American Hippo: River of Teeth, Taste of Marrow, and New Stories

by Sarah Gailey

  Houndstooth was muttering something under his breath. Archie pursed her lips, tying a silk scarf over her braids. She set her hands on her hips and turned to stare at him.

  “Houndstooth,” she said.

  “If they followed the currents,” Houndstooth muttered. “But—no, that wouldn’t be—no, no, damn it.” His elbows arrowed out as he pushed his hands through his hair. For a moment, Archie thought he’d turn around and acknowledge her, but he just bent back over the map. She put a hand on his shoulder and he startled.

  “Archie—what are you doing up?” He finally looked at her. “Where have you been in that dress?”

  “I’ve been obtaining us travel funds,” she said. “’Oundstooth, you look terrible. You need to rest.”

  He laughed. “Well, thanks, Archie, that’s very sweet of you.”

  Archie laid a palm against Houndstooth’s cheek. He felt warmer than he should have. “I think you are not well, perhaps. Please, my friend. Get some sleep. I’ll take the chair for the rest of the night. You take the bed.” It was a generous offer—the chair was narrow enough for Houndstooth to sleep in, but it was far too small for Archie. She knew that if he took the bed, she would spend half the night trying to find a way to squeeze herself comfortably between the carved wooden arms—but that didn’t matter. Not with Houndstooth blinking back at her as if he barely recognized her. Maybe he’d talk to me more if I was a gull-damned map, she thought bitterly.

  “I can’t sleep, Archie,” Houndstooth said. His eyes were bright, but they were rimmed with shadows. Archie frowned at him, and his shoulders drooped. He whispered, “I can’t sleep while Hero is missing.”

  Archie rubbed her forehead so that Houndstooth would not see her rolling her eyes. So melodramatic. “You can’t find them if you’re exhausted,” Archie replied, shaking her head. “Please. Just … rest until sunrise. I’ll wake you up then.” She patted his cheek a little harder than necessary. “I promise.”

  Houndstooth glanced at the bed, and Archie could see the battle between the physical need for rest and the pull of his—she mentally elided the word “obsession.” She nudged him toward the bed. “I swear on Rosa’s head, mon amie. I’ll wake you at sunup.”

  “Alright,” he muttered, “but only because I know you won’t let me concentrate anyway.” He stretched out on top of the covers, his bloodred hippo-leather boots hanging off the end of the bed. Archie turned the gaslamp down until it was dark in the little cabin.

  She tried to settle into the chair and sighed. It dug painfully into the sides of her thighs. She shifted, but she knew that it wasn’t an issue of her position—the chair was just too damned small. Damn if her thighs wouldn’t be bruised later. She folded her hands over her stomach and closed her eyes, determined to try to sleep in spite of the nagging discomfort of the chair. She listened to Houndstooth’s breathing slow down, and she listened to the gentle lapping of the waters of Lake Ponchartrain against the side of the boat, and she tried hard to doze off—but it was no good. She was too worried about Houndstooth.

  When did it happen? Archie asked herself. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when her old friend had gone from determined to fixated. He’d always been stubborn, always a little … performative. But it seemed like he’d crossed a line somewhere.

  When the Harriet Gate fell and the Harriet Dam blew, they hadn’t known that Hero was missing. Hurt, yes—but not missing. They hadn’t known Hero was missing for nearly a day—the amount of time it took them to escape the Harriet, dodge the ferals that had been released into the river, and find the doctor that Hero had been taken to.

  The doctor they had been taken to by U.S. Marshal Gran Carter.

  Archie’s hand crept to the inside pocket of her shirt, where she’d tucked Carter’s latest letter. It was too dark to read it, and if she unfolded it Houndstooth would wake up, thinking that she was interfering with his map. But that was okay—she didn’t need to look at it. She’d memorized it.

