Rebecca Bavone

Rebecca Bavone Shift Cafe Vik was a small shop on the border of Augustia. Beyond the city of steel and smoke was the dense green that spread over hills and ascended into Mount Rayne. The top of the mountain was fuzzy from my window seat. A fog was hovering, and it challenged the thick gray air I constantly hid from. It stunk. I was glad Yua lived in one of the villages that made up the Lands, a quiet place dug into a gargantuan hill named Toba. The Tobans took a major part in the clay trade among the rural land and gave city men the side eye as they lugged tubs of red guck up the carved ramp that delved under their houses. Yua had travelled to Augustia even after being warned of the tall, silver buildings and black roads and metal trucks, and of the microscope that would follow him as he passed along the sidewalk empty of weeds to my office. I was located on the sixth floor of a seven-story complex so it wasn’t surprising when I got a call saying a Toban wanted me to come down to meet him. That much steel stacked up was bound to collapse and Yua refused to even think about risking it. When I stepped out of the elevator I saw a man of about seven feet wearing a long white cloth shirt and a flustered expression. His eyebrows were brought close together and he frowned as he approached me. The scent of salt and dirt was so heavy I stifled a cough. “You are Mr. Fenray?” He extended his hand quickly and I took it. “Yua, right? Why don’t we talk outside?” The man relaxed and offered a smile. “Sure.” A coal truck soared by as we stood against a smooth wall. We watched it halt to a stop when the red light blared, and then Yua began. “Did Ria tell you?” “She told me there’s something going on in Toba.” “That’s all?” “I’m not sure she wants anything to do with it. She did send you straight to me.” Yua rolled pebbles of loose gravel under his foot. “Exiles will distance themselves, of course.” “Were you and her close?” “Just my sister.” He shrugged and I shifted. “Someone wooed by shiny things and poor promises. Has she found another man yet?” “No, I think she’s putting that on hold for now. Work is more than enough to deal with. She’s actually on a case today.” Yua sighed and a shadow seemed to dawn over him like an attack from the smokestacks. “Anyway, Mr. Fenray -” “Arthur.” “Arthur.” He glanced at a suited man who had stopped at a crosswalk, and leaned in. “The clay is being stolen.” I mirrored the concern in Yua’s face. It was one thing to take off with some city dweller, but meddling with the economy of an entire village permitted execution. Toba lived from clay like it was religion, and the other villages had a respect for them that ran deep in centuries of peace and generosity. There was also fear, for steel was sneered at and clay was the next best material, and if Toba didn’t agree to sell it, people in the Lands would become vulnerable to nature and neighbors. “I’m guessing the police is stuck since you’re here,” I said. “Ha! The police are merely patrolmen. They keep watch of the caves - who goes in and out - but they haven’t seen anyone take anything.” The words flew out of my mouth. “Is no one questioning them?” “In our minds. But it would chaotic to outright accuse those who are meant to protect us. There’s enough unrest as it is. An outsider is what we need.” “That doesn’t seem right, Yua.” “You are objective, no? A real investigator.” A woman in a cherry dress clacked her way across the street. I held my breath as she got closer. “Alright, fine. I still have some things to do today, so why don’t we meet somewhere later?” “And go to Toba?” Yua asked. The woman noticed him first, and when she stood beside him with her arms crossed, I realized she was a good four inches taller than him. The air was awkward as Yua looked up at his sister and she kept her eyes on me. “Do we still have the file on the Maclad case?” Ria asked. “Uh, we should. Look in the second cabinet from the left.” “Cool. Thanks.” She left without a word to Yua, ducking into the complex. His lips were in a line and he fiddled with his hands. “I saw a place when I was leaving the Lands. Cafe Vik.” “Sounds good. Let’s say four o’clock.” Yua lightened up a bit and said goodbye, a natural skyscraper shuffling away in his brown sandals. ** It was past four when Yua slid his body into the seat across from me. I was having coffee and reading a tattered copy of Divine Comedy that I had plucked from the many bookshelves in the shop. The waitress regarded Yua with wide eyes as she asked for his order. He simply said, “Water,” and then tried tucking his legs under the table. “Ria used to do that,” I said. He ignored my comment and stared at the Lands. I changed my tactic. “How many barrels are missing so far?” “It’s not the barrels. It’s the actual clay.” “What do you mean ‘the actual clay’? Straight from the cave?” “Indents everywhere like it’s being scooped up. Most of us think the patrolmen are taking turns shoveling it into their own barrels and then storing it somewhere. They smooth over the holes so it looks as if an air pocket popped.” The waitress plopped