I dropped my eyes again to where the sheet lay across my lap and swallowed hard as an uneasy feeling twisted my stomach.
“Wraeththu blood turns humans into Wraeththu?” I was still trying to wrap my head around this new wrinkle in reality.
We humans had known the Wraeththu were different and that they were enemies of humanity, but other than that I did not know much else about them. They were shrouded in mystery and suspicion. So many rumours and wild stories about them were told it was hard to know what to believe.
“Blood and three days of hell. Those are the facts of life, my friend,” Mouse replied, nodding curtly.
“So I’m Wraeththu now?” I asked again slowly. This seemed very surreal
“Mostly. There is one more thing that needs to happen. To be completely har you’ve got to spend some time with Dawson.” Mouse leered at me for a moment. “And maybe a few of the others too.” He smiled an odd tight smile before looking away quickly. “I’d better go tell them you’re ready.” He scrambled to his feet.
“Ready for what?” I called after him, but I got no answer.
Mouse and I often scavenged together. We usually set out in the mornings and in the mid-afternoon had hauled our treasures back to our home in an abandoned warehouse by now unused train tracks. I was one of them now; I was Wraeththu. To me, there seemed not much difference between being human and being one of them. Life was still harsh and violent, and we still struggled for territory and dwindling resources. My life had settled down to a dreary routine of scavenging, helping to maintain our territory, sleeping, cleaning, and trying to attract as little attention to myself as possible. Dawson, our crew leader, wasn’t terribly fond of me; I didn’t fit in.
That day’s scavenging had been successful; we’d found a bag of old clothes and we’d managed to steal a case of canned peas.
That afternoon was different from most. When Mouse and I returned to the warehouse, our clan weren’t the only ones there; Dawson appeared to be entertaining.
“You’re late,” Dawson barked.
“Sorry,” I replied. “We had to be careful – wanted to be sure we weren’t followed.”
“Tanks! Bunches of them!” Mouse supplied, nodding enthusiastically.
Dawson waved his hand autocratically. “Come over here and meet my guests.”
Mouse moved forward grinning, while I followed more slowly.
“This is Mouse!” Dawson said beaming at Mouse proudly. “He’s one of our best! He can sniff goods out anywhere, and he can liberate them like a pro.”
Mouse nodded vigorously and grinned more.
“And this,” Dawson said with considerably less enthusiasm, gesturing in my direction, “is Nolan.” He paused a beat. “He’s new”.
I nodded to the newcomers. There were seven of them and they were like no one I had ever seen before. They were beautiful. They wore clean, colourful clothing, jewellery, and their hair was long and styled. There was something else too, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. They not only looked different, I was sure they were different; they seemed to radiate something. Self-confidence? Power? Authority? Serenity?
By comparison we were loutish, grimy riffraff stuffed into layers of ill-fitting scavenged clothing.
“And I am Maelduin,” said one of the newcomers, a tall, tanned har whose dark blond hair hung in a neat braid down his back. “These are Acorn, Aydenn, Osiris, Zekki, D’rik, and Inari.” He flashed a disarmingly charming smile; Dawson was clearly bewitched.
Our guests were all easy on the eyes. I will admit to being fascinated by them as well. The one who piqued my interest the most was the dark-haired swarthy beauty with big dark eyes, and a slightly aquiline nose, who’d been introduced as Inari.
Someone had started a fire in an old metal crate, and our crew members sat around it while our guests listened to Dawson talk about us. Actually, he talked more about himself and how wonderful his plans were, and his gripes about the world, which constantly failed to recognize his genius. He was pathetically desperate to impress our guests, but to me he came off as even more of an unimpressive braggart than usual. Most of our crew egged him on, flattering him, and encouraging his antics, but I saw that Dawson was a garish caricature compared to our guests and their composed self-assurance. I gave total credit to our guests, who managed to remain flawlessly gracious, their smiles never wavering.
