Amber Sparks - The Unfinished World - And Other Stories

They have been traveling in a dark jungle for days. Lancelot does not know jungles; he has never known such uncomfortable and wet heat. The damp reminds him of the damp he and Gwin made when their bodies came together. He misses her bright, brassy smell. He does not like this place. It has too many eyes. The men chatter to themselves and Lancelot cannot understand them and he is shorter than everybody here. And he is bored. There are no devilish knights to joust with, no castles to besiege and break. Only this vague heat and a cascade of invisible threats, surrounding them in the jungle like nightmares waiting to pounce. He is afraid of these nightmares. Defenseless against things he has never seen, he sleeps with his head to the tent, avoiding attack from behind.

The men are taking turns cutting through vines, hacking and slashing and cursing the foliage in this miserable heat and humidity. Mosquitos swarm the party, and the mules stop, well, mulishly in protest, half-hidden behind a lacy veil of pests. One of the beasts has just attempted to shed its pack again, standing firm and four times heavier in the middle of a small copse of trees, when Lancelot feels eyes on the back of his head. The men laugh, thinking he has gone stupid from too much time under the soil. Those are insects, they say, slapping at the backs of their necks and palming the blood smears as if to pantomime. Lancelot rolls his eyes. Even outside of space and time there seems to be a language barrier when it comes to metaphor.

Something is watching , he says. Following. I can feel it.

The men are still laughing, but not as hard now, and their eyes narrow as they survey their surroundings. These are not careless men. They have not earned the favor of their prince by being foolish. They fan out to the edges of the path. They wait, laughter fading down into a buzz saw of jungle silence, which is not a silence at all so much as a warning.

Lancelot is not the first to see it, but he is the first to believe it. A pale man, body and hair the color of paper, almost nude but for a leather loincloth and holding a sharp wooden spear. He appears in an instant as though he’d fallen from the sky.

He blinks, slowly. Just the once. Stands extraordinarily still.

We are looking for the kingdom of Prester John, says Lancelot. His heart swims into his throat for his own lost kingdom, but he swallows it down and watches the man’s spear carefully, ready to duck or dodge if necessary. The spear lowers, inch by inch, spear hand relaxing. The man’s face makes a bitter smile. And bitter, notes Lancelot, translates through all the many languages and races of the world. Bitter has a note that’s hard to miss.

We seek the same, says the man, and he gestures. Some thirty-odd men like him, all paper-colored and silent, emerge from the surrounding trees and stand with spears at the ready. The prince’s men, normally taciturn and unshakable, shout in surprise. Lancelot cannot understand how the pale men managed to hide themselves among all this dark and greenery. He thinks it is a trick he would very much like to learn.

Would you like to join us? asks Lancelot. We can seek for this kingdom together, and split the treasure among ourselves. The prince’s men mutter darkly; Lancelot is offering what he has not been authorized to give. The prince’s men begin to wonder if digging up a hero was in fact a mistake. Some of the prince’s men had argued for making a golem instead, and it is looking like perhaps they were right after all. But it doesn’t matter in the end, because the pale men want nothing to do with the prince’s men and their search. At Lancelot’s words, they break into a single hiss, like a long white snake, and then fade into fog, into mist, into nothing. Lancelot and the prince’s men stand their ground, uneasy for a time. Eventually, as the sun begins to loosen its grip on the blue overhead, they seek for a place to camp. To rest for the night and to water the mules.

They’ve only made it a short way forward when there comes a wailing like a heart run through.

Everyone turns and stares, watches helpless as the swampy sand opens and eats one of the men and his mule. One by one, small mouths of jungle-earth emerge and drown the prince’s men where they stand. The ground rumbles and churns, men and mules shriek and run about, and in the sand’s grumbling Lancelot hears the warning: We are the seekers. We will seek those who quest for what is hidden, and we will swallow you whole. We will keep the kingdom safe.

Lancelot does not want to be swallowed here, so far from where his king and queen lay. He smells green in the air, and in wild panic to live seizes a nearby vine and pulls himself up. He is face to face with a tiny monkey, old-man-faced and screeching. Lancelot has never seen a monkey before, but somehow he recognizes a relative. He is encouraged. He suddenly feels he has been made to swing from treetops, in the way that heroes do. As the men below dance about, avoiding the sand’s hunger, Lancelot flies to another tree, and then another, until finally he spots solid ground below. The remaining men gape as he calls to them, but only for a moment. These may be foreigners but they are not fools. If gravity has suspended her pull for a moment, they will happily follow suit. After the ground has given up the chase, Lancelot waits at a respectful distance while the others mourn their dead and distribute their belongings.

Later that night, they come to the edge of what looks like a village. There is a clearing, and a clump of small huts; a group of tall men in hooded robes confer in hushed tones by torchlight. Their eyes glow like embers, but their faces remain in darkness. As if in a dream, Lancelot opens the door to the nearest hut, drawing his sword. But his weapons would be useless here; he knows this. Another tall man, taller even than the others, stoops by a fireplace, half-hidden and half-flamed by the meager fire in the hearth. He is tossing papers and books to the floor, he is muttering to himself. He is too absorbed in his search to notice Lancelot at first. But then he hears the scuffle of footsteps, turns, looks with no surprise on the knight and the band of men behind him. Where his face should be is a pool of ink, spreading in the soft firelight.

Is this Prester John’s kingdom? asks Lancelot.

The man laughs, hateful, bitter. We are also searchers, he says. We have only just arrived ourselves. And we will depart as you will: empty-handed, empty-hearted.

But who are you, Lancelot says. No real question. The answer does not matter. They are seekers, that is all. He suddenly understands that there is no kingdom. There are only the seekers and the lost places they drive toward, always just out of reach.

And with that, he breathes a last breath of stone and copper, of green and damp, of soil and skin. Then he tumbles to bones and is still, sleeping once more, and now the men must find their own way home.

They met only once, at a piano recital in her hometown. Both of them were there for other people’s children. He caught her yawning while a blonde in pigtails murdered The Blue Danube , and they exchanged grins. After drinks and dinner they were delighted to find they shared a hobby: both were sculptors of sorts, though she worked in clay and he worked in wood. Both had jobs that sent them round the world, and it was a way to kill the long, late hours that haunt the solitary traveler.

She started the exchanges, the reminders they sent to one another as they aged in different cities, countries, hemispheres. But that would come later. At first it was the dinner, and the drinks, and the porch outside where her laughing relatives lingered. At first it was her childhood bedroom, the quilt flung to the floor, the way she moved like a dancer and the way she flung her arms about and the way he surprised them both by bursting into tears. At first it was finding their faces fit perfectly, a jigsaw. A locket severed and the halves hung round the neck of the world they would cross many times over the years, always looking for one another.