Good Mountain

“It Is Coming”

The sky was cloudless and absolutely dark, save for a single point of soft yellow light—one of the Four Sisters slowly dancing about the hidden sun. The distant stars were too faint to be seen through the thick window—a few hundred specks that only scientists had bothered to name and map. Stars meant very little to Jopale. What captured his mind was soft country beneath: The Tanglelands. Relentless pressures had crumbled this wood, exposing every old seam and any line of weakness. Long ridges and single hills had been erected through a series of unending quakes. As a result, the trail was far from a straight line, and the climb as well as fatigue kept slowing the worm’s progress. But there were no fresh breaks or blockages on the trail, at least so far. The waking passengers seemed thrilled to be alive, or at least they pretended to share a renewed confidence. And of course everyone wanted at least a glimpse of the tall saprophytes that grew beside the trail, watching the exotic forest passing by for a moment or two, then returning to their blankets and more familiar distractions.

Jopale had never seen country like this, save in picture books.

He mentioned his interest to Do-ane, and she responded as he hoped. “I’ve seen the Tanglelands,” she admitted. “Several times now. But I still think they’re lovely. Just wonderful.”

The girl had a buoyant, joyful attitude when she wanted to.

Jopale stood beside her, watching the pale, many-hued light pouring out of the dense foliage. Sometimes he asked about a particularly bright or massive tree. Do-ane would warn that she didn’t know her fungi as well as she would like. But every time, she named the species. Then when the rest of the passengers had settled on the stomach’s floor, leaving them alone, she quietly asked her new student, “Do you know why this country is so rich?”

“The old islands are broken into hundreds of pieces,” he offered. “Plenty of fresh surfaces ready to rot away.”

“That’s part of it,” she allowed. “But as much as anything, it’s because of the moisture. Three large islands were compressed and splintered to make the Tanglelands, and each one had tremendous reserves of fresh water underground. Which the saprophytes need as much as they need food, of course.”

He nodded amiably.

“And besides, rain likes hilly country,” she continued. “Given its choice, a storm will drop its wealth on broken ground.”

“How about your Good Mountain? Is it very wet… ?”

She shook her head. “Not particularly. That country is very flat and very boring. And beneath the surface, the wood is exceptionally dry.”

“Why?”

“Because the island on the surface can’t reach the Ocean anymore.” Do-ane put one tiny hand beneath the other, as an illustration. “I think I mentioned: There’s a second island resting under it, thick and solid, blocking almost every root.”

“That’s your Mountain? The underneath island?”

She hesitated, making some kind of delicate calculation. Then she looked out the window again, saying, “No,” in the tone people use when they want to say a good deal more.

Jopale waited. Then he said, “Tell me more.”

She squinted, saying nothing.

“About your undersea mountain,” he coaxed. “What do you do down there?”

“Research,” she allowed.

“In biology?” he asked. And when she didn’t responded, he offered a mild lie. “I was once an avid biology student. Some years ago now.”

Do-ane glanced at the passengers. Rit was sleeping. None of the others were paying attention to the two of them. Yet the young woman whispered so softly that Jopale could barely hear her words. “No,” she said. “It’s not really biology that I’m studying, no.”

“Not really?” he pushed.

She wasn’t supposed to speak, but she also wanted to explain herself. With a slender smile, she said, “I can’t.”

“I don’t mean to interrogate,” he lied.

The young woman’s life was wrapped around her work. It showed in her face, her manners. In her anxious, joyful silence.

“Forget it,” he muttered. An enormous fungus stood beside the trail—a pillar topped with fruiting bodies that bled a bright purple light. It was a common species whose name he had already forgotten. Staring at that apparition of rot and death, Jopale remarked with the coldest possible voice, “It’s not as if the world is going to end soon.”

“But it won’t end,” Do-ane said.

He gave a little sniff, and that’s when he discovered that he was crying. It was the sort of manipulative gesture Jopale might have attempted and would have failed at. But his tears were as honest as anything he had ever done, a fabulous pain hiding inside him, any excuse good enough to make it surge into public view.

“This disaster has happened before,” the young woman promised.

“So I’ve heard.”

“But it’s true. A new continent always grows on the sunlit face of the world. The water below is always choked of its free oxygen. Old wood compresses and shatters, and the methane rises up through the fissures and holes.”

“What about wildfires?” he asked.

“There have been big fires before.” She smiled to herself, betraying a deep fascination, as if describing an enjoyable novel full of fictional tragedies. Then she added, “These world-consuming fires have come seventeen other times.”

Not sixteen times, or fifty thousand.

Jopale invested several long minutes contemplating her precision. Then he asked, “How do you know that? An exact number?”

“I can’t,” she said.

“You can’t tell me?”

“No.”

He stared at her face, letting his own anger bubble up. “This place where you’re going,” he started to ask. “This peculiar mountain… ?”

“Yes?”

“Your colleagues, those scientists who discovered the feature… I don’t think they used the old word ‘mountain’ because it reaches in any particular direction. Toward the sky or toward the world’s core, either.”

Do-ane avoided his weepy eyes.

“My guess? The object was named for its composition. That’s another quality inherent in the word. The mythical mountain is supposed to be harder and far more enduring than any wood. Am I right?”

The young woman was standing on her stocking feet, staring through the window again. The Tanglelands were beginning to thin out and turn flat, stretches of empty dead ground between the occasional giant fungi. Now the brightest stars were visible through the window, twinkling and jumping as the worm slid along. Do-ane was standing close enough to Jopale to touch him, and she was taking quick shallow breaths, her face growing brighter even as the empty land around them turned blacker.

Jopale held his breath.

Then very quietly, his companion said, “The great fire,” and touched the plastic of the window with the tips of two fingers. Do-ane announced, “It is coming… !”