The World Below Me: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Elise left again for work. When she came home, Zerdi was there waiting. He took her bag. It had felt nice the first time, but Elise was beginning to feel uneasy about being served like this. She looked around to find the house even cleaner than the day before. She hadn’t realized it could get this clean. Zerdi was already kneeling on the floor. She sighed.

At least the floor is clean.

Elise sighed again and knelt beside him.

“Zerdi. You’re free here. You are not required to do any of this.”

He didn’t move.

“Please stand up.”

He stood.

“Is it goodt?” he asked.

He was trying even harder. Elise bit her lip, then sighed and smiled.

“Thank you, Zerdi. It’s good.”

The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. It was almost a smile.

That evening, just after sunset, she opened the back door. The sky was a deepening purple, still fairly light, but no longer as harsh as the midday sun.

“Zerdi. I have some vegetables to check. Would you come with me?”

She left it as a request, though he came without question. He paused at the back door.

She walked into the yard, looking again for the hole or the mysterious man who had appeared that night. No luck. When she looked back at the house, Zerdi was still in the doorway, his eyes edging cautiously toward the sky. He took a furtive step to the right of the doorframe, his gaze still locked upward. The vast open sky overhead filled him with a deep, instinctive wrongness.

Elise walked back to him.

“Come on. It’s safe,” she encouraged.

He wanted to shake his head. He wanted to run back inside and curl up in the safety of the closet. He wanted to hide from the endless sky and the Father’s cold eye, but his mistress—his Amaresh—commanded him. He took a step toward her, then another. His eyes shifted down to the ground, unwilling to see the hollow ceiling open above him.

“There you go!” Elise’s voice was cheery. She seemed entirely unconcerned with the half-closed yellow eye hanging above them in the darkening sky. He tilted his head up to see her expression.

Elise was beaming. She gestured for him to follow. They walked across the spiky moss that Elise called grass. She led him to the taller plants. They looked nothing like the ones grown in Oruthal. These were vividly green. She knelt beside one and slipped her hand beneath a fruit.

“It’s a tomato.”

“Itsa tomato.”

A warm evening breeze glided through the garden, ruffling clothes, hair, tail, and leaves alike. Zerdi froze, his eyes darting from tree to bush. Everything seemed to come to life at once.

“It’s okay. It’s just the wind. It feels nice.”

Elise closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. He shifted uneasily, still watching the tree leaves dance and flutter. He helped Elise pick vegetables and pull weeds from around the plants.

“There, almost done.”

She looked up, but another gust of wind had him staring at the pinwheel on the fencepost. She laughed.

“Maybe that’s enough for one day.”

They went back inside and washed the vegetables. After dinner, it was time for another English lesson. She used pictures from magazines and books to show him a world with a sky.

“Bird. Cloud. Field.”

“Bird. Cloud. Field.”

“Sun.”

Zerdi paused. He looked away from the page and down at the floor.

“Zerdi?”

When he looked up, he pointed to his face. “What’s this?” Then he scrunched his face into a deep frown, his brows drawn low and rigid. Elise bit her lip and took a moment.

“Angry?”

“Angry.”

Elise copied his sour expression and repeated the word. Zerdi touched the small sun on the page.

“Angry Father sun. Angry at bakdan.” He pointed upward. “Fall.”

“Fall?” Elise couldn’t tell what he meant.

He gestured broadly with both arms toward the sky.

“Zerdi can fall into the sky.”

Elise shook her head.

“No, no. You won’t fall.”

His face grew desperate.

“The sky is big. There is no…” He pointed upward.

“Ceiling?”

“No ceiling.”

“It’s not a cavern, Zerdi. It’s the sky. It goes up forever.”

He nodded solemnly, looking at her as though she had just given him a terminal diagnosis. He wrapped his arms around himself and hunched his shoulders.

Elise knew there was no easy fix for this. He would have to learn to accept surface life.

Or find a way back underground, she thought.

After a week, Zerdi was able to hold simple conversations. After two weeks, they were having routine exchanges. Elise came home from work as usual.

“Zerdi?”

He appeared from the kitchen with a small loaf of bread.

“You used the oven?”

“We have ovens. They work different, but it is not complicated.”

“Are you going to eat with me?”

He froze. Then, recovering himself, he nodded quickly.

“I can do that.”

He set himself a place and joined her at the table.

“I guess you’re not used to eating with others?” she asked as she sat.

“Not with my mistress.”

