Oculum Page 7

  “Miranda1, pleased to see you this fine morning,” William2 says quietly, bowing to me. “And Mother of Miranda1,” he adds, bowing to Mother. He does not acknowledge Mother of William1, who has shut her eyes.

  I am about to greet him when Regulus says, “Welcome William1, we are pleased you could join us.” I’m confused and look at William2, then my eyes slide to his armband.

  He is wearing the deep red patch but with a silver “W1” embroidered upon it. His Mother has the same armband, deep red with a silver “W1.”

  Regulus watches us closely. “Say hello to William1, Miranda1. Where are your manners?” I consider Regulus. I look at William2, masquerading as my life-long friend William1, and I have a choice.

  I can pretend that this boy is William1, bide my time, play along.

  Or I can tell Regulus, tell everyone, that this is all a lie, and that there is a world Outside, and the real William1 is there now. I can tell them all that I will not play along with them.

  But … I simply don’t know what would happen then. I need more time to see what Regulus is planning.

  I smile and bend my knee and bow my head. “Wel-come, William1,” I say calmly. “We must hurry to class. The Simons and Isas shall miss us.” I know immediately that I shall never call him William1 out loud again. I shall always call him “William2” in my heart and mind and simply “William” if I must use his name aloud. A small act of defiance.

  “You must go on your way then, Miranda1 and William1,” Regulus says, staring at me, and I nod.

  “Yes, we have chores to attend to,” I say as haughtily as I can.

  Then William2 and I leave the Senate together and hurry across the square and the common to the Teach-ing Hall. Two Mothers leave the building behind us, mine and the Mother of William2, wearing her false armband of “W1.” I pretend all is well. I talk to William2 about the day ahead. I am an excellent actress, a liar, a brilliant pretender.

  I have to be now.

  I have seen what Regulus does to those who don’t play along.

  As we left the Senate, I dropped my satchel and for a second turned and saw Regulus descend the stairs. He stopped before the Mother in chains, the Mother of William1, then with a swift move, he reached deep into her chest.

  He wrenched out her mechanical heart.

  She slumped forward, and her metallic arms in chains hit the cold marble floor.

  CLANG!

  Regulus crushed the mechanical heart in his cold grip and threw the broken thing on the marble before he strode away. The true Mother of William1, the one I have known all my life, is dead.

  Regulus just killed her.

  I joined William2 before Regulus saw me watching him.

  Although I know nothing of death and have never seen it before, I suddenly realize that more than anything, I want to live.

  Mannfred

  Next day Grannie isn’t feeling well, so we don’t travel. Instead we stay in the courtyard, which feels safe enough, almost comforting. There are small busted houses all around us and the other family with Littluns.

  People come by to swap with us. A woman who lives nearby brings water for a few fresh eggs from our hen. She’s got a pump and a well near her house. A blacksmith comes and checks Nellie’s loose horseshoe, which needs a shape and a nail. Grannie gives him a small knife from the Shiny Man, for his help. Another woman brings fresh herbs and carrots, which Grannie trades for some of her blue cloth. Grannie and this lady talk a long time, and it’s like watching Grannie chat with our old neighbor back home. This courtyard has a friendly feel. There are pictures on the walls of the houses, like roosters and sunsets and a bird with a mighty blue fan-tail of feathers.

  The pictures are faded, but you can still see them. They’re made in what Grannie calls “tile.” When I ask Grannie about the fan-tail bird, she says it’s a picture of what was called a “peacock.” I run my hand over the shape of the bird on the wall. The City has wonders, big and small. The shining dome with the lifted top has been in my head all morning. It’s all I can think about.

  Cranker and me laze all day, which is good. We fix up the cart a little, walk the horses, and rub them down. The Littluns play with the Littluns from the other family.

  All in all, we’re not so bad off for a family fleeing a sunken home.

  The sky is beautiful all day, the beginning of spring. Back home at Grannie’s, I know the big trees would be starting their leaves; even the mud might be greening with lichen and moss.

