Old Green World (16 page)

Niall sat down, cross-legged, next to Albert. He didn’t say anything. After a few moments, he took his hand and ran it over the stubble on Albert’s head. Albert recoiled in surprise, then cautiously and stiffly let Niall touch him. They stayed like that for several minutes before Albert turned onto his side, facing Niall, and curled up in a ball.

I’ll tell you how I am
, Albert said.
I hunt, and I hear the forest talking to me when I hunt. When I listen, I know everything, and hunting is easy, but there’s something terrifying. I eat what I hunt, and I read, and I talk to myself. Then I sleep, and I dream about the forest, and I dream about the people in the forest. I dream about the people from the forest that I killed. I don’t know how long I’ve been here anymore.

They sat there in silence for a little while, connected, present to one another.

Then, Albert said:
I deserve it. I deserve to die out here, alone and mad.

Why do you deserve that?

You deserve it, too
, Albert said, and then let the thought sit for a while.
I deserve it most of all, though. You killed because you had a plan. Most of the soldiers killed because they didn’t know. But I knew. I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway. I knew but wouldn’t admit it. I was angry, and I didn’t know what to do, and I was good at killing. I’ve been learning to kill since I was a baby.

You’re still a baby
, Niall said. And then:
What if we changed everything, you and I? What if we stopped the killing and changed civilization? Would that feel like penance to you?

Albert got up and walked toward the cabin.

Niall waited a moment. He looked out again, toward the forest. He thought, his own private thought,
I could go now, just go. It would be kinder.
But, when he rose, he walked toward the cabin as well.

From the doorway he saw Albert in his hammock, laying back, eyes closed.

“Are you all right?” Niall said aloud.

“I’m trying to center myself. That’s what you always taught us, right? You tell us to be stillness and the sound of breathing. So shut up and let me be stillness.”

Niall smirked. “Fine.” Albert grew quiet and so did Niall. He sat, stilled himself and experienced himself, the room, Albert, himself with all of it. When he spoke, it was for Albert.

The core of the universe has no order, just collision and vibration, decay and regeneration, churning. Somehow this resolves into the universe. We struggle to understand how.

“What’s that all about?” Albert said aloud.

“It’s part of the doctrine we recite to initiates. To those becoming Adepts.”

Albert curled up on the hammock, turning his back to Niall. “I don’t want to do that. The last thing I want to do is be an Adept.”

You want to know, though, don’t you? You want to understand.

Niall then walked to the door, which was slightly ajar, and opened it entirely. A breeze blew through, and the light of the sun-dappled forest shone in. He walked back toward Albert, circled the hammock. He took a chair beside the hammock.

You want to be able to speak back to the forest, to understand it. You want the dreams to make sense. If you are initiated, you’ll understand
, Niall said.
I can’t promise anything else, but I promise you’ll understand everything.

Albert flipped around and stared silently into Niall’s eyes. He reached out and started stroking Niall’s hand and forearm.

He’ll do it just to share it with me
, Niall thought.
He just wants to be with somebody.
This was a poor decision on so many levels, but it was a decision he went on making.

He took the index finger of his right hand and touched it to Albert’s forehead, just above the eyes and between the eyebrows. “There,” he said.

+ + +

Suddenly Albert flew away. He landed in a different place. It wasn’t clear whether time had passed. The place surrounded and shrouded him in gray. The gray felt close. Albert tried to reach out and touch it, but it was different from fog. He tried to squint through it, and thought he could make out shapes. He wasn’t sure where they were relative to him, whether they were big things far away, or smaller things near to him. After a while, he decided that they were trees, and that he was near a forest. He started walking toward the trees. He walked for a while before he realized they weren’t getting any closer.

This is it
, he thought.
This is initiation.
With nowhere to go, he sat down and listened to his breathing. It sounded vast: it was the only sound he could find. He counted a hundred breaths. He thought he heard the rush of wind, but realized it was his imagination. He counted three hundred more breaths. His ears started to ring. He counted five hundred more before the ringing faded.
 

