by CJ Brightley
I cast around for words.
“I guess I know what to use my wish on, then.”
“Use all three,” Marcela said. “It can’t hurt to try.”
October 14 (from the Mobile Press-Register)
* * *
Small community, big thank you
By Justin Landau
* * *
The residents of the tiny offshore community of Mermaid’s Hands issued a public thank-you to an unusual benefactor yesterday. After Hurricane Helga wiped out the collection of 10 houses last month, state officials, spurred by complaints from coastal fishermen and conservationists, issued an injunction against rebuilding in their controversial location on the tidal mudflats off the coast of Sandy Neck and the Sunset Bay Conservation Area.
Then came intervention from the other side of the globe, in the form of a speech by Kayamanira (Kaya) Matarayi, a separatist leader from the Southeast Asian nation of W—. Kaya mentioned the plight of the people of Mermaid’s Hands in connection with the situation of her own people, W—‘s mountain minority.
Her remarks brought Mermaid’s Hands to the attention of Minorities Mobilize, whose advocacy has been credited in the state’s change of position on the village.
“We’ve already thanked our friends at Minorities Mobilize,” said Mr. Brett Tiptoe, the community’s spokesperson. “Now we want to thank Kaya.”
The children of Mermaid’s Hands donned special T-shirts with letters on them to spell out a thank-you message. [photo]
But how did someone on the other side of the globe come to know about a community that almost none have ever heard of, even here on the Gulf Coast? Apparently through correspondence with one young resident of Mermaid’s Hands, Emlee Baptiste (12), who has been writing to Kaya since July. While the US government has not taken an official position on the ethnic conflict in W—, Emlee is understandably supportive of her friend.
“I want to visit her one day,” Emlee said. “I’d visit her tomorrow if I could. I hope she’s okay.”
There has been no news out of W— about Kaya for several weeks. It is not even clear whether she is still occupying the volcano temple where she was originally held or has been moved to a different location. The level of the lava lake in Abenanyi’s crater has been rising steadily, and volcanologists say the volcano is likely to erupt within the next month.
13
Without Friends or Family
October 5 (Kaya’s journal)
A supply helicopter came today. It’s been fifteen days. The clouds from the Ruby Lake are not much changed from yesterday and the day before, so I’m grateful to the powers that be that they decided today was a day they could risk a flight. My water ran out yesterday. Two from the State Security Service came as well, the Bully and a new one, not Friendlier. A shorter man with an angry pout and frightened eyes. They stood between me and the replacement water tank.
“Are you in contact with the insurgency?” the Bully asked abruptly.
I spread my arms. Nothing of the outside world was visible beyond the cloud towers rising from the Ruby Lake. No outside sounds reached our ears, only the Ruby Lake’s own unquiet voice and the slowing blades of the helicopter.
“How?” I asked, glad that Sumi wasn’t around to catch their eye and give them ideas. Though, what if she returned while they were here—worse, returned with a message? My pulse pounded in my ears.
“Three of the people we brought in for questioning after the Jarakasan Lake disaster said the directive to plant the rebel flag by the lake came from you.”
“Did you know what was going to happen at the lake?” Pouty asked, his voice every bit as petulant and aggrieved as his lower lip suggested it would be.
“You wouldn’t like my answer,” I replied, but in the mountain tongue.
“Speak properly,” snapped the Bully, and it was foolish of me to taunt him by saying “this is properly,” still in the mountain tongue, because I was not fast enough to avoid his quick hand today. This time he grabbed my wrist and twisted my arm, making me stumble and, to my shame, cry out.
“Speak properly, or next time we’ll bring one of the local brats along to translate for you, and you wouldn’t want that.”
“You know my circumstances. You put me here. You know every object that’s in that house.” The pounding of the blood in my ears, my eyes. I was seeing red, Ruby Lake red. “But if I could pass a message along, it would be to plant flags everywhere within the Lady’s reach.”
“Anything in there that could be used for signaling?” Pouty asked, addressing the Bully, not me. The Bully released my wrist and strode past me and into the house, leaving Pouty behind, hand resting on his pistol, as if he were afraid I might charge him.
“He thinks you know when and where eruptions are going to happen,” Pouty said, pointing with his elbow at the pilot.
“I’m not a volcanologist,” I said.
Pouty glanced past the platform railing at the Ruby Lake. “It’s been letting off steam up to now, but the whole thing’s going to blow one day soon,” he said, grinning slightly.
“Even a botanist can predict that much,” I replied. Pouty’s grin widened.
“And yet here you sit. Getting pretty warm, eh?”
I looked away. The Bully was returning, carrying the metal cup, plate, and bowl I’d been provided with when I was brought here. He held up the plate, which winked in a stray beam of hazy sunlight.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “A tiny pinprick of light like that can’t pierce these clouds.”
Could it? The plate was stainless steel; it had a high shine. Could I have been sending messages with flashes of light to watchers on the crater’s edge, if I had thought to do so?
“Are you in contact with the insurgency?” the Bully asked again.
“I’m not sending messages with my dinner plate, no.”
