The Semaphore

Mondagreen was down to his last cigarette. He smoked it slowly, chewing the smoke around his mouth, savoring the hot twang in his throat, the widening sensation of exhaling big, blue clouds.

He hated running out of cigarettes. It was like being stuck at home when all your friends were out having fun. He was usually good about stocking up, but he’d been on the road for a while, and he didn’t know he’d be making a detour to Allegewi. Plus, since those stupid kids climbed down into the hole, he’d been smoking a little more than usual. The worst part was that he didn’t even know when he would be able to get more; he was a two-day drive from Blackwater and his hometown of Tecca, and people around here in Allegewi tended not to smoke. Then again, if Arborvale was any indication, there may not be any people left in Allegewi, smokers or not.

It was almost morning. He told those dumb kids he was going to leave at nightfall. But nightfall came, and he hadn’t left. He glanced at the satchel, propped on his lap. About an hour ago he gave the girl water. He expected it to be unpleasant. Stomach turning. Terrifying even. But it turned out it hadn’t been any of those things. When he unfolded the cloth and poured water to the girl’s cracked lips, he felt something almost pleasant. He felt useful.

He flicked the nub of his cigarette off into the dark forest. He told himself he’d stay another hour, and that would be it. One more hour and then Mondagreen would collect his things and drive away from Allegewi. He had extended himself far enough: driven a day further to the west than he planned; spent an additional day poking around an abandoned village; agreed to look after a girl he didn’t know and who may very well bring trouble—all for one measly ethergrain pen. A pen he didn’t even have anymore. He took a tiny sip of proof, sputtered into his sleeve, and then crawled to the edge of the hole and clicked on his lamp.

As was the case the last twenty times he checked, there was nothing at the bottom of the hole. The rope dangled against the slick rock wall, unmoving. About eight hours ago the incessant plucking sound had stopped. Mondagreen would have been relieved—it was a grating, ugly sound—but he took its sudden silence as a bad sign for the kids. If he was a betting man—and in fact he often was—he would put all he had on the odds that they were dead.

He clicked off the lamp.

But in the moment before it went dark something stirred at the bottom of the hole. Mondagreen fumbled with the switch, his fingers clumsy from the proof. He couldn’t believe the kids had managed to make it back. After all this time they would be surprised to see him, and he, despite himself, would be happy to have them back above ground.

He clicked the lamp back on.

A naked man with a giant knife stood looking up from an eyeless face.

The lamp nearly fumbled from Mondagreen’s hands.

The naked eyeless man opened his mouth and protruded his tongue—a wrinkled thing—and then set his enormous blade—as long as Mondagreen’s Sarabeth—in his gray teeth, and took hold of the rope.

“Don’t!” Mondagreen shouted, feeling instantly stupid. “Stay down there!”

The eyeless man pulled himself up the rope with terrifying speed. Ten feet. Thirty feet. Sixty.

Mondagreen clambered back. The lamp slipped from his hand and rolled across the ground, coming to rest several feet away and shining at an upward angle into the trees. For a long, empty moment, Mondagreen did not know what to do. The only thought in his head was a memory of his brothers chasing him down a dead end alleyway and dousing him in paint. Then he regained his senses, drew Sarabeth from his back, and, in a single downward blow, severed the rope drawn taut across the ground.

He dashed for the light, fumbling it in his sweaty hands, and turned it at the hole.

But where the hole should have been was now only solid ground, a patch of forest floor no different than any other—save for the length of rope protruding from it like a single hair from a scalp.

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A twig snapped in the trees behind him. He whipped around, aiming the lamplight, expecting to see the eyeless man, his long knife raised, rushing toward him.

But it was not the eyeless man. It was just some young guy, a little older than Varia, with a gourd-hide jug strapped to his side and the same plain clothes of the Lowoods that Pontis and Varia wore. His skin was badly sunburned and his hair was coated in yellow dust. He stood at the edge of the clearing, shielding his eyes from Mondagreen’s lamp.

Mondagreen stood, Sarabeth in his hand.

“Who are you?” Mondagreen asked.

The young guy’s eyes passed over the satchel at Mondagreen’s feet. “What’d you do to them?” he asked.

