by Ali Shaw
IV
1
The Night the Trees Came
With its headlamps beaming and its engines sucking at the rain-streaked night, the jumbo jet thundered over the runway. At full speed its nose peaked into the air, its wheels lifted and it had left the earth. It roared into the sky with the noise of its flight echoing behind it, and in its wake the runway staff in fluorescent jackets drove into place beneath the floodlights. A transit buggy skated along a sidetrack, turned and steered towards the terminal building. Its tyres squirted up rainwater as they went, and nearly crushed a whisperer also making its way, at a much more laboured pace, in the direction of the terminal.
The buggy’s driver was talking into her radio mouthpiece and the darkness was thick and filthy wet. Even had the driver spotted the whisperer through all of that, she would have mistaken it for just another collection of windblown twigs. The whisperer, however, seemed untroubled by the weather. It hobbled along with steady purpose, its long arms trailing the ground like a gibbon’s. From its forehead grew two budding sprigs of leaves, and these it directed ahead of itself like antennae. When it reached the parkway for the newly arrived flights it paused and stood a while, observing the cabin crews. They were bringing out sacks of litter from a plane, while luggage trucks parked beside the hold to receive suitcases. The long-armed whisperer watched and remained silent. It had been silent for a long, long time.
With an awkward tilt of its neck, the whisperer gazed upwards at the windows of the nearby terminal. Up there was another of its kind, clinging to the frame to peer in through the glass. That one was tiny, its arms and legs just stems bending out of an ivy body. It too went unnoticed, the hour being that when an airport’s incumbents are all either sleep-deprived or shuffling their time zones, but after a short while it let go of its hold on the window frame. The wind took it at once, ruffling the leaves of its body as it tossed and looped it through the air, sweeping it back and forth until, at last, it laid it on the tarmac not far from where the first whisperer stood. At once it got up, on wire-thin feet, and together the pair loped and hopped across two runways and a stretch of grass drenched flat by the rain.
Eventually they came to a roundabout on which grew a dozen stunted lime trees. Beneath one of these a fissure had opened in the earth, several feet long. This was the sort of thing the airport staff might notice, had any passed to inspect it, but the fissure looked so freshly made that it was as if it had just that moment torn open. In its mouth another whisperer waited, a bloated and haggard thing with a mane of curling white roots. It squatted in the crack as if it were holding it open, albeit with limbs that looked more like tentacles than arms. Towards it, from another direction, hobbled a fourth whisperer, then a fifth and sixth. Each brushed into the fissure and found its way into a tunnel leading down from there into the earth. Once the last had entered, the root-haired gatekeeper followed, and the fissure closed behind it and was sealed shut by the mushing of the rain.
Down in single file the whisperers went, moving as purposefully in the blind dark as they had beneath the floodlights of the airport. Down in silence. Down and down the tunnel that bent and wound like a riddle. Along their way they passed the openings of other passages, out of which more whisperers limped and tiptoed to join their trooping line. Things became damp. Things became chill. The tunnel roof dripped with mineral liquor, although none of the marching figures paid it any heed. Deep through their earthen corridors they waddled and lurched, deeper and deeper, and although it was possible they remained beneath the airport, there were tunnel mouths down here from which warmer air blew, and others from which a breeze rasped that was bitingly cold. A whisperer with limbs of spined cactus joined the procession, moving on all fours with the slow strokes of a reptile. Another arrived with a proud and shaggy coat of evergreen needles, and there were crystals of ice still melting between its spines. Down they all went. Down together, until at last they reached the end of their path.
They had come to a chamber, a cavernous space, and although it was possible that it lay beneath the airport its ceiling was hung with roots of all bends and thicknesses, and the air was stirred with both the scent of pine and the bitterness of myrrh. Other tunnels opened into the chamber, and from these more whisperers poured, clambering up the earthen walls and crawling in lines along ledges. Still they made no sound, moving as silently as spiders, but from the heart of the cavern there came now and then a slow and dormant creak. Growing there in the darkness was some kind of tree, some underground species of plant with no need for the daylight. Had any shone that far below the earth it might have illuminated a singular pair of great branches, each sweeping sideways like the arms of an enormous chair, and a high trunk with many smaller, crooked branches splaying out from its top. It was from this tree, or something on it, that the creaks kept sounding.
