The Semaphore

“His name is Coden Hummel,” Doctor Inoue said.

They had relocated to the Mayor’s office for a private briefing. Now it was only Mayor Longley, Doctor Darian, Doctor Inoue, Refi Yu, and the three. They sat around the Mayor’s desk, a map open before them. Doctor Inoue indicated a point some ways north of the city of Lowood Den.

“He lives out on the edge of Rapidan, the region of hills and high plains.” Her finger tapped a spot on the northern edge of the map, right where the Lowoods ended. “You can take the outpaths a ways, before they dry up on you. From there, follow the ravine.” She traced its dark length with her finger. “Don’t stray from it. It’ll bring you right to Hummel’s door. You’ll know it when you see it.”

Laszlo leaned over the map. He was tall and well built, his hair cropped short, and his expression was stoic. But his hands would not settle, and his eyes kept returning to the door, as though some part of him were still measuring the distance to it.

“When we get there,” said Varia. “What do we tell him? What do we ask?” Her voice was level, but flatter than Pontis was used to, drained of its typical ready spark.

“Doctor Inoue has written a message for Coden Hummel that you’ll deliver,” said Darian. “It’ll hold all of it—the medical particulars, and the rest—so you don’t have to carry those details yourselves.”

“You’ll have rations to last you there and back,” said Mayor Longley. “Should you need to go further, you’ll see to your own supplies from there.”

“Further?” Varia looked at her father. “Why would we need to go further?”

Mayor Longley and Doctor Inoue communicated a silent exchange.

“We’re asking,” said the Mayor slowly, “that if you can’t find Hummel, you seek answers further on.”

“Where?” asked Varia, her black hair screening half her face. “Who else is there for this?”

Mayor Longley took a slow breath, and Refi Yu cracked his neck.

“…Where?” Varia repeated, looking around the desk from face to face.

Doctor Inoue breathed at a normal rate. “Osseon,” she said.

Laszlo exhaled.

Varia blinked around. “It’s even a real place?”

“It is,” said Refi. “I was there, way back. There’s people—historians, scientists—who put their time to studying the past, and careful. A one in Osseon can surely tell what happened to this girl.”

“You’ve never said you went to Osseon,” Laszlo said. “What did you see there? Are any of the stories true?”

“Maybe some,” said Refi. “I only made the exurbs. But I saw the towers of the city proper, and a building that climbed clean into the clouds…”

“But it likely won’t come to that,” the Mayor put in. “We believe Hummel will receive you, and tell you plenty. Then you simply come home.”

Varia touched her face pensively. “What happens to the girl?”

“You’ll bring her with you,” said Darian. “It’s the only way for Hummel to properly evaluate her.”

“And we want her out of the city,” Refi said, half under his breath.

“She can’t walk, of course,” Doctor Inoue said. “But we’ve found she takes some small comfort swaddled in blankets. The dark seems to soothe her. Laszlo will carry her on his back that way. She weighs next to nothing.”

“By rights she needs neither food nor water,” Doctor Darian said. “But we’ve decided she should drink each morning and night, to keep the pains of thirst off her. It’s a small respite from her great suffering, but one of the only ones we can afford her.”

A long silence unfurled across the office.

Pontis set his voice pad on the desk and jotted out a note.

‘What else?’ it read.

“Be watchful,” Doctor Darian said. “Look out for one another. Keep faith in the importance of your errand. What you’re doing is for the good of Lowood Den and its people, and quite possibly others beyond.”

“Depart in the morning,” said Refi. “With the sun. Rushing off tonight only brings you unready. Take today to gather your things, learn your route, and put your time with your families.”

Varia nodded slowly. Mayor Longley reached across the desk and laid his hand over hers, and for a while neither of them spoke. He had put her name in the drum himself, the day she turned sixteen, as was his duty. He could not tell her he was sorry for a thing he still held in reverence, even if he was. So he only held her hand.

Doctor Inoue looked at Pontis and said nothing.

Then for a long time the members of the briefing were silent, all looking off in different directions, the day lengthening outside.

