Scorched (4 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Torrent:

Kaolin had evolved into a woman while Cotta and I remained boys. We had only heard of women bleeding but never seen it with our own eyes. A woman usually bleeds only once in her life and then she gives birth and either dies, or she lives and gives birth again.

The first thing we did was collect all of the blood and divvy it up between the three of us. It was bitter as blood often tends to be, but the extra nutrition would help us on our long journey.

Kaolin’s mood quickly changed. She walked in the back and kept mostly to herself. When we tried to include her in the conversation, she just ignored us. Her mind was off in some faraway land and neither Cotta nor I were allowed in. We continued forward, pushing the world behind us as we walked into the unknown.

Our feet had never been so sore. Blisters formed all over our toes and then quickly turned to calluses. In addition to our bodies deteriorating, I could see Cotta struggling with the mental aspect of our journey through the Ancient Tunnel. It wasn’t the fact that we were walking into a void, it was that the tunnel was so high. Whenever we worked in the tunnels, we were forced to hunch, as we snugly moved toward our working position, but the Ancient Tunnel was so massive that he was beginning to feel uneasy. He would often spend most of his walking looking up at the faraway ceiling, worried some unseen creatures were about to strike. How could he have survived in the olden days with no ceiling at all?

“What if it never ends?” Cotta asked, chewing on a piece of food.

“Everything ends,” I told him. “Beginnings can’t exist without an ending and we saw where the tunnel began.”

And then Cotta said something that caught me off guard. “It was the beginning of the tunnel for us but the ending for them.”

He was right, but how could a beginning also be its end? If a man grabbed his toes, there would be no beginning or end to his body, he would just be. But if his feet were his beginning and end, what were his hands when raised above his head? If a man and woman come together and have a baby, that baby grows into a man or woman and has a baby of its own but which is the beginning, the baby or the man/woman? And then, a baby is born and that is his beginning. He grows and dies and that is his ending. But then after he dies, we consume him and he begins again within us until we die and therefore he dies. But then we’re eaten and we start new within those who eat us. Maybe there isn’t an ending until nobody is around to consume the dead. Maybe the tunnel doesn’t end until we die and nobody is around to question if it has an end.

Kaolin quickly stopped --

“You hear that?”

She put her ear against the wall. We followed. “What do you hear?” Cotta whispered.

She shook her head and put her ear to the ground. Cotta and I gave each other a look, then did the same.

I placed my ear against the ground and heard what sounded like a faint whistling coming from below and then --

Kaolin’s foot stomped the ground as hard as she could. Dirt crumbled from above. She stomped again and more dirt came tumbling down.

I jumped to my feet and held her as tightly as I could to prevent her from stomping again.

“What’re you doing!?” She paused for a moment and looked me in the eyes. I had never been this close to a girl in my life, not since I was ejected out of my mother’s uterus.

She put her hand onto my chest. “You don’t want to die in this tunnel, do you?” And then, she pushed me back, jumped as high as she could and smashed into the ground beneath her.

The tunnel rumbled. Dirt and rocks came tumbling down from all directions. There was nowhere we could run. There was nothing we could do. I took what I assumed to be my last breath and closed my eyes when the floor beneath me collapsed and we plummeted below.

We hit the slick decline and sped down at an incredible speed. I reached for my tumbling ax to slow our descent but I couldn’t get it. All I could grab was Cotta’s flailing hand as we tried to grab onto the moving wall before our skin was completely shredded.

And then, we hit the ground and I lost my breath. I lost my understanding of reality and feeling. I touched my body to make sure it was still there. Cotta appeared above me, hand reaching down. I grabbed it and he hoisted me up.

Kaolin was a few feet away, picking up as much fallen chum as she could, gathering all of our tools.

I looked back up. All I could see was darkness, but I could hear something…

I grabbed my lantern off the ground and moved my way through an uneven tunnel, one that either formed itself or was made by clumsy hands.

I crawled through an uneven gap, squeezed through a tiny crevice, stood up and gazed at something I had never seen before in my life.

All I could do was stare and when Cotta and Kaolin arrived, they could only do the same.

It was beautiful and glimmered like the rock Ceramy had found, but it was moving and alive.

“What is it?” Cotta asked, stepping closer to the noise.

I moved in front of him and knelt down to the edge. I peered inside and saw a boy peering back. The boy made the same movements as I did, taunting me and then Kaolin knelt beside me and a girl who looked identical to her appeared. And then Cotta and his imposter.

I moved my hand toward the strange surface and felt my flesh submerge, past the boy looking back at me. My hand was cold and wet. I pulled it out and Kaolin screamed as she saw my hand. It had changed colors and looked new like that of a baby.

“Are you okay!?” Kaolin asked, fearful that I was in pain.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I put my hand back in and scooped up some of the liquid and put it to my face. I hesitantly stuck my tongue out and tasted it. “I think…I think it’s water.”

We stood up and looked out at what I assumed to be a body of water. “I didn’t know this much water existed in the world,” Cotta admired.

I raised my lantern over to the side and saw a spurt of water trickling out of a tunnel and splashing down into the large body. I looked back down at my hand, “I think it removed the dirt from my skin.”

“You can remove dirt from skin?” Cotta plunged his hand into the boy staring back at him and then lifted up his discolored flesh. “It smells weird. Good, but weird.”

I looked around for our other adventurer, but she was nowhere to be found. “Where’d Kaolin go --”

As soon as I uttered the words, a running Kaolin appeared and jumped into the water, causing an explosion of the liquid, spraying Cotta and me in the face.

And then, Kaolin was gone, disappeared, swallowed by the water until --

She rocketed out and splashed us with the liquid. Cotta and I were frozen in place, staring at the girl standing in the water.

