An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

  “And do you have a Plan B, Aster?”

  “Yes. Plan B is you don’t do it. You refuse. You can refuse.”

  He reached to grab her hand, but Aster pulled away. “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Be safe.”

  They reached the Clearing, a hundred or more lowdeckers in a thatch surrounding a large platform, two meters tall, ten wide in every direction, wooden steps surrounding them. Aster wondered who’d built it, if they knew who and what it was for, if their palms blistered as they sawed the wood.

  Silver poles situated at five-meter intervals held up a plastic awning, with the purpose of providing shade for the Sovereignty. Sixteen guards flanked the platform on either side, snapping at lowdeckers to be quiet and to stand back, commands followed with little complaint. They had no desire to be here. They had no desire to witness this tragedy at close range. They were here as victims of unfortunate timing, workers harvesting maple at the worst possible hour.

  Aster saw that above the Clearing, even more lowdeckers watched through the glass, their eyes discernibly sad even from this distance. Made to watch, they would share this burden together.

  “Aster,” Mabel called. She was coughing. She’d run to get here.

  “Did you get everything sorted?” Aster asked.

  “I think,” Mabel said, out of breath. “The Tide Wingers have a surprise for you too.” She lifted her skirt and revealed a rifle, but it was different than the one that belonged to Sovereign Nicolaeus. That one had signs of wear. Divots. Markings. Initials carved in. This one was shiny and brand new, much simpler in design. It seemed the Tide Wingers’ reputation for resourcefulness wasn’t overstated. They’d done more than make new bullets—they’d made new guns. Aster imagined they’d used copper piping already available behind their walls for the barrel. “There’s twenty in all. They’re passing them out now. Do you want this one?”

  Aster shook her head. “You keep it. Protect yourself. Protect Pippi and Ainy.” After this mess, she hoped she’d see Mabel again.

  “Give me the poppyserum now,” said Theo.

  Aster slipped him the vials. “Will they strap her to that?” she asked, pointing to a chair on the crude wooden stage. Leather belts draped over the arms, the color so richly brown it appeared burgundy.

  “Likely,” said Theo.

  “You are being unusually terse. You don’t think you can do it?”

  Before he could reply, the Clearing settled into an uneasy silence. Aster heard the sound of clanking metal and shifted to see two guards leading a manacled Giselle into the Clearing, ankles chained with only a foot of give between them, wrists the same. Dark patches turned her eyes into dull spheres. Black, wavy hair hung from her scalp in bedraggled sheaves. Her skin, set off by undertones of olive, looked a sickly, sallow green. Following her were four more guards towing something large and heavy, hidden beneath a veil. Aster gazed upon it with squinted eyes, but had no idea what it was.

  The two guards pushed Giselle along. In nothing but a slip and her work boots, she didn’t look her twenty-five years. She had all the smallness of perpetual childhood, but none of the innocence.

  The Sovereign funneled in last, took his place to the left of the platform. The guards held Giselle off to the side, while the others hauled the concealed object up to the center of the stage. Lieutenant turned to those men and made a gesture with his hands. At the signal, they pulled away the veil.

  A single cohesive and alarmed gasp filled the Clearing. Under the fabric was a gallows. Hurried and hushed conversation gripped the crowd once more.

  The Sovereign sidled up to Theo and whispered, “You’ll forgive the lack of notice, but your services are not needed after all. I thought such an event required more flare.”

  Theo kept his face neutral. “Little says flare like a hanging.”

  Lieutenant smiled and tilted his head to the right. “You should feel relieved. I know firsthand how weakhearted you can be when it comes to young girls.” He pointed his head to Aster. “Isn’t that right, Aster? I’m sure the two of you have learned your lesson on that front, and I know you both appreciated my mercy.”

  “Of course, Sovereign,” Theo replied. “Your mercy as well as your restraint prove boundless.”

  Aster recited Philosophia Botanica, paid Sovereign Lieutenant no mind. The verses, methodical and orderly, rendered in perfect iambs, provided her the steadiness she needed. If Giselle was to die by hanging, then their plan had failed before it had begun. What use was there in feeling despair? It was her own fault to have thought the best-case scenario an actual possibility.

