Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction

by Nalo Hopkinson

  Pascuala watched them approach. They did not look like the survivors of a car crash. Their clothes were clean and unrumpled, as though they had just stepped from their hotel and not stumbled along the rough verge of a road over unknown terrain. There were no cuts or bruises or wounds of any kind showing dark on their pale skin in the failing light. The hair of both man and woman was neat and shiny-clean, not dull with the dust that would have been kicked up during a car accident.

  Yes. Pascuala sighed.

  “I’m Russell Musgrove,” the man said when they stood before her. “This is my wife Janice.” The pair looked at one another as though they shared the most delightful secret, and Russell put his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

  Pascuala’s gnarled hand flew up to touch her lips. “You are newlyweds.”

  Janice smiled shyly. “We’re on our honeymoon.”

  Pascuala saw the young woman’s nostrils flare and her eyes slid past Pascuala, searching out the scent. “Oh, how lovely!” she exclaimed over the family altar within. “And the aroma is so enticing. I had no idea how hungry I was until now.”

  She took a step toward the pan de muertos and mangos and limes, the few confections shaped from alfeñique for the children who had not survived, and Pascuala’s special mole sauce, a favorite of Teodoro’s, all lovingly arranged amidst glowing tapers and flowers.

  Pascuala opened her mouth to speak, but Russell pulled Janice back to him and said, “That’s not for us.” Two lines puckered into existence between his brows and he looked to Pascuala. “It’s not, is it?”

  Poor souls, so far from home, they do not know yet, Pascuala thought, and lifted the gourd that hung beside the door. “This is for you,” she said.

  “I’m not sure what we should do now,” Russell said when they were done. He licked sweet papaya juice from his fingers. “Which way we should go — back to Cobá or on to your village? Is there someone with a car there?”

  “There is no car. And Cobá is not the place for you to go. Those who walk in that place would not welcome you.” She wanted to weep. I cannot send them away. They are so young, so lost; they don’t even know yet that they no longer belong here. But Teodoro — “Come inside. Someone will come soon to guide you.”

  She motioned them into the hut and indicated another stool placed near the altar and set the stool she had brought from the doorway down beside it. But when she started to kneel beside the firepit, Russell exclaimed, “No!” and returned her stool to her. He sat down cross-legged beside his wife’s place. They regarded one another for a moment, in the glow from the embers and the tapers on the altar. The penetrating fragrance of the copal incense was stronger inside.

  “Who are we waiting for?” Janice asked. “Is your family in the village? Will they be coming home soon?”

  “My sons and their families are in the village, at the churchyard, yes. But they cannot help you. We’re waiting for someone else.” Pascuala looked away from the woman’s bewildered blue gaze. Her eyes were drawn to the altar and she lifted a hand to adjust a flower. The hand looked like the paper bags protecting the candles in the compound, the skin brown and crinkled. I should be in their place, she thought.

  “Who are we waiting for?” Janice asked again.

  “My husband,” Pascuala whispered. She turned on her stool to face the doorway, and the stream of golden petals that fell away from it into the night. From the corner of her eye, she saw the couple exchange a glance before Janice spoke again.

  “Your husband is not at the churchyard?”

  “No. He … left a year and a half ago.” She kept her attention on the doorway. Had there been a flicker of movement out there in the darkness by the jungle fringe? She caught her breath and held it. What am I doing? a part of her whispered. I cannot bear to wait again, not another year! Send them away, let them find their own way, let someone else guide them, let Teodoro come to me, send them away!

  “How can your husband help us, if you don’t even know where he is?” Doubt thickened the man’s voice.

  The breath shuddered across her lips when she released it, and she had to blink rapidly. “I know where he is.”

  Pascuala heard the hard soles of his shoes scuff across the packed-earth floor as Russell rose. “Thank you for your help, but I think we should head for the village.”