a glass in front of Yua and he thanked her. “Why couldn’t it be air?” Yua sipped his drink and I took a swig of my black coffee. “There’s too many of them. It looks like the walls are sinking in.” We sat in Cafe Vik until the sun lowered and were forced to order dinner while our theory formulated. There were two possibilities. The patrol was actually stealing clumps of clay by night and dragging it into a secret location where another person or persons from the Lands bought the product. I chewed on a chicken bone and shook my head. “Okay, yeah, but why hasn’t a dramatic peak in clay showed up anywhere? Surely you’d know if Finnian or Nazure - oh!” I slammed down my hand and Yua coughed on a lettuce leaf. “They use it slowly! Has any village started ordering less clay than usual?” Yua held his head away from my ignited face. “You’ll have to ask the Vice Chief.” It wasn’t as likely, but still possible that an abnormal excess of air bubbles had built up and were just now deciding to burst. I kept that idea swimming in the back of my mind as we wished the waitress goodnight and exited the cafe. Yua grimaced at my car, a bright blue hunk of metal, and led me to two horses that were tied to a post. “It’ll look bad if you bring that thing,” he said, easily throwing a leg over a spotted horse and beginning down the stone path that vanished up ahead. I scrambled onto the remaining horse and set off into the Lands. ** Augustia was a bleak, gray mass behind me and I welcomed the rich grass and clean air. Yua’s scent had expanded and surrounded me. It was good, old nature. Something of the past to most, but not completely forgotten. The Lands were so wide Mount Rayne seemed no closer than it was from the city. We weaved the horses through a cluster of large stones covered in mold and lizards. A few crows whizzed above us and one perched on a rock to yell at me. I wondered if Ria missed the openness of it all. I saw it everyday from the towers of Augustia but barely remembered being in it. Cold, dewy grass was all I could conjure up. A morning picnic, maybe? I saw the joyful faces of my parents under the shade of a tree, and it darkened until I was back on the horse, staring at the rising moon. “We almost there, Yua?” He was a few yards ahead of me. “Right there,” he called back, pointing to a massive hill roaming with inhabitants. Toba could have been mistaken for a mountain if it wasn’t so clear it was a mound of hard dirt. I could already hear gossip as we neared the village and saw a woman drag her children into a hole within the hill and close the wooden door. Clay homes ringed neatly around the elevation as if in worship. We rode into a market without being greeted and put the horses in a stable. An older woman with white braids packed away molded clay figures into a deep bowl with the help of a lamp and a barefoot boy. He stopped to gaze at me and was smacked on the head. The sting I felt from hostile stares subsided as I followed Yua up wooden steps that encircled Toba until they reached the Chief’s room. “Wait here.” Yua went inside. There was a generous flow of talking and then nothing at all. I walked to the edge and glanced past the high railing to watch Tobans recede into their homes for the night. The white-haired woman and the boy were slowly moving toward a hut, arms linked. He turned his head and laughed, a sound that was like a mouse squeak from where I was, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. Yua pulled me toward the stairs. “The Chief says we’ll go in the caves tonight, so I can show you what it looks like. You can ask people things tomorrow after you’ve been marked.” I paused. “Sorry, marked?” “A spot of dirt on the cheek. So people know the Chief approves of the outsider.” “Right. That’s fair.” The moisture of the clay made the cave reek of a mold field. It was a maze of lefts and rights and dead ends yet to be dug into even more. We went further in and Yua held his torch closer to a wall. The surface was riddled with bumps and condensation rolled down in thick drops. Yua ran his finger along a concavity. “Do you see?” “Yeah. I don’t think they used shovels.” “Just wait.” We entered an open space that connected various tunnels and Yua brought me across. The indents were giant. Some were at least three feet wide and they ran all the way up to the ceiling that gave Yua more than enough headspace. They were on every wall and got smaller and smaller as we walked down a tunnel until they stopped. It was like someone was trying to smash through using a perfectly smooth rock and had given their children pebbles to use. I squinted at the uniformity of the wall. There was no mark of any kind that would indicate there was an attempt to cover up the roughness the holes would have made. It all looked natural - nothing like a brushstroke or clumping. “So, how was this dealt with after they dug out what they wanted?” I said. Yua moved the torch toward me. “I was thinking the back of a shovel. It seems you don’t think so.” “There would be press marks, and I don’t see any. Does everyone know their way around here?” He