Chapter 19: Muddled
Dante's pursuit of Audra and Hanz was the same every single day. Nothing. Zilch. Not one of them were found, not even Neil.
"Dante," I would say, every single night when Dante and his team would get back from their search.
"Yes, little one?" he would respond, a bit dirty from the trip, though with a ready smile on his face, as customary since we'd met.
"Did you find Audra?"
That was the point when his smile would falter. Usually, with a stroke of his beard, then a pat on the back from one of the men he had taken with him on the search. And of course, with such action, I'd already know.
"I'm sorry," Dante would say then. "We tried."
My heart would sink at that part. My stomach would make this tumbling motion towards the rabbit hole. Today would mark one whole week of that. One whole week of waiting for them to find Audra. Except Dante and his team were just coming back tonight.
Seeing him and his crew emerge from the dwellings, I began to ran after him.
"Dante!" I called. "Dante!"
As usual, he stopped ahead of his teammates, gave me this friendly look upon hearing me shout.
"Yes, Pax?" he said.
"Did you find them?"
A shake of his head, and I was slowing down. But then he smiled so quickly, it got my hopes up a little.
"What?" I said. "Where?!"
"A party," Dante said, just as the first of his men clapped a hand on his back again, before going their separate ways.
My hand automatically breeched my pocket to touch the broken beads of my bracelet. At the same time, I stopped right in front of him, breathless from my run. "Excuse me?" I gasped. "I didn't catch what you said."
Dante stroke his beard. Today, he was extra dirty. It was though he had sloshed his way to the sewer and back— one of the questions I had asked him about during my one week of stay here, and which he refused to answer me with only a reply of, "We're doing all we can."
At present, he said, "A party, Pax. We had decided to throw you one."
"Me?"
"Yes." He replied. "As a celebration for having you here."
But. . .
"What about my friends?" I asked.
"Pax, it's been a week."
I almost threw a bead at him. If only it wasn't that significant to me.
Regardless, I gritted my teeth. "So what?" I said. "A week is not that long. You're already giving up on them?"
"I didn't say that."
"Then what?"
Dante gave an exhale, his expression weary but patient. "I'm just saying to give me some time." He sighed. "The sewer where you came from is a large place, Pax, and everyone is pitching in just to help."
That removed some of my annoyance, but not the worry of having Audra and Hanz absent from my side. Maybe there was something. "Why don't I come with you tomorrow then?" I said. "It will be an extra pair of eyes, and I would know immediately when I spot them. Or maybe, you know, they're hiding because they don't know you? Like I said, they're not in a position to expose themselves right now. We're not a criminal, okay? But maybe they're still running."
That could be possible as well, but even when I was saying this, Dante was already shaking his head. Something that he'd been doing for the past few days as well.
"Listen, Pax," he said, leaning to me. "The other men. . . They grow tired in the sewers. The last thing they would want is for someone to slow them down. No offense."
"I won't slow them down."
"I need to go."
"But we're not done talking—"
"Party tomorrow, alright?" Dante was beginning to walk again. It was making me more and more desperate. I tried to follow to where he was going, but another man— the guy with the sumo-built, blocked my way before I could.
"Apologies," the big man said.
"It's okay," I replied, tried to side-step him. But already, Dante was nowhere to be seen. He had left me hanging again.
The next day was just as excruciatingly painful as most of the other days. Not in term of physical ailments, (I think my leg had completely healed, aside from the wound) but due to the fact that I needed to do work while waiting patiently for Dante's news. The helplessness of not seeing Audra and Hanz was creeping on me.
Meanwhile, in the cave farm, Maya was yapping away, it was making my ears hurt.
"There are caves for everything in here," she was saying. "One for this sage farm, another for the actual crops. One for the dwellings. And oh! There are caves for herding animals too. Conduit is like a city in itself, you know, Pax. We can survive all by ourselves, even when there's a war out there above ground."
But why? I wanted to say. Why go through all that trouble? Why not just live up on the surface like all the normal people do? Though I didn't ask anymore, knowing that Maya would fill in the blanks anyhow. She was just that way— I'd observed through the days; a constant chatterbox.
I tried watering the sages while she supplied my non-existent question. "We here in Conduit, almost all of our people, we don't like going to the surface," she said. "We have a different lifestyle, as you can see. And to go up there where the sun is too bright is to ruin that."
"Almost all of your people?" I asked without thinking much.
"Yeah, almost."
Something in her tone made me stare at her.
Putting the bucket I'd been holding down, I wiped my brows with the back of my hand and gave her an inquiring look.