#

Back at the apartment, Pontis’s Ma brought him into her bedroom.

“I’ve something for you,” she said, opening her dresser’s bottom drawer and rummaging around beneath her clothes. “I don’t know why I never gave it you. Didn’t feel needed, I guess. But now, with you setting off like this…” She found what she was looking for and held it to her chest while rearranging the drawer and pushing it closed with her foot. “It’s not much,” she said.

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She sat beside Pontis on the bed and held out her hand. In it was a silver pen.

Pontis took it. It was light—lighter than paper—and strangely smooth.

“It’s an ethergrain pen,” his Ma said. “Its tip’s an alloy that’ll write next to forever without running dry. You won’t want for charcoal out there, long as you’ve got this.”

Pontis peered at the pen’s sleek silver body. He pulled his voice pad from his pocket and drew a line. The pen glided effortlessly over the page, and the line was bold and true.

The line continued into the words ‘Thank you.’

“You’re welcome,” his Ma said. “Got you fresh packs of voice pads, too. You might be gone ten days, might be longer. I won’t have you losing your voice.”

Pontis nodded.

“You’re going to see things out there you’ve never seen. Things that’ll be hard to make sense of…” His Ma took a slow breath. “Just don’t forget—whatever you see, it’s all of this world still. There is nothing not of this world.”

Pontis nodded again, more softly.

“And when it gets hard out there, remember nothing worth doing in this life comes easy. I know I say it to death. But it’s the truest thing I know.”

Pontis leaned in and kissed his Ma’s cheek. She threw her arms around him and hugged him tight, her thick hair tickling his face.

“My sweet boy,” she said against his neck. “You didn’t ask for a bit of this. A one never does.” She drew back and held his face in her hands. “But you’ll meet it all the same. Put your mind on your sister, and on me, and that boy of yours, the whole way there and the whole way back. Keep your feet under you. And come home to us. That’s the only thing I demand.”

When she released him, Pontis wrote out another note and handed it to her.

‘Ien’ll mind Harper full good.’

His Ma folded the note into her pocket. “Yes, he will. You’ve good taste, Pontis.”

The room was cool and dark. Sunlight pooled at the window but came no further. A breeze fluttered the curtains. On the wall over his Ma’s dresser was a photograph of Pontis’s father, smiling faintly, a scruffy beard along his jaw. Pontis remembered him differently: gaunt and delirious, barely discernible beneath the sheets of his hospital bed. His eyes swam in those final days, searching for something. Pontis was ten years old when he died, Harper barely out of his Ma’s belly. It was only six years ago, but it felt like hundreds. The earlier memories of his father—the ones where he resembled the confidently smiling man in the photograph—were worn in his mind. The ones of him dying were clear.

His Ma followed his gaze, then placed her hand on Pontis’s. “You remind me of him in ways I can’t rightly put,” she said. “Sometimes when I look at you I feel like I’m seeing him for the first time.”

Pontis hung his head.

“There, there,” his Ma said. “He wouldn’t want us mourning him any more than we already have. We keep moving. That’s all a one can do.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I need to get back to the hospital. Your sister’s there with Darian and the nurses—running amok, I’m sure. Go put your time with Ien while there’s daylight yet. I’ve a feeling he’ll miss you more than any of us.”

#

Ien was not on his roof. Nor was he at the pond. It was the middle of the afternoon, when most of Lowood Den was indoors, and Pontis walked the deserted streets. Small thoughts crowded in: about that he’d be gone ten days at least, and that ten days was long enough for a one to be forgotten. About the time he’d overheard Reine Harpun and Nat Derner talking about Pontis, and how he wasn’t clever enough or good looking enough for Ien. About how they would still be here those ten days when Pontis was not…

When he arrived at the tenement he found Ien waiting in the doorway of the atrium.

“I came to look for you,” Ien said, his voice hoarse as if he’d been crying. “I saw your Ma. She told me you’d gone, and at first I took it she meant gone gone, out on your errand, and I got full scared. But then she said you’d gone to look for me, so I waited here. Or else we’d only keep missing each other, a one and then the other, over and over.”

