Memory

Chapter 24

When we returned, Jolly was huddled in a corner, with Moki in his lap. That sight affected me strangely, for it seemed as if I looked back in time at myself, alone in the corner of my room, holding on to a scream of despair until the silver was fully gone.

I moved my sleeping bag next to his and sat down. He watched me with wary eyes as if I were the silver itself. I leaned against the wall, looking out across the room so that he did not have to feel my gaze. I was not, after all, the Jubilee he remembered. I said, “I’m sorry for this strangeness between us. You were my older brother. That’s how I remember you. My best friend. Now seven years have passed—”

“It has not been that long.”

“It has, for me. Seven years.” I tried to smile. “Ficer says I look on you as if you were a ghost. You must forgive me, Jolly, if it seems that way, but the dead do not come back to life every day, looking as bright as when they left. I think it will take some time to get my mind around it… though it doesn’t mean I love you less.”

He nodded, but his grip on Moki tightened. “Do you remember that night I called the silver?”

I could feel his dark eyes on me, and there was defiance in his voice, but I was not going to argue with him. I knew what he had done. Maybe, I knew how he had done it. “I remember it all.”

He leaned back against the wall, his right hand obsessively stroking Moki’s neck. “You are a ghost too, Jubilee. The silver was there in our room. I knew it must have taken you too. How could you have escaped? I thought you were dead. That we both were, and I had killed you.”

I turned to him in surprise. “No. The silver never touched me.”

Ficer appeared in the doorway then, startling Jolly so that he shrank against the wall. “Getting jumpy again?” Ficer asked as he lay down on his sleeping bag.

Jolly smiled sheepishly. “Sorry.” Then he glanced at me. “Did you see what happened that night?”

“Yes.”

His next words were haunted with memory. “There is silver in all of us. Mama told me when a player dies, silver will leave the body, like a last breath. I was that wisp-of-silver. I felt like a ghost, floating, not solid at all though I was still me. Like being in a dream, when you can’t touch anything, but I could see. I could see everywhere… that’s how it seemed. Windows opened everywhere I looked. It was the world—at least I guessed it was. None of it looked like any part of the world I had seen before. But at least it was somewhere, and I was nowhere. I tried to get through the windows, but they kept slipping away. I didn’t know how to move. I thought I would never escape.”

Whether that time in the silver encompassed hours or days or the slow turn of seasons, Jolly couldn’t say, but it was long. I think it was a different kind of time than passes in the world. Perhaps it was a kind of infancy, for like an infant that grows in strength and learns to walk, Jolly’s helplessness gradually yielded to a new mobility. He struggled always to move toward one of these vistas that he called a “window” and finally he reached one.

“It was like being pushed into a painting of a landscape, only to find the land in the painting was the real world, while…” He waved his hand vaguely. “Wherever I had been… that was a dream. Though it had felt real enough when I was there.”

“Where did you find yourself?” I asked when he’d been silent for most of a minute.

“Nowhere.” He shook his head. “There was no one there. Nothing. It was an empty land”—he glanced at Ficer, stretched out on his bedroll—“a lot like this place, but by the ocean.”

He had been terribly frightened and utterly alone. Wandering that strange coast he grew hungry and horribly thirsty under a pitiless sun. He hid behind rocks and watched as wild animals came up out of the water, great fat seals and giant sea stars with shining tentacles. A bull hippo chased him, giving up only when he scrambled up a cliff face where it could not follow.

“I stayed there three days. It rained twice and I had some water, but the sea snails I could pry from the rocks were salty and they made me sick. I thought I was going to die. It made me so angry. I didn’t want to die. But I was sick. I could hardly stand up. When the silver came, the third night I was there, I tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. No more cliffs to climb. So the silver caught me, and it was just like the first time. The world slipped away and I could see it only through windows. I was a ghost again, looking through windows, with a different view everywhere I turned… but I never saw home.”

