The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (44 page)

“The story of their journey had somehow been included in these notebooks,” Yoeme said, thumping the notebooks with her bony forefinger. “They set out at night and traveled a great distance before day-break. They slept until sundown and set out once more. They were only young children. The eldest girl was twelve. Perhaps that is why the people in the places they passed were merciful and did not alert the local authorities. The story is all here in the notebooks.”

Many weeks into their journey, as they began to enter the edge of this stern motherland, they were weak with hunger. All along they had managed to find water and to ration what they each carried in the canteen gourds. Finally, early one morning as they prepared to sleep until dark, one of the younger girls burst into tears. She was so hungry, her stomach hurting and hurting worse than the “spike.” But the eldest girl was suspicious of these tears because only the day before they had each got a handful of gourd seeds from a man tending his garden.

They had entered a dry, barren terrain of sharp stones and steep hills cut by gullies. Few people were to be found anywhere along the trail they followed now. When they had met people, they saw there was little food to be had. They were told the aliens had stolen their modest harvests year after year until the people could hardly keep enough to seed the gardens the following season. The children saw few birds or rodents and no large animals because the aliens had slaughtered all these creatures to feed themselves and their soldiers and their slaves. It had been many weeks since the four children had seen meat of any sort. So the eldest girl became suspicious and asked the younger girl to lift the sacklike cotton garment she wore. But the younger girl refused. The eldest knew then what had happened, and she jerked up the ragged dress. The other children were horrified to see the younger girl had torn an opening in the hidden pocket, exposing the edges of the almanac pages.

While the other three had slept, the younger girl had lain next to the others secretly chewing and sucking the edges of the brittle horse-gut pages. The eldest led the others, and they began slapping and kicking the younger girl until she collapsed on the ground in tears. But they were weak from hunger, and soon they stopped and sat on the ground beside her and cried too.

Of course nothing had been lost because the little girl had eaten only the edges of the pages. But as the children continued on, they began to find entire villages that had been abandoned, where the people had not even bothered to carry grinding stones or cooking pots with them. Finally they reached the point on the river where the village known as “the Mouth” is now located, but at that time, all that marked the place was the big grove of cottonwood trees there. The children found the houses empty, but fortunately they found water in a seep dug by coyotes under the cottonwood trees. The children thought they were alone in the village and had just settled themselves in a huddle to sleep when they heard the sound of a woman singing. The voice sounded happy and the children hardly knew what to make of it. She was a hunchbacked woman left behind by the others when they fled the invaders and their soldiers. The woman moved along the ground like a spider to get around in the village and could even reach the water. But of course she could not have fled to the mountains with the others.

The woman began to smile and talk rapidly to them in a language they had never heard. When they did not respond, she smiled again and gestured for them to come closer to her, and to the cook fire she had kindled in front of her house. She pointed into the big soot-layered cooking pot that was beginning to simmer. Bulbs and roots the woman had dug along the dry riverbed floated in the water like the severed arms and heads the children had seen in a lake near their home in the South. Ferny green leaves floated among the bulbs and roots, and the woman brought out a flat, small basket with crystals of rock salt.

The little boy fell asleep in the shady doorway while the girls sat staring at the hunchbacked woman whose face seemed as big as her body. They had been traveling for months and they had met people who were afraid of them—afraid of who might be tracking the children and of the disaster that contact with fugitives might bring. The girls studied the crippled woman for a while and whispered to themselves. They concluded the woman had been abandoned, left for dead. She seemed so happy to have them. She must have been alone a long time. Here was a place they might stay awhile. To rest up and prepare for the mountains. The children had concluded the bright blue mountain range below the higher and bluer ranges were the mountains they had been instructed to find. They discussed it and decided that since they were almost to their destination, they could afford to rest awhile with the crippled woman.

