Humanity (7 page)

My eyelids fluttered.

“Keep them closed!” he commanded.

I did. He continued to push me forward,
then stopped.

“Now, don’t open your eyes. I’m going to
describe something to you. Pink and white, embracing as one, surrounding its
environment like a cloud. How does that sound.”

“Nice.”

“Okay. Open your eyes.”

I did. I was staring into the basin of a
pink cotton candy machine. The basin was empty, save for the white crisscross
of cobwebs.

“See? Humans created this, then nature
took it and made it into something beautiful.”
“Cobwebs?”

“What’s more beautiful than someone
taking an abandoned object and making it into a safe haven for themselves?”

“That’s one way of looking at it. Another
way is as a hunting ground.”

“There isn’t any prey trapped in the web,
though. The spider isn’t even here.”

“He must not have been very successful.”

Gideon sighed. “Let’s try again. Close
your eyes.”

I did without argument, and he began steering
me by the shoulders again.

“Blue, green, purple, yellow, red. A
stained glass window, a rainbow of color, dancing right before your eyes. Open
them.”

I did. Broken glass littered the asphalt
in front of me. Blue, green, purple, yellow, red. Smashed to pieces. The
remnants of the fun Technicolor lights that once represented the carnival.

“Do you see it?”

“See what?”

“The beauty, Candace.”

“Not really.”

He took me by the arm, hauling me away
from the glass.

“Where are you dragging me to now?” I
demanded.

He stopped me in front of a speckled,
cracked mirror, hung on a tall, metal wall. “What do you see?”

“A mirror.”

“No.” He stood behind me, gently pushing
my hair forward, then tucking a few strands behind my ear. He lifted my chin,
meeting my eyes in the mirror. “What do you see?”

“Myself?”

“Yes.”
I looked closely. “I look washed out. There are shadows under my eyes.”

He dropped my chin, taking a step back
and shaking his head. “I might just have to shoot you for that,” he informed
me, wrinkling his forehead.

I turned to face him. “What next?” I
asked.

He looked around at the wall we faced, at
the building it was attached to, then met my eyes. His glinted with mischief.
“Follow me,” he said. Then he turned and walked into the building.

I followed, but, when I entered, my eyes
were met with more mirrors. Some of them were cracked. Others were whole. A few
were completely shattered, their pieces littering the ground.

It was a maze. A maze of mirrors.

“Gideon?”

I heard a chuckle somewhere ahead. My
heart was in my throat. Was this a ploy? Was he trying to escape? He couldn’t
have ran before; with his injury, he wouldn’t have managed to outrun me. But a
house of mirrors was the perfect way to confuse me long enough to slip away.

I sprinted forward, looking for which way
I was supposed to turn. I chose one turn, then another. Over and over again I
was met with my face. Me. Candace. I looked even paler than I had in the first
mirror. What would I do if he left me?

My breath was shallow. Sweat beaded under
my eyes. And, still, turn after turn of the maze. Dead end after dead end.

“Gideon!” I gasped, panicked. I had no
idea where I was or how to get out. The mirrors felt as if they were closing in
on me. I stumbled, then sank to my knees.

I needed to breathe. I needed to focus. I
wouldn’t manage to get out if I couldn’t even see straight.

I closed my eyes, slowing my breath. I
listened for anything I could possibly hear.

“Candace?”

I blinked my eyes open. Gideon’s face was
right in front of mine, his eyebrows knit in concern. I could see each freckle
across his cheeks and nose. His deep brown eyes stared into mine.

“Gideon!” I breathed in relief; my hand
snapped out to grab his arm.

He patted my hand. “I didn’t know you’d
panic like that. Sorry.”

“I thought you’d left me.”

He stood, pulling me to my feet. “Well, I
didn’t. I just thought it’d be fun. And, at the other end. . .” He pulled me by
the hand, through the maze of mirrors, to the other side. There stood the
Ferris wheel. “I thought that if you couldn’t see the beauty in anything else
around us, then you’d at least be able to see it here. After all, you got so
excited before, when you could see it from the road.”

The bulbs lining the limbs of the Ferris
wheel weren’t lit, but they weren’t broken, either. The structure stood, tall
and unbroken, glinting in the sunlight, the earth claiming it with green
climbers.

I stared at it, then looked over at
Gideon. “Yeah. I like this.” I looked at it again. “If you look at it and
nothing else, you can almost pretend civilization hasn’t ended.”

He was silent for a moment, letting me
look.

“I had one other idea,” he all but
whispered.

I turned to him, open to any suggestions
he had. “Yes?”

“I want you to close your eyes again.”

I did. He took my hands and pulled me
forward, leading me along. After several steps, we stopped.

