by E. J. Swift
Of course, they talk rot. He wonders what’s happened to them. Ri, that clown-faced girl, the others. Did they survive the epidemic? He’s seen for himself how quickly the redfleur spreads – you only have to touch someone who’s infected and it’s over. If one of them got it, the chances are they’re all dead. It’s painful to think about it, so after a while he doesn’t. What’s the use? He can’t do anything for them. His life has changed – he’s with the Osirian now. Mig the adventurer. Mig the expeditionary.
As they move further south, Mig finds himself capitalizing on this special in order to get what they need. The people who work on the farms are simple. They don’t have much, and Mig can’t imagine they know much, and that makes them the ideal recipients for his message. The first time it’s by accident. He’s bargaining with the farmer – she’s a tough one, and there are two young kids in the corner, sickly-looking brats wearing mouth-and-nose masks, their eyes peeking over like lizards in a hole. Mig almost feels sorry for them, and almost relents, but no—
‘Thirty peso.’ He names his price decidedly. It’s stolen money, but that’s no reason to be bounteous with it.
The farmer drives the price up. Mig pushes back. Eventually they reach an accord. As he’s loading up the pack she says, with a hint of sourness, there’s enough in that bag to feed a skinny stalk like him for days. Mig replies without thinking.
‘My friend needs to eat. He has to keep his strength up.’
‘Your friend is sick?’ The farmer is instantly wary. She shifts her stance, placing herself between Mig and the two children.
‘He was,’ says Mig. He shouldn’t say what he says next but something propels him on, perhaps the faces of the kids, staring at him like he’s a curiosity, a boy fallen from the sky. ‘But he survived.’
The farmer is reluctant to pursue the conversation but Mig holds out, allowing a tantalizing silence to expand, and in the end she can’t help herself.
‘Survived what?’
Mig whispers, ‘The redfleur.’
There is the briefest of pauses.
‘Get out,’ says the farmer. ‘You should know better than to joke about that.’
‘I wouldn’t tell a lie,’ says Mig, which isn’t true, although in this instance it is the truth. He directs his next words at the kids. ‘There’s scars on his face and all the way up his arms. The redfleur came for him but he survived, he’s as alive as you or me.’
‘Enough.’ The farmer is angry now, but Mig isn’t alarmed; rather he’s aware of the weight of what he’s just revealed. ‘Take your things and go.’
The kids’ eyes are round as peaches. Mig feels a peculiar spread of satisfaction as he hikes the pack onto his back and heads out of the farmhouse into the dusty, suffocating heat of the day. The blue sky yawns above him and the fields stretch out on all sides for as far as he can see. Usually his loneliness would fall upon him in this moment, like a curse, but telling the tale has done something. It’s staved it off, for now at least. He returns to the Osirian with a swagger in his walk.
‘Good haul?’ asks the Osirian, with a smile.
Mig nods.
‘Good bargaining.’
That night they eat well and it does not rain.
By the middle of the night Mig is overcome with guilt. What was he thinking? He resolves to keep his mouth shut. He is resolved all the way to the next farm where somehow it happens again, and this time Mig does not have the excuse of an accident, this time, he can’t resist provoking the farmers, and the sense of importance which fills him in the telling.
Farm by farm Mig embroiders his story. He adds little details. The man is from the ocean. He eats fish raw when he can get it. The scars from the redfleur are in the form of scales, golden, like fish, or like a simurgh from the old tales, yeah, lizards with wings. When he brings back the supplies the guilt returns and he tells himself this is the last time. He’ll confess to Vikram; he’ll stop this stupidity.
But he can’t help himself.
