As he drew closer to the center of the city, footsteps appeared in the soot that covered the pavement. On one block he found a dead man lying on his back. The corpse had been there for some time and was dried out like a mummy. With shriveled lips and yellowed teeth, he appeared to be grinning at the destruction around him.
The red arrows were smaller now, as if the messenger had sensed the growing danger and decided to hide. Gabriel found no further clues on the next corner, so he doubled back and discovered an arrow pointing to the building across the street. The massive structure
looked like a bombed-out church with a tower on each corner. Its entrance was a semi-circular archway; similar arches shaped each window. Someone had cut words into a marble plaque over the door:
Museum of Art and Antiquities
.
Wary of a trap, Gabriel stepped into the entrance hall formed by two intersecting arches. The museum once had a ticket booth, a cloak room and a turnstile, but everything had been destroyed. Apparently, someone had felt particular hatred for the turnstile and had taken the time to heat up the brass bars in a bonfire, and twist them into pincers that reached toward the ceiling.
He had heard about the city’s museum and library when he was a prisoner, but he had never been allowed to see the ruins. Turning to the right, he stepped into an exhibit hall filled with smashed glass cases. One still had a brass plaque that read:
Ceremonial Drinking Cups from the Second Era
.
There were no flares to light the interior of the museum, but the windows on one side of the room looked out on a courtyard with a fountain at the center. Gabriel stepped through the window frame and approached the fountain. Sea monsters with gaping mouths had once spat water into the fountain pool, but now the green marble was covered with soot and delicate flakes of ash.
“Who are you?” a man asked. “I’ve never seen you before.”
Gabriel turned around, looking for the speaker. There was no one else near the fountain, and the smashed windows that faced the courtyard looked like picture frames displaying sections of the night. What should I do? He thought. Run? In order to escape to the street, he would have to pass back though the museum to the turnstile.
“Don’t waste your time trying to find me.” The speaker sounded proud of his invisibility. “I know every part of this building. It’s
my
refuge. Not yours. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve never been in the museum. I wanted to see what was inside.”
“There’s nothing here but more destruction. So go away.”
—
Gabriel didn’t move.
“Go away
,” the voice repeated.
“Someone painted messages on the walls. I followed them here.”
“That has nothing to do with you.”
“I’m the Traveler.”
“Don’t start lying.” The voice was harsh, contemptuous. “I know what the Traveler looks like. He came to the island a long time ago and then vanished.”
“I’m Gabriel Corrigan.”
There was long pause, and then voice spoke with a cautious tone. “Is that really your name?”
Gabriel had once seen photographs of an army sniper wearing something called a ghillie suit—a ragged assembly of dark green fabric that changed a person’s silhouette and allowed him to blend into the countryside. The dark man stepping through the doorway had created a similar costume for hiding in the corridors of the abandoned museum. Swatches of gray and black fabric were sewn together in a haphazard manner to make a smock and trousers. Rags were wrapped around the man’s shoes. A gauzy black veil hung from the brim of a hat and covered his face. Silently, the dark man glided across the courtyard before stopping ten feet away from Gabriel.
“Matthew Corrigan told me that he had two sons named Gabriel and Michael.”
“And who are you?”
The ghost hesitated and then raised the veil covering his face. He was a tired-looking older man with thinning hair and very pale skin. Even his brown eyes seemed to have lost most of their color.
“I’m the museum director. When I woke up that first morning, the keys to the museum and some paperwork for a new installation had been left in my apartment. A bill for a new display cabinet was in the folder and my name was at the top of the page.” The man closed his eyes as if reciting a sacred incantation. “Mr. T.R. Kelso is my name. At least, that’s what the document indicated …”
“How did you manage to survive?”
“I hid in the museum during the first wave of fighting and remained here during the different regimes. So far, we’ve had one emperor, two kings and various generals.”
“Do you remember when the Commissioner of Patrols was in charge?”
“Yes, of course. He’s dead now.”
