The Semaphore

He could hear again before he could see.

“…take the headlights, too.”

Mondagreen tried to rub his eyes but his hands were bound behind him. He lay on his side on the pavement. His head and neck throbbed. He squinted and opened his eyes again, but all he could see were dark shapes drifting through light.

“What are we going to do with all of them?” a Toymaker asked.

“Move them off the road,” the bearded man said.

“Jordy’s still alive.”

“Can he walk?”

“Can you walk, Jordy?”

“…I…I think so…”

There was shuffling, and a groan followed by a thud.

“No, he can’t walk.”

“Cut him loose.”

Jordy pleaded. “No! No! I can try again! I can—”

There was a wet smack and Jordy went silent.

Mondagreen blinked up at a hazy shape standing over him.

“Not a whole lot with you,” the shape said with the bearded man’s voice. “Certainly nothing worth dying over.”

The Toymaker’s boots clacked on the pavement as they carried the contents of Mondagreen’s vehicle—and parts of the vehicle itself—over to their own.

“Looks like this sword is the most valuable thing you own.” The bearded man held a long, thin shape over Mondagreen’s face. “An antique. I’m surprised it hasn’t rusted through. I know someone who will pay heftily for it. But everything else you have is worthless. Even your vehicle’s parts are cheap. And whatever animal you trapped in that satchel smells like it’s spoiled.” The bearded man stooped to pat Mondagreen’s cheek. “But we’ll take it anyway. You won’t need anything where you’re going.”

Mondagreen tried to move his feet, but they too were bound.

The bearded man’s hand lingered on Mondagreen’s cheek. His thumb ran along his lips, peeling them back. “Well,” he said. “It looks like you aren’t as poor as I thought.” He waved someone over. “Kill him, take his teeth, and sew him up.” He turned and started back toward the vehicles, then paused. “On second thought. Take his teeth, sew him up, and then kill him.”

Mondagreen strained against his binds. The rotten egg odor of Senescence wafted off the pavement, filling his mouth and nostrils. Footsteps surrounded him, and he was both relieved and dismayed to find that his vision had returned enough to make out the laces on a pair of boots. Then hands seized him and rolled him onto his back. A heavy knee drove down onto his chest, pinning him to the ground.

“It did not have to be like this,” the bearded man said, leaning on the hood of one of his vehicles. “A tithe was all we asked. We would have taken just the sword.”

A set of hands groped at Mondagreen’s mouth. He clenched his jaw and rocked his head back and forth. Something collided with his nose, filling it instantly with blood and forcing him to open his mouth to breathe. As he did, fingers wedged between his teeth and pried open his jaw.

The bearded man chuckled. “But now we’re taking everything.”

Mondagreen writhed as a Toymaker lodged a pair of rusty pliers into his mouth. He felt the pliers latch on one of his teeth, a big one in the back. The other Toymaker drove his knee deeper into Mondagreen’s chest, his hands prying his jaw so wide it felt like it would pop out of its socket.

“Be sure to get the whole thing,” said the bearded man.

The pliers clamped down. Mondagreen screamed as a monstrous pressure twisted through his jaw. He felt the tooth come loose with a sickening crack that roiled through his ears, and a jolt of agony shot through his brain.

The Toymaker slid the pliers from Mondagreen’s mouth and held it up.

“Root and all,” he said.

The bearded man said nothing. Mondagreen, through the pulsing sheets of pain in his head and neck, heard the strike of a match, and the deep inhalation of the first drag of a cigarette.

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“One down…” said the Toymaker with the pliers, peering into Mondagreen’s mouth. “Only fourteen to go.”

Blood pooled in Mondagreen’s throat. He struggled to breathe while on his back, and though his vision was slowly returning, he felt his consciousness slipping away.

The pliers went back in. Mondagreen was too exhausted and lightheaded to struggle. He imagined the vibration of hoof beats in the pavement. He lurched when the next tooth cracked at its root. He choked and sputtered as blood gushed down his throat.

“Between the gold and silver and the sword, I would say this was worth it.” The bearded man’s voice was far away. “Labor is cheap.”

Mondagreen imagined the hoof beats drawing nearer.

“Speed this up,” the bearded man said, poking around the satchel in the backseat of his vehicle. “We can be the first into the shops when they…”

He was cut short by the sound of glass breaking, and a pall of heat.

Mondagreen squinted up. Where the bearded man had been a moment before was now a man-shaped ball of flames. From inside the flames, screaming.

The two Toymakers holding Mondagreen leapt up. Something tumbled through the air and collided with one of them, and he, too, instantly burst into fire.

