It began with a question, the only question that matters.
“Who are you?”
He looked down at me where I sat with my back to a shade-giving tree. Even in that first moment I thought him strange, though I could not say why and still can’t. His eyes are too intense for casual conversation, but it is not just that. He seemed to be neither jovial nor melancholy, and spoke with abruptness without sounding harsh, but it is not quite that either. I began to answer.
“No.” He interrupted me before I could start.
“Not like that. Not your name or age or address. I’m asking who you really are.”
The words died in my mouth and I felt myself drowning in his question. Suddenly I couldn’t meet this stranger’s eyes.
“You are not alone; many are ignorant of their own hearts. Most everyone in fact.”
He spoke gently, and I could raise my eyes to see the kindness in his. He was silent for a moment.
“Do you like to travel?”
Befuddled by the change of direction I began to answer unthinking.
“Yes I- “
Again my first response was ash in my mouth as memories came unbidden of disappointment and arguments and dashed expectations.
“I like the idea of traveling.”
He nodded like he understood.
“Experience can be a great teacher. However,” He drew in his eyebrows, “Do not make the mistake of thinking that a new horizon can teach you about who you are. A stranger cannot see your heart, and what the world sees it does not tell; no one can teach you who you are but you, do you understand?”
I nodded, but I did not really comprehend.
“I would still like to see a few horizons, all the same.”
He held down a hand to me.
“Then join me, and you will see worlds never dreamed of.”
It was the decision of an impulse. One I wrestled with, but this time the words, the feeling did not die within me. I gripped his hand and he pulled me up, and in the motion of gaining my feet my surroundings, my whole world changed.
I was standing on an unknown world, and I was underwhelmed. I stood in an expanse of gray. Charcoal dust coated the ground to my ankles, to my right a slope of shale led to gunmetal cliffs, to my far left murky waves lapped against the dismal shore, and over all a smoky sky cast a diffuse, pallid light.
That day we walked for miles until we came on the first village. The stranger, the cosmic con-man as I was starting to think of him, would not speak a word. He simply walked. My emotions caught between awe and despair and wholly undecipherable, I too walked. The village seemed large from a distance but much of it was abandoned, many larger structures crumbling to ruins. Of the few dozenpeople that remained all were skinny and mistrustful. Sleeping in one of the ruins the stranger awakened me and bid me be silent lest the natives hear us leave. I am certain they would have killed us.
Continuing up the shoreline, my companion began to speak more and more. He explained about the village and how isolated communities can become superstitious. He went on to say that when people are on hard times they look for people to blame, and may not react kindly to more hungry people. The next village we came to was a little better, and the one after better still, but we kept walking. The plain stretching from the coast to the cliffs widened, and villages now started to have fields of crops and pens of livestock. The ocean was still bleak and barely able to support life, but with room to grow people found a way. We were given rooms with straw beds now and food, even if it was tough, silt flavored fish.
Seeing more and more people of the seaside villages I noticed the same patterns playing out in each village. Everywhere, even in those communities isolated from trade with the others, a thread of superstition wove through the people with quiet terror. They would not look at the cliffs which they felt all evil came from. From what I had gathered the dust and ash was much deeper on the plateau above the sea, and dust storms would on occasion rage through the valley. But this did not frighten the natives.
My companion teased answers out of tavern folk with all the finesse of the conman I still felt he might be. The answer he got was less than helpful. A drowsy man slurred to us that the wastes call the children away, and when the wastes have you they never let go. Children have been disappearing for years.
The stranger who brought me to this world, for he would still not reveal his name, slammed his fist upon the bar. Gaining the attention he wanted he stood, and began to speak. He spoke of bravery and the duty of man to protect his family. He spoke of ancient fears and the perseverance of man which leads him to overcome, the triumph over terror. He mocked their faintheartedness and cajoled, urged, and inspired them and when he was through he had a mob to follow him in to battle.
His charisma was so great for a moment I forgot my own melancholy and my fear and felt my coward’s heart grow a lion’s fierceness. I remembered the monotonous life I had left, and promised in my inner quiet to follow the adventure before me no matter what form it took. It was in that moment that I first thought of him as my master, and I the apprentice of a trade not yet revealed.
The tavern patrons poured through the town gathering more men and torches and makeshift weapons. Within the hour we were climbing the slope up to the shelf above their world.As the night wore on the mob quieted until only the breathing of many could be heard. As the torches burned lower and the moon rose the people became more uneasy. When the moon, much larger than that of my own world and a pale violet shade, outshone the torches and changed the view of the landscape in its pale radiance people started to drop off in pairs or in groups.