  Pascuala sat very still on her stool. “Yes, go,” she wanted to say; “hurry, before it’s too dark to see your way.” Before Teodoro comes. He would come this night. She felt it in her heart. He must. I need him.

  They need him.

  She held up her hand. “Wait,” she croaked.

  “I really think—”

  She would give him to them this night. Next year, perhaps, she would sit before the altar, waiting not just for a moment with her dear Teodoro, but for his guidance to the other side. Pascuala closed her eyes. “Wait.”

  “Russ, look at her,” she heard Janice whisper. “Maybe we should stay a while, make sure she’s okay—”

  The jungle sighed.

  Pascuala gasped. “Shh, listen! They come!”

  The pair stood still, listening. Pascuala heard it again, that breath in the jungle, wafting over the myriad leaves. “Teodoro…” she whispered, and opened her eyes.

  The strewn marigold petals seemed to lift and take flight, bobbing and fluttering, weaving through the night toward the door of Pascuala’s house.

  “My God, look at them!” the young woman beside Pascuala exclaimed. “There are hundreds of them!”

  “Monarchs,” Russell supplied.

  Pascuala beamed up at him. “I knew he would return as a butterfly,” she said.

  The butterflies streamed from the jungle and gathered in a great golden cloud in the compound. A few broke from the flight and capered to hover tentatively before the dark doorways of the other huts before fluttering back to the group.

  “What are they doing here?” Janice asked.

  Pascuala shuffled to the doorway and stood with her hand on the worn wooden frame, the post smoothed and polished by generations of Ek hands. She lifted the other hand to the butterflies. She could feel the puckered parchment skin over her mouth stretched tight with a wide grin, but she didn’t care what the lost ones thought of that.

  “They’ve come for you,” she said to them, and beckoned the man and woman forward. “Go to them. They will take you where you need to go.”

  “Butterflies?” Russell’s voice came heavy with disbelief.

  “Not butterflies. The Ek are a very old family, and plentiful. Now go; they are waiting.”

  Russell Musgrove took his young wife’s hand in his and led her out into the compound. Monarch butterflies danced around them like flakes of gold in a current. The couple stood with their faces uplifted, glorying in the flight and the flash of bright wings.

  “Teodoro,” Pascuala murmured, “there is something more important for you to do this night. The turistas are lost and far from home and family of their own. Guide them safe to the other side. You are in my heart always, and I will wait for you next year, on Hanal Pixan.” She smiled still, but she could feel moisture tracking down the gullies in her cheeks.

  The erratic flight of the butterflies coalesced into a tall spiral. The dance of the insects quickened and tightened into a bright yellow tornado with the young couple at its center. The air sighed with the passage of hundreds of wings.

  Pascuala could no longer make out the figures of the young couple. They were engulfed in the flight of the butterflies and she wasn’t sure if the glint of gold was the woman Janice’s jewelry and hair or merely the glow of candlelight on butterfly wings.

  The sight blurred, and the old woman gripped the door frame to keep away vertigo. Faster and tighter the confetti kaleidoscope moved. Were those individual insects fluttering on the fringes, or was the whole fligh
t fading away?

  She could see the white marl of her son Juan’s house through the flight now, and the dark backdrop of the jungle. The young newlywed couple was gone. Soon the butterflies would be gone. Teodoro would be gone, and she would be alone again.

  Pascuala couldn’t help herself, she let a sob escape. “Teodoro, I miss you so,” she called softly.

  A chip of bright yellow fell away from the fading vortex. A lone butterfly trembled in the air of the compound, then fluttered toward her. Pascuala smiled and held out her hand. “Teodoro,” she whispered.

  The insect lit on the palm of her hand and rested there, its wings moving slowly up and down. Pascuala wept.

  The flight of the butterflies was no more than a pale smudge of colour now. The butterfly in Pascuala’s palm suddenly lifted and danced two circles around her head before flitting off to rejoin its fellows.

