by Ian Whates
“Soldier,” Matias said. “God damn.”
“Judging from his fingernails, he’s no rank-and-file,” Liisa said from where she squatted next to the man. “An officer and a gentleman,” she spat and let the man’s hand fall.
“We should have left him there,” One-Ear said again, tearing a hangnail from next to her thumb.
Matias glanced at her and snorted.
Liisa looked up from beside the man. “Who the hell is this guy? And why were they trying to get into Finns Heath? We don’t have anything here.”
Iiris picked at the knobbly pulls on her shirtsleeves. Her eyes, wide with fear, moved from the man to Matias and One-Ear in turn. “Maybe we could get a ransom for him.”
The girl’s mouth was a soft, round fruit, and One-Ear knew that Matias kissed it stealthily each night. As far as she was concerned, they could just as well have done it in the open. Though the child she was carrying was Matias’, One-Ear had never believed that he loved her or wanted her for a wife. Matias meant nothing to her, and Iiris was her friend.
When Iiris spoke, One-Ear saw relief and hope in the Demons’ eyes, which were immediately dashed by a barely discernible shake of Matias’s head.
“He’s waking up!” Liisa hissed and bounded further away from the man. “Hand me a pitchfork!”
The gang of Demons grew tense. Someone brought out a knife that had been hidden in the folds of his clothing, another grabbed a wooden club from against the wall. Penni threw a pitchfork to Liisa, who caught it deftly and swung its sharp tines toward the man. The teeth of the fork pressed down a hair above his collarbone, on the white skin that lay exposed under the collar of his shirt.
The man groaned and opened his eyes. He had brown, grown-out hair and the tidy beard and sideburns of a gentleman. There was a cut at the corner of his nose, and his lip was swollen and bloody, but anyone passing him on a city street on a normal day would have said he had a pleasant face. The face of a gentleman, One-Ear found herself thinking – and corrected herself immediately, because his eyes were cruelly calculating.
“What’s happened?” the man said, his voice coarse with blood. “My men...”
Matias stepped forward. “We found you in the street,” he lied with the quick braggadocio of a former guttersnipe. “You’re lucky Rat found you at all.”
Rat sneered; his gums, white with scurvy, gleamed.
“Otherwise you could have ended up in the wrong hands, unconscious like that.” Matias smiled generously, but the soldier didn’t smile back. He seemed to be considering his options.
“Clearly there has been a misunderstanding,” the man said. He spoke the musical Varjagian dialect of the Hills, but its melody was tarnished by the coarseness of his words. “I know who you are, and I know you don’t want to get mixed up in our affairs. If you know what’s best for you, you’ll return me to my people.”
One-Ear saw the man grope for support to pull himself to his feet, but either the pitchfork’s teeth, which Liisa pressed more firmly against him, or the discomfort induced by the earlier assault stopped his efforts short.
“You know who we are, but we don’t know you. Who are you, and what are you doing in Finns Heath?” Matias threw off his good cop mask as quickly as he had put it on.
“Nothing that has anything to do with the Demons.”
“Everything that goes on in these streets has something to do with us.”
The man considered his next words. “All right. I’m looking for a certain man. If you help me find him, we can forget this...” The man glanced at the fork tines pressed against his throat. “Misunderstanding.”
“It depends. Is the man a Finn?” Matias asked.
“A Dutchman,” the man replied. “He may be injured, or dead.”
“Why?”
“He was seen falling the night before last somewhere in the area of Finns Heath.”
“Falling? There aren’t any airships over Finns Heath – and there haven’t been any,” Matias said, furrowing his brow.
The Varjag looked unsure for a moment how much he should tell the Finns. “He didn’t fall from an airship. He was traveling alone... The man has mechanical wings on his back.”
Liisa snorted a laugh. “This bloke is looking for an angel among the Demons!”
The Demons never found out the man’s identity or whether he could get them off the hook for the death of his soldiers. That night, the man was struck with a high fever. He lay in the middle of the floor, trembling helplessly, but none of the Demons were willing to come close enough to even cover him with a blanket.
