Children of the Bloodlands

by S. M. Beiko

As she spun, her peignoir catching in well-practiced fire and burning out again, Cecelia soaked up the cheers and the kinetic energy in the air. Because she knew, as she felt the fire flash around her, this was the last time she’d ever be free.

  ~

  I gasped like I’d had my head held under water, staggering and falling on my hands and knees to pavement. Pavement? I blinked blearily around, the world swimming back into focus as my lungs pulled for purchase. I was outside, on the sidewalk. I had come down on a crowded sidewalk, pedestrians swerving to avoid me as I staggered weakly to my feet. Probably afraid the crazy was catching. Didn’t blame them.

  The vision. What the hell was that? After the disaster at Fingal’s Pint, I’d gone back to my flat. Closed my eyes for a second, and suddenly I was . . . elsewhere. Elsewhen. A vivid dream where I was both inside and outside at once. A woman named Ruo, the name from the letter that brought me here. I’d let the stone in . . . was it showing me some kind of memory?

  I touched my mouth, tried to master my racing heart. Was it showing me Cecelia’s memory?

  Fresh pain shot from my spirit eye into my head like the optic nerve was bristling with thorns. When it cleared, and I looked around again, stepping around a corner, I realized where I was now. I was on the Royal Mile. I was standing outside of where Fingal’s Pint used to be. I didn’t remember getting here. I just remembered —

  A flash. A fire. Table five. A man disintegrating as he held on, warning —

  “Roan?”

  I whipped my head to my name, body flushing cold. There was Athika, decidedly not burned to a cinder, and next to her was Ben, and they stared at me like I was the ghost.

  “Jesus,” Ben said, “I was gonna say you look terrible, but I guess anything is better than dead.”

  The grin I managed was more like a twitch. “I could say the same for you.” The words felt weird on my tongue, like I’d just heard them, said them, and I tried to shake the vision away. “How . . . ?”

  Athika suddenly surged forward, crushing me close in a hug that I couldn’t even try to match. When I coughed, Ben pulled us apart, saying, “Well, if she wasn’t dead before, she is now.”

  “How did you get out?” Athika ignored him, still holding tight to me like I was her lifeline. “And . . . are you sick or something? You’re burning hot.”

  I’d grown used to Athika’s fussing since moving to Edinburgh — she reminded me of Phae, and I hated that I seemed to exude a please take care of me pheromone, even if it was met with the best of intentions, so I tried backing away. She held on.

  “I . . . I don’t know. It all happened so fast. I think I was, um, blasted out onto the sidewalk. I woke up in a hospital, but they let me leave . . .” The lie came almost too easily, and I didn’t wait to see if they’d bought it, averting my eyes to the wreckage.

  Ben followed my gaze, nodding. “That’s what all the survivors seem to be saying. Everyone made it out, and when they couldn’t find you in there, we thought . . . well. We thought you were the only unlucky one not to make it.”

  I froze. “What? You mean no one . . . ?” I let the word died hang in the air, because it seemed too good to be true. An answer to my desperate misery, a clearing of my ledger. “Wait. How did you guys get out?”

  I scrutinized them both more carefully. They didn’t look injured in the usual ways — maybe a bit of emotional scarring — but if either of them had been anywhere near the blast that was so painfully painted in my mind’s eye whenever I closed my actual eyes . . . there was just no way.

  Athika’s grip seemed to flex. Ben moved closer.

  “Miracles do happen,” he smiled, but it wasn’t the same friendly grin I’d gotten used to these past months. I didn’t know why, but the smile seemed more like a threat. “We’re just glad you’re okay.”

  “Yeah. I’m okay.” I broke Athika’s grip with a swift jerk back that I played off as moving closer to the building’s remains. Fire trucks were still surrounding the restaurant and the surrounding buildings. A definite crowd had gathered while emergency crew diverted the foot traffic and incensed cabbies around the cordoned-off square that I’d incinerated. That was still on me. I raised my hand to touch my chest but forced it back down. No. Not me. Something else trying to use me. And I wouldn’t let it.

