Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 83

by Vandana Singh

  In the mid-day the storm subsided. They had lost two more people, and there were several injuries. Raju threw himself into the work, running for medical supplies, helping with the dead. But he would not touch Avinash.

  Felipe’s throat was so sore by mid-day that he could not speak. He was coughing blood. He packed up and went to the van that was taking the injured to hospital. He whispered goodbye to Raju as the boy stood under the great archway of the entrance. “Be careful, Sar,” Raju said. “Queen’s gone to her death, but Boss . . . that old bastard, he didn’t die right. Came to me in a dream, begging for asylum. Maybe it was just a dream, but maybe when the death’s not right you can’t go away. Like the queen. In the dream I told him I was having none of it. Told him to get lost.” The boy’s eyes filled with tears. He said, inconsequentially, “He taught me how to read and write. On the computer.” Felipe put his arms around the boy, surprising him, and whispered goodbye. From the van he waved. Raju was dirty, disheveled, scraped and bleeding in half a dozen places, but he stood tall. I will remember you, Felipe thought: Raju, errand boy, goatherd, possible descendant of kings.

  It was after a few days of tests that the bad news came. The doctors did not think Felipe would get his voice back. There was too much damage to the larynx. When they told him this, he had been doodling on a prescription pad in the waiting room. He stared at their sympathetic faces. All he could do was whisper. He got up, shouldered his bag, and staggered out. He went into the bright sun, the mad traffic of Jaipur, and began to walk swiftly toward nowhere. For a week or more, he lost himself in the city, in its markets and pink palaces, its gardens and residential areas. The days paraded before him like the faces of strangers.

  Then one afternoon he found himself outside the railway station. Horns blaring, bells ringing, shouting voices, auto-rickshaws and taxis and cars everywhere, and a surge of humanity going this way and that. A small boy cannoned into him, looked up at the stranger with the long hair and burning eyes, and burst into tears. “Mamma!” he wailed. A terrible, irrational fear that was not his own gripped Felipe. But here was the mother, barreling through the crowds like a battleship, grabbing the child. She gave Felipe a backward look full of suspicion as the two vanished into the crowd.

  The spell broke. Felipe rubbed his eyes.

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” Felipe said into the air. “Avinash?” There was a sigh in his mind, a plea. Felipe didn’t respond. He walked around the corner of the road, raising dust with every step, weaving his way through the traffic, until he found himself in a small park with a fountain, where he bought an ice-cream cone from a man with a cart. He stood contemplating the water cascading into the pool of the fountain. Small children were throwing pebbles, watching the ripples.

  So it is with our lives, Felipe thought. Each life like a ripple, spreading out, changing as it met other ripples, other lives. Some circles die away quickly, others expand into larger circles. A minor character in one story becomes the lead in another. We are all actors on shifting stages. We contain one another.

  I should throw you out, like Raju did—you could have killed Lalita.

  So what shall I do with you?

  The presence in his mind was barely tangible, as though Avinash had cried himself to sleep. Who knew where he would go, what mischief he would cause, if Felipe rejected him? There must be a way to release you, to bring you the peace you need, he said after a while. There was no answer.

  I suppose we are all haunted, he thought, with sudden insight. All humans carry with them unacknowledged ghosts. He thought of his mother. His uncle. The poet, Jaime Saenz, whom he had never met. Little Carmelita. Pedro. The crowded two-room tenement where he had grown up. He heard his uncle say: Hell, what’s one more?

  Felipe sighed in resignation. Well, stay with me awhile then.

  But you’ll have to behave yourself, he added.

  There was a long, answering sigh in his mind like a child turning over in sleep.

  He pushed his hands into his pockets, ready to leave the park, when he found the prescription pad from the hospital. His doodles were all drawings of kharchal. He thought he heard again that reverberating cry.