  As night draws in, two lone travelers arrive and stop with us in the courtyard, a man on a horse with a pack, a woman with a cart. After dinner, when the Littluns are asleep and Grannie sits by her fire and smokes her pipe, she invites them to join us.

  The woman says thankee, but no, and goes to sleep in her cart. But the man joins us.

  His name is Briar. Jonatan Briar. He’s youngish, solid-built, with a kind face and a deep voice. I’m taken by his black beard, the biggest I ever seen, even bigger than the Shiny Man’s. He sits at our fire, and for a while he plays a strange tune on a sound pipe he calls a “recorder.” We’ve heard music before, of course, Grannie sings to us, and once in a while a Music Man would visit us in the village and play drums and sing old songs. But I never seen or heard a recorder before. It makes me calm and quiet.

  After a few songs, Jonatan Briar puts the recorder away in a pouch at his side. His pouch has his name tooled on it in big, rough letters: J. Briar.

  Grannie tells him a little about us then, about how the Black Rain flooded out our home, and how we’re going to stay with her brother on the other side of the City because they got room and land.

  Jonatan Briar tells us that he grew up a long way from here, and that he’s a traveler. He comes and goes often, since he’s a stonemason by trade and good with sums. He tells us he helped rebuild some of the Olden Begones arches and standing walls in the great build-ings in Oculum City.

  “What’s that? Oculum City?” Cranker pipes up, and Jonatan Briar looks surprised.

  “That’s this place. This city is Oculum City, though I suppose most people don’t know that or forgot.” I look over at Grannie, but she just shrugs.

  “Well, what’s it mean? Oculum? Funny word,” Cranker demands.

  “It means ‘eye’ in a long-dead language,” Briar answers. “And an oculus is the open circular ‘eye’ at the top of very ancient domes.”

  “From the Olden Begones times?” I ask.

  Jonatan Briar shakes his head and sighs. “Well, the Olden Begones used them, too. But they come from a time long before then, Mann.”

  He seems almost sad, so I ask him how far away he came from, he smiles and says, “Weeks by boat, then as many again on horseback. I grew up on an island in a great northern sea, where educated men and women taught me reading and writing, mathematics, building, and something much more.”

  “What? What’d they teach you?” Cranker asks.

  Briar’s beard wags, and his eyes shine in the firelight. “Stories, Cranker. The great, old stories.”

  Grannie blows out a long breath of smoke, spies him, and says, “Tell us a story then, Jonatan Briar.”

  The big beard swings my way, and Jonatan says, “What kind of a story would you like? Mann? Cranker?” I been thinking all day about only one thing, the only thing I would want to hear a story about.

  “Cranker and me saw the dome in the distance last night, and we watched it open. A huge corkscrew turned and turned and pushed the top up into the sky. It seems like Olden Begones magic. Do you have a story for that, Jonatan Briar?” The big man smiles and crinkles his eyes and nods, and says, yes, he does.

  And so Jonatan Briar tells us his story he learned on an island in a northern sea, while we sit under the stars by the fire in an Olden Begones courtyard with a peacock picture on the walls.

  Here’s what he say
s: “Listen close, and I’ll tell you the legend of Oculum City. This city. This is a story found in books that are kept for safekeeping in the library on the island where I’m from.”

  “What’s library?” Cranker asks. I’m glad he asked, because I want to know, too.

  “It’s a building that houses many books and keeps knowledge. You’ll pass a broken one here, along the road ahead, but it’s empty now. There are hundreds of books in the library in my home. Imagine that! And every book holds a story, either a true one or a make-believe one. The one I’m going to tell is true, or so the librarians say, but you must decide for yourself.”

  “Grannie got a book by a man named Aesop,” Cranker says, trying to sound wise.

  Briar nods, thoughtful. “Those are ancient fables. Some stories last a long, long time, Cranker.” Then he starts his story.

