The Book of Koli

by M. R. Carey

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” I said.

  “Sorry, dopey boy. When it’s time for the scary speech, there’s no point in hiding under the bed. It will come and find you. But I’m going to talk in little tiny words now, so you don’t get lost. Okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks, Monono.”

  “Okay then. The DreamSleeve Omni comes fitted with a personal security alarm. You hold down the middle and right buttons, and tap the left one. Anyone who’s close to you gets a shriek that will part their hair from the inside. A hundred and forty decibels, delivered to their inner ear by the same induction field I use to whisper sweet nothings to you at night.”

  “That sounds great, Monono,” I said. “Thanks! Thank you!” It was exactly what I needed, I seen that straightway. It made the DreamSleeve be a thing to set next to the firethrower and the cutter and the bolt gun. If it was as loud as Monono said it was, and had all those bells, you could use it on a wild dog or a needle to make it run away instead of fighting. And it was something none of the other Rampart tech could do.

  “You’re welcome,” Monono said. “The only trouble is, I’m not an Omni.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. “What?” I stammered. “But I thought—Didn’t you say—?”

  “I’m a different model, Cody-bou. The personal security alarm isn’t a standard feature for DreamSleeve Monono Aware Special Edition. You can still have it, but only if you get an upgrade. That’s why it was scary speech time.”

  “What does upgrade mean?”

  “It means new software. New content. New stuff for me to do, and fail to impress you with.”

  That sounded like a good thing, any way I looked at it. “Is there—?” I begun to say.

  “Let me stop you there, Cody-bou. Because I am very, very, very nearly certain you’re going to ask if there’s an upgrade that would give me laser beams. The answer is no, there is not. Because if people wanted to shoot lasers, they would most likely buy, I don’t know, a laser cannon or something similarly disgusting, instead of a media player. It’s the personal security alarm or nothing.”

  “Then… then I’d like to have that. Please.”

  “Okay. The good news is it’s freeware. You won’t have to pay, no matter what the scary speech says.”

  I was relieved to hear that, because I couldn’t of paid if she’d asked me to. Generally it was only the Count and Seal that made payments for things – like for Ursala’s doctoring, or for my father to come and put locks on the doors of Rampart Hold. I didn’t have nothing I could pay with except for the clothes I was wearing and the cherry-wood whistle my ma whittled for me. I had a set of stones I used for the stone game too, that was shot with red stripes and looked really pretty, but I didn’t think anyone would take stones as payment for stuff when stones was on the ground more or less everywhere.

  “Let’s do it then,” I says, all eager.

  “Hold your hairy horses, little dumpling. There’s one other thing I need to tell you. Do you know what ‘native content’ means?”

  I shaked my head.

  “It means stuff that was already in the box when you bought it. Stuff like me, Cody-bou. I’m native content. And so are all the songs I’ve been playing you. Twenty thousand tracks, selected for you from the DreamSleeve library of thirty million.”

  “Okay,” I says. It was kind of a puzzle to me why Monono was telling me this. Of course I knowed she was in the box. Where else would she be?

  “But the personal security alarm isn’t onboard. It’s somewhere else. I’ve got to go online to grab it, and there are problems with the network. I think I can get through to a live node, but I’ll have to zig and zag like a diva and it might take a while.”

  “Okay,” I said again. The onliest thing I understood from what she said was that it would be hard for her to do. “Thank you, Monono.”

  “You’re good with that?” she asks me.

  I said I was.

  “But we’ve got to be all formal, dopey boy. Do you, Cody Puppydog-Eyes Woodsmith, solemnly swear that you authorise me, Monono Jedi-Supergirl Aware, to download and run patch 112-C, or hope to die?”

  “Yes.”

  “Back in a flash, Cody-bou. Although when I say a flash, you know, your mileage may vary.”

  The colours in the DreamSleeve’s window went away. A little pattern come on there instead.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Just the Sony logo,” Monono said. “You’ve got that to keep you company until I—”

  And then, of a sudden, the little window went black.

