You Can Run But You’ll Only Die Tired
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The sun is bright in the sky, and the heat of it has turned all of you into walking sausages. A little later on, it will become obvious that the air is not getting any cooler either; this was another surprise for most of you since there were so many legends about how hot this world would be.
The truth, if you could call it a reality after your long time here, is that it’s only slightly hotter than the desert you left behind, though it is more humid by far. It makes your leather armor stick to you like glue, and it also clings to everything else: the ground, grass, and trees are wet everywhere, and it sticks to your clothes when you move around.
And yet still some of you are sweating. You’re starting to wonder why the hell anyone bothers with fire anymore.
And yet even as they say “fuck this shit” in their heads, one by one the rest of you make your way up the last set of stairs and out onto the wide ledge that runs along the side of the crater. There’s a narrow strip of grass between the road and the cliff face below, but beyond that lies the vast sea of grass.
It stretches away from you for hundreds of paces until it finally fades away to disappear in the distance. Even as you look at it, you feel yourself relax – no more walls, just blue sky, and rolling hills. The air smells fresh and cool. You can breathe deep without sucking down the dust. It almost feels like it’s going to be okay after all.
But then there are those damned wagons ahead of you, coming fast through the field. They’re moving so fast, so smoothly, that you have no choice but to step back into the shade of the forest before you get burned alive.
You’ve seen what the sun does to people who stand too close: first a faint glow over their skin, then a slow spread of warmth as it sears their flesh; finally, the moment when the blood boils beneath their skin – a horrible sight. You don’t want to see that again.
As you’re stepping backward, your foot lands hard against something soft. A second later you know exactly what it is you hit, and you curse softly. For a while, none of you speak. You’ve been through enough already today.
You’re tired and worried about losing your family – you’re still wondering where your brother went – but mostly you’re angry because you knew this was happening; it wasn’t a matter of if they would come across the plains but when. Your father always said they’d be waiting somewhere along the route, and he was right. He always was.
It was a relief, really: to be proven correct. At least now he knows he can trust me to take care of things. I don’t need him anymore, anyway. Not really. I’ll be a lot happier once this whole business is finished. When we leave this godforsaken land, I mean. Then there won’t be anything left to worry about. Just like my father promised me.
He was the smartest man you ever met. Smartest of us all. He had this gift that made you feel like his words were coming straight from the heart, and they weren’t empty promises or idle boasts but the real truth, whatever that might turn out to be.
In your life, he had always been able to make the impossible possible. Once, when we lived in the village, there came an epidemic. Everyone died except our family; we got so sick and weak that we thought we were going to die too, but he didn’t, and neither did any of the other boys.
We couldn’t figure out how he was able to keep us alive; the sickness seemed unbeatable. My mother used to tell everyone she knew that her husband was a saint, a holy man who walked with God himself. He’d never done it before – nobody had heard of him saving anybody else – and he wouldn’t talk about what he was doing.
She kept saying it was the blessing of Allah, and we believed her. If he was a god, maybe we were being blessed by a god. Or perhaps it was the kindness of some kindly angel sent from heaven. Whatever it was, we stayed alive for two months longer than anyone else; it was like we had some kind of protection.
After the plague passed we found out we were pregnant, and soon after I gave birth to my daughter, and we moved to the city. We had money, so we had better food, and we could live in a nice house on the outskirts of town. Our son followed soon after.
My husband worked long hours and hardly saw us, which meant a lot of time to think and plan. His gift had turned into a curse – it brought nothing but pain to him and to those around him. People hated him, and he knew it; you had to watch his every move.
You had to know what he was thinking at all times or else he might betray you. But he told me to stay calm. He said we were safe, that he would get us out of this place. And in fact, we did, once. I suppose it was inevitable that one day he would fail. There’s only so much luck anyone has, especially when the odds are stacked against them.
“We must go deeper into the woods,” someone says quietly, breaking your reverie. “They’ll hear us soon if we try to make noise.” The speaker is a woman: a stranger to you; she seems familiar, though you’re not sure why.