Some time passed before the final whisperer arrived and took its place in the assembly, but none of those already gathered made so much as a hiss as they waited. The only sounds were the slow echoes from the tree, along with the occasional plinks and plonks of water droplets tumbling from the cavern roof. Then, when the final whisperer had at last taken its place in the chamber, every tiny mouth creaked open. Every tongue tested its stretch.
As one, they all began to whisper.
2
Gunman
For a minute, none of them moved. The wind circled the dead slopes of the coal pit. Then Hannah began to shake her head. ‘No . . .’ she whispered, ‘no, no he can’t have done . . .’
The man at the bottom of the pit pulled out more of the kirin’s innards and spooled them alongside him on the ground. Hannah felt as if her own insides were being scooped out just the same.
‘Hannah, are you alright?’ asked Adrien gravely.
‘But he can’t . . .’ she said.
Hiroko stood up straighter than the rest of them. ‘He has.’
Hannah wanted to charge down the slope and put the animal back together. Its blood was so fresh that it was as if it were some new, truer colour of red. ‘It can’t be dead,’ she protested. ‘The kirin is . . . it’s supposed to be . . .’
Her mind filled up, unbidden, with images of Zach as they had found him. As they had buried him. Memory painted his chest as bright a red as this, and she turned to her companions with tear-blurred eyes. ‘Why would he do this? Why would anyone do this?’
‘I’m going to ask him,’ said Hiroko, clenching her fists. She set off briskly down the slope, and the others followed less boldly.
They were halfway towards the man when the Alsatian’s head snapped round to stare at them. It barked once, twice, and the man turned his head and looked sideways over his shoulder, much as a hawk does. Then he returned to his work. His chest was bare, his lower body clad in soldier’s fatigues and jackboots. When they reached him he remained busy with the carcass, and it was only the eyes of the dog and the dead kirin that greeted them at the bottom of the pit. Hannah could hardly bear to look, but she felt that she owed it to the kirin to do so. Blood had spattered its horn, and all the iridescence of the enamel was lost beneath the overbearing colour.
‘Shitty place for an afternoon walk,’ said the man, without turning.
The four travellers glanced at each other. Hiroko’s hand brushed the hilt of her slingshot. ‘We were following this animal,’ she said.
The man paused. He dropped, with a slap, the kirin’s liver onto the crimson pile beside him, and the noise hit Hannah like a blow to the belly. He didn’t even want the ivory, she realised. This was only about meat.
The man raised himself onto his haunches and jabbed his knife into the corpse to sheathe it. He wiped his hands, palms then backs, on the kirin’s pelt, then stood up.
Hannah had been so fixated on the kirin that only now did she notice the man’s rifle. She stumbled backwards at the sight of it, fast as she could, her legs acting of their own volition. She tripped and fell with the wind knocked out of her and coal dust swirling up from the grou
nd she’d hit.
‘Mum?’ Seb crouched over her and tried to help her up.
‘Are you alright?’ asked the man. He didn’t speak with an Irish accent but with the Queen’s English, cold as industry. ‘I’ve got a bottle of water over there,’ he said. ‘Have some if you want.’
With Seb’s assistance, Hannah got back to her feet. She made sure not to look at the gun, only at its bearer. He was tall and broad, muscled like a primate. His skin had the same weathered complexion as her own, and his hair was a similar shade of blonde. He wore a pair of thin-framed glasses, and in the corner of one lens was a fleck of something pink.
‘I think it’s your rifle,’ Seb tried to explain. ‘Mum . . . had a bad run-in with a gun.’
‘Lots of run-ins with guns end badly,’ smirked the man, then jabbed his thumb in the direction of the kirin. ‘Just ask that thing.’
