Tearing Down The Statues

by Brian Bennudriti

  “Nevermind the bridge. Sorry. I just thought it was pretty. How did he know Isaniel’s name?”

  Misling nodded, still somewhat reluctant to let go of what she’d said, “If perhaps you could explain where the bridge leads…”

  She glanced at him, as if to shush. When he saw that was the end of it, he allowed her change of subject, “This recent aberration aside, neither Ring’s habits nor history, his knowledge, nor his true purposes are allowed to be known. It is an unwritten and senseless rule that in some manner bends to meandering discussions of no consequence with perfect strangers and the offering up of treasures and prized companions with neither question nor care for what Ring will do therewith. Strangers comply with his hidden purposes; and it is unclear why that is.”

  They both turned to watch Ring through the opening, at the helm and eyeing something off the starboard bow. It was quiet for some time but for the drive fans and the calling of birds, and at one point the laughter of a band of ragged children from the dockyards waving after them. Sylhauna was particularly pleased with that bit and fluffed her bright hairfalls for them, drawing cheers. Later, when it was awkwardly quiet again and she was staring at him, Misling offered what insights he could.

  “Isaniel was the name of a ceremonial carbine manufacturer and painter in the Fountain City prior to the War of the Rupture. There were three embarrassing instances of conflict with Under Governor Delton, one very scandalized and quite destructive to the reputations of both men given the damage done to the dining area of the Mystick Public House.”

  “A woman?”

  Misling shook his head, “A philosophy. It is difficult to accept what has become of his face and stature – there is only passing similarity.”

  “Well you didn’t actually meet him, how would you know what he looked like really?”

  “Mast.” This was his only answer, as if he’d said he could see the Mystick Publick House even now as clearly as he was seeing her.

  She frowned, “Depressing. How do you know we’re talking now and you’re not remembering me?”

  Misling didn’t respond but rather scratched his eyebrow to avoid that topic entirely.

  Sylhauna paused in reflection, “I really don’t know why he got so big.”

  “Treatments during the war” Ring shouted from the bridge without turning: the first he’d spoken in some time. “He could nourish a bit with sunlight so he could stay still for long periods to snipe; but he isn’t supposed to stay in the dark and eat.”

  He turned then to smile at them, “How’s that for cryptic? You guys are trading nuggets to establish a rapport. I can do that. And we’re there, by the way. Have a look.”

  Spreading out in long filaments in numerous broadly parallel directions, cargo rail trams busily darted from a massive intermodal station linking seagoing vessels from the wide shining Yagrada and its crowded dockyards up magnetic tracks nestled inside gargantuan rips in the mountain face. Shipments from all over the world spoked into this facility, tracked in Balcister’s shimmering masonry, and unloaded and stacked themselves by way of automatons of incredible size.

  Ring grinned with satisfaction and amazement at the operation, before joining them on the deck and sitting between them, his elbows resting on his knees. “Tell me we’ll never get away with hooking on and their security will arrest us.”

  Misling only looked on quietly in his unwillingness to participate; and so Ring glanced to Sylhauna in case she preferred to instead. With no takers, somehow, Ring was able to bound over the railing and down to a polymeric railed pad in one fast move without charging his leap.

  Ring saluted them, catching Sylhauna’s attention specifically, “It was truly a beautiful bridge.”

  His footsteps were echoing taps on metal containers as he made his way towards what was likely a dispatch station. She smiled after him, at last noticing Misling’s eyes upon her.

  “Your words were, ‘I absolutely have one’. What were you considering as fit to place before Ring’s newfound forthrightness?”

  “Oh, I know exactly what you should ask him. Explains everything.” Sylhauna stood and stretched her arms high toward the sun, her hair and its trappings hanging loosely against her back. She ran her hands through them, then leaned over the railing to spit. To her satisfaction, the white bubbled wad of saliva splattered within view.

  “Ask him if he’s the Salt Mystic.”

  10 NOTHING IN THE SKY

  In those days, superstition held that strong personalities of older times…emperors and generals and philosophers, were somehow locked in memories and stories carried around in the minds of the quick awaiting a time when they were most needed…perhaps intentionally embodied in Mast and transferred whole to Recorders. Neither supernatural nor religious, it was a deterioration of Salt Mystic principles envisioning a soul as a constellation of stories and something to be preserved like leaves pressed in a book. In the moment of their ecstatic return, the souls most suited to the unique needs of an era would indwell those who best knew their stories to champion the right, making a virtue of remembrance of the storied past. It came to general belief later that the day Balcister was lost was the day that belief lost its power to comfort.

  The subsequent events were precious relics to the lost generation that followed, images and viscera that placed their own shattered history in context and which were to be savored. Yet a broad pattern of sweeping dreamtime lay across much of the Record from those days, no matter the Recorder. Such a sweep had of course occurred during previous times of upheaval: the Brewing revolts that toppled the old dynasties and laid the foundations of Naraia and the War of the Rupture which cast the mold for these very times being the two most notable.