“Keep your eyes closed,” he murmured,
then placed my left hand up against his shoulder. His newly freed hand went to
my waist. He led me in a slow, careful circle, that my mind began to interpret
as a dance. After a minute, he started whistling a leisurely waltz, continuing
to lead me along.

“Open your eyes,” he finally said.

I did, meeting his. I looked around us,
noticing the white stucco columns that encased us, and the open roof above our
heads. We were dancing in a gazebo.

“This is where the orchestra would have
played, I think,” he whispered, watching for my reaction.

I smiled up at the open sky, then at the
columns around us. “It’s perfect. It doesn’t look touched at all.”

“Well, there’s a chunk of rock missing
over there.” He indicated it. “But I thought you’d appreciate the feel of it.
It’s a little easier to imagine the reality of this structure, since nothing is
really missing.”

“Can we camp here tonight?”
 
I asked. “It would be really neat to see the
stars through there.” I pointed at the open roof.

Gideon smiled. “Sure. I don’t know that I
could walk much more today, anyway. But, before we get settled, maybe we should
look around and see if there’s anything to forage for dinner.”

“Alright,” I replied, considering the
landscape. “Maybe if we. . .” I was in the act of lifting my arm to point when
there was a roar; a giant blur of orange landed on top of me, forcing me to to
the ground. Then it was up again, pouncing at Gideon.

I noted that Gideon had his gun out, then
noted that our attacker was an animal. A big, hairy animal with a long, thick
mane. The fur was matted and tangly, patchy in some places, and the beast had a
starved look to it – weak, like it had been wasting away in our absence.

Gideon raised his right arm defensively
toward the lion, and the lion knocked the gun from his hand; I watched it fly
toward what used to be a pretzel counter as I staggered to my feet. Gideon
whipped his knife out with his left hand, his right hand still buried in the
lion’s fur. The lion whacked at him with horribly ragged claws, tearing long
ribbons of flesh out of Gideon’s already healing arm.

I stood there, shock holding me to the
spot. Where had this lion come from? Was it originally from this carnival, one of
the escaped attractions?

Gideon wrestled with the lion, falling to
the ground under its weight and doing everything he could to hold the animal at
bay.

The animal didn’t seem to think I was a
threat at all. It had simply pushed me out of the way, then gone for Gideon.
Not that I provided much meat. . .

But I could probably suffice for dessert.

Something fuzzy occupied space in my
brain, other than the bloody, bizarre scene in front of me.

The gun.

I turned away from Gideon and jumped from
the gazebo, sprinting for the pretzel stand. I looked around for the gun,
finally dropping to my knees to check under the stand.

There it was.

I grabbed it, racing back to the gazebo,
recognizing the bloody state of Gideon’s fingers as they grazed the lion’s
fangs.

I held the gun with both hands and pulled
the trigger.

The first bullet to enter its hide just
seemed to make the lion angry; it roared and leapt from the gazebo, lunging
toward me, away from Gideon. The second bullet brought the lion down. The third
bullet ended its life. The stench of filth met my nose.

I looked at the gun in my hand, then
opened it to check how many more bullets I had. Only five. That would have to
be enough.

I walked back to the gazebo.

Gideon was pushing himself back to his
feet; his knife was nowhere in sight and, with my gun trained on him, he
wouldn’t have an opportunity to fetch his spare – the spare I had originally
taken from his attacker three weeks before.

Gideon met my eyes, not even glancing at
the gun.

Waiting.

Chapter 7

This was the moment I had been
anticipating. A month had passed since the deaths of my parents. The loss was
still fresh in my mind, in my gut, in my chest. I could immediately recall the
horror I felt when I saw my father’s glazed eyes. I ached with hurt, with
loneliness, with pain. The death of their killer would give me the triumph, the
closure, I so desperately needed.

Gideon didn’t say a word. His brown eyes
never left mine; his arm dripped blood.

What would it feel like to kill him?
Satisfying? Liberating?

Lonely.

When he was gone, I would have no one. I
would have to face each day on my own. There would be no one to talk to. No one
to think about nothing with. He had been preparing me for that, for the
inevitability of being alone. He had been teaching me how to savor life for the
peaceful moments, and how to block out the bad.

He had taken so much from me.

But he had also given me a sense of
peace.

No, I didn’t feel peace for my parents.
But, even though their deaths were still a raw wound, there had begun to grow
in me an understanding.

And he’d apologized. He’d had a family of
his own, and knew what it was like to lose them.

If I killed Gideon, what would I gain?

At this point, I might lose more.

“The stars,” Gideon murmured, coaxing.

I shook my head at him, stern. But the
words had already crept into my brain.

The stars. If I killed him now, we
wouldn’t watch the stars together that very night. I would be alone. I would
move on, and never look back at this place. I would have to be on guard
constantly, ready for anyone that might hurt me.

