From the Caves

  From the Caves

  Copyright © 2021 by Thea Prieto

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.

  Book design by Mark E. Cull

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Prieto, Thea, 1986– author.

  Title: From the caves : a novella / Thea Prieto.

  Description: First edition. | Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, [2021]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021013362 (print) | LCCN 2021013363 (ebook) | ISBN 9781636280028 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781636280035 (epub)

  Classification: LCC PS3616.R5376 F76 2021 (print) | LCC PS3616.R5376 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021013362

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021013363

  The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation, the Adams Family Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, the Sam Francis Foundation, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

  First Edition

  Published by Red Hen Press

  www.redhen.org

  “In the illogic of myth you can find prefigured the big bang theory of the origin of the earth (Hawaii); the expanding universe (Navaho Indian); the origin of life in stagnant water (Dahomey, West Africa).”

  —Penelope Farmer,

  Beginnings: Creation Myths of the World

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sky hears no talking when Green leaves the sea cliffs. All he hears is the fog net snapping in the offshore wind, the whine of the plastic fabric as it tears from its poles and unravels across the glass-littered beach. It is only with his arms jumped into the whirl, fingers clawing at the airborne net, that Sky notices a fleck of movement high on the distant bluffs—a falling dot. It sprouts legs as it slices the dark cliff face, knees skimming the sheer rock, two feet diving toward tide pools heaped with boulders jutting. The shredded net tugs loose from Sky’s grip as the dot silently grows into Green, and Sky wants to grab, wants to speak, but all he can think is I am seeing this, No—but I am seeing this happen.

  A palm slaps red to Sky’s face.

  Pay attention, yells Mark as he stomps the netting flat, into a ground alive with stinging sand. Further down the beach Tie kneels on the uncoiled fabric, her kinked fingers humming the threads back together, and Tie and Mark have their heads low, they are still working—what do I do? They didn’t see it happen, what do I tell them?

  Then the rapid beating of footsteps—Teller runs open-mouthed past the net, kicking up slivers of tin, his empty water bucket clanking to the ground. Eyes snap up the bluffs to Green’s unattended bonfire on the summit. When Mark and Tie drop the net and start running down the beach, Teller is already knifing through the surf, almost to the tide pools.

  At the churning base of the cliffs, the suck of low tide holds pockets of noise—a hissing wind, the boom of brown ocean waves. A distant shout from Teller. Up ahead Mark and Tie leap the broken mounds of asphalt, Teller so tall he crosses in strides, but Sky still needs both hands to climb the tables of salt-split cement. The bubbled rock bites his fingers, Sky’s toes are soon raw and raked, and when the back of Mark’s head dips out of sight, the clouded morning sinks huge, suffocating, and Sky is alone. The shallow whirlpools gulp louder, the dirty froth spins faster—keep moving. The others are just ahead, breathe, breathe, can’t breathe, the world is hungry, the others have left me, Green’s gone, he’s dead, the World— giant and alone.

  Sky’s bare chest scrapes from heart to navel as he scrambles to the top of a concrete slab, back into the ocean roar, and suddenly below him are three sets of naked shoulders—Mark, Tie, and Teller crouching low in the tide pools. Half-hidden in their circle, a tangle of red arms. One purpled knee crooked outward. Pale hips flattened against a mat of plastic trash.

  Please, Teller begs Green. Tell me.

  Under Tie’s floating hands, the corner of Green’s forehead is red against the rocks. One of his green eyes is open, the other closed. His bearded cheeks are spotted with sand.

  Tell me, Teller shouts at Green. Tell me the stories are true.

  The ocean rumbles. The tide rises into Green’s open eye.

  Say something, whispers Teller.

  A wave swells rank foam over Green’s chest, and Tie grabs at Green with sharp fingers. She shakes his shoulders like she might wake him from sleep, lightly at first but then urgently, fiercely, her mouth dragging a rough inhale that coughs into a crackled moan. When she pulls one of Green’s limp hands to her cheek, against her flaked and whispering lips, her round stomach hugs against her knees, swaying, and the fear in Sky’s chest boils to his face—hot, painful sobs. Green teaches Sky how to swim in the ocean and helps him build the fire. Green knows about evaporation jars and water filters and surviving the long, quiet summers. He’s the one who calls tides by their color and knows where to dig for roots and makes Tie laugh when she’s hungry and tells stories to stop the Dark Sickness but Green, Green—what will we do now?

  Mark stands, his hands atop his head, and glares up the sea cliffs at Green’s smoking bonfire. His fingers slowly pull into thick fists, gripping clumps of his matted hair.

  Stupid, says Mark, and Tie chokes quiet. Mark ducks for a chunk of cement and pitches it with his whole body at the shadowed bluffs.

  I told you it was a stupid idea—

  Don’t call him stupid, screams Tie.

  Green fell, says Sky.

  Stay out of it, Waste.

  Mark, it was an accident, says Teller. Green lost his balance.

  Because the wind’s dangerous up there, doesn’t anyone ever listen to me? And he hadn’t eaten in three days—

  That wasn’t his fault, yells Tie. This isn’t his fault.

