Out of Exodia by Debra Chapoton Page B

the hidden stables and the main
entrance.
    A victory cheer goes up. Everyone
believes we have vanquished this foe so they shout to one another,
daring to go down under.
    A nod from me is all it takes and our
circle explodes. Men step on corpses, women run around them,
children hop over the dead, and surge toward the various doors that
are embedded in the ground. A few women produce banners from their
packs, waving them wildly. The bit of breeze they make sends the
scent of death to my nose – blood and flesh and sweat, gunpowder
and guts. But there are no keening cries from widows or orphans. No
mourners for these cave-dwellers. Unless they’ve left those too
weak or sick or young or old beneath this battle ground.
    “ This way,” Lydia says. I
release the rod from the ground as she takes my other hand and
pulls me toward the two large barriers she’d pointed out before.
This entrance to the city catches the last rays of light. We reach
the doors that other Reds have already pulled wide. They’ve gone
from heart-pounding fear in battle, to conquering champions, to
parading victors in a short quantity of time. They stream down the
steps, confident they’ll meet no resistance, but their weapons are
ready just the same. In no time at all Lydia and I are the only
ones topside.
    I put my hand on the plaque and feel
the metal’s warmth. I read the inscription.
    “ This was built nearly
fifty years ago.”
    “ That’s what I told you.”
Lydia smiles. “Twenty forty-nine.”
    I run my fingers over the numbers,
leaving a smudge of blood. I stand still, my breathing tamed, my
violent hands subdued, and rub the numbers that hide a message. Two
oh four nine. I see it now. Honor unto wife. Maybe I need to change
our promise to wait until we reach that faraway land; perhaps I
need to make Lydia my wife before we leave here.
    I scan the short inscription below the
date, a vaguely poetic verse, and find the very line that sanctions
this amendment:
    Built to save from icy
breath of winter heat
    And killing swell of frozen
night,
    This city of Proserpina
saves her citizens from
    Heaven’s changing rains
and
    Its fanged dew.
    Whatever victory
celebration that transpires below will shift its morbid theme when
I propose a wedding
feast .

 

 

 
     
    Part II 2097
     
    Chapter 10 The Second Start
     
    From the tenth page of the
second Ledger:
    Some married, some gave
birth, some died, and all were fed with food from the
highest.
     
    WE’VE BEEN FOURTEEN months
in this underground city. Lydia and I were not wed that first
night. I went to Jenny to ask her blessing, to ask if she’d approve a marriage
between her daughter and me, and to suggest a wedding feast because
I’d seen the letters on the plaque change before my eyes,
from its fanged dew to wedding feast . She told me that Blake just proposed to Onita. There was
already a ceremony planned, she said, and she was sure that my
premonition concerned her friend Onita and not her daughter. She
couldn’t bless our union, she told me, until I had fulfilled my
destiny. I stayed away from Lydia for a while.
    The wedding feast lasted seven days and
nights as the cloud remained stationed above the entrance. No
packages of meat dropped that first evening and no loaves of bread
fell the next morning. But the wedding celebration included gorging
ourselves on the fresh fruits and vegetables we found below. The
citizens of Proserpina didn’t deserve our nickname of cave-dwellers
since their city was better than anything we had in Exodia. They
had refrigeration as well as cellars filled with cheeses and meats
and wines. We decimated their supplies completely during that first
week. On the eighth morning the bread dropped from the skies again,
but the cloud didn’t lead us away.
    The second week we spent settling in
more permanently, learning the workings of the heating and venting
and how the water was supplied. We memorized the layout of the
massive underground tunnels and rooms.