Oracle--Mutant Wood Read online

  If they change how they think.

  So I’ll be the mutant

  That I could not nix,

  Embrace my pollutant

  That folks want to fix.

  Soon the estranging

  Will stop, and they’ll see

  That what needed changing

  Was them and not me.

  Long live the mutants,

  The never-have-beens,

  The outcasts and tangents

  Who just don’t fit in.

  Long live our troubles

  To keep pure our hearts.

  Let’s be the people

  From whom the love starts.

  As always, Nika sang the final verse once more, this time every mutant in the audience adding their voice to hers in singing the anthem they loved so much.

  On that note, the evening ended. Feeling very small, Ret watched as the townsfolk got up to leave. These were the humble and homely—the cancered and crippled, the autistic and dyslexic—whose troubles ranged from upset stomach to Down syndrome. In a word, these were the mutants—the mess-ups when anatomy goes wrong.

  Soon, only Ret remained, weighed down by his thoughts. It seemed the words of Nika’s song had been meant specifically for him. He felt ashamed for the littleness of soul with which he had approached this town—a community that he had been bent on changing when he was the one who needed to change.

  “Hey, handsome,” Nika said, coming up from behind.

  Ret exhaled with sadness and told her, “I think I need to go.”

  “Yes, well, the show is over,” Nika joked.

  “No, I mean leave this place—go back home.”

  “Oh,” Nika said despondently.

  “Can you show me the way?” Ret asked.

  “If you want me to,” Nika replied with disappointment, as if waiting for Ret to change his mind. When he didn’t, she glanced at the dark sky and sighed, “If we leave now, we should be able to make it to the trilithon by first light.”

  Ret followed his guide through the shadows. There were no caverns to cut through on the journey this time, which was taking them to the far side of the valley. Where the farmlands ended, the brush of the desert resumed, growing ever sparser until their route became one of sand and rock. Ret could feel a slight incline to their path, and more than once he caught sight of a nocturnal creature.

  After climbing a series of nature-made steps, they reached a landing that overlooked the valley. The first signs of light were just beginning to stir the expanse overhead.

  “This is the trilithon,” Nika announced.

  Ret turned around to see what she was talking about. There, in the center of a grassy plot, stood the trilithon, a solitary stone structure consisting of three great slabs of rock. Two of its pieces stood side-by-side, each about eight feet wide, five feet thick, and more than twenty feet tall. The third piece was a bit smaller in size, though still large, and had been laid across the top. The monument’s post-and-lintel design gave it the appearance of a great doorway, even though the space between the two posts was only wide enough to admit one person at a time.

  Ret slowly walked around the structure, admiring the massive stones that dwarfed him as Nika continued to speak: “It is the symbol of our way of life here. This stone,” she said, touching the post on the left, “represents love of deity. And this one,” touching the post on the right, “represents love of man. On these two pillars hang everything that we do,” she added, pointing to the lintel across the top.

  “Those are your only laws?” Ret asked. “Just love?”

  “Just love,” Nika answered contentedly. “That’s what all other laws lead back to.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Ret said. “So how is this the way out of here?”

  “Well, to be honest,” Nika confessed, “I’m not a hundred-percent positive this really is the way out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Since this is how we all got here,” Nika explained, “we’ve always just kind of assumed it would take us back. But no one has ever tried it because no one has ever wanted to go back.”

  “Well, I guess it’s worth a shot,” Ret said, undaunted. Nika seemed a bit disappointed that her disclaimer had not deterred Ret’s resolve. “How does it work?”

  “If it works the same as how we got here,” Nika said, “then you stand in the middle, and when the light appears above that ridge,” she pointed to the top of the mesa on the other side of the valley, “the trilithon should take you to the other side.”

  “Like this?” Ret wondered, sliding between the two posts.

  “Maybe,” Nika chuckled, “but I was thinking more like this.” She turned him ninety degrees so that he was facing frontwards. “You know, it’d be a little easier if your shoulders weren’t so broad.” Standing close together, they stared into each other’s eyes for a long minute. Although Nika was a little older than Ret, she was very pretty, and her skin disease didn’t stand out as much as it did when he first met her.

  “I didn’t realize how bright your eyes were,” she whispered, their noses nearly touching now. “They’re like sapphires.”

  Ret figured the growing light behind Nika was accentuating his eyes. He brought his hand to her face to caress her cheek, but then his face clouded over.

  “What?” Nika asked, automatically stepping back and covering the scarred portion of her face. “It’s my skin, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s my skin,” Ret replied with amazement, inspecting his hand and then his arms. “My skin is so pale—almost like it used to be.” Ret’s eyes widened at the possibility. He promptly pulled down a lock of hair from the front of his scalp and confirmed his suspicion: “And my hair is getting lighter again, too!”

  “Again?” Nika wondered.

  It was true: Ret’s former appearance was returning. There was something about this land that was causing him to mutate back into his old self—his real self—a self that he had forgotten was a part of him. Now it was coming back, as if to remind him of his true identity.

