Dark Ages

Remo smiled. “He’s one.” The boy was awake and looking at the three adults shyly. His gaunt face was covered with the sticky remains of fruit. Rinds and cores littered the ground.

“Who is he?” the villager demanded.

“He’s one of the People,” Remo said. “They’re all over the place. They’re survivors, like you. There must have been twenty villages affected by the catastrophe. This kid was out wandering the jungle all by himself, eating gross steamed vegetables. Everybody he ever knew is dead.”

Chiun held up his hand, and no one spoke. Remo heard what Chiun was hearing—other voices, fearful and hopeful, coming closer. “Remo, you did this?” Chiun asked.

“Not me. It was the bird. He’s been out looking for them all night. He told them to head for the tree with the purple parrots.”

Soon the newcomers began to straggle, singly or in pairs, out of the forest, converging on the tree of the purple parrots. They were mostly young adults, some children, and they all looked like hell. They were filthy, naked, covered in wounds, their arms and legs splotched with bruises. They gathered about the base of the tree, not sure what to expect.

“Lunch is on me.” Remo pulled bags of supplies out of the bushes, all salvaged from the researchers’ camp. The people were soon opening packages of hermetically sealed beef stew and chop suey. “Later you folks can help yourself to whatever’s on the Burgos boat—it’s a few miles upriver. Or maybe downriver. That way, whatever it is. Hey, look, everyone! Spam!” He held up a box of meat cans.

The villager grabbed the food from Remo’s hands and took it to the newcomers. More were coming out of the trees, all of them shell-shocked victims of a catastrophe that they had never expected and didn’t understand.

The villager was crying, but now they were clearly tears of joy. He deftly used the can key to open the lunch meat and present the food to the famished survivors. He laughed as he cried, and he gave words of encouragement to each and every one of them. He busied about them with more stocks from the supply packs. He spooned food into the mouth of a woman whose fingers were worn raw from whatever she had endured.

The young boy, the first to arrive at the tree, ate just a little of the new food, then followed on the heels of the villager, helping him feed the People. One last survivor stumbled out of the trees, his face shrunken. The villager, and others, raced to him, took hold of him as he stumbled and carried him to the tree. Soon he was eating and looking stronger by the minute.

“This is a pretty nice picnic, huh?” Remo asked.

Chiun was detached and silent, but not in his usual obstinate way. Remo didn’t know what to make of it.

“You have accomplished something worthy of the scrolls, Remo Williams,” Chiun said at last.

“What are you talking about? I just cleaned up the corpses.”

“You have restored the People,” Chiun said.

“That was his doing,” Remo said, pointing at one of the purple parrots that was diving on them. It landed on the ground and waddled to Remo and Chiun.

“He rounded them all up,” Remo explained.

“Rounded them all up,” agreed the macaw.

“You do not know what have you done,” said the villager, coming to them with the boy at his heals. “This be way the People came to be—the old People.”

“Talk to the bird.”

The villager ignored the bird and wrenched the difficult English tongue from his brain with great intensity. “Now I know why all have I been made to do. I lived when all died so to guide new People—just as did one who was Caretaker lifetimes in the past. This the tree where bird hatched. This the tree where little father died fetching the great gift for me—the egg of purple bird. It all comes to a circle you closed.”

Remo was getting uncomfortable. “Really, all I did was cleanup. I just wanted to bring back some green. And fetch the feedbags. Janitorial work and gardening and grocery shopping.”

“You have remade the People and made me the Caretaker again.”

“Bird,” Remo said, “tell ’em it was your idea.”

“Trail mix!” the bird demanded.

“Remo,” Chiun said quietly in Korean, “accept graciously this high and deserved praise.”

“I don’t deserve this. I didn’t save these People.”

The Caretaker nodded, and nodding still he looked back at the quiet gathering of survivors, who had eaten well for the first time since the catastrophe. They were resting, finally abandoning the fear that tomorrow would offer them only continuing uncertainty.

“There is a story of one named Qetzeel,” the Caretaker began.

“You don’t say?” Remo said, then felt a sharp pain in his elbow. Chiun was holding it, but listening to the Caretaker attentively.

“Qetzeel is the Unmaker, the Destroyer,” the Caretaker continued.

Remo felt the blood trickle like ice water down his spine.

“Qetzeel is also the maker of the new world. When he destroys, he cleanses the world and makes it ready for rebirth. Friend, you have fostered the rebirth of the People through your symbol of new life.”