Hernan was talking about the two girls, both of whom looked about the same age as Yulya, and he mentioned the name Sophie. Mouth looked at the mute girl again and realized: this was Bianca’s dead friend, except not so dead. Bianca had said this girl was some kind of saint, with both a pure heart and a brilliant mind. But that perfect dead girl was standing here, watching Mouth with the worst expression anyone had ever aimed at her.
A too-familiar death rattle signaled that the shutters were closing, and Omar said, “Now’s our chance. Let’s just get going before this town gets any nuttier. Just show us the way out of this shitpile, and let’s get our sled and go.”
Everyone drained their coffees and loaded their packs up with all the provisions Hernan had to spare. Mouth was trying not to stare at Bianca and the not-dead Sophie, and they in turn seemed to be sharing a complicated silence.
If Mouth was lucky, maybe both these girls would catch something nasty from one of those giant insects in the deadlands, or get swept overboard in the Sea of Murder. You didn’t want to wish anyone dead, of course, but Mouth couldn’t handle the thought of traveling all the way to Argelo, empty-handed, under both of these accusing stares.
Mouth slid a massive pack on her back and prepared to brave the empty streets, which were still full of checkpoints and hyperactive triggers. Omar came up and grabbed Mouth’s shoulder in one long-fingered hand. “So I believe you when you say you didn’t get involved in politics and you were just pulling some ridiculous hustle. But I just need to know. What exactly was this thing you were trying to steal from the Palace?”
Bianca was standing right behind them, listening in. So was Sophie, the undead saint.
Mouth swallowed. She and Omar went a long way back, plus she owed him a lot right now, so she couldn’t look him in the face and give him a glib line. Not to mention, this particular disappointment was too fresh for her to have turned into a cute story yet.
“We called it the Invention. It, uh, it was a big crystal volume? It contained all of our songs and lyric writings. And verses.”
“A poetry book.” Omar laughed much too loud as the Couriers crept out into the tiny side street. “You tried to break into the Palace to steal a fucking poetry book?”
Mouth was tensing up, but got a grip just in time. The fists she had made turned back into hands, and Mouth found a smile someplace. “Yeah. It was the only copy, though.”
“Now I know you’re a maniac. A poetry book. You’ll have to do a recital for us once we’re out in the deadlands.” Omar was still chuckling as he strode in the direction of the junkyard where they’d hidden the sled full of merchandise once more, hunched over from his backpack. Lorry engines squeaked in the distance, and smoke billowed from no particular direction. Mouth turned and saw the hatred in Bianca’s eyes, until the rest of the Resourceful Couriers bumped against them, in a hurry to escape this city at last.
As they rushed across one of the main thoroughfares, Mouth spotted scraps of cheap paper that had been trampled into the cobbles: a poster declaring that the leaders of the Uprising would be executed in Founders’ Square after two more turns of the shutters. She tried to avoid stepping on the drawing of Derek’s bony face, out of respect.
At last they came to the junkyard. The wide-open street looked gloomy, here on the edge of night. All of the metal slats on the windows seemed to reject them, and the air seemed colder than usual. Every step Mouth took in defiance of her own rust-spiked heart. The Citizens had been good people, just trying to go through the world making themselves useful, and striving to preserve their culture as best they could. The world had stepped on their memory like it was dirt, and Mouth had blown her one chance to salvage something.
Alyssa came alongside Mouth and whispered, “Keep your shit together.” Mouth nodded, and she tried to empty her mind, the way she had so many times before.
PART
THREE
SOPHIE
I can’t see Hernan’s face, but he has a kink in his neck that keeps his shoulders uneven, and sadness creeps into his voice, even as he gives directions in a jolly tone. Before taking each step, he stares down at the cracks and sawteeth of this mining tunnel. These ancient mines have a hundred dead ends, and countless deep crevasses, and Hernan knows the safe route because a longtime client of the Parlour had inherited a map. Some of the wall struts seem to be starting to buckle.
I touch Hernan’s arm and whisper, “Thanks for helping Bianca and me get out of town.”