  “Yer boys. Yer boys did it, bunch of skinnies.” The long man was bent over, hobbling with a lame left leg, mumbling to himself as he made slow progress down the length of the rail tram. It may have been difficult to believe he was speaking to himself given the direct address; but that is how it was with him.

  “Funny business. Yer kind of funny business. Old Knotwhistle will get his piece.” He squinted to his left as if he were appraising someone’s understanding as he went. The way Knotwhistle widened his eyes stretched the skin of his face and lifted his dry lips off dark and yellowed teeth as if he were disgusted.

  “We’ll know how much they gave ye. Manifest change ain’t right like that. Not like that. Old Knotwhistle will give ye a manifest change.”

  The old man aimed yellow and dimmed eyes at the now frozen loader automatons, idle and dark collosi shrouding out the sun. The rails were quiet; and no dirigibles flew in the sky. In fact, nothing was making any sounds whatsoever apart from a chill late autumn wind whispering in his ear. Strangely, there was a faint smoky smell hanging in the air about him.

  “Yer boys.” Knotwhistle dragged his leg behind him, bobbing his shoulders as he went and continued toward the back of his charge, the burnished metal rail trams also idle on the tracks. Such teeth were absent from the old man’s face as to cave his mouth in and make his chin pop up and down when he chewed, which he forever seemed to be doing.

  “What they done to Dustle. He was a good one. The war.”

  He tilted his leather head to the side a bit as his slowly expanding vantage revealed a touring dirigible cruiser secured with mooring lines to the corrugated roof of one of his railcars. Sylhauna’s face appeared over the gunwale, waving. Then the Recorder popped up as well. It would have been most appropriate to ignore the Recorder and address only the girl; but he didn’t actually address either.

  “Funny business! Old Knotwhistle will get his piece!” He waved a fist as if they’d opposed him in this.

  The two of them climbed reluctantly down, dropping to the earth softly since that seemed to be the thing to do. Knotwhistle looked at Sylhauna as if she were a whale falling from the sky.

  “His piece.”

  Sylhauna coughed patiently, awaiting something that made sense to which she might respond.
>
  “Ye ought to know, freaks. Ye cough some up for old Knotwhistle or we’ll settle it right now. From yer funny business.”

  Sylhauna turned her eyes to the Recorder, gaining nothing, “Did we upset him?”

  “We’ll give ye a manifest change. It ain’t right what they did to Dustle, took off his knees. Made him see things. Yer boys. Greasing was on schedule; but they don’t believe old Knotwhistle. Say he’s just filling out the papers. That ain’t what we done back then, old Dustle would chew off yer behind for papers not right. Greasing was on schedule.”

  She smiled graciously, “Goodman Knotwhistle, maybe now that the greasing is done, you can tell us why everything is so still? We’ve been waiting to go into the city; and our friend has-.”

  “Ye agree to cough some up from yer funny business? Tell the company about yer doings, then ye’ll be sorry. We can settle this right now. From yer funny business?”

  She smacked her lips, “Our friend was working with someone to have us added to your manifest so we could-“

  “Funny business! Prolly part of this mess with the rails too. And the tower. Freaks!”

  When they had stared uncomfortably at one another long enough to recognize no way forward, Knotwhistle turned and started hobbling in the direction he’d earlier been going which was toward the dispatch station, the same direction to which Ring had made for earlier and hadn’t returned.

  “What tower?”

  “Yer boys. Nothing but freaks for old Knotwhistle. The war!” He continued in that fashion, grumbling vaguely racist things and glancing occasionally and viciously back at the two of them who followed. When he turned, it was as if he’d been discussing them with someone at his side and the two of them were in agreement. There ahead of them were others; but a silence overshadowed the place…an absolute and frightening stillness of the sort when one hears a dear friend has passed away.

  “What happened?” Sylhauna’s voice cracked and faded as she saw the faces of those sparsely peppered about them: thick and burly cargo handlers, mechanics with faces soiled in lubricants, and wide-eyed passengers with packages and bags piled at their feet. Something was very wrong; and it had the feel of hot steel suddenly chilled in ice water. A handful of idle mechanics and laborers were sitting on the ground or leaning against their machines, staring distantly like they’d each been abandoned and were only now understanding that. Ring was within sight; but he strangely kept to himself some distance off in the moss, sitting cross-legged and alone and avoiding their eyes. He avoided their eyes like he was guilty of something or was wishing things different.

  There was a flickering gray light coming from inside a shed’s doorway where several dirty and rough workers crowded. Knotwhistle turned to look at the two of them, wearing a cruel jaundiced smile as if he were amused at someone having fallen. As Sylhauna and Misling stepped over the threshold passing the old man, it wasn’t clear whether anyone stopped paying attention to the droning newscaster trying to make sense of Balcister’s smoking crater on the screen. Inside, a crowd of freight workers smelling of oil and grease sat watching. Their faces bore the pain of what they were seeing; and some were rubbing their eyes.

