by Starhawk
“It’s true,” said Lily. “Defense scouts brought us back the message two days ago.”
“What have we done?” Cress continued on. “Besides serve as their victims?”
“Some of us, acting without consensus, have blown their dams.” Lou from the Healers’ Council stood and faced Cress. “Without that, perhaps there might not have been so many casualties.”
“Without that,” Cress countered, “we might already have used up the reserves in our cisterns.”
“We’re getting away from process,” Salal said. She too looked weary and seemed to lack her usual sharp grasp on the meeting. Even her red hair had faded to a dull brown, its roots grown out. “If you want me to facilitate, you’ve got to wait and let me call on you. Does anybody have a proposal?”
“Defense does,” Lily said.
“What is it?”
“Marie, before she died, told the army that there was a power in this city they would never be able to conquer. Apparently to them that meant we have some sort of secret weapon. So they tortured Bird until he told them what it was.”
Maya grimaced. How can she say that so casually, so matter-of-factly? If it were her grandson …
“What did he tell them?” Salal asked.
“Why doesn’t he tell us what it is?” someone muttered at the back of the room.
“Process, please!” Salal said sharply.
Lily went on. “He told them our weapon was the dead. That if they killed any one of us, they would be haunted. Our proposal is that we make his words come true.”
“What do you mean?”
In the pause before Lily spoke, Maya thought she heard the beat of a drum.
“Defense proposes that we haunt the killers.”
“Has Defense been recruiting among the dead?” Cress asked. “Are you suggesting we hold séances?”
Several people around the room snickered. Lily continued, unperturbed. “I’m not proposing that we raise the dead. I’m suggesting that we try to face the killers with the consequences of their actions, make their victims real to them. That we follow them, tell them stories about the ones they have shot down, never leaving them alone but continuing to offer them a place at our table.”
“You’re insane,” Cress said.
“Won’t more people get killed?” Sachiko asked.
“Yes,” Lily said. “More people will die, in any case. But Cress is right about one thing—it is time now for us to become more active, more confrontational.”
“It might play on their fears,” Salal said thoughtfully. “If they believe what Bird told them, it might unnerve them enough to destroy their morale.”
“That may happen,” Lily conceded, “but it is not our primary objective. We must continue to reach for their humanity, to believe that within the worst of the murderers lies some spark of the fifth sacred thing. If we can reach that, we will find victory even in death.”
“You’re completely insane,” Cress said again. But after lengthy discussion, the Council adopted Lily’s proposal. Cress and his faction stood aside.
The woman dressed in white approached the soldier stationed in the Central Plaza. Yes, he was the one. She would never forget him, the cold look on his face as his hand raised the gun to her brother’s head. She approached him and looked him in the eye.
“My brother Jorge, that you killed yesterday, was a woodworker,” the woman said. “When I was little he made me the most beautiful toys.”
“Get out of my airspace,” the soldier said.
“He made me a toy dog that rolled on wheels; you could pull it with a string, and her head bobbed up and down. He got in trouble, though, because when Tía Anna asked him, ‘What are you making?’ he looked her right in the eye and said, ‘This is a bitch on wheels.’ ”
The woman’s eyes held tears, and the soldier shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “I said get away from me!”
“Jorge could never resist a joke. I feel so sad that I will never hear his laugh again.”
The soldier glanced behind him. “Look, lady, I didn’t want to kill your brother, okay? Sorry I had to do it. Didn’t have no choice about it.”
“But you did choose; it was your hand on the gun. You ended his life without ever knowing him or seeing his smile.”
“Him or me, lady. I don’t shoot, next stick down the line shoot me.”
“How do you know that? Is not that man, too, making his own choice? Maybe he too will choose to lay down his gun.”
“He won’t.”
“We can never escape from choice. Every act we take or don’t take. Every time we open our mouths or close our eyes.”
