The Wounded

I blushed. “Shhh! Someone will hear you.”

He gri

“Shhh! Someone will hear you,” he said mockingly.

I grabbed both his hands and threw them off. “Right. No more. I’m going for a walk.” He started to stand. “Oh no. You stay right here. And clean up that mess,” I said with a wink.

He smiled at me. At least for now. His mind was on lighter things. “Don’t be long,” he called out to me.

I stuck my head back through the entrance and said, “I’ll be as long as I want.” He chuckled as he turned back towards the broken ceramics, kittens with their faces slashed in half.

*****

I stayed on the upper level, walking past several lit entries. The occupants tipped their heads but didn’t offer any other greeting. The line of dwellings ended, and several tu

I sighed in relief.

“That is no way to treat your hosts,” a carefully accented voice uttered behind me. I jumped.

“Well, shrieking at me and crapping near where I sleep is not the nicest way to treat a guest either,” I replied as I turned to face Salim.

He nodded but didn’t respond. We’d been here for months now, and this was the first time I’d crossed paths with him. I’d seen him talking to Gus, walking gracefully past the others like a surveyor, a conqueror. It was so dark in this corner that all I could really see was his white coat and his teeth when he opened his mouth. Right now, he was smiling at me.

“May I see something?” he asked as he came towards me, coasting over the stones like he was barely touching them.

I squinted as his form moved closer. He was so All Kind apart from that voice. That voice was like fabric tearing and glasses clinking together. It was altogether foreign and totally fascinating. “I guess,” I said as he snatched up my wrist, ru

A shaft of light ran over my skin from his torch. “Hmm, interesting.” I tugged back, but he gripped me tightly. “You’re a Coder.”

“A what?” I snapped as I withdrew my hand sharply.

“Come with me,” he said excitedly, ignoring my question.

I shrugged and followed his disappearing form down another tu

*****

I put my hand to the wall, and it came back green and slimy. I shuddered. I really shouldn’t have been following this strange man down a dark tu

“Excuse me, but what did you mean by Coder?” I shouted at him.

He was shuffling through the shady cavern, shoulders hunched and focused. My voice seemed to frighten him, and he turned to me, startled.

“Hush. We’re nearly there. Come, come,” he beckoned.

We came to a door, which he opened quickly and without ceremony, ushering me to go in first.

I stepped in and he followed, snapping the door closed, lighting candles and turning on solar lanterns as he went. Each section of wall in this small, grey room was plastered with pictures, scraps of paper, and barcodes. My eyes rolled over each crazed depiction, and I took a step backwards. One of the monkeys hissed at me, and I glared back.

“What is this?” I asked, although I could tell. This was an obsession.

“This is my life’s work,” Salim said absently, patting one of the monkey’s heads a little too hard. I forced myself not to shake my head in pity. This room was the inside of an insane man’s mind. “I’ve been studying the codes. I’m close, so close now.”

I sat down on a metal table and took a deep breath. “Close to what?”

He looked confused for a second, and then he swept his arm around the whole room. I followed his movements, noticing the label of a creamed corn can stuck on the wall next to a bunch of numbers. “The answer,” Salim said exultantly.

I put my hands on either side of the table and gripped the undersides. This man was crazy. Being stuck underground for this long had driven him nuts.

But he was harmless, and I spent the afternoon listening to his theories about the Coders, the links and meanings between the numbers on the different codes. He viewed the Superiors as Gods and believed that when he cracked the ‘code,’ he and his people would be let back into the Woodlands.

“Wait. What do you mean, let back in?” My heart was beating fast. A new truth opened up another paper-cutting file in my head. “Salim, what’s your full name?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“Salim Sekimbo,” he said proudly, with his arm across his chest in salute. His coat slipped down a little and the faded lines of a barcode blared at me like a warning.

“You’re a Superior,” I said as a statement and a question, because I really wanted to be wrong.

He nodded. “Abel is my brother,” he muttered with a sour expression on his face and turned back to a stack of papers, shuffling through them, looking for something.

I stayed a while longer listening to his crazed ranting. My mind wasn’t really taking it in, because it was stuck on the why and how. He was Superior Sekimbo’s brother. How could this be?

I walked back to the main area, keeping my hands close to my sides. My shirt was already slick with green stains. I shook my head and thought of my mother, her disapproval. It was a tough recollection. I hoped she would be nicer to my sister.

The monkeys ran ahead of me and separated as I entered the vast central space. My eyes sca

Gus stood shirtless, by the canal, dunking his clothes in and out of the water. I stomped down towards him, peoples’ sooty eyes on me.

*****

I screeched to a halt meters from the bank and took a deep breath. Joseph had seen me. He was unhurriedly picking his way towards me but he was slow, stopping to talk to people, saying excuse me, doing things I seldom bothered to do.

His back was to me. I frowned at the muscled torso I was confronted with. “Gus!” I said sharply. He turned, beads of water clinging to his beard, water trickling down his chest, which was sprinkled with grey hairs. I felt suddenly embarrassed. I averted my eyes while he grabbed a towel. He seemed unperturbed. But he would always rustle me, clothed or not. He had Cal’s face, scrunched a little with age, but those eyes would always make me want to run.

“What is it?” he grunted.

My voice was shaky. “Did you know that Salim is a Superior?”

The corners of Gus’s dark lips lifted under his wire-brush moustache. “Oh,” he said as he dried his hair, “that.”

“Yes, that,” I said angrily.

“Yes, we know. He’s an almighty Superior banished for being… oh, how did he put it?” Gus scratched his beard. “Oh yes, banished for being original. Which is a nice way of saying crazy.” He laughed.

I was flabbergasted. “Are the rest of these people from the Woodlands?” I asked