by Thea Prieto
CHAPTER SEVEN
Don’t want to, don’t do it—
Mark’s body tightens around Teller’s crushed head, his clouded pupils begged open and staring at split flesh. The heat of the late morning presses into Sky’s lungs, his burnt feet feel coated with stinging rubber, but he does not rise from the ground. He continues to shiver and listen to Mark moaning.
—don’t do it, can’t do it—
Sky does not know how long he stares at Teller’s still, dirty feet, or what finally drifts his fingers to Teller’s toes, then to Mark’s shaking shoulders. Perhaps if he turns Mark’s face away from the red sight, Mark will stop trembling. The thought inspires no weight in Sky’s mind. Maybe then, thinks Sky, Mark will stop whispering quickly to himself, pleading, but Sky has never known how to do such a thing—to move Mark from his grief. Instead, he begins to untie the cords from Teller’s wrists and ankles with clumsy twitches as his mouth works up to a whisper.
Mark? Sky asks carefully.
Mark sobs so loudly that surprise lurches from Sky’s throat. At the sound of Sky’s voice, Mark weeps wide and without restraint, his ribs pressing out cries that eject Sky from the chamber, sending him fleeing into the tunnels. It is only after he drops lower into the caves that Sky realizes Tie is calling out to him.
Is that you? her voice echoes.
He rushes down into the sleeping chamber. In the wrung darkness, Tie’s quickened breaths feel uncomfortably near, a tightened core of inhales rolling deeper and more unstable than before.
Tell me, says Tie between gasps. Is Teller—
To talk to her, to lift up the words, would be to lift boulders, so Sky only drops near Tie, kneeling so close he can feel which muscles in her crooked legs and hips are gripped in pain and which have given up. She is not weeping, though. She is not lost like Mark. She is not still and empty like Teller.
Teller, Sky finally whispers. Poor Teller.
Sky escapes next to Tie’s hard stomach, curling up small.
But her sweaty hands find his arms. Sharp fingers cut into his wrists. Sky yelps.
Tell me, Tie bursts. Is Teller dead?
Sky nods in the darkness, trying to jerk his wrists away. Yes is the word he finally stutters.
Her fingernails dig deeper.
We had to do it, says Tie in rush. There was no other way. If you knew another way, you should have said something.
A strange, juddering sob pops from Sky’s mouth as she shakes him.
Why didn’t you say something? You’re not a child— there’s no one to take care of you, do you hear me? Green’s dead, Teller’s dead—everything’s dead.
Mark, says Sky remembering suddenly. Mark’s crying.
A flash of pain across Sky’s face—Tie’s unseen hand slapping him. Mark has struck him many times, in the darkness and in the light, in front of the others, but he has never been hit by Tie.
Do you hear me? she shouts with flecks of spit. There’s no one to help you.
Tie’s voice cracks into a groan. Her fingers loosen.
Leave, go away, she cries in pain. Leave me alone.
His terrified body combs through the tunnels, back into the heat.
In the dim cave above, Mark’s crumpled form still has not moved and his cries have not quieted. Teller’s crushed skull has grown a dark pool, his body making room for poison. Sky’s terror grows flush with the cave walls, the Dark Sickness thirsty and panting and close despite a droning responsibility telling him Teller’s body needs to be moved or it will poison them, Mark needs to help Tie or her body will kill her, they need food and water or they will die, food and water, food and water—
The white cold of fear—Sky wants to burn it away but he can’t, can’t get warm, even as he turns into the burning daylight. In the main passageway, with the heat reaching up through his blistered feet, he scrambles on all fours over the tunnel’s coarse stones, toward the glowing storeroom— the brick was not replaced in the wall and dust swirls through the open rectangle. Crouched low, Sky gropes the surface of the floor, its muddy surface already hardening in the dry air, parts of the ground molded into the shapes of Teller’s limbs. The depressions show the outline of a body, Teller’s life summed up by a gathering of forms trapped in the dirt. Elbow and toe gouges—these leavings no more alive than dust, no louder than writing in clay. Even as the marks ask to be read, the lines of Teller’s dragged fingertips crumble when Sky touches them, the sand collapsing into the round pits made by Teller’s shoulders, shoulders Sky used to ride to the beach. The earth oozes a hungry smell as Sky fails to keep Teller alive this way, to remember his remains by touch—even this Sky manages to ruin. Near the impression that must be Teller’s head there is the faintest indent of a mouth, barely open, Teller’s words made as filthy and silent as dirt, a hollow ready to let the poison in.