“Fuck you! Get the Jesus away from me! I never had no choice, okay? Never had no brothers or no sisters! Nobody made no toys for me. I was bred for the army; I do what the army tell me.”
“That is a terrible thing to do to a child. You have suffered. You are suffering now, in a new way. Because now you do have a choice to make. And I can see in your eyes that you understand this. It is the terrible gift you have come here to receive, and you will never be free of it again.”
The soldier patrolling the dam was a dark khaki-colored spot surrounded by moving figures in white. At first he pushed ruthlessly through the crowd, swinging his bayonet, but they followed him across the plaza.
“My son was a gardener,” Mrs. Hernandez said, holding out a basket of ripe tomatoes. “Take, eat the fruit of the man you killed.”
“Out of my way, lady.” He shoved her aside and turned, to encounter a small girl.
“My abuelo told good stories,” she said. “This is the story he told me about the woman in the mountain.…”
He turned abruptly away from her, only to encounter a tall man, who smiled and said, “My cousin liked baseball. Do you play sports? No one could touch him when it came to bat, even as old as he was—”
“I said get the fuck away from me!”
“Do you know how I felt, to see my son shot down, that bullet enter his head, that dear face I had washed so many times and watched as it grew and changed—”
“Shut up, lady!”
“Taste, taste these fruits so you will know what you destroyed!”
“Look, I was ordered to do it.”
“Choice is always possible. You chose to obey. And now we are here to teach you the meaning of your choice.”
“Clear the way!”
“Even now, there is choice. There is still a place set for you at our table, if you will join us.”
“I said clear the fucking way!” He swung his rifle butt wildly, and it smashed the child in the head. She began to cry, and someone picked her up and soothed her, while a woman stepped forward.
“My daughter, who you have just injured, is six years old. She likes to sing. From the time she was an infant, she moved to music. From the time she could stand, she tried to dance.”
“I’m warning you, get out of here or I’ll kill a few more of you.”
“Then others will come in our place, to show you the consequences of that choice. But still, let me tell you more about my brother—”
He turned and fled.
Whether it was the superstition of the soldiers or whether the stubborn dead of the city continued to fight on in their own way, tales of other hauntings multiplied. Lan was seen wandering through the barracks, looking for his executioner. Phantom children were heard crying in the square. Lights were seen at night crossing the broken bridges, moving over the gaps where spans had fallen. The soldiers began to whisper among themselves that what Bird had said was true. To kill a Witch meant to be forever haunted.
One by one, a slow trickle of deserters began to take refuge in the City’s houses.
“What’s his T-cell count?” Sam asked.
“Nothing wrong with the count,” Aviva said. “It’s the activity level that seems to be compromised. Cytokine production’s way down.”
They were meeting in the kitchen of Black Dragon House, which Sam had turned into a make
shift hospital. The first few deserters had been sent out of the City, up to the Delta where the Stewards’ army had not yet penetrated. But now that they were receiving a steady influx of soldiers, transportation had become a major problem. With the bridges down and no boats kept on the west side of the Bay, sneaking a soldier upriver required a major clandestine operation.
“Hmm,” Sam said. “That confirms what we suspected about how the boosters work.”
“By stimulating cell activity, rather than inducing replication,” Lou said.
“Damn, I wish we had access to our own labs,” Sam said.
“If we did, your friendly biochemists of the Toxics Council would brew you up something to compensate,” Nita said. She had returned the previous night to try to replenish supplies of certain chemicals they needed in the lab they had established upriver. Her wild hair was pulled back into braids, and it left her thin face exposed, vulnerable. “As it is, I don’t know how I’m going to get what we need. I guess the other approach would be to keep them in strict isolation until their immune systems recover and start to function normally.”
“If they recover,” Aviva said. She’d been chewing her lips, and they were red and chapped. “What if they don’t?”
“The body is resilient,” Lou said. “Already I’ve seen some improvement with acupuncture. The herbs help too. The problem is what they contract in the meantime. And we don’t have any facilities to keep growing numbers of men in sterile isolation. It’s hard enough to keep them hidden from the Patrols.”