  At once he knew what he had to do. He began running through the streets toward the bus-station. He had to get on the next bus to Jaisalmer, get out there in the open desert, find Lalita. He would be whisperer, interpreter between the kharchal and the human race. She held the key, the secret, the question for which his life was the answer. As for the boy Avinash, his story was as yet incomplete. Perhaps it was only in the largeness, the emptiness of the desert that the abandoned child would find his courage, his peace. Felipe found his way from the ticket line to the bus. “I’m taking you home,” he said to Avinash in his mind, not realizing he had whispered aloud. He didn’t know why he’d said that, but it felt right. The old man next to him looked at him in surprise. Felipe whispered, “Do you hear it? Do you hear it too? The cry of the kharchal? Cry for the kharchal, my brother.” He remembered abruptly the night in Madrid, the sirocco howling outside, the stirring within him, an animal waking from sleep, stretching, telling him he was not merely human. He remembered his fright at that discovery, his pushing it away into oblivion. Might as well put a lid on a sandstorm. Now he felt as though some barrier within him was dissolving, something was freeing itself. Without warning, words began to swirl in his mind. Sitting in the bus he found himself afraid they would disappear if he didn’t set them down now. He pulled out the prescription pad, found a pen, and began to write.

  About the Author

  Vandana Singh was born and raised in New Delhi, India. She acquired a passion for inventing her own myths around the age of eleven, and obtained a Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics in her twenties. She now teaches physics at a small state university near Boston, and obsesses over everything from human nature to climate change to creative pedagogies. Her short stories have appeared most recently in The Other Half of the Sky (ed. Athena Andreadis) and Solaris Rising 2 (ed. Ian Whates), and several have been reprinted in best-of-year anthologies. Of this story she states: “I am indebted to the Bolivian writer and critic Miguel Esquirol (Portfolio, http://sffportal.net/author/mesquirol/) for invaluable feedback as well as information about Bolivia. Any errors or omissions are my sole responsibility.”

  Shepherds

  Greg Kurzawa

  The lioness ambushed Abel’s flock as he herded them down from the high pastures. Dropping soundlessly from a rocky ledge along the sheep path, she landed on a lamb not six months old. The flock scattered. Turning to confront Abel, the beast rose to her hind legs and opened her claws. Her ears lie flat, her tail thrashed. From her mouth hung the lamb, scrawny legs kicking.

  The first swing of Abel’s heavy crook caught the lioness low on a hind leg. She dropped back down to her forelegs to keep from toppling, her crippled limb drawn tightly up. A growl rose in her throat, but she did not release the lamb. Abel meant his second blow for her skull, but she caught the shaft of his crook with her clawed right hand. Abel pulled, and the lioness pulled back, nearly dragging him off his feet. He shoved the crook toward her, then pulled again as she rebalanced, bringing her stumbling forward. When she dropped the crook to catch herself, Abel thrust, penetrating her low in the gut. She scrabbled for purchase on the rocky path as he drove her back, finally pinning her to the rocks by the meat of her own flank.

  At last she bared her fangs to shriek, and the lamb fell in an awkward heap.

  With his free hand, Abel slipped the elk-bone cudgel from his belt just as the lioness broke the shaft of the crook with one downswing of her heavy arm. He stepped in to interrupt her lunge, and one blow from the cudgel caved the side of her skull. She faltered, head dragging, but too full of hate to die so suddenly.

  She shrieked again when Abel seized a ragged ear and twisted her head to the side, exposing her ruined face. Her slitted yellow eyes bulged at his raised cudgel. She lifted an arm as though to fend him off, and howled, “No!”
/>   Abel’s first blow silenced her; his second finished it.

  Discarding the broken crook, Abel stood over the dead lioness and the wreck of her victim. The lamb would die—there was no helping that. He knelt to smooth the bloodied fleece, and to offer what comfort he could. By the time the lamb died, the bravest of his rams had begun a hesitant return. Weary already, Abel drew his knife and pulled the lioness closer to him by her scruff. Where there was one, there were many; rebuke was necessary, lest they think him weak.

