Chapter 4. And Moses Stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back…And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. - Exodus 14. 21-2.
32 people made their exodus from the City of Rosen right on schedule. Other single moms, who were serving as watchmen atop the walls, could find no enemy in sight, and so the gates of the city were thrown open an hour after sunrise. The four huge Percheron horses pulled the massive wagon loaded with provisions and climbing gear, weaponry and warm clothing through the gates. Even the kids who were 5 years old or younger declined to ride on the wagon, which was being driven by Valmyristarsis. Everyone knew she had to hike it to further harden her muscles to survive in the wilderness. Everyone was staring at a long hike, including Al, who was now liberated from his chains. The thinking here in releasing him from the chains was that he would not run off and escape, because he would not want to face the wilderness alone, penniless, unarmed and unsure of where he would find his next meal. Plus he was well treated by the beautiful warrior women. Why would a sane man run away?
A few catcalls ushered them through the main gate - comments such as - `You idiots are marching off to your deaths,' and, `If I said it a thousand times I'll say it again, you see here a collection of brainless single moms leading a bunch of brainless kids to early graves.' These sorts of comments were the general themes of these comments made by the loitering critics and opinionated bystanders, but there were some positive comments as well. Who knows if these were sincere or not? Perhaps everyone thought they were fools, but perhaps some were merciful enough to offer `the fools’ some encouragement.
The road before them bisected a vast barren plain which was more or less flat and treeless save for some wooded hills far in the distance. In or beyond these hills one had to assume there might lurk bands of enemy warriors, or perhaps gangs of wandering brigands, and so the plan was to spend most of their time - when they were forced to travel on the open prairie, with no trees to conceal their advance - traveling at night and laying low and hiding out as best they could during the daylight hours.
Seraphinaria turned back toward the city of Rosen and saw a huge white banner hanging high atop its walls. The sentries would exchange this for a black banner to warn them if enemy forces were sighted. But once the walls fell away from their view, once they had put ten or twelve miles between themselves and the walls, they would have to rely on their own advance scouts to search for enemies.
The 9-year-old girl, Shelby, was walking beside the 3-year-old Buddy, who was now sitting on a pile of blankets atop the wagon. After half an hour Buddy, also known as Hamilton, had enough walking for one day. `Traveling at night has the advantage of hiding us from human eyes, but it also has a disadvantage,' Shelby was saying to Buddy, `because there are these flying monsters which come out at night'. Buddy's eyes got big when he heard the words `flying monsters'.
`Monsters?' exclaimed Buddy.
`Yes indeed,' continued Shelby, `flying monsters, also known as "winged gargoyles", will swoop down and snatch up little fellows like you. They feed on kids just your size, you see.'
`Don't scare him,' said Shelby's mother, Misevasundia.
`I'm only giving him the facts. I think he has a right to know the facts,' said the precocious Shelby.
`The fact is,' said Shelby's mom, `it is unlikely that we will have any problems with the winged gargoyles. They attack at night alright but we will have the younger kids protected under blankets and tarps. You older kids know how to use your knives and you have thick leather jackets for armor. I don't see any problem from winged gargoyles. They might try to kill or blind the horses but we'll just have to be quick about stabbing them and fighting them off.'
`I saw a winged gargoyle die once,' said Heliomirabellisima. `About five of us had put arrows into this one mean old mother, and the damned thing just wouldn't die. We were hacking it and hacking at it with our swords, but it just kept right on trying to slash us with its razor-sharp claws. At last we got its head cut off. You want to wipe its saliva off you right away if one slobbers on you. It burns like acid. I still got some scars.'
`Don't you worry about no flying monsters, Buddy', said Misevasundia. `We'll kill them.'
`We would be wise to get off this main road as soon as possible,' said Mirabrasantes. `I know some trails wide enough to accommodate the wagon.'
`Do you sense danger at the moment?' asked Shelby, knowing that Mirabrasantes had a reputation for clairvoyance, for second sight ability to sense hidden dangers which no one else could sense.
`Not at this moment,' responded Mirabrasantes. `It's just always sound policy to make yourself as inconspicuous as possible in the wilderness.'
`Well I think that makes excellent sense,' said Shelby.
`Well I thik that make ekellent sens,' mimicked young Buddy.
Morning stretched into afternoon and they had yet to find a branching road or a smaller trail which they could use to makes themselves less conspicuous. The winter sun, amid a blue cloudless sky, was warming the air enough to make the hikers shed their warm garments. They trudged along in their shirt-sleeves. It was an hour or two before sunset when they found a trail leading east which would take them to a forest of evergreens a few miles further on. Seraphinaria sent Navorrasicaa and Sevaladelia ahead to scout out this forest, to find a place to make camp, and to make sure everything was safe. The two scouts wished they had Mirabrasantes' gift as they approached the wall of pines and leafless hardwoods. Who knew if someone or some thing was lying in wait and watching them approach? They had not penetrated far beyond the first few ranks of trees before the trail diverged into numerous branches, into a labyrinth of sorts, where the trails wound round the tree trunks in a confusing maze of pathways.
