Beneath Ceaseless Skies #206

by Claude Lalumiere

  No foreign power bombed Hochelaga. The indigenous village, which occupied some of the most desirable real estate on the Island of Montreal, a patch of land between the colonial city centre and the mountain, was covertly burned to the ground by a squadron of Jonathan Flagg’s police force. The Hochelagan survivors were imprisoned in a secret dungeon at southwest foot of Mont Royal, where the Montreal General Hospital was being built. The Hochelagans have survived all this time, in captivity, kept breeding to provide fodder for the Patchwork Procedure. Every officer who participated in the massacre and its aftermath was executed—for “treason”—lest any of them ever reveal the truth.

  The truth about the Patchwork Procedure is that it does not work with the remains of the dead, even the freshly dead. Two living bodies, donor and recipient, must by linked by transfusion while the surgeon grafts the flesh of the donor onto the body of the recipient. Once the operation is successful, then the donor is disposed of.

  What the public thinks it knows about the Patchwork Procedure is all public-relations theatre. The truth is that the splendour that is Metropolitan Montreal is built upon an ongoing atrocity.

  Jonathan Flagg, the most frequent beneficiary of the Patchwork Procedure, has in my lifetime always looked like a monster. But it is only now that I can admit to myself that the monster runs much deeper than the surface of his borrowed flesh.

  And yet the truest thing that may be said of me is that beyond all else I am loyal to Jonathan Flagg.

  * * *

  12. An Audience with Jonathan Flagg; and the Future of Montreal

  The President-Mayor’s office is sparsely lit. Flagg’s eyes are photosensitive in the extreme, and he is prone to debilitating migraines if he does not shield them adequately. Even in this near dark, he wears shaded lenses that cover half his face.

  It is not easy to see his outline, but my imagination, augmented by intimate familiarity, paints a full picture of the President-Mayor. His oversize head is held up by a neck brace made of silver alloy. His bulbous skull is entirely bald, with three stitched protuberances encasing foreign brain matter. He wears only a loose robe so that he may connect the tubes that feed the Patchwork Solution into his body, so as to ease the constant pain and discomfort of his condition. He can survive without quite that much medication, but he has become addicted to the euphoria it affords him. The drugs do not addle his judgment; they restore balance to his mind, which would otherwise be beset and distracted by his physical ailments. Hidden by the robe and the drug-giving apparatus is the President-Mayor’s misshapen body, of which I doubt much, if any, is the original flesh of Jonathan Flagg. These days, he keeps his public appearances to a strict minimum. Not for the first time I wonder why he persists in staying alive at such a great cost. Are death and oblivion truly more horrific than this parody of life?

  The overriding emotion that fills me as I enter the presence of my mentor is one of deep tenderness. Above all, I want to do his will; without him, I would be nothing.

  “President-Mayor,” I address him, “the Vice-Mayor is a traitor. You have my assurance that he is well secured and carries no weapons. There are matters I must discuss with you that require both his presence and the utmost discretion. I recommend that the guards be stationed outside this office during our conversation.”

  “My son, these men follow me everywhere. They are loyal. You can speak before them.”

  His voice is low, with a hint of rumble to it, but also soothingly melodious. That voice is one of the tools that helped him hold on to power all this time. That, and his merciless intelligence.

  I nod. And I launch into my story: my pursuit of Blanchard; my capture and detainment in Québec; my rescue by the Invisible Fingers; the war plot of that secret organization; its attempts at recruiting me to help fulfill its designs on Montreal; the revelations about the true fate of the Hochelagans and the dark secret of the Patchwork Procedure; and finally my escape from the Eternal Chinese Empire and return to the metropolis.

  President-Mayor Jonathan Flagg responds, “My son, how do you propose to proceed?”

  I hesitate. Did I bring the Vice-Mayor here so Flagg and I could interrogate him? There is much that we can learn from this agent of the Invisible Fingers. I told Flagg that Trembles is weaponless; indeed he is, but I am not.

