The Sea Is Ours

by Jaymee Goh

  Cristan used his refashioned ash-furnaces to distill the quintaesencia of gold, which he further laced with the calx of wine, letting the precious metal’s subtle tones elevate the addictive qualities of the alcohol, even as Hustino reverted to previously mastered scales. Maren constructed a galleon de cielo large enough to carry four, a steamless beast made of wood and metal, powered by dynamos and an apparatus of coils that transmitted blue pulses from one end to the other, even as Hustino wrote and rewrote rudimentary harmonic equations. I began performing the choreography Hustino inspired, my movements harsh one moment, smooth and languid the next, and pained, always, always pained, because creativity was an agonizing exercise of loneliness, even as Hustino diminished in mass and in spirit, becoming a frail approximation of the man he once was.

  We did our best to bring joy back to our Hustino, but despite tasting Cristan’s blissful concoctions sprinkled with gilded wine, despite riding on Maren’s steamless galleon, despite seeing so many weep at my depiction of his artistry, the pianist remained inconsolable.

  We were converged in our secret retreat, letting the cool breeze tinted with hymns and carols do what it could to soothe the red slashes on our skins, when I finally articulated my thoughts.

  Hustino, I said by caressing the pianist’s waist with my leg, a simple piernazo to call his attention and to prepare him for the rest of what I had to say. The Gobernador-General herself will ask something from you. You will not like it. I execute a gancho by hooking my leg around his thigh, then slowly letting it slide in a graceful lustrada, expressing through the trap and release motion the truth of our situation.

  Say yes, I begged by pulling him into a closer embrace, or, if you are truly unwilling, let us escape. Let us find a new beginning away from here.

  Hustino had not been Hustino for weeks, and the tenor of our nightly carnal pursuits had changed in the absence of the man we knew. It had become more violent, his expression of the act almost cruel, often brutal, sometimes unbearably vicious. But there was still sexual satisfaction, even a painful variant of pleasure. But perhaps the most important reward occurred afterward, when the ropes had been untied, when the whips had been set aside, when the gags had been thrown away, and Hustino returned to being Hustino, all the anger drained out of him, leaving only a pensive type of tenderness. It was the unguarded look in his face, along with the loving way he caressed the welts on my wrists, that gave me courage to speak.

  But Hustino’s answer was as adamant, as immovable, as unyielding as the grave, and it was immediate.

  “No,” Hustino said, as he turned away from me.

  “Hustino, perhaps you do not completely understand—” Cristan began.

  “I understand.” Hustino stood up. “I understand perfectly.”

  “My love, please—”

  “In this, the Cuadro Amoroso has no say.” And then, he left.

  The guardia sibil came for Hustino the next day. Dangerous-looking, heavy-coated men with their elaborate swords and oversized pistols, they knocked on Hustino’s door, parroted the command of the Gobernador-General, and asked him to accompany them to an undisclosed location. Hustino did not struggle; instead, he relented with the grace of a doomed man. And we, purportedly the ones who loved him the most, could only watch from our respective windows, unable to help, unable to stop them, unable to do anything but wish things had gone differently.

  Hustino was gone for seven days; when he was returned, he was barely alive.

  We did our best to medicate him, but though Cristan distilled the healing essences of herbs; though Maren revived his heart numerous times with sparked coils; though I added mechanical joints and replaced broken bone with sturdy metal, there was not much improvement in Hustino’s condition. We were scientists, not doctors, and the sum of our brilliance could not equal the healing arts practiced by the faithful. And if there were lore in the neighboring powers that could have helped in Hustino’s recuperation, those doors were closed to us as well.

  In the end, all we could do was stand vigil.

  How I wished Hustino could have spoken; how I re-imagined those times to be filled with tender goodbyes or sunset-tinged rememberings instead of mournful quietude. But Hustino was unable to express anything in words, and his fingers were too irreparably broken to express his horrors in music. Whatever the Gobernador-General had the guardia sibil do to him, it was, in many ways, worse than immediate death. It was as if Hustino had gone through the antithesis of an alma parpadear where, instead of being united into a greater thought and a grander dream, he was instead disassembled and methodically dismantled, until his heart was just a cluster of malfunctioning valves, his mind a maze of shadows and nightmares, and his soul a tattered assembly of memories. Near the end of his days, Hustino became increasingly silent, worryingly still, as if his core had drifted into a vacuum where no sound could exist, terribly alone, terribly beyond our reach.

