Lawrence Schoen - Barsk - The Elephants' Graveyard

He traveled to one of the Civilized Wood’s popular gathering spots, empty so late in the evening, and bathed in the fountain at its center, scrubbing at the mud streaks and leaf stains on his pale skin. He lost a few scabs in the process, and these scrapes bled a bit, but he washed that away, too, and applied pressure here and there until the tiny wounds clotted and he was as clean as he was ever apt to get. He’d washed his shorts at the same time as he bathed, and as he stepped from the fountain he removed them the better to squeeze the extra water from them. Still wet from head to toe, he put on the damp shorts and then strapped his daypouch across his chest again. He hurried to Tolta’s home, expecting to dry along the way. He climbed in through a window, snuck into the bed that she insisted was his, and went to sleep.

He awoke to Tolta preparing breakfast, not just hot porridge but a serving of sweet leaves and several kinds of fruit juice, too. He slid onto a bench at the table and worked his way through two steaming bowls, three servings of leaves, and full glasses of all three juices (and refills of two), all the while nodding or shaking his head in response to his mother’s questions of if he was doing well and getting enough to eat and keeping himself out of trouble and staying clean and studying with Jorl.

When he finished, he glanced up to smile and thank her, but stopped without a word. His mouth fell open and the memories of things he didn’t know he knew bubbled to the surface of his awareness.

“You never got to say goodbye, did you?”

“Hmm? You mean to Jorl? No, dear, I was out when he came by. He’ll be back in a few days, I think. He left a note though and—”

“No, not Jorl. Arlo. He didn’t leave a note. And he knew he wasn’t coming back.”

Tolta bit her lip and turned away, but not before Pizlo saw the beginning of tears. Keeping her back to her son, she busied herself with the porridge’s cooking pot. “No, Pizlo, he didn’t leave a note. But how could he? It was an accident and—”

“It wasn’t.”

Silence but for the scraping of a wooden spoon against a pot.

“Jorl says—”

“Jorl doesn’t know everything!” Tolta slammed the pot down. The wooden spoon scattered across the floor. “He may act like he does, but he doesn’t. He could be wrong sometimes. It happens.”

“Yeah, but he’s not. Not about this. I know, cuz the moon told me. It said Arlo will say a proper goodbye.”

“A proper … the moon?”

“Yeah. I’d forgotten that part, but I just remembered and thought you’d want to know. I didn’t mean to make you sad. Anyway, I should go. Thanks for breakfast, Tolta.”

“Pizlo, wait. What do you mean the moon told you?”

“I saw it the other night. The second littlest, Pemma. It was my third moon. It told me lots, so much that I forgot bunches but I’m remembering now. That’s why I gotta go. Bye!”

With no more warning, Pizlo slid off the breakfast bench and bolted for the door. He flung it open, leaping through as soon as the gap had widened enough. He heard Tolta rushing after, but in the time it took her to reach the door and lean through, hands to either side of the frame, Pizlo had already vanished into the surrounding green.

He’d been thinking a lot about what the moon had said, and also what Jorl had told him about the aleph. It opened all doors, and he might need one himself if he was going to follow where he thought he needed to go. Even though he was only six, he felt certain he’d accomplished three things of such special merit that the traveling council would surely award him an aleph, even if they were usually stingy about it. Jorl had once said his was only the fifty-seventh aleph ever. If only they could be made to talk to him and acknowledge his existence. In fact, didn’t his existence count as an accomplishment? Even though they acted like he wasn’t there, he had heard how they spoke about him. Abomination was the description they most often used. Nature’s Mistake was a close second. His kind were considered soulless, but that was silly. Who among them had ever seen a soul, anyway? His situation was biological, not spiritual. He’d read about it in one of Jorl’s books, the genetic fluke of two Fant conceiving without a proper bonding. And how the resulting child most often arrived stillborn, and how most of the rest died within a year from missing organs or senses. It’d taken him days to realize his own inability to feel pain was part of that. But the unique thing was he had survived, six years now, longer than any other fluke. That had to be an accomplishment worthy of an aleph!

And he understood things. Hadn’t he given Jorl directions to the place only the Dying knew? That had to count as a second one. It wasn’t something he could prove though, not like his being alive, not until Jorl came back and said he’d been right. But still, he knew he was right.

Maybe the one about swinging on vines wouldn’t count, even though he did it so well. And maybe they wouldn’t be impressed by his insect collection, no matter how much better it was than anyone else’s; he’d already learned that not everyone shared his enthusiasm for bugs. But the fact that he talked with all of Barsk, from the mud in the Shadow Dwell to the clouds in the sky, that had to count. Jorl had never mentioned anyone else who could do that, and he hadn’t read about it anywhere. Just because he took it as given didn’t mean other people wouldn’t see it as special. Surely the way any of them could talk to anyone else was pretty special. Noisy and maybe pointless, but special. They chattered endlessly around him, but not much of it mattered or meant anything.

At least when Jorl talked to him, he told him stories. He liked that, the sharing of experiences. It was real. It mattered, didn’t it? Wouldn’t it be great if he grew up to be a Speaker like Jorl, to be able to summon people from before he was even born and listen to their stories. But … they probably wouldn’t want to talk to him either. He had to think that over more; it would be awful being a Speaker but not be able to Speak. Maybe he should just focus on his aleph …

There were things to do. Pizlo didn’t know where the aleph-granting traveling counsel was, but likely not there on Keslo. He’d just have to take matters into his own hands. He’d explain it to them when they met him and they’d understand. Maybe. If they talked to him. But that wasn’t going to happen, not if like everyone else they pretended not to even see him. Maybe he should get something better than an aleph. Maybe he should just claim the right for himself because his entire life was one ginormous ongoing accomplishment that almost no one on Barsk wanted to admit. Or maybe that was the third special accomplishment that would earn him an aleph. Or maybe turning it down in favor of his own mark would be the third. The logic kind of got away from him, but somewhere along that line of thought he’d reached a decision: he didn’t need an aleph. Didn’t he already go anywhere he wanted because people wouldn’t see him? No, he needed his own mark. Something no one had ever seen before, and so they couldn’t be afraid of it, or deny it was real. Something they could talk to, even if they wouldn’t talk to him.

Pizlo never wandered the walkways of the commercial areas of the Civilized Wood during the day when other people constantly came and went. But sometimes he went there deliberately, like when he wanted to play a game of making people dodge out of his way. He’d walk slowly from point A to point B. He’d do it with his eyes tightly closed, and trust to their need to get out of his way without acknowledging the fact by so much as a muttered complaint. Other times he went just after dawn, when the shops were closed and he could press his face against windows and gaze through the creeping diffused light at stuff that ordinary folk needed in their lives.