  I have killed many times in the interest of the Islands of Metropolitan Montreal, obeying the will of the President-Mayor, always in the belief that I was fighting against the myriad forces that would bring injustice and inequity to the city-state that I love. But I can no longer pretend that injustice and inequity are not intimately part of the fabric of Montreal. Is it time for me to slay the father so that a new world, a new Montreal, may be born? Can I continue to serve the President-Mayor in light of the truth I avoided for so long? Do I still have faith that Jonathan Flagg will continue to lead Montreal to an ever-brighter future? For all that I do not trust the Invisible Fingers and their naïve or willfully deceptive notions of a utopia built on the greed of capitalism, they are perhaps right that the world needs to change, though perhaps not according to their script.

  The guards fidget tensely while I remain silent. I know these men: Michel Anderson, Richard Howard Philips, and Christopher Jacques. I am their superior officer and I chose them for this detail, to be the personal guards of the President-Mayor. Who or what commands their deepest loyalty? Myself? The President-Mayor? The Islands of Metropolitan Montreal? Their personal ethics? Would that knowledge affect my decision?

  My left hand brushes against the handle of my pistol while my mind speculates on all the possible futures that derive from what I will do next.

  Copyright © 2016 Claude Lalumière

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  Claude Lalumière (claudepages.info) was born and raised in Montreal. He’s the author of Objects of Worship (2009), The Door to Lost Pages (2011), and Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes (2013). His fourth book, Venera Dreams, is forthcoming in 2017. His first fiction, “Bestial Acts,” appeared in Interzone in 2002, and he has since published more than one hundred stories; his work has been translated into French, Italian, Polish, Spanish, and Serbian and adapted for stage, screen, audio, and comics. In summer 2016, he was one of 21 international short-fiction writers showcased at Serbia’s Kikinda Short 11: The New Deal.

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  WHAT PADA-SARA MEANS TO THE ELEPHANT

  by Jeremy Sim

  “Are we lost?” says Shashi, her voice a knife-edge. “We’re lost, aren’t we?”

  “No,” I say, more firmly this time. “We are not.”

  We have been picking our way along the frothy lip of the coastline, Shashi and I, tracing the path I mapped out beneath the desert stars. We make careful progress along its sand-splotched waterline, traveling only at night. Now and again the icy water rushes over our feet, and Shashi shrieks and races ahead, scattering tiny crabs who skitter and flatten themselves in invisible mud-pockets in the dark. The cold sea breathes peacefully beside us, and we are definitely not lost.

  At least I think we aren’t.

  “We’re lost,” Shashi insists.

  I turn and see that Shashi has stopped. In the ten feet of waterlogged beach between us, the only sandal-prints are mine.

  I know then the look on her face, the uncertainty close to tears. In a minute she will ask for bread, then for home, then for Mami. And my magic can only bring her one of those.

  I trudge back over my own footprints.

  “We aren’t lost, silly.” I seat myself on the cold sand. “Here. Let me show you on the pada-sara board.”

  I reach into my rucksack and withdraw the old, sand-beaten board. The pieces rattle woodenly inside. I unfold it like a pair of wings, balance it on my lap and place an elephant, Shashi’s favorite, on a black square on the bottom edge. “See, this is where we started. This is Tarq.”

  I drag the elephant two squares up, against the left edge. “This is where we are now. Right u
p against the sea.”

  “Where’s Ankora?”

  “Ankora,” I say, placing a white castle piece, “is here.”

  “How about the yodhinika?”

  A white cannon, for the yodhinika soldiers, goes down right behind our elephant, one square away.

  “So close!?” says Shashi, aghast.

  We squint down at the board together, at the three lonely pieces and the blocks and blocks of space separating our black elephant and that faraway white castle. After a while Shashi nods. I pack the board away, take her by the hand, and stand.

  And we flee on.

  * * *

  I am sitting atop a hunk of driftwood, an itchy tangle of seaweed and sand, with Dadi’s spyglass pointed west. Along with my pada-sara board, it is the one tool I dug out of Dadi’s armoire when Shashi and I squeezed out the back window and snuck out of Tarq. The spyglass is cold and heavy and beautiful, and it is many things to us now: our compass, our scout, our weapon. All our other family things, rugs and tools and gold rings and pocketwatches, are lost.