  “They still don’t know what caused it,” Athika was saying behind me. I could feel her and Ben’s eyes boring into the back of my head. “Do you have any ideas? Do you remember seeing anything?”

  I made an effort to search the crowd so I wouldn’t have to meet their eyes. Something was wrong. They couldn’t know. Could they? Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of Ben, and something pulsing at his neck, just where the collar of his shirt started. Something black, like a stain of ash. Except it was moving, branching out. Growing.

  I winced again, this time overcome with the image of the man at the bar, holding tight to me, his arm blackening . . .

  “I’ve gotta go,” I managed as I spun away from them, from Athika’s red-shining eyes and outstretched fingers, the tips of which seemed to be going dark.

  I shoved my way through the crowd, feeling sick. I needed to talk to someone, anyone.

  “Easy there,” said someone in front of me; I was moving so fast I’d ricocheted off him.

  I apologized. His hazel eyes were too kind for me to deserve. “Best be careful,” he said, his accent thick. “Trouble’s about, girlie.”

  “Uh. Right.” I moved away from him, from the rest of the crowd, but even when I was across the street and around the corner I felt eyes following me — maybe the man’s, maybe Ben’s and Athika’s. Maybe eyes that no one else could feel but me.

  And as the whispers from the Opal grew more urgent, I felt more alone than I ever had.

  ~

  He watched her go. He knew she felt it. It took more than he cared to admit not to go after her now. Patience, hissed the thing inside. Soon.

  He turned up the street, went the other way. When he passed the entrance to the Edinburgh rail station, he kept going. He hadn’t been down there since his prison cell had smashed open under heavy axe hands; the six earnest, gleaming eyes wide with triumph as he was pulled out to freedom.

  He hadn’t felt fresh air in seventeen years, and the rush of those trains had been enough for his wind-starved skin. Down in that underground, he’d heard their song.

  Patience, he told himself firmly, smiling, until he wasn’t in the street at all.

  Far from Sea

  “Where are you going, Nattiq?”

  Natti zipped up her hoodie and took another breath through her nose as she tried for patience. “The zoo, Aunty.”

  Aunty’s cough was ragged and wet, like an overflowing ditch at spring’s first melt. It was getting worse, and so was her memory. “Right, right, the zoo,” she said, as if she suddenly remembered the last ten times Natti had told her. “What you going there for? Don’t you live in enough of a zoo already?” She laughed, but again it was overtaken by painful hacking, and Natti forgot her impatience.

  “Here.” She hurried to one side of Aunty’s old La-Z-Boy, handing her a glass of water and a pill. “It’s for the job interview, remember? They’re looking for fall camp counsellors.”

  As Aunty drank, Natti thought about her chances, which were slim. A high school dropout with a GED, her only work experience flipping burgers at various fast food places up and down Portage Avenue. But she needed a change, to move up. She wanted to do something with real purpose, and while avoiding deep fryer splashback helped pay the bills, her dignity was slipping.

  And at the rate Aunty was going, Natti needed something more flexible to help out at home.

  “Miriam is going to look in on you later, okay?” Natti was making for the door, worried she would miss her bus. It was a long ride and two transfers from Point Douglas to Charleswood, and she was grateful for the ki
ndness of neighbours who had taken care of Natti more times than she could remember.

  “I don’t need Miriam or anyone fussing over me.” Aunty scowled, bringing a hand to her temple. “It’s just the water . . . the waters have changed. And I can’t seem to remember . . .”

  Natti had heard this all before; ever since Zabor was sent back to the hole from whence she’d come, Aunty had changed. Startled in the night, talking in her sleep. Even in waking, she sounded like she was moving slowly through a dream, the details of which slipped through her fingers with every need of reassurance.

  “And Aivik?” she yawned, the combination of the water and the Aspirin maybe, hopefully, calming her — though still doing nothing for her memory.

  “He’s on a long haul, Aunty. He drives a truck now.” Natti checked the oven’s clock and felt rising panic. “Miriam will be by soon; I’ve got to go.” Then she was out the door in a flash, even though cardio really wasn’t her strong suit.