His story garners different reactions. Sometimes people are angry, and he guesses that, like him, they’ve lost a loved one to the redfleur or some other horrible plague. They don’t want to be reminded. Other times they can’t get enough. Wanting to hear more, they bribe him with extra food. Perhaps he’d like to stay for supper? They can spare enough for another mouth…
Settled in his role as storyteller, Mig starts accepting the occasional gift. A lemon from the groves, its skin thick and waxy, the flesh a bursting tartness on the inside of his mouth. He insists on eating the fruit straight, to the mirth and delight of his hosts. He wants to say to them, you think you get lemons two a dozen in Cataveiro? The next day it’s a plate of enchiladas cooked fresh, with seasoning plucked straight from the fields. Then a tumbler of wine. He says no, the first time, knowing it’s best to refuse this particular type of hospitality, but at a second entreaty relents and accepts. What’s a drink, after all?
The wine tastes rough and acidic and Mig doesn’t care for it, can’t believe people would drink this stuff for pleasure, but after a few gulps it becomes more tolerable, and by the end of the glass he is feeling faintly light-headed, warm and relaxed and ready for another. Yes, he’ll take another. The farmers – a brother and sister, both with the same narrow face and clouded eyes – press him for details about the man who survived.
Mig is in an expansive mood. His inventions grow wilder and less plausible with every sentence, and he watches with satisfaction as they swallow it down. He has found that the kick he gets from telling these tales is exponential to how far his fabrications deviate from the truth. By now he has settled on a style of delivery: a mixture of wide-eyed innocence and bewilderment. When the farmers ask how he came to be travelling with such a man he says he was bewitched, or thinks he was – his head is so foggy now it’s hard to remember. After the second round of wine he stands to leave; he really has to go. Won’t he take another? they ask. But Mig is firm this time. He has to go. He smiles, thanks them, and heads for the door.
And finds the man standing in his way.
For the first time Mig experiences a moment of panic. He asks the man to let him pass. The man smiles – not a pleasant smile, not any more – and says he doesn’t think so. Keep calm, Mig tells himself. Make a dash for it. You’re faster than this arsehole. He sprints for the gap between man and door, but either his balance is off or the man trips him, and somehow he misses. Falls. Face down to the dust-clogged doormat, the dust clenching him in a sneeze, and then the man has his arms pinned painfully behind his back. He’s dragging Mig backwards into the house, Mig’s heels kicking uselessly against the floor. He thrashes in the man’s grasp and feels his arms yanked tighter, contorting his shoulders. Mig yelps in pain. The man hauls him up the stairs, Mig shouting and screaming with every step. All the while he’s aware of the other one, the woman, closing the front door, watching.
His panic dissolves into terror. What are they doing? What are they planning? He’s thrown into a room and the door slams, and locks.
The man’s footsteps thud down the stairs. Mig is left in the room, in silence.
He can hear his breathing, fast and ragged. The thud of his own heart against his ribcage.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck.
He’s been duped. He can see it now – feeding him the alcohol – fuelling his stories. The thought comes to him, clear as a rash. The bastards want Vikram.
They want the man who survived.
He should have known this would happen.
His head is beginning to hurt, but maybe that’s the blood racing at his temples, a dull, insistent throb. He cases the room. The window is locked. He can see the farm outbuildings, pieces of machinery at a standstill, the pink and white poppy fields and the flat skyline beyond. So empty. Nothing out there, no one to know he is here. The sun is hard and bright and low in the west. He tries to force the window open to no avail. He rattles the door handle, kicks at it, yells, ‘Let me out!’ After a few minutes the man c
omes back up and bangs hard on the other side.
‘Shut up, you little shit, or I’ll make you shut up.’
Mig falls silent, genuinely afraid now. He sits quietly, head pounding, shoulders aching, trying to see a way out.
Minutes pass. Longer. The sun moves lower in the sky. It must be an hour since they locked him up in here. Mig feels a great wash of despair. The Osirian will be wondering where he’s got to. What if he moves on? What if he thinks Mig’s done a runner? He looks again at the machinery out in the yard. These two could do anything to him, kilometres from any place fit for humans to live. Crush him, chop him into pieces with an axe, grind him into food for chickens.