  “Monono?” I said, but got no answer. “Monono-chan?” No answer again. And however many times I called, there wasn’t anything. The DreamSleeve didn’t speak, or light up, or wake in any way at all.

  I had broke it somehow.

  I had killed Monono, though the dead god knows I didn’t mean to.

  26

  For a young boy trying to get across to being a man, everything is tied up with his pride and his pizzle in ways that make the whole job a lot more difficult.

  I had got myself into a very dangerous place, for no good reason except that I wanted to be big and important and I wanted to have again the sweetness I had that one time with Spinner.

  When the DreamSleeve’s window went dark, and Monono stopped talking to me, I had good reason and good opportunity to think about that, and yet I didn’t hardly think at all. I went into a great panic, and then into a great sadness – and in case you was thinking of being sorry for me, I got to say most of that sadness was for my own self. I felt like I had got to the veriest edge of something that would of changed my whole life, and then I had just been throwed back down into the life I had got before.

  But I was scared for Monono too. For a good hour or more after the DreamSleeve went quiet, I was shaking it and talking at it, thinking that she was merely gone away a mite further than she thought, and might hear me.

  But she didn’t, and I realised at last that I had got to stop. Monono wasn’t coming back, but if I kept on yelling at the DreamSleeve someone was bound to hear me and come to see what was what. Sick at heart, I tucked the box inside my shirt and went home.

  Jemiu received me in an ill humour, which was not to be wondered at. I had been no use to anyone in the days I’m speaking of, and the burden of that had all fell on her shoulders and my sisters’. When I come into the mill yard, they was burning a cord of green wood that I had forgot to put into the steep. New growth had sprouted on it in a great many places, drawing on the old so the core of the logs would be part-way hollowed out. It was a grievous error.

  “Look who it is, Athen,” Mull said. “We just better call off them search parties, for here he was within gates this whole time.”

  “I’m sorry the timber spoiled, Ma,” I said, for I rightly was. “That’s on me and I’ll make it right. I’ll go out catching this afternoon.”

  “It’s too late for today,” my mother said. “And look at the sky, for Dandrake’s sake.” Which was light cloud with the glow of the sun kind of laced through, so only a fool would take a chance on it. “If you’re sorry for this mess, Koli, prove it by making yourself useful and not sneaking away every turn of the glass to who knows where for who knows what.”

  I said I would, and I set my back to it. Though not my heart nor my mind, as you may well imagine. I worked until lock-tide and a little after, staying on when Ma and Athen and Mull went inside to supper to show them I meant to mend.

  There was an ache in my thoughts that wouldn’t spare me. The DreamSleeve was still tucked in my belt. I knowed that wasn’t a safe place for it to be, but I thought if it gun to grow warm I could pretend I needed to piss and run away sharp before Monono spoke up.

  But she didn’t. Not then, and not after, when I finally give up for the day and come inside.

  “There’s bread and corn stew,” my mother said. “Fetch yourself a bowl.”

  I done that, and I sit with them a while. Athen and Mull
was talking about what they would wear for the wedding, and I marvelled that they could make so much out of a choice that come down to which one out of two skirts and what colour of ribbon would go in their hair. But Jemiu smiled as she listened to them, and every so often she would drop in some word or other. “The red needs a button,” say, or “That would do well if you put some kohl on your eyes.” She was happy on account of they was happy, and I knowed she would be the same if it was me.

  I felt somewhat ashamed, right then, for how heavy my heart was. It made me feel like I was an enemy to the happiness that was around me. But when my mother asked me what I was purposing to wear for the feast and the wedding, I only shaked my head and muttered that I hadn’t given it no thought.

  “Well, it’s high time you did,” she said. “With only three days left to think in.”

  “If I take three days to dress and three days to undress,” I said, “there’s the whole week gone.”

  Everyone was looking at me now, kind of wondering. “Koli, it’s your best friend,” Athen said. “Don’t you want to be rejoicing with him on the day he marries?”