  It was in this moment when Ret came to a life-altering realization: he was a mutant. Yes, a mutant—not only in his appearance but also in his past and present, his hopes and habits, his family and fears. If anyone in this world was a mutant, it was him, for he was the most different of all. Oh what a hypocrite he was to have judged this land’s people when he was one of them! Surely, this was where he belonged.

  The first streaks of light were just peeking over the ridge across the valley—streaks that would, in some unknown way, purportedly take Ret back to where he had come. But just as the light fell on the trilithon, he stepped out from between its two posts and purposely missed his chance. He would not be going back; this was his new home.

  CHAPTER 11

  MESSAGES OF WOOD AND STONE

  Back in the Siberian wilderness, at the bottom of the vast excavation site, Mr. Coy and Serge were pacing back and forth at the foot of the great tree, unsure of their next move. Several hours had passed since Ret had been dragged underground, with no indication of him returning any time soon. Although the Russian president seemed quite distressed about the situation, Mr. Coy was filled with more wonder than worry. He knew Ret was in the element’s territory now, and so he didn’t feel too uneasy when his repeated attempts to make contact with Ret proved futile. Still, night was approaching, and the falling temperature meant they needed to seek shelter.

  “I think it’s time I headed back to Moscow,” Serge eventually said. “If you’d rather stay here, I’ll give orders to the excavation superintendent to see to your needs.”

  “No, no,” Mr. Coy replied, “I should get going, too. We’ve waited here long enough.”

  As they walked toward the helicopter, Mr. Coy tried to convince himself of his decision to abandon his vigil. Well aware that the Oracle was in his possession, a part of him wanted to remain nearby in case Ret came looking for it, if in fact the time to collect the element was drawing nigh. But he figured
Moscow would be close enough for now.

  Feeling slightly dejected and very unhelpful, Mr. Coy sat down in the cabin of the helicopter with a heavy sigh. Then, as he gave the pit floor one last sweeping gaze, he saw something he hadn’t seen before: a small wooden sign, staked in the dirt by one of the tree’s massive roots.

  “What is that?” Coy wondered aloud, pointing at the sign.

  “Shall we investigate?” Serge offered.

  The pair quickly returned to the place of their watch and, in the twilight, read this brief message: Ret is fine, call Paige.

  Now Mr. Coy was beginning to worry. Utilizing the helicopter’s portable cellular tower to connect his call, he immediately took out his cell phone and dialed Paige’s number, his heart pounding and mind racing. Where had this sign come from? Who had written it? And how did they know his daughter? With each unanswered ring, Mr. Coy was growing more and more concerned. He traced each letter of the sign’s message with his eyes, over and over again. The words had not been written with ink but rather carved into the wood.

  “Dad?” Paige finally answered, sounding somewhat groggy.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Coy said with relief. “Are you okay?”

  “Dad, it’s five o’clock in the morning,” Paige told him with a yawn.

  “What have you been up to?” he asked, trying to find out why the mysterious sign had instructed him to call her.

  “Not much,” Paige responded, half asleep. “School’s been out for the holidays.”

  “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” Coy probed.

  She had almost dozed off when she remembered, “Actually,” perking up, “there is: Ana and I were exploring a really old part of the Keep the other day, and I found something that I wanted to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a drawing of Stonehenge,” she explained, “not how it currently is but either how it used to be or could have been. And there are all kinds of notes written faintly on it. I was thinking maybe we can go there when you and Ret get back?”

  Mr. Coy was about to tell Paige to save the idea for later, but then he saw an entirely new message written on the little wooden sign: Go there now.

  Coy and Serge glared wide-eyed at each other.

  “Dad?” Paige said on the other line. “Dad, are you still there?”

  “I…I think that’s a great idea,” Coy said, still in shock.

  “You do?”

  “In fact, why don’t I meet you there?” he suggested, a bit robotic.

  “When?” Paige questioned.

  Coy hesitated for a moment, unsure of the sign’s motives. Just then an invisible hand underlined the word ‘now,’ at which point Coy swallowed and told Paige, “Now?”

  “Okay, great!” Paige cheered. “I’ll get on the next flight. Can Ana come, too?”

  Coy looked to the sign for guidance. A ‘thumbs-up’ symbol appeared.

  “Sure,” Coy told her. “I’ll meet you at the airport in London, okay?”

  “Okay, see you soon!” Paige concluded.

  “Bye.”

  When the phone call ended, the sign showed a smiley face.

  “What is going on?” Serge inquired with awe.

  “I’m not really sure,” Coy admitted, “but how soon can you get me to London?”

  “You’ll be on the first flight as soon as we return to Moscow,” the president promised.

  “Great,” Coy said, stepping away from the sign. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  Fairly creeped out, they anxiously returned to the helicopter, leapt inside, and shut the door. As the chopper’s blades began to spin, Mr. Coy looked back to see if the sign’s message had changed yet again. The sign was gone.

  * * * * *

  “Hi, Dad!” Paige called out after she and Ana spotted him at the airport.

  “There’s my girl!” he grinned, scooping her up in his arms. “Hello, Ana.”

  “Hey, Mr. Coy,” Ana returned his side hug, gladly letting him carry some of their luggage.

