The Semaphore

The Hall’s yawning domed ceiling was crossed with steel beams. The enormous circular south-oriented window welcomed ample sunlight—the cloud cover had burned off by mid-morning—and dust drifted in it, constant and light. Chairs were arranged in the main room, enough to accommodate the entire population of Lowood Den, all facing the low stage erected for last fall’s Viridian Day, which had yet to be razed.

Pontis’s Ma took a seat on the stage between Doctor Darian and Mayor Longley. With them was Refi Yu, Lowood Den’s chief peace officer, and, on a low table before him, a squat wooden drum that Pontis had seen brought out only twice before in his life. It was old—older than the Hall, people said—its slats worn pale at the seams, a hand-crank fixed to one end. They watched, silent, as people filed in. The children—anyone under the age of fourteen—were led to a room off the main Hall to be overseen by a group of their teachers.

Pontis and Varia found seats together near the front. Varia waved to her father, who nodded and offered a solemn smile.

Pontis scanned the crowd until his eyes met Ien’s. He sat all the way on the far side of the room, among his family. The twins glared at Pontis.

Finally, when nearly everyone was seated, Mayor Longley stood and cleared his throat.

“Everyone,” he said. “Thank you all for putting your time here today.”

The crowd directed their attention forward.

“There is a circumstance that you must all be made aware of.” Mayor Longley clenched his jaw briefly. “It’s not an easy thing to speak of. But Lowood Den has always kept to transparency and democracy, and there will be no exception today. Now I need you all to listen careful to Doctor Darian, who’ll explain what’s happening. I’m sure there’ll be questions, but I’ll ask you save them for the end. Doctor…”

Mayor Longley returned to his seat as Doctor Darian stood. A few people in the crowd took advantage of the transition to cough and shift in their seats.

“Thank you, Mayor.” Doctor Darian’s hands fiddled at his waist. “I’m not going to mince words. The children are in another room, out of earshot, and there’s good reason for it.” He cleared his throat. “The night before last, Andon Rilles heard his dogs barking and went out to have a look. He came upon a girl walking through his field, nine or ten years of age. Nude, half-starved, and full alone. And she’d taken certain… injuries. For one, her eyes had been cut from her head.”

There were gasps and whispers. Someone shouted, “No!”

Doctor Darian closed his eyes briefly, then continued. “On top of that, a one had carved writing into her skin. Messages, we think, meant for us, or whoever found her. These messages touch on the legend of the Plangent Age, as well as things we’ve no reference for at all. That aside, the girl’s been in our care since yesterday morning. In the care of Doctor Inoue, particular.”

Darian gestured to Pontis’s Ma, who lowered her head.

“The girl’s in grave condition,” Darian continued, wiping his forehead. “And after examining her careful, we’ve reason to believe her turning up here, in Lowood Den, is a warning. That something far worse may be happening.”

“What are you on about?” someone shouted from the crowd.

“What’s it to do with us?” someone else yelled.

There was a chorus of agreement.

“Send Refi’s people out on the outpaths!” yelled a woman.

“It’s not so simple,” Doctor Darian said, raising his palms for quiet.

“Quit trying to fright us!” a man called.

“We’re safe here!” a woman shouted.

“We may not be,” said Darian.

“You’re not making sense!”

“Let me finish…” Darian implored.

“This is absurd!”

“Why’s it our problem?”

Doctor Inoue stood up so abruptly that her chair teetered. “Because the girl won’t die!”

A murmur passed through the Hall, and there was silence.

Doctor Inoue walked to the front of the stage. When she spoke again it was in the flatter, careful voice she used for medicine, the words laid down one at a time. “I spent over twelve hours with her. I did everything I could to heal her, to treat her wounds, to give her a solace from her pain. But her body is too badly hurt. The excision of her eyes, the deep lacerations in her skin—many of them infected—not to mention the severe malnourishment and dehydration. It has long been our way that we do not abide long suffering here. At five o’clock this morning, I administered the standard euthanizing dose of somniferum. When it did not work, I administered physical intervention. But her heart went on beating. And her nervous system went on answering to stimuli.” She steadied herself and lowered her volume. “We tried other methods, including stopping her heart by hand. Even that failed. Something we cannot name is refusing her the dignity of death. As I speak, she knows nothing but agony. This is outside the purview of science and medicine—at least the science and medicine we have.”

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The crowd was silent. Overhead, a pigeon flittered from one beam to another.

“Please understand the gravity here,” Doctor Darian said. “Whatever it is that’s gripped this poor girl, it’s beyond us to treat or even understand. We can’t risk such a fate falling on a one in Lowood Den.”

“Is it catching?” someone asked.

The crowd moaned.

“We don’t know,” Doctor Inoue said. “But she’s isolated. We’re taking every reasonable precaution.”

“Get it out of here!” a man shouted.

“What do we do?” a woman cried.