“Just keep yourself safe,” he whispers back. “I think I might disappear for a while myself, once I make sure Jeremy, Walter, and Kate are taken care of. This city barely tolerates people like us when things are calm, but during a crisis…”
“I can’t bear to think of the Illyrian Parlour disappearing.” I almost hit my shin on a tiny spur of rock, but stumble aside at the last moment.
“I always knew that place couldn’t last forever.” Hernan sighs. “We’ll preserve what we can, and reopen when we can.”
The end of the tunnel seems so brilliant at first I have to shade my eyes until they adjust.
“This is where I turn back,” Hernan says. “Don’t forget everything I taught you.”
I lean against Hernan’s slate-gray suit jacket and clutch him as tight as I can. His scent comforts me for probably the last time, the same lavender and sandalwood as the Parlour itself. I try to slow down the flow of time, the way Hernan showed me, to keep this moment from ending, because I can’t even bring myself to walk away from the man who gave me a new family and nurtured my mother in spite of herself. The man who showed me how patience could work as much transformation as a million geothermal vents.
“Thank you,” I say again, “for everything.”
“It was the very least I could do,” he murmurs. “I wish your mother could see the brave young woman you’ve grown into. She’d be as proud of you as I am. Goodbye, Sophie.”
Hernan fades into the darkness of the ancient tunnel, while the rest of us climb down to the dry riverbed that marks the outer boundary of the deadlands.
The Old Mother and the Young Father extend past the city walls, but they dwindle into mere foothills ahead of us. Beyond the mountains’ end, there’s only a reddish-gray rocky terrain that stretches past the horizon, with naked darkness swallowing one side and scorching daylight exposing the other.
As soon as we’re past the walls, the Resourceful Couriers start singing. None of them sings the same song, or in tune, but the raucous clash of shanties seems to cheer them up as we trudge and steer their wobbling sled down to somewhat more level ground.
Bianca hasn’t spoken since we left the Illyrian Parlour, but now I hear her voice, even over the six different choruses.
“I have unfinished business in that city.” Bianca doesn’t look back at the sheer stone wall. “I’m going to make sure the sacrifice of Derek and the others counts for something. Even if it takes the rest of my life. I’m going to burn that fucking Palace to the ground.” She grips her backpack in one hand, like a cudgel.
* * *
I try covering my eyes and looking down at the regolith, but the sky still hurts. Bigger than dreams, sweeping from cinder gray to acrid white, with no buildings or mountains in the way. Even if I wrench my neck, I could never see the whole thing. The “road” ahead looks lifeless, drained by Xiosphant’s endless water demands, but every now and then I see the head of some burrowing creature emerge. The reddish-gray dirt, marbled with ochre and crimson, becomes either rich embroidery or a bloody shroud, depending on which way I turn my head.
I can still look back and see the city that banished me twice; no matter how long we trudge, the golden Spire still glares at our retreat over a hill covered with tufts of scrubgrass quivering in the cold wind from the night.
When I fantasized about walking beside Bianca again, I always imagined this happening after Xiosphant had thrown away all the old rules in some unimaginable revolution, or when we had grown old and found each other agai
n. But now she and I are together, here and now, and we’re traveling to the City That Never Sleeps, where we can be whoever we want. I can’t even trust this much good fortune.
Except that Bianca won’t even look at me.
Maybe I’ve been dead to her too long, and she can’t accept me back into life. All this unsaid garbage is heaped up between Bianca and me, as tall as the Old Mother. And she just keeps staring, red-eyed, at Mouth, the scar-headed smuggler who tricked her. Bianca hasn’t spoken since she said she had unfinished business in Xiosphant, and she hasn’t looked back once. She marches with emphatic strides and gritted teeth, as if she’s heading toward something rather than away from it.
I can’t hear the city’s chimes anymore. I don’t know what time it is, and I feel as if I’ve been out here for half my life. Only the slight changes in the landscape prove time is still passing. I feel like falling on the ground, pummeling my own knees, or refusing to walk any farther along these endless plains.