  There were specters who lived at the edges of Aster’s vision, fat-mouthed gorgons with elephantine teeth. Their braids protruded squid-like under the large brims of their straw hats. Holes dotted their dungarees. They chewed tobacco and jerky and bone gristle. Gunpowder trickled from their wounds. Whenever Aster turned to get a better glimpse, they were gone, perpetual inhabitants of the margins. That was how she understood hope, nothing to get too invested in.

  “Sovereign,” said Theo, “I understand you desire a spectacle, but too much of a scene may rouse rage rather than fear. I beg you reconsider the injection. You could even leave the gallows here, as a warning.”

  Lieutenant made a sound in his throat only slightly more dignified than a snort. “And girl, what do you think?” he asked, not exactly a rhetorical question, but not one for which he was genuinely interested in her answer.

  “I think you’re sadistic and wish to see a hanging, and therefore there’ll be a hanging,” said Aster. She wished herself brave enough to look up into his eyes, but she kept her focus downward, head bowed respectfully.

  “Not sadistic, ruthless. There’s a difference. Otherwise, an astute observation,” he said, then returned his attention to the gathering. “On behalf of the Sovereignty, the Will of the Heavens, and your fellow passengers of His Sovereign’s ship Matilda, it is my honor and privilege to announce the heralding in of a new and better age. It is for that reason we join together today to carry a life from this world into the next, where she will be judged accordingly. With humble hearts, we say—” and the crowd called out in unison, just as they had with Flick, “Hallelujah. Blessed be.”

  When Lieutenant read the full name of the accused aloud, he pronounced it with an unexpected combination of grandeur and solemnity. “Giselle Nwaku,” he said, reading from a small piece of paper.

  “That isn’t my name, that’ll never again be my name!” Giselle screamed, pulling against her chains. Several took a cautious step backward, faced with the viciousness of her tone. Those who knew her nodded their heads, unshaken.

  “You disrespect your forbearers, and by extension the Heavens, by forsaking your own name?” said Lieutenant.

  “It isn’t my name! My name’s Devil now!” she cried out. “And I’ll kill you all, I swear it, if not in this life, the next.”

  One of the guards kicked her up to the platform and she fell to her knees on the steps.

  A woman with hanging skin stuck her nipple into the mouth of a toddler who refused to be soothed, but his wails were no match for Giselle’s shrieks.

  The same guard grabbed Giselle by the scruff of her neck to push her forward, but she surprised him, turning and head-butting his nose, blood spraying. Aster saw that this was her chance. “Giselle,” she called out, “catch!” Aster slid her blade from its sheath in her boot and tossed it over to Giselle. She didn’t catch it. It bounced against her chest, tumbling over her chains before falling to the ground.

  Giselle scurried after it, having gotten the jump on her guards. Several others clambered after her, and though she was slowed down by the shackles, her determination made her unstoppable.

  “Do it! Kill them all!” yelled an older woman in the crowd.

  “Aye, do it!” yelled another.

  “Devil! Devil! Devil!” cried others, taking several seconds to find a uniform rhythm.

  Aster knew that the world in which Giselle slew
every one of these men, Lieutenant included, did not exist, that one half-crazed woman could do only so much. Still, she found herself shouting, “Spare none! No clemency!”

  Giselle—Devil—got her hands on the knife, flipped the blade open, and stood, jutting it out to five guards who circled around her. “I will haunt you,” she said, then took the blade and stabbed it into her own stomach.

  Aster choked back a startled scream. Giselle, forever defiant. She’d not let them take her, not when she could so easily take herself. Gasps dominoed their way through the Clearing. Devil slumped backward on the platform, limp-limbed.

  “Quiet now,” Lieutenant said, his fearsome demeanor forcing everyone into compliance. He walked up the steps to her body. Aster heard Giselle’s squeaky wheezes. Lieutenant lifted his foot and set the bottom of his boot on the tip of the knife handle, pressing down. He shifted left and right, driving the metal jaggedly through her.

  She howled, and if souls were real, that was the moment Giselle’s abandoned ship. What a small thing she had asked for, to be left alone, to be allowed the solace of her own atoms. The only cocks she wanted inside her were the ones she requested, the only hands on her body the ones she begged to have touching her, the only knife in her gut the one she lodged there herself.