He laughed at his own joke, then let it fade when he saw Hannah’s scowl. The Alsatian, a flea-bitten cur with one torn ear, growled at her distrustingly. ‘You did this,’ said Hiroko, pointing at the carcass.
‘Of course I did,’ conceded the man. ‘What of it?’
‘It was unnecessary!’
‘Says who?’
‘We all do,’ said Hiroko, and Hannah was grateful for the steel in the girl’s voice. The Alsatian turned and sniffed at Hiroko, and when it took a hungry step towards her the man had to reach down and grip its collar to restrain it. Yasuo poked his head out from Hiroko’s hood, and hissed at both man and dog. At the sight of the fox the Alsatian lunged on instinct, and the man grunted with the sudden effort of holding it back. The dog bared its teeth and barked until its master silenced it with a whisper of something into its ear and a heavy pat of its neck. Then it whined and stopped struggling, although it did not take its eyes off Yasuo.
‘What kind of girl are you,’ asked the man, unamused, ‘carrying a fox about in your hood?’
‘What kind of man are you,’ retorted Hiroko at once, ‘shooting a kirin?’
‘Is that what you call one of these?’ He stared dispassionately at his kill. ‘I wouldn’t have called it that.’
‘It wouldn’t have threatened you,’ said Hiroko. ‘It was a herbivore.’
‘You think I can’t see that? But why should I care? I have mouths to feed.’
‘You . . . you have family?’ asked Hannah, finding the idea strangely painful.
‘Why is that so hard to believe?’ The man reached out and scratched the Alsatian’s skull. ‘But . . . no. Not any more. What I have is orders. I was sent out to find food.’
‘Sent out?’ Hannah looked again at his fatigues and his military boots. ‘Are you a soldier?’
‘No. I just got these clothes off an army man. I’d make a terrible soldier.’ The man glared again at Hiroko. ‘I don’t like being told what to do.’
‘What . . . what are you, then?’
‘I don’t have a job any more, if that’s what you mean. But my name’s Leonard, if you want to know it. Are you going to tell me yours? You’re some sort of family?’
‘She’s my mum,’ explained Seb, stepping in when it became clear that Hannah wouldn’t answer. ‘I’m Seb, and she’s Hannah. And these are Hiroko and Adrien.’
Leonard pointed from Hannah to Adrien. ‘Brother and sister, right?’
Hannah flinched. ‘My brother was killed. Adrien and I are friends.’
Leonard looked back at her and pouted. ‘A lot of shitty things have happened, haven’t they? Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .’ He turned around, crouched, then tugged his knife back out of the kirin’s hide.
‘What are you going to do with the rest of it?’ demanded Hiroko. ‘That’s too much meat for you to carry anywhere on your own.’
‘Stash it somewhere. Come back for it soon.’
‘Where are you taking it?
‘A lot of questions.’ Leonard lifted the animal’s belly fat and worked his blade in. ‘But if you must know, I’ve shacked up with a sort of community, about four days’ walk from here. We’re set up in an old hotel.’
Adrien gasped.
‘Now you look like you need some water,’ said Leonard.
‘A what?’ whispered Adrien, looking petrified.
‘A hotel,’ repeated Leonard, ‘although you couldn’t really call it that any more. It was the Caisleán Hotel. Grand old place. Not so grand now.’
Adrien didn’t move a muscle. The breeze drifted down the slopes of the pit and raised ghosts from the coal dust.
‘The Caisleán Hotel is where we’re headed,’ said Seb.
Leonard looked at each of them in turn. ‘You’re joking, right? Did you hear about us?’
‘We were following the kirin,’ said Hannah in a queasy voice.
‘We’ve come all the way from England,’ added Seb. ‘Crossed the sea. Walked every step of the way, just to find that place.’
At that Leonard looked stupefied. He laughed, then stopped laughing again abruptly. ‘To find our place? You’d better not have set your hopes too high.’
‘Actually, it was, um,’ said Adrien, in a high pitch, ‘it was . . .’
Leonard was still laughing. ‘You’ve got a room reservation, or something? You think you’re going on a holiday?’
‘It was to find my wife.’
