The Semaphore

They didn’t have the jam his Ma liked—blueberry and apricot—so he settled on raspberry and orange, which Fren, the grocer, promised she would enjoy.

Back at the tenement, Pontis found Doctor Darian’s bicycle leaning on a tree in the atrium. His Ma had wanted her groceries before Darian arrived. Pontis anticipated her irritation. Should he tell her what had happened? It would frighten her. He tried to think up a gentler excuse as he climbed the stairs.

But when he entered the apartment he found his Ma and Doctor Darian sitting forlornly at the kitchen table. On the counter was the fresh loaf of bread, unsliced. The phonograph was off, and a heavy silence filled the room. Even the pigeons that roosted on the tenement’s windowsills, cooing day and night, were quiet.

“Go in with Harper,” his Ma said without looking up.

Doctor Darian gave Pontis a small nod, ran a hand along the top of his short-cropped gray hair, and then looked down at the table.

Pontis placed the groceries on the counter. It was rare to see his Ma so grave. Even when she was serious, she wasn’t, really.

“Go.” His Ma’s voice was stern and flat. “Now.”

Pontis hurried down the hall to Harper’s bedroom.

“Mama wants the door all closed,” Harper said when he entered.

Pontis closed the door and sat on the floor next to his sister. She was concentrating on coloring her drawing, which portrayed a white building amid a lush green forest.

‘Is that our tenement?’ Pontis wrote.

“No,” said Harper, sorting through her box of charcoals for the proper shade of green.

‘Then what?’

“I don’t know.”

Harper’s reading comprehension had advanced enough over the last year that he could finally communicate with her—though this did not always mean she wanted to communicate with him.

His Ma’s and Doctor Darian’s voices leaked faintly through the apartment. Pontis got up and stood at the wall adjacent to the kitchen. He pressed his ear to it. For a few seconds all he heard was the echo of his own blood rushing through his head. Then slowly the words started to come through.

“…that poor girl’s been through more than most,” Doctor Darian was saying. “She’ll be full lucky to live the night.”

“I’ll do what I can for her,” Pontis’s Ma said.

“Her eyes, Fiorla,” said Darian. “A one took out her eyes.”

Pontis bristled.

“Atrocious,” said his Ma.

“She’s not so much older than Harper…”

“Darian…”

“I’m sorry. It’s just… What kind of monster… To blind a child and maim her. Carve messages into her skin. Then send her wandering through the wilderness, alone and half-starved. She’s yet to say a word, if she even can. It’s a mercy she wandered onto the Rilles’ farm. Otherwise a one would never have found her. She’d have died alone in the forest…”

“These messages,” Pontis’s Ma said. “What do they say?”

Doctor Darian lowered his voice. “Mythological gibberish. On the Plangent Age. The War on the Mountain. Other things I don’t fully recognize.” Again Darian lowered his voice; Pontis pressed his ear against the wall so forcefully that his head throbbed. “Some kind of religious fanatic. A cult.”

“Sickening.”

“And there’s more…”

Silence followed. Pontis held his breath and squinted his eyes shut. He willed Doctor Darian to continue, or his Ma to respond. A warm breeze crept through Harper’s open window, rustling Pontis’s hair. Then there were footsteps in the hall. Pontis sat quickly beside his sister on the floor.

The door opened. “I’m off to work now,” Ma said. “Pontis, stay in with your sister until Varia’s arrived.”

Pontis nodded.

“And even at that,” she continued. “Don’t put your time outside tonight.”

Pontis reached for his voice pad.

“It’s not to debate,” his Ma said. “Stay in.”

“You can help me and Varia draw where all we’re going to,” said Harper.

Pontis sighed, then nodded solemnly.

His Ma started to close the door, then stopped. “I love you both.”

“Love you, Mama,” Harper said without looking up from her drawing.

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Pontis put his hand to his mouth, then extended it toward his Ma. His Ma returned the gesture, lingered in the doorway a moment longer, and then walked away. Soon after, she and Doctor Darian left the apartment.

Pontis watched Harper work additional layers of green into the woods around her white tower. He recognized the terms Darian had used—Plangent Age, War on the Mountain—from school, but could not recall their contexts. Ien was always reading in his spare time. And he loved school. Pontis yearned to track him down and tell him what he’d overheard.

His sister focused on her drawing with the intent of a much older person, her little arm flexed, her eyes strained with concentration.

#

It was the hottest part of the afternoon when Varia arrived.

“Ma said Pontis can’t put time outside tonight,” Harper blurted.

Varia gave Pontis a curious look. “You in trouble?”

Pontis considered writing out for Varia what he had overheard. But he didn’t want to have the conversation in front of Harper.

He smiled and shook his head.

Varia sat on the floor beside Harper and picked up a piece of green charcoal. “Well, Pontis isn’t mine to mind,” she said, studying the drawing. “And where he puts his time is his business.”

Pontis watched from the doorway as Varia helped Harper color in her trees. His Ma had told him to stay home, but not for his own safety. For his sister’s. “She’s not so much older than Harper…” Doctor Darian had said about the girl. But Harper was safe with Varia. And the danger—whatever it was—wasn’t here. The girl had come from elsewhere. His Ma was being overprotective. She was being a Ma. Pontis would only be gone for an hour. Two at most. Just enough time to tell Ien what he’d heard. And maybe take a quick dip in the pond. He’d be home hours before his Ma ever returned from work.

