Master of Fire - 2. Innocents Abroad

Marty woke to find Rocky bending over him. It was daylight.

“You’re crying again,” Marty mumbled.

“I thought I’d killed you,” Rocky said, brushing away tears. “Anyway, it’s just allergies.” He paused. “Marty, we’re not in California, anymore.”

“Where’s my parka?” Marty asked.

“Gone,” Rocky said. “It just disappeared. Just like the motorcycle. One minute we were riding through the arena toward the barn, the next second we were flying through the air. You hit your head on that tree. You were out for a couple of minutes…I thought you were dead.”

“A couple of minutes?” Marty said. “But it’s morning! Oh, yeah. The sun was rising.”

“Yeah,” Rocky said.

Marty stood up awkwardly, holding on to a tree to keep his balance.

“What the—?” Marty said. “My zipper’s gone! I mean, it’s just not there!”

“Yeah,” Rocky said. “My jeans have buttons. They’re still there. But the z…zippers in my leather jacket, they’re gone, too. They’re like the m…motorcycle. They don’t belong here.”

“So, where are we?” Marty whispered.

“I think…I hope…we’re wherever George went,” Rocky said.

“How do we get back?” Marty asked, alarmed.

“I don’t think we can,” Rocky said. “The door’s closed. Or, it’s not open from this direction.”

“Rocky, I’m scared,” Marty said.

“Now you’re crying.”

“I am not crying!” Marty sniffled. “It’s allergies!”

Rocky reached out and wiped a tear from Marty’s cheek. “Don’t kid a kidder, Marty.”

Impulsively, the older boy reached out and enfolded Marty in his arms. Marty rested his head against Rocky’s chest. He felt the older boy stiffen, then relax.

“Now you’re crying, too,” Marty said. “What would your friends think, Rocky?”

“Chandler. My name is Chandler,” the older boy said. “Marty, I’m sorry I brought you here. Will you forgive me?”

Marty raised his head. Chandler…Chandler—who would have thought? Marty saw tears coursing down Rock…Chandler’s cheeks. He reached up and brushed his own tears, then tentatively touched Chandler’s cheek. Marty slowly wiped the older boy’s tears away. “Yes, I forgive you.”

A light bloomed in Chandler’s eyes. The boys looked at each other from a distance of only inches. Then Chandler bent his head and kissed the younger boy.

There was a very long silence before, “Um…Chandler,” Marty said. “I…I have to know. Why did you kiss me?”

The older boy said, “Marty, I wanted to kiss you since we were in homeroom two years ago—the first day I first saw you. I watched you for a long time, and wish I had the guts to tell my friends to go to hell, and to ask you for a date. Yeah, I knew you were gay…and I knew I was, too. I just didn’t have the guts to do anything about it.”

Rocky shrugged off Marty’s hug, and slumped to the ground, his back to a tree. “Ow!” Rocky said. “What am I sitting on?” He looked around, then said, “There must be a rock in my pocket…hmmm…it’s my wallet.” He pulled out a big leather wallet, attached by a chain to his belt. “Holy shit…!”

Marty was still trying to digest what Chandler had just told him. How can a guy who hangs out with a gang of gay-bashers…homophobes…tell me he’s gay…and that he likes me!...I mean, he’s kind of cute, except for his hair...and now he’s worried about his wallet? Nevertheless, he asked, “What is it?”

“This is weird,” Rocky said. “I just got paid. I had over five hundred dollars in here. Now my wallet’s full of coins. Holy shit! These are gold! There must be a dozen of them. My d…dr…driver’s license and school ID are gone, though.”

Marty pulled his own wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and looked inside. “My ID is gone…so is my library card. All the money is gone…there’s gold and silver and copper, like pennies, but they’re not…The picture of my parents…it’s here, but it’s not a ph…ph…photograph; it looks like it was painted! Oh, here’s the swim team’s schedule, I wrote it on a piece of paper…it’s still…Oh! I can’t read it! It’s not in English!”

“No, it is in English,” Marty said after a moment. “But we’re not speaking English any more, are we?”

“What about the parchment? Do you still have that?” Chandler asked.

Marty pulled the document from his pocket. “Thank goodness it wasn’t in my parka pocket,” he said, unfolding it. “I can still read it! It’s not English, but I can read it.”

“H…holy shit,” Chandler breathed.

“What is that?” Marty walked toward a copse of brush from which the rising sun brought a glint of light. “Look, the saddlebags from the m…m…motorcycle. They must have been real leather. They came through when the helmets, my v…v…vinyl parka, and stuff didn’t.”