“If he dies,” Rat said, echoing aloud what everyone was secretly thinking, “then we can get rid of the body without causing a stir and pretend we don’t know anything about him.”
“Why wait?” Liisa said, reminding One-Ear, again, why she stayed away from her. “We can always hurry things along...” Liisa drew a slow line across her throat with her forefinger.
Matias shook his head. “We’ve talked about this. We’re done with those kinds of games. After what happened to Juhani... You don’t want to go back to those days, do you?”
The Demons shook their heads. It wasn’t just a matter of not wanting to cross certain lines. Many of them still remembered the days when Juhani Korpela had been their leader. Violence had been a constant, even within the gang. In the end, Juhani got caught and was quickly convicted. One-Ear had seen a picture of Juhani’s hanging in the paper and had secretly been glad. Things were better since Matias had taken over. The Demons were feared, but at least they didn’t have to fear each other.
The Varjag started to vomit blood and mucus during the night, and by morning the man lay dead on the floor of the hut. The Demons buried him deep in a bog eye on the edge of Finns Heath. But by that point the game had already been lost. Someone had seen something, someone had told. When word reached the Varjags, the government’s retaliation was efficient and ruthless. Finns Heath was declared a rebel area. The many-legged black steam tanks called spiders levelled the roadblocks as if they had been made of matchsticks. And most people hadn’t stuck around to fight. They had either fled or been mangled by the legs of the spiders.
Afterwards, One-Ear had left to search for the winged man. Bloody, alone, and half-crazed with rage and grief, all she knew was that she wouldn’t hand the man over to the Varjags.
Isaac felt the air flow under his wings. His whole body ached. Unyielding, rending, deeply penetrating waves of pain pumped strength into the savaged tissues of his upper body. Pain flashed before his eyes in glowing, white balls of light, but Isaac paid them no attention; instead he sliced again and again through the cushion of warm air radiating from below. Despite Bruno’s efforts to deter him, he had set out as soon as his muscles had recovered enough to carry him to his destination. As afternoon turned to evening, he crossed the mountains and at last saw the city of Keloburg before him. The mass of buildings and its many shades of brown were obscured in places by a thick, black curtain of smoke. Some of the buildings had collapsed, leaving gaps in the pleated rows of multi-storeyed buildings. Everything about the city looked dirty and repellent in Isaac’s eyes. Before him floated government airships.
Isaac awoke groggily and wasn’t sure whether it was the same day as before. The apartment was empty; the woman who had called herself One-Ear had left. Something soft brushed Isaac’s shoulder. Isaac fumbled the fabric hanging on his wing and yanked at it. His wing shook, sending a hot wave of pain through his body, and he groaned through clenched teeth. When the pain receded, he took a closer look at the wad of cloth in his hand. It was a loosely knit piece of fabric, its blue and green checks faded and fuzzy. There was a hole near the edge where some screw or other part of Isaac’s wing had caught on the fabric. Isaac pushed his finger through the hole. The mouse-haired woman’s shawl. A sudden impulse drove Isaac to press the fabric against his face and breathe in its scent. It smelled like a woman, like vanilla, and vaguely bitter. The scent made him miss Anneliese more t
han ever.
The memories returned. And when they came they burned him to the core.
Isaac’s head had fallen forwards, his massive wings arced out on either side of his mangled torso, his hands rested in his lap. One-Ear crouched besidehim, laid the bundle she was carrying on the ground, and touched his cheek. It was warm, but no longer hot. The man’s eyelids flickered at her touch. He held One-Ear’s shawl in his hands. When One-Ear tried to take her shawl back, Isaac awoke and gripped the fabric with both hands as if it would protect him. When his panic and confusion subsided, Isaac opened his clenched fingers.
“It’s got a hole in it,” he said, showing her the spot in the blue-green fabric. “I’m sorry.”
One-Ear didn’t reveal her irritation. Without saying a word, she tied the shawl back around her shoulders, bent down over her bundle, and opened the strings that held it together.
“I thought you abandoned me,” Isaac said.
“I brought food.”