Handfuls of mud—Sky smears them up and down his shaking legs that aren’t strong enough to stop anything, across his needy stomach and throat, and covers his face with sludge, jagged bits of rock and grit scouring his mouth that causes death by saying nothing, a voice that killed to be born but might as well be dead for all its quiet. Sky rolls in the mud of the storeroom where Teller’s body used to be, in the warm dampness that feels only half-alive. The dust thickens until it breaks Sky’s chest with coughing, finally laying his convulsing body flat, but the marks on the floor are already ruined, only vaguely human, unrecognizable bodies, many bodies, all lost and swallowed by the past.
Hollows, Sky sobs. Their caved bodies, their mouths, the writing—hollows within hollows. Teller’s mouth—it might be Sky’s mouth, and the caked mud on Sky’s face cracks open, to imitate the hollow of Teller’s mouth. Around Sky, written in the oldest clay of the walls, are also round shapes, scratches like circles, orbs. Like eyes, or like open mouths. Sky forms his lips into their dead shape and makes a sound.
Oh is the sound from Sky’s tongue, his lips shaped like the circles on the walls.
Curiosity, like a small, blue light, gently cools his mind.
Oh, Sky decides, the circular symbol on the wall is an Oh. It makes an Oh sound, its meaning and shape one and the same.
And realization—it makes every scratch on the wall capable of sound, every written word ripe with voice. The voice is still muddled and low like his own, but the writing on the walls, all of it stands up, ready to speak, like it has been waiting all this time, all these years. The words become hollows that carry voices, like bowls hold water, like bodies hold stories and memories and families—is this the way I’m supposed to keep you? thinks Sky through smiling tears. Can I hope to keep them now?
Hope, says Sky aloud, a word with Oh in it. At least one hollow filled with voice, filled with something besides poison, taking away the Nothingness. There are no cures now for Teller’s prayers and Green’s storeroom sobbing, but determination and hope, relief from the Dark Sickness, stories to push the poison out—this is what Teller meant by Vital—I can keep them forever this way.
Sky quickly closes off the storeroom with the brick and rushes back through the blaze of the main passageway, his arms flattening his steaming hair, protecting his lowered face, and for the first time that day he truly considers the cooked state of his feet. Any more running today, Sky knows, will rupture the blisters and sickness can climb up my legs like it climbed into Teller—I need Mark’s legs to help me.
But when he reaches Mark knotted tightly near Teller’s body, his strong limbs coiled up so small with a weakness so much like his own, the word Oh becomes a support beam, a doorway, an Opening. Mark so helpless, useless— is this how Mark has always seen me?
Mark, begs Sky. Please get up.
Mark’s puffy eyes are squeezed shut, his head shaking back and forth.
Can’t, cries Mark. Can’t kill Teller, can’t do it alone—
Sky stirs his voice again, awakening it.
Teller’s dead, says Sky firmly.
Mark weeps and rocks his body.
Can’t ta
ke care of Teller, sobs Mark. Can’t take care of Mother or Green or Song—
He’s circling, thinks Sky with Oh still in mind. A spiraling death guilt, the same Sky feels for Mother—this he now shares with Mark. If Sky wanted to hurt his brother, to split his grief wide, then Sky would tell Mark the pain is never hollow. Shove work into the emptiness made by the missing pieces, try to replace mothers with brothers, but the Forever writing does not fade and the questions do not stop itching. Above all, the Dark Sickness does not disappear, death does not stop coming, not for Teller, not for Green or Mother.
Not for Tie.
Sky’s heart trips. There will be more death soon if I don’t remember Teller’s words. Get Mark working, think of Teller’s body and the water supply later—right now, I have to take care of Tie.
Mark, says Sky suddenly, I’m going to help Tie and you have to help me.