  We have just done our bread magic and eaten, and the sun is cresting the dunes. I can hardly keep my eyes open. I have my eyes trained on a specific spot on the coastline, a narrow gap between a wrecked ship and a bulky jut of cliff. If the yodhinika are still on our tail, they will have to pass through that crevice before the tide comes in. But if all my planning has paid off, we will stay ahead of them for yet one more day.

  Shashi does not know, but if the yodhinika catch us, we will die. They will bind our hands, kneel us on the beach, and shoot us. Our bodies will be wrapped up in crimson flags to be marched back through the ghettoes of the city; the corpses of two more disobedient bharjana on display.

  I am tired. I yawn, and I am about to put the spyglass down when I see something.

  There. A man, booted and red-vested, peers around the side of the wreck. He scans the beach, movements clinical. He strides through the gap. A column of gloomy soldiers follows, their boots kicking up harsh sprays of sand.

  My heart twists. It is not two or three yodhinika, or even six. We are being pursued by an entire troop.

  The leader has a moustache to match his dark, chubby face. His pepper-black hair hides a sprinkle of salt. And suddenly my stomach sinks, because I recognize him. He is Jagmeet, the patrolman responsible for the ghetto where Shashi and I lived.

  I let the spyglass fall away, and scramble over the rocks to join Shashi where it is safer.

  Jagmeet. Of all the yodhinika oppressors, he is perhaps the one who knows Shashi and me best. After they took Mami and Dadi away, Jagmeet was the one assigned to watch us, and from time to time I’d catch him squinting in through the sand-caked windows of our hovel. He was our clockwork ghost, moving through the ghetto the same way every day, hands knotted behind him. In the evenings he’d trace a route round the esplanade, keeping an eye out as we sat in the warm grass and played pada-sara.

  One evening he did not keep to the outskirts; he crossed the hot cobblestones of the esplanade until he reached the center of the field. The instant he stepped onto the grass, everyone’s eyes were on him: the lone yodhinika in a crowd of bharjana.

  And out of everyone, Jagmeet stopped in front of me. He slouched to the ground, smelling of wine. His gaze swept my pada-sara board, the pieces and screens. He made a little movement with his chin.

  As yodhinika requests, so bharjana does. We played. We propped up our screens, arranged our secret pieces, and did battle. Everything went quiet, the only sound from the rustle of blankets and the velvety tap of our pada-sara pieces.

  When I had captured most of his pieces and cornered his king, he stared at the board, digesting his defeat. I looked up, the summer wind hot in my nostrils, playing back the last few moves in my mind.

  He leaned over the board, clapped me on the shoulder and rose to leave.

  The others waited till he had rounded the corner, then exploded in a flurry of chatter. That night I was the hero, the bharjana that stood up to the yodhinika bully and won.

  But I remember the pressure of Jagmeet’s hand on my shoulder. It was firm. It did not feel like he was pushing me down; more like leaning over a little to measure my height.

  * * *

  “I’m hungry,” Shashi says.

  “Stop it,” I say. “We need to walk.”

  “But I’m hungry.”

  “You ate less than two hours ago. When the sun rises, I’ll make you some more.”

  “When is it?” she bargains.

  “Later.”

  The world is quiet this time of night, just the moon and the rustle of warm breezes stirring the seagrass. Our sandals make a shhh shhh sound against the sand, the grains scraping painfully on our ankles.

  “I want to sit down,” says Shashi.

  “No,” I say, and a bolt of impatience shoots through me. “I told you. Be a good girl and walk.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as we can, as fast as we can, for as many nights as it takes.”

  “No!” Shashi flops to the ground, face against the sand, and lies there like a dead octopus.

  “Why are you doing this!?” I scream. “I can’t do the bread magic now because they’ll see us! They’re right behind us!”

  Shashi starts to wail. I suck in an angry breath and let it out again, and for a moment I just want to grab Shashi, throw her over my shoulder and press on. But the moment burns out, and I slump to the ground.

  I am tired too. I am hungry too. It was a mistake to start so early today, to push Shashi so hard.