  “A long time ago in the Olden Begones, before the Black Rain and when fruit trees bloomed, this was a vast city, roaring with life. Hundreds of thousands of people lived in this city, and they had the magic of kings. They had light without fire, they had water without wells, they had power that you could not see, and machines that went on four wheels across the land, but without horses.

  “They had the power of the air and great machines that took flight. They could talk to each other over great distances, without pigeons or fire, but with the black boxes you see like an ocean at the side of roads. They rode in their machines, and sent their messages, and built their empire. Oculum City is only one of hundreds of cities like it across our world. People come from far away and tell us there are cities like this one in their lands, too.”

  Cranker and me look at each other and Cranker says, “Hundreds?”

  Jonatan Briar nods. “Hundreds, maybe thousands, and most of them bigger than this one. In the city we’re in now the people built a dome. They called it the Oculum City Dome. The same dome you saw opening the other night. It rose into the sky like a crystal mountain, and it was used for special days of ceremony, games, and for festivals and celebration. When the weather was fair, the top of the dome was raised by a simple mechanism, and it was a beautiful sight. The people of the city enjoyed the dome and used it for pleasure and entertainment.

  “But as we all know, there was a price to their use of the light without fire and the power you could not see. The Black Rains came, the fevers came too, then the bees died off, the fruit and other crops began to fail.” Grannie smokes her pipe, and me and Cranker sit and listen. It’s always a sad thing to remember or talk about, when the Black Rains first came and the world changed forever. Grannie told us the rest of the story too when we were little, about the Dying Fever and other lesser fevers that came after, and the panic and fear and mad-ness that took off most everyone in the end.

  It was not something you talked about.

  So no one really did, at least not very often. You learned the stories when you were little, and that was enough. The early Black Rains brought terror and sickness, and terror and sickness brought collapse and mayhem, and mayhem brought the end of the mighty civilization. It brought the end of almost everything, along with the end of peaches and pears.

  I stir the fire up with a stick and add another piece of wood.

  Jonatan Briar goes on. “The people of the Olden Begones couldn’t stop the Black Rain, though they tried. There was no magic they could think of that could save the bees, or the crops, or in the end, themselves.

  “Some saw what was coming and went away and learned how to survive without the power you could not see. They learned how to grow hardy grains in dark soil, they learned how to raise sturdy goats and hens, how to make candles and clothes, and how to live in a different way from everything they knew before. Some also could survive the Dying Fever. They’d be sick but not dying sick. That’s why you, me, and Grannie and these Littluns, why any of us are here: because some people went away and learned a new life. And survived sickness and hardship.”

  We all heard this part of the story before, too, how a very few clever people survived from the Olden Begones since they built tiny farms and greenhouses, learned new ways, and found crops that grew without bees in the dark soil after the Black Rain. They were also lucky or strong enough not to die from fever.

  “In Oculum City the people knew they were doomed. They could not save themselves. But they could save their children, or some of them. So they made a magic, a kind of medicine that could put a child into a safe sleep for a long time. They gave the children strength in their bodies called ‘immunity’ that would protect them from illness, even from the fevers that killed. They created an army of simple helpers made of metal and leather who worked on the power of the sun and who could run the Oculum City Dome without guidance. Then they chose one thousand babies from the city and sealed them inside.”

  “Were they dead?” I ask. The thought of Lisle sealed inside the dome asleep for all time made me fearful.

  Jonatan Briar shakes his head. “No, they used the medicine that would put a child to sleep. So not dead, just waiting to be woken.”

  “They’s all asleep?” Cranker asks, doubtful. Briar nods.

  “Yes. So the story goes. These thousand babies go to sleep, and the Oculum City Dome is sealed up, and outside the world changes forever with the Black Rain, illness, and mayhem. But inside the simple machines work away to keep the sleeping babies safe. Once every year, year in and year out for decades, then for ages and ages, the machines open the dome and test the air for a poison that made the Black Rain come. If the poison fell below dangerous levels for long enough, then the machines would start to wake the babies, fifty girls and fifty boys a year, until all one thousand babies awoke. Then the Olden Begones hoped their children would grow and one day start the mighty city all over again.”

