Chapter 4
Ryan:
The air was heavy with moisture. I inhaled, and coughed at the strong smell of dirt and leaves. My eyes were sweaty, so I wiped them with the back of my hand. Blinking, I peered into the overgrown forest, through every shade of green, broken up with a little bit of brown, and, at the top, the suggestion of a blue sky.
The feeling of cold glass faded from my fingertips. I rubbed them together sleepily. My bones felt stiff, and someone was pulling my arm. I was leaning on the man and walking. That was okay. He was a man with bushy white eyebrows, a short white beard, and a flowing white robe to match. His stern eyes were focused on the path ahead. We ducked under a branch.
My mind was groggy.
“Where are we going?” I asked him. My voice sounded strange, like my mouth had gone numb. I worked my lips to restore feeling.
“Somewhere safe, with food,” he replied, in a strange accent.
“Oh.” I sighed. “That sounds good.”
I didn’t want to question. My mind was still groggy… from something.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“You leaned on me. I decided to take you somewhere safe where there’s food,” he answered.
I was waking, I realized, waking up from a long, deep sleep. What was the dream? I didn’t remember leaning on him. I realized that my feet were dragging and shifted some of the weight back to them. The old man slowed down for me. I didn’t remember letting him lead me, or what happened before.
Then I did. All the memories came back.
I shuffled away, and backed into a tree that stopped me, leaves shaking. The bark was rough against my back. “Where am I? Where’s Erin, and Kris, and… Jason. Ron is dead…” I was breathing hard. I didn’t even want to form the last name on my mind.
The old man was watching me, studying me, with a serene look in his eyes. “There are three others on their way to the same place that we’re going.” This old man had irises, brown ones.
“Where’s that?” I demanded.
“Somewhere safe, with food,” he said slowly, crossing his arms. He seemed to be growing impatient.
I pivoted away from him, around the thick trunk of the tree, and stared into the shadowy leaves, looking for an escape, or anything familiar. “‘Somewhere safe, with food’? That’s not very reassuring.”
“At the Sun Tower, not that you’d understand the reference. You should have started with a better question.” His voice was as uncompromising as his gaze. “For example: ‘What can I do for you?’”
“Who are you?” I squeezed the tree bark, rough and sappy in my hands.
“Call me Sensei,” he said simply.
“Sensei? Like a teacher?” I tried to make my stare as accusing as my voice.
He nodded his approval. “Very good. You know some Japanese.”
“What’s going on here? The old man with the black eyes, what did he do?” I threw out my arms, wishing for a way out, for something, anything familiar.
The man held up his arms, a calming gesture, and his eyes took on some of the confusion I was feeling. “Black eyes? I’ve... heard of a man with black eyes. Tell me more, and I may be able to help you better.”
I started to speak, but stopped. What if this was the black-eyed old man in disguise? “No. I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s going on. I’m not going any further into this insanity.” I took my chance peering again into the distance, searching for any sign of civilization beyond the jungle-like forest. Where had it come from?
“I want to help you, young man. Who are you looking for?”
I closed my eyes and held my head. I remembered the insanity, the intimidation, when I first came to face the destruction, the wounded people, when I landed in Tokyo after the earthquake. Panic would not help me here; I knew that. I took a deep breath.
“You talked about three others,” I said.
The man nodded, folding his hands into his wide, white sleeves.
“Two girls, one boy, my age?”
“Yes,” Sensei said. “My men found three young people like yourself all within the last few hours. Did they also see this… man with black eyes?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, still wary of revealing too much. “Where are they?”
When the old man smiled, his face now seemed warmer, and genuine. His voice had assumed a very teacher-like tone, wise and patient. “The safe place with food. It’s this way. Why don’t we save the talk until we arrive?”
Sensei pointed forward. There seemed to be a clear path before us. Taking a break from speaking would be welcome. I gestured for him to go ahead. He led the way, and I followed.
After a few minutes walking down the path, I found myself simply admiring the view. The trees were interesting. I had taken notice of a few Japanese trees in my months since I landed, but these didn’t look Japanese. I wished I had paid more attention on my elementary school nature hikes back in Kansas. It wasn’t as if there were a lot of trees back home, but these here seemed thinner, with darker bark and broader, greener leaves.
“We’re not in Tokyo, are we?” I asked.
“No,” he answered. “We’re a long way from Tokyo.” His intonation was flat. He was giving away no extra clues.
I started with another question, but Sensei quickly interrupted me. “It might help me to know more about you, and what exactly happened with this black-eyed old man, so I can frame my answers correctly.”
“How can I trust you?” I stopped in my tracks, putting a hand up to steady my still-woozy head.
He stopped and pointed to me, frowning. “By giving me the opportunity to be trustworthy, for one. I don’t know what’s happened to you. Maybe if you just tell me exactly what happened, then this will be easier for both of us.” He turned swiftly back to the path. “I’m going to hurry because I’m hungry, but you can take your time.”
He got a few steps farther before I jogged to match his pace. “My name is Ryan. I’m from Kansas, in the United States. I went to Tokyo after the earthquake and met a Japanese girl named Erin, who introduced me to another girl named Kris. Those are the two girls I hope you found. Kris took us to see this… gem, or was it a cube…”
I growled. So many confusing details, mixed up in my head.
