IGMS Issue 49

by IGMS

  She reached into her pannier and handed me a stone fruit. Her gold eyes softened with worry. "Soon." The fruit felt cold in my hand. "I need to know you are all safe. I can't fly without knowing. You'll be free to choose your path soon enough."

  After the wingtest. Until then, I was a dependent, bound by her rules, not just tower strictures and city Laws.

  "Let me come out to watch you go, then. I'll use the scope. I won't fly."

  She frowned, but we were bartering now. Her favorite type of conversation.

  "Not outside. You can use the scope inside. When I return, we'll fly some of my route around the city, as practice." She saw my frustration. "Promise me you'll keep inside? No visiting? No sending whipperlings? We cannot lose another bird."

  "For how long?" A mistake. My question broke at the end with the kind of whine that hadn't slipped out in years. My advantage dissipated like smoke.

  Nat, on Ezarit's other side, pretended he wasn't listening. He knew me too well. That made it worse.

  "They will go when they go." She winced as sounds of Mondarath's mourning wafted through the shutters. Peering out again, she searched for the rest of her escort. "Listen for the horns. If Mondarath sounds again, or if Viit goes, stay away from the balconies."

  She looked over her shoulder at me until I nodded, and Nat too.

  She smiled at him, then turned and wrapped her arms around me. "That's my girl."

  I would have closed my eyes and rested my head against the warmth of her chest if I'd thought there was time. Ezarit was like a small bird, always rushing. I took a breath, and she pulled away, back to the sky. Another guard joined the first on the balcony, wearing faded yellow wings.

  I checked Ezarit's wings once more. The fine seams. The sturdy battens. They'd worn in well: no fraying, despite the hours she'd flown in them. She'd traded five bolts of raw silk from Naza tower to the Viit wingmaker for these, and another three for mine. Expensive but worth it. The wingmaker was the best in the north. Even Singers said so.

  Furled, her wings were a tea-colored brown, but a stylized kestrel hid within the folds. The wingmaker had used tea and vegetable dyes -- whatever he could get -- to make the rippling sepia pattern.

  My own new wings leaned against the central wall by our sleeping area, still wrapped. Waiting for the skies to clear. My fingers itched to pull the straps over my shoulders and unfurl the whorls of yellow and green.

  Ezarit cloaked herself in tea-colored quilted silks to protect against the chill winds. They tied over her shoulders, around her trim waist and at her thighs and ankles. She spat on her lenses, her dearest treasure, and rubbed them clean. Then she let them hang around her neck. Her tawny cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and she looked, now that she was determined to go, younger and lighter than yesterday. She was beautiful when she was ready to fly.

  "It won't be long," she said. "Last migration through the northwest quadrant lasted one day."

  Our quadrant had been spared for my seventeen years. Many in the city would say our luck had held far too long while others suffered. Still, my father had left to make a trade during a migration and did not return. Ezarit took his trade routes as soon as I was old enough to leave with Elna.

  "How can you be sure?" I asked.

  Elna patted my shoulder, and I jumped. "All will be well, Kirit. Your mother helps the city."

  "And," Ezarit said, "if I am successful, we will have more good fortune to celebrate."

  I saw the gleam in her eye. She thought of the towers in the west, the wealthier quadrants. Densira had scorned us as unlucky after my father disappeared, family and neighbors both. The aunts scorned her no longer, as they enjoyed the benefits of her success. Even last night, neighbors had badgered Ezarit to carry trade parcels for them to the west. She'd agreed, showing respect for family and tower. Now she smiled. "Perhaps we won't be Ezarit and Kirit Densira for long."

  A third guard clattered to a landing on the balcony, and Ezarit signaled she was ready. The tower marks on the guards' wings were from Naza. Out of the migration path; known for good hunters with sharp eyes. No wonder Nat stared at them as if he would trade places in a heartbeat.

  As Ezarit's words sank in, he frowned. "What's wrong with Densira?"

  "Nothing's wrong with Densira," Elna said, reaching around Ezarit to ruffle Nat's hair. She turned her eyes to the balcony, squinting. "Especially since Ezarit has made this blessed tower two tiers higher."