  I miss you. I want to see you again. I miss the way you smell. I miss the way you taste. I’ll be on Ponchartrain in a fortnight, aboard the Marianna Fair. Meet me there, and we can—

  Archie’s eyes snapped open. Was that—no. She’d thought for a moment that she’d heard a splash, but it had probably just been the water lapping against the side of the boat. She reminded herself for the hundredth time that the lake was safe. Houndstooth made a soft sound in his sleep, a bad-dream sound, and Archie closed her eyes again. She tried to slow her breathing. She would need to sleep so that she could get Houndstooth through the next day of searching for Hero. She had never seen him like this before—she had to remind him to eat, to drink water, to comb his hair …

  This time, Archie stood from the chair before she knew what she was doing. There had definitely been a splash, and a scream. She pressed her face to the window, trying to see through the streaky glass, but she couldn’t make out what was happening on the lake. There was another scream, closer, and then a sound that made the bottom drop out of Archie’s gut: the grating bellow of a feral’s roar.

  “Putain,” she whispered. “Son of a bitching fuck. Houndstooth—!”

  “Let’s go,” he said. She turned around and he was already standing behind her, one hand gripping the waxed leather saddlebag that held the majority of their possessions. He reached past Archie to grab the map he’d been scribbling on. Archie grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and whipped it on as they left their room. The hall was strangely silent.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Archie asked Houndstooth’s back.

  “They probably haven’t woken up yet. Or they don’t know,” he called over his shoulder. “I don’t think there are any other hoppers on board.”

  Archie hesitated. “Couillon,” she muttered again. She banged on the door closest to them with the flat of her hand and didn’t stop until the door swung open. A grey-faced man answered, and Archie grasped him by the lapels of his nightshirt. “Listen,” she said, her nose a half-inch from his. “There are ferals in the water. They’ll kill everyone here, and this boat is small enough for them to flip over. Everyone on board needs to get to shore immediately and then run inland. Do you understand?”

  “But—how—” the man sputtered. “Who are you?”

  She slapped him. Not as hard as she could, but as hard as he needed to be slapped. “Wake up the others,” she said, gesturing to the two other doors in the hall. “Get their help waking the crew downstairs, and then get to shore before the ferals get here. If you want to live, it’s what you’ll do. Do you understand?” The man hesitated, and Archie lifted her hand again.

  “I understand!” he cried, holding his hands up in front of his reddening cheeks. “But—where are you going?”

  But Archie was already gone, tearing down the stairs after Houndstooth. Behind her, she could hear the man starting to knock on doors. Good.

  By the time she and Houndstooth reached the main deck, the screams were constant. The moon provided just enough light to see shadows in the water—some moving, some not. There was a fire, and Archie thought it was probably the wreckage of a houseboat or maybe a skiff that had anchored for the night. The grunting of the ferals was everywhere.

  Houndstooth dug around in the saddlebag and hauled out Archie’s meteor hammer. She gave it a couple of practice swings as Houndstooth strapped a knife to each of his arms.

  “Winslow,” she said urgently, staring across the water at the silhouettes of the ferals. “The harpoon. If there’s ever been a time—”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t practiced with it. I’ll row, you just … try not to hit me with the hammer, eh?”

  “Then I’ll use it,” she snapped, and then took matters into her own hands. She reached into the saddlebag, pulled out four lengths of cylindrical brass, and started latching them together.

  “Archie, we don’t have time to—”

  “If you die trying to get off the water, we’ll never find Hero,” Archie said. “And m
y hammer might hit the raft, it’s no good out here. Where’s the head? Never mind,” she said, digging into the saddlebag again. “I’ve got it.” She pulled out a notched spearhead the size of her forearm and attached it to the end of the long pole. She fumbled—she wasn’t used to putting the damn thing together, and she kept startling as people screamed and ferals bellowed and wood splintered—but then she felt a satisfying snick and she knew that the head was secure. “Alright,” she said, “let’s go. You steer.”

  Houndstooth stepped over the railing of the Marianna Fair onto the raft that was tethered there—the raft on which he and Archie had arrived just a few nights before. He held it steady as she lowered herself slowly onto it. The roaring of the ferals came closer, and the process of shifting ballast to the center of the raft was taking too long, but if Archie was going to be on the back of the raft with the harpoon and Houndstooth was going to be on the front of the raft with the pole—they couldn’t capsize. Of this, Archie was certain: falling into the water meant death.

