Flicker and Mist

by Mary G. Thompson

  Now we couldn’t speak of what had just happened, and I couldn’t dwell on what Caster thought, not if I wished to remain calm. We didn’t speak as we climbed into the cart, or as a fine gray workbeast pulled us through the nearly empty streets of the city, or as we reached the south gate, or as we rode through the gate and into the seagrass. Porti took my hand as we rode, and I held on to hers. I tried to cleanse my mind of all thoughts, to focus only on staying present.

  It was easy oftentimes to forget that just outside the city gates lay the high, sharp cliff at the bottom edge of the plateau, called Heart’s End, and beyond that, the vast oceans that surrounded us. One could smell the sea air inside the city, of course, but it was one thing to breathe the air and another to see the ocean’s vastness. The water was so far below us that it was visible only at the horizon, but it extended beyond sight, vast and mysterious and all-powerful. Each month all those in the city came out to hear a service; for the Council, the Deputy himself led the worship. I supposed the Deputy would perform the funeral service for the son of a Council Member, and sure enough, as we stepped from our cart into the sandy grass, the Deputy was standing near the cliff’s edge, facing the ocean, his head bowed.

  Perhaps the Waters would take him. Perhaps they were true gods and knew right from wrong. But as we approached the funeral feast, laid out upon a long wooden table a dozen yards back from the cliff, the Deputy turned to face us, and it was clear that the ground he stood on was solid. The Waters were not going to take him; they didn’t care what he had done to us.

  “Myra, can you see that?” Porti whispered.

  “See what?” I asked.

  A gust of wind hit us, flattening my skirt against my body. “The ocean is much higher than it was,” she said. And she was right. If I hadn’t been distracted by the Deputy, I would have seen it right away. The other mourners had noticed it too; they were whispering to one another. The Members of the Council, their close advisors, and their families stood in small groups, all looking out at the waves. We should not have been able to see the surface of the water from where we stood.

  “How can it have risen so much?” Porti asked. “Caster, didn’t you say it rose a few inches in a month?” She turned from him to me. “At the last service, we had to approach the edge to see the water.” It was true. I should have been terrified, but I was numb. I saw the waves. I knew that they shouldn’t be visible. But it was as if I were reading about the rising of the ocean in a book.

  “The ocean shouldn’t be this high,” said Caster. He stared out, arms crossed over his chest.

  The Deputy waved us all forward. We three were at the back of the group. There were photoboxes set up around the area. The funeral would be broadcast into the homes of ordinary citizens. I didn’t see a radio receiver; whatever the Deputy was about to say, only this group and the Waters would hear it.

  Why are you rising? I thought. Will you swallow him up as he stands there? Will you swallow us all? Or will you swallow my family and me and all the Lefties and leave the rest untouched?

  “May the Waters hear me,” the Deputy began.

  The company bowed their heads. Orphos’s mother leaned on his father’s shoulder. His sister stood apart, staring straight ahead at the water.

  “We have come to Heart’s End to commit our beloved son, Orphos Staliamos, to the Waters,” the Deputy continued. “Like all the Plateau People, he was born of their choosing, and we return him to their care, that they may love and protect him in death as in life, that they may conduct him to his final home in the vast world beyond this one.

  “We all wish that this boy had more time to live among us; we cannot see the next world, and so we do not understand the happiness that awaits him. One day, happiness awaits all of us who return in due course to the Waters. Let us not mourn for Orphos Staliamos, but let us, with our love, assist him in reaching the place where he will live forever.”

  Four men carried a coffin along the edge of the cliff. Hanging from the back of the coffin was an orange and yellow kite, old and tattered, one we had flown together as children. It was customary for the family of the deceased to send one of his favorite possessions with him to the grave, and the kite was the thing they had chosen. They still saw Orphos as a child, and this itself was sad enough, but sadder still was the fifth man who walked behind the coffin, carrying in his arms the large, sharp white horns of a wetbeast. Shrill’s horns.