Chandler rushed over to where Marty stood. “Yeah, it’s the saddlebags, for sure. There was a lot of stuff in them.”

A wool blanket had come through, as had a long, bone-handled knife with its leather sheathe. A plastic poncho was missing. A geologist’s hammer, with a cork-covered haft was intact. The multi-tool utility knife was missing its red, plastic, decorative sides, but was otherwise complete. The first aid kit was largely okay, although a tube of ointment and all the plastic bandages had disappeared. “I had a bunch of sample bags…but they were p…plastic, and didn’t make it,” Chandler said. “Look, the geology book and my notebook are okay; the p…p…plastic ball point pens are gone, but the pencils and the colored pencils are okay, even the erasers.”

“Whoa! I can read the geology book,” Chandler said. “But not the words on the metal tape dispenser in the first aid kit. What is going on?”

Marty looked at the geology book. “Yeah…I can read it, too. Whoever decided what could come through the gate, also decided what would get translated and what wouldn’t. This is really weird.”

“Look…oh, be careful. It’s the needle from the compass. Everything else was p…plastic…except the pivot pin…Ah, here it is. I’m going to put these here…in the first aid kit. Maybe someday I can make a compass.”

“I didn’t know you liked geology,” Marty said, as Chandler used the awl on the pocketknife, and the rawhide string that had been tied to the hammer to install a lace in the fly of Marty’s blue jeans.

“Nobody did, really,” Chandler said. “I read a lot about it, and I used to go out by myself, on the…you know…my friends would have thought that was, like, even more weird than being gay.” He looked at Marty, and handed back that boy’s jeans.

What does he want me to say? Marty wondered. That it’s okay that he and his friends picked on every boy in school who was smaller than average, who was even slightly effeminate, who wore nice clothes rather than blue jeans, who was in the band or the drama club? I don’t think so! Aloud, he only said, “Uh, thanks.”

“Water; we’ll need water. And food, and fire.” Chandler looked around, and then said, “This way. We’ll find water in this direction.” He started walking downhill.

“Hey…” Marty started to say. Then he shrugged, and picked up the saddlebags, and followed Chandler down the gentle slopes until they reached a creek.

“Do you think the water’s safe to drink?” Marty asked.

“Everything I see tells me it is,” Chandler said. “This forest is old…and looks uninhabited. The stream has probably flowed for miles…and unless there’s some really bad stuff in it, a stream will clean itself in 10 or 20 miles.”

“How do you know that,” Marty said, as he knelt by the water.

“My father had survival school…I read all his books. All the survival books said that you should stay where you are, and let rescuers come to you. I don’t think that’s going to work, here. We need to find civilization. This stream will eventually run into the ocean, but before that, if we’re lucky, it will enter a river that will lead us to a city. All civilizations built cities on rivers.” If there is civilization, here, Chandler thought.

After a while, he said, “There’s got to be civilization, doesn’t there? We have money; there’s a written language…that means we will find civilization.” He looked at Marty, but Marty only shrugged.

The boys followed the stream until mid-afternoon, when Chandler called a halt. “We’re going to need food, and the best place to get it is going to be that pond.” The stream had widened into a pond, nearly filling a small valley. On one side was a shelf of rock from which spring floods had washed the overlying soil.

Chandler cut a small, straight sapling, and quickly fashioned a spear.

Marty watched, fascinated, as the boy took off all but his briefs and waded into the water. “You trying to get arrested?” he asked.

“Somehow, I don’t think that is going to happen,” Chandler said. “It’s not like we’re in some national park, you know. You could have enough faith in me to gather wood for a fire to cook the fish I’m going to spear.”

Marty flushed. He’s right. And, he knows a lot more than I do about this place…whatever it is. He could have ripped me for what I said, but it’s almost as if…as if he were trying to be a friend. Okay, Marty, cut him a break. He’s probably as scared as you are…he’s just better at not showing it.

Chandler tossed several fish to Marty, and then stepped out of the stream. He rubbed himself dry with his hands. He had a puzzled look on his face. “Marty, do you have any body hair…chest, underarms?” Chandler asked.

“No…I’m part Navajo,” Marty said.

“Well I did,” Chandler said. “Arms, legs, underarms…a little on my chest. But it’s gone, now.” He pulled at the front of his briefs. “Marty, uh, do you have pubic hair?”

Marty looked at Chandler, and seemed to realize that the older boy was asking a serious question. “Yeah,” he said.

“No, I mean, do you…Look to see,” Chandler insisted. “I used to…but it’s gone!”