  Nat sniffed, loudly. "This tier's pretty nice, even if it reeks of brand-new."

  My face grew warm. The tier did smell of newly grown bone. The central core was still damp to the touch.

  Still, I held my chin high and moved to my mother's side.

  Not that long ago, Nat and I had been inseparable. Practically wing-siblings. Elna was my second mother. My mother, Nat's hero. We'd taken first flights together. Practiced rolls and glides. Sung together, memorizing the towers, all the Laws. Since our move, I'd seen him practicing with other flightmates. Dojha with her superb dives. Sidra, who had the perfect voice for Laws and already wore glorious, brand-new wings. Whose father, the tower councilman, had called my mother a liar more than once after we moved uptower, above their tier.

  I swallowed hard. Nat, Elna, and I would be together in my still-new home until Ezarit returned. Like old times, almost.

  In the air beyond the balcony, a fourth figure appeared. He glided a waiting circle. Wings shimmered dove gray. Bands of blue at the tips. A Singer.

  A moment of the old childhood fear struck me, and I saw Nat pale as well. Singers sometimes took young tower children to the Spire. It was a great honor. But the children who went didn't return until they were grown. And when they came back, it was as gray-robed strangers, scarred and tattooed and sworn to protect the city.

  The guards seemed to relax. The green-winged guard nudged his nearest companion, "Heard tell no Singer's ever been attacked by a skymouth." The other guards murmured agreement. One cracked his knuckles. Our Magister for flight and Laws had said the same thing. No one ever said whether those who flew with Singers had the same luck, but the guards seemed to think so.

  I hoped it was true.

  Ezarit signaled to the guards, who assembled in the air near the Singer. She smiled at Elna and hugged her. "Glad you are here."

  "Be careful, Ezarit," Elna whispered back. "Speed to your wings."

  Ezarit winked at Nat, then looked out at the sky. She nodded to the Singer. Ready. She gave me a fierce hug and a kiss. "Stay safe, Kirit."

  Then she pushed the shutters wide, unfurled her wings, and leapt from the balcony into the circle of guards waiting for her with bows drawn.

  The Singer broke from their formation first, dipping low behind Wirra. I watched from the threshold between our quarters and the balcony until the rest were motes against the otherwise empty sky. Their flight turned west, and disappeared around Densira's broad curve.

  For the moment, even Mondarath was still.

  Nat moved to pull the shutters closed, but I blocked the way. I wanted to keep watching the sky.

  "Kirit, it's Laws," he said, yanking my sleeve. I jerked my arm from his fingers and stepped farther onto the balcony.

  "You go inside," I said to the sky. I heard the shutter slam behind me. I'd broken my promise and was going against Laws, but I felt certain that if I took my eyes off the sky, something would happen to Ezarit and her guards.

  We'd seen signs of the skymouth migration two days ago. House birds had molted. Silk spiders hid their young. Densira prepared. Watchmen sent black-feathered kaviks to all the tiers. They cackled and shat on the balconies while families read the bone chips they carried.

  Attempting to postpone her flight, Ezarit had sent a whipperling to her trading partners in the south and west. They'd replied quickly, "We are not in the migration path." "We can sell our honey elsewhere." There would be none left to mix with Mondarath's herbs for the southeast's medicines.

  She made ready. Would not listen to argumen
ts. Sent for Elna early, then helped me strip the balcony.

  Mondarath, unlike its neighbors, paid little mind to preparations. The skymouth migration hadn't passed our way for years, they'd said. They didn't take their fruit in. They left their clotheslines and the red banners for Allmoons flapping.

  Around me now, our garden was reduced to branches and leaves. Over the low bone outcrop that marked Aunt Bisset's balcony, I saw a glimmer. A bored cousin with a scope, probably. The wind took my hair and tugged the loose tendrils. I leaned out to catch one more glimpse of Ezarit as she passed beyond the tower's curve.