“We’re starting to see flu, fungus, and thrush, and Goddess knows what all they’re incubating,” Aviva said.
Sam closed his eyes for a moment. His head felt too heavy, as if lead weights pulled at his jowls. “You know, I’m too old for this. I deserve a peaceful old age.”
“You’re worrying about Bird,” Aviva said. “You’re wearing yourself out.”
“We’re all worried,” Nita said.
“I’m worried about holding Maya down,” Sam said. “She wants to go haunt the General.”
“Just let her try,” Nita said grimly. “I’ll kill her. Then she can haunt anyone she likes.”
“Are you okay?” Bird asked Rosa. His guards had brought him to her cell, a windowless conference room with a locked door, for his daily visit. My reward for treachery, he told himself.
Rosa nodded. She looked worn and thin and deeply depressed, but Bird could see no marks on her, no bruises. Not that that meant anything.
“You sure, querida? Are they feeding you enough? Are they giving you water?”
She nodded again. She hadn’t spoken to him since the day he appeared in the uniform of the Stewards. Ah, well, at least she still had her integrity.
“They haven’t hurt you?” She shook her head.
I’m the one who’s hurt her, failed her.
“You could keep up with your piano practice, you know.” He tried to sound cheerful, hearty. “Of course, you’d have to imagine the piano. But you could work on the timing for that Mozart piece I taught you. You don’t want to have fallen way behind when this is over.”
She looked up at him with such contempt that he fell silent. Right. Betrayal is bad enough; I don’t have to compound it by being actively stupid. He nodded to his guards, but before he could leave the door opened and the General himself came in, followed by one of the guards Bird remembered from the torture sessions. A neural probe swung from his belt.
Shit. Oh, shit.
“We’re not getting results.” The General got straight to the point. “You’ve been sitting out in the Plaza for over a month now. Nobody’s taken any ration cards. You’ve been holding out on us.”
“No, no, I swear I haven’t. I’ve done the best I could.”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten the taste of the probe. Jordan, give him a shot.”
The pain lashed through him as if every one of his nerve endings were a separate whip. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming. Mierda, the fucker must have it dialed up to maximum.
“Maybe the girl needs a taste,” the General suggested.
“No,” Bird said, before he could stop himself. “You promised you’d leave her alone.”
“Give her a hit,” the General ordered. “Just so we can hear her squeal.”
Her scream rang through the room.
“You’ve got one more chance. Think about it. We listen to your tapes, boy. We know you haven’t done shit for days except sit there on your nigger ass. Oh, and by the way, who is Maya?”
Fuck you, Sam. Oh, fuck you, fuck you, for ever mentioning that name. “Yemaya? She’s the Goddess of the Ocean, the old African orisha.” This time the pain started low, barely perceptible, and built and built until he was shaking and sweating and against his will began to scream.
“You’ve barely begun to experience the full possibilities of this thing,” the General said, looking at the probe with admiration. “Jordan, go to work on the girl until this soulless little demonfucker stops trying to lie to us.”
He was going to have to lie, but he was going to have to find a lie they would believe, the lie that would save him, because the truth would not set him free. No, Rosa’s screams were unbearable but Maya’s would be just as bad. They would hurt her, and she was old and frail. Maybe she, at least, could die. Diosa, thousands of Witches in this city, why couldn’t anyone get them out of this? Shit.
Rosa, Rosa, I am sorry. I am going to have to talk, but I’ve got to wait a bit, they won’t believe me if it comes too quick, too easy, so I’m going to have to numb myself to your cries. That is not a girl’s voice I hear, it’s a gull’s shrill cry, it’s a badly played violin. Goddess, if only it would stop. My teeth ache from it. How long must I spin this out?
