by Larissa Lai
Thin as a winter rabbit and pale as fog, the girl seems barely there at all. The smeared remains of charcoal pencil applied around her eyes only add to her haunted look. Her eyes dart back and forth. Her hair’s been cut short—a feeble attempt to stop lice. A tangled mass of scales falls thickly around her. They aren’t very clean. Large black insects scuttle through them. I don’t want to imagine the condition of her brain with all these dirty twigs plugged into it.
“Lie here,” I say, patting the examination table that Calyx Kaki and I built a couple of days after I woke from my forget-me fog.
The girl lies down, and I think I see a resemblance. The high forehead, the curve of jawbone. She looks a little like a Grist sister. My heart leaps.
“Are you going to help her or what?” growls her small friend, surprisingly fierce. Her breath reeks of old cabbage.
I unwrap the hand. The wet stench of pus fills the air. I hold my sleeve to my nose. The wound at the side of her hand pulses scabby and purple-black. Dirty, ragged skin and torn flesh hang off it. There are multiple puncture wounds, four of them deep. From one of them, blood spurts in intermittent red globules.
At the sight of her injured hand, the girl grits her teeth like she’s going to cry. But she doesn’t. I’m impressed. It’s a nasty wound, and it must hurt like a knifed rabbit.
“Not sore?” I say.
She nods. A single tear falls now, and she sucks a great wad of snot back into her nose.
“How long ago did this happen?” I ask.
The short one shrugs. “I don’t know, ma’am. Lady Kora came back like this. She’s new, and she runs a bit wild.”
“Don’t you all?” I blurt.
The short one gives me a hurt look.
“This morning,” says Lady Kora.
I flush the wound with water and wipe it down with a few drops of mother moonshine.
The girl’s eyes bug wide. I give her a precious two shots to drink.
“Any other symptoms?” I ask.
“She was a bit nauseous at dinner,” says Shortie. “Can you help her? Her hand’s gonna be okay, isn’t it? She’s the one with the touch, you know, for locks and stuff.”
“I’m going to give you something to make you a bit sleepy,” I tell the girl.
Shortie says, “Do you have any vaccine for tetanus? And maybe rabies?”
I pause to remember what these are. Tetanus is lockjaw. Rabies is bat-bite sickness. I ask Calyx to make a decoction of cicada powder, scorpion powder, heart-of-earth, skullcap, woad, tree peony, and coin grass to clear heat, cool the blood, and expel wind-phlegm. There are small amounts of all these herbs in the meagre supply we brought from Old Grist Village, already steamed and powdered. I don’t know how I’ll get more when they run out.
Shortie says, “No vaccine? Madame hoped you might have brought some of those things with you. She said you like needles.”
“My people don’t dance, scavenge, or steal,” I tell her. “We also don’t use poisonous medicines from the time before.”
That hurt look again.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Our Mother of goats and atonement, without Peristrophe Halliana at my side, I’m all foot in mouth. “The wound is very dirty. Whoever bandaged it didn’t clean it first. I don’t know how your friend is going to fare.”
Calyx brings the bitter drink, and I make the girl swallow it.
One puncture wound won’t stop bleeding. I’ll need to suture it. I begin to prepare a needle of precious poppy.
“No sleepy stuff,” the girl says, pulling her arm away. “I need to work tonight.”
“Doesn’t your hand hurt?”
The short one laughs. “Work schmerk! She wants to go to a party, don’t you, Lady Kora? She’s in love with a tiger man!”
The injured girl hisses at her.
“Love is a drug,” I say. I pop a needle into her arm before she even guesses I might do it.
She opens her mouth to scream bloody murder, but her eyelids droop, and in another second, she is asleep.
“Show’s over,” I tell Shortie, and urge her out the door. “I’ll send word when she’s ready for visitors.”
The little one looks reluctant to leave, but when I pull out my suturing needles, she goes.
Calyx swabs at fresh blood welling from the puncture site, while I sew the hand up quickly. The wound isn’t such a big deal. It’s infection that concerns me.