  The noise from Mondarath had eased, and the balconies were empty on the towers all around us. I felt both entirely alone and as if the eyes of the city were on me.

  I lifted my chin and smiled, letting everyone behind their shutters know I wasn't afraid, when they were. I panned with our scope, searching the sky. A watchman. A guardian.

  And I saw it. It tore at my aunt's gnarled trees, then shook loose the ladder down to Nat's. It came straight at me fast and sure: a red rip in the sky, sharp beak edges toothed with ridge upon ridge of glass teeth. Limbs flowed forward like thick tongues.

  I dropped the scope.

  The mouth opened wider, full of stench and blood.

  I felt the rush of air and heard the beat of surging wings, and I screamed. It was a child's scream, not a woman's. I knew I would die in that moment, with tears staining my tunic and that scream soiling my mouth. I heard the bone horns of our tower's watch sound the alarm: We were unlucky once more.

  My scream expanded, tore at my throat, my teeth.

  The skymouth stopped in its tracks. It hovered there, red and gaping. I saw the glittering teeth and, for a moment, its eyes, large and side-set to let its mouth open even wider. Its breath huffed thick and foul across my face, but it didn't cross the last distance between us. My heart had stopped with fear, but the scream kept on. It spilled from me, softening. As the scream died, the skymouth seemed to move again.

  So I hauled in a deep breath through my nose, like we were taught to sing for Allmoons, and I kept screaming.

  The skymouth backed up. It closed its jaws. It disappeared into the sky, and soon I saw a distant ripple, headed away from the city.

  I tried to laugh, but the sound stuck in my chest and strangled me. Then my eyes betrayed me. Darkness overtook the edges of my vision, and white, wavy lines cut across everything I saw. The hard slats of the shutters counted the bones of my spine as I slid down and came to rest on the balcony floor.

  My breathing was too loud in my ears. It roared.

  Clouds. I'd shouted down a skymouth and would still die blue-lipped outside my own home? I did not want to die.

  Behind me, Nat battered at the shutters. He couldn't open them, I realized groggily, because my body blocked the door.

  Cold crept up on me. My fingers prickled, then numbed. I fought my eyelids, but they won, falling closed against the blur that my vision had become.

  I thought for a moment I was flying with my mother, far beyond the city. Everything was so blue.

  Hands slid under my back and legs. Someone lifted me. The shutters squealed open.

  Dishes swept from our table hit the floor and rolled. Lips pressed warm against mine, catching my frozen breath. The rhythm of in and out came back. I heard my name.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw the Singer's gray robes first, then the silver lines of his tattoos. His green eyes. The dark hairs in his hawk nose. Behind him, Elna wept and whispered, "On your wings, Singer. Mercy on your wings."

  He straightened and turned from me. I heard his voice for the first time, stern and deep, telling Elna, "This is a Singer concern. You will not interfere."

  At the Picture Show: Extended Cut

  by Chris Bellamy

  * * *

  Accept the mystery

  On 'The Leftovers' and our often-misguided quest for answers

  There's a lot to be said for not knowing.

  In both life and art (to whatever extent the two can be separated), it's in our nature to search for, even demand, answers. In both cases, I'm not so sure it's in our best interest to actually find them. The reductive way to put this is that answers, in and of themselves, are meaningless. Or, if not meaningless, then certainly much more limited in their capacity to illuminate than we seem to give them credit for.

  For the sake of this argument, let's narrow the art down just to cinema and television, mediums with a historically tricky relationship with the distinction between answers and meaning, and the unnecessary conflation of the two. Here, we commonly think of answers in terms of plot resolutions and character motivations. But direct answers like that are inherently inadequate. The crime was solved, the item was found, this or that team won, the couple did or did not get together. So what. Movies and TV shows (individual episodes and longer, serialized arcs alike), by default, have a way of organizing their ideas in such a way that reduces them to a simple answer to a question or a simple solution to a problem. There's something intrinsically false about the tidy way they tend to wrap things up - which isn't necessarily a negative, just an observation. In any case, the best ones use those answers in service of a greater, more interesting end; for lesser ones, the direct answer is the point. And for many, that's enough. They followed a story and found out what happened at the end of it. Fine.

