Revolution in the Underground (2 page)

Walking in the Enchanted Forest, as it was called, was not something anyone could do at any time.  To begin with, the forest floor was only accessible from a few points in all of Erosa, and one of those points was guarded by the Council.  It wasn’t as if there were any laws forbidding access to the grounds.  In fact, there were very few laws in Erosa.  Erosa existed more or less as a utopian anarchy, governed more by the collective wisdom of the Elders and mutual interests of the populace than any established hierarchy—the formalism of any rules and regulations would’ve been very much out of place.  Nonetheless, most people tended to avoid the forest floor in part for its supposed danger.  On occasion there were direct sightings of strange and powerful creatures roaming the ground, and at other times the evidence was more indirect—the vibration of the trees and the shriek of the supposedly perilous creatures.  Though no one had actually ever been killed by any of the creatures, parents would often forbid their younger children from exploring the forest floor unattended.

The real reason so few Erosan’s ever explored the forest had nothing to do with rules or danger—they simply had no desire.  Everything one needed was right there.  Most people resided between the forest’s upper and lower canopies, and although the foliage made the floor and sky difficult to see in some locations, it was easy to find places with greater visibility.  If one wanted a change of view, one could travel to the higher or lower residences, or explore any of the numerous terraces and caves on the surrounding cliffs.  The only real places of interest on the forest floor was the river—which was close by—and the occasional hot spring, but even these were seldom visited.  Since most of the waterfalls fell and pooled on the larger cliff terraces before ultimately joining the river below, people didn’t even have to visit the ground in order to go for a quick swim.  The forest floor was above all a mysterious past—littered with relics so distant that few believed they were even worth wondering about. 

Though Ember visited the ground frequently, he never ventured off into the deep forest.  The forest was an unusually sentimental place for Ember—each visit seemed to awaken a new dormant and darkly nostalgic memory of his mother and father.  When he was eight years old he watched his parents sail down the river into parts unknown.  He remembered the confusion he had when they left and the sadness everyone felt when they did not return.  Ever since then, Ember held a deep desire to care for and protect his younger sister—a desire that stemmed as much from his obligatory sense of chivalrous responsibility as it did his supposed promise to his departing parents. 

In fact, of all the strange memories Ember had that day, the promise to his parents was the one he was most uncertain about.  It was quite possible, he believed, that he had concocted the promise as a way to subconsciously cope with his grief.  His grandfather had repeated the story to him so many times that Ember also considered the possibility that his grandfather completely invented it.  He knew such a fabrication would be out of character—Azure was a wise and proud man that valued honesty above all else—but the thought of an inexplicable secret remained tantalizingly persistent.  Ember had considered all possible motivations, from the mundane to the scandalous—a white lie to contain his sense for adventure, protect him from the forest’s danger, and ensure his sister’s perpetual companionship, or perhaps a deceitful fiction designed to cover up a grave secret and employed to control.  Ember had dreamt about the promise so often that he couldn’t help but feel that even if it were a lie, it had, to some capacity, become a reality.

A strong wind shook the ladders above and below the balcony and woke Ember from his pensive stupor.  He thrashed his head violently from side to side in an attempt to break his trance-like stare and made his way to the Falls.

***

             
Ember arrived to the sounds of his contemporaries playing.

             
“Well if it isn’t the famous Ember Oaks,” one of the younger boys called out.  “I’m surprised you found the time to come out.”

             
“Ya, thought for sure you would rather talk to your trees than spend some time with your friends,” chimed another.

             
“Come on guys, be a-nice to the poor fellow.  He’s a-got his a-Generalized Eval. today.”

             
Ember stripped down to his underwear and cannon-balled into the cold water, trying as hard as possible to splash his friends.  Ember had a disparate group of friends: ranging from 15 to 22 years of age, bookish to athletic, and normal to, well, Onyx.  Since there were no formal schools or organized athletic associations—though there were special places devoted to both—most friends were met through random encounters.   A “friend,” in the Erosan sense of the word, was merely an individual who was encountered more than would be expected by sheer probability alone.  The conventional definition of “friendship” would be meaningless since Erosa was small enough and the people friendly enough that nearly everyone knew and liked one another.

             
“Are you worried?” one friend teased. “It’d look awfully bad if the grandson of the great Azure failed to pass his Evaluation.”

             
“Dude, don’t freak him out.  If Onyx could pass then I’m pretty sure a moderately intelligent bird, let alone Ember, could pass as well.”  The boys laughed before looking over to Onyx to see whether or not he was offended.

             
“Actually,” Onyx said honestly, “birds are remarkably intelligent creatures.  They have complex social orders and are even capable of making tools.”

             
“So what you’re saying is that we shouldn’t insult birds by comparing them to the likes of you.” The boys laughed and splashed each other with water playfully.

             
“No, all I’m a-saying is that birds are quite remarkable creatures.  They have more efficient respiratory and excretory systems, and when it comes to fidelity they have humans beat by a mile.  D’you know that most birds are monogamous?” Onyx moved his hands about in a confusing manner as if he could somehow explain the term with hand gestures.  He always chose the worst terms to gesticulate.

             
Ember looked at Onyx and nodded approvingly.  There was something Onyx had that was absent in the others.  He might not have been Ember’s brightest friend, but he had a unique sense of intellectual curiosity.  Most people in Erosa seemed content to live their quiet and perfect lives.  They had no need for questions because they had no thirst for knowledge.  They were complacent with life’s offerings and had no need to ask for more.  Not Onyx.  Onyx was flawed… deeply flawed… but in a way, it was his imperfections that made him more perfect than the others.  They might have been happier, but Onyx was more alive, and Ember knew it. 
They can splash all they want
, Ember thought to himself,
but only Onyx will ever make a ripple.

