The Humanity of Monsters

by Nathan Ballingrud

  “The old seeds.”

  “I saved them.”

  Six and Joe sit on Six’s old emergency blanket and share out the crop on a beat-up kitchen plate. Their fingers poke each other on the way to strawberries and light-washed spinach. It washes the taste of blood away.

  “Thanks,” Joe says sleepy when the harvest’s all done. “S’good.”

  Joe’s not a little kid anymore. He’s not half as light as a chicken or a goat. But Six carries him up fourteen floors of stairway to their billet, mouth smeared with strawberries, fast asleep.

  The alchemists’ train is the black train that comes down the tracks come midnight. Six has never seen it up close: by midnight every good kid and even the bad ones have locked the doors of their billets and are fast asleep, full knowing they’ve got a six A.M. wakeup.

  The turnstile men don’t guard the station gates when the alchemists’ train comes in. They unlatch the metal bars that’re for strollers and wheelchairs and market-buggies, and everyone walks free to the platform, free out again until the sunlight spills sickly down the stairs and announces it Market time.

  The boy who comes through the gate, hooded, face covered ’gainst public eyes is too big for a ten-year-old if you look hard, or look twice. His arms are too thick, his legs too thin and gangling. He doesn’t say goodbye to his father, who stands at the stairway under his best Sunday hat, mouth a tight line under his bushy moustache.

  But midnight’s so that nobody notices: the too-long cloak, the shaky step. The blond-haired brother smuggled down early evening to a broken-backed sixth floor garden, holding himself in outlines, in the dark, with the taste of secret strawberries on his tongue. Midnight’s the alchemists’ hour, and in their hands things go strange.

  The wind rises from the tunnel, from the dark. The train comes in.

  The midnight train is dark as stars. The midnight train’s painted up with planets, each car banded with the swoop of a heavenly body ringed or striped or pitted. It moves like a snake along the tracks every child in central’s seen so many times on Market days, cheering as the rumble gets loud and the Moving Market comes in.

  The doors all open. Nobody cheers the midnight train.

  At the staircase, somebody sobs.

  The boy in the black rough cloak looks into the dark of the lead car. There’s no lights at midnight on the platform, in the train. He steps from dark to darker; he steps inside.

  “Greetings,” say the alchemists, and their voices are sharp like devil weed, bad seed, breaking the rules. The alchemists in their black train, learned men, terror-men, are hard to see for a boy who grew up billeting in a place where it’s never full dark. They’re flashes of patched knees and sunless skin. They’re eyes that reflect metal and never close.

  The train doors shut behind him with a hiss of dead men watching. The sobbing’s sliced clean from his ears with metal and rubber seal, and then the only sound’s one he hasn’t heard since he was littler: the train, whish-whisper, the moving of wheels on track.

  It’s too much to close his eyes, hands up and ready to fight. But he counts three, counts the deepening of the shadow that’s tunnel-not-station before the boy lets down his cloak.

  “I’m not the seventh son,” Six says, and his voice is all squeaky like a kids. “I’m bad news. Bad seed. You won’t have him,” he says, and waits to be struck down.

  It won’t keep secret more than a day. They’ll open the billet door for breakfast and it’ll be the wrong baby boy lying curled up in the blankets, arm around his stuffy, ruined from Great Destiny by complicity with his bad boy, bad seed big brother. They’ll be so mad. They’ll be furious.

  They’ll hug little Joe to their chests and cry happy for his keeping and teach him the garden and the chicken-feed times.

  “You must love your brother very much,” the alchemists say, circled, leaning close and closer. Their train smells like paper and dry sweet. No, their breaths. Their breaths are hot and paper. They eat tales. They eat children.

  “No,” Six chokes out, and lifts his chin up high even though deep inside he’s crying, crying right to his belly now that there’s no chance of scaring the baby. Pictures himself falling, falling. The tug of the wind. “I hate him.”

  There’s a silence.

  Then: “Good,” one of the alchemists laughs, crackling, crumple-paged. “I like bad sixth sons.”

  His eyes are working again, in the dark; his eyes work enough to see the turn of a chin, the half-light of eyelids drooped low. “We didn’t agree—”

  “I like bad sixth sons,” the alchemist repeats sharp as a papercut to the tongue, and breaks the hovering circle, steps in close.

