Aerovoyant

by P L Tavormina

  “That’s crazy. They—what, you mean they’re sending body parts? Why?”

  “Keep your voice down. They went to Renico. Renico sent these nice tidy envelopes to this place in the middle of Sangal, and there’d be a . . . package to go back. At first I thought it couldn’t be anything real. I thought I imagined it, but you know, over a few years, it happened a couple more times. I asked the other couriers and they said no one stays on that route for long. They give it to new couriers.”

  It had to be her imagination. Alphonse would have heard something—there’d have been gossip, some tipoff. Fierno—his mother would have found out and used the information.

  “Yeah, that kind of stuff never happens when I go to the southern cities. Not saying they don’t have their own problems, but you don’t want that kind of thing in your aut.”

  After the pub, Manny left Alphonse and went to meet her waitress friend down at the café. Alphonse walked back to the grounds. She couldn’t be right about the packages.

  Autore, Grandfather’s casket was closed.

  Odile was there, on the grounds, facing away, talking with two men. Alphonse flushed. She was still here, in Collimais. She hadn’t left, hadn’t gone anywhere. He could talk to her, should talk to her. She deserved that. She might even know something about what Manny had said.

  She nodded to the men, then turned and her gaze fell straight on him. Her eyes hardened and there was a slight shake to her head.

  Or not. Fine. He didn’t need to see her. He hadn’t wanted to anyway; still didn’t want to. He strode past the group toward the far side of the grounds, yanked his tent flap open and tied it to the corner. Heat and staleness wafted out. He didn’t need to see her at all.

  His flash of anger faded. Except, he’d missed her. He’d missed Odile’s passion, her insight. He’d missed everything about her.

  “Thank you, Al, for going wide.”

  He turned and there she was, and her eyes weren’t hard at all. She looked how he remembered, the only difference being the purple undertones in her complexion—her secondary pigments beginning to show. She was so pretty. Her skirt fluttered around her shins. Her blouse, worn and wrinkled, and her eyes like mountain granite.

  “Odile. Your family opposes Renico, right?”

  She drew in a sharp breath.

  “Right?”

  She looked at the people nearby. “Walk with me.”

  He did, and they passed the fenced oxen, more tents, and a few food carts. Odile walked without speaking, purposefully, the wind pushing her hair back. They reached the dirt road out to the belt, and she kept going, no sign of slowing.

  “It’s one thing to talk at the inn,” she finally said, still striding along. “It’s another to blurt out something like that in a crowd.”

  There was something so innocent about it, that the people at the tent seemed like a crowd to her, and he smiled as they kept going. “Odile. A friend I’ve been logging with, she carries packages. Says the government murders people, chops them up, and sends parts to Renico.”

  Odile burst out laughing, but she didn’t seem surprised. “You and Ephraim should talk. I told you, it’s profit.”

  “Is it true?”

  She didn’t really answer. She frowned, faced away, wouldn’t look at him. She said at last, “They claim to improve lives, but it doesn’t hold up. Not when you think about the droughts and the cyclones. I mean, holy heavens, in a bad year a thousand people or more die in those storms. So, yes, of course they kill.”

  That wasn’t what he meant, and she knew it. He waited, and after a few more paces she said, “Ephraim killed.”

  Now it was his turn to laugh. “Yeah, highly doubtful.” The man wrote protocols. His mannerisms, his meticulous nature—none of it was that of a killer. He was a medical aide, a technician, something like that.

  She stopped walking and turned to face him. “How is it that I know more about your grandpapa’s death than you do about the Vastol Vendetta?”4

  “The Vastol . . .”

  “Vendetta. The two councilors murdered in Vastol, I don’t know, twenty years ago. Ephraim was there.”

  Alphonse had been a child, barely old enough to speak, but a memory surfaced. There’s been a backlash . . . His grandfather’s words floating up the stairwell. Alphonse remembered hugging his stuffed lion at the top of the steps. Someone yelled, something crashed and broke. His mother’s voice. You’re going to get us killed! The vendetta . . .