He swam in a trance for six hundred breaths before his mind rejected the whole enterprise, called Niall a liar, called himself a fool, and despaired. He sat still and counted a thousand more.

“Are you showing up, Niall?” He shouted. It didn’t echo. The space felt small. “I imagine you’re going to show up eventually. Any time now.” He waited and then shouted, “Niall!” It was as muffled as before.

He returned to his quiet and stayed still. A thousand breaths more.

He began to feel pine needles and brush beneath him. He opened his eyes and could see trees in their detail. He was in a clearing. The forest had a peculiar green glow.

It was the clearing where he had made his home in Baixa. He could see his cabin. And then it wasn’t his home, wasn’t his cabin, was just somewhere much like it. Other people lived here. He saw Baixans helping one another with their chores, bringing in food from the forest, cooking, bathing one another, taking midday naps.

A priest was making rounds there, talking closely to a woman with a baby. The woman seemed concerned, as if the baby might be in danger, or sick. The priest spoke matter-of-factly but calmly to the woman for a few moments, then looked to the baby and put a hand to the baby’s brow. The baby stopped its crying. The mother spoke again, affirming what the priest had told her. She kissed the priest on the cheek.

It can’t be Niall
, he thought,
but it is.
He stared intently at the priest.

And then he heard Niall in his ear.
Don’t try so hard. You can just relax and look. You don’t
try
to look at things with your eyes, right? You just look.

You’re cross
, Albert said.
You’re a man but you can bear a child.

Did your parents teach you that word?
Niall asked.

When I was a boy, there was a cross at our school. She was a girl, but her body was a boy’s. The Adepts realized it. They took her and her parents to the Old City, to London. We talked about it a lot. Everyone was very excited.
Albert remembered that it was a great moment, something remarkable. Her parents were so proud. Albert remembered wanting to be cross when he saw how special it was.

That’s right
, Niall said,
Adria is from the north. I should have remembered that.

Niall stared at the tableau, the village, his other self, before speaking again.
My parents and brother were from Terra Baixa. They fled from here on a boat. They were hungry and sick, and they wanted to be somewhere safer and better. They went to London, and I was born there. My parents knew; they always knew.

When I was four, the Adepts came for me. My parents were content with letting me go. They still live in the city. I haven’t seen them since I was four years old. I grew up with the Adepts.
Albert noticed a surprising hint of bitterness in the last sentence.

You have a man’s body
, Albert said. It was partially a question, partially just an observation.

The Old People taught me as a child how to grow as a man
, Niall said.
Our strength, our height, our bodies are just codes and chemicals, bits that we organize into a system. Adepts are experts in what these codes all mean. We can control the systems of our bodies. That’s much of how we heal people.

It’s not just about bodies, though
, Niall said.
‘Man’ is just a word for how we act in this world.
He paused.
It was different in Baixa, before. My body would be different if my parents had stayed in Baixa, or if we lived before the Old People. The Old People gave us different words for our bodies, to organize us. They changed what our bodies meant.

What is this place? Is this real?
Albert asked.
Why didn’t you come when I called?

You needed to sit a little longer. This is a place. You’ll learn that there’s something subjective about ‘real.’

When does the initiation start?

It’s started already.
Niall leaned in closely to Albert, as if for a kiss. But Niall just put his finger at Albert’s third eye again.

And then there was a moment, and Albert didn’t know when it was. Niall was above him; Albert could feel Niall’s weight on him. And then he was wrapped around Niall: it hurt, but Albert also wanted it, he wanted to feel Niall. He felt the free fall of Niall in control; he gave in to it and then fell apart. It became a crystal prism of moments: Niall was inside him, he was inside Niall, in a moment that might have happened right now, or a long time ago, or was maybe something he dreamed. They were somewhere else; Niall lay back, naked, scratched his belly, looked at Albert, and said, “C’mon.” And then he was pinned beneath Niall again, staring at him helplessly, losing himself in Niall’s indomitable, impenetrable, calm, relentless, laughing eyes. He could hear Niall’s words in his mind again, unsure if he was hearing them just from his mind or from Niall himself, those words from before:
You want to know, don’t you? You want to understand. What if we changed everything, you and I?