From overhead, the sound of wingbeats on the air. Not now! I prayed, but I couldn’t stop myself from glancing skyward. It wasn’t Sumi. It was two cuckooshrikes, already disappearing from view. My eyes returned to the Bully. He was smiling.
“That pet of yours. The crow. That’s how you’ve been communicating,” he said triumphantly.
“I think you have crows confused with homing pigeons,” I said, but the Bully just shook his head and laughed as he headed for the helicopter, waving for Pouty to follow. He pulled a phone from his pocket, and although I couldn’t make out what he said, I caught the word “crows” and the name of my town. He looked back over his shoulder.
“You’re finished now,” he said, voice positively mirthful. “I imagine we’ll be back shortly to bring you in. Leave those by the water tank,” he added as the pilot approached him, small sacks of cornmeal and rice under one arm and a net bag filled with vegetables dangling from the other.
“How about my cup and bowl, and my plate?” I called.
“Confiscated,” he called back, climbing into the cabin.
“I’m sorry,” the pilot whispered as he set down the food. “Please—” He looked in pain, his forehead was so creased, but it must just have been anxiety. He raised clasped hands, but was called back before he could make his request.
As if I could grant requests.
I must warn my mother, but the only way I have to warn her is through Sumi, and the State Security Service will be watching for Sumi now.
And even as I write, here Sumi is now, black bedragglement on the guard rail, and with a note tied to her leg.
October 5 (Kaya’s mother to Kaya)
My dear girl,
I don’t know how to tell you these things. There is no honey to be had if you bear with the sting of the news—it’s wasps who rule the world right now.
Grandmother Jemenli has said I should leave town, Tatamaneh says so too. Captain Tata, we’re calling him now—he’s become the de facto leader on the ground here—but I remember when he was known as the Limping Boy, the last time round. They’ve told me they’ll take me to a safe spot in
the mountains. Rami’s grandparents are already there, and Jeteman’s mother and brothers.
I said I couldn’t leave you with no link to the outside world, but they reminded me of the watchers who sit in their jeep, smoking, and keeping an eye on our house, and the ones whom I always see if I look over my shoulder in town, while I’m shopping, or the ones I catch lounging by Satmelelin’s snack stand, when I take washing down to the river.
“They prefer meat, you know,” one of the men called up to me last night, when I was scattering corn for the crows. “There’s a dead rat here you can have. They’ll love the taste.” The other two laughed. I didn’t answer, but it was unsettling.
I do that—feed all the crows—as cover for Sumi. I leave the door ajar, and while the other birds are pecking and fluttering, she bobs right into the house, unnoticed. Or did.
Captain Tata said you’d prefer to have me safely hidden away than arrested. He pointed out that by taking myself out of danger, I’d deprive the State Security Service of a tool to use to coerce you. Put that way, it seems like my duty to leave, much as I dislike hearing it.
The rest of what Captain Tata says, what he hears from the capital, I like even less. The word “purge” keeps on turning up, which seems to indicate the worst for all of you. But then he says there’s talk of ringleaders taking advantage of naive youth—which sounded at first to my ears as if perhaps they were looking for a way to pull back from their harsh position, as if maybe Rami could be the sacrifice for all of you—except Captain Tata says that since the Lake Jarakasan disaster, Rami’s name never gets mentioned without yours being mentioned too. They’re making you out to be a wild-eyed religious fanatic who’s trying to drag the mountains back to the Stone Age and who’s likely to bring the nation down in the process.
For so long I’ve been petitioning for your transfer to somewhere safer, but now I’m frightened that a move would be prelude to a death sentence. And yet it’s certain death if you stay where you are. What can I say. If you do get moved to the prison, keep your eyes open. Some of the young firebrands who’ve joined the resistance are talking about staging a breakout. They’ve never left the mountains and don’t realize how dangerous it is to have a mountain face in the lowlands right now. And yet foolish daring may well be our best hope right now.
I wish Sumi could lend you her wings.
If you can send her back to me tonight, after reading this, do. Then I’ll know you’ve had my message. I won’t leave here until the dark hours of earliest morning.
Thinking of you always,
your mother
October 5 (Kaya’s journal, second entry)
Where are you, Lady?
October 5 (Kaya’s journal, third entry)
I don’t think I called to her out loud. It was just within me, my cry, and I wrote it down, right there, underneath the pictures of the flowers and fruit of Schima wallichii, the needlewood tree.
What happened next … I closed my eyes to keep back tears, and suddenly there were the Lady’s hot hands, pressed against them, as if we were playing guess-who, and her voice right in my ear, saying “Did you misplace me?” Then she let her hands drop to my arms, turned me round, and pulled me close, like a mother with a worried child.
I thought I was on fire. She let go and frowned, looking me up and down—I felt so insufficient!—but she said only, “I keep forgetting how fragile you are and how quickly fierceness wears you out.” She sighed. “I do wish you could dance with me, little Kaya.”
“I wish I could, too,” I said.
Then her glum face brightened, and I realized I wasn’t looking up at her anymore, but down on her. She was child-sized and shaped, with eyes full of mischief and the corners of her mouth lifting in the beginnings of a wicked grin. “I’m going to make more trouble for your enemies,” she said. “Smoky farts from my butthole in Taneh! They won’t like that!”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“I guess they won’t,” I said.
