Surrogate

The walls of the cave were red stone, smooth and barren. The ground was slanted, stretching down into a darkness the sunlight couldn’t penetrate. Yimha held out her torch, took a deep breath, and then began to walk. 

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Lotok followed a step behind, glancing at the walls like they would close in around them at any moment. “May I ask…You said only children come here. Why?” Her voice echoed in the empty space.

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Yimha weighed her words. “This place is…in your language, I think I would call it sacred. Children come here on their first voyages.”

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The sand shifted under their feet, growing more sparse as they traveled down into the earth.

Lotok looked around, no doubt trying to see how such a lifeless place could be sacred.

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“It was the home of the Mother River,” explained Yimha. “Thousands of years ago, it carried my people to the valley. It tunneled through the earth with persistence and strength, and taught us to do the same.” The torchlight flickered, the only motion in the stale air. “It’s gone now,” she said, “but we are still its people.”

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Lotok looked at her in awe. “Mother River,” she said softly. “That is why you call yourselves River Children! I always thought it was a mistake in translation.”

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Yimha smiled and shook her head. “No,” she said. “It is our history. This is our valley, even if it is now desert. It is our home even if it is changed. It is said that when voyagers enter this place, they can feel the Mother’s echo.”

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Yimha had grown up on the voyagers’ tales. They said Mother pushed them, guided them to its heart just like the waters of old. Its hand once sustained and carried this valley, and it still did so for all who knew its history. Mother River flowed through all its Children, like a song never to be forgotten.

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“Did you voyage here?” asked Lotok.

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Yimha stumbled, nearly dropping the torch. She was beginning to lose feeling in her feet from the trek here, like she was a kid again, traveling through her first dry season on the surface.

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“No,” she said, regaining her footing. “Voyagers must carry the River in their blood. When I was banished, I was renounced from my bloodline, and thus stripped of the chance to carry the title.”

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That seemed to stun Lotok into silence. Yimha’s banishment was clearly marked on her neck, but she supposed gauging the age of scars would be a rather useless skill for a highborn to learn.

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The sand was gone completely now. The bare stone was cool under the wrappings meant to protect her cracked and bleeding feet. They were deep beneath the ground now, the air chill but no less dry than that heated by the sun. It pricked the back of Yimha’s throat and pulled at her skin. 

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“Do your people have places like this?” she asked, wanting suddenly to fill this empty air. “Places sacred to you?”

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“Not sacred,” Lotok said, “but special, yes. At Kolewott’s base is the Spirit Gardens. On the solstice, those who wish to commune join together and make the trek down.”

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“Commune,” Yimha repeated. “I don’t know this word.”

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“Commune is…like communicate,” Lotok said. “Communicate. Do you hear it?”

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“Communicate,” Yimha repeated, rolling the word on her tongue. “So it is a way of talking?”

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“Not exactly. Talking is what you do with someone standing in front of you. A spirit attached to you, appearing to you in visible form, you might talk to. Communing is for those spirits who have already left the mountain. We don’t commune through words.”

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Yimha watched Lotok out of the corner of her eye. She knew the people of the mountain were spiritual in a way that went beyond religion or culture. It was said that Kolewott showed them things unknowable to anyone else. That they could see the dead made flesh and bone again.

 

“Have you ever had a spirit attach to you?” she asked.

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“No,” said Lotok. “But I know people who have. Parents staying to guard their children, friends not ready to say goodbyes…Eventually, they all make the journey down, but there is no harm in lingering. It means you loved the life you were given.”

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Yimha considered this.

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“And when they leave the mountain?” she asked. “Where do they go then?”

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“I don’t know,” Lotok said. “No one does, except the spirits who are ready, I suppose.”

“It’s like a voyage, then,” said Yimha. “Leaving home to go where you are led.”

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Lotok smiled. “Yes. I suppose it is.”

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The path before them branched into two, each dark and foreboding. Yimha knew one would lead through the Mother River’s heart and out the other side. The other, she couldn’t say. She didn’t know how it worked for voyagers. Was she supposed to notice some small difference between the two tunnels? Or should she hear something calling out to her, beckoning her home?

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“Wait,” said Lotok, holding out her hand. “Do you feel that?”

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Yimha stilled, holding her breath for a moment. She turned her focus inward, to her own body. She became aware of the painful dryness in her throat, the way the bare skin of her arms itched from the lack of moisture, the fact that her feet had finally gone completely numb. Yimha let out the breath. “No,” she said finally.

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Lotok took a step forward. “It’s like…movement.”

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Yimha raised her torch, illuminating the same stagnant walls as before. Lotok approached the entrance to the left passage and stopped again, looking up to the ceiling. “It’s this way,” she said.

 

She strode forward confidently, quickly leaving the radius of torchlight and forcing Yimha to scramble after her. When the tunnel branched again, Lotok made the choice without pause.

 

Suddenly, she gasped, whipping her head around to look at something not there. She began to run. Yimha followed, desperate not to lose her in the maze of winding tunnels. 

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“Lotok!” she cried. She could hear laughter bouncing off the unforgiving walls. Yimha was quickly becoming afraid.

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Her unfeeling feet hit a groove in the stone floor, and she fell forward. Her chin hit the ground hard, cracking her teeth together and sending vibrations up and down her skull. The torch flew forward and landed before her, illuminating a yawning cavern, stretching up and around like an open fist. Yimha pressed her cheek to the cold, unfeeling stone. Her body ached. She tasted blood in her mouth. The air pressed in, leeching the moisture from her veins. She fought the urge to cry.

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For the first time in years, she felt utterly forsaken.

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Then came again the laughter. Yimha froze. She looked up once more, and there was Lotok. She was dancing. She leapt about the open space of the cavern, her movements casting distorted shadows on the far walls. She was the only motion in the deadened place.

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“It’s here!” she cried, laughter still in her voice. “I understand now! It’s still here! The parent guarding its children, watching over its home! It’s still here!” She rushed over and pulled Yimha to her feet, still laughing. “Yimha, do you see this?” she said. “Do you feel it?”

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Yimha leaned on her shoulder and stared up at the stone walls, the dry desert air. The heart of her valley, the birthright of her people, the ghost of her beautiful Mother.

 

She could feel nothing at all.