  Aster felt Theo grab her from behind, but she wrangled out of his grip and ran to Giselle’s body.

  “Stop her!” shouted one of the guards, but it was Lieutenant who said, “Let her have her moment. It is done.”

  Sweat and blood had turned Giselle’s slip translucent, and it showed her breasts, stomach, and legs, the triangular thatch of hair covering her pubis. She was naked before the world.

  “Aster?” she said, her voice a simpering croak.

  “Devil,” Aster answered.

  “I’m going to die?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then promise me you won’t remember me fondly. Promise me you’ll blame yourself,” said Giselle. Words left hurriedly from her lips, whisper-quiet.

  “Aye, I will,” said Aster. “I can’t help but do so.”

  “I want to be the chip on your shoulder. Fifty years from now, you’ll think of me with a sodden heart. Promise me, promise me I’ll be the mean wench ghost who drives you mad. Don’t be happy. When people say, She’d want you to be happy, know better.”

  “Aye, aye, yes, yes,” Aster nodded.

  “Aster?” said Giselle, eyes fluttering spastically, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes before spilling onto her cheeks. The thick black ink from her eyelashes smeared onto her lids.

  “What is it? Whatever you’d like me to say, I’ll say it. I’ll say it one thousand times. I’ll swear you any oath you want.”

  Aster begged Giselle to say more, but she didn’t. Her spiteful eyes had gone dead. When Aster bowed her head, laid her cheek against her chest, she could hear no beating heart. She placed her ear to Devil’s lips to listen for the sound of flimsy breaths, was rewarded with only silence.

  She crawled to Giselle’s wellies, removed them from her narrow, scabbed feet. The audience murmured, and Aster spit on the toes, took the hem of her shirt, and rubbed them into some semblance of shininess.

  “All right. Enough,” Lieutenant said.

  A guard hit Aster across the back with a baton two times. She wept not for the pain, but for Giselle. Wretch that she was, she’d disregard Giselle’s dying wish. Aster would remember her quite fondly, indeed.

  The guard struck her again, and the pain was immense. He had a heavy hand. Aster tried to imagine herself someplace else, but she couldn’t. She was here, in a field splattered with blood that didn’t belong to her. Giselle lay lifeless. Her lips were chapped and caked with white.

  A heavy sadness settled upon Aster, and she remembered again that she was nothing, a puppet. Unpleasant memories bobbed upward to the forefront. Unsoft hands, splintered wooden spoons, how she hated everyone.

  Aster felt another bash from the baton as she sat crumpled on her knees.

  “You cease your savagery this instant or be killed without mercy,” warned Theo, voice cool with measured fury. His gaze bore into the man beating Aster, teeth bared. The expression he wore revealed determination, and none of the disquiet he likely felt. Theo, like Aster, was a man of rules. Order offered him solemnity. A disruption to the system was a disruption to his sense of calm.

  The guard did not drop his baton. Aster flinched in anticipation when she saw him draw it over his head. But the blow never came. Midstrike, he stumbled to the ground, the baton along with him. He clutched his neck, which had been pierced with a dart. The poison meant for Giselle had found its way into the guard’s veins. Mind bleary from pain, it took Aster several seconds to understand what was happening. Theo had a tranquilizer gun.

  A fresh set of shocked gasps emanated from the crowd. Aster glanced toward the commotion, and were she not in so much pain, she’d have risen up. Finished with Aster’s attacker, Theo stood with the tranquilizer aimed at Lieutenant.

  “I can’t let you carry on in this manner,” he said. “It’s not right, and I can’t tolerate it. Not anymore.” Members of the Guard kept to their places, unaccustomed to such momentous betrayal and therefore unschooled in the proper response. Their beloved Surgeon, the Meticulous Hand of God, was poised to shoot five hundred milliliters of cortalviss into the newly appointed sovereign. Stunned into stillness, they watched, bludgeons and batons at the ready.

  None stood as stationary as Sovereign Lieutenant himself. “You defy the Guard? You defy me?” he asked. Incredulity didn’t suit him at all. Shock tinged his characteristically baritone voice into an unintimidating whine. “You’re a liar and a traitor,” he said, a single squinted eye revealing intense apprehension.