  Porti sobbed next to me. Next to her, Caster still stood wooden. And I couldn’t react at all. I couldn’t let myself feel even the slightest bit, or I would risk flickering again. Deep in my chest, there was a ball of sorrow that was nearly choking my organs, compressing my stomach, pressing my lungs.

  In complete silence, the men lifted the coffin into the propeller, a large wooden contraption powered by prezine that existed solely to commit a body to Waters that were low and far from us, to send the coffin far into the distance, making the journey that much shorter. The Deputy raised a hand, one of the men discreetly pressed a button, and with a loud pop, the coffin shot out. The water was so high that instead of flying over the surface, the coffin skimmed it, leaving a wake, and stopped before it reached the horizon, so that a tiny speck of it remained visible in the distance.

  Orphos and part of Shrill and Orphos’s kite were floating in the ocean with a wooden coffin. I wished to believe that they were going to the world beyond ours, the perfect world where water and land coexisted, where the oceans were of steady height. I hoped that Orphos would meet Caster’s mother and all the others who had died. But I feared he would float out there until he rotted, that the oceans were not gods but ordinary water that would soon overtake us, flow over the seawalls, and wash the city away. If they were true gods, how could they allow Orphos to die? How could they let people be tortured?

  As was traditional, the mourners approached the edge of the cliff. Porti, Caster, and I moved forward into the wind, which blew louder and faster than before. I was at the end of the line, to the far right of everyone else. The wind was loud enough to drown out Porti’s sobs and anything the Deputy might be saying. I heard only its rush and the crashing of the waves into the cliff wall.

  As one, the line of mourners kneeled at the edge of the cliff. I found myself on my knees, staring out at the waves. Orphos’s coffin was still visible. The Deputy must be saying something about Orphos’s journey, perhaps something to reassure us about the ocean and the wind, some way to try to make it all make sense.

  If you are out there, I prayed, show me why this is happening. Why must my friend die; why must my parents be in jail? Why is my best friend in trouble, my secret out, my ride lost? Why can we not have the lives we wanted? What have we done to deserve this? Why do you let the Deputy speak for you when he tortures your people? Do not the Lefties kneel at the ocean’s edge and commit their dead to you in the same way as the Plats? Did you not create them out of the Plateau People and set them high in the Eye so that they could become different? Did you not make them different for a reason?

  It was cold here at the edge of the water—​freezing, really. The Deputy must have finished speaking. People were rising from their places, heading back to the tables where the funeral feast was. Porti was still beside me, kneeling, and Caster next to her.

  The wind changed. There was a flutter in the light around me, as if the sun were shifting position.

  “Caster!” I jumped to my feet and leaped the two steps to him. As I did so, my chest grazed that of a person.

  The person—​the invisible man—​grasped both my shoulders and pushed me aside.

  Caster, his knees only inches from the cliff’s edge, threw up an arm to block the man’s blow. A dagger appeared in thin air above us.

  I kicked out a foot, and my ladies’ boot connected with the man’s knee.

  He howled in pain, and Caster grabbed the hand holding the dagger. The two of them wrestled for it, and I kicked again.

  “Go!” I yelled at the attacker. I kicked. Pinpric
ks rushed through my heart.

  No, no no no no, I thought. I pressed them back with everything I had. I could not flicker. Not here.

  Caster grasped the blade, wrenched the dagger away, and dropped it on the ground, his hand bloody. He jumped to his feet, throwing a punch where the attacker had been. But the man was no longer there. I had not heard him run—​it was as if he had truly disappeared, extinguished from existence. The wind returned to normal, screeching around us. I still felt pinpricks, but they were receding. I had hung on.

  Caster and I stared down at the dagger. Its handle was made of fine white wood, a species that grew only in the Left Eye. It looked exactly like my mother’s weapon.

  “Is that . . .” Porti trailed off.

  The Deputy was coming toward us now, and the guardsmen.

  Caster bent down slowly and picked up the dagger in his uninjured left hand.

  “By the Waters, what was that?” the Deputy asked.