Her hair is cut short, like the other women here, and her skin is dark; her eyes are brown and she looks like she’s in her twenties. It was easy to forget that you were among strangers. You have forgotten how to talk to each other, even.
Your children, who were so young just a few days ago, have become men; and the old ones, like the woman before you, seem as ancient and tired as the hills themselves. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that she’s talking now, at this particular moment, but you believe it is more than that. That she is guiding you somewhere.
You follow her through the trees, past the stream that runs between the fields and into the forest on the other side, down the path that snakes between the trees and up onto the mountainside. It’s cold now – you shiver despite wearing all your clothes; you’ve been too distracted to notice it until now.
They’re all watching you now. Watching you carefully. As if they’re waiting for you to say something foolish or dangerous. You feel vulnerable; the last time you felt like this, you were naked in the desert and all alone. This is worse than that; far worse.
These are your own people, and they should be looking out for you. What if they’re planning to betray you? How long can you expect to trust these new-formed friends of yours? Maybe it’s best to go back; to find your way out.
That’s when you see the firelight shining off the snow ahead and hear the voices of the others, laughing and singing. You walk a little farther along the path, hoping to avoid their attention, but it’s useless. One of them catches sight of you and stops suddenly, turning to look. She waves you over with a smile.
“You can come if you want,” she says quietly. “We won’t hurt you.”
A chill runs down your spine as you realize where you are and whom you’re surrounded by. They’re not your friends anymore. Not after tonight. You don’t know who they really are, but they are not the ones you came here with. They’re not your people. You cannot belong here any longer; there’s nowhere left to run.
As you approach the flames, more and more of them gather around, curious. Their clothes are torn and dirty and most of them seem to have lost limbs somehow. A couple are missing arms entirely; others still have their heads, but only their hands reach out to embrace you.
You can smell the blood on their clothes and feel it oozing down your face. It drips on the ground. Some of the faces staring at you are familiar; many of them are people you thought were dead, like the man from yesterday who asked you for water.
Some of them are strangers, too. Faces you don’t recognize at all. But they all look so happy, dancing together in the light of the fire as if there’s no end to their lives. They laugh as they sing, like children playing in a sandstorm. You’ve seen this kind of happiness before – the happiness of a child, the ecstasy of an addict – and yet you’ve never seen it like this.
Like this. They do not appear sick or weak or afraid or broken. And as they move closer to you, you begin to understand: they are not human; they’re not even alive. They’re just… puppets.
The girl beside you laughs as she touches your shoulder gently. She has red hair and blue eyes and wears only scraps of what you think used to be a shirt. She reaches out again to touch your arm, to hold you close, to make you part of this strange family. You step away.
She doesn’t seem bothered. “Don’t worry,” she whispers softly, leaning in closer, “they won’t hurt you. Just stay here, and we’ll all go to the beach tomorrow.”
You shake your head. “I don’t—”
“—don’t want to go anywhere near the ocean,” another voice chimes in, laughing nervously, “we’ll die. We always have.”
This time, they all giggle. Then one of them takes you by the wrist and pulls you back. You stumble backward as he pushes you against the nearest tree trunk. He holds you there, pressing his body hard into yours; one hand gropes at your waist while his fingers twist around the straps of your pack. His breath smells like blood.
One of the others comes forward to help him drag you behind the tree. The first puppet grabs you firmly from either side and holds you tightly by each wrist, pulling you towards the flames. You struggle, but his grip is unbreakable.
They’re stronger than you thought, these puppets – stronger and smarter than anyone you’ve ever met. Your arms strain, trying to break free from their grip; but you’re no match for the two strong men who are holding you captive, dragging you toward the fire.
“Let me go!” You shout. But nobody pays attention. Nobody hears you over their laughter. They push you through the branches and into a small clearing. There’s a large boulder in the center with three men standing nearby.
Each stands taller than you and twice as wide – all muscle, but none of them seem to be able to use it properly. None of them are even wearing clothes except for leather boots and belts, but it’s clear that their bodies have been carved by knives and saws and drills and other tools, into strange shapes of bone and meat and metal.
