The Semaphore

Refi Yu met Pontis and Varia outside the Hall before sunrise.

Laszlo was already there, and Pontis’s stomach knotted when he noticed the conspicuous black satchel fastened to his back.

Varia had cut her hair. Not much, but enough that her bangs ended just above her eyes in a nervously serrated hack. She carried a long, sturdy walking stick with a leather-wrapped handle. “Sleep any?” she asked as Pontis neared.

Pontis shrugged.

Refi sorted through a large sack on the ground. He pulled three smaller bags from the sack and handed them out. “Flints and kindling in each, and food enough for ten days, was you to pay attention. Water’s a different story.” He pulled out three gourd-hide jugs. “Carry any more than this and the weight’ll make you sweat faster than you can drink. You’ve enough for six days. Run out before you arrive, look for streams over ponds, and mind you boil all you plan to drink.”

Pontis, Varia and Laszlo fastened their food bags and gourd-hide jugs to their backs in rote silence.

“There’s also this.” Refi produced a bottle of proof from the sack. “Not for drinking, unless you’re after knocking yourself out. Antiseptic. Use it sparing.”

Pontis placed the bottle of proof in his bag.

“And one last thing.” Refi reached into the sack and pulled out two hunting knives. “Had these lying around.” He handed one to Varia and the other to Pontis.

“Where’s yours?” Varia asked Laszlo.

Laszlo lifted his shirt, revealing a long knife fastened to his belt. “Always with me.”

“Laszlo’s got the map,” Refi said, “and a good compass. Though you shouldn’t want for either. Long as you don’t lose the ravine, you’ll get where you’re going.”

Varia’s walking stick clacked with an anxious staccato on the pavement. “So that’s it?”

“That’s it,” said Refi. “I hope to see the three of you in ten days. We’ll be thinking of you. The all of us. Now good longs.” He took a moment to scowl at the black satchel on Laszlo’s back, then walked off down the avenue and disappeared in the predawn gloom.

Laszlo adjusted the weight of his baggage and started off to the north, in the direction of the grove, without another word. Pontis and Varia exhaled in unison, and followed.

#

The Lowoods sprawled beyond the city of Lowood Den for a hundred miles around, yielding only for the smattering of farms on the city’s northern edge and for the city itself. An old trade path, which ran north to south, met the city on its eastern border, then petered out into sporadic clumps of concrete and, quickly, nothing at all. Beyond, the faint outpaths provided passage through the tangle of trees, dense overgrowth and paludal ground. They traced the ravine’s western side, meandering around mossy boulders and small ponds.

The trees were mostly monk elms, their stout trunks and wide canopies obscuring the sunlight into milky green. Underfoot, the soil was rich and dark. Mushrooms grew all summer along the elms’ roots, and blankets of ferns wavered along any and all even ground. Songbirds whistled relentlessly from their secret perches in the thick leaves.

As the woods deepened, gnats gathered, and by the time the sun had fully risen in the east, mosquitoes joined. The three walked along an outpath, waving away the insects. The path was wide enough that they could go side-by-side, and in this fashion they made their way north, conversing little, their eyes ahead.

They stopped for lunch beside a small, glassy pond overlooking the ravine.

“Easy to forget we’re out down on an errand at all, and not just out for a stroll in the woods,” Varia said, eating seeds one at a time from her palm. Though her voice had the inflection of someone trying to convince herself of something.

“It’s been a few hours is all,” said Laszlo, leaning on the trunk of a monk elm, taking small bites of a dried mushroom.

By the afternoon, the outpath had become so narrow that they were forced to walk single-file. Varia took the lead, her walking stick poised on a shoulder, Laszlo directly behind. Pontis eyed the black satchel fastened to Laszlo’s back. It was so small. It seemed impossible there could be a child in it. Nine or ten years old, they’d said. The satchel appeared nearly empty.

As the day lengthened, the three began to slow. Laszlo sweated profusely, his shirt soaked front and back, his face flushed. Pontis’s calves ached, and the bags he carried felt as if someone had slipped rocks into them when he wasn’t looking. Varia used her walking stick.