Leonard frowned. ‘Is that so?’
There was silence for half a minute, then Leonard tapped the flat of his knife against his thigh. ‘So . . . ? Has your wife got a name?’
Adrien took a deep breath, then didn’t say anything. Hannah could almost see the words stuck on his tongue, bunging up his mouth with the fear of speaking them. This awful man with kirin blood all up his arms had just revealed that he had the power to bring their whole journey to a deflated end. Right here in this pit, Leonard could tell them whether or not Michelle was at the Caisleán Hotel, whether she had lived or died, whether their journey had come to its end. ‘Mish . . .’ croaked Adrien. ‘Mish . . . Her name is Michelle Thomas.’
All four of them tensed for Leonard’s answer. His lips pursed. His eyes narrowed.
‘You’d better come with me,’ he said.
‘What?’ spluttered Adrien. ‘What do you mean? Is she okay? Is she there?’
After what seemed like an age, Leonard smiled. A shark is a shark, Eoin had said.
‘I’ll lead you there,’ said Leonard, ‘if you carry your share of my meat for me.’
‘But . . . but . . .’ Adrien protested. ‘You have to at least tell me whether she’s alive!’
‘I don’t have to do anything,’ said Leonard. ‘I happen to think it’s none of my business. Better if you wait and see. So . . . enough talk. I’ve got meat to chop, and you four can either help me or get lost.’
He turned and ran the knife back into the kirin.
It seemed they had little choice but to accept Leonard’s offer, and each of them shoulder a portion of kirin meat. Leonard cut a polythene sack into squares, then tied each around a fleshy bundle, its jelly and its juices glistening inside the transparent plastic. Seb tried to carry Hannah’s bundle for her, but she insisted that she take her share, and indeed felt like part of some strange cortège when they left the coal pit behind them.
The meat was an awkward load to carry, not so much because of the weight but because it was hard to grip the packaging. Blood and air bubbles flowed against the plastic as if seeking an escape, and Hannah imagined opening the bag like a magician’s sack and a living kirin springing forth to trample Leonard. Several times, as they walked, Adrien pressed their new guide for information about Michelle. Several times Leonard took delight in evading an answer. There was something about the way he did so that reminded Hannah of how he’d pulled the innards from the kirin, and with each rebuff Adrien looked more miserable than before.
The rest of the time, Leonard seemed disinclined towards conversation, only speaking to issue commands to his Alsatian, who kept pace at his side and occasionally stole hungry looks at Yasuo. That nigh
t, however, he built them a fire, and Hannah had to admit she was grateful for it. Then Leonard began to place kirin meat over the flames.
‘Um,’ said Adrien, ‘do you mind?’
‘Do I mind what?’ asked Leonard.
‘We were following this animal.’
‘So? You don’t want anything to eat, is that it?’
‘We were . . . we were . . .’ Adrien glanced at Hannah. ‘Don’t you see? We were following it.’
‘And lo and behold you’ve found it,’ said Leonard, and threw another thick slab on the fire. ‘What did you expect would happen next?’
‘We expected it to be alive!’ spat Hannah, and Leonard looked up at her as if surprised. The meat sizzled in the flames, and gasped when one fatty seam burst.
Hannah stood up and stalked away. She found a cold log to sit on, with her arms folded and tears streaming freely down her cheeks. Adrien joined her, not a minute later. Seb and Hiroko came right after that.
Leonard didn’t have a tent, but nor did he ask them for a place in theirs. Neither did they offer, since he seemed happy to curl up outside it with his dog, his long fingers still stroking the animal even while he slept. As usual, Hannah woke first in the morning, and gently lifted Adrien’s arm aside to leave the tent and stretch her spine in the beginning dawn. She watched Leonard’s ribs heave in time with his dog’s, then looked at his rifle lying beside him. The gun made her feel different inside. As cold and unbending as its barrel. What would it be like, she wondered, to take it up and point it at Leonard, and have revenge for killing the kirin?
She stepped away hurriedly. She knew the answer to that question, knew just what it would be like. She was surprised by her willingness to ask it.