“Dawson, you are unbelievable! A genius to be reckoned with!” Maelduin chuckled affably.
From my vantage, on the outside edge of the circle gathered around the fire, I was pretty sure that several of our guests exchanged a faint smirk, but no one else appeared to notice.
“That story, my friend, deserves a toast,” Maelduin went on. “Allow us to offer you and your hara some refreshment so that we can offer up a toast to your continued success.”
The suggestion was met with whoops of approval by members of my crew. Our guests began producing green bottles and fanned out among the twenty or so of us in Dawson’s crew. Inari passed a bottle along to the eager hands of one of my gang with a smile, but he stayed seated next to Maelduin. I observed him for a moment, he seemed withdrawn, resigned, tired. To me he was the most intriguing and beautiful of them. I kind of identified with him, or at least I projected my own feelings of discontent onto him.
I watched my crew squabble over the bottles, each grabbing one and taking a swig before it was snatched from them. When one bottle was emptied another appeared. If these strangers had as much booze as they seemed to, I really needed to make myself scarce; no good came from bullies like Dawson and his ‘favourites’ when they got drinking. My attempt to slip away would have been successful but for the visitor named Acorn.
“No! Don’t go, tiahaar! You mustn’t go!” He called out. “Stay! This is good stuff. I promise.” He grinned at me as he grabbed my wrist and flicked his long brown curls over his shoulder.
I was caught and Dawson had noticed. He glared at me as he got to his feet. “Where were you sneaking off to, Nolan?” he demanded. “Being rude to my guests?”
“I was going to go see about starting dinner.” It was the first thing that popped into my head; the wrong thing. I should have just said I was going for a pee.
Dawson froze for a moment and then his eyes narrowed. We had precious little food. The case of peas we’d found today would be barely a mouthful for our own gang – sharing would only mean less for everyone. Dawson wasn’t generous. He wouldn’t think twice about accepting the strangers’ offer of alcohol, but he’d not voluntarily offer them food in return.
“You were, were you? How… thoughtful.” His voice was low and dangerous; he took a few steps towards me.
Acorn reacted; smooth and lightening fast. He dropped my wrist and slid his arms around my waist, and in a dancer-smooth move had swung me out of the way, inserting himself between me and Dawson. With his arm still firmly around my waist, Acorn fairly oozed ‘sensuous soume’ at Dawson, placing his hand lightly on our leader’s chest.
“Dawson, you treasure!” Acorn purred. “How generous to offer us dinner! I might have known you’d try to do such a sweet thing. Hospitality like yours is a rare treat these days. You are to be commended! But we can’t let you! No! No! No!” He shook his head emphatically.
Dawson looked confused for a moment but then swaggered smugly at the flattery.
“Of course not!” the har called Osiris laughed. “It would have been rather rude and pushy for such a large number of us just to descend on you unannounced and expect to be fed. We’re trying to make a good impression on you, so we brought you and your hara dinner.”
A murmur rippled through our crew and attention shifted away from us as the clan anticipated dinner. As I met his eyes, Acorn gave my waist a slight squeeze. I mouthed, “Thank you”, and he responded with a slight nod and a ghost of a smile.
Dinner was not fancy; there were no table-cloths or cutlery, no plates or crystal, but it was divine. These hara had brought sandwiches – yes, huge ch
unks of juicy tender chicken, thick slices of plump tomatoes, crisp lettuce, in enormous crusty bread rolls. I was in bliss. When Osiris passed around enormous chocolate chip cookies for dessert I wanted to kiss him, but I didn’t.
Later, much later, I was still sitting by the fire; full, content, and after several drinks, feeling mellow and sleepy. I was staring into the dying flames trying hard not to think of how long it had been since I’d eaten food like that and trying even harder to think about how long it might be until we ate that well again.
The box of books landed with a loud bang startling me out of my reverie. Mouse took a couple of paperbacks and tossed them into the fire.