When we reached the top of the path fewer than ten men were left with us and my confidence had drained once more. Gazing out into an endless field of gray there was a single imperfection in the blank slate. A slightly darker blot on the horizon to our left, on the very edge of the cliff above the northern edge of the village. I asked my master what it was and his answer drained the life from me and left me as colorless as the surrounding horizon.
“Ruin. Though I think not as dead as it tries to appear. We’ll be paying a visit soon.”
The rest of the men left at that time. I suppose seeing the wastes was as much as they could be asked of. I could only hold tight to my master’s side, reminded more than ever of my age. In my home world I was still a child.
Several days passed in the purgatory of the waste. My master passed the time well, he would wax poetic on any subject that caught his fancy from the nature of time to the astrophysics of this world’s moon. Any subject other than what we were going to find in the ruins, which never seemed to grow larger and almost seemed to be receding on the horizon. His favorite subject that he kept returning to was the past he saw everywhere around us. He described to me in great detail the beautiful forests and fields of wild flowers that used to grow upon the very ground we walked. Such was his intricacy of detail that I asked him if he had visited once before. His answer was as elusive as ever.
“I may have been here long ago, or to a similar plain. I can’t be sure. But anyone could tell of the life that was once here, you’re not walking in dust, you’re walking in ash.”
I looked at my feet and around at the gray world in growing horror. I clenched my fists against the undesired tremor and watched the ash darken as drops of sweat fell from face.
“Oh yes my young friend, there was a time when this was no wasteland. It must have been a paradise of nature before whatever happened to cause this hell.”
My nagging doubts and curiosity forced my tongue on to press him for even a drop more of information despite my body’s reaction.
“But won’t these forests and such grow back soon?”
“Not the way things are now, they can’t.”
“But they must. When a forest burns it releases seeds and the ash becomes fertilizer to grow back larger than before. Firemen and park rangers use controlled burns in forest preserves. This ash should bring new growth soon.”
Glancing back at me with appraisal he said in a quiet tone:
“Are you sure this world operates under the same laws as your own?”
Looking a bit chastised as he saw the growing horror present in my face he added:
“There’s probably still life out there somewhere. Sleeping deeply. Power like that doesn’t just disappear.”
After several days of endless trudging through ash and drudgery we came upon something new, something I could never imagine. The haze was swept away in the wake of a dust storm and our horizon was laid bare for the first time. I saw not an endless vista but a great forest close at hand. Trees as gray as the landscape and appearing fragile as glass stood in silence, not swaying in the wind. Moving forward entranced by the silent splendor my master made no move to stop me. Reaching out to touch one I knew it by the feel of it on my fingers. Stone. Beneath barren branches and ankle deep in ash I stood in a petrified forest. I looked back but he was turned away towards the far off ruins with searching gaze.
“What happened?”
He did not turn away.
“The plains died. The forests burned. Eden fell.”
He would not move. I turned back to the forest and wandered deeper, breathing softly so as not to disrupt the silence.
The crack was so loud I thought the world had shattered. Stepping back, I looked beneath my feet but could not see amid the drift of dust. Crouching to examine I found the offending glass and held it up to the light. My body drew still, as silent and motionless as the trees standing over me. Such a small item to hold in my hands, to step on. A pair of glasses, one lens broken. His voice was as it always was, or at least always seemed to me, gentle.
“Before, when there was life on this planet, there was also a civilization.”
He crouched beside me but I could not look up.
“They lived in paradise, with technology beyond that of your own world, but in harmony with nature. They loved the land and it loved them back. The empire fell at the same time this world died, but I don’t know if they caused it or were caught up in it. Seeing this I can’t think of them as anything but victims.”
We left them behind. I would not sleep near their resting place.
I awoke that night in the pale blue radiance of the unfamiliar moon, alone. Turning around to search for my master I was so awestruck by the sight before I fell back in horror. The ruins which had been so far away in the distance reared before me in renewed grandeur. Dominating my field of vision, I could barely take it in and I needed minutes to determine its form in my mind into an idea. Red banners hung over stone foundations in great billowing waves, yellow flags and green stripes clashing and crashing into a riot of color screaming into the night, tearing at my eyes after days of nothing. The realization came to me yet did not enlighten me at all. It was a circus tent. In the middle of nowhere. And I knew in my heart that this is where the children have been taken.