  His robes rustle like pigeon wings, like the wind going through the tall pasture, and his hands are clean-nailed but rough as any farmsman’s. The walls are covered, lined, padded with books and books and books. His eyes are dark. His eyes are dark as stars, and the smell of his hands and books and eyes is burnt cinnamon toast and the devil.

  I’m a brave boy, Six tells himself, breathing shallow so’s to not get the smoke and devil in. I grew right. I saved things. I didn’t hurt no one else.

  He takes him by the hands. He leads him into the black, black car as the train pulls free through the tunnels to travel the nighttime tracks.

  “Come along, bad seed,” he says, in a voice that echoes like a child’s tunnel scream, a voice that might be kind or hard or mocking. “There’s much to do before morning.”

  the nazir

  sofia samatar

  Before that stifling evening in 1924 the children had always thought it impossible for grownups to see the Nazir and live.

  Cynthia’s elder brother Roddy was the authority in this matter, as in all others. A tall, sullenly handsome fourteen-year-old, who would later drink himself to death with majestic nonchalance among the hollyhocks of a house in Dorset inherited from their uncle, Roddy had first seen the Nazir at the age of eight. He was out in his little boat, Ward el-Sham, with Mansour the gardener at the helm, when the surface of the river had suddenly gone dark and a wind rattled wildly in the fig trees. A terrible odor had rained from the sky with a delicate pattering sound, along with a number of little bright objects he thought at first were pearls. When they dropped in the water he saw they were maggots. The Nazir passed over him, crooning. Its voice resembled that of the Italian head matron at the Anglo-American Hospital. He couldn’t tell what it said, or even whether it spoke English or Arabic or its own strange tongue. It turned its head and winged southward along the river.

  “It had talons like this,” said Roddy, making a great C with his arms. “There were shreds of something hanging from them. Like cloth.”

  “Did the gardener see it?” asked Hugh, wiping his nose on his wrist.

  “Of course not,” said Roddy. “He’s a grownup. He’d be dead.”

  Hugh had never seen the Nazir himself. Cynthia had never seen it either, but she thought she had caught a glimpse of its shadow once, soon after her nurse Félicité had gone back to Lausanne. Félicité, rosy, cheerful and short of breath, helmeted in a brilliant topee, fond of Offenbach and jam, had drunk rat poison. She had floated for a week between life and death, laid out like a stout white pillow on the bed in her little room, and when she was well she was sent away. She left Cynthia her button collection, a postcard of the Rhine and the lumpy armchair in the nursery where she used to do the mending.

  The first night Félicité was away—not ill upstairs, but really gone—Cynthia curled up in bed clutching a rag doll and the postcard. She ran the edge of the card along her teeth and took a few experimental, consoling bites of the worn paper. Félicité’s chair was in darkness, but the lamp with the colored beads on the table beside it gave back a ghost of garden moonlight. Downstairs the servants were laughing, and there was a splash as someone tossed out a basin of water. Then a low rumble, a pressure, a killing fe
ar. The Nazir.

  “I didn’t really see it,” she explained some years later to a group of girls at her aunt’s home in London, at a time when she had a respect for accuracy. “It was more of a feeling—like a weight pressing me down. All I saw was a shadow drifting by. The shadow of a huge wing.”

  Her audience gave a gratifying shiver, a chorus of mews. And Cynthia, bobbed and self-assured, clad in a tasteful blue wool jersey, recalled the specific terror of that Cairo night, the wind, the conviction that life, like a row of candles, was going out.

  The grownup who saw the Nazir and lived was Hugh’s mother, Mrs. Ashgrove.

