When night fell our whole family climbed down from the road and huddled in the ditch alongside. It was cold, and damp, and the grown-ups dared not light a fire. The children were hungry, and had been hungry for weeks; you could hear our stomachs rumble.
Grandfather Eliram laughed, a hearty, encouraging chuckle.
“It’s nothing like this in Bet-Zelem,” he said. “When I was young I traveled there. Such feasts they have in that city! Its Grand Canal is at the joining of three rivers, and the cattle trade and the fruit trade and the spice trade all meet there. Every meal is an incredible banquet! A light repast in the poorest household puts more food on the table than you would see in a week back in our village. Spitted beef, pears and figs, cinnamon and ginger are all as freely shared as river water. Your stomachs will not rumble so, when we make it to Bet-Zelem.”
In the morning we awoke and continued down the road. It was hard going; any road is hard for a refugee. Now we were out of the hills and into the low farmlands, but the fields we passed were burned and muddy, and the houses were locked and barred.
Sometime after noon there came a whine, high in the sky. Everybody scattered and flung themselves into the underbrush, staying still and covered and quiet. Everybody except the donkey, who was too stupid to run, whom nobody else had been able to lead to safety.
The flier’s bullets sizzled like rain on the roof of a burning building, and when everyone came back out, the donkey was dead. Grandfather Eliram led the children away, holding his woolen cloak protectively around us.
“Do not worry,” he said. “The fliers in Bet-Zelem have no guns. When you hear an engine in the sky of Bet-Zelem, it is a skycab or an aeroyacht, trailing silken ribbons and sparkling streamers. On the solstice holiday everyone who owns a flier decorates them with flags and bunting in purple and gold. The waters of the Grand Canal are strewn with tulips and lilies, and all the fliers parade just above it while the people in the city stand on the tiled banks and throw garlands over them. You will see such beautiful things in the sky, when we make it to Bet-Zelem.”
That night there was an empty barn. A few of the aunts and uncles said that it was unwise to stay in a place like that. But the children were shivering, the wind was howling, and sleet had begun to fall; the barn had walls and a thatched roof. So we huddled there and slept.
But the cautious ones were right. In the darkest part of night, men with rifles burst in and held the family at gunpoint. Maybe they were soldiers; maybe not. It was too dark to tell.
The family had brought little from our village, and had already lost much on the road, but the men still took most of what remained. Nobody argued or tried to stop them, but they struck most of the adults with the butts of their rifles anyway; then they drove all of us out into the night.
Grandfather Eliram found a clearing close by; it was dry enough. He helped the children tend to the injured aunts and uncles; he got everyone ready to rest again, huddled under weathered blankets and torn coats.
“There are no soldiers and no bandits in Bet-Zelem,” he said. “The great granite wall keeps out any enemy, and even the armies of Bet-Zelem must camp outside the city. All the notable citizens compete to outdo each other in alms and charity, in temples and agora feasts and public baths, so nobody is desperate enough to steal. People will be amazed at your bravery, when we make it to Bet-Zelem.”
The sun rose. The family made it back onto the road.
That day we came to a place unlike any we had known before.
Strung across the road were enormous slabs of granite; the remains of a wall. It had stood a dozen stories high at least, and, in some places, it still did. In other places, it had collapsed under many bombs. Half-shattered towers stood like broken teeth.
Inside the walls there were more buildings than the entire family—save for Grandfather Eliram—had ever seen in one place. The buildings were shattered too. Where marble columns still stood, they were pockmarked with bullet scars; where wood had been used it was burnt or still burning. There were fliers in the sky; they were killing each other.
The family picked our way along a cracked road, past emptied storehouses and barren bazaars. We came to an enormous chasm in the ground. The broad split was deep; its walls were carved from stone; it had at one point been straight. In the distance, it was possible to see how it had once been fed by three mighty rivers.
There were many bodies at the bottom of that pit, and when Grandfather Eliram saw this, he covered the children’s eyes and would not let us see.
There came the sound of marching boots, not far away at all; close enough to make the ground tremble. Some of the children began to cry, for we remembered the sound of those boots and what followed. Grandpa Eliram held us close and hushed us urgently. The aunts and uncles hunted through toppled buildings and swaying ruins, but there was nowhere left that was either secret or safe. At last one of them found an abandoned cellar, a place for the family to hide.
Down in the cellar, the grown-ups spoke among themselves, whispering in the dark. And meanwhile, Grandfather Eliram sat cross-legged in the dirt, gathered the children around his lap, and told us all sorts of marvelous stories about the journeys of his youth. The time he saw the ocean; the time he met the wizard; the time he dined with seven princes.
Finally a grown-up decision was made, and our family departed from that unfamiliar and awful place, as fast as they could manage, wandering outward through the ruins.
“Wasn’t that horrible?” said Grandfather Eliram to the children. He was still smiling, yet we could see that something strange and sad had come into his smile. “What a story you will tell of that awful place, when we make it to Bet-Zelem.”
• • •