The woman dropped tiny pinches of the rock salt into the stew and adjusted the level of the fire carefully. She was listening to the girls whisper, but did not speak until they had scooted themselves into the shade with their backs against woven-river-reed wall. The eldest girl could understand nothing the woman was saying, but decided the woman had asked about their destination. So the eldest girl stood up and stepped into the sun, shading her eyes with one hand and pointing with the other. The woman dragged herself past the little boy without waking him and moved around the fire until she could see exactly where the girl was pointing. The woman had then pointed at all the empty houses and had nodded her head, then had pointed back at the blue mountains that filled the entire horizon from the west to the east and as far north as it was possible to see. As the sun went higher and the heat of day descended, the mountains became less distinct and their color a hazy blue.

While the others slept and the woman watched the stew, the eldest girl had slipped away as if she were going to the bushes to urinate. But once hidden, she had carefully unknotted the threads closing the hidden pocket. Although she could no more read the writing than she could understand the language of the hunchbacked woman, she looked carefully at each stiff, curled page. When she returned to the little cook fire, she glanced over in the shade to be sure the other three were sleeping, and then she dropped a page of the manuscript into the simmering vegetable stew. The girl had done it so quickly the hunchbacked woman had no chance to protest. The woman watched the stew for a long time. The girl watched beside her. The thin, brittle page gradually began to change. Brownish ink rose in clouds. Outlines of the letters smeared and then they floated up and away like flocks of small birds. The surface of the page began to glisten, and brittle, curled edges swelled flat and spread until the top of the stew pot was nearly covered with a section of horse stomach. Well, it was a wonderful stew. They lived on it for days and days, digging up little round bulbs in the soft, white river sand, and gathering ant eggs and other things the crippled woman directed them to get. Food was difficult to find, but with the four of them they managed very well, and gradually they realized if they had not come along, the crippled woman would have starved as soon as she had gathered all the roots and bulbs she could reach.

They all began to gain strength from just one potful of stew. Only the younger girl who had chewed and sucked the edges of the pages she
carried knew the source of the wonderful flavor in the stew. Then, in a quarrel, the little girl who knew the secret of the stew had told the others. The little boy began to cry. He said he would not eat another mouthful because he might be eating the part of the book in which the alien invaders are wiped out forever. He might be eating the passage of the story that describes the return of the spirits of the days who love the people. The eldest girl had shared the shock of her companions at her thoughtlessness. It must have been the hunger—hunger affected the brain. They had all seen what hunger did during the last months the Butcher had starved and slaughtered their people. But then the eldest stopped crying and said, “I remember what was on the page we ate. I know that part of the almanac—I have heard the stories of those days told many times. Now I am going to tell you three. So if something happens to me, the three of you will know how that part of the story goes.”

The little boy did not agree. He did not think tampering with the pages of the almanac was allowed. But the girls were brutal. They told him they didn’t care if he ate or not. Every time a page had been memorized, they could eat it. Of course they hoped to reach some of their own people in the mountains of the North. They agreed they should try not to eat any more pages. They would have to be cautious. The crippled woman only watched. The children noticed she was less cheerful, and they did not hear her singing as they had when they’d first come. The eldest said it was because the woman was afraid soon they would leave her, and then she might die. The youngest girl thought the woman was sad because the others in her village had left her behind. The little boy feared the woman had already suffered the effect of having eaten a page from the almanac.

Sometime in the late afternoon, the eldest girl studied the northern horizon, calculating the last leg of the journey. She had learned the paler the blue of the mountains, the drier and more barren the land where they lay. She must not have her willpower fade at the thought of leaving the comfort of the shady cottonwood trees and the water at the little house of river reeds.

