by Cally Black
‘Weku,’ one of the Crowpeople whistles at me.
Maybe it’s my name now. I bob my head like they do. Anything to keep this crowd of scary Crows from negging on me.
Some of the squad are dirty, bloody, some with burns and injuries. They’re in small groups, whistling, waving their claws. Weapons still slung at their sides. But some of them won’t be coming back here. That grenade the captain threw, the one that took some Crowpeople out. What if they think I caused that?
The lounge goes real quiet as I follow the Crows in. Heads turn. Pale eyes stare. Some from inside helmets but others from bare velvety faces, noses long, but shorter than the helmets, and rounded. Low whistles start up, growling at me, like they don’t want me here. Shoulders hitch, wings quiver, like maybe they’re getting ready to tear me to pieces. Tāmāde. I wanna run, but where? One of the Crows that carried me up holds out his wings, whistles loud, explains something maybe, and most of the Crowpeople bob their heads and stop their growling when he says, ‘Tootoopne.’
Quiet whistling starts up again around the room. The Crows give me a few side-eye looks but mostly go back to what they were doing.
A loud whistle from the back empties the room of noise again. Boots stomping is the only sound as a Crow surges from the back, straight at me, wings out and quivering, armour glinting. This one has wider hips than the others, and a helmet that’s skinnier at the nose. She’s a woman maybe? Don’t matter what she is, cos she’s so enormous, coming at me so fast, she’ll hit hard enough to push me off the landing!
Another Crowperson whistles at her. ‘Tweetoo!’
I lift my elbow, drop my head and squeal, ‘Tweetoo!’
It pulls her up. She bowls into me just enough to knock me down.
I’m on my hands and knees, the white floor in my face, with the pain of her hip armour hitting the side of my head. From here, there’s only one thing to do. The only thing that’s kept me alive.
Never mind my shaking knees, I stand and face Tweetoo. Her wings are high, quivering like she’s about to pounce. Her uniform’s streaked in red. Crow or human blood, I dunno. I lift my elbow again and duck my head. ‘Tweetoo,’ I say.
Nothing. I drop my elbow and look up. Tāmāde. Her pale green eyes, staring out from the shadows of her helmet, wanna slash me to bits.
I don’t dare move. I reckon they’re all crazy-mad at me like this Tweetoo Crow.
Then the Crow beside me steps in front of her, faces me and smacks his armour at the breastbone. He has a fatter helmet than the rest. He flew me up here.
‘Wooloo,’ he says.
I lift my elbow and salute. ‘Wooloo!’ This starts a thing where squad members call out their names for me to salute.
‘Telooloo! Tualoo! Wanoo! Teeka!’ I squeal. Tweetoo stares, eyes still shooting me down, never mind me imitating like a good pet.
Vomit crawls up my throat. I swallow and move away from Tweetoo, doing my trick. Showing I’m not worth killing. And I don’t know how I’m moving, anyway, my legs are weak as. Some kind of auto-pilot survival thing, maybe.
Wooloo brings me food and I perch, broken and lost, on the edge of a white couch. I poke at the strange green rubbery stuff in the bowl, watching the Crows and worrying about Gub. How he’ll be feeling twice let down by me not being there. How lonely he’ll be with no-one to cuddle him and rub his back. A jab in my thigh makes me pat my pocket. Headless is in there, so he don’t even have his toy to make him feel better. Poor Gub. I suck in a breath, swallow down the sting in my throat.
When Wooloo brings a bowl of water, I drink it all. It cools the burning in my throat a little.
The Crowpeople get back to whistling to each other and peeling their helmets and jackets off. Their heads are round and covered in the brown velvety fuzz. Their whole faces stick out just below their wide, forward-facing eyes. Not as far as the helmets made them seem. Just enough for a man to wrap his hand around, maybe. Still beak-shaped noses, but more like a long nose bone than a hard beak. Nostrils are flat halfway along, and their mouths and jaws are underneath. Weird as.
The thumping and whistling of the Crowpeople fades and I slump on the couch. It’s a shock crash, I know, but I can’t stop my eyes from closing. There’s no more fight in me.
A touch on my leg wakes me. It’s Tweetoo tying a cord to my ankle. I’m too gone to care.
WEKU?