“Oh,” Marty said. “Mine’s gone too. Wonder where it went?”

“Yeah. Wonder why it went,” Chandler said.

After he dried and dressed, Chandler cut into the center of a piece of dead wood, and scraped shavings and some fine powder into a pile. Putting the driest twigs nearby, he carefully focused the rays of the setting sun through the pocketknife’s magnifying glass onto the powdered wood. A curl of smoke greeted his effort. Within seconds, he had a small fire going.

“I could never do that, before,” he said. “I wonder if the sun is brighter, here.” He piled twigs, and then branches onto the fire. “It’s early spring, I think. See how the leaves are still bright green? And the water in the stream is cold. Snowmelt from mountains, somewhere, maybe. It could get cold tonight. Don’t know what might be in the woods. We’ll need wood to keep the fire going.”

*****

“Um, Marty,” Chandler began, “I’ve never…you know…had sex with a boy before.”

“Um, Chandler,” Marty teased, “Does that mean you want to? With me, that is?”

When Chandler replied, his voice was firm and serious, “Yes, please.”

“Then just relax…if you can…and let me…” Marty said.

Marty saw a glow from Chandler’s body as the older boy reached orgasm. Chandler’s body arched off the ground, and he clutched Marty.

“Holy shit, Marty, is it always that good?” Chandler asked when he could speak.

Marty took great gulps of air as he recovered. “Chandler, it’s never been that good before.”

“Do you think you could do what I did?” Marty asked Chandler.

“Maybe not as well,” the older boy answered, “but I really want to try.”

Marty felt himself approaching climax. It seemed as if every nerve in his body was on fire…not painful fire, but a tingling sensation that rippled from his extremities to his penis. As he reached release, he saw a glow that seemed to move from him to Chandler, just like the one that had moved from Chandler into Marty earlier.

“Holy shit, Marty, if I had known how wonderful that could be, I’d have kissed you the first day I saw you.” Chandler’s voice turned bitter. “I’m such an idiot.”

Marty held the older boy tightly, and kissed him. “Not an idiot, Chandler. You could never be an idiot.” Chandler’s crying, again, Marty thought. And I don’tbelieve it’s allergies. He’s as afraid as I am! Marty leaned over to kiss Chandler again, but the boy’s even breathing showed that he was asleep. He’s afraid, but he’s not afraid to sleep, Marty thought. It must be okay.

*****

The next morning, the boys breakfasted on fish. Chandler ruled out the mushrooms Marty found, but gave the okay to some strawberries. “Mushrooms have very little food value,” Chandler said, “and there are too many that are poisonous.”

“My teeth feel fuzzy,” Marty said. “Wish we had a toothbrush.”

“Working on it,” Chandler said, then handed Marty a twig. Chandler had whittled the bark from one end, and shaped it slightly. “Use it like a Popsicle stick; scrape gently. Spit a lot.” Both boys were pleased with how effective this was.

While Chandler had been fishing for breakfast, Marty had reorganized the leather straps on the saddlebags to convert them into two backpacks. After their morning ablutions—“Wipe with these leaves…I don’t know what they are, but I know that they aren’t poison ivy,” Chandler had said, handing them to Marty—they set off, following the stream. Each time they encountered a pool where the stream widened, Chandler would stop to look for fish. By early afternoon, Marty was carrying a string of fish on a vine looped through mouth and gills. Chandler called a halt in mid-afternoon. “I want enough sun to start a fire,” he said.

There was no pool in which to bathe, but they stood in the stream, naked and splashed water on their faces, through their hair, and down their bodies. “I may not be clean, but I sure feel clean,” Marty said. “Did those survival manuals tell you how to make soap?”

“Um hum,” Chandler said, “it was something like straining water through wood ash to get lye, skinning a hog, and boiling its fat in the lye water. I don’t think I’m ready for that, yet. Besides, I feel pretty clean, too.”

After supper, and brushing their teeth with another twig, followed by chewing on mint leaves that Marty found—“I recognize this. Mother grew it for tea”—the boys spread out the blanket and lay down for the night.

An hour or so later, Marty and Chandler lay side-by-side, holding hands and gazing at the sky. Both were still breathing heavily, and it was several minutes before what Marty was seeing registered on his brain. “Chandler,” he said. “Look at the stars.”

“Beautiful,” Chandler said.

“Seriously,” Marty said. “Look at them! They’re not right!”

“Yeah, Chandler said. “This clinches it. This isn’t some parallel Earth; we’re on an entirely different world with an entirely different sky. I can’t wait to see the moon!”