The word I sang hung in the air, like the drone of a musical instrument, and the insect buzzing intensified.
I had said my name, and someone had heard me.
I looked up, and just twenty feet above us, large shapes with spear-like beaks burst through the very fabric of the atmosphere. Each had a sleek body with feathers slick as black steel, and their multiple sets of eyes throbbed with excitement as they entered the space. Their wings were the ones making the sound of a million beehives, and I knew then who was here.
The hummingbirds of Mictlán, hummingbirds made of smoke, burst into the world.
The hummingbirds intercepted the bullets with their smoky flesh, which left thick trails behind. The word I spoke slowed down time, but now that I was done saying it, time sped up back again to the pace I understood on Earth.
Four hummingbirds had entered the airspace, and each one was easily the size of an SUV. They flew in the path between the two buildings, and they made circles around the flying buttresses of the tower, staining the air.
The men in the uniforms shouted and turned their rifles upward, shooting at the birds. The hummingbirds seemed to be made of the darkness I had experienced in the lower levels of Mictlán, because they sucked sound and light toward them, stretching the air like taffy. The gunshots were dim, and soon, the word I had spoken and its trailing music got suctioned into the bodies of the birds.
The largest of the animals hovered in front of me at the lip of the balcony. It had eight pairs of eyes on each side of its head, and I recognized him. I had ridden his back with the Xolotl. Out here under the weak November sun, his smoky flesh shifted and pulsed, as if a hot bubbling liquid ran beneath his feathers. He had a deep intelligence inside his many eyes, one that I knew I could never tame.
“Help me,” I said. I could only try.
Two of the men dropped their rifles and ran back into the building, and as they did so, a thick voice spoke to me from up above.
“YOU,” the voice roared.
The third man held his ground and continued to shoot until one of the hummingbirds plucked the rifle right from his arms. The bird swallowed the weapon, and the gunman screamed as he crawled back toward the door.
Two eyes peered at me through the smoke. Each was the size of an automobile.
“I’m never going to leave you, Wanderer,” the Ocullín said. “As long as there are men with soft minds like these, I will always be there to corrupt them, and their dark deeds will eat you and everyone else alive.”
“But why?” I said.
“Every corridor or the universe has me in it. You go through life and death, and then, off to the side, I sit in wait. I am the winding side road that you shouldn’t have chosen. I am the disease in the cosmos’s liver, Wanderer.”
“I am not a Wanderer,” I said. “Stop calling me that.”
And then its long laugh echoed toward me.
“Imbecile. How do you think you invoked the hummingbirds? You spoke your true name for the first time, and it’s confirmed. You are a Wanderer, too. Just like that damned dog and his filthy white brother.”
I put my foot on the edge of the balcony, and I leapt into the air, ready to break the Ocullín with my own hands if I could. Instead, I fell down toward the street.
As I began to fall, the hummingbird caught me. I grabbed at the feathers on his back to find any sort of grip. The windows of Tribune Tower were just inches away from my face. I looked down and saw the street more than thirty stories below.
“Take me up to the Ocullín,” I screamed. “I am through with this shit.”
The hummingbird rose toward the voice of the Ocullín. The air shimmered at the spot on the roof where the voice originated, and I pointed the hummingbird toward it. As I approached, I wished for my grandmother’s knife, but I would have to live without it.
As I approached the shimmer, I heard a final laugh, and I knew it was all too late.
The Ocullín escaped this plane of existence , and as he moved through into another realm, he left his calling card: a hard ball of thick, savage sound, concentrated on that roof like a bomb about to detonate.
The Ocullín’s sound bomb exploded. I felt a shock toss me back, and pain rang in my ears.
The hummingbird recoiled from the soundwave, and it and I fell backward onto the concrete roof. The smoke animal landed on top of me. His black blood of smoke ran down in my face, and I slid out from under his body and onto the roof to see if I could still catch The Ocullín. The bird was dead. It left a trail of music sadder than anything I had ever heard.
The Ocullín was gone.
I wiped the black blood from my face, and I tasted the earthy sweetness of the hummingbird’s blood. His blood turned into smoke immediately, making me choke and burning my good eye. My skin was dry, as if the bird’s death had never happened. I beckoned another bird, and he took me back to the Tribune’s balcony. I jumped off the bird and ran to the spot where the camera had fallen over. Its lens was pointed straight down at the surface of the roof.
I placed it back on its tripod and made sure it kept on recording.. Below, more shouting emerged, and ambulances stained the city streets in red.
The air shimmered again, and the essence of the remaining three hummingbirds faded, and the vacuum of sound lost its power. I could hear noises a little better now, and the shapes of those gigantic birds vanished in the smoke. And within a second or two, all trails of that black smoke disappeared.
I looked down at the street, panting. The LEDs were returning to their previous displays of Christmas trees, advertisements, and cartoon characters. Police circled the Golden Mile, and pretty soon, I would be missed in the tour below. I grabbed the camera from the tripod, folded the steel legs, and made sure I left no traces of myself on this balcony. Thick, acrid smoke filled the air, and I was glad to return into the building, where I could breathe a little easier.