Mondagreen lowered the lamp. “Didn’t do a thing to anybody,” he said.

The guy took a step forward, placing his hand near his waist and the faint impression of a knife through his shirt. His shoes were nearly in tatters.

“Where’d you get that?” The guy pointed to the satchel.

Mondagreen positioned himself between the guy and the satchel. “Why don’t you tell me who you are. Reckon we’d all calm down some, were we on a first-name basis.”

The guy took another step.

Mondagreen adjusted his grip on Sarabeth’s hilt. “My name’s Lady Mondagreen of Tecca,” he said. “What’s yours?”

“I’m taking that with me,” said the guy, his eyes locked on the satchel.

“That’s gonna be a problem.” Mondagreen eyed the guy’s stance. He was right handed, and his left knee seemed to be causing him problems. “I’ve been charged with keeping this girl safe. She’s not going anywhere with you or anybody else.”

“Charged by who?” The guy’s voice flared with anger.

“By my new friends, Pontis and Varia.” Mondagreen watched the guy’s face react faintly. “I think maybe you know them?”

The guy gritted his teeth and lifted his shirt, exposing the handle of his knife. “You’re lying,” he seethed. “She’d never leave the girl with you. What’d you do to her? Tell me!”

A bat clicked and chirped through the clearing and off into the trees.

“Varia and Pontis left the girl with me while they climbed down this here hole.” Mondagreen nodded toward the middle of the clearing, forgetting in that moment that the hole was now gone.

The guy’s eyes searched the ground. “What kind of nonsense is that?” he asked.

Mondagreen tsked. “Shit. Yeah. Well, there used to be a hole there. Two of them went down it, looking for the girl’s family. And I agreed to mind her till they were back. Now I don’t know who you are, but neither of them said a word about somebody coming to take her.”

The guy glowered, his knife halfway from its sheath. “You’re a liar,” he said. “I saw you take them in Rapidan. Saw you drive off with them. I followed your tracks. Ran over those hills all day and night. Varia’d never go off willing with a stranger. You took her. You did something to her.”

Mondagreen tapped his finger on the side of the lamp.

“I never should’ve let her go off without me.” The guy turned his gaze up to the sky. “She needed me. The whole time, she needed me.” He drew his knife. “What’d you do to her?”

“Listen…”

“What’d you do!?” The guy rushed at Mondagreen, his knife raised clumsily overhead.

Mondagreen tilted his lamp upward, directing its light into the guy’s face. The guy shut his eyes mid-charge. Mondagreen stepped carefully right, allowing the guy’s momentum to propel him, blind and stumbling, into the clearing, where he tripped over the satchel and fell face down onto the ground.

Mondagreen sighed. “Seems like you got some stuff to work on,” he said, sliding Sarabeth into her sheath. “Clearly you got some misdirected feelings, some insecurities. I mean, Varia’s… nice, I guess? Nothing to attack a man over.”

The guy jerked minutely, and then was still.

“So here’s what’s gonna happen. Since this hole here just up and fucking disappeared, and our friends are—well, let’s just say they’re on their own—I’m carrying the girl to Tecca. That’s what I agreed with Pontis and Varia. Doctors there. Good ones. Well—decent ones. I’ll scud you across Rapidan and leave you at the north end of the Lowoods. You can get yourself home, wash up, and have a long talk with yourself about what it is you’re so angry…”

Mondagreen trailed off.

The guy hadn’t moved, and in the lamplight a dark pool glinted beneath him.

“Buck…” Mondagreen knelt beside him. “You alright?”

Mondagreen turned the guy over. His hands were bunched beneath him, his knife lodged in his chest all the way to the handle. Blood runneled from his mouth and nose. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. There was no breath.

“Well shit…” Mondagreen sat and rubbed his face. Instinctively he reached into his collar for a cigarette, and then punched the ground when he found none. A cool, early morning wind worked its way through his hair. He blinked around the clearing, his eyes landing on the length of rope protruding from where the hole had been. He felt suddenly like a young child, the whole world a sprawling confusion that resisted his best little efforts to untangle. He dragged himself away from the guy’s body and sat beside the satchel, lowered his face into his folded arms, and waited for the sun to rise.