“How long ago was that?”
“We don’t have clocks and calendars here.”
“I know that. But does it feel like a long period of time?”
“It was recent,” Kelso said. “The current leader is called ‘the Judge,’ but there have never been any laws on the island.”
“I’m looking for an outsider, a woman who is a very good fighter.”
“Everyone knows about her,” Kelso said. “Sometimes, I leave the museum, hide in the walls and listen to the patrols. This woman frightens the wolves. They tell stories about her.”
“Is she still alive?”
Kelso surveyed the entire courtyard as if expecting an attack. “It’s dangerous to stand here. Follow me.”
Gabriel followed the ragged figure back into the museum and through the vandalized display areas. Bits of glass and crockery covered the tile floor and they crunched and cracked beneath his shoes. The dark man’s movements were completely silent. He knew where to step and what to avoid. Finally, they reached a room with a mural
that showed men and women in blue overalls working the levers of enormous machines. Someone had attacked the picture with an ax or a knife, destroying every face.
They reached a wooden door with a smashed lock in one of the corners. Kelso opened it cautiously, revealing a staircase and a dried-out corpse hanging from a noose.
“What happened?”
“You mean the dead man? I found the body on the street and hung it up here. This is better than a lock or secret entrance. People open the door, see the body and turn away. You would think they’d go up the staircase, but that never happens.”
Kelso slipped around the corpse, and Gabriel followed. They climbed up a circular staircase that ended at the top of a tower with a stone balustrade. It was a perfect place to survey the island—the shattered buildings, the over-grown parks and the dark river. Gas flares rose up from different parts of the city and smoke drifted past the jagged spires of the half-destroyed buildings.
“In the beginning, this really was a museum. The historical exhibits were on the ground floor and works of art were displayed in a first floor gallery. Whoever designed this place paid a great deal of attention to the details. The relics and antiques have vanished, of course, but I’ve done a study of the display case labels. All of them are very specific, mentioning the Twelfth Era or the Third Regime. The island once had a recorded history, a shared story about the past.”
“So when was the Third Regime?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a special book or a government report, but I haven’t been able to find it. The people living here can understand what history
is
, but we can’t remember the past. History doesn’t exist in this world.”
“And what kind of art was upstairs?”
“Painful images.”
“Torture? Murder?”
Mr. Kelso smiled for the first time. “It was something much worse than that. The museum had paintings of mothers and children, food and flowers, epic landscapes of great beauty. Naturally, the people trapped here hated these images. One of our first dictators said that the gallery confused people and caused discontent. So a squad of men smashed all the sculpture with hammers and burned all the paintings in an enormous bonfire. In this world, the foolish are proud of that fact. They find strength and certainty in their own ignorance.”
“It’s your world, too.”
Kelso raised his arms of his ragged costume and pushed the veil away from his forehead. “It doesn’t feel that way to me. The only desire I share with others is the need to escape. Your father disappeared into a passageway and I couldn’t follow him.’”
“I’m here to find Maya.”
“You mean the demon? That’s what the wolves call her. I’ve seen her twice, from a distance. She carries a sword and walks down the middle of the street.”
“So how can I find her?”
“Why would you want to do that? She’ll kill you. Perhaps she once had some goodness in her heart, but goodness can’t exist here.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Mr. Kelso laughed. “She kills everyone. No exceptions. I’ve heard some people say that she’s lost her eyes. All you see are little chips of blue stone.”
“Can you guide me to her?”
“And what’s the benefit to me? Can you get me out of this place?”
“I can’t promise that,” Gabriel said quietly. “I’m from another world, but you started your life in this place.”
“But I’m not like the others here. I swear that’s true.”
“Everyone has the power to make certain decisions in their life. If you think you’re better than the others, then prove it. Maybe your actions will free you when everyone is destroyed and the cycle starts again.”
“Do you think that possible? Really?”
