Below the World

Ab urbe condita, the old words scrawled deep into the walls. ‘From the founding of the city’. Scholars take it to mean Rome, but no city is ever one thing. They said all roads led to Rome, but this is where they ended. The roads below, the paths that follow the rivers. The ancient routes through which once the blood of the earth flowed. The montains belched fire, and the ancients had no word for that.

“They had mons ignifer – fire-bearing mountain –,” I whisper to the darkness.

“Mons flammas eructans – mountain belching fire –,” the other voices reply.

It is a ritual as old as the caverns. The names half-true, their understanding the wisdom that there is so much to understand.

The man makes a sound behind his gag.

“Prester. Where did you get the sacrifice from?”

“Work,” I say. “A tourist who will not be rude again. A bad apple that will no longer spoil this world.”

There are murmurs from the others, but no one protests. We try and take those will not be missed. But sometimes there are other choices. Sometimes even power held in secret must move in the wider world. I raise the blade, whisper words older even than Latin. There is a silence that listens. The crooked god smiles at us in the darkness.

And then the smile is gone. There are gasps from the other sid in the cavern. We all feel the god’s benediction vanish like a cold wind.

“Excuse me? I’m looking for Latin and – uhm! I think this might not be a good adventure to have?”

I turn. There is a boy of eleven in the cavern. It is Emilio who acts. Always Emilio. Two gunshots ring through the darkness. Sometimes that calls the god back, returns the warmth. Nothing.

The boy walks forward. He is holding two bullets in his right hand. “You tried to shoot me?! We’ve not even met, and that’s pretty rude!”

Emilio fires two more shots. The boy somehow isn’t there, and then in front of Emilio. Emilio, who of us all does deeds in the day that are as dark as those he does in the darkness. Emilio, who falls to his knees weeping. The boy turns to the rest of us. He looks unharmed, and hurt, and there is nothing of our god in him.

“What are you?” I demand. I brought the sacrifice; it falls to me to speak.

“I’m Jay. And you are –.” He pauses. He speaks my name, the one only everyone else here knows, his Latin flawless. “You have another, but that is your real one I think. And you were going to do some mean bindings here.”

The chains and ropes holding down the American tourist fall off of him. He doesn’t get off the old table. He does not run, as terrified of this Jay as the rest of us are. It is a small comfort.

“Emilio. What did you do?” I demand.

“I asked him to be jaysome,” and distantly I hear a cry of pain from the crooked god.

The boy turns to the sound, and then to me. He lets out a huge sigh. “And you aren’t jaysome at all. Killing people –.”

“The sacrifices protect the city from the fire,” I snarl.

The boy laughs. The sound is surprised more than anything else. “There is old blood here, Hagan of the fire. They built a Colosseum above to contain it long ago, and you and yours worshipped it. Turned the dead and the dying into something else. But sacrifice? If sacrifice could save from fire, no one would ever burn again. If sacrifice worked, you would not have to act in secret. I’m only eleven, and I know this really well so I bet you do to. Even if humans are really good at not knowing things they know.”

I raise the knife and speak a word not meant for human tongues.

The boy doesn’t move. “I am tough like a Jay, so cutting me won’t work you know. Man. I totally tried to be all like Honcho and it didn’t work and being jaysome will destroy your god-thing so badly you’ll just keep trying to bring it back so that means I have to be like Charlie!”

“Pulvis et umbra sumus,” I intone.

“We are dust and shadow,” the others reply. Voices shaking, but they hear me.

I raise my voice: “Tempus edax rerum,” I scream. Time is the devourer of things, and the others don’t have time to speak those words. Black fire burns the room. Jay just stands in the middle of it, untouched.

“Time isn’t black fire,” he says, as if that – that! – should make sense in all of this. “But I guess this means I have to be Charlie!”

And despite the cheer in his voice, his face changes. Something cold and angry rises up, stares out at me. The others break and run. Civil servants. A retired engineer. Old Gaston with his lame leg. Even Emilio tries to stand and run.

“I was having an adventure looking for Latin, but instead I find people doing sacrifices and not being jaysome and this isn’t a proper adventure at all.”

Jay gestures. The gesture is terribly casual, and the crooked god is in the room with us. Old beyond telling, saving the city with death and sacrifice for longer than written records allow. “A god trying to cheat death,” Jay says. He does something, and I feel the god go. Somewhere beyond following or understanding. “I can’t eat gods like Charlie does, but I bound it a long way away and that’s sort of the same thing. Right. Charlie. Being scary. Sorry, I almost forgot to. It’s really hard to.”

“It’s all right.” It’s the American speaking, half against his will.

Jay grins. Nothing else is like that. I almost forget the crooked god, and then the grin is gone and Jay smiles a slow smile full of knowable power. “You will do no sacrifices here again. No one will,” he says, and his voice makes the words into a fact. Everything falls away. All we’ve done, the power of this place. The losses, the sacrifices, the gains: it’s all unmade under words by something that only looks to be human.

The others cry, and Jay tells them to run. They do, because it is not a request. And Jay turns, and looks at me. I do not know who this Charlie is. But I see the anger in his eyes, and I run as hard as I can away from it and everything I am.

His voice is a whisper I will never forget: “To get rid of bad apples is to become one. To hold down is to become a lower creature as well. You think you can serve the darkness and make light? You think the world is so simple that you can do that without being jaysome? You can’t,” and the last two words follow me as I run. In English and Latin both, ringing through the air.

I am almost not surprised to feel the ceiling begin to give way. The entire cavern falling apart. Not to bury Jay, but so terrified it can do nothing else but try and destroy the cause of the fear.

And Jay is waiting. When we emerge into the old tunnels, from the ones only the chosen were allowed to remember. Only there is no rage. No anger. Just the boy of eleven, with a worried look to his face.

“I think I did an oops,” he says, and everyone else looks – distracted. His gaze flicks to me. “I can totally get them to forget about the accident, but if you do they might try and bring their god back. And Charlie would have to stop that and she’s way scarier than a Jay can be! So you get to remember, and make sure no one does this. Okay?”

I nod. I am too terrified to think of what might happen if I don’t.

Jay vanishes between moments. I shudder all over, and lead everyone else up, make up lies for every question they have. Anything to make sure Jay never returns. Anything to never meet those that creature considers scary. I know I will never again go below the world, but I can’t turn back.

I think that, if I did, Jay’s Charlie would be there. And I would learn what a bad apple really was, how deep the rot within us goes and just what we had done.

I run. In the end I run, and know I will never stop.