  “How long would that take to wake them?” Cranker asks. He never was very good at his numbers.

  “Mann?” Jonatan asks.

  I sum it up in my head. So fifty boys and fifty girls, that’s one hundred babies a year, until all one thousand was woke. “Once the first baby was woke … ten years to wake them all?” I say, concentrating.

  Jonatan nods. “Good math, Mann. You’d make master stonemason!” This makes me feel strange. I don’t hear praise much. But something is bothering me.

  “Couldn’t they ever get out?” I ask. “Once they woke up?”

  Jonatan winks at me. I think he thinks I’m smart. “Good question, Mann. What would be the point of a dome that you couldn’t get out of? Why save all those children if they couldn’t leave the dome when they were ready?”

  “Why, they’d be nothing but prisoners,” Cranker says. He wants Jonatan Briar to think he’s smart, too. The big man shifts his weight and leans into the fire.

  “That’s so, Cranker. There’s a story in one of the books in the library about a secret door for the children inside to discover when they were ready. But no one has ever found it, although no one has looked too hard, as far as I know.”

  Jonatan Briar comes closer to Cranker and me, and we both draw nearer.

  “Along with the babies, the Olden Begones sealed up something else in the dome. Can you guess what?” I shrug, and Cranker shakes his head. Jonatan Briar pokes me in the arm.

  “Seeds. Seeds that would grow trees, bushes and crops that bore fruit. Special hardy fruit trees and crops made to withstand the harsh new environment after the Black Rain. And they sealed up special, hardy new bees to do what’s needed to make the fruit healthy. When the air was safe again, the machines would start the first crops in the dome. Along with the babies, they’d wake up the bees and the fruit trees.”

  We stare at him, silent and doubtful.

  “What machines could do all that?” I ask after a silence.

  “They were very smart in the Olden Begones.”

  “Not smart enough to save themselves,” Grannie says. “Not smart enough to stop the Blac
k Rain. Nor the fever.” She was always one for pointing out the very truth of a thing.

  We all sit quiet for a while, watching the fire, thinking about Jonatan’s story.

  “Is it true, though?” I ask. “About the babies and the machines … and the fruit trees?”

  Jonatan Briar doesn’t answer me right away, when he does he sounds like he’s not sure, like he’s considering.

  “I tell you, it was taught to me as a legend, but legends can be true, Mann, or at least partly true. The men and women who taught me are smart, well-learned, and the keepers of the old knowledge. They spend all their lives reading about the Olden Begones. In their library they have ancient books and papers called ‘magazines,’ and even some very precious relics called ‘newspapers’ from long ago, in special dry vaults beneath thick glass so they don’t age so quickly. They write out the stories they read in the books, magazines, and newspapers so that they aren’t lost forever. They teach their children the stories from the Olden Begones so that we will travel into the world when we’re grown and tell others. Tell you. My job is to keep the old stories alive.”

  “I thought your job was to build with stone and do sums,” Cranker points out.

  Briar laughs. “Well, yes, that too, Cranker. Stories don’t make a living, and stone does.”

  “But if it’s true, or partway true, wouldn’t we know it? Wouldn’t we see people in the dome? Wouldn’t we know they were in there?” I can’t get enough of this story. The sight of the golden dome glowing in the sunset last night as it opened will stay with me forever.

  “The dome is thick, Mann. It’s too thick to break through, and the old entrances from long ago have been blocked, and no one knows where to look for them, anyway. Besides, if they are in there, maybe the babies are all still asleep? People do talk about scaling the dome one day and climbing in through the open top, but frankly, we have bigger things to do first. And it’s a long way up, and how would you do it? Besides, it’s hard to get up close because of the piles of Olden Begones garbage, cars, trucks and buses …”