The Remains of the Future

Part XVIII: The Time Has Come

Cages hang via ropes from the ceiling, like the hutt does from Pepsis. Small, long-tailed Peptorous dart about in them, their scales and eyes a rainbow of colors.

Real Peptorous.

Lowering myself to my knees, I bow my head.

"Get up," Anta laughs. "They're baby ones and don't understand your piety."

I obey, still trying to be deferential.

A fire crackles in one corner, the chimney mud-brick, making the room hot enough to be a furnace; which cannot be good considering the house is wooden.

A large desk stacked with neat little piles of paper secured to the desk with pins and strings. Cushions and blankets arranged on the floor in a way that says: Even when I'm messy my living space still looks great.

My head spins as the leisurely house rotates.

A woman, white braids whipping the space around her as she turns, is in a corner, a bag of squeaking and scurrying creatures in her calloused hands, their tiny feet making imprints in the cotton.

Growls behind her.

"My maid Nefer." Anta walks to the desk. "She informed me that you were in Xance."

Nefer bobs her head as if we have never met before.

"Leave us." Anta doesn't look at Nefer as she scurries to the door, stepping around me in a swoosh of fabric. Taking a pole from the doorframe, she bends, catching the end of the stick on the bridge and pushing the office house around so the doorway lines up with the plank.

The back of my throat stings with the sour remnants of my worm-filled breakfast.

A tiger, belly swinging and strips along with it, slinks from the corner Nefer was covering and flops on a rug in front of the fire. Opening his paw, the large cat reveals a mouse, squeaking and bolting from one side of his little clawed cage to the other. It seems to amuse the tiger to watch its meal suffer, lips pulling back to reveal dagger-like teeth.

I take a step toward the mouse, but the tiger looks up at me, and I step right back. It yawns.

"Greg, my tiger," Anta looks at it affectionately. "Isn't he cute?"

Greg isn't what I want to talk about.

Tell me I'm right, I want to say. And everyone else is wrong. Tell me you were abducted and this is your prison.

"I'm so excited!" she gestures to the cages. "Soon, everything will change."

Looking up at the mini Peptorous in their cages, I think of the Merysen and Aytet and Eye-Patch and their stories about fighting these creatures. "Is it safe? What you are doing with them?"

"So you know." She sounds like a disappointed child, too late to be the first to spill a petulant secret to her mother. "The Xancian people might be a little...tostled and upset, but, Kitma, their plays. That represents who they are. Who cares? Stupid, hu? Don't worry. I know your weaknesses... But they're awful, ok, like I said, don't worry. No one's really going to die, or at least... I don't know. It will all be the way it should in the end, though. Meaningless, really. Trust me?

"I mean, if you only knew, the way they come awake is so beautiful. They become so much stronger than they originally were, at least according to the ancient data. And...they survive so well. I put them in the fire and tried to drown them. They can't die! But, on top of that, they come awake with a kiss! Isn't it so sweet?"

She seems so far away, so distant, from the doorway where I stand.

All this time, I had trusted her. More than anyone else, everyone put together. "Did you come here on purpose?"

"Of course," she responds. "I'm sorry for not telling you, but I saw my chance and knew I must take it."

"You were using me," I say. "To get the bones, to complete this mission."

"No. No!" Anta rushes over to me. "That's not true. Yes, I needed samples of the bones, but I love you."

One of the Peptorus, in a cage close to the desk, swinging besides Anta's head, hisses.

Anta lazily touches the cage, and the animal settles down. It is a Peptorous I don't recognize. Eyes like jewels, scales a bright purple.

"Come in," Anta says, returning further into the room and beckoning to me with a finger. "Sit down. You look so strange in the doorway. I want to show you my new crown."

"I can't go back in there." To Aytet's accusatory stares and the vomit-smelling backstage. To blackness and my guilt. "You can't make me go back. You know what they plan on doing?" My voice is keening.

She waves a hand. "Yes, I know. I'm sorry. But I've heard stories about Aytet. If there is anyone to kill, it would be him."

I bit my lip. She's right, but I don't want to tell her that. Don't want to admit it to myself.

I take a step toward Anta and the desk. Besides the papyrus, there is a large book, written in a language I do not understand. The pamphlet I brought her tucked between its pages, a bookmark.

Anta grins, her jeweled tiara glitters in her hair, so dark it could be the absence of color. I stare at her. "You're so beautiful."

Anta's smile widens (although I did not think that was possible). She hugs me again, "I better take you back." She pulls away.

"No," I plea. "No, please don't put me back there. I'll do anything. Please."

I grab her arm and squash it, harder than I intended to. Delicately, she removes it. "The King will notice. It's ok. I believe in you. Besides, who knows? Tonight is the night when the stars align. When everything I have been working for culminates in one final show of power. You might just be ok? Something just might interrupt your little show. Ok?"

Anta is here for me. Everything is ok. No, she wasn't abducted, but she's not a traitor either. What she plans to do might help Dogon. It will all be fine. She's right so much of the time. I trusted her, it would be stupid to stop believing in her now. She loves me, she will not do anything that could hurt me.

"Us," she whispers. "Soon, it will be the Peptorous and just us."

We are like two magnets, when pulled apart we clash back together. We are in each other's embrace again. Anta's arms are so warm, so comforting. I wonder if a mother's hold feels like this. I nod into her shoulder. She must love allegories.

Just.

Just us.

An allegory.

—

The sounds of the crowd leaks through the floorboards: raucous laughter at the jokes, the crying at the sad bits, and the jeering and yells during the fighting scenes. The noises are disgusting, even the laughter doesn't sound joyous, but like they are laughing at something, like they are mocking it.

Every second is painful.

I am meeting a beast, on that stage. I will have to fight it and I will have to win, or me and my companions will die.

I squeeze Aytet's and Merysen's hands, both of which seemed reluctant to join hands, but I had been persistent. 'Can I have my earring back?' Aytet had said as I took his hand. 'You can have it back when I'm dead. Then it will be yours by right.'

'That's a lie,' Merysen had said.

The ring stings my ear, but I am still afraid to move it, positioned as I am, equidistant from Merysen's and Aytet's reaches.

Tap, tap, tap.

The Jailor again?

A Death's Soul walks around the bend, crunched over. He leans down in front of me, a smoky cologne wafts from him, "five minutes till you're on."

I squeeze Aytet's hand so hard I am surprised when it doesn't fall off.