At last he hears the heavy tread of footsteps on the stairs, followed by the click of the lock. He waits, tense. Ready to sprint. The woman slips in quick as a wasp and locks the door again before he has a chance. She stands, back to the door, regarding him, her face inscrutable.
‘Where is the man?’
Mig shakes his head. He has to hold his ground.
‘Where is the man you keep talking about?’ she repeats.
‘I was making it up.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she says. She is very calm, but not calm the way the Osirian is calm. This one is calm the way people are when they have an endgame in sight and are prepared to be ruthless. Like the Alaskan.
He’s underestimated the situation. He should have known better. The alcohol is making him slow. Stupid.
‘I was making it up,’ he repeats, but shakily.
‘You will tell us where he is.’
Mig judges it best to keep silent. He wonders, with a flush of dizziness, if the woman is going to torture him. He wonders if he can buy some time by lying, tell her the Osirian is somewhere he isn’t, give her a location that is close enough to be plausible but far enough away for Vikram to escape.
The woman reaches inside her apron pocket. Mig tenses. A knife, she’s going to have a knife. Or pliers, to pull out his fingernails with. The guerrillas have methods like that. What if this pair have connections?
She brings out a large jar with a metal screw lid.
‘Do you know what this is?’
There is something inside the jar, Mig can see. Something thin and coiled with black and red and yellow stripes, something that he’s only ever seen in pictures. Involuntarily, he jerks backwards.
‘My brother collects snakes,’ says the woman, turning the jar this way and that, studying its contents with detached interest. ‘This one is a young coral. It’s highly venomous.’
She places the jar on the floor, between them, but within easy reach. Mig can see quite clearly the outline of the snake. Its coils, each about the width of his finger, are beginning to unwind in a slow, squirming motion, no doubt seeking to escape. Mig’s legs have gone suddenly numb; his bowels feel liquid.
‘If I release it, it will bite you,’ continues the woman. ‘And snakes don’t like being confined. It won’t be happy when I let it out.’
She’s bluffing, Mig thinks. She must be. Why the fuck would they keep one of these creatures in their house? Something that could kill you if it escaped? You’d have to be insane.
He thinks how far away they are from the city. How very far. How isolated. These two, alone on their farm, with their snakes.
‘Death by venom is slow and very painful.’ The woman reaches for the jar, her fingers wrapping around the glass like a caress, sliding it back towards her lap. Mig is overcome with horror. ‘It can take days,’ she says.
She looks at him.
‘Where is the man?’
His mouth is dry. Her fingertips rest on the lid of the jar. The coral snake’s head lifts suddenly, sliding upwards against the side of the glass, revealing the scales of its underbelly. Mig has no idea if she’s telling the truth. If it’s deadly, or not. How can he run the risk?
‘I can’t tell you where he is,’ he says. ‘I can only show you.’
She smiles. For a moment he thinks he’s bought himself some time but then she twists the lid of the jar a fraction to the right.
‘No!’
There is a knock at the door.
‘What?’ snaps the woman.
‘Open up.’
It’s her brother. The woman doesn’t say anything but is unable to suppress a frown of displeasure at the interruption. Mig gathers his wits. Now is the moment, when the door opens. He’ll rush them both. If he knocks one of them off balance, he might make it down the stairs. He tries not to think about all the deadly objects they could hurl after him, or what would happen if they let the snake loose.
With the jar clutched firmly in one hand, the woman unlocks the door. Her brother is standing in the corridor, a strained expression on his face. As the door opens wider, Mig sees the reason for it. The Osirian, Vikram, is behind him, and he has a weapon pointed at the back of the man’s head. A gun.
Mig stares.
‘Mig.’
Vikram’s voice startles him into movement. He sidles past the woman, whose fingers are trembling with rage on the glass, the snake inside shaken about by the movement, its head switching angrily from side to side. Past the man. Past the Osirian. The gun is not like anything he has seen before.