  The sheep kept their distance while Abel worked. He sliced the tongue from her mouth and the ears from her head. He removed liver, heart, and hands. These things he scattered across the path, a warning to the other abominations on the mountain that this shepherd was not too old yet to defend his flock.

  When Abel coughed—which was often, and for exhausting stretches—blood laced his sputum. He coughed more than usual that night by his fire in the cedar grove, and spat more blood than the day before. Between fits, he drank steaming broth from a wooden bowl.

  There were days, Abel remembered, when he would not have lost the lamb to the lioness, or to any other aberration. Days when no beast could take his crook from him. In those days, his first blow killed.

  These days, he couldn’t still the shaking in his hands.

  Abel considered those hands, a text of overlapping scars. Testament to his life on the mountain. He looked to the darkening heavens, where once he had seen infinite stars. Only the brightest shone for him now—no fault of theirs. He thought of the lioness he had killed, and of the other beasts with which he shared the mountains. They were braver than they had once been, and every season more capable.

  “You’re an old man,” Abel said to his fire. “You can’t stay here anymore.”

  And so it was that Abel decided to quit the mountain, and to go before the snows came. He did not think he would see another spring. He knew his time was on him, and had no illusions of prolonging his life. He only wanted to find a place where he would not have to suffer being devoured by beasts.

  Emptying his bowl into the fire, Abel reflected on the fact that he’d not seen another of his kind in a long while. He wondered if there would be anyone left to welcome him back.

  Abel took his time fashioning a new crook from a cedar limb. During that time, he decided to descend eastward. It wasn’t that he hoped to find any of the old roads that crossed those lands, or that he thought the cities—unlike those on the western plains—might still be populated. He knew only that he preferred to travel toward the rising sun, rather than away from it. The next morning he rolled his few possessions into a sheepskin blanket, which he secured across his back. Down from the high pastures and into the foothills he herded the flock, where they wandered for days. Every morning he collected rotten wood from rivulets and gullies, and burned it in the evenings. With his pillar of smoke roiling into the blue-black void, he leaned on his crook to watch the desolate plain. As night came, he imagined the clustered towers and sweeping bridges of ancient and abandoned cities far in the distance.

  “Hello,” he said to the fire, but his voice felt atrophied. He hawked and spat. “Hello,” he tried again. “My name is Abel. This is my flock.” The words were clumsy on his tongue. “They are everything I own. They can be yours. If only you let me die in your company.”

  More practice was needed, he felt, if he was to sound human.

  All night he conversed with the fire.

  Abel slaughtered a lamb the next morning, and made a stew over his guttering fire.

  The next day a bearded stranger came up from the plains, making no effort to conceal himself. Leaning on his crook beside his smoking fire, Abel watched him pick his way barefooted up the rocky slope in plain view. At a respectful distance, the stranger stopped to lean on a branch he’d been using as a walking stick. From there, he squinted up toward Abel and called, “Where from?”

  Abel touched his chest. “My name is Abel.” He swept an arm to indicate the three dozen sheep grazing among the boulders of the slope. “This is my flock.”

  The stranger contemplated the placid sheep. “And where did you come from, Abel? With your flock.”

  “Through the mountains.”

  The stranger shifted his squint up the slope—expecting more, Abel knew. But everything he’d planned to say before, now seemed ridiculous.

  “We saw your smoke,” the stranger prompted.

  “I didn’t want to descend without permission.”

  “You plan to stay?”

  Abel looked to the pot over his fire, then back. “Are you hungry?”

  Not long later, Abel had prepared flatbread on a rock, and was serving stew into shallow wooden bowls. He passed the first to the stranger, who called himself Levi. Accepting the bowl, Levi sniffed the contents before selecting a chunk of meat with finger and thumb. “How long have you been up there?” Levi asked before pushing the meat through his beard.

  “There were roads when I last came down,” Abel said.

  “There are still roads,” Levi said. He nodded south. “Some of the widest ones near the ruins aren’t overgrown yet.”

  Abel took his bowl and a round of flatbread, then crouched where he could watch Levi. They ate in silence for a little while, then Levi asked, “Are there still people on the other side of the range?”