Moki stirred, so Jolly set him on his feet. The hound stretched and yawned and wagged his tail, and we both watched, as if it was a fascinating thing to see. Then Jolly spoke again. “I thought everyone had lied to me.” His fist clenched against his knee. “I was so angry. Furious at Mom, Dad, because they’d lied to me about the silver—”

“They didn’t lie—”

“I know that! I know it now. But then, I thought it was the same for everyone, that the silver only took you away, it didn’t kill you.”

“But it’s not like that… is it?” I longed for him to tell me that everything I knew was wrong, that players could return from the silver, but Jolly was wiser than that.

He shook his head. “Other players can’t survive the silver. It’s only me and… and…”

“Kaphiri?” I asked softly.

Jolly looked suddenly fearful. “You know him?”

“I’ve met him.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “He’s hunting you. And now… I think he’s hunting me too.”

Jolly nodded, and turned away again. I was afraid he’d stop speaking, so I pressed him with a question. “Jolly? How did he find you?”

“He didn’t. I found him.”

He described how he’d struggled once more to escape the silver by reaching toward the vistas he could see, the “windows” as he called them. It was hard for him to move willfully. It was so much easier to drift, and yet, as he strove for direction, he learned, and motion became easier. This time he chose carefully, before slipping through a window into the world.

“It was a better place,” Jolly said. “A lot like Kavasphir, though there were animals there I never saw before, so I think it was really far away. But there was a stream with fish in it, and wild berries, and I set a trap and after a couple of days I caught a piglet.” He shrugged. “It’s better to hunt with a rifle.”

So I would guess.

“Anyway, I stayed there many days. I didn’t keep count. But I never saw another player. It was lonely, and I wanted to go home. So when the silver rose again, I walked into it.”

That became the pattern of his life, for weeks at least. Perhaps for months. He would look for a place like Kavasphir, or any place that seemed familiar, or just a place where there was some sign that players might be nearby. But the world is vast, and he never found his way home.

“Then he came,” Jolly said. “I saw him, far away in the silver. At first I thought I was only looking through another window, but there was something different about him… as if he was solid and everything else was mist. The other windows would fade in and out of existence, but he was solid. Not a window at all, but a player within the silver itself.

“A player… but he wasn’t a ghost like me. He was real. Solid. Fixed in place… like the sea snails I’d pried off the rocks. That’s what he was like. I went to him, but he couldn’t see me. He was in the silver, but he couldn’t see. You understand? I was the silver. He was still a player.”

“You were transformed? And he was still untouched?”

Jolly nodded. “The silver would not take him, or touch him. That was his power, but it was a curse too. It made him angry, though I didn’t know it then.” His eyes had a distant look. “He couldn’t see me, but I could see him. He was walking, and there was solid ground under his feet, but it was not solid for me. I followed him anyway, through a window and out of the silver.” Jolly’s smile was bitter. “He saw me then. I scared him. He looked so scared. But only for a few seconds.” His face grew sad as he remembered. “He took care of me, and for a time I was happy that I’d found him.”

They learned much from each other, Kaphiri and my brother. Though they both could survive the silver, their talents were not the same. When Kaphiri entered the silver, he remained a physical being. He could go only where he could walk within the fog. It was different for Jolly. His fate was like that of the metal pole Ficer had directed me to touch. The silver would dissolve his body, but he would not lose coherence. He would remain whole in the memory of the silver. He would remain aware. It was as if the silver’s awareness became his, as if he shared the mind of the goddess. He could see through the silver, to places all around the ring of the world. He could reach through it: a ghost that might appear anywhere the fog touches.

Never before had Kaphiri imagined it possible to ride the silver. It was a talent he wanted for himself.

“I asked him to help me find my home,” Jolly said, “but he had never heard of Kavasphir. So we went to a temple in high mountains where he kept his home.

“He told me that silver once was rare, and in those days people were less afraid of the mountains. Many temples had been built in the high places then, and people would come deliberately to see the silver. All those temples are gone now, except the one where Kaphiri lives, and almost no one comes there because they’re afraid of the silver. But there was another player who lived there, a woman who kept the temple for him.”

“And was she his wife?” I wanted to hear that she was, for then I would not have to suspect myself.