The remaining Toymaker scrambled toward the vehicles. Mondagreen watched from through bleary eyes as a horse galloped up behind him. Its rider, a flurry of red, threw a bottle at the man’s back, which shattered and drenched him in hot, thick flames.

The three Toymakers, all consumed by fire, ran off in different direction across the plain, screaming and flailing. Mondagreen lost sight of two of them, but he kept his sights on the bearded man, who teetered about forty yards off the road, collapsed face forward on the brittle ground, and burned.

Mondagreen rolled himself onto his stomach. The blood that had gathered in his throat spilled from his mouth, and he took a desperate, shuddering breath.

The horse and its rider circled the vehicles. Another horse appeared, an appaloosa with white and beige speckles, its mane braided with beads. It clomped slowly and stood over Mondagreen.

He squinted up at its rider. A figrue dressed in red from head to toe, a red veil concealing their face.

Mondagreen tried to speak, to give thanks and to plead for help. But his throat was inflamed from the blood, his tongue swollen from the pliers, and before he could issue a single sound, both horses took off along the road. A moment later, a red carriage rumbled past, pulled by two more appaloosas. Its wheels jounced along the cracked pavement. As Mondagreen watched it go, a face looked out at him through the small window in the carriage’s rear. This face was also concealed by a veil, though this veil was white and decorated with red lines, and though Mondagreen could not see the eyes behind it, he felt they stared deeply into his.

The carriage and the two riders continued off along the road to the northeast, in the direction of Osseon, leaving a trail of gray dust, and as they dissolved into the distance Mondagreen finally succumbed to his injuries and exhaustion, and everything went dark.

#

When he came to it was not yet morning on the plains of Senescence. For a long time he could only lie there, his head pulsing. The still smoldering bodies of the two Toymakers who had fallen nearby illuminated the road. The bearded man was a faint orange glow in the middle distance.

Mondagreen mustered the strength to move. One of the Toymakers he’d killed lay only a few feet away, still clutching his knife. Mondagreen dragged himself to him and used the knife to free his hands and ankles.

He stood shakily, placing his weight against the hood of his vehicle. Blood rushed to his head. He swooned and clutched at his temples. It had been awhile since he’d received such a quality beating. In some ways it almost made him nostalgic, but mostly it just pissed him off.

They had torn his vehicle apart. Some of the parts were removed properly, and could be easily reattached. Others—necessary parts like axles and the photovoltaic platelet on the engine—were torn beyond repair. It would be impossible to reassemble the vehicle without the proper tools.

He limped over to nearest of the Toymakers’ vehicles. He found his katana in the backseat and the satchel beside it, blessedly undisturbed. There was a jug of water in the front seat, which he took with him as he set the satchel on the pavement and knelt to unfold the cloth. His hands were shaky, and his vision kept blurring. He gave the girl water, and then drank some himself. The sensation of water filling the pockets from which his teeth were extracted made his skin horripilate.

He combed the pavement for anything useful. He took the pliers that the men had used on him, figuring that if nothing else they would be a good memento. He found his teeth—three of them, though he only remembered them taking two—and dropped them into the collar of his shawl. He noticed a pouch on the ground near the side of the road. His head swam as his knelt to pick it up, and when he looked inside he briefly thought he was hallucinating.

Cigarettes. At least thirty of them, all nicely rolled. The bearded man must have dropped them when the veiled riders appeared. Mondagreen placed one in his mouth and lit it off the low, hot flame that lapped from a Toymaker’s corpse.

He figured it was just before dawn. It was only a matter of time before more Toymakers arrived, drawn by the fires of their burning cohorts like moths to a lantern. He loaded his things into one of their vehicles and used his katana to free the corpses—the Toymakers’ idea of adornment—from the hood and roof, setting them neatly on the roadside and covering their faces with a dead Toymaker’s cloak.

He touched his nose, which was crooked and swollen. It wouldn’t be a drive through Senescence without breaking a couple bones and losing a few teeth. It wasn’t the first time, and if he was lucky it wouldn’t be the last.

The vehicle fired up readily, its powerful engine roaring out across the plains. Its headlights flared, illuminating the carnage surrounding his pilfered vehicle.

“So long, sweet honey,” he said, dragging on the dead man’s cigarette.

He aimed the Toymakers’ vehicle up the road to the northeast, then looked down at the satchel.

“The things I do for you,” he said, wiping a clump of ash from the seat beside it.

They sped off down the road, the sky to the northeast faintly red just over the horizon, aglow with the distant but formidable lights of Osseon.