  The Ashgroves lived in a villa on Kasr el-Nil. Mr. Ashgrove, weedy and dyspeptic, was in the Civil Service. Mrs. Ashgrove rode, favored trousers and scarves, and smoked a hookah. Cynthia had once heard her father describe Mrs. Ashgrove as “a real blonde, of a type more common in Germany than in England.” She remembered the words for their tone rather than their meaning: it was rare for her father to speak so mellowly and appreciatively of anyone. It made her shy every time her mother took her to call on the Ashgroves. “Careful,” her mother warned her as they went up the ill-kept little path, picking their way among the discarded fruit-skins. They both jumped when the monkey, Marco Polo, threw himself the length of his rope, screeching a welcome. The hair on his neck was quite rubbed away. “Dreadful creature,” cried Cynthia’s mother, trotting a few steps, for Marco Polo had been known to hurl feces at guests. The doors of the villa stood open, and in the parlor Mrs. Ashgrove perched on a ladder, blurred by the sunlight, hanging curtains.

  “Minna, dear,” gasped Cynthia’s mother. “What are you doing?”

  “Lovely, aren’t they?” Mrs. Ashgrove called down. “So much more cheerful!”

  “Look out,” Cynthia advised her mother, who was about to stumble over the suffragi, Sherif, who sat on the floor grinding coffee in a mortar.

  Cynthia’s mother recoiled. She picked up her skirts, sailed round the suffragi and approached the ladder. “Minna, my dear, come down. It isn’t safe.”

  “Oh, I’ve a head for heights.”

  “But why not let the servants take care of it?”

  “No need. I’ll be through in a moment. Hello, Cynthia.”

  “Hello,” said Cynthia, lingering in the doorway.

  Her mother turned round a few times. There were books and unfinished bits of embroidery scattered on the couches. Most of the squares of embroidery had needles in them. A cut-glass bowl occupied an armchair, glittering like a tiara.

  Cynthia’s mother moved the bowl to the table, pushing aside a plate of fish-bones and an illustrated magazine. “Really, Minna,” she said, looking about her despairingly. Sherif thumped his mortar, scattering coffee-grounds.

  “There,” said Mrs. Ashgrove. She climbed down the ladder, smacked her palms together and greeted Cynthia and her mother with kisses. Her thick hair was tied on her neck with a ribbon. Up close she was less beautiful, but more disturbing. Her white shirt smelled of cucumbers freshly sliced.

  “Hugh’s in the garden,” she said, “plotting mischief.”

  Cynthia trailed outside. She knew that Hugh was not plotting anything interesting. He hadn’t the brain. He shared with his mother only his shock of golden hair and the appearance of impregnable good health. Crossing the veranda she passed a window and saw her mother leaning toward Mrs. Ashgrove, murmuring urgently, and she knew that in an hour, seated at Groppi’s with Mrs. Bourne-Hopewell, her mother would sigh over dear Minna, her inexperience, her disorder. “Trousers!” she would say. “Absolutely alone with the suffragi!” And Mrs. Bourne-Hopewell would shake her military jowls. But Cynthia would be happy. She was going to have lemon ice, the kind that came with a little rosewater sprinkled on top.

  THE NAZIR

  By Roderick Rutherford

  The sages say the Nazir lives in the moon. It prefers the half-moon, and lies on top of it with its huge tail hanging down. This is why the period of the half-moon is best for traveling by night. Full-moon nights are risky, and the dark of the moon even worse.

  The Nazir is in decay. Nearly all who have seen it mention its stench.

  It likes grownups to eat, but only children can see it.

  It eats very slowly, lying in its lair. Sometimes you can see the bones it tosses down. We call them falling stars.

  Cynthia, who had a stubborn streak and was careless with breakable objects, was never whipped. Roddy, organized and withdrawn, was whipped rather often. He was whipped for laziness at lessons, for eating the nasty messes the servants cooked for themselves, and for what their father called his “crooked eye.” “Don’t look at me with your crooked eye,” their father would shout, and if Roddy did not look down in time he was certain to be whipped. Strangely, it was their father who had something wrong with his eyes: one was of glass, the original having been mislaid at Ladysmith.

  Roddy was beaten a few days before they learned that Mrs. Ashgrove had seen the Nazir.

  Cynthia was skating through the drawing room in her stockings. The vast room, with its floor of reddish marble, was perfect for this exercise, although of course you had to avoid the carpets. She was humming, skating closer with each pass to the carved sideboard, tasting the danger of banging into it and shattering a decanter, when her father’s dragoman Ahmed passed through the room on his way to the library, buttoned tightly into the Circassian costume he used as livery. The skin between his brows was dusted with dandruff, a sign of November. He nodded to Cynthia, said “Good afternoon, Miss,” and went into the library. He left the door open and Cynthia heard his murmur and then her father’s voice. “If you will excuse me for a moment, gentlemen.”