My fear that night was great and terribly selfish. It was not in me to worry for my master, for even though I cared for him and wished he was with me I was past the point of doubting him. It seemed obvious to me that he had left me of his own will; I was both angry at him for abandoning me and wished his return. He was my protection; he feared nothing. I struggled to keep my head about me, because I felt I understood my master’s wishes as if he was there speaking to me. I could picture him standing beside me, looking sideways at me and speaking in his soft voice full of humor and hints at pasts I could not follow. I knew he wanted me to go into the tent. This was a test of my apprenticeship.
I knew nothing of the man’s past and knew him for only a short time, but I understood the man himself well. He cared about people, and he expected me to save the missing children in his place. I walked to the garish ruins, the ghost of my master urging me on, giving me strength. At the entrance, a great opening in the tent flaps, I found a child’s hair ribbon. This was a turning point in my life. You see, coward that I am such a thing chilled my blood and made my legs weak. But this time I felt it distantly, as if I saw it happen to someone else. I kept walking, not waiting to be struck by fear. As I passed into that circus of hell I promised that I would save her, my determination greater than my fear.
I wandered for hours inside the circus of the damned, as I now think of it, but I will keep its telling short. It is only the end that truly concerns me. Everything you would see in a normal circus was present in this one, but twisted in a perversion. Directly ahead of me when I first entered was a stage surrounded by a crowd. I first noticed that while animated, the crowd was entirely silent. The only sound was of an announcer dressed as a clown, addressing the crowd from a platform high above the stage.
“Yes ladies and gentlemen welcome one and all to the legendary wasteland circus! The place of children’s dreams come to visit again! For this next trick we’ll need a volunteer from the audience!”
I approached with pounding heart, the clown speaking to the crowd was faced away from my approach; I tried to walk as quietly as possible so that I could get a closer look at the proceedings. Spotlights danced on the stage, dazzling my eyes accustomed to the moonlight outside. I was quite close before I could make anything out. On stage was a large sickly looking lion. A member of the audience was hurriedly making his way down to the stage, arms waving in a still silent exclamation of excitement. As he stepped into the spotlight I could see him clearly for the first time and realized why the audience was silent. The man was a skeleton, bones bleached white by time. The skeleton, urged on by the clown’s mad crooning, bent over and stuck his head into the lion’s mouth. The lion promptly snapped its jaw shut, crushing the skull. The now headless skeleton staggered backwards and with its arms thrust jubilantly into the air ran back to the stands. The lion coughed several times, choking on fragments of bone and dust.
“Calm down there Leo, don’t lose your head.”
A dry clicking sound came from the crowd which I imagined was the sound made by many skeletons opening and closing their jaws in silent laughter.
“I suppose old Leo here would be a bit happier if he could do the trick with a living volunteer. Wouldn’t that be a treat huh folks?”
So saying the clown turned in his stand and looked right at where I was hiding, crouched behind a support beam. He was a small man, his polka dotted and patched outfit hung loosely over his gaunt frame. He wore face paint, thick white and red on his face, struggling to cover up his patches of uneven facial hair. His sight gave the impression of the smell of sweat and liquor. He smiled when he looked at me, his teeth were yellow and black.
“It seems we have another new guest tonight. What a special night! I’m sure we’ll find all your dreams here, all children do. That’s why no one ever leaves my circus, isn’t that right fellas?”
The clicking sound came from the stands again. I ran.
Running back through the way I had entered I found not the moonlit outside world but another tent, with another exhibit of hellish cruelty and fear. In this one a man, or rather skeleton, was walking a tightrope over a tank of brackish water that moved with ominous suggestion. A crowd, smaller than the first one, threw rocks at the tightrope walker, trying to knock him into the tank below. Above the crowd was the same clown. Not a similar one, the exact same clown.
“Would you prefer a new attraction child?” He turned to me again with the same insane smile. I ran. I ran and ran and kept running. Everywhere I ran was a similar story, more tents, some big and some small like rooms and corridors. Everywhere a new atrocity in more and more grotesque horror. Always the same clown in his massive sheet smiling at me with rotten teeth and gleaming eyes, but nowhere could I see any children.
After much running and hiding I became desperate to find a way out, if only from claustrophobia; I yearned to see the gray slate of the wastes. The clown’s manic laughter followed me, surrounded me. It was after running through the hall of the freak-show, tortured by the hellish screams, that I endeavored to make an exit. Knocking over every torch and lantern I could see I had soon set fire to the cloth of the tent around me. Through the flames I could see the demon clown surrounded by his mob of skeletons arrive.