Sure enough, when I go back to check my work a couple of hours later, I notice the flesh of the hand turning red in a disconcerting way. Some of the fingers are brown, and the thumb is turning black at the tip. I press it and the flesh crackles slightly. Not rabies after all. Wet gangrene. The girl is fast asleep.
I leave her for an hour. When I check again, there are blood blisters all over the hand. It could get better, but it’s not likely. A wicked thought crosses my mind. What if she is like the Salty that came through our woods? What if she is like Madame’s lost Carmela Sweetwater? Her hair is black like that of the Fourth Plague Ring Grist sisters, not red like the Cordova School ones. More than any other Salty I’ve met so far, she looks like she might be related to us. In any case, I have a duty to stop the gangrene from eating up more than the hand.
I take a tea break to consider the right course of action. Sip a little cerebral tonic in hot water, as my mother double used to do when facing a crossroad.
When I come back the girl is dopey but awake. “What are you doing, Gristie doctor?”
“Are you going to hurt me?” she groans, her voice sleepy and low.
I begin to sharpen my bone saw.
“No, no, no! Charlotte! Uncle Wai!” She croaks the words out, throaty and creepy.
I don’t want to be alone with her. I give her a double shot of precious poppy and more needles into the meridian of calm.
“Delphine,” she moans before she drops back into sleep.
I heat a large flat knife until the metal glows red. I prepare a cup of forget-me-do for her to drink as soon as she wakes.
My sharp saw cuts through flesh and bone as through water. Blood spurts in purple gouts. With the hot flat knife, I cauterize the wound. Then I bandage it and leave the girl to sleep.
Any amputation is a big deal. My Peristrophe Halliana died of one—well, that plus tiger flu. I carry the girl to the small convalescing room that Calyx Kaki decorated with images of Our Mother in all her forms—human, animal, and vegetable. At the head of the bed she’s also placed a large watercolour of Eng. I put the cup of forget-me-do on the night table.
Then, exhausted, I retire to the small but private living quarters at the back of the clinic, which Madame so generously had a few of the girls set up for me and Calyx Kaki.
I try to sleep, but sleep won’t come. My head runs with memories of the eye surgery that was Peristrophe Halliana’s last, visions of Grist Village on fire, and the nightmare of enmeshed sisters swallowed by HöST’s batterkite. When I can’t stand it anymore, I push the blankets aside, drop my feet to the floor, and tiptoe out the back door, down the hall, up the back stairs, and out into the night.
29
POTATO DREAMS
KORA KO // SALTWATER FLATS
NODE: MINOR HEAT
DAY: 2
KORA DREAMS OF POTATOES. SHE SPILLS THEM FROM AN EARTHENWARE jar, and they tumble from its lip, round and juicy, along with a flow of earth that smells sweet as clean rain. With her right hand, she picks up a particularly plump one, and with her left, begins to brush the dirt from it. The dirt feels moist, and its particles vibrate with subtle life. The surface of the potato glows smooth and healthy. It is a pleasure to touch it, even after all the dirt has been brushed off. She strokes its velvety surface as though it were a live animal, tender and quivering. She thinks she hears it release a faint mewl. Its very softness makes her fingertips itch, just slightly at first, then more intensely. She strokes the potato harder, seeks a rough spot on which to scratch, but the skin is smooth, so smooth. The itch spreads down
her fingers to her palm. She rubs her palm against the potato, but its shiny surface offers no relief. She grasps it with her itchy right hand and squeezes this lovely fruit of the earth until its skin breaks and the white flesh is crushed to a pulp. Potato juice drips between her fingers, but still, the hand itches to the point of pain.
Her eyes blink open then, and she realizes she has been dreaming. The hand continues to itch like a demon. What drug did that strange doctor give her? Her left hand is so heavy it takes all the will and strength she’s got to move it to the right side of her body to scratch the itchy hand. When her left hand arrives at the right, the right is not there. Heavy with sleep, she fumbles. Is she still dreaming? Wake up, Kora! She pinches the arm above the absent hand. The pinch hurts. She feels again for the hand. Still not there. Sleep more, Kora, it’s a bad dream. When the drug wears off, you’ll find your hand again—bitten and infected, to be sure, but well on its way to healing. She closes her eyes and dozes.