They sat together on the stairs. Ien tossed handfuls of seeds from his pockets onto the cracked pavement. Pigeons descended from all directions.

“I’m going to miss you,” Ien said after awhile. “But it’s ten days is all. Go by like nothing.”

Pontis reached for his voice pad, though once it was out, he wasn’t sure what to say.

“Glad I’ll be putting my time with Harper,” Ien went on. “She’s a good one.”

‘She likes to draw,’ Pontis wrote.

“I like to draw too,” said Ien. “Not good at it. But I like it.”

Pontis pointed at himself and shook his head.

Ien tossed another handful of seeds.

The ferns growing up through the pavement nodded in the warm breeze. Beams of sunlight cut down through the atrium’s roof. Pontis closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet air and the scent of Ien’s shampoo.

When he opened them, Ien was watching him.

“So how do you want to put your time this afternoon?” Ien asked.

Pontis wrote out a note and handed it to Ien. ‘I want to spend it with you.’

Ien brushed his blonde hair aside and stuffed the note into his pocket. He took Pontis’s hand. The pigeons finished their meal and dispersed back to their roosts on the ledges, and soon the atrium was empty save for the ferns and the saplings and the golden bars of sunlight.

#

By the time Pontis’s Ma and sister returned, Ien had been gone for an hour. Pontis was in his bedroom packing a bag with clothes and items that he figured might come in handy. These included: a box of matches; a spool of rope he’d found in the ravine a couple years ago; the new pack of voice pads his Ma had gotten him, along with the ethergrain pen; and a single candle. He avoided weighing himself down with soap or too many changes of clothes. Hygiene, he figured, would not be a priority.

Once he was packed he joined his Ma and Harper for dinner in the kitchen. They ate mostly in silence, Ma speaking only to field Harper’s questions about where Pontis was going.

“He’s got errands to run for me,” she explained. “Varia too. Back in a few days.”

“Who’s gonna stay with me when you go to work?” Harper asked.

“Pontis’s friend Ien. You like Ien, right?”

“Yeah I like Ien. He knows a lot of stories.”

“Maybe you could draw some of the stories he tells.”

“Maybe.”

After they ate, Pontis cleaned up the kitchen while his Ma gave Harper a bath and put her to bed. When she reappeared she took Pontis in her arms and kissed his face.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said. “Try and get some sleep.” Then she hurried down the hall to her room and closed the door.

Pontis went to his room and got in bed. Cool air drifted through his window and riffled his hair. He tried to picture what might happen tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. He thought about the girl, spending her final night in Lowood Den’s hospital. Images of Ien’s face flashed and dimmed. Pontis buried his face against his pillow, where he could just barely smell the traces of Ien’s hair.

Around midnight he got up and went down the hall to Harper’s room. She was no more than a dark shape beneath her blankets. Pontis stepped carefully to avoid waking her and sat on her bed. He listened to her breath, and matched her breathing with his own. As his eyes adjusted to the dark he looked at the drawings tacked to the walls. She had hung the one of the white tower in the forest. Beside it was one of yellow hills, with a strange object atop one hill that looked like a black cake with golden specks, all beneath a starry sky. There was a drawing of a city of dark buildings, and another of a colorful town against the sea. There was one of a room with sweeping staircases, and one that appeared to be a simple blank piece of paper.

“Are you gonna come back?” Harper’s voice startled Pontis. She had rolled onto her back to look up at her brother from barely open eyes.

Pontis nodded earnestly.

“You promise?” Harper asked. “Because everyone’s acting like you’re not. They’re acting like you’re going away forever.”

Pontis took Harper’s little hand out from beneath the sheets and used his index finger to spell out, ‘P-R-O-M-I-S-E’ on her palm. Then he folded her hand closed and set it down softly.

“Okay,” Harper said, her eyes fully closed again. “I believe you…”

Pontis remained beside her for the rest of the night, at one point dozing, and only left once the first wisps of daylight appeared through the window.