  Two councilors in Vastol, the capital city and home to the Continental Congress, had drafted a bill requiring the combustion industry to publicize certain data. But before it passed, those councilors were killed, their corpses found days later in the river, eyes removed, faces sliced open.

  Their seats had gone to investors with Garco, the subsidiary of the industry in Garrolin Province.

  Alphonse reeled, his foot caught on a lip of dirt, and he fell back and down. It was incomprehensible, that this plot his mother was caught up in might trace back so far. Had she been involved with combustion even while her own father was alive? No, she must have been brought in.

  The wind picked up, blowing along the hillsides and through his shirt, a low, soft howl. “Odile.” He searched her face, latched onto her cool, gray eyes and tried to ease the ache in his heart.

  Her face shifted to patience, then to a soft smile. “Don’t be too hard on Ephraim. There were circumstances. It was a long time ago, and I truly don’t know the details. He’s made amends for whatever role he may have played.” She looked off to the side, to a copse of copperwoods. “Holy heavens. I’m the one who’s hard on him. He’s found people up and down the foothills, organized us, gotten us to decide for ourselves if modernization is what we want. He’s done that almost singlehandedly.”

  “Ephraim killed?” It stretched Alphonse to the breaking point and made Manny’s claims quaint by comparison.

  “I don’t know the details. He was there.”

  Dust imps blew down the road, her skirt blew up, she pulled it snug against her legs with one hand and held out the other. He took it, pulled up, and gestured to the copperwoods. They went into the windbreak, and she stood nearer than before. The tilt of her head, her eyes searching him, it was like a salve.

  “Odile, what does Ephraim know about Vastol’s Council? How many delegates would vote to replace Prime Chancellor Nabahri?”

  She scoffed. “I doubt he knows that.”

  The smell of her was the same as he remembered, spices and herbs. She’d been cooking. He inhaled quietly, stretching the breath out. She smelled right. He didn’t know when he’d learned it, the earthy tones of her underneath the spice. He inhaled a second time, taking this breath longer, pulling the air deep into his chest.

  Odile let go of her skirt. “Do you believe your logging friend?” She was close enough that she needed to tip her head to look at him. She was close enough he could put his arm around her and grab the trees on the other side.

  “I don’t disbelieve her. I’ll ask around.”

  The wind blew through the branches overhead, not a wail but a hush. She leaned into him. “It’s really windy. This windbreak is too small to—”

  He kissed her. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in. She held back, caught off guard maybe. But then, she opened up. And she was so soft, her mouth yielding, her body fitting. She smelled so good, and her passion . . . she kissed him, with her lips and her tongue and her arms around his back.

  Odile had been his introduction to all of this. His gateway to the belt, its sensibilities. And this wasn’t her first kiss, and that excited him too.

  She was so slender. His arms could probably go around her twice. How had he never noticed? It must be her drive, or else her clothes were too baggy. It didn’t matter. He pulled her closer, her mouth tangy. He kissed her cheek, her neck, under the ear where she’d rub
bed something. Her head tipped back. He couldn’t get enough, and her breathing grew louder. He didn’t know what this kiss was, a beginning or a goodbye. He wanted her, wanted this, this life, all of it.

  “Al, I want you—”

  “I want you too, Odile,” he murmured into her hair, grabbing handfuls of her blouse into his hands, aching to feel the small of her back, warm and soft, delicate. Pulling her, needing her.

  “I want you,” she breathed, “on the Council.”

  He stopped.

  The wind blew through the branches, louder. His arms were tangled around her, still caught up in the cloth of her shirt. Her words hung in the air. He couldn’t unhear them. He stepped back, away from her, this young woman with ideas about his future. “What the fierno?”

  She pulled away too and pushed her hair from the side of her face, the side moist from his affection. She swallowed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Even her breathing was steadying out. “You can make a difference. A real difference.”