  But ultimately, that doesn't really get it done, does it? No solved case or resolved plot can get to the bottom of anything. It's the search for answers - the thinking, the questioning, the speculating, the philosophizing - that's ultimately meaningful. The journey rather than the destination, to paraphrase the old cliche.

  Few pieces of storytelling have understood - even embraced, in a sort of backwards way - this dichotomy better or more profoundly than HBO's The Leftovers, which recently concluded its second season and affirmed its status as probably the best drama on television. (Especially now that Hannibal and The Knick may be over.) This is a show fundamentally built on a premise that begs to be explained: Two percent of the world's population instantaneously disappears without a trace. In most incarnations, that would be the starting point for a long-running mystery. The show would revolve around it. Every character would be trying to answer it. We'd spend episode after episode uncovering - and discarding - clues to it, and eventually working our way toward an explanation that, let's face it, would satisfy very few.

  The version of the show we got instead is the exact opposite. Not only has the show, through two seasons (with one left to come), refused to explain what "caused" the Sudden Departure, but co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta (upon whose novel the show is based) have made it clear they have no intention of doing so. This runs so contrary to how many consume fiction - especially serialized television - that the show's existence is practically a miracle. But its greatness underscores the utter flimsiness that any other approach to this story would provide. If Lindelof and Perrotta had decided to provide an answer for us - to reveal what exactly happened that day - it would ultimately be little more than trivia.

  To be clear, The Leftovers - which begins three years after the event took place - is not simply trying to be mischievous or confrontationally withholding; it simply finds (correctly) much greater truth in everything but the "answer" to this particular mystery. The Departure is, for all intents and purposes, a MacGuffin. Instead of treating it like a puzzle and trying to solve it, the show focuses on characters - some who lost loved ones in the Departure, some who didn't - existing in a world in which the inexplicable has happened. Without the requirement for, or expectation of, a definitive answer, the show becomes entirely about the search for meaning, or order, or purpose; about the big questions we ask in the face of tragedy or loss, ambiguous or otherwise; about the lengths and depths we will go in order to understand. Or, as the case may be, control, or atone, or recover, or forget, or remember.

  While the show itself has resisted the need for hard answers, it embraces the human need
to search for them anyway. Both seasons are filled with details and subplots about new religions and philosophies and scientific theories that have sprung up as a result of the Departure, and designed to find a reason for it all. In season two, for example, one team of researchers seems convinced that it's a matter of geography, and that the supposed anomaly stands a good chance of occurring once again.

  Most prominent, though, is the cult-like Guilty Remnant, a group of silent, chain-smoking pests dressed all in white, who present themselves as "living reminders" of the Sudden Departure. Their presence and their behavior throughout the series has been chilling and vile, but they've certainly made a sort of point - to us and to everyone they so smugly, placidly confront with their very presence.

  Despite the aberrant actions the group takes, the show doesn't simply let them become one-dimensional villains - there's too much empathy for the very human reasons the group and its methods sprouted in the first place. Even in season two, when we see former Remnant members leaving the group, their "rehabilitation" doesn't really take unless, and until, it's replaced by something else. Some other belief system. Something that fills that void, that provides the kind of purpose and direction they sought in the aftermath of the Departure. (In this case, it's one character falsely co-opting the supposed "miracle" of a faith-healer - Holy Wayne - who appeared throughout season one.)

  The Leftovers is as naked a testament to the human experience as anything I've seen on television, and it's largely because of the way it reflects - through, and in response to, a genre conceit - realities about the way we make meaning of our lives, particularly in the face of what we cannot ever truly understand or process. The characters on the show suffer sudden, instant and unexplained loss - but all of us similarly experience loss, and even though we typically have more explicit knowledge about what happened - and when, and how - that does not make it any easier to understand or reconcile. There is no ultimate answer or reason that we can ever unequivocally know; sooner or later that's the conclusion that confronts us. And if we don't get any kind of conclusive answer in life, why should any fictional character?