“In her youth,” Darian said, trying for calm. “Doctor Inoue studied under a man, an expert not only in the physical sciences but a great deal else besides. Fiorla—Doctor Inoue—and I agree that this man may have some answers for us, some counsel on what we ought to do. He may even know ways to help the girl. He lives a five days’ walk to the north.”

The crowd stirred in discomfort.

“We don’t raise this lightly,” said Mayor Longley, rising again. “And we know it’s out of keeping. But if you could see this girl…” The Mayor swallowed and exhaled through his nose. “If you could see her, as I did this morning, as Doctors Darian and Inoue have, then you’d understand what’s at stake. If we don’t act here, we’re neglecting the safety of our own children.”

“We have to know,” Doctor Inoue spoke softly.

Mayor Longley stood a moment with his hands flat on the table before him, as if to draw something up out of it.

“The girl has to be carried north to this man,” he said. “And if this man can’t help her, she has to be carried further still. It’s a long road, and not a safe one. I won’t stand here and pretend it otherwise to any of you.” He looked out over the Hall, and for a moment his eyes found his daughter, and moved on. “Lowood Den has set its hardest labor the same way for a hundred years. The levees. The deep wells. The winters we don’t talk on. We don’t choose who bears them, because a one who could choose would choose wrong, every time, in favor of his own. The drum chooses. And we abide it.” He paused. “There’ll be no exception today. No exception.”

A stillness settled over the room that Pontis felt before he understood it—the particular quiet of a thing everyone present had grown up beneath, and that had never once, till now, turned its face toward him.

Refi Yu rose and set his hand on the crank.

“We will make three pulls. From every healthy soul, sixteen to fifty,” he said—not because a one had forgotten, but because the words were part of it. He turned the crank, and the drum revolved on its axle with a dry, rushing sound, the sound of a hundred years of names sliding over one another in the dark. Somewhere among them, Pontis knew, was a chip with his own name cut into it, dropped in on his last birthday, the newest name in all that worn wood.

“Wait!” a man stood from the crowd. “Don’t we get a time to prepare?”

“You want to put this off?” Refi asked, his arm coming to rest and drum stilling. “What part of this hardship do you want to sit in for a time? And what then? Hours? Days?”

The man did not respond, and after a few seconds he sat down. Refi resumed turning the drum.

The chips rushed and clacked within.

Refi stopped the drum, reached in without looking—the not-looking was the whole of it—and drew a chip. Then he read it in the flat tone this all demanded.

“Laszlo Ferrir.”

A murmur moved through the Hall. Toward the back, a young man Pontis knew only by face got to his feet. One of Refi’s own deputies. He nodded gravely toward Refi, then nodded again out at the gathered before sitting again and disappearing from Pontis’s view. He was a strong young man. It was a good pull.

Refi turned the crank again. The names rushed and settled. A pigeon shuffled overhead.

Refi reached in and drew.

“Varia Longley.”

For a breath nobody moved.

On the stage, Mayor Longley closed his eyes and raised his face to the ceiling, and a noise came from him like one made in sleep.

Beside Pontis, Varia had gone very still. Her hand found the edge of her chair, and squeezed there until her knuckles went white. When she stood, she stood as if her legs had gone to sleep beneath them, and she looked at her father, and her father looked up at the ceiling. Then she sat back down and stared at her hands.

Refi turned the crank a third time, stopped, and reached into the drum. In the half second before he withdrew it, Pontis’s stomach made a soft gurgle. He thought about Ien, somewhere across the way, obscured by heads and bodies. He thought about Harper, in the other room, playing with blocks or drawing, and wondered if she sensed that what was happening out here mattered, or if she was blissfully unaware, as intended. He thought about Varia, beside him, her eyes down, breathing slow. He thought about what his father would do, if he was here…

Refi held up the final chip, and read it.

Pontis’s Ma was on her feet before the name had finished leaving Refi’s mouth.

“He can’t—” she began over the murmur. “He can’t call out. Was he to be hurt on the road, was he to stray, to need help—he’s no way to—” She stopped. Every face in the Hall had turned to her, and not one of them unkind, and not one of them about to move. The pull did not care that Pontis was mute. The drum did not know he was hers. That was the reason they turned to it, in these moments. That was the reason it was sacred.

Pontis’s heart beat, and his ears rushed. He turned to Varia, who looked back at him, wide-eyed.

His Ma sat down slowly—the worst thing Pontis had ever watched her do—and stared off. Then slowly her eyes found Pontis’s, and they were full of fear.

“Who will mind Harper?” she asked, at a normal volume, as if they were sitting in their kitchen.

Across the Hall, a chair scraped. Ien stood among his family, his blonde hair bright where the window-light fell through it.

“I’ll mind Harper.” He said. “Every day of it. Till they’re home.”

Pontis’s Ma looked at Ien. Then she bowed her head.

And after that there was a long silence. Until, as if by some command, everyone in the Hall got to their feet, their chairs groaning, and stood for the three the drum had named. It was the town’s oldest courtesy.

Pontis rose because everyone else had, though his legs did not want to. Varia stood in unison, and their hands found each other’s, and their fingers interlocked.