nodded. “Except the kids.” “If anyone’s really stealing, they aren’t keeping it down here. It would have been found already.” He waited for me to go on and I scratched my head. “Right?” “Oh, yes, we checked the whole cave.” “Any other places that come to mind?” Yua shook his head. I sighed and something in the room squished. Stepping away from a frozen Yua, the noise got louder and I grabbed the torch from his shaky hands, coming to a wall that spiked my interest and doused me in fear. To my amazement, it was moving. Like something was kneading it from the inside. It bulged in some places and sunk in others rapidly, bubblegum stretching and kicking up the gross, dank smell of wet clay. The wall formed craters and then filled them in, only to put them somewhere else as if it was trying to choose the ideal spot. I was drawn into the dance until it slowed and finally ceased, leaving ridges deeper than before. Yua was behind me and his shocked face remained even as my words reached him. “Does anyone come down here at night?” “The thieves.” His voice was soft and far away. “Not the - besides them.” “I told you. They saw no one.” “Right, so no one knows. Okay. Yua, you can’t tell anyone except the Chief. We should go to him. Now.” “He’s sleeping.” “Tomorrow, then.” I motioned toward a tunnel and handed him the torch. The light touched his cloudy eyes and he put his hand on my arm for a moment. “Arthur, what was that?” “I don’t know yet.” ** The news relayed to the Chief was puzzling to the both of us. The cave walls were moving on their own. The only explanation I could come up with was natural shifting in response to the copious amounts of clay being harvested. Maybe Toba had reached their point. The trade would have to die out before it killed them. I didn’t say anything like this to Yua, who was still shaken up, and we tried to appear unsuspicious by asking residents questions for most of the day. I was speaking with a vendor and examining an apple when a young man in a purple-dyed shirt eagerly approached Yua, and, seeing the thumbprint of dirt on my face, spoke directly to me. “I hear you’ve been asking around.” His eyes were big and shined in the afternoon sun. I glanced at Yua and he shrugged. “Do you know something?” At this he quickly pulled us behind the fruit table and whispered, “It’s the Finnians. They’re picking it up from the patrolmen. They have to be.” “You saw this happen?” The man pressed his foot in the grass and straightened his back. “I can prove it! We have to see the Vice Chief!” I trailed behind Yua and the man as we neared the winding stairs, and saw the old woman step out of her hut with the bowl weighing down her arms. I told Yua to visit the Vice Chief without me and meet me at the market, not waiting for a response and rushing over to the woman. Her gray eyes stopped my hands that reached for the bowl. “You’ll stay back.” She trudged along and I kept some distance while I walked beside her. “I’ve been marked. See?” I pointed to my face and she grunted. “That looks heavy,” I went on. “It always is.” I searched around for the boy, expecting him to come running in and take up the space between us. A child bounced ahead toward another armed with a stick and they disappeared past the tables and tents. The woman set the bowl down and took in a deep breath. “Why are you still here?” “I don’t know. I just like helping people.” She began taking out the figurines, and slapped my hand when I tried to pick up an orange-painted fox. “You want to help? Go in the cave and find our clay.” “I’m afraid it isn’t there.” Her long fingers rearranged the pieces of art in rings. “It is.” “There’s no hidden storage. Do you -” The woman roughly put an eagle next to a snake and it crumbled from the force. “You believe a village is stealing from Toba. That a Toban is betraying us. Which one do you have those eyes set on? Martia? Nazure? Finnian? You are ignorant and think small.” The display was finished with the fox in the center, a cute thing with two black dots and a tiny brown nose. I thought about my theory. Of course there was no theft involved, but how could she know this? I wanted to avoid panic among the citizens and stick with the cover Yua and I had chosen. I also needed answers. Real answers. She moved the bowl to the end of the table. “If I’m being honest”, I said, “I know villages have nothing to do with this.” Her face lightened. “You’ve seen it.” She took my hand and put her own over it. “I can hear it at night. I told my mother when I was around your age, and she snarled at me and hurled things at me, yelling that I was cursed like her. That I was unlucky enough to know it was coming alive. She made me keep quiet.” The woman dropped my hand and turned away. I stood there and took in the scent of fresh grass that the breeze carried. Clouds of sand were kicked up in a nearby field. The kid had discarded his stick and was tickling the other as they fell down. I stared up at the impressive Toba, with its built-in doors and stairs and full homes. The market was brimming with conversations and smiles. People strolled hand in hand