  She skated into the corner and crouched in the shadow of a cabinet. Her father strode through the drawing room, purposeful, his head thrust forward. Through the open door she could see part of the library: there was a map on the wall, stuck all over with colored pins. Ahmed, bowing, led two men out into the drawing room: Mr. Ashgrove and Robertson Bey. They sank in the cushioned chairs. “Whiskey, Ahmed,” said Mr. Ashgrove. He scratched nervously underneath his stubbly chin. Robertson Bey sat frowning, his coat pulled tight across his shoulders, his big hands on his knees.

  A moment later her father returned. He moved at the same determined pace. One of his hands gripped the collar of Roddy’s jacket. Roddy, inside the jacket, skipped along beside him, trying to keep his footing. He wore only one shoe.

  They went into the library and her father slammed the door.

  Ahmed brought the whiskey on a tray.

  Robertson Bey swallowed his and gestured for more, and Ahmed poured. Cynthia’s father could be heard in the library, shouting.

  “Endanger yourself . . . Disgrace . . . The native quarter . . .”

  “Bloody mess,” said Mr. Ashgrove.

  “Started two years ago,” grunted Robertson Bey.

  “Started in 1919,” said Mr. Ashgrove. He covered his eyes as if he were suffering from a headache. “I don’t know. . . . Sometimes I think

  . . .”

  “Think what?” Robertson Bey inquired sharply.

  “Nothing,” said Mr. Ashgrove, lowering his hand. When he picked up his glass the ice rattled.

  “Don’t want to lose your nerve.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing like that. It’s Minna. She’s upset about things. Brooding. It makes the house—well, it’s a strain.”

  “Only to be expected,” said Robertson Bey, losing interest at once, gazing at the picture above the sideboard, camels in an oasis. He took another swallow of whiskey. His scalp had begun to sweat. “Damned hot for November,” he remarked. “Could be the cause of all the trouble.”

  Mr. Ashgrove laughed weakly. Cynthia shifted her weight with care, trying to ease the cramp in her legs. It will be over soon, she thought. Surely the sun was advancing across the carpet.

  In the silence
the strokes of the belt came faint and rhythmic like the ticking of a watch.

  THE TALE OF ABU WALEED AND ABU SAMEER

  By Roderick the Younger

  A tale is told of Abu Waleed, a holy man of the desert. On a time a man called Abu Sameer went to visit him in his cave. “How can a man see the Nazir?” he asked.

  “He cannot,” replied Abu Waleed. “It is a grace given only to children.”

  “But I desire to see the Nazir,” said Abu Sameer.

  Then the sage smiled and said: “Very well. You will see the Nazir when you walk east and west at the same time, when you are able to lick your palm without either bowing or raising your hand, and when you look through the back of your head.”

  Then Abu Sameer went away disappointed, not knowing how to achieve these things. Some years later he was captured at Constantinople. His enemies tied each of his legs to a horse, and drove one horse east and the other west, so that his legs were torn from his body. Then they pulled out his tongue and made him hold it in his hand. Lastly they flayed his head, starting at the nape, and brought the skin down over his face, leaving him in darkness.

  It is believed that in his last moments he saw the Nazir.

  They went to the Ashgroves’ for dinner in their father’s big motorcar. The unseasonable heat continued; Cynthia’s white piqué stockings prickled. The streets were empty except for policemen, standing on the corners, who saluted smartly as the car went past.

  Someone had begun clearing the path at the Ashgroves’, but stopped halfway through. Marco Polo was nowhere to be seen. As they neared the house a white shape coalesced in the evening grey and glided toward them: Mrs. Ashgrove in her evening gown.

  “Hello,” she said. She kissed their parents as if everything were quite normal, as if she’d come down the steps of the house and not through the dry, exhausted garden. Her hair was plaited and circled her head like a crown.

  “Minna, darling,” their mother stammered, “what have you done with your shoes?”