I love reading. I love books. I had been taught to respect books, long ago in that other life I’d once had. Burning them just seemed so wrong but I had given up trying to teach my fellow crew members a love of books. I sat mutely watching the cover of one of the cheesy romance novels begin to bubble and then darken as the flames took hold: a picture of a buxom woman in a pale mauve gown swooning into the arms of a shirtless muscular man, a castle visible in the distant background.
“Don’t let Nolan see you burning those books,” Dawson sneered. “He’ll cry.”
The crew guffawed loudly; I did my best not to react.
“Do you like books, Nolan?” Acorn asked brightly.
“Yeah…” I mumbled self-consciously. “Love ‘em.”
“And burning them bothers you?” Maelduin asked, an eyebrow arched.
The dark one called Inari was suddenly alert, roused and now focused on the conversation.
“Well,” I said carefully, “I understand why we have to burn them, fuel being as scarce as it is, but…. I dunno, it just seems wrong… and sad. It’s such a waste.”
“A waste?” Maelduin cocked his head to one side.
“There is so much art in them, so much information, and so much to learn from them. They represent most of the knowledge and ideas that the world has ever had. If we burn them, that information and those ideas are gone.”
“Who cares?” said Mouse as he threw a few more books into the flames. “It’s just human knowledge. Humans are finished. We’re Wraeththu – we’re a million times better.”
“But, we were human,” I couldn’t help responding. “All of us. We can’t forget that. How are we going to know we’re better unless we can prove we’ve gone farther than humans did?” I pointed to one of the books he’d tossed into the pyre, Basic Math and Pre-Algebra “Basic Math isn’t going to change just because we’re now Wraeththu, nor will other basic facts…”
“Humans are stupid fucks,” Mouse pronounced darkly.
“They weren’t always,” I insisted. This was a subject I felt strongly about. “Humans were around for thousands of years. They invented all sorts of brilliant things; they put people on the moon, created great works of art, and built strong civilizations… Humans weren’t always like they are now. I know there were always wars and conflict, empires rose and fell, but there were always groups, and individuals that were trying to make things right… until something happened and all of society fell apart. Civilisation failed completely and Wraeththu emerged.
“If we don’t preserve the written human record, we may never know who we are and why we are the way we are. If we want to understand today, we have to understand yesterday! Learning about all of humanity will help us know what things we must do and what things we need to avoid. We’re moving out of human history into our own history…”
I suddenly realised how much I had said and how enthusiastically. Shame and fear silenced me then, but I was over the moon when I saw Inari’s swarthy face break out into a wide grin; he appeared more engaged at this moment than he’d been all afternoon. He leaned over and grabbed one of the paperbacks. He held it up for me to see – it was another romance novel – one whose cover depicted a muscular man with a cowboy hat staring stoically off into the sunset as a woman with long hair clung to him.
“And what, pray tell,” Inari asked with a mischievous grin and a twinkle in his eye, “will be learned from this… literature?”
I grinned back, thoroughly delighted. “Perhaps, some day in the future, a Wraeththu scholar will want to compare…”
“SHUT UP!” Dawson roared.
I shut up immediately – damn the booze for having sent my inhibitions and instincts for self-preservation packing!
“SHUT UP!” His voice was a shrill shriek, his face was red and his limbs flailed like those of a child before a tantrum. “No one gives a fuck what you think … you’re just a fucking piece of shit … SHUT THE FUCK UP!!”
I ducked and rolled backwards out of the circle. The empty bottle Dawson had hurled at me glanced off my shoulder and skittered across the floor.
Dawson’s abuse continued as I retreated behind the rows of stacked pallets. Howls of derisive laughter followed me as I stepped out into the freshness of cool evening air. Gangs are ‘substitute families’, my ass.
I swung myself up onto the broken bit of fire escape that still clung to the warehouse wall and climbed to the expansive flat roof. I heaved myself up onto one of the vent outlets that peppered the roof. I came up here often; to think, to escape, to cry, to dream. This evening it was to escape.