No, whines Mark, but the new hardness of Sky’s voice forces Mark’s eyes open. A bloodshot red surrounds the fogged Ohs of Mark’s eyes, both pupils revolving upward and finally fixing on Sky.
Mark jumps into a sitting position.
What? gasps Mark, and Sky touches the caked earth on his face. Looking down, he sees the rest of his body discolored with hardened mud, so Sky begins knocking the crusted dirt off his limbs in chunks and clouds. Under the shell, his skin feels powdery and smooth. His chest expands wide. His muscles round as dust coats the wet of Teller’s face—a gentle burial. Mark watches Sky like a plant growing quickly out of the ground, delivering itself from the earth, and with Mark’s full attention, Sky’s limbs feel able, his back tall and strong.
Don’t worry about the storeroom right now, says Sky slapping his hands clean. Can you take Teller outside?
Outside, repeats Mark.
Yes, and make a fire—we’re going to need light to help Tie. Can you do that?
Mark sits up and nods quickly with an enthusiasm Sky recognizes—his own childish actions reflected back at him. Mark begins gently arranging Teller’s body, head ducked and actions so cautious that Sky sees the way he has always obeyed Mark’s orders—so eager to do right, so eager to erase wrongs. And Sky knows Tie was correct, that Mark can’t take care of anyone anymore. He has no determination or hope left—it’s my turn now to help everyone.
So sorry, Mark whispers softly in no direction, in every direction. With careful, limping steps, Sky descends into the lower caves, into the thick and inky blackness that presses against his eyes, his ears searching and stretching for Tie. Soon he can make out her breathing low in the sleeping chamber, her groans of pain straining against the stones. When he enters the cave, he stops cold.
Oh, she cries.
His word, his hope—it is alive and hurting Tie. A circular figure that Sky filled with voice, like Tie’s round body filled with Baby. Writing dies if no one remembers its voice and Teller said Baby has to make sound—Baby has to cry right after.
Tie, says Sky sitting near her raised and parted knees.
I’m going to die, says Tie gasping through gritted teeth. It hurts all the time now.
I’ve got the wash water ready, says Sky, and Mark is bringing light—
Going to die, repeats Tie. Oh—going to die—
Sky reaches out to Tie’s flexed and sticky arms, to her fists gripped near her hips. The bowled stones under her back are slick with her sweat, and when he retrieves a boiled strip of tarp from the wash bucket to mop her face, she pulls it into her clawing fingers. A ripping sound.
Dying—no water—
Tie, listen to me, says Sky. You won’t die because, because—
—Green—going to die—
What would Teller say? thinks Sky. What would Green say?
—because you’re special, says Sky. Remember the mother story? Only mothers bring us out of the cave.
Tie continues breathing quickly, but her words stop and Sky can feel her listening.
Yes, says Sky quickly, that’s what Green used to say—
Oh, says Tie with more pain than realization, but Sky hears the word Oh doubling itself between his mouth and her belly, spinning his thoughts faster.
The Twin Goddesses, says Sky. Remember?
I don’t care, Tie weeps. I want Green. I want to die like Green.
No—
What if, sobs Tie, what if Green didn’t fall?
Tie, Green’s gone—
What if he jumped?
Green’s body dropping across the cliff face—Sky sees it all again, scorched into the back of his mind, repeating—Green, his legs, Green falling, the tide pools. Green’s eyes closed when telling Song’s stories, his hands releasing Little One into the sea and his weeping in the storeroom afterwards, fingertips tracing silent words in clay, No swimming away from here—
Fear jaws the inside of Sky’s chest as Oh flickers in his heart, hope falling away with Green, dragging the stories, the voices and names, into darkness. Cold and distant, as Mark described Green long ago at the bonfire, when Tie demanded the truth, the memory of Green’s arms floating away from Sky’s swimming body—
And all the while, Teller insisting on vital memories, on determination and hope.
Sky raises his voice into a shout.
Tie, listen to me. Green’s dead—we’re all dead, really dead—if there’s no one left to remember us. If you want Green, then you have to stay alive and remember him tomorrow.
Just remember me tomorrow, whispers Tie, drenching Sky with a glowing sadness, Green momentarily sprung to life through her voice. Tie inhales in one long pull, and exhales a deep, moaning sob, her mourning filling up her whole shuddering body. Sky understands her only in half-words, but pieced together, he hears Hurts and Dying and Miss him so much.