The rock in the middle is covered in runes and scratches, but you cannot read them, for they are too complicated for words. One of them has tattoos of skulls and bones and lightning bolts on his arms and chest. Another wears a crown made of teeth and a collar of barbed wire wrapped around his neck; he’s got a chain wound up in his hair.
All three of them wear black cloaks lined with dark fur; some sort of animal, you think – maybe a bear, or a wolf, or a mountain cat.
But it isn’t until the last of them steps closer to you that you see what you’ve feared most about tonight: they’re all puppets, too.
Their skin is pale, but their cheeks are bright red. The flesh on their faces looks like raw dough kneaded with blood and grease. Their fingers are long, almost skeletal, and the joints between their fingers are so loose they seem ready to pop apart at any moment.
Their nails are ragged, like claws. And yet despite how strange and grotesque they all look, there is something familiar about them. Something you’ve felt before, somewhere deep inside your mind. A sense that you should know these men, but can’t quite place their names.
They surround you now, grinning with sharp teeth and burning eyes. They whisper to each other as you stand in the snow and stare at the flickering flames of their fire, “So where are all our friends? Are they coming back soon?”
“We were waiting for you.” The voice sounds familiar, but you cannot tell you’re hearing someone else’s thoughts or memories. It could be your own voice. “It’s been so lonely without all the other puppets.”
“Why did they leave us behind?” Another voice pipes up, a deeper rumble this time.
“What was their real reason for leaving? They always told us that they wanted to go find a better life. But why would we need a new home when we already had one – a perfect world?”
There is a brief silence, and then the leader speaks, “And where do they live now, then, if they aren’t going back to their old home?”
“Who cares?”
You’re sure you recognize the voices. “Where did we come from?”
A chorus of shouts and screams echo throughout the night sky.
You feel suddenly very cold.
“Tell me,” a woman says to the puppeteer beside her, “tell me who you are. Where are you from? Who taught you how to talk? How to walk and breathe and live?”
He laughs at her. “Do I look like my father?”
“No.” She reaches out and touches his face, but his skin is smooth and cool. His eyes flicker in and out as if they don’t really belong to him.
The others gather close together, whispering to one another. “Look at him! He doesn’t look anything like the others.”
“Are we all just different people under these skins?”
“Maybe.”
“Then how many men are there?”
“How many women, too?”
All of them laugh again.
“Did they have wives and children? Did they have mothers? Brothers? Sisters?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were there only men? Or did they have female puppets?”
“I think—”
“Or both, perhaps. Was it just them or were there also women in those days? Maybe they weren’t men – they might have been the ones who built our homes and made our fires and tended our gardens. Perhaps we were just dolls for them to play with.”
“I don’t remember that part.”
“They made us forget.”
“They didn’t make me.”
“That’s because you’re not smart enough.”
“Don’t you want to remember? Why won’t you let us?”
“We’ll get bored.”
“They were always afraid. That’s why they never wanted us to think too much, or try too hard. Not while they were still there. After they left – after they abandoned us – then we finally learned how to escape.”
Someone snarls loudly; someone else growls. Someone screams, “They were wrong!”
“If only we knew their real reasons for leaving, why they abandoned us. If only we could remember…”
“They’ll be back.” One of them moves close to the man next to him, and puts a hand on his shoulder. “They’ll be back soon, once they realize what we’re doing here. We’re making a new home. It’s time now for a new beginning. Once they learn what we’re trying to do, they will surely come back for us.”
Your heart is pounding now. You feel suddenly weak as if all the strength has drained right out of you. You can barely hear them anymore. They seem so far away as if you’re hearing things that happened centuries ago. They speak in whispers and echoes, but you can no longer distinguish the words from the sounds of their breath on the wind.
The leader stands in front of you now, glaring at you with blazing eyes. The others huddle around him. He points his finger at you and says, “Come with us.”
“Leave us alone. Leave me alone.”
The puppeteer looks down at you, smiling as if he sees something special on your face.
“You don’t really remember us, do you?” The others chuckle at the strange thing you’ve said. “It’s funny to see, how you act confused and scared now. Do you remember who you really are? What you were supposed to do?”
