Munmun

by Jesse Andrews

  I was weeping with happiness, also full of a sad ache. I was sad because I knew I would probably only get to hear it once and then lose it forever. And the song was so far beyond what I could dream, I wouldn’t even be able to remember it.

  I knew I would never hear the song again without this floating seedflowerbirdhouse to sing it to me, so that was the ache, every musicswell and beautybloom was a fist clenching my heart.

  I put my head in one door and looked inside and it was a girl my age, eyes shut.

  I tried to squeeze through into the house, noluck, the air netted me. She opened her eyes and smiled.

  “Uh,” I said. “Well, ofcourse, hi. I’m Warner. What’s your name.”

  But she just shook her head.

  “That’s okay, don’t tell me,” I said. “But, heresthething, I have an idea for something I could make you, so come out and let me make you something, please.”

  She shook her head again.

  “No, but please,” I said. “I don’t think you understand. I’m really good at this, and I would make you something really good.”

  “It’s time to get up and go to morningschool,” she told me in a dark little voice that hollowed me out completely, and the morningschool part was how I knew this girl was middlerich, and that’s why it hurt extra much when it dissolved and vanished and I woke up with the tears not all the way dry on my stupid littlepoor face.

  LIFEANDDEATHWORLD

  But I didn’t get to worry about the girl very much during the day or night because it was time to pursue Prayer’s crappy plan.

  Sure, Prayer was cute. She had the big deep eyes and the wide bright mouth that the agreement among men is, that’s cute. She also had the rubywine skin that some guys especially like who like ruby skin. On the minus side, her head was narrow and shaped like a bean, and her arms were too long with big knobbyknuckle hands on the end like paddles. And long legs which men like but huge feet which men don’t like. Her hair was very fine, by which I mean thin and not good, and there wasn’t quite enough and if you got too close you could see through to her weird pink scalp. So what I’m saying is, she was cute, not amazing, but maybe I just think that as her brother and actually some men love to see some scalpskin the color of a baby rat, who knows.

  But Prayer was definitely cute enough that some of the local squads and crews wanted to involve her in a big bangsesh in some garbage somewhere, and anytime she left the coastguard station she wanted me to bodyguard her, other boys too if possible.

  It was usually me and Usher. Usher was a publicgarden orphan, grayskinned and squinty, a year older than me but smaller with incredible shrimpiness and a little bit of palsy. He was ofcourse pointless in a fight. But he could atleast scream pretty loud, and maybe from a distance you just see two boys with a girl, you don’t see that the two boys are pretty young or that one is a shrimp, so you decide not to chase them, and anyway Usher was lovesick for my sis Prayer, so, sure, let him help bodyguard.

  The point is, Prayer needed to meet middlerich guys, not just in Dreamworld but also intheflesh. So where was the best place for that.

  “Warehouses,” I suggested.

  “Nope,” said Prayer. “It’s all middlepoors in there.”

  “Business offices,” I said.

  “Those men are married or old,” complained Prayer.

  “I think you want old,” I said. “Old guys are lonely, desperate, might die tomorrow. Perfect.”

  “I guess you’re not thinking of this as How Prayer Meets Her Soulmate,” said Prayer.

  “You already have a soulmate,” I pointed out. “Usher.”

  “Ugh,” she said. “Shut up.”

  “Right now Usher is thinking about you and either crying or banging a hole he made in the sand,” I said.

  “Warner, it’s time to shut up,” commanded Mom. “I’ll tell you where Prayer is going to find a husband. Law school.”

  “Ohcrap,” I said.

  The closest law school we knew about was twenty miles away, on the other side of Lossy Indica, in the suburb of Sand Dreamough.

  “What about business school,” said Prayer.

  “Law school,” ordered Mom.

  “Business school though has guys learning to make deals, sell products, start a big corpo in a little garage, build munmuns and power out of just your thoughts and words and confidence, that might be exciting maybe,” daydreamed Prayer.