“Fetch the boy before he makes any more trouble, we have another stop to make next week at the southern villages. I could use a touch up on paint. He should have enough blood in him to last me a while.”
The skeletons rushed at me, careless of the fire for they were already dead. Backing away I found that my fire had done its work and burned away some of the cloth surrounding me, but to my dismay there was the stone wall of the ruins behind the cloth. I was still trapped. Or so I thought until I saw at the edge of the flames a door set into the stone. Rushing at it with everything I had it still took me three attempts to knock it open, badly hurting my shoulder and accumulating too many burns to count, but it was at last open and slammed shut behind me. I now ran through stone hallways, unlit by torches but with empty windows letting in translucent moonlight. I ran for nearly a half hour but was not pursued. I found a balcony and there caught my breath, reveling in the cold air and the clear light of the moon.
Looking out from this balcony I was once again confused, but this time I was so tired I could not bring myself to wonder or even care. I could see ruins of a castle around me but could see no tent. Nothing broke up the silver gray of the castle ruins, all I saw around me were collapsed walls and caved in buildings. The only structure still fully in tact was a tower to my right, opposite of where I ran from the unseen circus. My exhaustion was interrupted of course. Mad laughing pierced my ears like a blade.
“You can’t hide from me little boy! I’m the ringmaster of ruin! The wastes belong to me, I am their king and I’m coming for you!” Turning back to the room the balcony stood off from, I could see the demon in his horrible mockery of joy running down the hall. Opening the only other door I found the corridor blocked by rubble. Turning all around in panic my eyes fell upon a figure in the rafters above me. He was younger than I, but certainly not one of the children that was taken. Being between five and ten years old, his skin was darker than the villagers I had seen and his hair was long and tangled like a savage child. He looked in to my eyes and silently pointed above my head, gesturing urgently. Looking above me I noticed a sort of balcony protruding into the room from another floor. Only a few feet out of my reach I decided to try to climb the edge of the doorway to reach this ledge. Straining my reach and leaping wildly I managed to pull myself up to this balcony just before the clown caught me. Running into this new corridor I found my young savior appearing, and running alongside me. He laughed as he ran.
“That was pretty good, I almost thought he would catch you,” I gasped back at him.
“Who are you?”
“Oh I come from a village far away from here. Just call me friend, because I’m here to help.”
I was confused by his answer but familiar with its like. He spoke strangely for one so young. We ran until my young friend stopped us, slowing and putting out a hand to hold me back. I tried to urge him on but he shook his head.
“He won’t follow us here, he’s too afraid.”
He nodded to a door in front of us, the central door of a hall that intersected with ours. It was of a more ornate design than others before it, a brass handle set into a dark wood that was wholly untouched. I opened it and entered.
Imagine a study perfectly preserved but forgotten. Bookshelves lined the walls on either side of the door, richly upholstered armchairs sat next to glass lamps and a large desk faced the door in front of a window that ran to the ceiling and perfectly framed the moon hanging above the gray plains. Everything was gray with undisturbed dust, a black and white photograph perfectly preserved. Walking into the room, lifting up puffs of dust from the thick carpet, my small friend trailed in my wake as I went over to the desk.
“There are even papers out, as if someone had just left. I wonder what happened.”
The boy, silently following with soft footsteps that did not raise any dust, spoke with quiet confidence.
“This was where the master of the castle ruled his empire. Now there is no master and no empire, only wastes.”
I looked at him with something close to suspicion. I did not feel threatened by him, but I was still made uneasy by what he said, I was uncomfortable with his knowledge.
“The thing in its circus calls himself king of the wastes, but he would never walk on the same ground as the last true king. No one is more afraid of ghosts than demons, they know what lurks in the dark.”
I could not learn anything from his face, it was as controlled as any adult. I began to turn back to the papers but he reached out and grabbed my hand quickly.
“Come on, if we don’t go we’ll miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“Something you’ll want to see.”
I was angry at again being brushed off, and more so that it was by someone younger than I, but my friend smiled and I was inclined to believe him. We left the sacred ground of the office behind. I never saw the contents of the paper I wanted to investigate, but now I imagine what it was and why my friend didn’t want me to see it. I imagine it was a flier for a touring circus from the time of the great empire. A circus that probably had a large kindly clown. At least before the wastes.
Here we finally get to the crux of the story, I felt that I had to tell the first parts, but if need be I could tell only this last bit and be satisfied that I told my story.