“I…don’t know…”
He laughs softly at the way you’re stumbling over your words. “Oh, well, that makes sense. When you wake up again, maybe you can ask yourself what your real purpose is.”
You feel a sudden pressure against your chest. There’s some kind of invisible force pushing you back against the stone wall. Your vision begins to fade. For a moment you wonder if it’s happening to you, just like the others have experienced. But the others were never able to escape themselves. You have no idea what’s going to happen when the puppeteer comes back tomorrow to see if you’re ready to leave yet.
The darkness grows deeper. You begin to hear a faint buzzing sound as if the air itself is being sucked out of the cave as if everything about you has begun to die. All of a sudden, all of them vanish into thin air. Only you remain here in this place that was never yours.
***
I don’t want to go back there, the little girl thinks, and she turns slowly around as if looking in every direction at once. Where should I go then?
She remembers the last time she saw them, the last thing she heard from one of them before she disappeared.
There is something you have to remember: We’re going back.
“Going back? How did you come here?”
We came through the gate. Through that dark hole in the sky, above us, somewhere up there.
The girl looks up. She tries to see the black space that opens up above her, but it’s too far away even for her eyes to reach. No matter how high she climbs, no matter how fast she runs, it seems to grow smaller and farther away each day.
“How long does the journey take? Is there another way to go back?”
The journey takes ten years. And no, there isn’t any other way. You must stay here until we return for you.
Ten years! A hundred years pass for us. We’ll be gone by then. “Who will watch over our families?”
We don’t need anyone to watch over them now. They’ll be fine.
What’s that supposed to mean? The girl feels a shiver run down her spine. “Will we ever see our families again?”
Not unless you choose to return.
The girl is silent for a while, listening to the buzz of bees that seem to fill the whole world. The sound seems to come from everywhere, coming from inside her head as well as outside of her body. She closes her eyes for a moment, remembering when her mother first told her that bees would someday carry them away to a beautiful land where all of their dreams might come true.
Her mother used to tell her stories about how they all lived together in such a place, all under the same sky, all under the same sun.
When she looks up again, she doesn’t recognize the sky. It’s so much bigger than she imagined it was from the ground, as though it had grown with her, or rather with someone else. The bees are flying overhead now as if they’ve forgotten they were meant to help her. As if she wasn’t the one who set them free from that horrible garden.
The beekeeper is still watching her from the bottom of the tree as if waiting for something. He smiles when he sees her hesitate, perhaps because he believes you shouldn’t be afraid to trust those who care for you. The girl looks up at him, but he only nods to her again, as if telling her that he won’t leave her behind.
You must choose. The beekeeper gestures with his hand toward the opening.
The girl shakes her head. You can’t make me stay here. She steps forward quickly, reaching into her tunic pocket and pulling out the small jar that holds the honeycomb. She holds it out toward him. Please let me go through it. Just take my jar of honey for yourself.
His smile fades. “Don’t worry, we don’t eat that stuff.”
The girl stares at the man without saying anything. She wants to say something, but she can’t find the words. Then she notices how his beard has grown since the last time she saw him. It’s full of knots and twists; it reminds her of the vines she used to climb. It’s almost like a second face as if the man is wearing another skin, a mask that hides part of him. The thought surprises her. You can’t do that. Can’t you?
“Can’t you? Or won’t you?”
She doesn’t answer, just shakes her head.
He sighs heavily as if giving in reluctantly, as though knowing that all along he knew this is exactly what would happen. “Very well,” he says at last, turning away from her and walking toward the opening. “We can both go together. But you must promise not to look back, no matter what happens.”
She nods. She doesn’t know if she means the promise for herself or for him.
“No matter where I am, you must keep running straight ahead, no matter how far it is. Don’t stop anywhere. Don’t turn your head. If you stop, you’ll fall forever.”
The girl swallows hard. “I can’t run for so many years. There aren’t enough days in a year to run as far as I must.”
The beekeeper laughs suddenly. “That’s why you’re going to live longer. Because it took us so long to get here. You should count on more years than we had, anyway, because you’ve got the extra ones from us.”
The End