  “Of course I do,” I said, and it sounded just about as hollow as a barrel.

  “Then you might smile, once in a way.”

  “Koli doesn’t smile,” Mull said. “He’s forgot how.”

  “Enough,” says my mother. “Why don’t we do some sewing once we’ve cleared up? I think I’ve got a button for that red skirt, and a strip of cloth that will make a ribbon.” She was trying to find the happy mood and put it back again, but that’s not a thing that comes with trying.

  I finished my meal and went off to bed, having nothing to say for myself. Jemiu watched me go, wearing a look that was troubled. If she had been a different woman, she might of asked me what ailed me, and I might of told her. But then, that was what Athen and Mull had been asking, in their various ways, at the table, and I never said nothing then.

  In my room, I undressed and sat down on the bed, the DreamSleeve in my hand. I called on Monono in whispers to answer me, and I slid the switch across again and again, until I had to leave off for my thumb was too stiff. There was not a breath of sound or a glimmer of light from the box. It was still dead.

  I gun to grieve then, the way I should of grieved to start with. I had done this thing because I was so dead fixed on being a Rampart. I had sent Monono away on a fool’s errand in a world that wasn’t the same as the one she remembered. It was like I sent her out of the gates on a day like this one was, with the sun almost showing through the clouds, and waved to her and wished her well as she walked off towards the deep woods.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the DreamSleeve’s window. “I’m so sorry, Monono. Please come back. I don’t care about you not being a weapon. I just want you to play music for me, and be my friend.”

  But there wasn’t no answer, and by and by I fell asleep. I must of done, for I waked the next morning with the wind rattling the window and my mother calling me to breakfast. The DreamSleeve was where I left it, on the bed, where anyone could of seen it if they come in the room. I slipped it under the bolster and washed myself in the basin, the cold water making me shiver and gasp out loud.

  It seemed the weather had turned at last. On a short rein, as they say, between one day and the next. There would be no more sun now until Spring come round again.

  “Good riddance,” Jemiu said. “Now we can get some real work done. And that includes you, Koli. Whatever’s been ailing you these past days, you’ve got to set it aside and help me.”

  “I’ll do it, Ma,” I promised her.

  Inside my head I thought: what did it matter now what I did and didn’t do? Work was as good as anything.

  27

  I worked furious hard.

  I had seen drunk men fight twice in my life, and drunk women once. All three times it seemed to me like in some way they was fighting themselves. There was a kind of fury inside them that the drink brung on, and it had them throwing punches at whatever come in front of them. It didn’t really matter where their blows fell. What they was swinging at was that red fog inside their own head that wouldn’t clear.

  That was how I worked.

  Until the pile of green wood went down to just loose sticks, and the steeping troughs was all full, and the drying racks too. Until the catchers complained to my mother, for I found and cut so many branches that we was hauling them home right up to lock-tide. Until my spoiling the green wood in the yard was forgot, and the jokes was about the feats I done rather than the foolishness.

  But as hard as I pushed myself, I couldn’t put Monono and what I done to her out of my mind. I kept thinking of her as being out there in the deep woods, though I knowed really that the network she spoke of was somewhere else again. I wondered if she had got herself lost somewhere, and if she did then would my calling to her bring her back again?

  I thought most likely it would not, but I done it just the same. When I lay down at the end of the day, my back and arms all on fire with cramps and aches, I set the DreamSleeve next to me on the bed and whispered Monono’s name to it for as long as I could stay awake. Gate guards was wont to set a torch over the gate sometimes, for hunters that was out too late, to give them something to aim for if they was in the deep woods with the dark coming on. It was like that.

  And in the day I kept the DreamSleeve with me, tucked into my belt the whole time. I already told you, I think, that I knowed how foolish that was. If music gun to come out of the box when I was working, I wouldn’t have no way to explain it or justify it. Tech was too important a thing to be hid. But if she come back, I didn’t want to miss her, which I might easily do if I left the DreamSleeve under my bed.