Arriving at a balcony my friend and I crouched, looking down into the base of the tower that stretches far into the sky. This tower room was a ballroom of blue marble and red draperies, with balconies looking down from every level. A spiral staircase circled the ballroom, connecting the balconies from the floor to the highest level. This room was dusty, a pile of rags littered one corner by the base of the stairs, and a floor level window was broken, letting in a breeze of night air. We waited.
“It won’t be long now.”
My young friend assured me.
Below us our enemy burst in through a door and staggered into the center of the room. He turned all around, breathing heavy.
“Where are you brats? When I catch you I’ll skin you alive and sew a new costume!”
So saying he staggered drunkenly towards the base of the stairs. My friend grabbed my arm.
“Do not be afraid. Now comes judgment.”
A shudder ran through the room, dust blown across the floor by the breeze. The pile of rags moved. Shifting and growing, and finally stepping into the silver-indigo light, what I first had viewed as a pile of filthy rags was a stag of glorious beauty. The mad clown staggered away from its advance.
“No not you. You’re gone. You can’t be here; you have no power here.” The stag stepped forward again and the clown turned away and tried to run back the way he entered. He was stopped by a large bear, the light bouncing off his brown fur, ambling in slowly. The clown gasped and turned away again, to the open window. Lurching towards the window he almost didn’t see the swooping shadow. A shadow dove at him from the gaping window and he fell to the floor, covering his head with his arms. The shadow spiraled around the room, coming to perch on the stag’s antlers, an eagle of proud visage.
“This is my home; your time is gone. This is my place, leave it!” He was on his knees, screaming with spittle flying from his mouth. From the last side, the West, a lion prowled into the room. His mane was golden fire and he was fearsome indeed.
“Now he will be judged by the Lords of Nature.”
My friend whispered to me.
“I am king of the wastelands! These are my lands and all the children belong to me. They are mine.” The eyes of the beasts burned into him, silent, insistent. He whirled around from one to the other, speaking to all of them.
“His false claims are pointless, and no amount of stolen power can stop their judgement.”
His whisper sounded in my ear.
“I have every right to take them- No I am the rightful ruler- It was free to claim and I was- These are not your lands anymore! I am the Lord of the Wastes!”
“They don’t appreciate him misusing their land. It was theirs first after all, and power like that doesn’t just disappear.”
Looking at my friend I could see a gleam in his eyes that was familiar to me.
“Now his judgment will come. Nature’s wrath against a monster.”
Looking back down I saw the wretch crouching in the center of the tower, surrounded closely by the Stag, the Eagle, the Bear and the Lion. He screamed horridly, throwing his head back to the ceiling where the moon was shining down through the glass roof. Several things happened in quick progression. First the Stag pawed the ground, and vines green and living sprung through the floor, shattering the marble, and twined around the wretched figure. Then the Eagle still perched on the Stag’s antlers rustled its feathers and gave a harsh shriek.
Each of the remaining windows broke as a raging tempest blew into the room, spiraling into a cyclone centered on the thing. It buffeted him and tore at him, revealing more of him beneath his guise of a clown. He was pale and sickly, covered in festering boils and sores. Beneath the white paint of his face what I thought was red paint was revealed as more sores. His hair was falling out. He was truly disgusting.
My fear of him began to fade as I saw how pathetic he truly was. The cyclone continuing, it became the bear’s turn. Rising up onto its hind legs the bear reared over the pitiful man, a rumbling growl filling the tower. The floor around him, cracked by the vines still holding him, groaned and began to sink, pulling him down and surrounding him. Finally, the Lion moved to stand before him. With only his head above the ground he was forced to look the Lion full in the face. He began to weep.
“I was in pain. I wanted them to hurt like I did when the world fell. I was left alone in the waste. Have mercy.”
My friend nodded next to me.
“Nature understands pain. But Nature does notforgive hate.”
The Lion roared. Light flashed blindingly, when I could see again there was no more man. Where he had disappeared there was a very small sprout, the beginning of a tree. The animals were gone, and so was my friend. No longer scared, I walked out through the ruins. I saw no circus of damned and no proof of my passage. I walked out of the ruins.
My master was waiting for me, a sleeping child in his arms. We said not a word, there was nothing that could be said. I knew he wouldn’t have answered my questions anyway. We left that place far behind, stopping in the village long enough to see the missing child returned to her home as if nothing had happened. The villagers would never know what I saw, they would forever wonder where their children had gone. But they would lose no more children, and they were given another blessing as well. While Nature was holding court for the killer of children, rain clouds had hung over the wastes for the first time in a long time. The wastes would not stay wastes forever.