  One look at Mark’s angry face, his scrunched nose and sun-bleached eyebrows, and Sky closes his eyes. He blocks out the sight of Green’s ear bleeding into the surf, but even as the ocean crashes and groans, Sky can still hear Mark’s slicing words.

  Green cared more about that bonfire than he did about taking care of his own teeth, that’s why he couldn’t eat anymore.

  Mark retches a sob. His voice cracks into a shout.

  He would’ve burned up our whole firewood supply and risked all our lives for nothing.

  Be quiet, Mark. It’s the only way to signal the others.

  There are no others, Teller.

  The wind leans against Sky’s shuddering body, an empty, lonely weight.

  We have to fix the fog net, says Mark at once.

  When Sky looks up, Tie and Teller are staring at Mark, both frowning. Mark’s narrow face is tight but dry, gazing south beyond the gray crescent of the beach and its heaps of melted plastic garbage, past the sand dunes piled high to the black-mouthed caves in the headlands. The caves, thinks Sky—safety, escape, Home—but far off a murky cloud is rearing across the red mountains inland, a t
ower of dust swallowing the jagged ridges, chewing its way closer.

  We need to fix the fog net before the storm hits, says Mark, his voice flat. We need to put out Green’s fire and save whatever firewood is left. There are so many things we need to do now that—

  —now that Green is dead? shouts Teller, and Tie yells against her clamped lips, clutching her stomach tight. Stop, Mark, just stop. We need to slow down, we need to talk about this.

  With one light finger, Tie wipes the sand from Green’s forehead. The gesture is intimate, private. Sky averts his wet eyes but Mark’s words ramble, his fingers shaking and counting.

  I’m sorry but it’s already summer, every day the fog net catches less water, and without Green we’ll have to work harder than ever—

  How can you talk about work right now?

  Tie, I’m talking about water, for you and Baby.

  Tie drops forward onto her palms, her large belly hanging. Spit drips from her twisted mouth, lips silently forming Green’s name.

  Teller jumps up like a fist, and though he’s the thinnest of them all, knob-spined and basket-ribbed, he’s taller than Mark, taller than Sky on his concrete perch. His dirt-stained hands clench as his hairless chest expands wide. When Teller speaks, his dark-circled eyes stare at no one.

  That bonfire was more important to Green than food or water, says Teller, and Green taught me to remember the dead above everything else. I’m taking his body to the fire.

  But we could push him out to sea, says Mark, confused. His body will be poison soon—

  Green always honored the others.

  It’s too dangerous up there, the storm—

  Mark, you’re either going to help me—

  —no time for traditions—

  —or you aren’t.

  Teller picks cautiously around the red-stained rocks and tangled rebar, and slips his hands under Green’s shoulders. When Tie lifts Green’s thin ankles, his broken pelvis lengthens purple at its joints, his right side hangs low, so Sky drops down in the tide pools near the others and wedges a shoulder under Green’s sinking thighs. The skin of Green’s legs is cold but pliant where Sky wraps his arms, stiff where his ear presses against Green’s hip. The stink of seawater and urine. A familiar body sweat smell. A moan weeps from Sky’s mouth.

  A heave and they lift Green’s body together just as the tide surges, the ocean growls, and Teller’s toes fumble the wet rocks. His heel drives into a knot of rusted metal shingles, and when Teller’s foot reemerges, a dangerous red shows through a slice in his foot wrappings.

  It’s nothing, Teller says to Mark’s widened eyes, quickly adjusting the wraps to cover the wound. When Mark steps forward he hisses Stupid under his breath, folds his long arms around Green’s chest, and they all move toward the beach.

  As they cross the sand without speaking, Sky can feel the lurch of Teller’s limp, Tie’s shuffling steps, and the pop of Green’s hipbone. He tries to focus on these sensations instead of the gathering weight of Green’s still legs, to ignore the fog net cracking in the wind and the empty water bucket rattling down the beach. Instead of the spinning heat and his dry tongue, he focuses on the path directly below him, on the ankle-deep dust that, as they climb the sand dunes, then rest, then climb the bluffs, hardens into stone steps and ledges of burnt brick. Their path tightens as they approach the blackened basement of One, Two, Three—the structure with one standing wall and three intact windows—and the trail swings near the cliff edge at Three, Two, One—the hole where a house crumbled into the ocean in perfect thirds. Near the top, where the cracked cliffside leans into the air, Sky and Teller have to change positions to fit through a snarl of pipes and steel beams pulled low by their collapsed foundations. They pass puddles of melted pitch and finally emerge onto the exposed peak of the bluffs, and by then Sky’s naked body is burned and rashed. The charging wind rocks his steps unsteady, the heat blurs his vision, and the cool touch of Green’s skin relieves nothing of the red afternoon sun.

  At the brink of the precipice, in its deep, circular fire pit, Green’s bonfire smolders low. Thin trails of smoke rush in all directions, but Green pegged enough splintered plywood nearby to raise the flames again. They lower Green’s body into the crater of coals and shining tar and heap the entire stack of wooden planks over his head and torso. Though Mark mutters about saving the floorboards for their own firewood supply, he helps push coals over Green’s dirty feet, his scarred hands, and every part of Green is covered when the mound ignites.