* * *
Some part of me keeps expecting things between Bianca and me to go back to the way they used to be. She’s supposed to be the one who jolts me out of my silence. She ought to be reminding me that we’re young and we can just laugh at everyone’s stupid limits.
No matter how much she ignores me, I can’t stop leaning into her line of sight and trying to get her attention, like a neglected child.
Ahead of us, a sudden wind sweeps from night to day, shaping loose soil and rocks into a shimmering fist.
My new bracelet makes my forearm itch, and I keep thinking I feel it vibrate. When I touch it with my eyes closed, I almost feel as though I’m traveling through the night instead of the dusk, on four powerful legs. I wonder if Rose, or one of the others, is out there beyond the side of the road, watching our progress. This bracelet feels like a reminder that I have other friends besides the ones I just left in Xiosphant and Bianca. But also, there’s a claim on me. I owe a debt that I haven’t repaid yet.
Sulfuric dust gets in my eyes, nose, and mouth. With no mountain in the way, the night looks like it’s right there, next to me, calling to me. And over to my right, the unquenchable blaze seems ready to burn me to cinders, like my mother.
* * *
In front of us, the sled jerks and halts, even though Kendrick, the giant with the face piercings, insists he upgraded the motor back in Xiosphant. Alongside piles of leather, ore, dried fruit, and cakes, the sled also has a quilted denim pouch on top, just big enough for two bodies to squeeze inside. That’s the sleep nook, and we’ll all take turns inside, sleeping two by two. The front of the sled seats two: Omar and Mouth. Four of us walk alongside the sled, two in front and two in back, carrying packs and rifles. Bianca’s had a bit of rifle training, but I don’t even know how to hold mine properly. The youngest smuggler, Yulya, keeps promising to give me some lessons, and maybe also teach me some Argelan—she already tried to explain about something that sounded like “Anchor-Banter,” which she says is a major concept in Argelan culture.
Mouth keeps nudging Omar and pointing out a million dangers on the road, from sinkholes to storms to deadly wildlife charging out of the night. The two of them have a whole shorthand that doesn’t sound like language. I keep watching out for the horseflies that will descend without warning and eat a person whole, or maybe infect you with a flesh-eating disease. Yulya keeps saying you can go from safe to dead in an eyeblink out here.
As soon as we’re away from Xiosphant, Omar adjusts his clothes, lets down his mane of dark hair, and wraps a big scarf with an elaborate pattern around his neck. Some time later, I hear him say to Reynold, “You know, Khartoum built all the computers on the Mothership, and then they got shafted.” Then Omar looks over his shoulder at Bianca and me, because of course you’re not supposed to talk about such things in Xiosphant, and he can sense our discomfort. “Better get used to it.” He laughs. “Everywhere else, you better believe we talk about this stuff.”
To hear Omar tell it, New Shanghai built the Mothership’s life support, food supply, and gardens before leaving Earth, while Calgary built the water reclamation and sewers. And then once the Mothership had launched, those two compartments ended up in a position to demand whatever they wanted—and all this time later, their descendants still rule Xiosphant. That’s not the version we were taught in school, and it makes me wonder what else we were taught that nobody else believes.
* * *
Not knowing the time makes me feel young and ancient at once. I don’t know if the shutters are up or down at home, whether people are eating sweet pastries or savory pies, if the children are playing in the scrapyard. I could get used to seeing a dark horizon and a line of bright red occupying the same sky more easily than this unawareness. I don’t even know how weary I am. The knapsack straps gnaw on my shoulders, and I keep zoning out as I walk.
All those people who paid Hernan to lose track of the passage of time could have just come out here, to the deadlands.
A few times, the trail slopes downward, and the night rises up, making a hillock or cliff against the darkness. Maybe I glimpse a shape standing on the cliffside, a big shadow on the edge of night, flexing tentacles and a great pincer, or maybe I’m dreaming on my feet. Even if I could survive walking into the night, the smugglers would think I’d gone delirious if I even tried.
I brought a toothbrush, but there’s no spray and I just have to use some weird soap they gave me. And I’ll never get used to squatting behind a rock to go to the toilet, and then running to catch up with the sled.