  And in that moment Pascuala heard her name, breathed in the flutter of a butterfly’s wings.

  Being Here

  by Claude Lalumière

  The night before, you and I had fought, and it had taken me forever to fall asleep. We didn’t make up then, and I still regret that. We’d argued about nothing and everything — the dishes, the vacuuming, the cat litter. A stupid fight. One in which none of the important things got said, in which all the real reasons for the tension between us were carefully avoided. Exasperated, you had turned your back to me; a snore interrupted me mid-sentence. Waking you up would only have made a bad situation worse. There was nothing I could have said at that moment that would have brought us closer. I let you sleep and tried to calm myself down.

  It was useless. I lay awake for hours, unable even to keep my eyes closed, until I fell from sheer exhaustion into an unrestful sleep.

  I woke up at dawn, as I always did. The clock on my bedside dresser told me it was not quite six yet. I usually took advantage of the time before I woke you up at eight to go running in the park. That morning, thinking I had a choice, I decided to be lazy and stay in bed. I knew the exercise would help snap me out of my funk, but I just couldn’t gather the energy to get up and start my day.

  After a few minutes, it occurred to me that in the morning I always needed to pee urgently. And yet there I was, feeling absolutely no pressure on my bladder.

  I wanted to enjoy a drowsy morning in bed, just rest and relax. But I couldn’t get comfortable. The blankets were so heavy.

  The clock read 7:12. The feeling of being trapped by the blankets was unbearable. I was getting tenser and angrier by the second. I couldn’t muster the strength to get up. I liked mornings, but already I was hating this one.

  The digital readout on the clock became my lifeline to sanity. That every minute a numeral changed filled me with a strange and pathetic reassurance.

  Still irritated from the previous night, I wanted to shout at you to stop snoring, but, with our fight still so fresh, I knew waking you up this early would only make things worse.

  Lying there, I was hypersensitive to noises I usually blanked out. The morning traffic, the creaking building, the shrill wind outside. I could make out what the neighbours were saying through the walls; they were calmly reading each other snippets from the morning paper. Everything was so loud.

  And the smell! The cat litter stank like we hadn’t changed it in months. Were we really that bad? The whole apartment reeked: the unwashed laundry, the sinkful of dirty dishes, the garbage. How could we have let things slide so much, I thought.

  Finally, it was eight o’clock; time to wake you.

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t push the blankets off me, I couldn’t reach over and touch you. I wasn’t paralyzed, though. I could move my neck, my face, and the top of my right shoulder — everything that wasn’t caught under the blankets. I tried to say your name over and over again, but no sound came out of my mouth. I thought: you’ll be late for work; you’ll be furious with me.

  And then the fact that I couldn’t speak hit me, hit me much harder than being trapped in bed. I panicked, losing track of time, unable even to think, until I heard you roar my name.

  But that was no roar, not really, only a mumble amplified by my hypersensitive hearing. You were finally waking up. The clock told me it was 10:34. You always mumbled my name when you were in that dozy state, rising from sleep to wakefulness. I loved that.

  You turned towards me — I’d never noticed before how pungent your morning breath was — and your eyes popped open. You were looking past me at the clock. You flung out of bed, screaming my name without looking at me, shouting abuse and insults because I didn’t wake you up in time. The noise and stress combined to give me the god of all headaches.

  When you got out of bed, the blankets moved enough so that my other shoulder was freed. But no more than that. I could move that shoulder again. Such frustrating relief.

  Ten minutes later, you stomped back into the bedroom — your skin moist from the shower — and, still angry, shouted, “Where the fuck are you?” You turned on the light, and it was too much for my eyes. I squeezed them shut to block out the searing brightness. I mean, I tried to. My face wasn’t paralyzed. I could feel my facial muscles react when I moved them — even my eyelids. But closing them didn’t stop the light. While putting your clothes on, you kept shouting at me like I wasn’t there.