Gideon had never hurt me. Not physically,
at least.

I wanted revenge. It pained me to know
Gideon was alive.

But now, after spending a month with him,
it might be more painful for him to be dead.

I sighed, closing my eyes. Then I lowered
the gun.

I heard some scrabbling around and looked
up to see Gideon pocketing his knife, still watching me.

“Do you want the gun back?” I asked,
offering it to him. “You’ll probably swipe it from me at some point anyway.”

“You know what? You keep it. Why would I
take it from you when you’re not going to kill me? It’ll be useful for us both
to be armed.”

“But what if I change my mind? What if I
decide to kill you after all?”

He looked at me again, his eyes boring into
mine. “Candace, after the month we’ve spent together, I trust you. You’re not
going to go back on your decision.”

“How do you know?”

“You’ve been dwelling so much on the
anticipation of killing me, and I could always see that deadly potential in
you. . . If you were going to kill me, I’d already be dead. You might lack
resourcefulness, but, if you had been desperate enough, you would have come up
with something. I already knew you wouldn’t kill me. I knew the moment you
looked at the broken glass back there.” He nodded in the direction we’d come
from. “You looked at it and didn’t see it as a weapon. Just as something
broken.”

He was right. I hadn’t even considered
the possibility. This carnival had so many things that could be used against
Gideon – there was a lot more broken glass, hoards of it everywhere – and I
hadn’t seen any of it.

Gideon had known – he had suspected all
along. He wouldn’t have taken me here if he hadn’t. He would never have let me
near anything he thought I could use against him. Not until now. Not until he
thought I
wouldn’t
use it against
him.

My eyes dropped to the ground. I backed
into one of the columns, then slid down, resting my forehead against my knees.

“I’m going to go slice up that lion. I’ve
never had lion before – I think he’ll be a bit gamey, but will probably taste
just fine.” I heard him shuffle off.

What was I going to do now? The hole that
was my parents gnawed away at my chest.

There was nothing I
could
do.

Except maybe continue to follow Gideon.

After a while, Gideon came back carrying
long pieces of lion flesh. I noticed he’d wrapped my mother’s shirt – the one I
had previously used as a bandage on his leg – around his bloody arm. I probably
should have offered to cut the lion for him, considering the injury. It would
have been a common courtesy. I couldn’t quite bring myself to care enough,
though.

He set the meat on the stone floor before
leaving me again. He came back ten minutes later with fire wood. He was quiet;
I could tell he was trying to leave me alone with my thoughts.

He started the fire, and laid the meat to
cook.

“Where will we go tomorrow?” I asked.

He sat back against a column and looked
at me. “I have nowhere specific in mind. I tend to just go wherever I feel
like. That’s one nice thing about having no society: no one to tell you where
you can’t go. We go anywhere we want, see anything we want, and then do it
again. Where do
you
want to go,
Candace?”

He hadn’t told me it wasn’t my business.
He hadn’t even questioned whether I was going with him. I had asked him a
question, searching out a future that didn’t involve his death. He gave me an
open answer, inviting me to choose.

I looked down. “I’ve never thought about
where I want to go. I’ve always just followed along with my parents, wherever
they thought we should go.”

“Ah. Well, how about this? Tomorrow,
we’ll choose a direction. Then, we’ll walk in that direction until we see
something that interests us. Sound good?”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

“Gideon?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t mind having me along?” I
looked up at him again; he met my eyes.

“Candace, I’ve been alone for a long
time. No matter how well I handle that, it’s nice to have your company.”

“You thought that even when I was going
to kill you.”

“Yeah, I suppose I did.”

“You must be desperate for company, then.”

“No. I’m just open to the possibilities
the world offers.”

We ate. The sky grew dark. We settled in
on either side of the fading fire. The stars came out, one by one, framed by
the gazebo’s open roof.

“Do you know any of their names?” I
asked.

“No. Humans naming the stars is just a
way for them to try and understand what can’t be explained. I’d prefer to just
lay back and focus on how they make me feel.”

“How
do
they make you feel?”

“Small.” He paused. “Insignificant. Like
everything in this country – all its flaws and problems, all the death, hunger,
and despair – none of it matters. Because there is so much else out there
besides ourselves. One day, the earth is going to get swallowed by a black
hole, and all of this will cease to exist. After that, will it even matter
whether there was a man named Gideon who killed a girl named Candace’s parents?
Will it matter that Candace wanted to kill Gideon, then decided that might not
be the right answer? Will it matter whether we head east or west tomorrow? Whether
we stay in Oregon or go visit the coast where Florida disappears into the
ocean? Whether we even hop the border to Mexico? All of that will be just one
tiny blip in earthen history. We wouldn’t even make the text book. No one will
ever write any sort of book about us. All of our problems? They’re nothing,
compared to the world.”