  He couldn’t get his mind around it. His heart pounded, blood sang in his ears, and he needed something right now, but not politics.

  He jammed his hands in his pockets. “I actually wanted you, Odile. Nothing of you, just you.”

  The kiss, in that moment when she kissed back, it had been a connection, a confession between them, the family he’d choose, and for a fleeting moment he thought she would too. Maybe politics was the core of power. Maybe he was naïve to think otherwise.

  “Don’t be stupid. It makes no difference what you want. It’s never mattered what I want.”

  This life, he’d come to love all of it, and for a moment Odile seemed like his harness here outside the cities, an anchor to hold to. But this anchor bent downward. He couldn’t trust it.

  There was no family here. Back home there’d be only dysfunction. His mother had raised him to see people’s motivations before they knew those things themselves, and he had completely, utterly botched seeing that in Odile. If Manny knew his name, if Reuben did, they’d play him too. “Forgive me for being stupid. I guess I thought I mattered to you.”

  Her hair blew forward again, and frowning once more, she pulled it behind her head. “In fifty years or a hundred we’ll be gone, and it won’t matter one whit if we cared for one another or not. The only thing that matters is that you can be on the Council. Take charge, make the system better. Heavens above, we need it. Turaset needs it.”

  Any life here was slipping out of reach, but as soon as his anger filled him, it drained away.

  Because this was Odile. Her expression. Her beautiful face so full of passion, so full of a belief in a better future, even at the expense of herself, her own feelings, and he wanted that too. Here she was, asking him to fight for the future. How could he say no? She’d probably do it herself in his place. She’d storm into Governance Hall and spark a revolution if she could.

  He said quietly, “It’s not that simple. Combustion owns Sangal’s Council, and there’s no easy way for a dishonest boob like me to make any real difference.”

  He said it without thought, without recalling that they’d never actually spoken of those careless words she’d dropped back when he started at the inn. He’d never admitted that he’d even overheard their conversation that night before closing his window. But the look on her face now—he hadn’t meant to shock her. Not Odile, the woman who in this moment he’d trade his past for. “I’m sorry, Odile. I—”

  “No. No, I’m the one who’s sorry, Al. It’s possible . . . you know what, it’s possible I was wrong about you.”

  * * *

  4 These events are described in The Vastol Vendetta, a short story found at pltavormina.com

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The inn settled down. Ephraim went out for the evening and Ardelle turned in. Quietly, Myrta left the inn and made her way to the wagon grounds, which were loud enough she could have found them with her eyes closed.

  Inner ring, northern edge.

  She found Terrence’s wagons. These were his, there was no doubt. She’d helped repair the rails a few seasons earlier. But there were hardly any grain sacks and no tobacco. A few whiskey barrels stood on the second wagon.

  The yields must have been horrible.

  Jack jumped down from the whiskey wagon and called over the noise, “Hey! You made it.”

  The other wagons had their own horribly scant yields.

  “It’s louder than I expected,” she yelled.

  “Let’s go out a ways. I’ll tell Nate.” Jack jogged around the second wagon.

  Movement on a neighboring wagon caught her eye, a couple involved with one another in an intimate way. She flushed and looked down. Jack returned, and they made their way down an aisle.

  She raised her voice again. “Is it like this every year?”

  “Yeah.”

  A steader going the other way grinned at them, and Jack raised his hand at the man. It was no one she recognized, but Jack always made friends.

  Ahead, a fiddler played a market song. Jack nudged her and pointed at two men in front of the fiddler. They were dancing to the tune and using identical footwork. The musician played faster and faster. They kept up, focusing on their feet, keeping the pattern.

  One of them was Emmett, the cotton steader’s son, wearing a richly-dyed tunic and vest. He was tall, that was plain even as he half-crouched for the dance, and he was handsome enough, but so old. She might have married him, if her life had gone differently.