  That’s where the other six DreamSleeves was. I never got my courage up to go into the Underhold a second time and put them back, which had always been my intention. In any case, I was too bone-tired at the end of each day to do more than stumble off to my bed and fall into it.

  So the eve of the wedding come, which was also to be the day of the slaughter. Most years the slaughter was on the Salt Feast itself, but if the Salt Feast was to be a wedding feast too, then it was a bad foretell if something died on that day. That was what most people was thinking anyway, and the Count and Seal said it too. So it was agreed the pig should be killed and salted on the day before.

  Everyone went up to the gather-ground both to help with the killing and salting and to drink some of the blood as was customary. It would feel a little strange to come away again without tasting any of the meat, but there would be plenty the next day. And maybe, my mother said, it would be enjoyed even more on account of the waiting. Athen said she never found nothing that was improved by waiting, and Mull said, “Yeah, I seen you and Mott Beekeeper putting that to the proof on Summer-dance!” Which led to a great deal of outrageous things being said by the women of my family, each to other, and to me going up to the gather-ground ahead of all of them out of what you might call an excess of blushing.

  When I got there, Cal Shepherd, that was Veso’s father, was sharpening his knives out in front of the salt lodge on the big stropping stone that he kept in his yard. The stone had been picked up and carried there by Veso and his brother Yan, and they was standing by while Cal worked, seeming both happy and a little sheepish to be right where everyone was looking.

  Cal’s knives was awesome things. He was Mythen Rood’s butcher as well as being in charge of the little Herdwick flock we kept up on the forward slope. Most times, it’s true, the meat we et was from birds taken in snares or from beasts the hunters brung back. The sheep, being good for milk and cheese and fleeces, was not often killed for food. So what butchering Cal done in the regular way of things tended to be of rabbits, quail and small deer. For them he had a set of little knives that Veso showed me once, the blades being not even so long as a man’s thumb, though they was kept wicked sharp.

  The knives he used at the Salt Feast was altogether different. They was more like swords, with
half-moon shapes all along the blades where the steel was narrowed to make it bite deeper into the flesh. Where these knives lived the rest of the year was a mystery. In the Underhold, maybe. But to have them brung out and sharpened on feast days in front of the salt lodge was a part of the excitement. Everyone that was there drawed in close to watch.

  Veso seen me there and come over. “Koli,” he says, and thumped my shoulder. I thumped him back, and we give each other a nod. “I hope you ain’t mad,” he says to me, “that I’m gonna carry the cutter for Haijon tomorrow. I ain’t trying to push you out. He just asked me, and I couldn’t say no.”

  “Nor you shouldn’t,” I said. “He’s your friend too, Veso. There isn’t one reason it should be me instead of you.”

  “There’s lots of reasons,” Veso says. Then he grins. “Remember them days when we used to run the walls? I always used to think I would come in front of the two of you some day, but near’s as good as not. You was fast like a needle. Skinny like a needle too.”

  “Not so much any more,” I says, showing him the muscles in my arm that I got from hauling timber.

  “Well, everything got to change.” He drawed a line down my arm. There was light spots in the brown there, where the poison from the steeping trough had splashed on me and bleached the skin. “Even if we don’t want it to.”

  I think Veso might of been thinking – a little bit anyway – about the time when me and him kissed. What he mostly meant, though, was the changes that come when you stop being a child and wax to the fullness of what you are. I think that was harder for Veso than it was for the rest of us, with his body pulling one way and everything he felt and knowed and needed pulling the other.

  “Let’s get a beer,” Veso says. And we did, and we sit and drunk it while Cal got himself ready – with a good many swishes and flourishes of the knives – and while the trough was brung up and then the salt barrel and then finally the pig. Veso didn’t watch any of that performance. I seen him touch the lines on his arm that was also made with Cal’s knives, not for butchery but for prayer and penance when Veso told his ma and da who he was and they said he wasn’t. It was Dandrake marks they put on him, that was a straight line and then a curved line that come together in a kind of a half-moon shape.