  When he died, Cristan, Maren and I began to plan.

  ~*~

  The first part of the scheme was all about me, because I needed both their expertise, because I was unsure as to how to go about it, because for all my self-surgeries, I had never attempted to change any vital organs with artificial ones and was thus less confident of my recovery rate.

  The second part was Cristan, partly because he was impatient, and partly because his was the easiest to execute. Poison required only the most basic alchemy. The real challenge was in being able to outwit the doctors of faith, for once symptoms started to show, it would just be a simple exercise of their arts to heal themselves.

  Instead of crafting fast-acting venom, as other deviants had done in the past with varying degrees of success, Cristan chose to go slow. The quintaesencia of lead tasted sweet, or so Cristan told us. It was only detectable when it was too late, when the metal had rooted itself deeply into the bones, when the abdominal pains had already gone past excruciating, when the dementia had taken hold.

  And so it was that during the celebration of Eostre, Cristan delivered several boxes of fragrant rice cakes to the good doctors as an offering to the Arquitecto Sagrado.

  Then, he waited.

  We were not fools enough to believe that we would not be caught, for certainly if we were geniuses in our fields, there must be corresponding intellects of the same degree working as guardias or as doctors or as detectives. But Cristan had wanted to see if his mad plan would work; he wanted to revel in the chaos it would cause. And so it was not until three weeks later, just hours before the detectives had solved the mystery of the dancing demented doctors, that he took his own life using the most traditional of poisons: arsenic.

  As a parting gift, Cristan created a sumptuous feast for the detectives who would barge into his casa to arrest him. Survivors would later inadequately describe the majesty of the assembled towers, made of spun sugar, marzipan and confectioner’s paste, generously gilded with silver and gold and lead and powdered wine; they would use ill-fitting words to articulate the tantalizing scents of the ornately plated cakes and tarts and pies, mysteriously still warm as if Cristan had just taken them out of the ovens moments before they arrived; they would ineptly recount their despair at taking one bite, then another, and another, unable to stop, unable to deny the orgasmic glory that came with tasting each perfectly crafted gastronomical delight.

  Only those of the weakest constitutions died; many survived the ordeal, only to be haunted by a craving Cristan alone could satisfy.

  The detectives were persuaded, with the help of a carefully crafted letter echoing the sentiment of heretics, that radical thought served as motivation for Cristan’s crimes. Thus, the Cucinero Peligroso, as Cristan would later be called, enjoyed the reputation of being a deviant in the eyes of the colonia and a martyr among revolutionaries.

  ~*~

  The third part of the plan was Maren.

  Her challenge was to be able to gather the embajadors in one area, when the resulting economic bullying had forced these officials to be at odds wi
th not only the colonia, but each other. To accomplish this nearly impossible feat, she took her small galleon to the road.

  At first, only a few of our peers, mostly catedraticos who thought kindly of her and her flirtatious smiles, came and listened. But as her invention took flight, as more people saw the flow of currents inside Maren’s metallic beast, as more of the citizenry began to experience firsthand how it was to ride a ship without steam, more important members of society began to take notice.

  It was during the monsoon season that she was finally able to attract the attention of the embajadors, who all came en masse because of their fear of being outdone by the other. By then, Maren had mastered the art of presentation, adding exciting flourishes and embellishments to what should have been a simple, scientific lecture. The most awaited moment of her demonstration had ceased to be the galleon de cielo itself, but rather Maren, beautifully attired with long flowing hair, entering a metal cage which was then subsequently charged with large volts of lightning from her coiled constructions.