He left Harper and Varia in the bedroom and went down the hall to the bathroom. He closed the door but did not lock it. The hot afternoon air billowed in through the open window, fluttering the lace curtains, and Pontis climbed out to meet it.

#

Ien was not on his roof. Instead, there was a note in Ien’s careful handwriting, secured under a loose brick near the long branch of the tree whose canopy grew through the roof’s middle.

‘Should a one need me, I’m down at the pond. I.M.’

Pontis looked out to the west. He could see the lush grove where the pond was nestled, and towering over it the enormous ancient suspension bridge. It reached across the forested ravine where people claimed a river had flowed hundreds of years ago. The bridge’s cables had long ago unfurled, its towers sprouted with ivy. Pigeons swarmed the towers’ acmes like whorls of smoke. After a while he forgot why he was staring at the bridge. Then he remembered that at that very moment, the boy he might love was swimming in its shadow, waiting for him.

#

The streets were quiet that time of day, when most people sought shade and respite from the heat. The shops were closed, and the few restaurants along the avenue would not open for dinner until sunset. Pontis sweated as he went, his hair clinging to his forehead. By the time he reached the grove his shirt was soaked through. He navigated the dense growth of ferns and flowering plants, turning his ear to the birdsong that trilled from every quarter of this tranquil place. A bumblebee droned lazily around his head, then landed on a pink flower with deep blue veins. A garter snake essed by underfoot. Pontis breathed the sweet, earthy air.

He arrived at the shore of the pond. Ien was supposed to be here, but there was no one and nothing except the traffic of dragonflies over the water and the crowds of frogs sunning on the lily pads along the pond’s surface. From down here, the ancient suspension bridge occupied half the sky. Its underside dripped with ivy and vines.

Pontis pushed his damp bangs out of his eyes and stepped up to the edge of the water. Was Ien gone? Had he returned to his roof? Or gone elsewhere? He looked down at the still water. A shape hunkered beneath the silt-clouded surface. A log. Or a big fish. Pontis crouched and peered at it.

The shape crashed through the surface, drenching Pontis with pond water. He recoiled and fell backward. The shape rose and towered over him, its blonde hair dripping.

“If you could see your own face,” Ien said, laughing, his soaking wet hair matted flat to his head. “Are you being funny or did I scare you?”

Pontis wiped pond water from his eyes.

Ien helped him to his feet. He liked to swim in his clothes, which now he picked at to unstick from his tummy and shoulders.

“I heard my brothers made you trouble before.” Ien pushed his mess of sopping wet hair out of his face.

Pontis waved his hand as if to disperse a swarm of gnats, then offered Ien a grin and pointed to his teeth.

“What’s it? Oh. You’ve still got all the teeth. Full good.”

Pontis grinned wider. Ien grinned back.

“Well while they were out hunting you,” Ien said, “they weren’t making their chores. Pa was stormed up. They’re about ear-deep in a week’s load of laundry here. And well-earned.”

Pontis followed Ien to a log behind a row of stonehand shrubs, where they sat side-by-side. Ien wiped droplets of water from his arms with the outside of his hand. Pontis fiddled with a reed. Ien smelled like the pond. Ien’s knee was close enough that Pontis could feel the warmth of his skin, though they were not quite touching. A brief, baffling anger welled up in Pontis at the distance.

“So what else?” Ien asked.

Pontis fished his voice pad from his pocket and did his best to transcribe the discussion between his Ma and Doctor Darian. It took him several pages, and he handed them to Ien all at once. He watched Ien’s face as he read. His brow furrowed, and his lips pursed. Pontis had to clench his jaw to resist the urge to kiss him then and there.

“Whoa,” Ien said when he finished reading.

‘What do you think of this?’ Pontis wrote.

Ien shook his head. “I’ve heard about the ones who believe all that. The Plangent Age and the War on the Mountain. The ones who pray to Malory. Full sad, to put your time on something that’s not real.” Ien looked out at the pond. “But this girl your Ma’s treating… Well, she’s real. And a one did that to her.”

Pontis followed Ien’s gaze to the water and thought about his sister.

“But they’ll take care of her,” Ien said. “Your Ma’s a full spectacular doctor. Remember my arm?” He rolled his shoulder. “Better than before it broke. Truth.”

Dragonflies darted and zoomed from one side of the pond to the other. A swallow swooped and skimmed the water. A turtle waddled up onto the shore, blinked in the sunlight, and then disappeared inside its shell.

Ien moved his knee a quarter inch so it rested against Pontis’s. Pontis breathed slowly.

“Let’s swim?” Ien asked, his hair dripping.

Pontis took a breath, then wrote on his voice pad and presented it to Ien.

‘You know I’ve got no other friends like you.’

“Those are rumors Mara Ferl created,” Ien said. “Even Brig and Byer know it.” Ien wiped more water off his mostly dry arms. “I’ve got no other friends either. Like you.”

Pontis leapt up and undressed to his underwear, then splashed into the pond. Ien followed him. The dragonflies carved angles overhead. The swallows darted. When the sun dipped below one of the bridge’s towers, casting the pond into shade, they left and went to Ien’s roof, where Ien made Pontis eat a handful of seeds, suspecting—correctly—that he had eaten nothing all day. Then they sat together on the long branch that reached across the roof and watched the sun settle against the buildings of Lowood Den and the forest beyond. As the sky reddened, Ien leaned against Pontis, and when the first stars broke out against the wide sky they both fell asleep, and Pontis dreamed of nothing but the weight of Ien’s head on his shoulder.