I ran back into the elevator, where Snowy waited for me, tugging on his e-cigarette.
“You stink, She-Ra. Did you barbecue hot dogs out there? What the hell?”
“We won,” I said. “I have it all on tape, and you saw the video streams, like everyone else.”
“Half a million viewers,” he said.
I hugged Snowy, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to go get a beer to celebrate.
“What happened out there was pure theater. Egg on the city’s face, and a showcase of the corruption that we live in. I can retire now,” Snowy said.
That night, I reveled in the bitter notes of a dark ale that was much too fancy for me, but which tasted of victory. Mercy had chosen this Rogers Park pub, making sure it had a private section of booths where we could rejoice.
“What a damn success,” Mercy said. “And we would be nothing without our She-Ra. The newspapers and broadcasters still can’t figure out how someone got up on the roof of the Tribune to shoot the whole event.”
“Phantom hero,” Dennis whispered to us with both thumbs up.
My phone vibrated over and over. Surely it was José María. My anger for him had not subsided and I wasn’t ready to deal with him again. I muted his texts without glancing at what he was writing. This was my victory, and if he didn’t want to recognize how important the OLF was to me, then I wasn’t going to deal with him until later.
We ordered more beer, and we did shots of whiskey. We replayed the YouTube clips of our feed on our phones, and we laughed at how the mayor’s approval rating went down to fifteen percent in a single day.
“So, Montes,” Dennis said, “where was the fire?”
I had been dreading this question. I couldn’t get anything past Dennis.
“What fire?” Mercy said.
“CNN reported that while the parade got shut down by OLF, a fire erupted on top of one of the buildings by Trump and Tribune Tower.”
Think quick, girl. Think real quick.
“Yes, I saw it and smelled it,” I said.
“Where was it?”
“I don’t know, but
if the wind had been blowing the other way, our perfect video feed would have been nothing but smoke.”
“They showed the footage from helicopters above the street,” Dennis said. “It was like a big ball of smoke. For a second, I thought those cameras would spot you, but the smoke was too thick.”
“But they never determined the source of the fire?” Dennis said. “That’s weird.”
This was just like him. He wasn’t going to drop it, because all his life he had been thorough.
“Whatever or wherever it was, it helped us get some cover. I’m just grateful.”
“Grateful — to whom, God?” Mercy said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just grateful.”
“Montes is our hero,” Mercy said.
“You guys, I saw something else in the building across the way,” I said.
There it was. I knew I couldn’t keep every secret to myself. I had to tell someone.
“Uniformed men, with badges, pointing rifles.”
“Just like at Millennium. Snipers,” Mercy said.
“Did you get it on video?” Dennis asked.
“There wasn’t any time,” I lied.
There’s always time. It moves in the vastness, wheels gnashing and gliding past each other.
“Save that info for now,” Mercy said. “That’s serious. Very serious.”
We went to get something to eat at the Golden Nugget, and afterward, we went to a small Polish tavern on Broadway. I felt victory in my veins. I could forget about Mictlán for a few moments. Now that I had said my own name, I hoped the Ocullín would stay put away, to let me rejoice in this real victory.
By 2 a.m, we were squealing, doubled over at the bar, drunk off our assess and feeling like kings. The coverage of the Parade of Lights would be going on for many days, and we would relish every moment of embarrassment from the corrupt powers.
My phone continued to vibrate, and finally, I got fed up. I muted my text messages, and instead, I posted a series of selfies of all of us to Instagram, one after another, our smiles wide and our eyes bright, and I knew that doing this would take my battery from five percent down to nothing.
After posting the selfies, I tucked the phone into my coat pocket.
We still had a four o’clock bar to hit.
We rode the Blue Line up to Logan Square, and as we exited the station, a dozen cops stopped us to inspect our IDs. It was a Saturday night, and the bars were bursting even at this late hour, but the cops didn’t care.
Our driver’s licenses passed their inspection, until they got to me.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” said a tall cop as he turned my driver’s license over and over in his hands. He shone a flashlight in my eyes, and I recoiled. The light beam felt like a block of ice bursting into shards in my brain.
“No, I don’t think you do,” I said.
“I’d advise you all to get back to the university tonight after you’re done partying. After what happened today, I wouldn’t be surprised if a curfew is put into effect.”
In that dim light under the street lamps, I could hear the blood rushing through the cop’s jugular, and the roar of his stomach. The music he made was faint and fading, and I knew then, from the song his body made, that he had an internal disease. He continued to stare at me as if I were a fish in an aquarium.
“Are we done, officer?” Mercy said, stepping between the cop and me.
“If you see any suspicious activity — terrorist activity — you come find me, okay?”
“Sure thing,” I said.
“This city’s going to turn into a very dangerous place to live,” he said. “Don’t contribute to it.”
“Have a good night,” Dennis said.
“Fucker,” Mercy said under her breath as we stepped into the bar.
I could still hear the damaged song of that cop’s body. Since my return from Mictlán with José María, I had never felt the songs inside of people as sharply as I could now.