  “Esteemed guests, see how the bolts arc outside this metal compartment but leave me, inside it, unharmed? Earlier, I showed you how a small amount of current was sufficient to fry an egg. Yet here I am, perfectly well, and conversing with the distinguished gentlemen and beauteous ladies with nary a burn,” Maren would say, as she manipulated her inventions from within. “This is why, despite the metal casings of my galleon, despite the massive amounts of current it will need, it can and will carry its passengers safely to their destinations. It will be different matter, however, if my device was not used. Why, it is more dangerous than any known weapons la Madre Patria has been able to develop.” At this point, Maren would extend a hand to her captivated audience. “Now please, come closer, see for yourselves how harmless it is.”

  I was not at her last presentation, but I have often imagined how silly the embajadors must have looked as they approached the lightning cage; how their eyes must have widened with greed being so close to something so powerful; how exquisite Maren’s smile must have been as she switched off the mechanism that controlled the electrical charges; how chaotically beautiful everyone must have appeared, limned in metal-tinged blue, stripped of their artifice and their false etiquette and their elegant veneers, unable to flee, unable to find respite, unable to go beyond the reach of arcing volts and coruscating electricity and instead, were redeemed, and at the same time, reduced through Maren’s act to being a mere component of an all-consuming force.

  The detectives concluded, not convincingly, that it was an accident; an unfortunate accident that took the lives of the ambassadors of Tsina, Hindustan, Inglatera and Mejico, their babel of translators, and the promising machinist who would go down in history as Senora el Relampago, the Lightning Lady.

  ~*~

  I am the last bolt to slide in place, the last piece on the puzzle of revenge. It took me months to recover; a year to rebuild my reputation as a dancer of note; a couple more pass before I finally piqued the interest of my target.

  My challenge is to murder the acting sovereign of the colonia. The Gobernador-General is protected by guardia sibil, some of who have their own augmented limbs, to enable a more effective defense. The key is to do something no one has done before, to truly rebel against the laws of fisica, to fly higher, move faster, so that I may be able to penetrate the wall of men and women that surround the Gobernador. To do that, I need power.

  The copper-springed heart was my idea, but I needed Maren to build the mechanism that would operate it, and I needed Cristan to distill me the medication I would need to survive the transplant. We knew there was a possibility it would not work; we knew I could die for, just as with Hustino, we were merely mimicking the healing arts.

  But my body proved once again its resilience. It accepted the change and became stronger for it. And if cerulean pulsing lines often appear under my skin, and if I hear the whirring sound of turbines instead of the steady thrum of a heartbeat, and if I see phantoms of my dead lovers conversing, laughing, asking me to come with them, all of these combined is still a small price to pay for what, in turn, I am able to do.

  I see Cristan and Maren and Hustino take their imaginary seats among the selected guests invited to the Gobernador-General’s soiree. The audience is small, even accounting for the guardia sibil, the stage they allotted me, large. In my starting position on the raised platform, the endless opportunity of space beckons to me, calling to me to fill its emptiness with the caress of my arms, the harsh flicks of my feet. I delve deep within myself to stay still. Only when the melancholy music begins do I move.

  I drag one leg, then the other, in time with the subtle base, tapping my foot lightly on the wood, letting the exhausted sadness of my movements flavor the ambient energy. At the unexpected melodic crescendo, I execute a sharp roto trasero then proceed to a slow slide, as if the harsh interruption never happened.

  I am lost, I tell the audience as I interrupt the sway of my hips with a jump and twist in midair. I am broken, I say as I harshly stop the gentle flutter of my arms with a drop on the floor. And I repeat this again, and again, with broken salidas, and disrupted ochos, and a sudden stop to a languorous pirouette.

  When the music fades I begin to turn.