“Zerdi, I’m not your—” She stopped suddenly. That sad look was back on his face. She sighed. “I’m not a good mistress.”

Oh, what is he going to think when I send him home? she thought.

“You are,” he answered so quickly it felt memorized. Then he slowed down. “You are a good mistress. You are learning.”

“I don’t want to learn to be a mistress,” she replied just as quickly. The thought of owning a person—of doing it willingly, of learning how to do it properly—made her shiver.

His face fell again.

“I mean, I’ve always been taught that owning another person is bad. It’s vile. Freedom is the most important thing a person can have.”

His expression softened.

“I do not want to be free. I do not know how. I want to serve you. You are kind. If I do not serve you, who would I serve?”

“Deciding who you will become—that is something everyone must struggle with.”

“Not everyone. Not me.”

“Does no one choose their station in life where you’re from?”

“No. Some do, but not the bandakdan.”

“You feel safe being a servant. A bandakdan.”

She had meant it as a question, but it came out as a statement. Still, he met her gaze for just a second before bowing his head and nodding.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “I think I understand. I’ll be your master for now.”

He smiled at her briefly. It caught her off guard, and she found herself smiling back warmly. Oddly enough, she didn’t feel as awkward about the arrangement as she thought she might. She had no intention of asserting power over him, so for now, she could live with it.

He went into the study and retrieved the tablet. Elise had almost forgotten about it by this point.

“This is my official document.”

“Your papers? Like ownership papers?”

He nodded and carefully handed it to her.

“My name is here.”

He pointed at a cluster of strange characters and showed her how each one made a sound. Elise copied him the way he had copied her for nearly three weeks.

Finally.

Elise was already searching for matching characters and sounding them out. Zerdi’s eyes widened as he watched her. He continued helping her work through the document, teaching her more sounds as she went.

“Zerdi. Do you ever want to go back?”

He frowned, his brow furrowing as he took a moment before answering.

“Yes. No.”

She gave him time to work out the language he needed.

“I like to serve you. I want to keep you as my mistress. But I do not like hell.”

“Hell?”

“The lands outside the Mother Earth’s womb. These sun lands.”

Outside Mother Earth? He meant the surface. It was obvious. The light from the sun was torturous to his eyes.

“Yes, although we don’t call it that. We just call it… well, we don’t really know of any other place besides the surface, so it’s just earth.”

“Your people do not remember the great banishment and the evils we do then?”

She shook her head, completely engaged.

“No. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Can you tell me?”

“My people are bad in past time. We are punish. It is our burden.”

He still didn’t know past tense well, but Elise understood his meaning.

“So, do you… miss home?”

He smiled slightly.

“Go home to the warm Mother Earth and be sold to some other master, or stay in the blind hell with mistress who is kind but does not understand how to be my mistress.”

When she thought about it, it did seem funny.

“So this is hell, and the underworld is home. But you were punished and had to leave hell to live underground?”

“Yes. Before, this place is nice. It is not angry.” He gestured toward the sky and its bright “angry” sun. “We sin and Sun Father is angry. He make Mother swallow us. We are saved by Mother.”

“Blessing to us because we survive in a land protected by our Mother Earth,” he continued slowly, “but curse to us because we are sins and swallowed inside by that land while the surface burns like the oven.”

There was so much to understand, and Elise was engrossed. This was better than any history book she had browsed in the library. She listened carefully to every word. It was difficult to place him. He spoke of religion and history in such familiar terms that it felt as if she were speaking not to someone repeating an old story, but to someone who lived inside it.

She gave him a gentle look after he finished.

“Well, you’re welcome to stay here. You may find it more agreeable than the hell you describe.”

He looked again at the sunlight peeking through the blinds, then back at her. She could see the creases in his brow.

“You don’t like the sun?”

“Is it not the torment that you must endure every day?”

She stopped herself from laughing at the thought, though a smile did slip onto her lips.

“Not at all. In fact, we love the sun. It warms us. It makes things grow.”

“It does not blind and burn?” Curiosity was written all over his face.

“No. Well, you don’t look directly at the sun. We’re taught that from an early age. You’d also wear sunscreen if you were going to be outside for a long time.”

She glanced at her watch. It was her day off, and normally she would have spent it at the library, but this was a special situation. She hated things that kept her from the library, or interrupted her plans in general, but she didn’t feel that way about Zerdi. He was like a book in the library, except instead of static words on a page, he could answer questions and change direction at her request. There was so much to learn.