‘Inside,’ says Vikram. The man goes in without a word. Vikram shuts the door and locks it. As they go down the stairs Mig can hear the remonstrations beginning between brother and sister. He can’t help sneaking glances at Vikram, who wields the gun easily, like he’s done this before.
In the yard outside the sun hits him, long and low, the silent machinery casting shadows in the dust. They waste no time in putting distance between themselves and the farm. Vikram is still gripping the gun tightly.
After a while Mig says, ‘I didn’t know you had that.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know,’ says Vikram, and Mig, taking the hint, shuts up.
‘What did you tell them?’
Vikram shows no external signs of anger, but Mig senses he isn’t going to wriggle out of this one so easily. He tries anyway.
‘Nothing much.’
‘Mig. What did you tell them?’
He mutters, ‘I told them you’d survived.’
‘You told them I’d survived.’
‘Yes.’
‘Survived the redfleur?’
Mig avoids looking at him. He focuses his eyes on the flat, featureless countryside, everything murky in the dusk. ‘Yes.’ He blurts out, ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘Do you want us to be caught?’
‘No!’
‘Do you want me to be caught?’
‘No.’
‘There was one condition to our travelling together, Mig. You remember what it was?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. He’s screwed up. He’s screwed up and they both know it. He waits for the inevitable recriminations. ‘Are you sending me away?’
Vikram looks at him for a long time, the expression on his face making it impossible to turn away. Under that stare, Mig feels the importance drain out of him until he’s as low as a worm.
‘If this happens again, I won’t have a choice. You’re smarter than this, Mig. You’d better prove it to me.’
Mig waits, expecting more, but the Osirian appears to be finished. He changes the subject and talks of other things. His Spanish improves all the time. He asks Mig questions about Patagonia and Patagonian people, questions which Mig sometimes struggles to answer, or answers warily, unsure if they contain some trick or test. Eventually he works up the courage to ask.
‘What’s that gun?’
‘You mean where did it come from?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It was made in Osiris.’
‘Your city?’
Vikram hesitates before he says, ‘Yes.’
‘And you’re going back there?’
‘Yes.’
They assess one another. Mig is no longer sure, if he ever had an inkling, of what is going through the Osirian’s head.
&nbs
p; He is surprised when Vikram reaches into his pack and withdraws the mysterious black stone which Mig has seen him examining in secret on so many nights.
‘Do you know what this is?’ he asks.
‘No.’
‘It’s a holoma. You’ve never seen one before?’
‘No. What does it do?’
‘It’s a way of sending messages. It belonged to the Antarctican.’
Mig looks at him uneasily.
‘Like robotics?’
‘Something like that.’
Mig makes the sign of the spider. He isn’t superstitious, not remotely, not like the kids back home, but you can’t be too careful with shit like this. Robotics are a breeding ground for demons.
‘What do you want it for?’
‘I need to send a message.’ Vikram pauses and Mig guesses he is weighing up whether to trust him. ‘The Antarctican. Taeo Ybanez. He had a partner back home. She deserves to know the truth about how he died. But we should get some rest. We need to make progress tomorrow.’
Mig takes the hint and goes to lie down, but finds it impossible to sleep. As he lies awake, riddled with remorse, listening to the steady rhythm of the Osirian’s breathing and the click of night-time insects, Mig wonders what Pilar would have made of this odd man and his faraway city in the ocean. He sees her squatting on the roof of Station Sabado, her hair a tangle of bright dyed feathers, her expression caught between habitual truculence and the quiet bliss that enters her face only when listening to music. He sees her looking down on the plaza with the Cataveiro trams approaching the station, and his heart breaks over again. He’s a madman, Mig. That’s what Pilar would say. This one’s touched.
Touched or not, Mig sticks with him. But when, after weeks of travel, they arrive at the coast and look out over that same ocean – which Mig has never seen before, an unimaginable, restless thing which fills him with an equal sense of limitlessness and terror – there are things which he does not tell Vikram.