or shoulder to shoulder. This was where a whole community laughed, cried, danced, slept, thrived, and lived. The entrance to the cave was becoming the mouth of Hell to me. “What does it want?” The woman looked at me and I glimpsed the fatigue in her face - the drooping eyes and sagging frown. “Why should I know?” She plucked the fox from the center and thrust it into my palm. The boy was beaming as he passed through the market, and she waved me away when I tried to ask more. I left before he arrived at the table and waited by the Vice Chief’s room. Yua joined me a few minutes after with the other man, the latter staring at the ground and itching his arm. They had found nothing out of the ordinary. The only red flag was a cancelled shipment that was supposed to go to Nazure the last weekend, but the explanation of an overstock of clay had already been accounted for. The newly depressed young man felt awful and we stayed with him for the rest of the day, chatting and inviting him to dinner with us. By nightfall he went back to his hut with a big grin on his face and Yua and I sat in silence with the fox resting in my hand We were around a burning torch that was propped in the center of his home. He was concentrating on peeling an orange and jumped when I spoke. “An old woman told me the clay is alive.” “The old women here gossip. Does that not happen in Augustia?” “She said she can hear it moving.” Yua looked up. “Did she say why it moves?” I shook my head and he resumed digging his nail into the skin of the fruit. “So, we still have no answers.” “We know it’s either something or…” I stopped myself and fixed my thoughts on how the shadows danced on Yua’s face. “Please don’t say it’s air pockets. That doesn’t make sense.” He let an orange peel drop into a pile in front of him. “What we saw wasn’t natural.” The words jammed in my throat. I sat still and dumbly, unable to tell him what he deserved to know. If the foundation of Toba was shifting it would eventually cause a collapse, and though I couldn’t really estimate how much time the village had, the rate that wall was moving was damn fast. I had seen Augustian buildings packed with twenty stories of workplaces crumble into junk and leave behind dead, soot-coated bodies. I had watched the chunks of cement and metal beams being taken away on dozens of trucks until all there was left to clean was the splattered red and dust on the streets. I was sure that had happened. As young as I had been, I knew all those people had died, and continued running through alleyways with the other lonely boys and racing them to the top of an office or apartment building. Leaning over the edge of the roof hadn’t scared me, but I always remembered seeing a speck turn into a person as it made its way to the ground. I had thought the deaths were man-made along with the shiny towers that came from poorly scribbled blueprints and mismatched numbers. I hadn’t been surprised or scared. Now I felt it. I wiggled the torch from its stand and left the hut, away from the trailing calls of Yua’s worried voice. The patrolmen cut their conversation short as I closed in, and almost blocked the cave entrance before they saw Yua running across the grass. I went in blindly, the light ironically nothing like a guide, and paused at a forked path. Yua caught up and pried the torch from me. “You can’t just run in here! What are you hoping to find?” “Just get me back there.” I began walking down the left tunnel and he tugged at my sleeve. “Wrong way, Arthur.” I tried to relax. The reek of the walls was suffocating and it seemed the holes started sooner than when I was last there. It wasn’t pebbles. It was golf balls. And soccer balls and basketballs and larger and larger so that the center of it all was like Toba was turning in on itself, sinking into a pit in a natural, disastrous act of reversal. The sound was deafening, songs of shifting from every direction merging into a clumped rhythm that had Yua raising his shoulders to his neck and whirling around the torch. I covered an ear and steadied the light for Yua. It spilled over the ground and illuminated the falling wall to our right. Not crumbling or breaking into a pile of thick red that promised to take the ceiling with it and bring on our deaths. The clay was thinning as it dripped and pooled at Yua’s feet. He shuffled back quickly and I focused on how the torch shined through the film that lead to the other side. Everything was intact above our heads when the wall finally broke, the puddle of guck still soupy and running, and a moist burst of wind rushed in and lingered. Our breathing was loud in the new quiet. A portion of the wall had melted and left a cut-out tunnel that spanned to just below the top. It was in the form of a human. I stood before it and faced Yua. I knew my body was much smaller than whoever or whatever was trying to break through the base of Toba. The arm shapes that seemed to widen as they travelled down and down went past my knees and my head was below where the chest would be. It was massive. Yua stared above me. “Don’t stand there.” “We have to