The hunchbacked woman was again boiling a potful of roots and bulbs. The woman gestured at the pot, and the eldest girl knew the woman wanted another page from the almanac. But this time the girl was well rested and not starving. She knew what must be done with these pages. They had not yet reached the mountains the color of the
sky. Her instructions had been very clear. The girl pretended not to understand what the crippled woman was asking, but the girl also realized by the expression in the woman’s eyes, the woman was not fooled. The children had not traveled all that distance without encountering “hosts” who had wanted favors in return. Even the little boy was not safe from such propositions. But their elders had warned them they must be prepared for “such hosts” because the epoch that was dawning was known by different names from tribe to tribe, but their people called the epoch Death-Eye Dog. During the epoch of Death-Eye Dog human beings, especially the alien invaders, would become obsessed with hungers and impulses commonly seen in wild dogs. The children had been warned. The children had been reminded. A human being was born into the days she or he must live with until eventually the days themselves would travel on. All anyone could do was recognize the traits, the spirits of the days, and take precautions. The epoch of Death-Eye Dog was male and therefore tended to be somewhat weak and very cruel.

The girl was careful to take each of the children aside one by one. She told them they must travel on and that she felt the crippled woman might try to stop them. So when they went to dig roots and gather larvae in the coolness after sundown, they were careful to fill all of their gourd canteens. The little boy carried the torn blanket. The hunchbacked woman watched helplessly and kept gesturing at the pot full of roots stewing over the coals. The girl who had first chewed the edges of pages she carried hesitated. She had also had her first menstruation because of the food and the rest, and she wanted to show the others, especially the eldest, she was not a child.

“Go on,” she told the others, “I will be following right behind.”

The eldest girl tried to warn her. “Don’t do this! We must stay together.” But the girl would not listen. “At least take off your dress so the pages will be safe.” But the girl refused that too because she was confident of herself. The last they ever saw of her was in front of the house of woven river reeds, accepting a bowl of stew from the crippled woman, who was smiling broadly and nodding her head enthusiastically.

The eldest girl went sneaking back the next day while the others slept. She had gone back for the pages, not for their companion. The crippled woman was asleep in the shade of the cottonwoods. The eldest could find no trace of the other girl. For a while she thought perhaps the girl had somehow been lost attempting to catch up with them, although they had been walking in the river sand, following the dry
riverbed. But as the girl quietly checked inside each of the abandoned houses, she finally came to a structure that had been used by the men for ceremonial purposes. Part of the structure was set below the ground’s surface; even as she stood at the entrance she could feel cool air currents pouring out. The girl had stopped at the entrance although she knew she must hurry. She had not hesitated at any of the other houses, but the air currents she felt caused the sweat to chill on her skin; a shudder swept over her. She did not want to go inside. She did not even want to stand in the threshold and look in.

So there, in the hottest part of the day, after the sun had centered in the sky, a restless breeze kicked up the dust and rustled the cottonwood leaves. The girl was standing in front of the ceremonial house; she did not want to look inside, and yet she was certain she must. The clatter of the cottonwood leaves in the wind, and the waves of heat swelling off the packed earth of the abandoned village plaza, seemed to lull her into drowsiness and sleep. The girl realized if she did not move that instant, she would become paralyzed, and her fear startled her and caused her to lunge forward into the coolness of the dim ceremonial chamber. The heat swelling out of the parched earth had been the woman’s ally; while the woman was sleeping, her ally had been instructed to guard the abandoned village.

People did not return to the abandoned village for a long time, and even now, people from the village called the Mouth suffer for reasons that can only be traced to what the eldest girl saw inside the ceremonial house. The epoch of Death-Eye Dog is, of course, notorious for just this sort of thing. Death-Eye Dog has been seated on the throne for five hundred years. His influence has been established across this entire world.

So the girl did not hesitate at what she saw hanging from the cross-beams of the roof. What she had returned for was the ragged garment the younger girl had worn. The eldest girl could only hope the crippled woman had not begun cooking the pages, but had instead feasted upon the liver or heart, known to be the preferred delicacies. The hunchbacked woman had not yet removed the pages from the dress, so the eldest slipped the garment over her head and wore it over her own dress. The children had been told the pages held many forces within them, countless physical and spiritual properties to guide the people and make them strong.