  In his dark burgundy uniform, the brass buttons shining under Baby’s oppressive light, he appeared waifish and weak. His wide shoulders and sturdy frame did nothing to negate the image, nor did his hands tightened into powerful fists. Aster realized his power never came from his sternness, but from his knowing calm. Theo’s sneak attack had stolen that from him.

  “To think I served by you, broke bread with you, called you Brother in Battle,” Lieuteant continued. “You are less than nothing, less than dead, less than never having been born, a disgusting, filthy turncoat who no one could ever trust. A man without loyalties is a man without a soul. Do you think yourself brave? Noble? Honorable?” He posed these questions not rhetorically, but as a man hungry for answers

  Sensing the desperate curiosity in Lieutenant’s inquiry, Theo responded in earnest, the tranquilizer gun still poised in his arms, prepared with another dosage of cortalviss. “I am not after honor, Uncle. My righteous anger could never undo the bad that’s been done here today. But I can kill you, and in doing so, prevent similar tragedies.”

  Lieutenant stared hard at his nephew, lost for words. Silently, he called for his guards with the snap of his fingers, but Aster charged forward. With all her woman-might she barreled into the guard nearest Theo, jumping upon him before he could react. She set her forearm across his throat, pushed so hard his windpipe crushed.

  She heard the wind-like snap of Theo pulling the trigger of the dart gun. When she looked up she saw the needle had landed in Lieutenant’s eye. He would die in minutes.

  Three guards seized Theo, and with that, the riot began. Lowdeckers rushed the guards. Weaponless, they were weak, but they made up for it with volume. The bravest, or foolhardiest, attacked straightaway. The more reticent hovered around the perimeter execution-black, shouting violently in moral support, pushing away the guards who tried to quiet them.

  A woman Aster’s age or a little older, with long, reddish-

  brown hair and wide shoulders, snagged the scarf off her own head, leaped up behind one of the guards, and strangled him. Her gently sloped muscles pulsed as the skin pulled taut over them. She twisted the cloth around his neck with abandon. It was a sight, truly. Aster had always been interested in the ways bodies lived, and the wa
ys they didn’t, and there was an artistry to the science of suffocation. Without oxygen to sustain its biological, anatomical, and physiological processes, the body withered into blackness, and that was that. This brought on a definitive and visible shift in the status quo.

  The guard’s face brightened to an unappealing shade of eggplant. He whimpered wet, ineffectual breaths as the brown-haired woman pilfered the life from him like it was nothing but a goldpiece in a rich man’s pocket. Others of his rank dashed to save him, only to be hindered by enraged civilians.

  A family of four demonstrated godlike lack of mercy—a mother and another mother, a son whose voice had not yet deepened, and a daughter with only the hint of breasts. When a guard accosted one of the mothers, the two children (“Yella and Ajax!” their parents called out) grabbed hold of a guard’s ankles. They yanked until he toppled to the ground, his head cracking against the base of a maple tree. Yella grabbed the bludgeon from the man’s belt, held it over her shoulder ready to swing, body shaking. Ajax looked near vomiting. He leaned against the trunk of the tree, eyes closed. Aster could see that he was praying. The volume of the horde made it difficult to hear his exact phrasing, but she knew that he prayed not for forgiveness for what he’d done, but for ruthlessness, so that he might do it again to another.

  Another watchman grabbed one of the mothers by the arm, hit her stomach with his bludgeon so hard she keeled to the grass after a single strike. Ajax ran toward him, though he had not a weapon. His meema, not the one on the ground but the other, shouted, “No Ajax, no!” because she saw what Aster noticed out of the corner of her eye: a different guard approaching, this one with a curved blade as big as an arm. He sliced it through Ajax’s gut. The boy cried out, then fell. The guard sliced through him again. Ajax died.

  Aster felt Theo’s slender arms wrap around her from behind. He pulled her from the fray, fifteen meters out from the maple tree where Ajax only seconds ago prayed, right by the hot creek. He removed his shirt, ripped and torn from his altercation, dipped it in the water. “May I?” he asked, gesturing to the hem of her shirt. Aster whispered assent, then he pulled the fabric up. Near them, a mad mob declared war, and here he was, pressing a hot compress over her bruised spine.