go in.” A wave of fear passed over Yua when he met my eyes. “Why are you standing there?” The volume of his voice rang in my ear. He forced his body toward me and leaned so his nose bumped mine. I tried backing up, but a hissing whisper made me halt. “Do you see it?” His eyes flicked up. There was a chill that cut through the stuffy cave and wiped my back. I turned, expecting the worst, and peered down the grotesque tunnel until it went dark. “Yua.” His mouth hung open and he was fixed on nothing. The chill hit me again. I took the torch and held it out. My legs lost their feeling and I smacked the ground for just a moment before I sprung up. Neither of us screamed. The noise was taken from us and instead rose from the clay. It moaned and yelled with every step that brought it closer to our shivering forms, the substance dripping from what was presumably a face, carved round eyes and a slit in the center that opened as it cried out, and a scowl that bared sharpened teeth. It clenched its fists as it shifted on, and the emanating wrath held me where I was. Yua’s arm was pressed against mine. A low growl was thrown at us and its scratchy voice boomed. I pictured the patrolmen scrambling to wake the Chief and calling out to the citizens. I saw the Chief, calm and ready, and the boy dropping the bowl to carry the old woman away from whatever hell I was facing. I imagined the words of the creature were just rumblings of the world moving and balancing. Yua grasped my wrist and I had to hear them. “You take and take from me. I hold you up in peace, but you still disturb me. It is mine.” Its first step into the open space had me and Yua bolting for the exit. A shadow blocked my sight and I skidded to a stop at the awful cry that rang from him, returning it and gripping at the pain swelling up my shoulder. The light was flying everywhere, and I ducked out of the way of the flame. I tried steadying it, putting a hand on Yua’s, and he started and twisted his body so he was looking past me. There were flecks of clay like acid flak that painted his face and had his cheeks dropping onto his chin and his eyebrows becoming flaps over his eyes. He gurgled a scream and I saw that he was hovering and had flung himself around in the creature’s hold on his legs and other arm. I pulled on him desperately and a shrill sob escaped his lips. Blood flowed from the cleanly melted leg that sloshed in the creature’s mouth. I stared in horror at the waterfall of crimson that piled onto the floor, and let the torch drop when his head finally fell and he was silent. Tears soaked my shirt. I took the torch and didn’t wait for the creature to devour the rest of Yua. My feet brought me to the turn I first saw and kept going and going, but it was hopeless. The corner led to another corner and the walls of clay were all the same. I had left the bumps long ago. I heard a groan. That sluggish thing couldn’t catch up to me. I caught my breath and was jolted by a slow tumble of energy. I looked up. The ceiling was as it was. My eyes followed it back, and some feet down there was the start of a crack. It advanced, and I could hear the packed clay flood the center of the maze and the monster wail. “It is mine!” I raced on until I met a dead end. The rumbling approached. The torch was slipping from my sweaty palm and dots of acid on my shoulder had warped the skin and left it leaking blood heavily. I slunk down. I saw the bustling Augustia in a smoky cloud, red and ruined. The fallen city of mistakes. Crashing metal like trees splintered by lightning. The rich bark became burnt black and the flames sprinkled the faces of my parents. Ria was waving to me from a window seat in a cafe, but I looked through a hole in Mount Rayne that led to a plain of sand where Yua and the old woman stood. The boy danced around them. The torch flickered as cool air surrounded me, and I tried to go back to the picnic. I tried to meet Yua and the others beyond Mount Rayne. The deafening sounds were upon me and an avalanche of clay grew closer. “Mine!” The ceiling was caving in. I hugged my knees and cursed nature as it fell. ** Ria drove into Toba with Augustian police and medics. She parked her buggie, slipped off her flats, and rolled up her pants before walking through the rows of broken and leveled huts. No one spoke to her. Some started toward the ambulances, mostly children, and others roamed around with cuts and bruises. The force of the collapse destroyed the tents and tables of the market and all the little clay homes except the two outer rows. She stopped at what used to be hers and Yua’s and stared at it with stony eyes. “Ria?” She flinched away from the touch on her arm. “Ria!” Her head whipped to the side and the glare she had mustered up melted. The old woman was covered in dust and blood ran from her forehead. “Zuzanah?” Ria looked around. “Where is Tay?” The old woman embraced her tightly. “Zuzanah, where is the boy? Where is Tay?” A hand rubbed her back when she began shaking. Her head rested on the woman’s shoulder. “Where is Yua?” There was only silence, and Ria fell to her knees.