1
THE SCREAM STILL COMES FROM THE HOLE IN THE rock, though at the very least, it’s not getting any louder, as if that’s some kind of good thing. The Land in our party watch the rock warily, but if you ask me, which nobody is, not warily enough.
“I think we should leave, Pop,” I say. “I think we should leave right now.”
“Just wait,” he says, staring at the zigzag hole, along with everyone else.
“Look,” Granddad says.
A small fire has appeared there. Just a few little flames at the bottom of the shape, which bend in the breeze of the scream like the lichen did, and then, there’s no other way to explain it really, the fire starts leaking out of the hole.
It runs down the front like something molten, but when it gets several feet down, it dies out.
The screaming grows fainter, then that stops, too.
No one moves. There’s some quick Noise between everyone except me, and a few of the Land start preparing to climb the rock.
“They should absolutely not do that,” I say.
“We’re finding out about a possible threat to the planet, Max,” Granddad says. “They want to keep their people safe. And if that means putting themselves in danger, then that’s what has to be done.”
He makes himself a place to sit with a little square tarp he takes out of his pack. He takes out another one and tosses it to me. I can’t believe we’re just going to sit down by something that makes that sound, but I guess we are.
“It’s all right to be scared, you know,” Granddad says.
“I know,” I say. “Why wouldn’t it be okay to be scared when something’s scary?”
He likes this. “Your father teach you that?”
“Of course. Being afraid is normal and it’s good and sometimes it’s the right reaction, and sometimes you have to be afraid and do something anyway.
” I look at a Land who’s readying himself with woven lichen ropes to climb the rock.
Ess is helping him. They both look really young to me, and I suppose that’s why they’re doing it, being young and smaller.
“They’re nervous, too,” Granddad says. “There’s only stories in the Conversation about this. Myth.”
“Like what the Sky told us.”
“Exactly. And they know just as well as you do that it’s not literally real.
So they don’t know what this is or why it makes a sound or where that fire came from.
” He looks around us. “I mean, this used to be a town, according to everything they know, but it doesn’t look like it’s been anything for a long, long time. ”
He’s right. There’s not a trace of a town here. No ruins of houses or even shapes of paths or hills they might have built. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s even come this way in forever,” I say.
“And that’s interesting in itself, isn’t it?”
“Why?”
“This isn’t an empty planet. There are Land towns and moving encampments everywhere.
In the Conversation, I’ve seen desert groups and frozen tundra groups and forest groups and plains groups and there’s even a city no human has ever seen along the shores of a great ocean thousands and thousands of miles from here. ”
“What’s it called?”
He looks surprised. “What’s it called?”
I shrug. “Just curious.”
He opens his Noise, showing me an image of that city, filled with tower upon tower of Land houses and buildings, growing up like coral out of the water, and I get an impression of sunshine and sea air and history, and I realize the impression is the name of the city.
“Oh,” I say. “Wow.”
“What I’m saying is, there’s no corner of this planet the Land haven’t explored and found a way to live in and thrive. So why did they never come back here?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“That’s the thing. They don’t know either. And that’s not supposed to be possible.”
“That’s not really comforting.”
“I didn’t mean it to be. Life isn’t always comfortable. You’ve got to make yourself uncomfortable now and then or you’ll never grow.”
“You don’t always have to speak in lessons, Granddad.”
He laughs at this. “It’s only because I care about you boys.”
“Then why don’t we ever see you?”
He doesn’t laugh at this. In fact, he doesn’t say anything for such a long time, I start to feel like I’ve screwed up. I’m about to apologize, when he says, “I’m the only human in the Conversation.”
“Pop’s in it.”
“Not like I am. I’m always in it. Your dad’s got people around him to talk to, but when I’m in the Conversation, there’s just me.
” He looks thoughtful. “And sometimes I feel like I’m getting further and further away from what I remember about being human.
I’m so deep in it, every day, every second, even when I sleep, that sometimes I raise my head to look at the world and I realize a year has passed and I didn’t even notice. ”
That doesn’t feel great. That we’re something he can so easily forget.
I think he sees it on my face because he says, “It’s not you, Max, or your brother or your father.
” He nods toward Pop again, now helping Ess as a counterweight for the Land going up the rock.
“There’s no one on this world I care more for than your father.
You really don’t know all he went through. ”
“I know some of it.”
“But he’ll never tell you all of it. You talk about bravery. There’s no one person I know, human or Land, braver than your father.”
Pop must hear something in Granddad’s Noise, because he looks over at us now, curious.
Granddad just smiles at him and says something back in his Noise.
Pop blushes and turns away. “He never did like praise,” Granddad says to me.
“And also, this is important, the second bravest person I’ve ever known is your mother.
I couldn’t pick better parents for anyone. ”
“She’s still kind of annoying.”
“Of course she is. You have any idea how annoying I was for your father?”
“He’s almost at the top,” I say, meaning the Land who’s been climbing.
“She.”
“Sorry. Me, of all people.”
“Everyone makes mistakes, Max. What matters is how you fix them.”
“Another lesson.”
He laughs, and that’s when all hell breaks loose.
The Land woman–or girl, even, she’s small enough to be right at the border–has reached the hole at the top of the rock.
She’s put her feet into the zigzag shape.
It’s big enough so she can stand all the way up, and we all watch as she takes a step inside.
Just as I say, “Another lesson,” something grabs her.
We don’t see what it is, but her Noise yells out in terror and she just vanishes.
Her Noise cuts off an instant later, and in the maybe one or two seconds of shock as everyone takes in what happened, the screaming sound of the god restarts.
It’s much, much louder this time. The Land and Pop are already leaping to action.
Another, bigger Land who was watching close by immediately starts scaling the rock, leaping past Pop and Ess, and I get the feeling from the Noise that this is the girl’s father.
Everyone else has picked up weapons or science devices and are shouting to each other in their Noise.
“Granddad?” I say.
“Stay behind me,” he says, getting to his feet.
“Be careful, Pop!” I yell.
Because he’s watching the second Land scamper up the rock face. When the Land gets to the hole, the sheer force of wind from it now nearly knocks him back. He sends Noise through the opening, no doubt calling for his daughter who disappeared–
And fire erupts from it like a volcano exploding, and it takes off the Land man’s head and everything above his midsection, just gone in a terror of flame and fire, and the rest of his body falls to the ground, and Pop has to jump back to avoid being hit by it.
“We’ve gotta get out of here,” I say to Granddad.
“Yup” is all he says, grabbing his pack and shouting in his Noise to the others. They’ve all got the same idea. Pop is running back to me already, and everyone else is scrambling back from the rock face, where the fire is still roaring out of the hole–
And somehow bending and reaching down the whole front of the rock to touch the ground below. One of the Land calls out something in her Noise and points, her fingers making a specific describing shape. Everyone stops to look, like they shouldn’t all still be running.
Something is forming in the tower of fire.
“It’s a god!” I say. “We have to run!”
I wish I was wrong. But I’m not wrong. Everyone’s still staring, no matter how much I’m screaming, as a skinless, screaming burning god steps from the tower of flame, and when it does, even I stop to look.
It’s not a skinless burning human. It’s a skinless burning Land.
It still screams the same, though, and it’s still four or five times the size of any of us, and as it steps out of the flames, it reaches down and it grabs the nearest Land scientist, and it eats him.
The god snatches him right up from the ground, throws him in its mouth, and crunch, bites him in two, swallowing the first part and then tossing the second into its mouth.
It’s the very worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I just saw someone blasted in half.
“Oh, shit,” I say.