  “There was an invisible attacker,” said Caster. “But Myra put her ladies’ boot to good use. See, they are good for something,” he said to me. He didn’t smile, though.

  “Find him!” the Deputy commanded. The guardsmen were already scattering. Two of them pulled out devices I had never seen before—​squares with centers of prezine-looking brown—​held them out, and swept them back and forth. The handheld sensors, I presumed. The beam they cast was invisible. I wondered if an invisible person could see those beams as we could see each other or if we could be caught unawares. And hated myself for thinking the word we.

  “He’s gone, Your Excellency,” I said. “I didn’t know which way to follow.”

  “She’s saved my life, I believe,” said Caster, rolling the dagger handle in his palm.

  “Does no one care that Caster is bleeding all over the cliff?” Porti asked. She stepped between us and took his injured hand. She unwound the scarf from her neck and wrapped it around the wound.

  “Thank you,” said Caster. “Both of you.” He looked down at me. Still, he didn’t smile.

  The Deputy put an arm around his son and pulled him from the cliff’s edge. “The feast is over!” he cried, leading us back toward the table. “Take your melon with you! Eat a piece to speed Orphos’s journey in your own homes!” He took the dagger from Caster’s hand, stopped short, and turned around to face the empty cliff’s edge. Porti and I, following, were the only visible people he spoke to.

  “You will not survive another war!” he shouted to no one. “You have begun something you can’t stop.” He held up the dagger. “I will find you. I will hunt each one of you down. You can’t hide from me. You will face the Waters and be judged!” He gripped the dagger until his knuckles became white, his features blank and yet distorted. He turned his gaze from one end of the cliff to the other, and as he did so, for a second, his eyes rested on me.

  Nineteen

  THE DEPUTY DECIDED THAT IN LIGHT OF WHAT HAD just happened, he could spare two guardsmen to escort Caster and me to the jail. I hadn’t been sure the Deputy would keep his word, but as soon as we reached an enclosed carriage, a replacement for our open-air cart, he put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Give my best to your parents, Miss Hailfast.” He squeezed my shoulder in a fatherly way.

  Though I wished to shrug off his hand, I stood there and waited for him to remove it.

  “Do not let her out of your sight,” he said to Caster. “Nor let him out of yours,” he said to me. With that, he gave a very small smile, with no humor in it but possibly a tiny bit of kindness. For helping his son, I supposed. Finally, he let go of me.

  I climbed into the carriage, and Caster climbed in after me. Though the guardsmen rode outside, I didn’t feel I could speak freely. I wished to apologize to Caster, to force him to say something real instead of hiding behind thin jokes, but I hadn’t trusted him with the truth, and I still wasn’t sure I could. He was the Deputy’s son, closest to the person who had just sworn to hunt down every last one of us. But I didn’t have to say anything, because he began.

  “We have had many fights,” he said. “My father and I. Long before the testing, he told me that you and I should not be friends, that the Waters disapproved of your very existence.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out, since I didn’t know what to say. He held up a hand.

  “Let me say this, please. I defended you. I said you were a Plat as much as I was, that you were raised here and loved our city. I told him you intended to take your father’s place on the Council someday. Do you remember telling me that, many years ago?”

  “Yes.” I had gone through a phase as a child in which I told anyone who would listen that I would be on the Council. I had no brother or sister, and I couldn’t imagine what might stand in my way.

  “He said it would never happen, that no Member would support a Leftie, right of inheritance or no. But I said I would be Deputy someday, and I would support you.”

  “Caster . . .”

  “I just want to know one thing,” he said. “Was I wrong? Are you a Plat or aren’t you?” He turned to look into my eyes and waited, his jaw set.

  “Of course I am,” I said. “I’m a Plat as much as you are. I know nothing at all of the Eye.” I lowered my voice, in case the carriage walls were thin. “It’s an accident of the blood. A fluke. I don’t even know how to flicker. If I did, I wouldn’t have done it by mistake.” I wasn’t sure if I spoke the truth. Before the testing, before they took my mother away, before they barred me from the Games, I would have had no doubt at all. But now doubt seemed to be all I had.