“What?” she inquired, looking at us dumbfounded. She looked down and noticed her whole body had changed colors. And her hair…her hair was the color of teeth, but so much prettier. Her lips were blood red.

I started to feel dizzy and I could see Cotta looking the same. “Come on in, it feels so good!”

I was hesitant, afraid to see the colors my skin and hair would turn. What if I looked different than them?

Apparently Cotta wasn’t thinking what I was thinking because he quickly jumped in and resurfaced with brighter and lighter hair, his eyes brighter than ever. “Come on in! Don’t be such a crag!” Cotta and Kaolin laughed. I knew I had to go in, so I stopped thinking and I jumped --

I hit the water and my body went into shock. I opened my eyes underneath and could see the brown escaping my skin and I could see Cotta and Kaolin’s hands intertwined.

I resurfaced and found Kaolin and Cotta smiling at me. I looked down at the imposter in the water and he was beautiful. His hair shined, his eyes twinkled. My two friends splashed me with water and I splashed back.

I hurried over to them and we both dunked our heads underneath. I felt a soft hand interlock with mine and then a callused one took hold of my other. We stood in a circle, hands clenched, smiles gleaming.

I had never felt better in my entire life. I felt reborn and lighter and…like fresh meat, like fresh milk, just…fresh.

Kaolin smiled at me and rubbed my arm, then smiled at Cotta. She moved closer to him and placed her lips against his. Their eyes closed as mine remained open, and then, she pulled away and came close to me, leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine.

I was dizzy again and my heart was pulsating as if I were running through the collapsing tunnel. She pulled away from my lips and Cotta and I placed our lips against each other, but I wanted to do it again with Kaolin, so I did, and so did Cotta.

We pressed lips for awhile and rubbed each others’ bodies. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe and my body would collapse. A wave of energy pulsated all over and I felt like I was weightless. I felt like impossible.

I got out of the water and lay on the soil, staring up at the shield above me. I wanted to touch the ceiling, but I knew it was out of reach. I wanted to jump higher than I could jump and slowly peel away the barrier. I wanted to move through the air as if I were walking, arms outstretched and pointing towards freedom, my one and only dream, to be in a place without a ceiling and without any walls. An ancient tunnel in all directions, where the darkness was occupied with anything that was or could ever be. I would put down my lantern and walk into the black and become that anything, I would occupy somebody else’s dreams because if I were to ever enter that void, I could only be a dream, an unfiltered, undiminished dream.

But for now, I was me.

We ate and we slept and then we awoke. There was only one direction we could continue. The water was carving a path through the dirt so we got inside and walked through the wetness, making sure to hold our torches up high so they wouldn’t get extinguished.

Kaolin was much happier now, pushing her hands through the water and propelling herself forward like there was no gravity.

“I’ve never felt this good in my entire life.” Kaolin moved to her back and pulled herself along.

“It’s nice, but not as good as tunneling.” Cotta slurped up some water and spit it out.

“It’s way better!” she retorted, floating effortlessly in the water.

“How can you say this is better than tunneling? You wouldn’t know. All you’ve known is your cubby.” Cotta was getting a bit heated. There was nothing he loved more than striking his ax against dirt.

“What do you think we’ve been doing all this time? It’s really not all that fun.”

“We haven’t been tunneling! We’ve been walking. It’s not the same as crawling through a path you carved out. If you’d journeyed through the hive you would know.” Cotta was full fledged annoyed.

Instead of ending the conversation, Kaolin pushed on. “I have. This is better.”

I looked over at her. “I thought you never tunneled.”

“I never said that.”

“You implied it.”

“You inferred it, I never said it.”

“So, you could’ve found your way back. We didn’t have to take you along.”

“Nobody made you do anything. Nobody forced you.”

“You knew I’d feel bad sending you back. You knew I thought you couldn’t make it. You used that against me.”

“Maybe.”

I was just as annoyed as Cotta. With every step, I felt as if I were losing more and more control. My feet wobbled. I felt as if I would fall forward. I couldn’t keep myself steady. I had never been so angry to the point of feeling this way. In fact, I really didn’t feel that angry, so why was my body feeling this way?

I looked over and saw Cotta stumble and fall into the water, his body pushing forward at an accelerated speed before he regained control.

Kaolin also struggled walking. And then, I fell and the water pulled me faster and faster through the narrowing tunnel. Behind me, Kaolin’s screams echoed all around.

I fell beneath the water and my lungs screamed. I couldn’t get back to the air, I couldn’t get back to the oxygen. A rock appeared in front of me, but I couldn’t move and the rock didn’t want to. It struck me in the stomach and ripped apart my flesh. The water turned red and my eyes fluttered.

I raised my hand above me and touched sky and felt the air speed around my damp hand. My lantern floated passed me and then submerged in the water and everything went dark. I became a dream.

I couldn’t see where I was heading or where I had come from. I couldn’t see the blood escaping my body, all I could feel was the throbbing on my stomach and the muffled yells from behind.

I knew I was dying. I knew I would die. I knew this was the end.And then, in the pitch black, I saw a faint light ahead. The light got brighter as my light got dimmer.

My battered body smashed into something rigid and I got sucked deep beneath the water before I finally resurfaced.

I was lying on dirt staring up at a structure I could never imagine. The darkness was gone and I could see everything. I could see the water flowing through the object and spinning this thing and the thing kept spinning as more and more water swept through it.

I wondered if Kaolin and Cotta would see the magnificent creation. I wondered if they had survived the rocks or were shredded like I was. I wondered if they would find my body and make me part of theirs.