When they reached a small glade at a crook in the outpath, Varia suggested they stop and set up camp in the clearing. “We’ve done well,” she said, setting her bags down and collapsing against the trunk of a monk elm.

For nearly half an hour the three did nothing but hydrate and catch their breaths. As the sun dipped away and the woods darkened, Laszlo made quick work of building a fire. The birdsong waned, and in its place crickets and cicadas chittered. At twilight, Pontis started to doze off, his chin falling forward to his chest. But he was awakened when Laszlo stood abruptly and disappeared into the trees, carrying the black satchel with him.

“He’s giving her water,” Varia said from across the fire, her eyes orange with flame. “Doesn’t want us to see her, I guess.”

Pontis watched the woods where Laszlo had disappeared. Varia fed the fire and helped herself to another handful of seeds. Night fell in full, and the fire cast the trees into trembling shadows. When Laszlo reappeared he set the black satchel carefully near his bags and took his spot on the hard ground. The three sat in silence, listening to the susurrus of the nighttime woods. Far away, an owl hooted. The fire crackled. Then one by one they fell into shallow, dreamless sleep.

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#

They awoke with the sun. Before they set off, Laszlo once again carried the satchel into the woods. Pontis and Varia doused the fire with water from a puddle at the edge of the glade, and combed the spotty grass to make sure nothing was left behind. Laszlo returned with the satchel already refastened to his back, and the three set off once again.

The outpath widened as they went. The gnats and mosquitoes seemed less ferocious than they had the day before, and the dry air and rocky ground implied the three were climbing, incrementally, in elevation. Varia remarked that it had cooled since yesterday. Laszlo was in good spirits, and spoke more readily than usual, wondering aloud about the age of certain trees or rocks. At one point, he and Varia walked together ahead of Pontis, speaking quietly and grinning at one another, their shoulders frequently bumping. When they stopped for lunch, Varia took a few minutes to meditate on a mossy boulder beside the path. Laszlo joined her, mimicking her posture and closing his eyes, though he could do nothing to suppress his smirks.

By the afternoon, despite feeling as if they’d covered a great deal of ground, they remained energized. They kept a brisk pace, moving together along the outpath, sensing not only the distance they had put between themselves and Lowood Den but also their progress nearer to Coden Hummel.

“This rate, we’ll full be there by tomorrow evening,” Varia said, only half joking.

Laszlo shrugged. “I think I’m with you.” He turned and smiled at Varia, taking his eyes off the path just long enough not to see a protrusion of roots. His foot caught, and he tripped forward.

Varia grabbed his arm and managed to keep him on his feet.

“Thanks,” Laszlo said, avoiding eye contact.

Varia smoothed his sleeve. “Lighter than you look.”

That night they camped directly on the outpath. Pontis fell asleep at once, curled on his side by the fire with his blanket bunched beneath his head. He awoke sometime in the middle of the night, thirsty. Only after he’d set the jug down did he realize he was alone. He peered around the dark woods, training his ear past the crickets and cicadas. There was a sound through the trees: rustling and pawing; Varia’s heavy breathing; Laszlo’s deep grunts. Pontis pulled the blanket over himself and pictured Ien’s face, his breath labored with the resentment of a summer interrupted.

#

The three continued to make good time the following day, and though they sensed they were climbing in elevation, the ground felt always level, and they were never winded.

At one point, a deer stepped into their path. It stopped to blink at them, its tail switching. They held their breath until it strolled off into the woods. A moment later, two fawns hurried after it, their spindly legs wobbling under their new bodies.

“You never see them in the city anymore,” said Varia after they resumed walking. “My dad says when he was a boy they’d come walk full down the streets of Lowood Den. Says a few even kept them as pets.”

“Too many people now,” said Laszlo. “The deer keep to their quiet.”

They came to a section of the outpath across which a monk elm had fallen. The tree was sprouted with platforms of mushrooms and shaggy moss. Pontis leapt over it. Laszlo followed, his feet sliding on the slick, rotted bark. Varia scaled the fallen tree and paused briefly atop it to peer out at the woods. As she climbed down, Laszlo offered her his hand, which she declined.

A little further along, as they passed between a pair of mossy boulders, Laszlo placed his palm on the small of Varia’s back. Gently, she quickened her pace, until Laszlo’s hand drifted, alone, in the air.