“That’s depressing.”

“Focus on the serenity of it. If it
doesn’t matter, there’s no pressure. We just do what we want. We live. We
survive. We die. There’s a certain peace in that.”

“I suppose.”

“You can’t think about it in such
technical terms. Words can’t really capture the sentiment. You have to separate
yourself from humanistic goals and think about things in terms of time, in
thousand year segments.”

“For example?”

“For example, what would be a one
sentence summary of the last thousand years of humanity?”

“Uh. . .”

“How about ‘Humanity’s greed and
selfishness led to wars and contentions.’”

“I guess that sums it up pretty well. But
how is that sentiment serene at all?”

“It’s not. How about this, though, as a
description for the last twenty-five years in the United States: ‘Government
shattered, and the land returned to its rightful state.’”

“Its rightful state? A shattered country
is the land’s rightful state?”

“No, Candace. There is more to life than
humanity. That lion we just ate a part of? He was alive. I saw the desperation
in his eyes before you killed him. He attacked us for survival. It was either
him or us.”

“Like when you killed my parents.”

“Or when you killed those people who
attacked me. It was them or us, and you chose us.”

“Logically.”

“Well, let’s think about it in larger
terms. There are two types of existence in the world: nature and humanity. They
are constantly warring with each other, fighting for survival. Which should
win? Nature, or humanity?”

“Humanity, naturally.”

“You only say that because you’re human.
But what if you were a tree?”

“I’m not a tree.”

“But what if you were? You could either
be cut down and burned for firewood so a girl named Candace can stay warm, or
you can live long and tall, while a girl named Candace dies of cold.”

“I think, if I were the tree, I would
choose death.”

“You’re not picturing it the right way,”
Gideon replied roughly; I could hear him shake his head at me.

“Are you telling me that you’d rather let
a tree live than have this fire we’re lying next to? I’m certain you didn’t
feel that way when you cut that tree up for wood.”

“You’re missing the point.” He pushed
himself to his feet with a grunt, despite how drained I knew he should be at
the moment. I quickly stood, too, eager not to give him such a height advantage
on me. “Follow me.” He left the gazebo, starting past a dark stage once used
for acting, then past a hotdog stand.

I followed, then tripped over something I
couldn’t see.

He pulled me up by the elbow. “You okay?”
he asked; he didn’t let go.

“I’m fine,” I replied roughly, but I let
him use my elbow to guide me forward.

We came to the edge of the carnival,
which merged with a small wood. He stopped me in front of a thick tree.

“See it?” he asked.

“The tree?”

“As I was describing it.” He let go of
me, walking forward to rest his hand on the bark. “This tree stands against all
weather, a fortress of power. It grows leaves to collect energy from the sun.
Its roots collect water and nutrition from the soil. In the fall, it bears
fruit. In this case, walnuts, it seems.” He reached an arm up and shook one of
the branches; nuts rained down on our heads. “We’ll need to come and collect as
many of these as we can carry in the morning,” he added as a side note.

He plucked a leaf from the branch and
handed it to me. “Look at the color. The veins. How they branch out, reaching.”
He raised his arms up, turning to indicate the entire tree in a grand gesture.
“This is a fantastic organism,” he told me. “But, one day, a man might be
desperate for survival and resort to cutting it down. When he does, he’ll be
able to count the years this tree stood; it leaves rings in its trunk to
indicate its age.

“I might even be that very man! I definitely
would never choose to let myself die rather than eat or feel warm. Life is a
story of survival; we are just one piece of that story.”

“Us against the tree,” I murmured wryly.

“Yes,” Gideon breathed, looking up at it.
“Us against the tree.” He looked back at me. “Beautiful, right? The fall of
humanity isn’t about the fall of humanity. It’s about the endurance, the
growth, of everything else. As humanity dies, nature thrives. The world
continues. The world is
alive
. But it
might not be
our
life.”

“Humans are just one piece of the story.”
In this perspective, everything fit as a piece to one complete whole. There was
no division. There were two competing forces. When one receded, the other grew.
When the other receded, the first grew. This was the story of life, and we were
just a part of it. Even as civilization crumbled, life still flourished.

“Exactly.” Gideon smiled.

~ * ~

We slept, and, in the morning, we
returned to the tree. I approached the bark before Gideon caught my elbow with
his good hand, pulling me back.

I raised a brow at him. “It’ll be faster
for me,” I pointed out, eyeing his injured arm.

Gideon rolled his eyes. “Not likely,” he
replied, taking my place at the trunk and bracing his fingers against the wood.
I noticed a wince.