Maya, noticing me, put down her bucket too. "I really shouldn't tell you," she said.
"Tell me what?"
She glanced around as if looking for something, and when she didn't find it, gulped.
I looked around too, noticing for the first time that Mart wasn't with us. "Does it have something to do with her?" I asked.
Guiltily, Maya nodded her head.
"Oh. . . Then keep your secret."
"But. . ."
"It's none of my business," I said. "And like I explained before, I'm not staying here, so why bother?"
"But what if they find your friends?" she asked.
"What about it?" I said. "We'll all leave together."
"But life is so much better here in Conduit, Pax. You're going to miss a lot."
There she goes again. If Dante always arrives with the bad news of not finding my friends, and if I were forced to work on this sage farm every day just to satisfy everyone, Maya, here, would tell me every single freaking time that Conduit, their hidden land, was like the Holy Grail of all places, it was beginning to annoy me.
To leave here would be a blasphemy of some sorts, according to her.
Right on cue, Mart appeared out of nowhere, carrying with her two buckets of water again, giving us the most bored, pained look she could muster.
"What are you doing just chatting in there?" she said. "Do I have to do everything around here?"
I looked away. Scowled. So far, this had been my life here in Conduit.
Okay, it wasn't all that bad, I thought, as I pruned the sage, did all that Maya and Mart had taught me to do over the last few days. Maybe I was just being a whiny bee. Maybe life in here Conduit wasn't really as boring or as painstakingly absurd as I had made it appear. Maybe I was just being difficult.
I wiped my face from sweat, turned my nose to the non-existent ceiling, which was now displaying a soft cast of the afternoon sunlight, ready in a few hours to give way for the night.
For one, the place looked beautiful. Not in a postcard sort of way, but in that 'you'd arrived in paradise,' sort of beauty, which maybe what gave way to the townspeople's obsession with it.
Second, the Conduit-dwellers themselves. For the past few days, they had admittedly given me a home without asking for anything in return. They had not asked where I came from, who I was before this, or even where my healing wound had come from. They had just quietly accepted me into the town after that trial in the lake. Furthermore, I was given a job that suited my height and weight.
From what I'd gathered with Maya, all the other teenagers were either given the heavier tasks, or were made to take care of the bigger animals, though frankly at this point, I wouldn't mind.
Third, what was the third? I scratched my right leg.
Ah yes. . .
The third, and perhaps, the most important bit of why Conduit wasn't as bad as I made it out to be was sitting right on my skin. The sage.
"It has medicinal properties," Maya had shared on the second day that I was brought to the farm, right after I was told that I was to work with her and Mart on it. "The sage, I mean," Maya continued. "Your wound is probably on the last stage of healing because of it. It wouldn't take long before your broken skin is replaced."
"But how?" I remembered asking. "How come? Is the sage magical?"
Maya just shrugged.
"And if there was such a potential in any plant or substance out there," I added. "Then a lot of people would need it, wouldn't they?"
"Exactly," Maya agreed. "Exactly why we keep the sage a secret."
But isn't that wrong? I wanted to ask. Isn't that a little bit brutal? If there was such a marvelous sage existing in this world, then by all means it should be shared. With, or without their permission.
But apparently, Maya who had been looking closely at my reaction, shook her head at me. "The world doesn't work that way, Pax. Some things cannot be shared."
"And some people are meant to just stay here and guard the sage." Mart had sounded bitter at the statement, was passing us by when she said it. "But Betty wasn't one of those people."
Betty?
"Mart. . ." Maya gave a sigh at that time. "Betty is gone. Don't taint her memory."
Back to the present, I took a furtive glance at my two companions who were hard at work on the sage farm. Maya and Mart; they were just like the people here in Conduit. So ready to accept me yet still keeping some kind of secret from me.
And who was Betty?
Maya, who was sprinkling some type of soil on the beds, noticed me looking at her. Which made her smile and wave. "You alright there, Pax?"
"Yup."
"Okay then," she said. "We'll take a break in five."
As promised, after five minutes, the three of us sat on the edge of the farm, a beam of light making a spotlight on our heads. Maya was the one who would usually pack the food, and this afternoon was no different as she unfurled the cloth from the sandwiches. They did traditional things here, from preparing the food to serving it to us like this.
With a satisfied smirk, Maya gave a sandwich to me, then to Mart who looked sullen as always.
"Look at us three," Maya remarked. "Sitting here, eating sandwiches. I wonder how it would be when your friends are found, Pax?"