At 4:15 a.m., we wandered back up to the train station, but by then, police had shut down the El train, and we were told we needed to find alternate routes to go home. Helicopters filled the sky.
Mercy and I split a taxi, and we rode in drunken silence most of the way. When she dropped me off in front of the dorm, I fumbled to get the key in the lock, but I made it. I fell hard into the bed with my clothes on, and I drifted off into dreamless sleep.
The next day, my face lay buried in the pillow, and I heard a faraway drumming sound. Tiny. Three bursts, followed by silence. And then it repeated.
It came through clear, and sharp. Three knocks. Again.
My door.
I felt dizzy, but I did my best to run my hand through my hair. I answered the door, still wearing the clothes from the night before.
It was Morgan, my roommate. She wore her sleek running pants and jacket.
“What time is it?” I said.
“It’s 3 pm. Clara, I was hoping I’d find you.”
My mouth tasted like hops and stale, cheap whiskey.
“Can it wait?” I said.
“Your family’s been calling since last night, but I slept overnight at Tom’s. I was just coming back now, and security at the front desk asked me to find you.”
“What do they want?”
“Something happened to your brother.”
WANDERER
“We took many trips on the railroad when I was a boy, but for some reason, the journey back was always the most enjoyable for my grandfather.” – Adán Montes’s journal, 1967.
“There are no chosen ones. There are no special people. And there are no special rock bands. We’re all just sound waves in the orchestra pit.” – Sergio Andersson, lead singer of Arkangel, addressing the audience before the #13SC tour in 2016, Oslo, Norway.
“Chicago came into its own in fits and spurts. By the time the 1920s arrived, the city left behind its murderous legacy. It was reborn as a crib of new life.” –Historian Belinda Ronstadt, Songs of My Father’s City, Colibrí Books, 2052.
Life never prepares you for a true moment of change. Just like a snake bites down and injects neurotoxins into a mouse in the jungle, the transfer of new knowledge can have the same effect on a person. Your flesh paralyzes, and your brain does things that you wish it wouldn’t.
Morgan went back out to run some errands, and I slogged back into our room.
My phone was out of battery, so I video-called my father from my laptop. For some reason, I thought he would know what I had done at the Parade of Lights, and that’s the first question I expected to hear from him.
“Clara, I’ve been calling you all day.”
“What’s going on?”
The music my father’s breathing made through the video screen was something I had heard before, in a place shaped like a seashell.
“I sent him out to get menudo for breakfast. It was just six blocks away—”
More ragged music emerged from my father’s lungs and heart.
“A driver ran him over.”
“Where is he?” I said.
“The doctors pronounced him dead at noon.”
I choked and took hold of the armrest on my chair. I couldn’t look at my father’s tears through the screen, but I had to.
“But are you sure—”
“I’m very sure, Clarita. We need you to come down to the house later today.”
“I’m leaving now.”
The taxi cruised through the streets. The ride was nothing I could afford, but my father had instructed me leave the university right away. I left the lake breezes of Rogers Park and blew past downtown Chicago, and then back out toward the southwest.
We got stuck in traffic just a half mile from my parents’ house, and there, on 26th Street, I felt the urge to cry, yet nothing happened.
Not a tear, not a single whimper.
Little Village had not yet been gentrified, and in those days, its large farmacias, sprawling restaurants, and quinceañera boutiques for
cotillion dresses still gave off echoes of the places in Mexico that had inspired the communities that lived here. The three-story walk-ups and short bungalows were singularly Chicago architecture, but the people in these streets spoke only in Spanish, and the smells of home cooking scented the air with something that I could never find in other parts of the city.
I walked out the taxi and faced the house. José María had been born in this house, arriving much too soon to make it to the hospital back in 1990. He had never left it, either. It was a two-story walkup, drenched in beige. Solemn and quiet, like my father’s taste in everything except his clothes.
My face was hot, and the cramps in my gut were pure hangover. The heat in my brain and in my eye came from somewhere else.
As I put my key into the lock on the side door, pain shot through both of my legs. It hurt to stand. But I took a deep breath, and I turned the knob on the door to let myself in.
I don’t know why I expected José María to be there, waiting for me, as if it had all been one very long and involved prank in his repertoire.
Instead, my father ran to me, and my mother followed suit. Behind them, all my aunts stood in the kitchen.
That day, I made physical contact with every single relative. Through these hugs and holds, I heard the music in their bellies and the songs in their bones. Though their words were about being sorry and the loss in our family, the sound waves of their bodies gave off music that only I could hear. Inside this music there were songs of princes, kings, infants, ancestors, and loves lost. I remembered the song that the police officer had given off last night, and I realized that I didn’t drunkenly imagine it. I could hear the music inside these bodies clearly, as if I were still in the Coil.
This new knowledge I kept to myself.
“How did it happen?” I said. My mother and father sat with me in their tiny living room, and Minerva and La Negra remained in the room. The rest of the relatives were in the back, cooking and drinking.
The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) Page 26