Inside the bundle were a piece of bread and some leathery vegetables. Carrots, potatoes, an onion. Isaac kept awake the entire time it took One-Ear to light the fire and bring water to a boil. He watched how she cut the potatoes and carrots into pieces and sliced the onion. One-Ear was sorry to no longer have any seasonings. Isaac shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to One-Ear that the man’s pain had lessened somewhat while she was away.
When the potatoes had softened, One-Ear took the pot from the stove.
“Can I ask you something?” Isaac said suddenly. His gaze was direct and serious. “Why are you helping me?”
He was trying to catch her eye, but One-Ear pretended she hadn’t noticed. She couldn’t tell Isaac about her plan. About the talons she had constructed while he slept, or about the Ormen Lange. He wasn’t ready.
“Eat,” One-Ear said. “Get your strength back.”
Isaac and One-Ear spent the next days alone in the desolate attic apartment. One-Ear mostly stayed in the apartment, but from time to time she went out and brought back more food and water. She prepared a thick salve of plantain leaves, resin, and other ingredients that remained unknown to Isaac, which she applied to Isaac’s wounds. Her nimble fingers felt cool against Isaac’s skin.
“They go all the way in,” Isaac said. He had watched her eyes, how her gaze wandered over his chest. “The wings are anchored to me, and I to them. We’re one being.”
Her fingers paused. She glanced at Isaac, unable to fully conceal her shock. She set the cup of plantain salve on the floor and looked closely, as if for the first time, at the harness Isaac bore, and not merely his wings. She laid her hand on Isaac’s chest and traced the edges of the metal claws on his bare skin.
“But how?”
One-Ear saw metal where there should have been unbroken skin. Fresh scar tissue, which she had assumed were caused by his fall. Wounds that had scarcely healed and had then opened again when he struck the earth.
One-Ear raised her eyes to his face. “Who did this to you?”
“I did it to myself. Or, at least, I ordered it done.”
The wings behind him, leaning against the wall, were shaped like those of a bird, but their feathers were made of metal and leather. Now he had folded them closed, but when stretched to their full extent, the span of each wing was several meters. One-Ear’s eyes drifted back to the metal claws that gripped the man’s chest. The strips of skin visible between them were red and swollen from the pressure of the claws. One-Ear ran her finger cautiously along the surface of the skin and tried to understand – in a mixture of wonder and admiration – the cruelty of the construction.
Wounded. That was the word that described the woman best in Isaac’s mind. Not fragile or weak. But definitely wounded. Anneliese had become like that, too, when Mathilde was taken. She had looked as though nothing could ever hurt her any more than that.
Mathilde and her friend Gert had been fishing in a stream alongside the main road. Most of the time, all that could be had from the small stream was trash fish and minnows, but locals said they would sometimes catch a salmon. Salmon was what the girls were hoping for, too. When Isaac and his family had moved to the small village that had been built for migrant workers about thirty kilometres northwest of Keloburg, they had been assured that the area was safe and the people were friendly. Neither Isaac and Anneliese nor Gertrude’s parents had thought to worry about their children’s absence until the evening. Only when the girls didn’t show up for dinner did they realise that something was wrong.
Anneliese’ brother, Bruno, had led the search party. They found out that Mathilde and her friend had fallen into the hands of government men.
“It was one of the groups of mercenaries headed toward Keloburg,” Bruno told them when he returned to the house. “The high king sent them to help the huscarl put down the rebellion. They’re savages, Isaac. The peasants say the high king looks the other way and gives the mercenaries liberties not allowed regular soldiers. When a band of them passes, the peasants lower their eyes and shut their daughters indoors, if they manage in time. They think the girls were taken to Keloburg,” Bruno said sombrely. “To the pleasure corps. I’m sorry, Isaac.”
“There must be a mistake,” Isaac said. “We’re here as their guests!”
“We’re foreigners, Isaac. The Varjags don’t care about us. They never have,” Bruno said. “When it comes down to it, we’re the same scum in their eyes as the rebels in Keloburg.”