  Before slamming the front door on your way out, you had let George in from the backyard. He jumped on the bed and walked all over me. His paws were like steel girders; the bed under me gave with his every step. After a minute or so of this, he zeroed in on my crotch and kneaded it mercilessly. Purring. My life was pain. At least you had turned off the lights.

  George stayed nestled on my crotch until you came back home after work. How much did he weigh? Eight pounds? Ten? Something like that. It felt like a bowling ball was crushing my pelvis.

  As soon as he heard you unlock the front door, he leapt off me. He meowed to be let out. You cooed at him and opened the back door. These noises were still too loud, but by this time, having had to cope with it for a whole day, I’d become somewhat used to my new found sensitivity. Even the light and smells, while still harsh, didn’t bother me as much. In general, the pain was getting duller — an irritation instead of an assault.

  After shutting the back door, you called my name. I tried to answer, but I still couldn’t manage to make any sound.

  I heard you pick up the phone, no doubt checking for messages. The phone hadn’t rung all day. I was thankful for that bit of silence.

  You swore and slammed the phone down. You turned on the TV and set the volume high. I braced myself for the pain, but I was adapting well — too well — to my condition. There was no discernible increase in my pain level.

  I heard you wander through the apartment, shuffling papers, opening doors. You returned to the living room and plunked yourself down on the couch. Over the sounds of a car advertisement, I could hear you sniffle and sob. Already, I missed you so much.

  You watched TV all evening, not bothering to eat. At 1:04 in the morning, you finally turned off the TV and walked into the bedroom. You looked miserable. You stared at me. In a tearful whine, you said, “Where are you?”

  Desperate, I tried to channel all my strength, all my energy into screaming that I was right there, but I still failed. Couldn’t you see me? It’s not like I was dead. If I were, there’d be a corpse, a body.

  And that’s when I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  I craned my neck to look down at myself, at where I felt my body squeezed into immobility by the blankets, and … and there was nothing there.

  I stayed awake that whole night.

  You fell asleep on your stomach, without taking your clothes off. You didn’t move all night, but you snored — of course, you snored. Your left arm fell across me and crushed my chest — the part of me that still felt like a chest —
until you woke up at 10:42 the next morning.

  It was only after your arm had been separating my upper self from my lower for several hours that I noticed that I was no longer breathing. When I thought about it, I was pretty sure that I hadn’t breathed since I’d woken up in this condition.

  Whatever that was.

  I listed the symptoms: I was invisible, even to myself; I didn’t get hungry; I didn’t need to pee; I didn’t get tired, but I felt a constant, numbing weakness; my senses were too acute for comfort; I wasn’t breathing; blankets were too heavy for me to lift.

  Like a list was going to explain everything, or anything.

  And where was my body? How could I feel so much physical pain if I didn’t have a body?

  You rolled on your back, away from me. I felt my rib cage pop back up. Did I still have a rib cage? I looked at where I felt my body to be, and there still wasn’t even the slightest hint of a shape. Was I even in there with you? Or was that sensation an illusion of some kind?

  I told you, silently, that I was sorry for everything, for being so distant, for so often only pretending to listen to you, for so often having some stupid thing to do when all you wanted was to enjoy spending time with me — and in the middle of my futile apology George sat on my face.

  You called in sick for the next two days. Minutes crawled by like weeks, sleepless days and nights like lifetimes.

  You called my office and a few of my friends, but I could tell from your voice the emotional price you were paying for doing this. You gave that up quickly.

  Couldn’t you see that all my clothes were still there? My keys by the bed? Couldn’t you feel that I was still there, longing for you?

  Your orbit consisted of the bed, the fridge, the couch, and the toilet. The centre of your universe was the TV.

  You stopped calling in sick. You just stayed home. When the phone rang, you ignored it.

  A week later, your sister used her spare key to come in when you failed to respond to the doorbell. At first she was furious, yelling at you to snap out of it. Eventually, you broke down and started crying. That mollified her.