  I would like to say some words for Green, says Teller when foul brown smoke and the smell of burning hair push Sky low to the ground. Tie crouches as well, her muddy eyes closed against the rising ash and slashing wind.

  Mark opens out pleading palms to Teller.

  Teller, says Mark, we worked hard to bring Green up here. It was a good thing to do, I admit it. I think Green would’ve appreciated it, and he would’ve agreed that we have to leave now.

  Teller stares hard past Mark’s hands, takes a deep breath and continues louder.

  I want to tell a story about Green, which is also the story of why we’re here.

  This is stupid, shouts Mark. The storm’s coming in.

  It was Green’s ritual, he deserves a eulogy.

  No time for stories—

  Would’ve made time for you—

  —need to be smart—

  What we need is—

  —water and food and firewood—

  —I’m the oldest now—

  Stop fighting, do you hear me, stop it, yells Tie and she’s on her feet. She stabs a coal-blackened finger at Mark, then at Teller.

  Mark, speak or shut your mouth and stop interrupting Green’s story. Teller, let Mark speak so he can go away, if he wants to leave so badly.

  From behind the smashed brick wall where Sky retreated, he watches Tie stand with her big, square hands on her thin hips, her hard stomach distended. Mark shies from her rigid frown, bowing his head.

  I didn’t mean I want to go back alone, says Mark.

  The planks in the bonfire shift and sparks whip the lip of the pit. Mark’s eyes flick to the storm, which has already clouded and consumed their path home to the caves, and his jaw muscles twitch. He finally lifts his hands toward Green’s body to speak, stretching his fingers wide in the traditional way.

  What I mean is, says Mark, Green was my friend, too. He helped me after Mother died, and he taught me hard work solves everything. He was always happy when he was helping people, but cold and distant when he told all those stories about a past that wasn’t real—or even if it was real, couldn’t help us anyway.

  Teller frowns and shakes his head. As the wind quickens, the bonfire rumbles and the bloody sun overhead drowns in a reek of ashy clouds. Sky curls himself into a ball to protect his skin from flying dust, and Mark also cringes, raises his voice, speaks faster—

  Green knew we sacrificed time, sacrificed food and water when we told stories, and we’ll be forced to make even bigger sacrifices right now if we can’t move on without Green. I can do some of his work, but fixing the fog net and collecting water, I can’t do those things alone—I don’t want to do them alone.

  Sky glances at Tie, at her body shot upright, her feet fixed and hands hanging at her sides, as though she can’t taste Green’s oily smoke in her mouth, doesn’t feel the cutting dust. Her sharp jaw clenches as it always does when she’s angry, but her eyes are also so wide, so empty, that Sky wants to slip his body under her arm. He wants to press his face against her smooth, curved stomach, against the quiet heartbeat within, but Mark will only tell him to stop being a baby. Sky crawls closer to Tie without touching her, and Mark kneels a short distance away, his hand shielding his face from the smoke.

  When Teller steps close to the fire, his long fingers are already aimed over Green’s body, gesturing into the wind. His voice deepens until it rolls clearly under the whistling air. It comes loud, from low in his stomach, easy and slow, the way that makes words vibrate
in the cave tunnels, the same way Green tells stories—

  —told stories.

  Heat tightens Sky’s face.

  I would like to talk about the path that led Green to this moment, says Teller, lengthening his words. I would like to talk about his stories and his beliefs, and I would like to start by telling the story of Abraham, which was Green’s favorite story.

  Mark scowls. He glances at the storm crawling across the ridgeline, at Tie’s attention absorbed on Teller, then flings a rock over the cliff and into the blinding dust.

  When the Great Fires began and Moth flew into the sky, says Teller, every camp wandered in search of sustenance. When the Great Fires began and Moth flew into the sky, there were many people in this area and the blue ocean waved with green kelp and sparkling fish. When the Great Fires began, the wooden homes around the bay had not yet burned and boats arrived with jarred food to share, but after the Great Fires began, the wind stopped blowing the air free of ash. The fires spread, the storms grew, and the Enemy Ocean awoke. The camps grew in favor of finding another place to live but Abraham spoke, because Moth had flown into the sky. Abraham had gray in his hair and there were worry lines across his forehead.

  Sky knows about those lines. Even as the wind threatens to roll his body, as he clings his fingers into the cracks in the ground, Sky remembers seeing those lines between Tie’s eyebrows, around Green’s mouth. Worry lines, whispers Sky.

  Abraham campaigned the camps, says Teller, and he advised everyone to remain near the sea. He said there’s an Observatory right here, on this very spot we stand, that speaks to Moth. He also spoke of desalination and the condensation of coastal fog, said that the Seven Seas were the Seven Wells, but in the end he was not elected by the people. The majority went into the desert and have not been seen since.

  A boom in Sky’s ears—the storm bursting against crumbling walls of burnt corrugated tin. Both Tie and Teller crouch as sand is flung up the cliffs, lifted all the way from the beach. The squall of dust surges against the bluffs, and although Teller is still speaking, his voice is no longer a steady hum.