Alexandria (6 page)

“Girls, it’s time,” chirps Ezbeth. She steps through the lodge, giving the children a last minute once-over. Their faces are puffy, but presentable. “Line up for me, just like you did before.”

The girls stand as if possessed and form an arrow straight line down the middle of the lodge and march outside. Streamers of gold and purple crisscross the sky as the evening sun sets over the ocean. The air is alive with frenetic excitement, the amphitheatre nearly full, row after row of toothy grins and glittering eyes stretching high up the side of the hill, and the gathered forms stomp their feet and cheer as the frightened children exit the lodge.

The certainty of impending doom sets upon each young girl, convinced that they will be painfully sacrificed, their throats slashed like their parents to satisfy the twisted pleasures of the bloodthirsty audience. Their feet want to resist but they are incapable. In dreamlike limbo their zombii walk carries them toward the stage, lambs to the slaughter, counting down the last moments of their mortal lives.

Nisaq walks toward them from the opposite direction, a train of cleaned and groomed boys following along. He meets Ezbeth in the middle and they instruct the children to sit, front row seats for the horrorshow, boys and girls separated by a center aisle. The crowd erupts.

Directly behind the benches, in lines of supreme precision, stand the warriors. Their ranks extend from one side of the stage to the other, and many rows deep, a legion of shaved and red-striped heads. Rigid, warlike postures give them a statuesque appearance, as though they are cut and sculpted from the very sandstone upon which they stand.

Beyond the last tier, situated almost at the crest of the hill, encircled by a ring of lush pines, rests the King’s Gallery.

Arana rises.

His multitude of followers stir in their seats as he descends the central aisle, each step spurring them further until the sound of thunderous stomping echoes off the hillsides. He has traded his simple attire for more stately wear, leather-trimmed and embroidered. His hands are unroughened. His face clings to boyhood. Deafening cheers compete with the roar of stomping feet as the young sovereign proceeds through the gridwork of warriors and steps upon the stage and faces them, blue eyes sparkling, a wide, white smile opening across his face.

“Tonight,” he begins, “we celebrate the proud return of our Temple Sons.”

The crowd rises to its feet and cries out.

“And their precious bounty…” He fans his hands out and gestures to the horrified children. This elicits another berserk outpouring and Arana moves to quiet them. “Brave children, who have made a long and difficult journey to be here with us. Some of you made that same hard journey yourselves.”

Whistles and calls ripple across the amphitheatre.

“These children will no longer endure the unspeakable suffering of the old ways.” Here he settles his piercing eyes directly on the children, down the row, looking intently through each of them. They are at once repulsed and mesmerized by his bizarre gaze. “I envy you the most. Your journey is only just beginning.”

The children stifle sobs and sit perfectly still.

“You have no need to be scared anymore, children. Ever again. You are safe. You are part of our family now.” He is beaming as he looks upon them, bursting with patriarchal pride. “I am your King. You will know me. Look around you—this is your family. These are your brothers and sisters.”

The children do as they are told, swiveling their heads around shyly and beholding the virtual sea of ecstatic faces spanning up the hillside.

“Sadly,” he says, his tone darkening, “we know that these are dangerous ventures. These brave Sons risk their lives when they leave our Temple… and sometimes they do not return.”

A hush falls over the amphitheatre.

“We lost a young man on this venture—a proud soldier named Vallen. I grieve for his parents, and for his brother.”

His gaze darts briefly to Jack, whose heart thunders. He shrinks in his seat under the weight of the hideous blue stare.

“His sacrifice was not wasted.” Arana shifts his demeanor again, pacing the stagefront like a prowling lynx. “There is a sickness in this land—a sickness passed down through the old ways, handed down from parent to child, through the forests and valleys and along the coast—there are people who perform dark rituals that celebrate the great destruction and invite its vengeful return. On the night of these children’s rescue, their people were honoring these old ways.”

Scattered grumbles.

“They worshipped Fire!”

Hysteria.

“And their
sick
rituals were cruelly acted out… by these innocent children.”

Disgust crescendos in the well-lathered crowd. Arana closes his eyes somberly.

“These children need your help letting go of what has passed, and accepting a new way into their hearts.”

Jack watches in stupefied awe. He doesn’t understand what any of this means.

“The world is ours.
Our gift
. And I will not allow the savagery of forest scum to ruin what we have built. I will not allow deadly rituals to plunge this world back into chaos. If they want Fire,” he shouts passionately,
“then we will let them burn.”

The horde unleashes a belt of angry lust that puts their previous display to shame, set to rip the whole structure apart if the zeal does not diminish.

The young King hardens his visage and strides abruptly upstage and vanishes from view, while the pandemonium swells and echoes through the valley and antique ruins below.