`Let's turn back before we get lost. We can camp inside this forest and try to cross it tomorrow,' whispered Navorrasicaa to Sevaladelia.
`Let's sit here and listen for a few minutes, to make sure there's nothing dangerous lurking nearby,' whispered Sevaladelia in reply.
The seconds elapsed in a dead quiet, a silence which didn't seem ominous or in any way creepy or unnatural to either of them. Having satisfied themselves that all was safe they retraced their steps and found their way out of the forest. After a half hour's brisk jog they found the main caravan once again and reported to Sevaladelia what they had seen.
Night had fallen and the moon had yet to rise and shed its light for them by the time they passed the outer pines and firs of the forest. A carpet of brown grass in a clearing to their right seemed as good a place any other to halt for the night. Soon their camp was bustling with activity. The oldest boys were sent to fetch water from a nearby trickle of a stream. There was no sense in using the reserves of water which they carried on the wagon when a stream was at hand. The oldest girls were sent to fetch firewood which would be used to boil huge pots of water, as well as to light their encampment. The littlest kids were helping their mothers peal potatoes and other such kitchen tasks. Al, who was getting used to his new gypsy life, was sitting on a blanket spread out of the grass, and was preparing hors d'oeuvres by slicing up a loaf of bread and heaping cheese or smoked salmon on to the slices, and then placing the slices on a platter. He showed Curt - Navorrasicaa's 4-year-old - and Dante - Sevaladelia's 5-year-old - how to fix the drinks the way the single moms liked them. For instance, Seraphinaria wanted her gin and tonics made with lemon slices not lime slices, and Valmyristarsis wanted her martinis made with rum and vermouth not gin and vermouth. And Casilevatates wanted three olives in her Martini. She shot Al an exasperated look once, when he gave her only one olive for her martini. Soon they were all drinking their drinks and feasting on briskets of corned beef and cabbage, though a few in the minority feasted on roast beef with asparagus tips and beets, and everyone had mashed potatoes and gravy, and after dinner there was coffee and a chocolate tor
t with cherries and whipped cream for dessert. Al talked about New York City and Paris, Rome and Milan and Chicago, San Francisco and LA and Miami Beach and all the other glamorous cities he had visited back in his old parallel universe. He explained the general ideas behind radios, televisions, the jet engine, the cinema, electricity, trains and cars and cell phones, antibiotics and anesthetics, but his audience was primarily interested in ICBMS and thermonuclear warfare, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nerve gas and biological weaponry - polonium and isotopes of U-235 - canisters of anthrax, suitcase size nukes etc. - devises which a single soldier could carry and by which he could destroy huge populations in enemy cities. Al would get lots of blank stares when he tried to explain the films of Bergmann, Eisenstein, David Lean, David Lynch, Hitchcock, Truffaut, Melville, Rohmer, Chabrol, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, William Castle, Fassbinder, Herzog, Tarkovski, Carrol Reed, John Frankenheimer, Orson Wells, Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino to these uneducated warrior women and their even more uneducated kids. They seemed to understood the basic ideas behind motion pictures, TV and video and amplified music, but they just couldn't wrap their minds around electric guitars and rock and roll – the wall of sound invented by Phil Specter – or how Phil Specter killed that lovely girl he was with, for that matter - and they certainly did not give Al the impression that they had a sound understanding of Lady Gaga, or what she was driving at in Applause, Poker Face, Bad Romance, Papparrazi etc., etc. Fortunately, Martha had her MP3 player with her when she came through the portal. Up until this moment she never played the songs on her MP3 player, because she didn’t want to alter this new universe. But Al persuaded the warrior women to persuade Martha to let them hear the songs on her MP3 player, so it was fun to observe the faces as these barbarians, or `civilized sorts of barbarians’, in this new universe, while they listened to Applause, Poker Face, Bad Romance, Papparrazi and lots of other songs from the old the universe.
Some time past midnight the slumbering Al was cuddling close to the sleeping Valmyristarsis. Navorrasicaa woke the latter, and this woke Al inadvertently, when Navorrasicaa informed Valmyristarsis that it was her turn to do sentry duty for an hour. Al stretched and yawned as Navorrasicaa crawled under the same blankets which were covering Al.
`Did you hear the wolves howling or were you asleep?' asked Navorrasicaa.
`I must have been sleeping,' replied Al. `How far away from us are they?'
`Oh a mile or more I suppose,' said Navorrasicaa. She had thrown her arms around Al and she was shivering, either from the cold or from fear of the wolves, or both.
`Well, I'll fight the wolves if they try to get you, if they try to…'
Navorrasicaa wondered how Al was going to fight any wolves when he had already fallen back to sleep.