  Myrta tore her eyes away, and they walked past the dancing game. “Is Nate selling? The wagons were empty.”

  “It’s the drought. We won’t recover costs, but he’s made new contacts and we might plant more acreage. Depends if we buy the irrigation.” The noise tapered a bit as they walked outward. By the edge of the grounds there were fewer lanterns, a handful of people and some food carts. Jack bought her a candied apple and they took the next aisle back in.

  She licked caramel from the apple’s fat middle. The sweetness coated her mouth, gooey and thick.

  She pulled her hair back. “Jack. You don’t want to be a farmer. Why do you do all this?”

  He grinned and looked away. Sometimes he was like that; he’d take a few minutes to answer. She focused on the apple. Freshly dipped, the caramel warm, the fruit cracking as she bit into it. Tart juices slipping under her tongue.

  “You know, it’s not forever. Nate’ll start a family someday.”

  They drew near the innermost ring. It was loud again, and they cut through wagonloads of poppy pods to the next aisle. Caramel was coating her fingers now. “You’ll leave the stead?”

  He smiled a little half smile. “I’ll do something.”

  She looked at him more closely. It seemed pretty clear he had an idea. “What something?”

  “Something.” He grinned, and they kept walking.

  There were fewer people as they went out; the people had all congregated at the inner ring with the lanterns and music.

  “That’s it? Something?”

  “Yeah.” He was beaming now, and it was odd, him talking about not being on the farm, but not talking about it at the same time.

  “You aren’t going to tell me,” she said. “Fine.” They drew near the outer edge. The tents were out here, where it was quieter.

  A small group of people stood past the wagons, in shadows amongst the tents. She pulled Jack back. “Look.”

  Odile was there, with four others in city clothes. They were handlers, scouts. They had to be.

  “She lied to me, Jack.” Myrta cupped a hand behind her ear.

  “. . . overnight . . .”

  “I’m ready to leave.”

  “. . . indenture . . . three months.”

  Odile said, “That seems fair.”

  “We can’t let her.” Myrta ran out.


  Odile saw her and yelled, “No,” just as one of the others turned.

  It was Melville di Vaun.

  Myrta turned back in panic and slammed into Jack. His face lit. He pushed around Myrta, went straight for di Vaun, and pulled back to slug him.

  Melville grabbed Jack’s arm and forced him to the ground. “Floyd, grab her.”

  Myrta ran toward the wagons, but Floyd was on her, pinning her to his side. She screamed. He hauled her up and clamped his hand over her lips. It stank of ciguerros. The filth on his hands got into her mouth. Odile was yelling too, held fast by two men. They dragged her off.

  Jack was on the ground, unmoving. Myrta flailed, pulled at Floyd’s fingers, tried to get them out of her mouth. They tasted vile and it wasn’t just ciguerros. She bit them as hard as she could and he yelped. Her neck grew damp from his breath.

  “Myrta.”

  She froze. Melville was inches from her. He gestured behind a tent, and Floyd dragged her back, kicking, with Melville right behind.

  Melville took a knife and flipped it open. He ran the sharp edge along the side of her face. The blade was warm. It scraped her skin. Her heart pulsed in her ears. Sweat drenched her. She tried to scream, but Floyd grabbed her hard.

  Melville smiled, and even in the low light his dimples showed. “Don’t need to examine you at all.”

  A shudder ran through her and she twisted harder and freed her mouth. “Help!”

  “Hold her,” Melville roared.

  Floyd wrenched her sideways. “Yes, sir.”

  Melville’s grin was wolfish. His voice was cold and detached. “You’re developed.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, twisting from the blade again. He put the knife on the other side of her face, turning her head square to him. “Good specimen.”

  Against the back of her head, she felt Floyd swallow.

  “Floyd. You’re overdue on fieldwork.” Melville handed his knife over. “Think about the anatomy. Give the extra-orbital muscle group a warning tap.”

  “Yes. Yes, sir.” Floyd swallowed again.