  I move beside her. Her cheeks are covered in mucus and fine sand, and her hair feels gritty. She feels small in my embrace, almost fake, like a doll. My eyes trace the waterline, taking in the ebb and swell of waves.

  “I want to go home,” says Shashi.

  But home isn’t there anymore, I almost say. The yodhinika took it away. First Dadi and then Mami, for the same old tired crime: belonging to a fictitious bharjana cell and “plotting treason.” Like so many before them.

  Shashi crawls into my lap, and I notice that the backs of her ankles are rubbed raw—they are hot and half-sticky to the touch.

  I close my eyes. We cannot go much further, not like this. We are moving too slowly anyway. The yodhinika are closing the distance; if they are not upon us tomorrow, it will be the next day. The white cannon piece butting up against the black elephant’s square, preparing for capture.

  “I think we’ve lost,” I murmur.

  Shashi squirms and pulls her ankles away from my fingers, her face digging into my stomach.

  I pull the pada-sara board out of my bag, just to look at it. I set the elephant, cannon, and castle in position, and slouch over the board with my head in my hands.

  The situation looks hopeless. If we keep going along the beach, the yodhinika will surely overtake us. No hiding place will shield us. If we turn off into the desert, they will see our tracks leave the waterline and follow at full speed. Either way, we don’t have much travel left in us. We need rest.

  “I’m hungry,” says Shashi. She burrows her face into the front of my shirt, smearing it with tears and mucus.

  I turn the elephant piece over in my hand. Its sandalwood eyes stare back at me, questioning, until I hide them in the grip of my fist.

  “Okay,” I say. I nudge Shashi. “Let’s eat.”

  She stops sniffling. She studies me. Her mouth is covered with snot and sand. “Really?”

  “Yes. I’ll make us some bread, and we’ll eat. But then we’ve got to keep walking, okay? I have a plan.”

  Shashi’s eyes go round. “But can you make me a really big bread?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  * * *

  I plant my knees in the sand, facing east. I make my hands into a bowl. It is a posture of supplication, asking the sky for its gifts. I close my eyes and remain that way for a moment, feeling the breath in my chest, the pulse in my veins. I am a conduit between ground and sky. The desert
wind rasps in my ear, bringing the smell of dried roots.

  I say the traditional words, lengthening each syllable as much as I can, stacking them in fuzzy layers.

  A familiar, hot energy radiates out from my core, filling the spaces between my organs. I am forced me to breathe deeper, to sit stiffer. The heat oozes from my stomach to my chest, from my chest to my arms. It gathers in my hands.

  All bharjana can do this. The bread magic. We make food from air and shadow.

  A surge of heat scorches my palms, as if I have placed my hands too close to a fireplace. A flash of green penetrates my eyelids, and I know the night around us has lit up briefly with the color of life and sustenance.

  I open my eyes. I am cradling a brown, spherical loaf, smooth and hard. It is patterned with pale green streaks, places where the energy moved in whorls and eddies.

  I tear off a piece of the crust, put it in my mouth, and give the rest to Shashi. She squeals, as if I am handing her a chunk of gold.

  My manna bread is chewy today, with a hint of clouds and seaspray. I scoop up Dadi’s spyglass from its place on my belt and focus south, on the yodhinika camp. There is no movement that I can see. Their tiny campfire winks and flickers, barely visible in the darkness.

  “Are you eating?” I ask, stowing the spyglass.

  Shashi nods. She shows me the chunk in her hands: more than three quarters of it is gone.

  “Good.”

  I kneel again and summon a loaf for myself, then another for Shashi. Two more flashes illuminate the night.

  When I check the camp again, it has come to life. Torches are lit. Tiny soldiers stumble from their sleeping pads. I watch a man sling what must be a rifle onto his shoulder, and although it was my plan to begin with, I feel suddenly afraid. My body, still magic-warm, feels like it has been dropped into an ice bath.

  They are coming for us.

  I bite off a large piece, brush the crumbs off Shashi’s clothes and help her to her feet. The bread’s nourishing magic rekindles a tiny, resilient spark inside me, and I am grateful. I take another bite. Chew and swallow. Chew and swallow.