Isaac refused to believe his brother-in-law’s words. “Mathilde is only 13 years old! Just a child,” he sputtered.
Anneliese withdrew to her rooms – not to grieve, but to extinguish herself with grief. She stopped eating and drinking, and merely lay in bed with dry, gaping eyes, clutching Mathilde’s nightshirt against her chest. Isaac had refused to give up. He had sent an urgent message by courier to the provincial king, but from the lack of response they understood that the Varjags didn’t intend to return the girl. The rebels had made surprising gains in the city, and even outside Keloburg there was talk of a state of war rather than a rebellion; the Varjags of Keloland had neither time for nor interest in dealing with the troubles of a landless migrant worker.
The anguish and distress in Anneliese’ eyes had driven Isaac to his decision. He would get Mathilde back himself.
“Are you crazy, Isaac? The high king’s troops have surrounded Keloburg,” Bruno said. “You’ll never make it to the city.”
“I’ll make it if I go over the mountains,” Isaac said, shaking his head. “The Varjags cut off Precipice Pass to the south of the city, but they aren’t expecting anyone to come over the mountains.”
“You mean you’ll fly?” Bruno asked. “Even if you could get your hands on a one-man airship, its hull would be so big you’d be detected as soon as you got close to Keloburg, day or night. You’d be shot down.”
In response, Isaac spread in front of them on the table two wide rolls of paper that he had pulled out of the large cabinet in his office.
Bruno paled when he saw Isaac’s plans. “Isaac, this is madness! The change is permanent. I’m not willing to do that to you.”
“Don’t you see how your sister is suffering?” Isaac shouted. “Do you want to lose Anneliese along with Mathilde? I’m the one taking the risk here, not you.”
Bruno rubbed his temples and stared at the diagrams. “I... I won’t –”
“Do it.”
Bruno had laboured three days sawing, cutting, attaching flesh to metal while Isaac lay in a morphine coma. When his work was complete, Bruno, horrified at what he had done, destroyed the plans and any trace of the wings so that no one else would ever suffer the same fate. When Isaac awoke, he had become Anneliese’s delivering angel.
A winged man.
Isaac wept. He didn’t know when he had started weeping, or why, but he sobbed miserably, wordlessly, like a small child. Words poured out of him in rivulets and in rapids. When he finally stopped, he realised he was leaning on the woman’s pigeon chest, nearly lyin
g in the embrace of her slender arms. One-Ear had drawn him against herself.
Tears streamed down One-Ear’s neck, filling the cavity between her collarbones and soaking into the front of her dress. The coolness of the day raised goose bumps on the flesh of her breasts. One-Ear stroked the man’s hair and cradled his head in her arms. The gesture was instinctive, motherly, but when the man’s crying had subsided and the involuntary tremors of his body had ceased, his breathing remained shallow. The sudden awareness of the closeness of another made One-Ear’s body tense, taut as a bow. When the man’s warm lips pressed against the tender skin of her collarbones, One-Ear moaned. Isaac interpreted the sound and her movement as a sign of consent. His palm grazed her breast; his finger brushed the place that had grown firm under her shirt.
One-Ear drew in a breath.
Isaac lifted her skirt clumsily, as if he feared losing everything should he slow down or let go. One-Ear was surprised to find herself opening her thighs to him, surrendering to his embrace. The man’s hands were strong and rugged. Isaac wanted to kiss her, and One-Ear, astonished, returned his kiss, tasting the salty tears on his lips. Their taste made One-Ear’s body soften, receptive to Isaac’s hands.
“I want to know your name,” Isaac murmured against her lips. “I can’t call you One-Ear now.”
“Johanna,” One-Ear said quietly. “My name is Johanna.”
Isaac rose to his knees, bearing One-Ear in his arms. One-Ear felt a rush of air as the metal wings beat in the confines of the cramped apartment. Isaac whispered her name.
“You’ve lost a child, too.” Isaac said it with certainty.
One-Ear stood at the window, watching the red sky. When One-Ear spoke, Isaac heard Anneliese’s anguish in her voice. “How can one city burn for so long?”