The hand begins to itch again, just a little, but then it offers up a screaming, searing itch, as though it is on fire, as though it is dry wood, crackling and sparking in a mid-autumn bonfire. She sits up, pulls her hand from beneath the covers.
She looks at it.
It is not there.
A scream erupts from deep in her lungs and pours out of her. She screams and screams and can’t stop screaming.
At Kora’s bedside, Tania slaps her palm over Kora’s mouth. “Shhhhhhh! You’ll wake the whole school.”
Velma’s there too.
Kora shakes and drools and points with her one existing hand to the place where her absent hand should be.
“The doctor took her hand,” Velma tells Tania. “There was gangrene.”
“Took her hand!” Tania stares incredulous at the absence. “I’ve heard that Grist sisters do that. I didn’t think it was true. How barbaric! I wonder if the doc—”
“Don’t be foolish,” Velma says. “There’s no such thing as Grist sisters. That’s an old wives’ tale. It was gangrene, that’s all. The doctor saved her life.”
“Of course there is,” Tania says. “Madame—” She stops herself. She and Myra are the only ones who know the truth about Madame Dearborn, Miss Sweetwater, and the burnt village in the Fourth Quarantine Ring. Madame had said there was no need for the young ones to know.
Kora is sobbing now.
“Don’t cry, Lady Kora. You don’t want Myra to catch you like this, do you? We’re going to a party. Why don’t you come? You’ll forget all about your silly hand.”
“She’s not going to forget,” Tania says. “Would you forget, Velma, if someone took your hand?”
Kora still sobs. Tries unsuccessfully to bite the palm still clapped firmly over her mouth.
Tania says, “Look, you have to calm down, Kora. If I let go of your lip, will you promise to stay quiet?”
Kora nods.
But even though she doesn’t want it to, when Tania takes her hand away, the scream keeps coming.
Tania claps her hand over Kora’s mouth again. “Where is that good-for-nothing doctor anyhow? This girl needs a sedative.”
“Lady Kora wants to come to the party, don’t you, Lady Kora?” Velma persists. “It was her invite to begin with, not Myra’s. She’s in love with a tiger man.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” says Tania. “How would she get an invite? Kora Ko is getting good at some things, but she’s no diplomat.”
“Maybe she’s good at more than you think,” Velma says. “It was her invitation.” She nods her head up and down, as though insistent affirmation will make it so. “Lady Kora, don’t you want to come to your party? And see your tiger man?”
Kora opens her throat, makes a rasping affirmative sound.
Tania removes her hand from Kora’s mouth, and this time Kora does not scream. She wishes herself home in the family apartment, lying in bed in her room. She wishes she could hear the sound of Uncle Wai on the roof above, hoeing, raking, and watering his garden. But she knows she never will again.
Her phantom hand still itches like a mother. “Where is the doctor? And her assistant?”
“Probably gone to the party,” says Tania. “The whole school is buzzing about it. But I don’t think you should come. You’ve just had a serious surgery.”
“But she wants to, so bad,” says Velma.
Tania says, “She’s in shock. Look, the doctor left you a cup of tea, Kora. Smells like medicine. Maybe for your nerves. You should drink it.”
Kora shakes her head. “She took my hand. I’ve had enough of her medicine. Please don’t leave me.”
“Everyone’s going,” sings Velma. “Everyone. The tiger men never open their garage to outsiders, ever.”
“Don’t bait her,” Tania says. “I’m not so sure this party is a good idea. We know nothing about the tiger men except that they’re sick with flu yet still live.”
“Cordova girls are tough,” says Velma. “And we’ve never been inside the Pacific Pearl Parkade.”
“We’re too curious for our own catcoats,” says Tania. “But let’s not bring a wounded girl to a place we don’t understand. Anyway, look at her. She’s in no condition to leave her bed.”
“I want to go to the Pacific Pearl Parkade,” Kora says.
“It’s a bad idea,” says Tania. “Kora, I came down here because I wanted to say something to you.” To show her sincerity, she holds out half a biscuit, spread with a rich-smelling oil.