Every time I catch sight of Bianca—her still eyes downcast, shoulders caving under her own giant pack—I forget to breathe. She’s the only thing worth looking at, even with the coruscating light coming off the mineral deposits on the rock formations. But she watches her own footfalls, without seeing much of anything.
But then I hear the tattooed man called Reynold mutter in Xiosphanti: “Waste of food. Why do we even bother to keep these two girls alive when there’s no way they’ll make it to Argelo in one piece? If you ask me, we should just—”
I charge forward, overtaking the sled, with my face searing hot and my fist already wound up. My knuckles connect with Reynold’s jaw, and I hear a sound like a door slamming. The big ugly man falls and rolls out of the way of the sled’s wheels right before he gets run over. He looks up and has a good view of the fury in my eyes.
“Sorry,” Reynold blurts. He stumbles to his feet and jogs to catch up to the sled, where Omar laughs in his throat.
“So, that’s going to leave a nice bruise,” says Alyssa, who’s also walking up front. “I like this one. She doesn’t need to talk, she expresses herself just fine.”
A massive storm comes over the horizon ahead of us, but dissipates before we reach it.
I see shapes on the edge of the night, but nothing comes to try its luck—and I never even glimpse a Gelet, though my bracelet still keeps throbbing, especially whenever I veer toward the light.
My entire body throbs from the repetitive motion of stepping on the hard ground, over and over, steadying my load with each footfall. I brought my best pair of mountain-climbing boots, but they’re already wearing out. The sky feels like it’s crushing me under its gray weight.
Maybe I’m dead already, just condemned to keep walking forever, with the angry ghost of Bianca by my side.
* * *
Long after I’m sure that I’m going to fall and they’re just going to leave me in the dust, Omar announces it’s time to change sleep shifts. Kendrick and Yulya slide down out of the sleep nook in a smooth practiced motion. But when Bianca and I try to climb inside with the sled rolling, we misjudge our leap, falling in the dirt while everyone laughs and cheers. We make it on the third try.
I’m lying face-to-face with Bianca, in the blindfolded warmth of a quilted tube just big enough for us, resting on all the precious leather. I breathe in a hint of the floral soap Bianca always used, laced with our sweat and the tang of rawhide. My knees rest against her
thighs.
“I’m sorry about your friends,” I whisper in Bianca’s ear. “I know you think you could have saved them somehow, but you would have just died with them. And if anything had happened to you, I couldn’t even…”
“Let’s just sleep,” Bianca mutters. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep, but then I black out. For once, my sleeping mind doesn’t replay scenes of cops pulling me by the armpits, or hunters hauling a wounded Gelet away. Instead, I remember a time that never was, when Bianca and I lived in a hollow space carved into the center of a tall rock face, which was perfectly round on the inside, like a globe. The two of us furnished the space with a hundred kinds of fragrant grass, and brewed hot drinks that took a whole lifetime to steep.
* * *
When I wake up, someone’s screaming.
“Omar! Fuck. It got Omar! Fucking, it fucking ate Omar. Kill it! It’s getting away!”
Bianca and I have as much trouble getting out of the sleep nook as we had climbing in, and we tumble onto the hard ground just in time to see the lower half of Omar’s body vanish into the night, in the jaws of a bison. Muscles ripple underneath ochre fur-covered plates, and a forked tail thrashes so hard it carves the air around us. The sled careens, in danger of tipping over, without anyone left to steer. Mouth lunges across Omar’s seat and wrestles with the steering levers.
Kendrick takes a shot at the bison, but misses. Omar’s face has a look of dismay, but not pain, as if the razor-sharp threads in the bison’s mouth severed his lower half too fast for him to feel anything.
The sled stops moving. Everyone just stares at Omar’s head and torso, then at each other. Mouth still leans over from the passenger seat, her hands shaking. She mutters something under her breath, and I realize that it’s a prayer in the original language, Noölang: something about the Elementals, and footsteps in dirt. Next to the driver’s seat, Alyssa’s hands splay, rigid as claws.
The City in the Middle of the Night Page 12