Aleksey's Kingdom Read Free Page B

terrifying. Ought I not, therefore, fear these local tribes rather than seek them out? But I knew this would be as ridiculous as meeting one group of Europeans and ever after fearing all such men. Aleksey saw only the differences between us and them. He could not see that amongst themselves the native tribes were as different as he was from an Englishman. I did not try to explain myself to Aleksey. To do so would force me to speak of my childhood. I do not know if I was protecting Aleksey or myself with this reticence. Probably a little of both.
    But I was distracted now and not particularly wanting to continue a brewing argument—as much as we both enjoyed bickering. His story had indeed stirred a remembrance of the past: a memory of a place entirely abandoned, as if people could leave this earth whilst still eating or sleeping.
    I plucked another fish off the grill and pulled pieces of the succulent meat from the tiny bones. Aleksey was watching me closely. Eventually, unable to contain himself, he threw a pebble at me. “And? What? Are you going to sit there all night, brooding?”
    “I am not brooding. I am remembering.” In truth, I was trying to decide just how much of the story to tell him. Some, I could not. I could not think about some of it myself, let alone tell someone else, even him. Had I known what was to come for us in the following weeks, I would have done, if only to have the comfort of knowing that now two of us knew of this horror. I had shared my past like this with Aleksey before and had felt distinct relief, as if laying down a physical burden.
    It was tempting to do so again, but my impatient boy threw a pebble at me—again. “And?” and thus the decision was made to tell him a version only of the story.
    “The Powponi—do you want to hear this or not?” He stopped the eye roll he’d been making and produced a face like an eager schoolboy listening to a wise master. Aleksey had missed a vocation upon the stage. “We used to winter in the south by a huge lake. It was so big it had waves and a tide, and you could not see the far shore even from the—”
    “I don’t believe you. How could a lake be so big?”
    “Well, it was fresh water so could not have been the sea. Although I suppose there might be freshwater oceans…. I had not thought of that.”
    “Whatever. You wintered there and…?”
    “Another tribe, the people of the Black Crow—I do not know how to translate that better—lived permanently at the water’s edge, and we used the winter months to trade with them, but when we came to the lake one winter, they were gone. The tepees were there; the fires were still warm; the dogs and horses tethered and not yet starving or dead. But no people.”
    “Oh goodness, just like the colony! Why did you not say so at first? I wish they could hear this back at the colonel’s house. They laughed at my—anyway. Go on. You do have fun stories. So, where were they? I know, they went swimming, and it was very cold, and they all drowned…?”
    “I do not remember, exactly, but there were over a hundred in the Black Crow nation—women, old people, and babies too—so a jolly swimming excursion is not all that likely, is it? And we would have then found their bodies.” I pursed my lips, frowning, staring at the flames. I thought this coincidence of his story of the colony and my memory very odd, but wanted Aleksey to be the one to wonder and speculate about it, as I knew he would.
    “So, where were they? What had happened to them? They must have told you where they had been.”
    I think he missed the point. “They never were discovered. That is the point. The village was empty, as if they had been plucked from the earth, and no trace of them was ever found again.”
    “What?” He was aghast. He had seemed to like speculating about his little mystery at the outpost, but clearly he expected to find a perfectly rational explanation. This did not please him as much. “What did everyone