Maze by J.M. McDermott

Author:J.M. McDermott [McDermott, J.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Apex Publications
Published: 2014-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

3: Journey

There wasn’t enough moonlight that night for traveling, and it was bitter cold. We couldn’t leave until daybreak.

Joseph was afraid that Aia would harm me. He invited me to his hut. In the water’s eye, I had spent one more night with Aia, sleeping in her arms. I would have had to bind her hands to do that, and I didn’t want to hurt her again.

She was supposed to be grateful to me, for her son.

I was confused, then. I didn’t want the confusion. I wanted to find the woman, and the grove. I wanted the things I had seen in the water that had entered my eye, long ago.

That night, I joined Joseph with his children. I held the warm love glow of my future in my memory.

Joseph and his children kept their lean–to near the edges of the encampment, where we could hear night watchmen pacing with torches. Their hut was cruder than most because Yi’s first husband had built it, and he was not a great craftsman, and Joseph was worse and could not easily repair anything. Leather and old cloth were wrapped around bones and sticks to build a long, rugged plank. This they had jammed against an intact place in the wall that used to surround the empty city. They had wrapped animal skins down the edges and around the openings on either side of the long, angular hut to make doorways.

Snow had accumulated against the triangular hut, catching on the rougher places in the roof in deep drifts around the jagged bones, insulating the sleepers against more snow, more cold.

I stayed with them that night. I was too excited to sleep. I was angry at Aia, but I couldn’t hold it in my mind for long, because we were leaving soon, and my wife was out there, waiting for me.

Gokliya sat awake in the darkness, like I did. He had been checking his brickbat and spear for signs of damp rot. He had rubbed warm oil and tree sap over them. They glistened. He drifted off — as I did — with his back against the cool stone wall.

I dreamed of my wife catching birds in nets, with her delicate hands picking through the vines and her face beautiful lost in concentration. Gokliya and I awoke early, in our uncomfortable places. We had fallen against each other while sitting. When one of us woke up, the other did, as well. We stepped from the hut together. We stretched our stiff bodies in the cold morning air. Snow dropped slowly over the maze like dandelion seeds on a windless day. I couldn’t see the castle spires through the early morning fog. I couldn’t see the sun beyond the grey, though I felt the light of it in my eyes, pushing through the murky maze of cloud and fog and snow.

“Is your father awake?”

“Maybe.”

“Wake him up.”

Gokliya stuck the blunt end of a spear into the hut.

Crying — was it toddling Geraldine with her pudgy face

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