(Nothing But) Flowers - John G. McDaid (the reader ebook .TXT) 📗

tumblers entertained; vendors shouted from stalls full of fried critters on sticks and strange but delicious-smelling baked goods from the lands up north.

As they lined up for the boats, guards searched them, just as they did at the Castle, taking anything suspicious. Ewen walked right through. But when they came to Donal, they looked at his blade, then his necklace, and called over their boss, who eventually called over his boss. The men muttered to each other for a while, then waved him on. His fellow passengers eyed the machete with a mixture of envy and fear.

Once underway, the tedious ride quickly made Donal long for the pleasure of waiting in line. The boats were crowded, the outsiders smelled like poorly wiped asses and rotten fish, and the guides barked descriptions of the largely invisible wonders in an incomprehensible accent. All Donal saw was a few bits of rusted metal poking out of the water, and yet the crowd gasped and gaped and pointed like children.

The Colonel's island was artificial; an enormous white and rust-brown structure which, when it had been built, would probably have towered hundreds of feet over their heads -- and, Donal supposed, continued perhaps a hundred feet beneath. Even in ruin, it was awe inspiring; a scabrous, flaking hulk, collapsed on itself, rusted beams surrounding a hollow interior where waves slapped and boomed. Their boat's closest approach was a hundred yards off, and while the visitors were absorbed with the sight, Donal threw Ewen a look and they quietly went over the side and swam for it, staying underwater until they were safe among the piers of the structure.

"I was wondering when you would show up." The Colonel's face showed no sign of panic.

The old man sat in a chair that likely started its life as a boat, wood planks whose pores were sealed with some greasy black material, now pried apart and reassembled as a low seat with wide arms. The Colonel of Kisk had a long face, dark skin, and ears that stuck out past his thin frizz of graying hair. He could have been a thousand years old, or it might just have been the tired look Donal recognized from the faces of those who have seen quite enough of the world and are no longer frightened by what's next. He might have been forty. He wore a woven loincloth and a half-dozen rows of necklaces, some with teeth, some shells, some, Donal saw, threaded with the shiny discs of the ancients, and one, identical to his, with the symbol of Emic.

His perch was a rusted balcony which jutted from the side of the structure, a miraculously horizontal surface amid the crumbled and folded building, dotted with rust holes that offered windows to the sea beneath. Out to the horizon there was just a world of water, lapping peacefully. The slap of waves and the cries of terns were the only sound for a long moment.

"Welcome to my island, built by the shining people of Kisk, long ago," said the Colonel, "Like all islands, like our increasingly narrow toeholds of land, suspended above Mother Ocean. I assume you bring greetings from the Castle?"

Donal said nothing. The sun beat down.

"I was born on an island, and I guess I'll die on one. You think you're here to kill me," said the old man, nodding at Donal's machete.

"I am here on a mission from the Keoh of the World."

"The World. Indeed." He smiled. "You know, every people, in every language, call their land ���The World' until they meet others." He shook his head, smiled. "You people are the only ones stubborn enough to keep calling it that. You are legend."

"Which is why you send your followers to attack our Castle? Kill innocent visitors? Women, children."

"I don't think even you really believe that."

"I believe you are a danger to the World."

"I am what I am because of who we all are," said the Colonel. "And you are no different. What's your name, son."

"Donal. And this is Ewen."

The Colonel paused and thought for a minute. "Donal. And Ewen. Look at me. I'm an old man with a big belly who enjoys sitting in the sunshine. The tumors took my wife and all my children before me, so whatever it is I have, whatever blessing or curse has spared me from the forgetting, well, it's going to die with me. So if you really are intent on killing me, at least let me show you why we believe what we do."

And that was how Donal found himself in the back of tiny boat, being rowed a half mile north over featureless ocean by this old man.

"I believed, myself," said the Colonel. "When I was growing up, a lot of people wanted to live out here. They took on faith that beneath us was a secret city, and within it, a gateway to the world beyond."

Donal was having trouble concentrating. This water was not like the placid lagoon, or even the ride across the estuary on the Keoh's boat. Here, he was constantly tossed, in a way that kept him from regaining his balance.

"My father said that his grandfather's father -- who claimed to have been Colonel here, who survived the great dying in the time of the builders -- had passed the knowledge of where this doorway was. My father had never tried to visit it, and wouldn't reveal the location until he was on his deathbed."

A duck bobbed ahead of them, and Donal expected it to take off at their approach, but it remained strangely motionless, and he realized it was a lifeless replica. The old man hooked it, and they sat, water lapping the sides of the boat, circling slowly. The Colonel lifted the duck with his gaff to reveal a yellow and white rope, descending.