             
“Whatever you say Dude.”

             
“Hey, did you guys hear about Rouge’s Evaluation?”

             
“No, what happened?” they all asked almost in unison.

             
“When she got the final question, she completely froze.  I don’t remember the question they asked her, but it was something really easy… and she completely panicked.  She couldn’t get any words out.  Apparently she started crying and then ran away before she was dismissed!”

             
“What, really?!”

             
“What was the question?”

             
“I told you, I don’t remember.”

             
“Hey Ember, don’t you like Rouge?  She’s kinda cute”

             
Ember’s eyes were closed and although all but his nose was submerged in the water, he could tell by the ensuing silence that someone had asked him a question.  Not knowing what question was asked, he simply shrugged and waited until they resumed their chatter.

             
“I don’t get it, what is even the purpose of the Evaluation,” inquired one of the younger boys.

             
“They do it so they can tell whether or not you have enough common sense to take on a particular duty or begin a certain apprenticeship.”

             
“No,” cried another, “it’s all just games the Elders play in order to unite everyone under a shared experience.”

             
“What happens if you don’t pass?” the youngest boy asked.

             
“Everyone in town makes fun of you for the rest of your life, and you have to wait a full year just to be evaluated again!”

             
“Don’t listen to him,” another person said honestly, “he’s just yanking your chain.  Most people pass their first time but it all depends on what you want to go into.  If you want to go into food production then they’ll probably ask you easy things like, ‘is this mushroom poisonous’ or ‘when is such and such ripe?’  Easy stuff your Mom or Dad probably taught you when you were young.  If you want to be an engineer, like me, they’ll give you hypothetical situations… like whether or not a particular arrangement of structures will support a given cluster of huts, or how you can repair a water mill if a something gets jammed in such and such.  They just wanna make sure that you can do your job competently.”

             
“What’s the big deal if you fail?  Sounds like you get another year to relax and do nothing.  Sounds like a good deal to me!”  All of the boys laughed.

             
Ember continued to drift in the water on his back.  He slowly opened his eyes and looked at the dense foliage of the towering canopy.  The Falls was a truly unique place, it had a little bit of everything: water, rocks, trees and sky.  It was essentially a large precipice with a large basin carved out.  Presumably the basin formed after thousands of years of weathering and erosion by the waterfall above it, but the near perfect location had caused some people to speculate that it was intentionally constructed sometime in the distant past.  Unlike the other ridges in Erosa, the Falls was not well developed.  There were almost no huts around it and there were only two bridges connecting it to the rest of Erosa—one of which was so dilapidated, it was hardly passable.

             
Ember gazed at some of the animals in the overlying branches.  He saw a pair of monkeys sharing fruit and wondered what they thought of the humans gathering below.  The sun’s rays peered between the branches but were not yet sharp enough to hurt his eyes.  As he floated through the water it occurred to him that he hadn’t said a single word since arriving.  His friends’ chattering sounded like garbled murmuring below the water, as incoherent and as rhythmic as the hum of nature.  He closed his eyes again and tried to think about how far above the ground he was floating.  He thought about how the water would soon join the very same river that carried his mother and father off into the distance many years prior.  He dipped his nose beneath the water and pretended like he didn’t exist.  When he came up to breathe, he imagined how the thin film of water slowly and smoothly fell from his face.  He wiped down his wet hair, which plastered neatly to one side.

             
Ember’s mind tried to make sense of the colors that were dancing across his eyelids.  The inside of his eyelids looked like a strangely occupied and uniquely heterogeneous landscape—composed of innumerable transient dots that seemed to flit into and out of existence.  He tried to focus on one of the dots.  He tried to make sense of the images they formed.  He tried to describe what he saw.  But like the forest and the trees, he was unsuccessful.

             
He thought about Rouge.  He had actually heard about her catastrophic Evaluation a few hours after it had happened.  His sister told him. 

Ember’s sister, Maggie, always seemed to be at the right place at the right time.  She was always up-to-date about the latest happenings in Erosa and was never shy about sharing the latest gossip.  Ember did not know why she took so much joy in such things, but he suspected it resembled his own desire for adventure and excitement—a different manifestation of a similar longing.  Though she was not the type to revel in others’ misfortunes, she couldn’t help but get excited at the slightest signs of imperfection.

              In this sense, Ember was no different.  He liked the thought of Rogue crying—though he did not like the thought of liking the thought.  He imagined the tears slowly rolling down her rosy cheeks as she desperately tried to mutter some semblance of words.  How mortified she must have felt, yet how alive!  The passion, the build, the height, the fall, the despair—it was beautiful.  The raw emotion.  The imperfection. 
If only my friends knew,
Ember thought to himself.
  If only people knew how I felt.  What would they think of me if they knew how I wanted to lick her tears and caress her face?  How I long to hold and comfort her—how I long to tell her that everything is okay, knowing full well that everything isn’t.  Talk all night about things that wouldn’t be and could never be.  To talk about mistakes and then pretend they never happened.  To hope against all reason that things would get better… and then…  fall down again.  To hope that one day things would be great, without it never actually being great.  All would not be lost, because we would always have each other and always hope would remain.  They would call me crazy… but maybe that’s what I am.