She closed her eyes and let the grin spread across her face.
“They’ll be busy putting out fires,” she said. Then she opened her eyes wide, and we were face to face, and she was not a child or a bride or an old woman; she was ageless. And she said, “So they won’t be ready, when I pour out my heart.”
My own heart caught in my throat.
“If you pour out your heart, it will hurt my friends as much as my enemies.”
“No, Kaya. No it won’t, because you’ll teach me the way to move. You’ll trace me a path, and I’ll follow. See? We will dance together.”
It came to me then: I am going to die here. I don’t mind. I think the heat from the Lady’s gaze has burned all fear out of me. Death will be an embrace, her embrace. I see there are blisters on my arms where she held me just now, but strangely, they don’t hurt.
October 5 (Kaya to her mother)
Dear Mother,
Captain Tata is absolutely right—I want you safely away from the State Security Service’s clutches. As for me, I promise you: I will never sit in that lowland prison, and they will never execute me. Religious fanatic, am I? If so, they have only themselves to blame. Build a temple and you’ll get a priestess. So they can say what they want. If blaming me makes them go easier on the others, all the better.
Here: let me prophesy a little. The vents in Taneh that have been releasing steam are going to release ash soon, and more land will burn. Tell them that. They may want to evacuate. Send that message to the media. Let everyone know that the State Security Service may have troops and weapons, but we have the Lady.
Your loving fanatic—
Kaya
(Report, Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Center)
On October 7, dark ash plumes erupted from the recently opened Taneh vents, 30 km north of the lava lake in the Mt. Abenanyi crater. The plumes were blown to the NW; ashfall in the foothill town of Rai is blamed for two wildfires and significant property damage.
Seismic activity is up markedly since July, and the level of the lava lake has risen precipitously.
(From the October 8 transcript of interviews with Prisoner 117, State Security Service files on the insurgency)
Lt. Vell: We want to talk to you about the situation in the mountain districts—
117: What about my wife? How is she doing? Is she okay? How’s the baby? It’s due any day now. You’ve got to release her, at least for the birth! A baby shouldn’t be born in prison.
Lt. Sana: Oh no, I don’t think a release is possible. Her charges are more serious than yours, what with her threats against the MP from the western mountain district.
117: What are you talking about? You’ve never said anything about threats before. All these months, coming in here, all the questions, all the accusations ... This is insane. Mirasan never threatened Mr. Gana; none of us did. Hell, I invited him to come to the festival.
Lt. Sana: The demonstration.
Lt. Vell: Kaya said that she proposed having the mob attack him.
117: That’s the craziest lie I’ve ever heard in my life. Mirasan can’t even bear to swat flies or crush spiders. She’d never suggest such a thing, and Kaya would never say she did! You’re just making things up!
Lt. Sana: She confessed.
117: What?
Lt. Sana: Your wife confessed.
117: She couldn’t have. Why would she, when it’s a lie? You must have ... What did you do to her? I swear I’ll crush every bone in your body with my bare hands if I hear that you hurt her, you piece of sh—
Lt. Vell: Assistance in here please!
[Prisoner 117 subdued and restrained]
Lt. Vell: Well that wasn’t a very promising display. But I understand; you’re feeling emotional. Now listen. Maybe something can be arranged for your wife. Maybe we can have her transferred to a hospital for the birth, and possibly we can see about a reduced or commuted sentence, but that depends on you.
117: [no response]
Lt. Vell: Can we have some towels an
d water, please? Clean off his face. And bring in a cup of water as well. There. That’s better. Go ahead; drink up.
Lt. Sana: It’s bad in the mountains right now. The worst sort of unscrupulous, opportunistic troublemakers have surfaced, and they’re preying on you people’s ignorance and superstition, vandalizing property and inciting violence. It’s a volatile situation, and it’s getting worse.
Lt. Vell: You’re interested in public service. You’ve had the benefit of a good education. You made the mistake of letting your childhood pals rope you into a foolish venture, but you’re no separatist, are you. You know the mountain regions can only prosper as part of a prosperous W—. That’s how you will prosper. If charges against you were dropped, you could go back and advocate restraint. Help steer things back in a rational direction.
117: I won’t be your tool.
Lt. Vell: It’s in your interests too, you know. Your family owns a fair amount of property, doesn’t it? If resentments are fanned high enough, the mobs may not limit their attacks to government offices and lowland-owned businesses. You don’t want to collaborate, but your wealth and education mean you’re already a collaborator. It’s just a matter of time before the mobs realize that.
117: Then they’re hardly going to listen to me, are they.
Lt. Vell: Right now they think of you as one of the heroes of their cause.
117: That won’t last, not if I start singing your tune.
Lt. Sana: You’re a clever man. You’ll find a way. You have to; you have your wife and child to think about. You want to secure the best possible future for them—certainly you don’t want any harm coming to them.
Lt. Vell: And don’t think of it as our tune. Think of it as your tune. It’s a better future for you, too. The man who brought peace? Nice ring to it. A better future for everybody.