I wake later, the next day maybe, to Crowpeople padding around the lounge. They side-eye me like I’m some mess nobody wants.
I sit up and rub the side of my head. It’s all lumps and bruises. I ache everywhere and I’m stiff as. Never mind, I’m alive. And Gub is too. He has to be. I can’t think of him any other way. I’d take any pain to keep him safe. Did he cry himself to sleep last night? Is he waking up whispering for me? Or Lazella? How long before help gets to him? How long before the tow ship arrives to salvage the Layla? I reach for Headless, wipe my wet eyes on my jacket shoulder.
Crowpeople stretch and groan.
A pair of battle boots stops next to me. Three talons at the front, and one on the rear of each boot. I stand, lift my elbow and look up into glaring green eyes. ‘Tweetoo,’ I whisper and duck my head.
Nothing, so I drop my elbow. She keeps staring, her eyes working their way down my body. My bare foot is dirty, scraped raw, caked in dried blood. My trousers are stiff and stained red. I swallow hard. Blink quick. I’m wearing my aunt from the knees down.
I stroke at her blood on my knees, then lift my hand. The blood is dry but red rings my fingernails and lines the joints of my fingers. Lazella’s. She’s still with me. ‘Oh,’ I whisper.
Tweetoo’s glaring at me like she wants me dead. I run. Get two steps before my left leg is jerked back by the cord and I smack into the floor.
I lie there, broken, sobbing. I can’t be here. I have to be with my Gub.
Tweetoo undoes the cord from the couch and uses it to drag me across the room. The cord gets tighter, cuts into my ankle bone. Other Crows whistle at her, but she don’t let up.
I squeal, grab at furniture and corners, but she yanks the cord so hard, my nails tear.
She drags me into a room, a row of holes in the floor, white spouts formed out of the walls above. The stupid arse could’ve asked if I wanted to wash! But then she pulls a knife from her belt.
I crawl back towards the door. ‘Tootoopne!’ I squeal. One of the other Crows has to know Tootoopne said I could live. Or did Tootoopne change his mind? Did he tell Tweetoo to slaughter me?
Tweetoo latches onto my jacket and slices it right up the back. She does the same to my T-shirt and they fall off. She stomps on the small of my back. I hit the floor. Suck for air. She levers my one boot off and throws it back towards the door. The cold knife touches my ankle and the blunt side runs the length of my leg and up to my waist, then down the other side. When she lets me up, my pants drop in a puddle on the floor. Tweetoo taps the wall and water flows from a spout above me. Blood spreads and swirls away from my trousers.
I snatch them up and hug them to my chest. My aunt’s not going down a dirty alien drain. I rub the trousers against my face. ‘Lazella!’ I cry. I’m rocking, hunched over the bloody trousers. The blood slides on my face. It’s on my arms and across my chest and thighs. This is the last of her. I can’t absorb her. I can’t keep her. The last of Lazella. When she’s gone, it’ll be the end of her. Forever.
She swirls off me and onto the floor. In lines, she bleeds and spreads her way to the drain. I try to gather her back, scooping the bloody water away from the drain, but I can’t. She’s leaving me. ‘Lazella,’ I whisper. ‘Lazella.’
I close my eyes, and she’s here, tapping on the shower door, cos she’s heard me start the shower again. ‘Tamara!’ she whispers. ‘I’m greasy as, and you’re using up my daily water!’ I shake my head, point to my ears and whisper, ‘What?’ Never mind she knows I heard fine, Lazella rolls her eyes, shakes her head and leaves me my extra minute of shower.
‘Weku?’ Twee
too whistles. I lift my head. She’s not angry. Something else. The door of the washroom is full of Crows staring, silent.
I stop crying. I stop rocking. I sit and stare at the drain. Now they’ll kill me. They’ll kill me for being weak and my blood will wash down this drain, and they’ll dump my drained pale body in the garbage.
Too quiet for Dios. Too small to work on a freighter. Too weak to get back to Gub. There’s no place for me.
Tweetoo gathers up my cut clothes, pulls the trousers from my hands. As they slip through my fingers something falls. Headless! I snatch him up and squeeze so hard, his legs and chewed-up neck stab into my palm. Gub, my little Gub, with no-one to pick him up, smooth the hair off his forehead. How can I get back to him?