"This line goes all the way down to the bottom, anchored to what they called the gateway between worlds. It's a shame my father never looked for himself. I might have spent my life rather differently."

The Colonel slid a rock from under the seat. "Hug this to your chest, and keep your arms around the line until you reach the bottom. Take a deep breath. If you are lucky, you may have a few moments to look around before you need to come back up. Be careful if you choose to go... inside. You could die down there."

Donal looked at the rock, at the water.

"You'll need to let go of your machete," the Colonel said gently. "And you'll want to leave your belt."

"No," Donal recoiled. The darkness of the floating pool came flooding back in; he felt a desperate urge to escape, to leap from the boat and flee.

"You think this could just be the way I dispatch assassins from the World?"

"No," Donal stared at the horizon. Distant clouds were building up into tall blue and gray anvils somewhere back over the land. The boat rocked in the sun.

"We do these things not because they are easy, Donal, but because they are hard."

Slowly, Donal put down his machete. Carefully, he undid his leather belt and set the bag down on the seat.

"You'll keep an eye on Ewen," he said.

"I will guard him like my own brother."

Donal grasped the rock and heaved over the side.

The first few feet was like the lagoon, warm and clear, but as he continued sinking, the light faded and rippled, the pressure in his ears increased.

Then he passed through an invisible layer and the water was suddenly colder. He began to make out shapes below -- a building, lying on its side, the line snaking into its open end. The light was dim here, and the water jittered with muddy particles, but through it, Donal could see that the structure had not fallen over; it had been built sideways, and inside was an enormous decaying object. He slowed himself on the line to hover, looking out over it, lit by the slanting rays of afternoon sun. It was clearly a device built by the ancients, hundreds of feet long. What must have originally been smooth metal was now a forest of kelp, sea anemone, mussels; rusted and sagging sections of the machine spilled intricate pieces, identities erased by corrosion, to the seafloor below. He could make out, in giant flaking letters on the side, a familiar pattern: cup-snake���arrow head. And as he saw that, he remembered the white cylinder in the corner of the Keoh's spider hole. That had been an image, a copy. And he was looking, he knew with certainty, at the original.

This was it. The pathway of the legend. A machine that took men between worlds, but those days were long gone.

He understood now that he had not eluded the Colonel's guards. He had been allowed to come. To be shown.

This, he realized, was the real World, had always been. A world that had existed before them, a world of both beautiful castles and amazing machines, and yet, a world whose builders had, through carelessness or malice, unleashed diseases that robbed people of their minds, sent growths through their bodies. A world of fabulous power, and yet unable to prevent the sea from rising to cover its buildings, the vines and grasses from reclaiming its roads.

And if such a civilization with time and power to spare had been doomed, what chance did Donal's grim, small, overgrown World have?

The Priestess of Emic had been right; the pathway was real. But not in any way he could ever have imagined. He knew that it was not, could never have been the Colonel's people who sacrificed their lives to terrorize the Castle. They were not true believers; they were believers in the truth. The threat to the World lay much closer to home. If he had not been underwater, he might have laughed, screamed, pulled out his hair.

He dropped the rock and headed for the light above. Climbed into the boat and sat, dripping, looking at the old man, as if for the first time.

"You saw?"

"I saw."

He sat for a moment, salt drying on his skin, before picking up the machete and tossing it into the ocean. It twinkled, spinning, in the light, made a distant splash. He moved to pick up his belt and stopped, frozen, his hand hovering.

"What's that," asked the Colonel, pointing at the leather bag.

"My brother, Ewen," he said, "He died with my mother, in childbirth."

"I think you've come to the right place," the old man said.

Donal considered the tanned deerhide bag, closed with a simple flap and latched with the spine bone of a raccoon. He nodded. Undid the bag, released the pitifully tiny bones and powder into the water. For a moment, he could see his brother's skull, tumbling, end-over-end, off into the darkness.

"It is sadness we are born for," said the old man.

Donal looked at the sky. The wind was picking up, and the rains would be coming soon.

"We'd better get back," he said to the Colonel. He looked at the dust on his hands. He was just like Ewen, he thought, and he would die too. Alone.

"Are you still going to kill me?" asked the old man.

"We'll see. Row."

Thanks to the Gibraltar Point crew (Laurie, Sara, Janice, Becky, Lis, Michael, Dave, and Peter) who read this in zero draft and saved me from the most egregious errors. Steve Samenski caught a huge one. Those that remain are solely my responsibility. Thanks to bladesmith Chris Doherty for research and advice, almost none of which ended up the finished product. The story owes a debt to Alan Weisman's amazing The World Without Us for inspiration, and, of course,