And then they were done for a moment, again maybe this moment, or maybe the past, or perhaps something Albert was anticipating. Albert was spooned against Niall now, staring at the black stubble of his neck. He nestled against it and smelled him and said
I love you
, and Niall said:
I love you, too. It happens as a part of this. It’s beautiful and very frightening the way we fall in love with each other.

Niall rolled around to face Albert. He grasped Albert’s chin again and took him into his eyes. And for a moment, for just a moment, Niall let the act drop and let Albert see the fear and machination in his eyes. A surge of adrenaline pulsed through Albert: he tried to label it as either terror or excitement. The difference was too subtle, so he stopped trying to give it a name, but he knew he wanted more.

Niall was gone, though. Albert woke up in the forest, or else they had been here the whole time. He remembered the pine needles against his back, the humid slight breeze on his flesh, bits of mud striped on Niall’s thigh, on Niall’s furry chest and shoulders.

He sat up, dressed. As he looked around the clearing, a feeling of vague familiarity crystallized into realization. He stood and walked directly across to the far side of the clearing. That was the way back to the farm.

He emerged from the forest and walked the boundary of the pasture, around the fence. There were no animals in the pasture. Beyond the pasture sat the gardens, where they grew vegetables for the house. The season was the same as Baixa; the late summer vegetables were full. The garden looked well tended. He saw the wooden markers that Lini had used to label the rows.

He went into the house. He could smell dough rising. A fire burned; through an open window in the kitchen, a breeze dried dishes on a wooden rack. The house was as he remembered it, before his parents died, before he left, but no one was there. He went through the rooms, looking and finding no one. He combed the house for dogs or cats. Nothing lived here.

He sat in a chair. He watched the fire for a while. He listened to the sounds of outside from the open front door and the open window. He started crying a little, and let himself. He would cry and then stop, and then sit calmly, and then cry again. Little wells of emotion. With each well of emotion, he felt a color creep into his peripheral vision, a grassy green. His view got greener and greener.

After a while he said to the fire, “You killed my parents. You bastards killed my parents.”

Richard was there, by the fire. He drank a cup of tea. He said, “It was an accident, but yes.”

They’re all dead
, Albert thought.
Everything good is gone. We’ll never get it back. And it’s him, and his stupid plans, their plans for civilization. They don’t care about the people. They don’t care whom they hurt.

There was a flood of thoughts, green thoughts. Albert pictured filling Richard’s chest with arrows, chopping off Richard’s head, running a sword through Richard’s gut, slowly. And then he dreamed of doing the same to others. Sister Alice. The little, terrible Old Sisters. Every green, sick savage in Terra Baixa. Even Niall, who manipulated him without giving him enough credit to think he might realize it. All of them.

He would bathe in the screams and stomp on their spilling viscera. He could do it. He was better at it than anyone. He could do it forever. He could ride all of it like a wave, a warm safe wave of the cries and dying exhalations and misery of others, all the others that put him where he was.

He swam in that place for a while. It felt good, and he started to think of making it happen for real, or as real as this place was. He had a sword and a fist and he took it toward Richard. He imagined putting a fist in Richard’s face. He could feel it. It was so close. All he had to do was let it happen. Richard stared at him, his stare unwavering. “Do it,” he said.

Albert stopped. “No.” He felt the heat and weight and tension detach from him, and with a rush move through him. He swam beneath the wave and felt its power finish itself above, around, away from him.

Richard shifted his posture. “You’re supposed to smack me now.”

“Shut up,” Albert said.

Richard smiled.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Albert said. “I love you. I don’t want to kill anybody. And if that’s what it means to be initiated, it’s a terrible plan and it’s not going to work.”