I took a bite of the bread. It wasn't one of those commercially produced breads that I would always eat in my house, but was instead softer and tasted better. Yet at the moment, all I could taste was Styrofoam. Now that she mentioned Audra, I missed her more and more.
"You're not a big talker are you, Pax?" Maya was back to her observations.
"Because believe it or not, some people would just like to be left alone." Mart had this grim look on her face as she said it, which Maya combated by swatting on the air, like there was an unpleasant bug.
"Don't be silly, Mart," Maya said. "People always have something to say. Take you for example. You used to be chatty. And now. . . Now you'd just forgotten that."
Mart? Chatty? I gave both of them a disbelieving look, though Mart didn't see and probably didn't care. Maya, meanwhile, continued jabbering on. "Mart used to be the talk of the town, do you believe that, Pax? She's brave. She's skilled. And unlike any teenager, she can take any position here in the Conduit. Even as a guard. Some say she can even replace the Elder one day, but then things had to happen."
Mart was giving no facial reaction at all, yet I could see that her shoulders had tensed.
Maya, of course, hadn't noticed any of that. "Unfortunate," she said. "Very unfortunate."
The rest of the break was spent quietly eating my sandwich, while Maya went on from how one of the women in the town had given birth last night, to how the sage would help the woman heal, and how miraculous it was that the sage could only ever grow here in Conduit.
The whole place was immersed with grayish-purplish light when they decided that our work was done for the day. And so I prepared; to see Dante once more, to get whatever news from him.
I was racing towards the cave's exit when Maya grabbed my hand. "Oh, by the way," she said. "Did Dante tell you about the party?"
Party?
Crap! I'd forgotten about it soon as he said it yesterday.
"Just what kind of party?" I said.
"Oh nothing much." But Maya still hadn't dropped my hand, smiled. "Dante and the whole town would just like to welcome you, that's all. But they also instructed us to keep you busy until the right time. So. . ."
So?
Her smile grew wider. "Want to play Sardines with us while we're waiting?"
"Sardines?"
Mart, from behind me, shuffled on her feet. "Sardines is like hide-and-seek," she said. "But only one person gets to hide. Betty and I used to do it all the time. With the other kids, of course."
I couldn't help but swivel to her. For once, Mart sounded happy.
Yet her face was downcast when I turned to look. Maybe I had imagined it.
"Okay then," I said. "Sardines it is."
Their instructions were simple. All I had to do was to hide in one of the caves that would have been vacated for the day, and to never show myself in the dwellings. To hide as best as I could.
The other kids from the town would join in the game as well, Maya had said. But in the small chance that none of them could find me before the party, I was to go back to the dwellings— I would have won the game. Also, I would know when to go back because an obvious signal would be given to me.
"Easy peasy," I said as I passed through a tunnel, one that I had not been into yet.
Come to think of it, there were a lot of places in Conduit that I hadn't been shown to before. I had seen the place where the clothes were woven, yes. In one cave, there were rows upon rows of this tribal-looking gadget for making fabrics. But other than that, and the dwellings itself, I was pretty much a stranger to the layout.
"Turn left," I said, mimicking a GPS, which made me smile a little.
Honestly, this felt juvenile to me, especially since Audra and Hanz weren't here to play. But something about today— something about doing something other than taking care of the plants or waiting for Dante's news gave me a different kind of feeling.
I rounded yet another corner. It wasn't that hard to see since torches were always lit on the walls. The paths were perfectly clear.
"But what if I get lost?" I chuckled nervously. "Would they still look for me or what?"
Another corner, then two. Three, four, until what I had predicted was more or less true. I didn't know where I ended up on. It was either I was really great at hiding, or I was too lost for my own good.
I needed to backtrack. So I did.
Through another corner, then another.
By the fourth one, I was grabbing on to one of the little beads in my pocket, sweating even though it was chilly in the cave.
Something moved to my left.
"M-Maya?" I called. "Mart?"
None of them answered. This was just like the sewers.
"Okay, Pax, you're being paranoid," I murmured. "Just backtrack. . . It's okay. If you don't make your way back, everyone will find you."
The bottom of my shoes slapped on the cave floor after a few seconds, nonetheless.
I was running. Why? Don't ask me why. I just wanted to run, get over it.
I rounded another corner and almost slammed on tall, metallic bars. Good thing, I was able to stop myself.
But crap! I gulped a lungful of air. Where the heck did I end up on?
Yet just when I was about to check it out, a small, familiar voice spoke from the corner, sending shivers down my spine. "Pax?"