  “Now I must lie for you,” he said.

  “If you want me to live.”

  “My father has killed no one,” he said.

  Yet. The word hung unspoken between us. I was sure he, too, saw the vision of his father holding the Leftie dagger.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m truly sorry. I didn’t wish to lie to anyone, especially you.”

  “How did you know that man was about to attack me?” he asked. “Is it something about you, something you share with him?”

  “I felt a change in the wind,” I said. “Anyone could have felt it.” But I wasn’t sure of this either. I remembered the shadows changing. Perhaps I had seen a part of him.

  “I suppose my father will keep a guard on me now,” he said. “We shall be trapped inside the apartment together for some time.”

  Perhaps he can also watch you during the night, I heard Porti say. I looked up at him, to see if his face would reveal whether he still would think being trapped in an apartment with me a good thing. But he wasn’t looking at me now. He stared ahead at the carriage wall.

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” I said. I wished he would put his arm around me, that he would kiss me and make me forget all this for a second, the way I forgot everything when he was kissing me.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “Your secret is safe.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Perhaps I should have felt relieved, but I didn’t. I had only the twisted stomach and the closing throat. This was not the same as having no emotions, as my mother seemed to think possible, but I didn’t feel any pinpricks; I was not in danger of flickering. I was perhaps in danger of fainting from lack of air and falling into Caster’s lap, whether he would have liked it or not.

  The carriage stopped.

  “I’ll wait here,” Caster said. “My father said to give you as long as you like. If they try to cut your visit short, send them to me.”

  “All right. Thank you.” I stepped out of the carriage and let the guardsmen escort me in.

  My father was in the cell next to my mother. They could talk, but they couldn’t see each other unless both pressed their faces up against the bars. That is how they were standing when I turned the corner.

  “Myra!” My father reached through the bars as if he wished to embrace me.

  My mother made a great effort to smile.

  At once I was in tears again. But I couldn�
�t flicker here. I had to control it. I took a deep breath and wiped my eyes. “The Deputy let me come,” I said. “At least there’s that.”

  “How is he treating you?” my mother asked, her eyes ice. I could feel the guardsmen watching me. I couldn’t say anything of my flickering, couldn’t ask her advice about how to control it.

  “I’m safe,” I said. “I’m fed.”

  “Myra, come here,” my father said. He reached out his arms, and I clasped his hands in mine. “You look well,” he said. “You’re a strong girl.”

  “What’s happening?” I asked. “Are they going to have a trial or announce a sentence, or simply lock you up until the Waters let the plateau sink?”

  “No one has told us,” my father said. “I don’t think the Deputy wants to decide. He knows we’re innocent of anything but protecting our family. I have spoken to the full Council about letting us all go to the Eye. They may yet approve it.”

  “An invisible man attacked Caster,” I said, “just now, at Orphos’s funeral. The ocean is much higher, high enough to carry ships.”

  “High enough . . . by the Waters . . .” He shook his head. “Is Caster all right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I kicked the attacker in the knee. But he got away. It was as if he didn’t have to walk but flew.”

  “Come here,” my mother said.

  I let go of my father’s hands and took hers. There was something in one of her hands. I couldn’t tell what it was as she slipped it to me, her eyes never leaving mine. Her hands were colder than my father’s, and her eyes were wet. Her hair was wilder than the last time I had seen her, her cheeks raw as if she had been scratching them. Up close, she did not look well. The emotion in her eyes was unlike her.

  “You must go to my mother, Myra,” she said. “You must forget about this boy, Caster Ripkin, and your friend Portianna, and even your beast. Nothing is more important than your safety, and you are not safe under that man’s roof.”

  “Momma, I don’t like it either, but I’m not leaving you and Poppa. What if they pass sentence and I’m not here?” This could be the last time I saw them. Now my head flared with pain from holding the tears back. But I wouldn’t let them fall. I would not give in.