  The drive to Stonehenge gave the trio an opportunity to catch up on the recent past and strategize for the near future. The fact that Mr. Coy had arranged to get around by rental car rather than public transit allowed them to speak freely. He knew Lye had eyes and ears nearly everywhere, and he even wondered if the strange message from the wooden sign was leading them straight into a trap, which was why he wanted to visit the tourist spot in broad daylight when there were lots of other people around.

  “I want you two always by my side,” Mr. Coy informed the girls as they approached their destination. “No wandering off, understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.

  They parked the car and headed toward the site, walking side by side. It was a cold afternoon, the sun lost behind a dense blanket of gray clouds. Their faces stiffened in the cool air of a slight breeze, and the thick grass was still damp from a recent drizzle. Despite the gloomy weather, however, there was no shortage of visitors who had come to admire the famous wonder of the ancient world, its great sarsen stones towering above the crowds like llamas watching over herds of sheep. Trying to look as unsuspicious as possible, Mr. Coy led Paige and Ana to an empty space along the outer edge of the inner circle—at least, that’s what the tour guide called it:

  “And in this inner circle,” the middle-aged woman told the group of tourists, “there are five trilithons.” Dozens of sightseers took out their cameras to capture the majesty of the trilithons, those mysterious monoliths that, with their lintelled posts, looked like doorways to another time. The guide added, “Only three of the five are still fully intact.”

  It was true: the two trilithons on the left and the one on the far right all looked complete, each consisting of two giant vertical posts with a slimmer horizontal lintel on top. The other two trilithons, however, were in bad shape. Both the one immediately to the right and the one directly across from them had fallen apart, so much so that only one of their posts was still standing. Each of their second posts and their lintels lay broken on the ground.

  The tour guide then directed everyone’s attention away from the inner circle and instead toward the outer circle.

  “In its day, it is believed that the outer circle made a full and complete ring around the inner circle,” she taught. Well clearly, its ‘day’ had long since passed, for the outer circle was in about as bad of shape as the inner one. It had been built on the same concept, with posts lined up next to each other and lintels laid across their tops. Besides the stones being smaller, the only difference was that there was no break in the lintels along the top, making the outer circle one continuous structure—in theory that is, for most of it lay in ruins, strewn all over the grassy site.

  In a word, Stonehenge was a disaster. As interesting as it was to meander among such history, the World Heritage Site was a wreck. If Ret had been there, he may have been tempted to tidy up the place—you know, just put a few stones back where they went (which he could easily do, of course, despite their enormous size). But even then, the monument would not have been complete, for many stones were missing from the site altogether.

  Losing interest in the guided tour, Paige reached into her pocket and retrieved the aerial illustration of Stonehenge that she had found down in the 2500 B.C. floor of the Keep. With Mr. Coy and Ana peering over her shoulder, Paige unfolded it and positioned it until it lined up with where they were standing. They analyzed it for several moments, Mr. Coy regularly glancing around themselves to make sure no one was eavesdropping.

  “Well, the drawing sure is prettier,” Ana observed.

  “Look how every lintel connects along the outer circle,” Coy noted.

  “Lintel?” Ana repeated the unfamiliar term. “Isn’t that a kind of bean?”

  “No, that’s lentil,” Paige corrected. “Lintel is a horizontal block that spans the space between two vertical supports.”

  Ana rolled her eyes, “Tomato, tomato.”

  Reca
lling the wooden sign’s insistence that he take Paige to Stonehenge, Mr. Coy appealed to his daughter for her thoughts, “What do you make of it, sweetheart?”

  Her eyes squinted in contemplation, she said, “The thing that jumps out to me the most is the presence of a sixth trilithon in the drawing.” She pointed to it on the paper. “It shows another trilithon right…,” she said, stepping to the corresponding spot on the grass, “…here.” The inner circle was more like a horseshoe than an actual circle, for there was a large gap at the end where she was standing. Or perhaps it was an unfinished circle, for Paige was getting the feeling that something was missing from the original design.

  “Excuse me,” she called out to the tour guide, folding up the drawing and returning it to her pocket. The lady, a prim and proper Englishwoman, displayed a revolting expression on her face, as if she had never been interrupted in her entire tour-guiding career.

  “Yes?” she grimaced at Paige, raising one side of her upper lip, which caused her nostril to flare.

  “Could it be possible that there used to be six trilithons?” Paige put forth. Several of the tourists began to mumble amongst themselves, intrigued by the idea. The tour guide had never been asked that question, and she wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “How do you mean?” she finally said.

  “I’m curious why there is such a big, empty space on this side of the inner circle,” Paige explained, extending her arms to partially span the gap. “Doesn’t it seem like the perfect spot for a sixth trilithon?”

  “I understand what you’re saying,” the guide told her smugly, anxious to regain control of the tour, “but everyone knows Stonehenge has only ever had five trilithons.”

  “But how do we know that?” Paige persisted.

  “We just do,” she fleered, straightening her neck like an old buzzard. “All the experts agree.”

  “But just because a bunch of people believe something, doesn’t mean it’s true,” Paige pressed. “‘All the experts’ used to think the earth was flat, remember?”

  “Well, do you see any remains of a sixth trilithon? Hmm?” the tour guide shot back.