  It was in some fashion and to those there settling or important to keep hearing about the smoke and the fear of further assaults, confusion. No new images were coming from the city, only trickled and possibly false stories. If all the nuanced rumors were true, the entire city was in flames.

  “They didn’t even threaten us. Why wouldn’t they threaten us first?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Peri will make them pay.”

  Alson was frozen – locked down tightly, that much was clear. Trains and highways, dirigibles, everything was shut down. There was no movement in or out; and thousands were missing, presumed dead. Balcister was entirely devastated.

  “Where is the Judge? Why doesn’t he say something? He should say something.”

  “He can’t show his face – they might be watching for him, hoping he’ll flush out so they can get him too.”

  Many of them let it hang there that someone would want to take the lives of their politicians for their beliefs or for their words or for the jobs they’d chosen. Here were neighbors and storekeepers and passersby who would have perhaps laid their lives as sacrifice for their children or for their freedom, and yet were called to do so for nothing.

  Quite some time passed as these working men and women, calloused and dirty and angry, sat in shock seeking distance from the newscaster’s rambling, watching old images of the shining Plaza and likely understanding their world was to never again be the same as it had been. One of the line mechanics tapped the forearm of the fellow beside him and motioned to his right – this is what started it. Though slight, the motion caught the attention of most of them; and at once a sight more frightening than they’d already seen was there with them an arm’s length away. It was enough. They froze motionless and pale.

  The Recorder was wiping tears from his cheek.

  One of the cooks from the mess wagon, a woman with thinning cottony hair and a twisted nose touched his shoulder in consolation since no one had seen such a thing…a Recorder not solemn and cold, not silent in the corner and transparent, but feeling along with them.

  “Sweet boy.” She patted him softly as if he were her own son till at last many others joined her; and finally, they each touched him in a comforting web. At last, the Recorder got up and left them, walking into the autumn daylight beyond the machines and concrete to the riverside where he sat before a broad speckled scatter of sea birds.

  “Yer boys.” Sylhauna had stepped outside and found Knotwhistle there watching.

  “Not now, please.” Sylhauna shook her head at the old man to sign for him to keep quiet. After a moment, she looked at the old man as if he were her brother.

  “It’s worse for him, you know. Being a Recorder.”

  She nodded patiently as Knotwhistle breathed out something imperceptible, “I once tried to run from my shadow because somebody told me it was a hole in the floor chasing me…a little me-shaped hole that moved as fast as I did and knew where I was going so it was always there. Isn’t that awful? I wonder is that what it’s like for him – never to have a horrible day go away?”

  Knotwhistle was yet mumbling insults or threats or something in a very still voice, softer than before. She tried to listen for a while, then at last tilted her head to continue.

  “What was the worst day of your life, Goodman Knotwhistle?” His yellowed eyes stayed on her; and his back twisted a little, for it seemed to pain him to stand without moving. “What on earth would you do if it always felt the same as it did the first time?”

  As the afternoon chill began to set in, people were scattering like ants after a rain, neither quickly nor with clear purpose, leaving the two of them among the scarce remnant. The old man’s chin popped up and down as he chewed on nothing.

  “Yer sort of trouble. Last of it. Nothing for old Knotwhistle. Nothing in the sky and nothing going up that hill.” It’s possible that’s what he said given he mumbled such. Nevertheless, he was away again, cursing to the empty air and limping unsteadily away from her.

  Sylhauna found Ring rummaging through the dry stores on the dirigible, chewing on something and having tossed unwanted items about on the deck. It seemed inappropriate somehow, doing anything. She stayed quiet and only ran her hand along the bow of the dirigible, the strange carving of the girl and her ridiculous ice sword.

  “Eat something, dear heart. It will be a while before we get another chance. In a very short time, our mutual friend is going to get up from his spot there by the water and trudge up that hillside like a pack animal.” She could just see Misling hazed against the orange sparkling river, staring at nothing and shaded by cold towering machines; and her expression betrayed a notion that this wasn’t at all about to happen. It didn’t make any sense that he would do that.

  “He isn’t a good Recorder, is he?”

  “He’s magnifice
nt. The way they should be. Eat.” He tossed her a ragged goldenrod block of spiced bread.

  When he had stuffed a satchel full and filled two steel canteens from the cruiser’s brass spigot, Ring sat cross-legged and chatted briefly to review his ventures with Misling to date, “Let me tell you about Farmilion…”

  Ring drew sad eyes from her answering to the relationship between the Recorder and his talkative charge, at least the part of which he knew. He told her of their meeting and the little Recorder’s nervous manner in the market, his facial expressions when mocked. She chuckled at the part where Ring slid the dirigible down the hill from the tent city and described perfectly Misling’s birdlike head turns as the vessel picked up speed. There was a flash of something on her face then, as if maybe it wasn’t okay to chuckle yet. He only nodded at her, approving.

  “You know what stands out the most for me, though?”