  She had to chase the bus and bank on a red light, but she still made it, panting and already sweating once she got on. It was fine; she’d have almost an hour’s journey to collect herself as she held on to the safety bar near the front of the #45. She’d have to transfer soon, and there was no point sitting.

  Underneath the hoodie she was wearing her best shirt — which really wasn’t much to write home about — and under her breath she rehearsed the things she’d memorized from a library internet search on job interviews. True, she’d done them in the past. But this was important. A job with fewer hours and higher pay seemed like a dream. And maybe, just maybe, it could lead her to taking a few classes at the U of W here and there. It might change things. But she had to get it first.

  Her transfer came up quickly, and she was on the #21, settling into a seat near the back as the bus filled, stop after stop. Natti watched the city flick by and realized that, even though so much had changed in only half a year, the people didn’t register it too much. True, everyone had been deeply affected by the flood. There were places in the city still being rebuilt, families grieving lives and homes lost to the deluge. But the city didn’t fold up; it kept going because it had to. People blamed it on ill luck and temperamental elements — A neat trick on the Owls’ part, Natti thought — and threw themselves into routine to distract themselves from what they all must have felt: that something unreal had happened. Something otherworldly. And it’d all happened so fast, even though the monster had been lurking there for hundreds of years before it was gone again.

  The bus passed by the U of W, and Natti watched the students filtering in and out of the grand castle-looking collegiate in the centre of the campus. As usual, she envied them. She tried to slot herself into their places but came up short with the visual. How could she belong there now? Her powers, and those of the Families she’d grown up being taught about, had always seemed like an inconsequential, additional sense. Something she’d fit in to a regular life. But now she’d seen a couple battlefields, had come out on the other side, and found that she liked it. Liked having a warrior’s purpose, even if it seemed like comic-book trash on the surface. She’d been a hero for once. She’d been a part of saving the day so this city could hold on to normality.

  But the next day, after the flood waters had receded, she was still just Nattiq Fontaine, dropout from the North End, not knowing if her mother was still alive, living in the house of a woman who probably wasn’t related to, let alone an actual aunty. Meanwhile the students at the university she idolized complained about having to take Indigenous Studies to graduate, thanks to new legislation.

  The entire world was different and only Natti noticed.

  The bus chugged along, avoiding potholes and the never-ending construction set up to fix them. Halfway there now; she combed her hair with her fingers, undid and retied her ponytail. This is as good as it gets. At least the zoo was near the river. No matter what, those dirty brown waters led to some sea, somewhere, even if here it was filled to the brim with a city’s refuse and rejects. And any path to the sea, however far or indirect, gave her a bit of peace.

  Despite what Aunty was hearing or seeing, the river felt quiet to Natti as she got off the bus at Overdale, crossed Portage, and headed into the park. She stopped for a second on the stone bridge, filled now with joggers and parents pulling kids in bike trailers. The wind whipped off the water and teased her hair into her eyes. She shut them; there was a hum there, a definite absence. The river hunters had been silenced, too, and for that one breath Natti remembered the one river hunter she’d called Brother. One she wouldn’t see again in this world, though she hoped he’d made it to the next.

  She kept moving. No, the river wouldn’t make a sound now that its queen was gone. Yet there had been something in an undercurrent. Not a threat, but a warning. That the absence was either short-lived or not as empty as it appeared.

  ~

  It took every nerve in Natti’s body to turn around and put her back to the interview, to this entire day. I thought your name was Nat. The counsellor, Rachel, had frowned at her. Maybe Natti already knew even trying this was a stupid idea.

  She stormed off down the path, cheeks hot as she bit back tears. The same old song and dance — an excuse about the position already being filled, the brush-off about her volunteer experience, her track record. All it took was one look, usually. Why did she bother getting her hopes up?