“He has no wife,” Jolly said. “He told me he was a cessant, and Mari—she who keeps the house for him—she is a cessant too.”

“Mari?” I asked, startled.

“Yes. Why? Have you heard of her?”

“I think I have.” The wife of Nuanez Li had been named Mari, and she had gone off with the traveler, seeking to restore her youth. How long ago? I could not guess.

“Tell me more,” I said, “and I’ll tell you my story later.”

Jolly nodded. “Mari was an old woman. Very old. She wouldn’t tell me how she’d come to be so high in the mountains, but she was afraid of the silver. She would never step outside the temple walls, even when the sun was bright. So she was trapped there, a prisoner.

“She was always good to me though, and she never became angry. Still she must have been lonely when Kaphiri was away. I felt sorry for her. I wanted to find some way for her to escape. It wasn’t Kaphiri that held her prisoner, you understand? It was the silver. So I hunted around the temple, wandering for miles, and made a map of all the wild kobold wells I could find.”

He frowned, and his voice grew even softer. “I was afraid of the silver too. Kaphiri could find his way through it, but I could not. Not when he wasn’t there. I needed him. I needed something solid to follow. I knew if I went back into the silver alone I would get lost again… and we were so high in the mountains there was no way I could walk out in the few hours the silver was away. Maybe, if I could move from wild well to wild well…”

He shook his head. “Mari didn’t want to go. Kaphiri had been away for many days, but as soon as he returned she told him what I was planning. It made him angry. Whenever he was angry I would stay in my room, or if the sun was bright I’d go walking in the forest. But when Mari told him I’d been looking for a way out of the mountains he went crazy.”

Jolly’s voice dropped again until it was no more than a whisper. “He hit me.” His hand rose, to touch the side of his head. “It made me dizzy and sick. It was night, and he took me outside, up onto the temple wall.

“That temple was on a cliff above a steep canyon. On afternoons when the sun was bright you could see to the canyon bottom where a thread of white water ran through forest, but most of the time there was only silver below us. That night the silver filled the canyon, flowing downhill like a wide, slow river just beneath our feet. Kaphiri said he would throw me into it.”

My brother’s eyes were haunted. He gazed at his hands, but he saw other things. “I didn’t want to be lost again!”

“Jolly, it’s all right.”

“I was afraid.”

“It’s all right,” I said again, but neither of us believed it.

“After that he brought other players to the temple.” His voice took on a note of bitter triumph. “He guided them between wild wells! I learned that after—that he stole the idea from me. He had threatened to throw me into the silver, but after that night he was afraid I would jump, so he brought some of his cessants to watch over me.”

Kaphiri had found a treasure in Jolly and he was not about to give it up. “All of us, we are like the kobolds,” Jolly said. “We all have configuration codes. That’s what I learned from Kaphiri.” He looked me hard in the eye as he said this, as if daring me to argue. I did.

“Jolly, players don’t have configuration codes. He was lying to you. We’re not mechanics.”

Jolly laughed—a cold laugh that frightened me because it reminded me of another. “You think you know.” He jumped up then, and paced the room. Ficer watched him, propped up on one elbow. Jolly said, “Kaphiri knows more about how we are made than anyone else alive. Our configuration codes are hidden deep in our blood, in our cells, but they exist. Kaphiri studied the codes in my blood, the codes that made me. Then he copied the pattern as best he could, adjusting the codes in his own blood.”

In his blood? I was aware suddenly of my heart beating. Kaphiri’s blood had crossed with mine and now I was changed, as if some part of me had been rewritten…

Jolly said, “He learned to move through the silver as I do. He went to many far places, while I stayed in the temple with the cessants he’d brought to watch me. They were afraid of him, but they loved him. They wanted to be like him. Sometimes… I wanted to be like him too.”

I nodded. There is an attraction in power. It’s why a son wants to be like his father, or a daughter like her mother who she sees as being in control of life. How much more powerful Kaphiri must have seemed than any father!

“At first, he would never tell me where he went, or what he did,” Jolly said. “But he would talk to the cessants, and when he was gone they would talk among themselves. I asked him if it was true, if he had brought the silver into enclaves where players still lived. He said it was true. It was his purpose.”