PIECES OF ME
Tweetoo pushes a foaming brush at my hands. And when I don’t move, she scrubs my back and hair.
I take a deep breath. My legs shake so bad I can’t hardly stand, but I grab the brush from her and scrub at my hands and fingernails, at my knees and feet and face, until nothing that happened yesterday is still on me. Never mind all my grazes and bruises sting and ache, and add more blood to that alien drain, I scrub them hard as. Scrub deep, but I can’t get deep enough, cos none of them hurts as much as my heart hurts for Lazella.
I stand under the water and rinse the bubbles and tears away until Tweetoo shuts the water off.
Crowpeople still stand in the doorway like maybe they’ve never seen a naked human before. Wooloo brings a sheet and wraps me in it, undoes the cord from my ankle, and tows me back out to the lounge.
A Crow has a wing spread over a table while another stitches up a tear in it.
I stare as Wooloo leads me past. The Crow doing the stitching stops and stares back like I’m the freak. And maybe I am. First I’m facing down aliens shooting all around me, then I’m a sobbing snotty mess lying in a puddle.
I stand and stare, my body shaking like mad, never mind it’s warm as in here. Wooloo gives me a bowl of water, and I cling to it, the little dinosaur held tight in my palm.
On the other side of the table, a Crowperson sharpens a knife, long strokes scraping up a curved blade. I should be afraid. I should hate them. But maybe I’ve shut down feeling anything?
When I saw Lazella dead, I fell into some kind of aching darkness. Everything going on around me, but numbed by the ache, like it wasn’t even me. I try to remember me, but it’s like there’s a missing piece now that makes it impossible to put me back together.
Think. Think! I’m good with my hands, cos I was always rigging up ways to get the vents off, to climb and get around the ship, and stop fans so I could crawl through them without being chopped to bits. Moving quiet as, watching people, rigging things, that’s what I do. Survival skills on a freighter where I wasn’t meant to be. And now I’m here, where I’m really not meant to be. But I don’t know about survival here. I don’t know how to go on with pieces of me missing.
I hoist the sheet tighter around me and push my back against a warm column that reaches up to the roof like a tree. I watch the Crowpeople like I watched the freighter crew, and the Crowpeople watch me right back, like maybe they don’t know what to do with me. I’m not used to that. I’m the one who watches from the shadows. But now I’m in the light.
Watching, copying. That got me this far. That’s what I need to do. Cos if I can’t survive, I’ll never find my way back to little Gub.
TWA
(WATER)
‘Wooloo,’ I whistle, slow and clumsy, trying out the sound. His large velvety face turns my way. I point to the little bit of water left in my bowl. But maybe they don’t point with fingers or claws. Who knows?
I tap the bowl. I step towards him and tap his jacket where his curved breastbone sticks out. ‘Wooloo,’ I whistle.
He steps back, surprised maybe. But didn’t he tap his own chest last night, when he said his name? How am I gonna do this?
I tap my chest. ‘Weku.’ I tap the bowl again and look at him.
‘Twa,’ he whistles.
‘Twa,’ I whistle. My first try at whistling the word comes out almost silent, but he bobs.
I drink the rest of the water and hand the bowl to Wooloo. ‘Twa,’ I whistle louder, and he fills it again. I bob and take it. Then I walk around, wrapped in my sheet, tapping other things. Food and furniture and a pair of boots on the floor. Wooloo whistles out names and I try to repeat them, in a whistle, then a squeal, try to remember them. I have to learn this language fast if I want to stay alive.
Weapons propped against walls, or on benches, I don’t tap those. Tweetoo’s eyes follow me everywhere. Other squad members join in my tapping game like maybe it’s fun for them, but then they get busy cleaning up themselves and their weapons, boots and helmets.
I sit at the table, pull my feet and knees up into my sheet cocoon and twist Gub’s toy in my fingers, keeping my aching heart from showing, as the Crow who was stitching the wing moves on to a wound on a squad member’s arm.