  It seemed a cheap consolation prize that in her need to escape the failed interview as fast as possible, the counsellor had left Natti in the zoo, free to wander the exhibits without having to pay the entry fee. Even though minutes ago she would’ve said anything to work here, as a cloud passed over the sun, Natti realized what a sad place the zoo was. Coming from a culture that viewed animals and the earth itself as sacred from which power came — even though her Seal roots seemed more distant since Aunty’s illness — Mundane places like this never sat well with her.

  She found herself at the North American birds exhibit, then the boreal forest enclosure. She wondered how many Denizens came here and didn’t feel like freeing their Family’s namesakes. Owls fluttered in their enclosures and foxes roamed in their pens, coats and plumage dull, eyes fixed on nothing. Natti scoffed; maybe this is where all Denizens deserved to end up. Someone else’s pretty cage.

  She wandered deeper, feeling that strange hum again, that pull, that she’d felt when crossing the bridge into the park. The river wasn’t far off and, without turning her head to look, she knew it was on her right side, just beyond a service road and a steep bank. But it wasn’t the river humming her forward, and she stopped herself as she read the sign beside the inukshuk that made her heart catch — Gateway to the Arctic: Journey to Churchill.

  Natti felt a chill up her spine, which was a welcome relief to the heat of her rage and shame, and joining the crowd of squealing babies and stressed-out parents longing for summer to be over, Natti went inside.

  She allowed herself the barest moment of childlike reverence, entering the space that was dark as a cave of ice, water rippling around her on all sides and above her head. It was like her best dreams, the ones where Aunty showed her spirit impressions of the Abyss, the sacred place of the Seal Family and the kingdom ruled by its dark fighting Empress, Ryk. Natti never thought she’d see something like this in Winnipeg, of all places, and it calmed her fury, even beyond the rubbernecking tweens whipping out their phones to take selfies instead of enjoying the moment.

  Then two white and hulking shapes moved across the ice-glass ceiling above them and the hum Natti felt turned into a roar.

  The polar bear exhibit, she knew, had become local tourism’s most recent crown jewel. It was no wonder; despite their huge country with all its natural wonders, many people — Natti included — might spend their entire lives here, and even this glimpse into the natural magic of the world offered a respite from that reality. The sun struck the water and Natti felt herself calm as she wa
s pressed closer to the glass by the crowd.

  At first, the bears paddled with a hypnotic cadence as if the people weren’t there at all, as if the water suspended above them and the people in the open air below inhabited two different realms. And they very well did. No matter how trapped Natti felt now by circumstance, at least she had some freedom — unlike the bears.

  The minute she thought it, her heart lurched, and the humming felt like a wave crashing on a distant icy shore. No, not a shore — a glacier with a beating blue heart — and the image was so stark and sudden she was only broken out of it when the crowd jostled around her to get a better look at the bears . . .

  . . . two of which had stopped swimming right in front of Natti and seemed to be staring at her, and only her, through the divide of the glass.

  One bear swam tentatively forward, paws and nose pressed into the glass. Natti felt like her feet had been frozen in the same ice she’d just seen, and someone said, “Whoa, look what they’re doing!” and the crowd squeezed closer. Unable to move, all Natti could do was stare helplessly into the black eyes of the creatures in front of her, which, she noticed, seemed to be growing more agitated as the crowd pressed.

  Something else was stirring in Natti — the same fury, the same aggravation, of being rejected only minutes ago. Her fist tightened as people told her to move or phones came out in front of her as if she weren’t there, trying to angle for the best shot of the bears swimming in aggravated circles before the swooning audience.

  Natti tried to find her voice — stop pushing. Stand back. But everything was frozen — legs, mouth. But not her mind, not when she saw that crest of ice again as the two bears came back to the glass, paws pressing uselessly, and Natti heard it.

  Please, came two voices that nudged gently against her thoughts. Help us.

  The crowd was overwhelming. She felt like she was going to be trampled, crushed. And in a surge, she felt that glacier turn over, revealing a power so blue and enormous that all she could do was ride the wave it sent through her, and she opened her eyes to the sound of the crowd screaming for the exits.