I hugged my knees and rested my chin on them. I hate my life. I hate Dawson. What purpose does any of this serve?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
It was an quote from an ancient book called The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and it played on an endless loop in my head. Its author wrote of revolution; peasants rebelling against aristocratic cruel oppression. While the storyline is full of chaos, violence, and repression, there is also a belief in the possibility of transformation, both personal and societal. The author had supported his revolutionaries’ ‘cause’, but he had also pointed out the evil of fighting cruelty with cruelty. It is a slippery slope from being the oppressed to being the oppressor. Perhaps we were now facing this same plight; humans had treated Wraeththu cruelly, and now that humanity was failing, were we in danger of merely becoming the new oppressors? Same shit, different day? Maybe we stood at that point where foolishness became wisdom? When despair became hope? Or, I sighed with resignation, maybe I’m just a fucking piece of shit that spends too much time thinking and trying to make sense of things that just ‘were’.
I sat on the roof brooding for some time, long enough for the sun to sink below the horizon on the other side of the river. The sky above me was now a dark indigo. Across the river, lights had begun to appear, twinkling in the darkness. A few moments later the flood-lights in the tall armed-guard towers burst to life and began their ceaseless roaming vigil, guarding the human occupants of the gated community from threats, from Wraeththu, from me. Ironically I felt like I was the most helpless creature on the planet. On our side of the river, there was darkness; the army had cut the power ages ago in a vain attempt to subdue both human and Wraeththu insurgents.
The crunch of gravel drew my attention. Inari crossed the roof casually and hopped up onto the vent box next to me. He didn’t say anything as he stared out across the river at the prowling searchlights. I noticed his dark hair had a slight and regular wave; it hung loosely over his shoulders.
“You shouldn’t be here with these hara,” Inari stated.
“Ha!” I sounded bitter. “You’re right, I shouldn’t, but all life’s a crapshoot isn’t it? My Grandmother shouldn’t have gotten sick, but she did. She shouldn’t have put me on that bus, but she did. There should have been someone to meet me at the bus terminal, but there wasn’t. I shouldn’t be here, but I am.”
“Sounds grim,” Inari agreed evenly, “How old were you then?”
“I dunno… fourteen, almost fifteen?”
“And how old are you now?”
“About twenty… almost twenty-one, I think.”
Silence returned and we both stared out across the river.
“Was it your Grandmother who taught you to love books?”
“Yeah. She worked in a library. It was an enormous old fortress of a building with an old broken down fountain out front. As they closed down schools, colleges, and smaller libraries, they’d bring all the books there. I was too little to stay home alone, so she’d always take me to work. They were all old people at the library, and I was quiet, so they didn’t mind having me around. I learned letters and numbers helping to sort books by call numbers. I could sit for hours with books. There weren’t any other kids – just books. By the time I was old enough to go to school there weren’t any left in our area. So I just kept getting reading tips from the others and discussing stuff I read with them. When I was ten I decided to read the whole library – I was going to work my way through every single book…”
I saw a flash of white teeth in the dark.
Inari asked me a lot of questions; at some points it felt a bit like an interview, but I didn’t mind too much. I was ridiculously flattered and way too eager to answer, too eager to please; no one had ever expressed any interest in me or my story. Have you ever heard yourself saying way more than you intended to? That was sort of how it was. I did try to reciprocate with questions of my own about him and his friends, but he was quite skilful at deflecting them. I told him about my life from my times at library to being part of the human gang. After I’d described the events surrounding my inception the conversation fell into a lull.
“Was Dawson your first?” Inari asked.
“Yeah.” I acknowledged finally after an awkward pause. “He’s everyone’s first.” These were not good memories. “He’s the first and then it’s open season for anyone who wants a go.”
“Not a good situation,” Inari observed; his voice was carefully neutral.
“It’s over.” I shrugged. “They got tired of me pretty quick. I don’t have to do it anymore.”
Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu Page 6