“She’s drugged to the hilt,” says Velma. “She won’t remember a thing.”
“I’ll remember,” Kora says. She takes the biscuit and crams it into her mouth.
“Myra is cruel to everyone when they first come and extra cruel to those who pose a threat. She riles up the other girls to match her too. She was the same to me when I first arrived. Because of my connections at Cosmopolitan Earth.”
“Oh,” says Kora, perking up through her drug fog.
“It’s how I lost my tooth.” She grimace-grins so Kora can see the space. “It’s how she keeps control.”
Kora nods, still stunned.
“She hurts us to save us?” says Velma, squinting as she tries to wrap her head around the twistedness of it.
“Yes. To keep us in line and so keep us together. She was so afraid of losing Madame Dearborn. And now we have. So we’re all scared, but Myra most of all. I’m sorry for my part in the hazing.”
Pushing through the strange doctor’s sedative, Kora attempts to gather her dignity. “Hazing? While you were away, I killed an old man. I would have left you all, if I had anywhere else to go. And now my hand is gone. You are all cursed.” Her eyes flicker with realization. “And I’m cursed with you.”
Tania gives her the other half of the biscuit, spread with more of that delicious oil. However angry she is, the oil is too delicious and Kora is too hungry not to eat it.
Tania says, “This won’t bring back your lost hand. But it comes from a care package my mother sent me. It’s real food, not from a nasty plague house. Oolichan oil.”
Kora is as surprised as Velma and Tania when her tears begin to flow again.
Velma feels sorry that Kora can’t go to the party. She doesn’t really grasp Tania’s words or gift, but she wants to do something. So she gets Kora a shot of whisky from the time before, from the upstairs kitchen. Tips it into the cup of forget-me-do that Kirilow left by the bed.
Kora drinks.
To Tania and Velma’s surprise, Kora’s eyes go faintly green.
“By Our Mother’s holy hair!” says Velma.
In the light pouring from Kora’s eyes, a flickering green figure appears.
“That’s Isabelle Chow,” say Tania. “Holy crap.”
Isabelle kneels. Kora has seen her kneel this way before. Her face is wet with tears. Kora has seen these tears before too.
I guess you chose her after all. I can’t believe it, after all we’ve been through together. What was I thinking? I guess I’m a girl and stupid…
Tania and Velma gawp.
Kora wills the vision to stop playing, but it rolls on. I’m not even talking to you. I’m talking to the ghost of you I keep in my moronic little heart, like an idiot, like a chump …
“What is this?” Velma says.
Tania looks at. “Where did you get this?” she asks, flicking the red filigree scale with her finger.
LïFT is still only at eighty-five percent verisimilitude, you know. And neither you nor that little bitch—how could I have ever called that charity case my best friend?! …
“I don’t—I don’t know …” Kora stutters.
“By Our Mother’s milky left boob, of course you do!” Tania’s tenderness has left her. She’s panicked and angry. “Tell me now, Kora. This is not a joke.”
“At the Isabelle shrine—” Kora squeaks.
“What Mother-smacking shrine?”
“Down by the water …”
“Myra is going to be livid.”
I’m amassing an army, do you hear me? You don’t get to treat me like this and live!
When the vision reaches its end, it starts again. On the second pass—the third for Kora—Isabelle’s tears seem even more pathetic.
I guess you chose her after all…
Tania becomes reasonable again. “The gossip is everywhere. Someone is moving against Isabelle. Her lover betrayed her. We think someone is selling her projections, to make money and undermine her credibility when she releases a new technology to save us from the flu. We don’t know more. We’re monitoring. Even though Isabelle has caused us terrible harm, whoever is working against her could well be worse. Don’t show this to anyone, Kora. I mean it.”
“I wasn’t trying to show it.”
“I think the forget-me-do or the whisky might have triggered it.”
So you’re going to sell a defective product to the desperate. I’ll make it again, and I’ll make it per—
“This should do it.” Tania yanks the red filigree scale out of Kora’s halo.
“Ow! That’s mine.”
The vision comes to an abrupt halt.
“Not anymore it’s not. Will Our Mother’s tech variations never cease?”