  “Hardly.” Abel gestured with his bowl at the emptiness of the plains. “Like this. There are some in the mountains, but they’re not right in the head.”

  “Used to be, ten—fifteen years ago, there were settlements all up and down these foothills,” Levi said. “People came out of the plains, and some—” he aimed his chin at Abel, “like you, through the mountains. They called the biggest settlement Bastion. Built it up nice, too.” He snorted, perhaps at the futility of building, or that of naming. “It’s all rubble now.”

  Abel drank from his bowl, then wiped a sleeve across his mouth. “How many of you are left?”

  “About eighty. Less every year.”

  “No one comes out of the city?”

  “The ruins? Nothing comes out of the ruins. Not since long before I was made. You still find scavengers ranging about. They like the cities, but they’re as corrupt as the ones up in the mountains. Every one of them named Adam.”

  Abel nodded toward the plains. “What about out there?”

  “Caravans used to come up the old roads, but we haven’t seen one in a decade. If there’s anyone still out there, they don’t bother with us anymore.”

  Abel tore a chunk of flatbread to mop the dregs of his stew. When he looked up, Levi was watching him openly. “Are you human?”

  Abel lowered his bowl.

  “I’m sorry,” Levi said. “You look it. It’s just . . . ” he shrugged.

  “I’m dying,” Abel said, surprising himself with the sudden confession.

  As though to hide embarrassment, Levi looked to the plains. “You want the nunnery, then,” he said. “They’ve got an old sister down there. They say she’s over three hundred.”

  “Who says?”

  “The sisters. Everyone.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “No, but the sisters have taken to calling her Eve. If she lasts another fifty years I might start to believe it.” He dipped bread into bowl and ate. “That’s where all the women are—the nunnery. They come out, some of them—when they’re ready. But mostly they wait for us to come to them.” He looked at Abel with a measuring stare. “I can take you there. Tomorrow, if you want.”

  Abel started to reply, but was interrupted by a fit of coughing. His hand was bloodied when it subsided, and he wiped it in the grass. “Today?” he asked. “You can chose any one of my flock to keep: ram, ewe, or lamb.”

  Levi emptied his bowl and brushed his hands. “Or today.”

  For the remainder of that day they traversed the foothills on winding game trails and crooked paths. It wasn’t until the moon rose swollen and yellow that Levi halted to direct Abel’s attention int
o the plains. Looking down Levi’s extended arm into the middle distance, Abel saw what at first seemed a single squat building wrapped loosely around a central courtyard. Squinting to clarify his vision, he discovered that it was not one building, but a compound of various irregular structures connected by enclosed breezeways, rough additions, and mismatched roofs.

  “The nunnery,” Levi said. He claimed his lamb, and would go no closer.

  The convent’s well was set in damp flagstones at the center of the courtyard, and it was there that Abel waited the night. With his back to the well and his crook across his thighs, he sat facing the doors and slept not at all. And when the doors of the convent swung open with the rising sun, Abel pushed to his feet with the help of his crook to be noticed by the austere sister who emerged. Standing at the threshold, feet bare beneath her habit, she seemed unsurprised to observe her courtyard occupied by a flock of milling sheep. Striding across the courtyard, she halted a few paces from Abel, hands deep in her sleeves.

  “These animals are yours,” she said, less a question than an accusation.

  “It’s a good flock,” Abel said. “They’re all of them pure.”

  Her eyes passed over the sheep, and when her blunt gaze returned to Abel, she asked, “What do you want, shepherd?”

  “They’re a gift,” Abel said. “For you. For the convent.”

  The sister peered at him more intently. “And is the shepherd pure like his flock?”

  “I am, Sister.”

  “So you say.” She extended an impatient hand.

  When Abel offered his own hands to her, palms up, she seized them and pulled them closer to her. Her examination was quick and practiced. After she had studied his palms, she turned his hands over to inspect the nails, then dropped them. “Open your mouth,” she commanded.