So sorry, says Sky reaching out to the shredded rag in her hands. Tie, I know you’re strong enough. That’s how the Twin Goddesses made mothers. You’re strong enough to bear it.
Tie takes a lasting inhale and a shaking exhale.
—listening, she says at last.
Sky exhales a deep, quaking breath. So many new words ejected from his trapped up tongue, but when he speaks again, Tie’s fingers fasten around his, driving his voice forward.
You only have to remember, says Sky. Remember what Green said, how the Twin Goddesses made the first people? They made people like them.
Two heads, says Tie between inhales. Four arms, four legs—
And everyone rolled around the world like wheels, says Sky. They made canyons and mountains to catch rain. Trees sprung from their tears. They made the world grow.
Tie spurts a cold laugh. Spit mists the air.
You believe that? sneers Tie, and Sky pauses to think, about Teller who prayed to Moth, and about Mark who says it’s all lies. Untrue things happen in stories, Sky knows, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t memories.
I believe, answers Sky, that Green told the story this way.
Another trembling moment, and Tie nudges Sky to continue.
The world grew green, says Sky, but the Twin Goddesses grew afraid. There were too many people, so the Twin Goddesses split everyone in half to slow them down. That’s why the progeny have two legs, two arms, and one head, and only mothers are like the Twin Goddesses when it’s time for babies to be born, becoming two heads, four arms, and four legs once again.
Just as Sky’s skin ripples, thrilled to air so many words at once, Tie groans. Her body clenches abruptly, as though to lift some unseen object. Her knees jab Sky as they part wider, and still clawing his fingers, her hands drag to her stomach, to her hips, and Sky can feel her muscles twisting. The stench of human waste fills the cave.
Mark, we need light, Sky shouts up the tunnel before turning back to Tie.
Tie, I’ll clean you. Teller said everything needs to be clean—what can I do?
Her red grip nearly crushes Sky’s knuckles.
Keep, stutters Tie. Something—
Keep talking? tries Sky while yanking his fingers from her clutch. After retrieving anothe
r shredded piece of tarp from the pot of wash water, Sky begins wiping her sweltered face in nervous jerks, pushing her damp hair out of her eyes, and he starts bathing her from her face downward.
It was not long, says Sky with a shaking voice, before the progeny were jealous of mothers.
Jealous, says Tie bitterly, the word spit from her lips as Sky sponges her slack arms to her gritty palms, washes away the thick smell of her underarms, hesitant to move the cloth to her chest grown bulged and tense.
Green said they were jealous, says Sky as he works. It’s why people started controlling mothers. The world was filling with so many jealous people that the Twin Goddesses had to split everyone in half again.
Sky pauses, stops washing the sandy creases at Tie’s hips and listens. In the blackness of the tunnel are other breaths—a faint smoky smell.
Mark? says Sky, his frustration climbing. Where’s the light?
Don’t want to control mothers, whines Mark from the darkness. Didn’t want to control life and death, should not have—
Please, shouts Sky in a high-cracked voice. Just bring some light.
Footsteps scurrying up the tunnel. Waste, thinks Sky, a waste of energy. Have I been this same burden on the others?
Tie’s breath—it piles into shallow gasps.
Mothers, says Tie. Moth—
Moth? asks Sky and realizes what she’s saying.
Moth, right, yes, says Sky as he washes around Tie’s thighs and knees. Mothers were—were split in half again, and one half was Moth. Moth flew into the sky, taking her children with her. The other half was Bear who slept in a cave. Her children slept in caves too, in the cave of her stomach. Now mothers fill the world by hollowing themselves—only mothers can bear people out of the cave.
Green, cries Tie mournfully, her muscles slack. So hollow and unhappy—
No, not hollow, pleads Sky, the washrag dropping from his hands as he gestures frantically. Not hollow, not to me. Green was—he’s like our words, he’s alive this way, and you’re like Bear—we’re in this cave—
Cave—out—
You have to bear it, begs Sky, to bring you and Baby out of it.
Out of the cave, says Tie. Oh.