the light touch of a zephyr's kiss.
“That way,” I say, letting the wind stroke the back of my burning hands.
At the top of the cascade of salt farms is a row of white-walled huts, nestled against the base of another hill that rises much more steeply. There are people wandering back and forth along the upper edge of the farms. They've been watching since I started my rambling run along the brick-lined edges of the basins. When I reach the last few rows, the watchers scatter. It is one thing to spot a monster; it is another thing entirely to meet it face-to-face. The only thing moving along the rim when I arrive is a tiny wind, blowing dust along the walls of the huts. A zephyr.
I've been thinking while I clambered up the hill, letting my brain get lost in my history as a distraction from the waves of pain coursing through my body. My skin is still raw and the weight of my clothing is a fierce torment, but my strength has not been sapped by the sun as I had expected. I have been burned by the sun numerous times during the twentieth century—a growing concern brought about by the vicissitudes of the modern world—but this time, I can live with the pain. I do not entirely know the source of my willpower; perhaps it is a reaction to seeing Phoebe survive sunlight or a facet of my conversations with Escobar or even strength drawn from my memory of the last augury I did for Aeneas.
I have lost my fear of the sun.
And with it, so too has my fear of abandonment vanished. I have turned my back on Arcadia, even as Arcadia has exiled me. I have nowhere to go. No home that I can return to. But my exile is not a yoke about my shoulders. The salt and the sun have stripped away all that dead weight.
The huts are tiny little domiciles, transitory living quarters for the farmers as they tend to their basins. I find little in the few that I break into. Most have tiny refrigerators that aren't very well stocked. What fruit I find I eat without reservation, replenishing my depleted cells. I can feel my body relax, no longer crippled by the desiccating salt of the basins. I'm a long way from being whole, but I'm strong enough to keep fighting.
Tucked between two of the huts, I find a worn bicycle. It is covered in dust and might have been green once upon a time. Wire baskets have been welded between the handlebars and on either side of the back wheel. The nut holding the seat in place is stiff, but I manage to get it started so that I can raise the seat. It has a metal bell, and I flick the ringer with my thumb as I ride toward the dirt road that runs past the edge of the farms and heads further uphill.
Ding! Ding!
Moray, the farming site where the Incans experimented with seeds, is only a few kilometers away. That's where the helicopter was going. Hyacinth Worldwide is building something there, and I suspect it is Escobar's great secret. The place where he is building the chimerae.
Ding! Ding!
The ringing of the bell is both a tribute to the dead and a warning to Escobar.
I'm not done yet.