“But an old man with black eyes stole it. He seemed to… lock me, and Kris, and Erin, and a guy named Jason to it. Then he said something like a magical spell. I think we joined in. We had to. We had no choice. And now I’m here.”
I looked at Sensei. He seemed intent on the path before us, but he nodded, listening.
I realized how crazy I must have sounded.
Neither of us spoke for a few moments; we just kept walking, an easy pace. I thought maybe he wanted more details, something to make it more convincing, but maybe I had already said too much. I kept my eyes on him. He was focused, but serene. Not all old men were evil. But he hadn’t said anything. He gave me no clues to read. I took a breath to calm myself.
“Did you understand anything I said?” I tried to keep my voice from cracking in desperation.
“Most of it, but I’m still trying to process it all.”
I nodded, trying to roll with his game. “Which parts did you understand?”
“The part about a man with black eyes taking a gemstone, or a cube, perhaps. I’ve heard of the United States, too.” He said the last part with a bit of a smirk.
I stepped behind him as a tree narrowed the path. He had understood the crazier part of what I said? “Wait, you’re speaking English… but you’ve only ‘heard’ of the United States?”
“‘English’ is an archaic word… and the United States is… gone.”
“English is archaic? Wait, then what do you call the language that…” I realized there was a more important issue at stake. “And what happened to the US? How long ago…?” Exasperation kept me from finishing the question. Then it clicked in my brain. “How long has it been since the man took the cube? That’s the last thing I
remember. How do you know about that?”
He stopped in his tracks and countered with a question of his own. “What color was the gem you touched? What size and shape?”
“It was black,” I said. The memory came back, sharp. “It was small enough to fit in your hand, and triangular, four-faced... a triangular pyramid. Equilateral, too, maybe.”
This old man turned and resumed walking. “All I know for sure is that the first time anyone around here saw Devidis, the old man with black eyes, carrying the black spear, tipped by the black triangular gem… it was around a century ago.”
“Devidis,” I repeated the name, and followed after the Sensei. It was the name Jason had called. Then finally, “A century??”
He nodded in recognition. “We’re here.” He pointed ahead, and I saw a light gray stone structure peaking out above the trees. “Are you hungry?”
I was starving. I was out of my mind. I tried to study Sensei, then looked back at the path we had just taken. Covering my eyes with my hands, I asked. “What happened immediately before you started walking with me back in this direction?”
“Now that is a question I can answer easily.” The old man was encouraging me. I sensed sincere appreciation in his voice. “I found you. You appeared out of nowhere, frozen, with your hand out, like you were touching something, at about waist-height.” He held out a hand to approximate. “I had you lean on me as soon as you were responsive. I started bringing you this way. It’s not safe to be out in the forest, paralyzed like that.”
I rubbed my forehead, still woozy. The answers and my memories didn’t add up. Then I had an epiphany, and held up a hand to stop any further explanation. “You know what? This doesn’t make any sense to me, and I realize you’re being very patient. Maybe I’m crazy, but, all the same, you, my stomach, and I agree that I should probably eat something, so let’s do something about that.”
“Well-reasoned.” The old man smiled. He clapped me on the back. “Once again, the food is this way.”
We walked together toward the stone structure. As the trees parted, I saw that it was a wide tower, jutting into the air, like some medieval skyscraper. It was a gray brick-and-mortar cylinder, long and straight from the base to the roof, with only a few staggered window openings, and some jagged battlements at the top.
Sensei led me past the last of the trees into a generously-sized clearing around the tower. There was a woman sitting on the massive steps leading up to an entrance bordered by thick, wooden double doors. From the gun on her hip, I guessed that she was some kind of sentry; she examined Sensei and I before giving a permissive nod in my direction. Her clothes, though, looked rough, like they had been home-made. Sensei hadn’t paused; I tried to imitate his casual stride.
“This is the... ?” I started to say.
“The Sun Tower,” he said. The rays of the tower’s namesake reflected off the smooth, gray stone walls, straight into my eyes. I shielded myself, blinking in disbelief.
“The Sun Tower.” I repeated the words and shook my head. Of course, the name wasn’t familiar. I checked myself. “Should I be familiar with this place?”
“Not necessarily,” he answered as we approached the tower’s broad doors.
“Oh, good,” I replied. “That makes me feel a little less awk—”
The door creaked open. A bald man with dark green, mottled skin, a long, thin nose and small, fan-like ears greeted us in a slightly high-pitched voice. “Welcome back, Sensei, and… your stranger-friend.”
I might have said, “Nice costume,” but I was too shocked. I did my best not to stare at him as he passed outside.
Sensei’s hand was gently resting on my shaking shoulder. His eyes looked like they were trying to beam some composure directly into my brain. His other hand held the door half-open. I had stopped halfway inside.
“Was that a…?”
“A friend? A goblin? Yes,” Sensei said. “We’ll have a seat and answer more questions later.”
He gestured toward a table. I gave up trying to make sense of things, and walked forward.
“Good man.” He gave me another clap on the back. As my eyes adjusted to the dimmer light inside, Sensei offered some short advice, a little piece of wisdom, one that remained with me forever afterward. “Accept the unexpected.”