The ravine, always to their right, erupted with ferns and shrubs and monk elm saplings along its rim. It was impossible to discern its depth given the thickness of vegetation. Pontis found a small rock, which he tossed over the edge. It crashed through the top layer of growth, and then continued down, clacking once on something hard and then going silent.

They ate a quick lunch and continued on their way. The woods thickened as they went, further stifling the meager sunlight, until the air was blue. They saw another deer, this one older, its fur graying. It walked along with them through the trees, twenty yards off the outpath, before veering away into the trees and vanishing. Laszlo again reached out for Varia, this time touching her arm with his fingertips. This she abided. But as the afternoon lengthened she seemed to alter her pace to avoid being near him, walking either just ahead or behind.

They camped again on the outpath. They ate sparingly, not in an effort to preserve their rations but because they felt only minimal hunger. Pontis was hardly tired; he felt he could walk through the night if need be, and all through the next day. Varia busied herself re-tying the leather strap at the end of her walking stick. Laszlo, sitting nearby, watched her, waiting for her to return his gaze. When she didn’t, he lowered his eyes to his lap.

Later, just as Pontis felt sleep taking hold, Laszlo leaned toward Varia and whispered in her ear. She smiled faintly and patted his knee, then shook her head. Laszlo’s face furrowed. He sat back and blinked into the fire. Varia lay down and drew her blanket up to her chin, and a minute later she was either asleep or pretending to be.

As the fire died, Pontis had a strange dream about a girl around his age with long white hair, standing on the surface of a lake and smiling at him as if she had known him all his life.

#

Pontis awoke feeling caked in sweat and grime. Varia and Laszlo were still asleep beside the smoldering fire. It was foggy, and already hot.

There was a small pond covered with a film of algae just through the trees. Pontis brushed at its surface until he could reach clear water, and washed his neck and arms. A pair of squirrels chased one another around the trunk of an elm at the water’s edge.

On his way back to the camp, less sticky but far from refreshed, he noticed movement among a small clearing surrounded by thick brush. He crept to its edge and peered over the growth. Laszlo crouched in the clearing, the black satchel set before him on the ground. His expression was one of focused disinterest as he unwrapped the satchel, folding the black cloth carefully aside. Pontis felt compelled at once to look away, but something kept his eyes rooted.

As the final layer of cloth came open, the first thing Pontis noticed was the bones. The girl’s ribs and pelvis bulged through her skin, her arms and legs thinner than the narrow branches at the tops of trees. Her skin was a rotten shade of gray, and the lacerations that Pontis had heard so much about, the words and phrases carved across her flesh—mostly indiscernible from Pontis’s vantage save for the one on her abdomen: I BORE WITNESS TO THE FREEING OF NONK’NON—were puckered and white, festering with bacteria. Her eye sockets were empty—a fact Pontis already knew but could not have prepared himself to see—and the dark gray pockets seemed to gape at the sky. Despite what he had been told, Pontis refused to believe that this emaciated creature was alive. Nothing could reside in that broken, battered body. There must have been a mistake.

Then Laszlo brought the gourd-hide jug to the girl’s mouth and poured a gentle stream of water onto her lips. At once her mouth quavered and peeled open, and her fingers curled, and she emitted a sound that reminded Pontis of his own father’s death. This movement, visual proof that something lived in this condition, drove Pontis to recoil, upsetting the shrub behind which he was hidden.

Laszlo looked up, meeting Pontis’s eyes. For a moment there was stillness. Then Pontis took off, sprinting back to the camp and collapsing against his bags.

Varia tossed her half-folded blanket aside and hurried to him. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

Pontis shook his head, his hands cupped over his eyes.

Laszlo emerged from the trees, the satchel fastened to his back. He stood over Pontis. “Sorry you had to see that,” he said. “But it was only a matter of time.”

Varia exhaled slowly.

“Good reminder what our errand’s for,” Laszlo said.

Pontis wiped his eyes and stood. He attempted to nod firmly at Laszlo, in agreement, but his head wobbled.

“We should keep on,” Laszlo said, gathering up the remainder of his baggage.