  Finally, finally, they were ready, and Houndstooth lowered a long pole into the water and pushed off. They were moving slowly, trying not to attract the attention of the ferals. Ripples spread across the water in front of them and behind, and Archie watched the black surface of the lake, waiting for a single ripple that moved in the wrong direction.

  She looked up at the shore. It seemed so far. Houndstooth let out a grunt of effort, and Archie felt a pang of sympathy—his wounds from their battle on the Harriet probably hadn’t fully healed yet. She glanced over her shoulder at him, and she thought she saw his silhouette tremble.

  She almost didn’t hear the splash next to the raft. Almost.

  She looked down and saw a ripple in the water, the front of a wake that started a hundred yards away. Archie yelled and pulled back the harpoon. An instant later, a feral’s head burst out of the water, teeth bared, nostrils flared and blowing water. The feral bellowed, a bone-rattling roar, its mouth gaping like a bear trap. It snapped at the raft, its jaws closing inches from the place on the platform’s edge where Archie’s foot was braced. Archie lunged with the harpoon. The hippo roared again, and Archie put all of her considerable weight behind her weapon as she drove it through the roof of the beast’s mouth. The sharp head of the harpoon drove through the feral’s skull like a pitchfork sinking into a rotted log, and Archie yanked back hard before it pierced the other side of the animal’s head. The harpoon jumped back into her hand, slippery with blood and saliva; lakewater and gore filled the feral’s mouth, black in the moonlight.

  Archie’s momentum nearly knocked her flat—but then Houndstooth gave a mighty shove with his pole, and the raft jumped forward. The feral—dead, surely it was dead—started to sink beneath the surface of the lake; but then, as Archie watched, it bobbed back up to the surface. Archie swore under her breath—she must not have gored it deeply enough in the brain. She wiped one hand at a time on her breeches, trying to get a good grip on the blood-slick shaft of the harpoon, ready for another attack.

  The feral twitched in the water.

  Then, as she watched, it jerked beneath the surface.

  Archie swore again and looked past the feral—it was hard to see in the water, and they were moving away from the beast as quickly as Houndstooth could row. But she was sure that she could see more ripples. She glanced up at the sky, which was just starting to lighten, and cursed the sun for taking so long to rise. She looked back down at the water and—yes, there, ripples, those were definitely ripples.

  Her suspicion was confirmed a moment later as two more ferals burst up out of the water. They roared at each other as they fought over the carcass of their late fellow.

  Archie nearly fell off the raft as it shuddered. She shouted, raised the harpoon, certain that a feral had gotten under the raft and was about to tip them over—

  “Archie, we’re here! It’s the shore!” Houndstooth was yelling behind her. “You get off first, I have to brace us!”

  Archie started to argue, but then she saw one of the ferals near the carcass of the one she’d killed raise its head. She was certain it was looking toward the sound of Houndstooth’s shouting—and then it disappeared beneath the surface of the water.

  “Fils de pute,” she said, then jumped off the raft and into the shallows. Houndstooth’s side of the raft dipped into the water, threatening to capsize. He tossed Archie the saddlebag as she waded to shore before jumping off the raft himself. They ran to shore, their legs frothing the water, and kept running. They didn’t stop, not even at the sound of the Marianna Fair splintering. Not at the sounds of screams in the water. Not at the sound of their raft shattering under the jaws of the feral that had chased them to shore. They kept running inland toward the freshwater paddock, toward Ruby and Rosa. They kept running until it was light out and they could be sure that they were too far for the ferals to chase them overland.

  They kept running until they were far enough from the carnage that they could no longer smell the blood in the water.

  Chapter 3

  The unconscious man looked small and soft without the bandana tied over his face.

  Adelia squatted beside the man and studied him. He was a stubbly, tan, nose-broken type. His mouth hung slack, and Adelia could see his little pink tongue in there, flopped over to one side.