“He told me the same. It’s what he was born for.”

“He said I was born for it too.”

“No! You can’t believe him. That’s not true.”

But the look in Jolly’s eyes belied me. “You weren’t there,” he said. “You don’t know what happened.”

Dread stirred in my belly. I didn’t know, but I could guess. “You called the silver into the temple, didn’t you? Just like that night at Temple Huacho.”

His face grew taut, as if he were seeing again some terrible vision. “The cessants saw it coming. They tried to carry me to safety, but the silver caught them anyway.” There was grief in his voice, though his eyes were dry. “So I got away, but I still couldn’t find my way home.”

“Youhave found your way.” I said it with conviction. “I’ll take you home, Jolly. I will.”

There was a distance in his eyes as he considered this. It was as if I’d become the child and he the adult with concerns I could not even conceive. “And what if he follows me there?”

I looked away. I didn’t want him to see my own fear.

“He’s looking for me!” Jolly insisted. “You know he is. You said it yourself!”

Moki shrank from his side, troubled by his anger. I gathered the hound into my own lap, burying my fingers in his soft fur. “Why does he want you, Jolly? He’s already stolen your secrets. He’s learned to move through the silver—”

Jolly cut off my protests with a quick slice of his hand. “You can’t turn a metal-eating kobold into a temple guardian, can you?” he asked. His voice was soft and bitter. “Kaphiri made himself more like me, but he is not me. He can go where he wants in the silver, but he can’t see anything until he’s there. For him it’s like stepping through a door between rooms. The rooms might be thousands of miles apart, but it’s only one step for him. Only one step between the mountain temple and the enclave he would destroy. He can’t see anything in between. He’s blind to most of the world. Posses have gathered to attack his cessants, and he has never seen them. But I can see them. I can see it all. That’s why I get lost. Everything is there at once, and it all gets confused…”

I came to understand it only slowly, that our senses are filters. We do not hear everything there is to hear, or we would be overwhelmed by the complexities of sound. We do not see everything there is to see, or our brains would fail trying to interpret every nuance of light. But in the silver Jolly was not protected by any similar filter. He perceived far more than his mind could make sense of, and so he could make sense of nothing… until he found Kaphiri. Solid and unchanging, Kaphiri was the rock he could cling to while chaos rushed around him. It was the difference between a player who is swept away in a raging river, and one who stands upon a rock while the river sweeps past him, gazing at the debris that passes by.

“I am his eyes,” Jolly concluded. “I see the world for him. I see his enemies.”

It was very quiet in that refuge, with no sound of wind or water, or the night songs of birds. When Ficer stirred in his bedding, it seemed a loud noise. “So he needs you,” Ficer said. “But he must fear you too. He must fear you could find some way to lead his enemies to him.”

Jolly shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. To do that, I’d have to go back into the silver, and then I’d be lost again. Jubilee—” He turned to me. “Don’t you see? If I go home, he’ll know it. He knows I’m from a place called Kavasphir. If he looks hard enough, he’ll find it—”

Something must have shown in my face.

“Has he been there already?” There was horror in Jolly’s voice. “Is that where you met him?”

I wanted to deny it, but I was not well practiced at telling lies. “He came. One night when I was sitting on the wall. He asked for you. I told him you were gone. I thought you were dead. I didn’t know.”

“And my father? Was that when…?”

“No. Kaphiri had already found him on the road.”

I told Jolly my story then, keeping nothing back, not even the story of the blood poisoning, which Jolly accepted with a look that had more of resignation in it, than surprise.

Should I have lied? Should I have tried to shield some of the truth from him? He was a child after all…

And yet he was not a child. He had been through the silver, and he had passed through other fires. Those experiences had changed him. Ficer was right in that. Besides, Jolly had a truth-sense too keen for me to evade. If ever I tried to pass lightly over a subject he questioned me, drilling down to levels of fact I hardly knew existed. I relived my journey that night, and it was late before we finally lay down to sleep.