  The 360-degree rotations of girasoles encadenados require balance and concentration, but it is my copper-springed heart and not my mind that holds me steady. I am reliving the last years again, temporarily immune to friction and gravity and the failings of mechanical joints and mortal limbs, free to dwell on images of Hustino, laughing as he explained the alma parpadear, and Cristan as he served his decadent flavorful masterpieces, and Maren, as she navigated the winds in her marvelous, powerful galleon. With each completed revolution, with each spin that defies the laws of fisica with its almost infinite source of angular momentum, I feel the stress inside me building, growing, increasing to the point of sublime pain, until the images themselves cease to be illusions, but take on weight and mass and volume (and texture and scent and sound) so that I am surrounded by the Cuadro Amorso, turning to the music of a thousand precious memories, even as a miniscule part of my artificial heart loses its place, leaving a dynamo to course its power without a circuit, intensifying the pain a hundredfold and momentarily blinding me, until finally, eventually, inevitably I stumble to a halt.

  And my chest explodes.

  My last image is of my heart, impossibly slow to my eyes, traveling a straight line toward the Gobernador-General, to its unavoidable end.

  Working Woman

  Olivia Ho

  It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when the hearse ran away.

  This was one of Singapore’s very hot days, when the heat sat in thick layers upon the dust of the streets and people moved as slowly as they could so as not to attract its attention. The hearse, one of the newer auto models, had been moving slowly. One moment it was trundling demurely along in the funeral procession, puffing gently; the next, it was shrieking down Victoria Street trailing clouds of steam and bruised mourners in its wake. A yawning fissure in the road skewed it a sharp left, and it ploughed through streets of terrified carpet merchants and songkok makers. Nobody tried to stop it, of course; any engine on wheels was liable to explode these days, and hearses were particularly contentious since the health of their passengers was no longer a standing issue. Instead, the runaway hearse went on gaining speed and losing pursuit, shedding flowers and tassels, until it crashed to a stop in the Malay cemetery.

  By the time the funeral party caught up, the hearse was lying on its side, gaping, empty. The mourners looked to their leader, who swore violently in Cantonese, paused for breath and added, “It can’t have gone far.”

  “No,” said another, “it’s a body.”

  Still panting, their leader surveyed the wreckage of the hearse, the gathering crowd, the growing unease that traditionally followed the incursion of large groups of Chinese men into a Malay neighbourhood. How long did they have before the police showe
d up and started asking difficult questions? He weighed his options.

  The hearse solved this dilemma for him by emitting an ominous whistling noise, and then blowing up.

  The ensuing chaos meant that nobody noticed when, a few streets away, a door flew open, a dish smashed and a woman screamed.

  ~*~

  “Weapons,” said the man at the door.

  Ning Lam raised an eyebrow. She pushed her loose braid back over her shoulder, reached inside her paper cone of kacang puteh and popped a boiled chickpea into her mouth. This she chewed deliberately.

  “Weapons,” growled the guard again. “You’re not going in to see the old man armed to the teeth. And throw away that stupid snack.”

  Ning rolled her one good eye. The other merely clicked in her head, a gleaming clockwork eyeball, and remained pointing straight at the guard, a trick that most found disconcerting. Indeed, the man almost flinched, only just catching himself. Ning winked at him with the good eye, unclipped her butterfly knives from her belt and laid them on the table, followed by two boxes of bolts. From her back, she unstrapped her crossbow. ‘This I’m keeping,’ she added, waving the kacang puteh.

  The man made an ill-advised grab for it. Ning tossed the paper cone to her left hand; with her right, she grabbed the oncoming fingers and twisted them halfway around. The man let out a yelp. Ning released him and strode past, fishing in the cone for roasted nuts.

  She heard him spit in the doorway after her retreating back. “Fucking hybrid.”

  Ning made her way across the gambling floor, past yelling men in singlets jostling elbows with bored housewives at the chap ji kee tables and the brassy new slot machines. The room beyond was dim and low-ceilinged; she had to stoop as she picked her way across the mess of thin copper pipes that snaked across the floor and curled up besides the shadowy figures lying prostrate on low bunks, sucking dreamily at the opium smoke flowering from the gutta-percha mouths of the pipes. Down another corridor, another man standing guard at the end. This one asked no questions, merely looked her up and down in her coolie trousers and her dirty kebaya that was once a light green, now loose and unbuttoned over a samfoo top. He held back the red beaded curtain for her to step through, saying as he did, “Miss Ning, Grandfather.”