  She had always been struck by how soft people were. They could throw punches, sure, but at the end of the day, they were a mess of vulnerabilities. This man’s face had been covered in an attempt to protect himself from Adelia’s inevitable retribution—and yet he’d yielded to Hero’s clumsy jab. Hero was bad at fighting; Adelia had been astonished that they had managed to land a blow.

  But then, Adelia reminded herself, people could be surprising.

  Ysabel had been surprising. Adelia had expected to love the baby, to cherish and nurture her—but she could never have anticipated how much she liked Ysabel. It usually took Adelia months to warm up to people, and yet the moment that Ysabel was born, Adelia had felt as if they’d been best friends for years.

  Go figure.

  Adelia felt a faint smile shade her lips at the thought of her daughter’s eyes staring up at her, wide and dark and just like her own. She smiled that little smile in spite of the gut-clenching terror: Those men have Ysabel. She smiled because she knew what to do with this man, this man who had helped to steal her baby.

  She drew back her hand, and she slapped the unmasked man across the face, with approximately one-tenth of the force that her rage demanded.

  He came to, spitting blood. He coughed, gagged, started to choke. Hero shoved him upright and slapped him on the back, and he coughed again, then spat something white. Adelia picked it up.

  “You lost this,” she said, showing the man his tooth. He breathed hard through his nose as he poked at his gum with his tongue. He spat blood again, then looked from Hero to Adelia with wide, spooked eyes.

  “What’s your name?” Adelia asked softly. Hero stood behind the man, fidgeting with their shirttails. Adelia smiled at them. They winced. Adelia supposed that her smile was not very reassuring at the moment—not while she was holding a bleeding man’s tooth.

  Oh, well. If he had wanted to keep all of his teeth, he would not have helped those men steal Ysabel.

  “You—you bitch, my tooth, you—”

  Adelia dropped the man’s tooth on the ground and grabbed him by the chin. In one hand, she gripped his lower jaw, prying it open. With the other, she reached into his mouth and grasped the tooth just behind his right canine—the companion to the one he’d already lost. She gripped it between her thumb and forefinger and gave an experimental tug. The man made a throaty howling sound, and she extracted her hand from his mouth.

  “Qué?” she asked pleasantly. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “My name’s Feeney,” the man panted. “Doug Feeney.”

  “Ah, excellent! It is nice to make your acquaintance, Doug Feeney,” Adelia said. Then, before he could sag with rel
ief, she grabbed his jaw again. He choked in surprise, his eyes popping. Adelia felt that ghost of a smile again, a kind of comfort warming her fingertips. Yes. She knew exactly what to do with this man.

  Having a child hadn’t made her forget her craft, and it certainly hadn’t taken the edge off her speed.

  She reached into his mouth and found the tooth she’d tugged on before. As Doug Feeney let loose a gargling screech, she gave a sharp twist of her wrist. She wrenched her elbow back, and with a rich, wet crack, Doug’s tooth ripped free of his jaw.

  Adelia rocked back onto her heels as Doug spat blood and whimpered. She picked up the tooth that she had dropped onto the ground, and rattled the pair in her cupped palm like dice. “There,” she said. “Now you match.”

  Near the treeline, Hero was retching. Adelia held in a tch. She had known that Hero was thin-skinned, but this was ridiculous. It was only a tooth, after all. He had plenty more.

  “So, Doug Feeney,” Adelia said. “Who sent you?” He opened his mouth to answer, and Adelia held up a warning finger. “Don’t lie to me.” She tossed one of his teeth into the air and caught it on her fingertip. It was easy—like catching the blade of a knife point side down—but the man gaped anyway, blood and drool running out of his open mouth. “If you lie to me, things will not be pleasant for you.”

  “Adelia,” Hero said. “I don’t know if—”

  Adelia looked at Hero patiently. Hero swallowed, then looked away. “What is it, Hero?” Adelia said, careful to keep her voice kind. She wanted to hear what Hero had to say. She really did.

  “I just don’t know if we can believe what he says,” Hero said. “What’s to keep him from steering us wrong?”

  Adelia looked from Hero to the man on the ground. “Are you going to lie to me, Doug Feeney?” she asked. “Are you going to ‘steer me wrong’?”