“I need to find Maya, Mr. Kelso. If you want to be a good person, you can start by helping me.”
Kelso’s mouth twitched as if it was painful to standing there without the veil covering his face. “I heard the wolves talking. They’ve trapped the demon in what used to be the library. They’ve probably killed her by now.”
“Take me there.”
“As you wish.” Kelso lowered the veil over his face and started down the stairs. “You remind me of your father, Gabriel.”
“What do you mean?”
“He didn’t lie to me.”
M
aya had once seen her life as a story with a beginning, middle and end. That chronological way of thinking had vanished during her time on the island. Although she hid in the rubble and fought in the streets, none of these events were connected to her past. Maya felt as if she were rowing a boat through a swamp where an immense battle had taken place. Sometimes a person’s body would float to the surface, and she could see a face, recall a name—and then the boat lurched forward and the face would sink back into the mud and weeds.
The past was fading away, but the present moment was entirely clear. She was trapped at the top of a pillar—a three-story fragment made of bricks and stone in the middle of the half-destroyed library. Her world was very small: a wooden table, a patch of tile floor, and a storage room where black cardboard boxes were filled with prints and drawings of angels. During the beginning of her captivity, she had searched through all these illustrations and discovered that each image was unique. There were smiling, benevolent angels as well as righteous angels smiting sinners with whips and swords.
If the wolves had caught Pickering while on patrol, they would have killed him immediately, but the former ladies’ tailor used his betrayal of Maya to win some measure of protection. He remained in what was left of the third floor reading room, sleeping beneath the wooden tables and warming up cans of food on one of the gas lamps. Whenever anyone new appeared in the library, he rushed over to describe the cleverness of his plan and the fact that he still hadn’t received his reward. With his encouragement, the wolves stood in the reading room and hurled bricks and chunks of concrete at the pillar. Maya retreated to the storage area for protection; whenever a projectile hit the metal door, the men cheered like football fans celebrating a goal.
She was resting in the storage room when she heard something heavy slam down on the platform. Peering through a crack in the door, she saw that the wolves had lowered a length of railing between the pillar and the reading room. A bearded man armed with an eight-foot pike stepped onto this improvised bridge and moved cautiously toward her. In order to protect his face and upper body, he had punched holes in pieces of blackened sheet metal and tied them together with twine. With each step, this improvised armor made a clanking sound.
Keeping her sword in its scabbard, Maya left the storage area and sauntered over to the edge of the pillar. The man with the sheet metal mask shouted threats and jabbed the pike in her direction. He took one step forward, wobbling a bit, as Maya watched his eyes. When he finally entered her attack perimeter, she feinted to the right, ducked down and grabbed the pike in a twisting motion that made the tall man lose his balance and fall off the bridge. He had a few seconds to scream as he fell sixty feet to the rubble below. The wolves in the reading room stopped cheering, and that gave her a
moment of pleasure. She kicked the edge of the railing off the pillar and it made a clattering noise when it hit the ground.
—
No one on the island buried the dead. The bearded man’s body was still lying face-down on a pile of half-burned floor boards. This example of her fighting skill seemed to deter attacks for awhile, but now a more ambitious plan was being organized. A leader had appeared in the library—an older man wearing a blond lady’s wig. His thin, reedy voice could be heard in every part of the library.
Three towers were being built with soot-covered wood retrieved from the ruins. The men spent a great deal of time cutting off the charred ends of roof beams and straightening bent nails with hammers. The towers were ungainly looking structures with props and buttresses added on to keep them from collapsing. Slowly, they grew higher until they were about ten feet below her refuge on the pillar. Once each tower had a flat platform at the top, the wolves began building wooden ladders.
Another group of men carried bricks and stones to the reading room and dumped them on the floor. It wasn’t difficult to figure out the plan for the assault: the stone throwers would force her back into the storage room while three groups of attackers scrambled up the ladders. Feeling tired and passive, she sat on the pillar with the sword on her lap and watched the preparations.