Dawn arrived to find the frost glittering round these languid sleepers lounging beneath the pines. One by one they crawled out from beneath their wool blankets and from beneath their eider down comforters to attend to their morning wash and then to their breakfasts. Before she had even eaten anything one of the little orphan girls - Jasmine - was complaining about a soreness in her abdomen. Al suspected these people knew a few things about appendicitis and he wondered if he might have to perform emergency surgery sometime soon. Sure enough, as the day worn on, little Jasmine was groaning more and more, and Al was telling the women-folk that if her inflamed appendix burst before he could remove it, then little Jasmine would most likely die. The women had all heard about people dying when they got in Jasmine's condition, and indeed their medical science was somewhat advanced. They had some knowledge of antiseptics and appendectomies. It wasn’t as if Al’s diagnosis was a complete shock to them. They had heard of surgeons who could deal with the problem but they themselves had no clue how they might perform an operation to save Jasmine from dying, not that Al admitted to being much more competent than themselves. Jasmine was more or less adopted by all of the single moms, or, at least, they were still waiting to see if Jasmine would accept Valmyristarsis, as Val especially wanted to adopt Jasmine. Neither Valmyristaris nor any of the other women wanted the job of cutting Jasmine open. They told Al to do the job. They told him to do what he had to do to save Jasmine's life. Al was no surgeon. All Al knew was that the appendix was attached to the large intestine. Well, he knew that he had to make sure he and his attending nurses wore masks, and used a sterilized knife to perform the operation, and used a sterilized needle and thread to sew little Jasmine back up once he had cut out the infected appendix, assuming he could find it. It was an hour before noon when they called a halt to their journey northwards, and began to gather the firewood they would need to boil water. Al took Seraphinaria's sharpest knife and plunged it into the boiling water. He then took inch thick rods of iron and plunged into the coals of the fire, to be made red-hot, and to be used later when he needed to cauterize a bleeding vein or artery. He let the knife he would use for the incision sit at the bottom of the boiling pot, along with the needle and thread, getting thoroughly sterilized, while the women gave little Jasmine shots of bourbon and gin and brandy, one after another, to help her cope with the pain of the operation. Al used rubbing alcohol on his hands and then he scrubbed his hands with soap and water, water that had cooled after it had been boiled. He washed for several minutes. And then he used more alcohol, and more soap and water, and more alcohol. Then he had Casilevatates put a cotton cloth over his mouth and nose, and over the mouths and noses of his two main assistants, Seraphinaria and Mirabrasantes. Jasmine was shaking with fear as the other women laid her on a makeshift operating table made out of wood taken from the wagon. Al rehearsed in his mind the instructions he would give to his assistants, mainly instruction on how to clear away the blood, so he could see where he was cutting. His assistants would have to use cloths boiled in water and then wrung dry to sop up the blood. A rather primitive expedient! But Al could see no other sanitized way to do the job. Once everything that needed to be cooled, after it was heated and sterilized, had cooled, and had been set nearby, ready to use when needed, four women held Jasmine tight, as Al began his initial incision, which was shallow and tentative. Jasmine was brave but she let out loud screams as Al pushed harder on the knife, as he cut through the wall of her abdomen. He stared down in disbelief, aghast at the bloody mess he was making. He directed Seraphinaria and Mirabrasantes to daub up the blood with their cloths. But new blood rushed in as soon as the old blood was mopped up! Al, who of course had no surgical gloves on his hands, pushed his fingers inside Jasmine's abdomen. Jasmine was beside herself with pain and fear as Al searched by feel for her appendix. Al was about ready to admit he didn't know what the hell he was doing. He was just about ready to say he should cauterize her bleeding veins and sew her back up - as he too was distraught and panicking by the high volume of Jasmine's screams - but then his fingers found something that he thought might be her appendix. He grabbed it between his thumb and forefinger. He then used his knife to cut it out. Whatever it was, Al definitely severed it. Hopefully it was poor little Jasmine's inflamed appendix! Al was now holding it in his left hand, giving it a less than medically authoritative inspection. Al set it aside by dropping it on a cloth. Then he had Mirabrasantes hand him one of the red-hot irons which had been plunged in the coals of the fire, which he then used to cauterize the point where the appendix had been attached to the large intestine. Then he took another and then another and another of the red-hot irons and cauterized all of the bleeding blood vessels that he could find. When this was done to Al's satisfaction he used the needle and thread to sew Jasmine's belly back together again.
Poor Jasmine! The little orphan girl was in a wretched state. Her beautiful young features were distorted with agony and she was weeping uncontrollably because of the pain. And then she got sick and threw up because of all the whiskey she had to drank in the attempt to deaden the pain of the operation. In a few hours she was more or less in a tolerable condition. Stabs of
pain shot through her abdomen whenever she moved, but if she kept perfectly still the pain wasn't too bad. Now, as Al told everyone, as long as she didn't get an infection and die from it, little Jasmine ought to survive both the surgery and the appendicitis.