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” he said at last. Jordan pulled away from Rosa’s shivering body and brought the probe close to Bird again. “Maya is a demon, the chief demon of the City. If you send her a message, if you pay her with the blood of a living thing, a mouse or a rat, she’ll help you.”
Pain again, chords and harmonics and melodic runs.
“I am not your superstitious foot soldier,” the General said. “Don’t try to bullshit me. I want the truth. And I’m old enough to remember the days before the Stewardship came to power. There was a writer in these parts, one of the chief apologists for Satan. Name of Maya Greenwood, I believe. Is she the Maya in question?”
I could hold out longer, let them find out how much I could take again, let them torture Rosa into insanity, but for what? Because I know I’m going to tell them. He knows it too. Ohnine was right, it’s the first break that’s the hardest; after that it gets easier and easier to give in, more and more pointless to resist.
“Yeah,” Bird admitted. And now I’ve betrayed someone new, committed one more unthinkable act, taken one more step down the road to places I still can’t bear to imagine.
“What relation is she to you?”
“My grandmother.”
“And where is she?”
“Upriver,” he said in the same flat defeated tone in which he’d identified her. “We sent her off to the Forest Communities before this whole thing began.”
“So you have ways to get messages across the bay?”
“Homing pigeons,” Bird said. And there was an inspired idea, why hadn’t they thought of it for real?
“If she’s far away upriver, why were you so concerned to conceal her existence from me?”
“I was afraid. Afraid you’d seek her out and hurt her when you take the forests.”
“Ah, so you anticipate our victory, then?” The General smiled.
“How can you lose?” Bird replied.
“My wife was the mother of five children,” said the sad, stocky man in the Plaza. “I loved her dearly. Do you love someone? Can you imagine what it is like, to have her taken from you, to answer the cries of the children?”
The ghosts had come to the dry fountain where Bird kept his fruitless vigil, flanked by Ohnine a
nd Threetwo and a squad of others. Bird could tell Ohnine was in his most dangerous mood, his eyes narrow, his voice on edge. None of them were sleeping well these days. Night after night the barracks were wakened by cries of fear, bad dreams.
The figures in white closed in. Bird felt afraid. They were his former friends, his neighbors, but now they were separate from him, as if he or they were already dead.
They ignored Bird and converged on Ohnine. Bird recognized Rob Johnson and his kids, distant cousins of his own father’s kin. Nellie Johnson had been on the Water Council, and Ohnine, Bird knew, had been one of the executioners. Was it his own fault? Had he named her, caused her death? Wait, he wanted to call to the Johnsons, stop, don’t bait this man, not today, not right now. But none of the ghosts would meet his eye.
“I’m not fucking around with you, man. You have until I count three to get out of here, or you can follow your Witch wife to hell,” Ohnine said.
“Here are our children—”
The shot rang out as a red wound opened in Rob’s temple. He fell. The oldest Johnson boy stepped forward. He looked about fifteen, rangy and tall, his voice wavering only slightly. “My father was a good man. He loved us, and he knew how to fix anything—”
Ohnine shot the boy in the forehead. His younger sister stepped over his falling body. I should do something, Bird thought, but he was frozen, immobilized with horror.
“My brother always tried to protect me,” Iris Johnson said. “My mother and father loved us. Didn’t anyone ever love you? Does your mother know that you kill mothers?”
He killed her too. Her eight-year-old sister stepped forward, and Ohnine, now wild-eyed and out of control, shot her before she could speak. There was another girl, younger still, who held the hand of a fat two-year-old. She broke down, flinging herself down on her father’s body and crying, throwing only one reproachful look at the man who pointed his gun at her. Bird held his breath. Ohnine’s hand was trembling.
“There is still a place for you at our table, brother, if you will choose to join us.” An old man stepped forward. Ohnine swung his gun blindly, as a woman appeared behind him, and then another and another, on all sides, women and men and children, until Bird could hardly see Ohnine in their midst, all of them saying softly, “Now, even now there is a place for you.”