Under their uniforms, Crowpeople are covered in fine, short hair. Dark and velvety. Sleek over bone, like the delicate skin of racing hounds. Which makes me understand why they wear the scary helmets. Muscles ripple from the centre of their breastbones back to their shoulders. Their strong upper arms are really short and angled upwards. The leathery wings are connected at the elbow and run along the long forearm until they get to where the wrist is. Then two long, jointed bones, like long fingers, branch down, supporting and controlling the wing. The rest of the wrist, free of wing, carries on, ending in three claws. All impossibly thin like they could snap easy as.
One Crow pulls on his black battle jacket over the complicated wings. The jackets do up under their arms and they’re heavily armoured across the breastbone and shoulders, with lumps and bumps like on crocodile’s backs in movies, but glistening, like a raven’s feathers. When the Crow’s done hauling it on, he slaps at the armoured wrist cuff and flexes his wings till his jacket settles on him. He looks invincible in that jacket.
The squad lines up by the landing, helmets on, weapons by their sides. Again they’re killer Crows. My breathing gets real fast at the sight of them. Tweetoo comes out of the washroom carrying the cord. She ties one end around my wrist and the other around the table leg, jerks it and walks off. They all plunge off the landing in single file, leaving me alone.
WHAT KEEPS ME SAFE
The cord is locked tight somehow. Like she’s set it, and it won’t loosen when I work at it. The more I pull, the tighter it gets. But Tweetoo don’t know me at all. I lie on my back under the table, brace my feet against the table top and shove it up, hard as. A crack starts at the top of the leg, close to where it spreads out to the table top. I shove again, force the crack open, jerk my hand up the leg, pull the cord out of the gap. When I let the table top drop back onto the leg, the crack repairs itself right away. I run my finger over where the crack was. Smooth as, but the tip of my finger tingles. Never mind I’ve bruised my hip bones on the floor, now I can go to the toilet without Crowpeople checking me out, at least.
I get some water and poke around a bit. I dunno what they’re gonna do with me. I need to find places to hide or escape. Knowing my way around, that’s what keeps me safe, and getting back to Gub can only happen if I can get off this crazy-arse ship.
There’s rooms off the main lounge, rooms with beds and other washrooms, a storeroom and pantry. No vents, no wet-walls. There’s not even water pipes. Never mind there must be some kind of tube inside the walls to carry the water in or carry the waste away, there’s no plumbing I can see, just spouts and holes made from the same white material as the walls. And the walls just breathe warm air through their pores. This place is not built at all like a freighter.
The squad left weapons behind. Some giant complicated guns and knives and strange blades. I don’t touch anything. They see something moved and I’ll be in deep with Tweetoo, for sure.
Even spending hours checking every surface in every room, I can’t
find any way out of these giant squad rooms except the way I came in. At the edge of the landing, I stare down into the hive.
There’s no leaving this place without a Crow to carry me.
The other end of the cord is now just a knot. It’s tightened itself so much there is no way I can get it back on the table leg. I stretch the ache in my back by lying on the couch thing, made of the same white stuff as the floor, but softer. It warms my back, makes me sleepy.
TEENOS WI KOOLOO
(BEANS AND ALGAE)
My arm jerks straight up and pulls me with it, waking me. The cord cuts into my wrist and I’m face to face with Tweetoo. Her long helmet in my face, green eyes blinking at me. She’s whistling like an engine from some old steampunk movie. Negging hard. I find my feet, slap the sleep from my eyes, lift my elbow. ‘Tweetoo!’ I say. Then I grab my sheet and pull it up as it slips away. She shakes the cord and the free-swinging knot slaps me in the face.
Tweetoo waves a claw at the weapons lying around, then at the kitchen area. Her wings quiver. I salute again but she yanks the cord hard to stop me. The cord gets tighter and tighter on my wrist.
I work at it with my other hand, trying to slide fingers in where it hurts most. Why’s she so mean?
She sees my fingers wrapped around something and pulls my corded hand towards her, digs at the dinosaur in my palm, but I won’t let it go. I won’t let her take my one thing I have left of Gub. She’s strong, and flicks it out onto the floor. I dive on it, wrap my fingers around Headless again. Squeal at her as I pull him to my chest.
She must’ve seen it was nothing dangerous but she gets her head down to my level and whistles right in my face like she’s asking me to shove her or hit her, like she wants me to start something she can finish for me.
More squad arrive and, never mind that they whistle at her, she keeps on shaking the cord. My hand is burning but I won’t let go of Headless.