John Hawks - The Golden City

“So when was the Third Regime?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a special book or a government report, but I haven’t been able to find it. The people living here can understand what history is , but we can’t remember the past. History doesn’t exist in this world.”

“And what kind of art was upstairs?”

“Painful images.”

“Torture? Murder?”

Mr. Kelso smiled for the first time. “It was something much worse than that. The museum had paintings of mothers and children, food and flowers, epic landscapes of great beauty. Naturally, the people trapped here hated these images. One of our first dictators said that the gallery confused people and caused discontent. So a squad of men smashed all the sculpture with hammers and burned all the paintings in an enormous bonfire. In this world, the foolish are proud of that fact. They find strength and certainty in their own ignorance.”

“It’s your world, too.”

Kelso raised his arms of his ragged costume and pushed the veil away from his forehead. “It doesn’t feel that way to me. The only desire I share with others is the need to escape. Your father disappeared into a passageway and I couldn’t follow him.’”

“I’m here to find Maya.”

“You mean the demon? That’s what the wolves call her. I’ve seen her twice, from a distance. She carries a sword and walks down the middle of the street.”

“So how can I find her?”

“Why would you want to do that? She’ll kill you. Perhaps she once had some goodness in her heart, but goodness can’t exist here.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Mr. Kelso laughed. “She kills everyone. No exceptions. I’ve heard some people say that she’s lost her eyes. All you see are little chips of blue stone.”

“Can you guide me to her?”

“And what’s the benefit to me? Can you get me out of this place?”

“I can’t promise that,” Gabriel said quietly. “I’m from another world, but you started your life in this place.”

“But I’m not like the others here. I swear that’s true.”

“Everyone has the power to make certain decisions in their life. If you think you’re better than the others, then prove it. Maybe your actions will free you when everyone is destroyed and the cycle starts again.”

“Do you think that possible? Really?”

“I need to find Maya, Mr. Kelso. If you want to be a good person, you can start by helping me.”

Kelso’s mouth twitched as if it was painful to standing there without the veil covering his face. “I heard the wolves talking. They’ve trapped the demon in what used to be the library. They’ve probably killed her by now.”

“Take me there.”

“As you wish.” Kelso lowered the veil over his face and started down the stairs. “You remind me of your father, Gabriel.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t lie to me.”

Maya had once seen her life as a story with a beginning, middle and end. That chronological way of thinking had vanished during her time on the island. Although she hid in the rubble and fought in the streets, none of these events were connected to her past. Maya felt as if she were rowing a boat through a swamp where an immense battle had taken place. Sometimes a person’s body would float to the surface, and she could see a face, recall a name-and then the boat lurched forward and the face would sink back into the mud and weeds.

The past was fading away, but the present moment was entirely clear. She was trapped at the top of a pillar-a three-story fragment made of bricks and stone in the middle of the half-destroyed library. Her world was very small: a wooden table, a patch of tile floor, and a storage room where black cardboard boxes were filled with prints and drawings of angels. During the beginning of her captivity, she had searched through all these illustrations and discovered that each image was unique. There were smiling, benevolent angels as well as righteous angels smiting sinners with whips and swords.

If the wolves had caught Pickering while on patrol, they would have killed him immediately, but the former ladies’ tailor used his betrayal of Maya to win some measure of protection. He remained in what was left of the third floor reading room, sleeping beneath the wooden tables and warming up cans of food on one of the gas lamps. Whenever anyone new appeared in the library, he rushed over to describe the cleverness of his plan and the fact that he still hadn’t received his reward. With his encouragement, the wolves stood in the reading room and hurled bricks and chunks of concrete at the pillar. Maya retreated to the storage area for protection; whenever a projectile hit the metal door, the men cheered like football fans celebrating a goal.

She was resting in the storage room when she heard something heavy slam down on the platform. Peering through a crack in the door, she saw that the wolves had lowered a length of railing between the pillar and the reading room. A bearded man armed with an eight-foot pike stepped onto this improvised bridge and moved cautiously toward her. In order to protect his face and upper body, he had punched holes in pieces of blackened sheet metal and tied them together with twine. With each step, this improvised armor made a clanking sound.

Keeping her sword in its scabbard, Maya left the storage area and sauntered over to the edge of the pillar. The man with the sheet metal mask shouted threats and jabbed the pike in her direction. He took one step forward, wobbling a bit, as Maya watched his eyes. When he finally entered her attack perimeter, she feinted to the right, ducked down and grabbed the pike in a twisting motion that made the tall man lose his balance and fall off the bridge. He had a few seconds to scream as he fell sixty feet to the rubble below. The wolves in the reading room stopped cheering, and that gave her a moment of pleasure. She kicked the edge of the railing off the pillar and it made a clattering noise when it hit the ground.

No one on the island buried the dead. The bearded man’s body was still lying face-down on a pile of half-burned floor boards. This example of her fighting skill seemed to deter attacks for awhile, but now a more ambitious plan was being organized. A leader had appeared in the library-an older man wearing a blond lady’s wig. His thin, reedy voice could be heard in every part of the library.

Three towers were being built with soot-covered wood retrieved from the ruins. The men spent a great deal of time cutting off the charred ends of roof beams and straightening bent nails with hammers. The towers were ungainly looking structures with props and buttresses added on to keep them from collapsing. Slowly, they grew higher until they were about ten feet below her refuge on the pillar. Once each tower had a flat platform at the top, the wolves began building wooden ladders.

Another group of men carried bricks and stones to the reading room and dumped them on the floor. It wasn’t difficult to figure out the plan for the assault: the stone throwers would force her back into the storage room while three groups of attackers scrambled up the ladders. Feeling tired and passive, she sat on the pillar with the sword on her lap and watched the preparations.

After the ladders were built and the stones were ready, the wolves carried the railing back up to the third floor and placed sections of wood on the rungs to make a narrow bridge. The men used ropes to lower the edge of the bridge down onto the pillar, but this time Maya didn’t kick it away. If they wanted to fight, she was ready.

The man wearing the wig appeared in the reading room, dressed a billowy black gown that touched the tops of his boots. Maya wondered if this was some kind of religious costume, but everything became clear when the man took a few steps across the bridge. Wearing the wig and the black gown, he resembled a cartoon version of a British judge.