What follows is a unique form of humiliation. The bashful children are pawed over and ogled at by their new family. Bright, sanguine faces ask questions that seem absurd under the circumstances.
How old are you, little boy?
What games do you like to play?
What is your favorite food?
The boys and girls give polite one-word answers to their queries and do their best to remain obedient. The strange people respond with smiles of amazement, as if their simple, terse answers are the most marvelous words ever spoken.

Smoke wafts from the chimney of the girls’ lodge and a sentry stands vigil just outside the door. The girls wear thin nightgowns and sit in a circle around the cobbled stone fireplace with Sena. She is a young woman herself, having barely left her teenage years behind.

“Did they hurt your family too?” asks Jeneth. She has taken to speaking for the group.

“This
is
my family. I was born here, I’ve always lived here.”

“But…” Jeneth ruminates over how exactly to phrase this. “You’re all so… nice. I don’t understand how…
how you could kill people.”

Sena inhales sharply, a bit shocked. “That’s not really how we talk about it here. I know others who’ve been brought from away, and it takes them a while to understand it was for their own good. We don’t want to hurt you. That’s the last thing we want to do.”

“Our parents are
dead
because of you.”

“They’re not dead because of us. Their own actions caused this. You didn’t know any better. You didn’t know they were hurting you.”

“Our parents didn’t hurt us,” says Lia.

“Oh, honey, I don’t mean they caused you pain. They hurt you in
here.”
She points to her heart.

“What does that mean? You don’t even know them.”

“I know…” Sena gathers her thoughts carefully. “I’ve known of people
like
them. I know their rituals seemed harmless to you, but you’re too young to understand. They are an invitation to the spirits of Fire. They are very dangerous.”

Jeneth shakes her head, confused. “What rituals? What are you talking about?”

“You know what happened to the world, right?
It burned
. It burned because they were sick—because they wanted it to burn. And your people were sick, too. Did they want to see everything ruined this time? The whole world and everything in it?” Her voice waivers and she mists over with tears. “I have… two babies at home… and when I look a them…
their little faces
… I just want them to be safe…”

She puts her face in her hands, overtaken.

The girls sit in bewildered silence and watch nervously as Sena weeps long into the night.

“I was brought here when I was seven,” says Quinlan. The boys sit cross-legged on their bunks and listen. “I don’t remember much about my old family. We lived in a cave near the coast, somewhere north of here.”

“Did they burn your parents?” asks Aiden, far too simply, as if this were a normal question.

“Of course. They had no choice.”

“But why?
Didn’t it hurt you?”

“I know I cried a lot at first. I understand, though. They were set in their ways. They wouldn’t fit in here. But I promise you, it gets easier. I have a good life here now. Better than I would have had living in a dirty cave.” Quinlan is looking at them, but not. There is something missing behind his eyes. “As for worrying about your old family, they were given to savagery and the sooner you put all that behind you the better. We’re civilized here.”

“Do we look like savages to you?” asks Jack.

Quinlan raises his eyebrows innocently. “You did when they brought you in.” Jack starts to form a reply to this absurdity and Quinlan cuts him off. “You can have a life so much happier than you would have had living like animals in the forest.”

“I was happy before,” says William, slumping his shoulders and staring at the floor.

“You’re going to be fine. It just takes time. Nisaq says it’s like training wild horses. It takes time and patience, and sometimes it seems cruel, but in the end they’re a lot better off.”

This peculiar analogy evades the boys and they say nothing.

“Well,” says Quinlan, scooting to the edge of his bunk, “I think it’s time to get some sleep.”

He moves around the chamber and extinguishes the sconces, plunging them into darkness.

The whole night has seemed like a prolonged hallucination. Jack curls up on his mattress, worn to the core from the evening’s bizarre convocation. As he lies there gazing at the ceiling, he falls asleep. Deeply.

He dreams.

He is back in his village, flames rising around him. He sees his mother at the end of the promenade and she is shimmering. His father is standing behind her, his face blurred, a veiled memory from his early childhood. He walks toward his mother but she does not get any closer. She looks so warm and comforting, such safe refuge, and Jack runs to her. As he runs the promenade stretches impossibly below his feet, new stones appearing out of thin air and widening the chasm that separates them. He runs harder and faster, and the stone avenue stretches farther and wider until his mother is just a speck on the horizon, shimmering and flickering like some mystical apparition. Suddenly the concourse shrinks and Jack is rocketing toward her at breakneck speed, the light twinkle of her hazel eyes, her beautiful soft face coming into view, closer and closer. Just as he should reach her, just as he is extending his arms and anticipating her tight embrace, he jerks rigidly awake, drenched in cold sweat. He looks around at his dormitory and lies flatly back on his mattress, tears bursting from the corners of his eyes, realizing with dread that he has only traded one nightmare for another.