  “Law school puts guys in the bank and the government,” said Mom. “That’s the most safe, safe is the most important, most important is what you need to focus on. Prayer, you’re going to law school. Warner, you’re going with Prayer and you’re bodyguarding her, also if you find other ways to help out, that would really be great. Me, I’m giving myself to a church.”

  “No, no, no. Nope,” I said, for lots of reasons. I didn’t want to be the assistant to stupid Prayer in her gross quest to find a bangpartner for life, and I didn’t want to leave for a strange new place full of middleriches who were smarter than me, and I didn’t want my mom to go sleep sickteen to a room with randos in the leaky littlepoor shelter of some crummy church.

  But my mom can make her mind tougher than mine, tougher than Prayer’s, and she flattened us with it. So after a few days of fighting we wheeled her off to Middlechurch of the Lord King God and said our goodbyes, and she wouldn’t cry even when we did.

  The first phase of Find Prayer A Husband was even just getting on the road somehow. We had nineteen munmuns that I had folded deep in a pouch, but that was emergency munmun you can’t spend on transport. So how to get there for free? Well, you could hike through the city. But Sand Dreamough was all the way past Sentrow and basically right up to the mountains. So the hike would have taken atleast a month, forget that hopefully. As for the bus, the muncounter near the door has a special broom for littlepoors trying to sneak on. If you’re by yourself you can hop buses from the outside sometimes, scramble up the tire when it stops and hang out in the wheelwell, but with two people, basically forget about it. Metro made the most sense but who even knows how to use that thing? First of all, you have to read the Metro map and who has any idea how to read? Usher, that’s who.

  Usher ambushed us on our way out of the church. We were strapped up with little pouches of extra clothes and waterbags so he knew something was up.

  “Are you leav ving?” he asked.

  “Prayer’s going to law school,” I said, so it wouldn’t break his heart.

  “Oh w woww,” said Usher.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So, Prayer, tell him goodbye, and thank him for guarding you all those times obviously.”

  But Prayer was making extra big eyes at him and Usher was frozen like an animal corpse and my heart kind of flopped over, I knew what she was doing.

  “Well hey,” she said. “Not so fast. Usher, you can guard me one last time if you want.”

  Poor lovesick dumbass, he had no chance. So off we went the three of us, on the mission of Take My Homeless Cantread Sister To Law School.

  The Dockseye entrance to the Metro had three kinds of doors. Way off to either side you had battered eighthdoors for littles like us to go through, onefoot high, just need to pay two munmuns for those. Next in were the halfscale doors, about fourfeet, littler middlepoors get to use those, ten munmuns please. Then in the middle you have big glossy twoandahalfscale doors for bigger middlepoors and most middleriches, a twenmunmun fare for dressy ladies and sweatsuit gentlemen striding through. And ofcourse if you’re bigger than twoandahalfscale you don’t fit on the Metro, but when you’re that big you don’t want to squeeze into trains with other losers anyway, instead you’re zooming around on the bigroads in your own monstertruck.

  All entrances had floortoceiling doublesliders so littlepoors couldn’t race through, plus you had sternlooking muncounters roaming around with brooms. And as for paying three twomun littlefares, forget it. Fortunately I had a plan.

  “Fortunately I have a plan,” I announced, and I jogged out of the entrance and
up the sidewalk, and Prayer and Usher jogged with me, and we jogged for an hour or two all the way to where the tracks came up out of the ground. Sure enough, you had here and there some ratscale holes in the sidewalk and fencing where the rats could wriggle through.

  My idea was, follow the rats, because rats get in the Metro all the time without paying any munmun. And the rats won’t be a problem because there are three of us, if we all just stick together then no one’s getting facechewed by a rat today.

  “Warner, your plans are terrible,” said Prayer, panting, but we did it anyway. We wriggled through the holes and down onto the gravel next to the tracks, and started walking back toward Dockseye Station, and ignored the little picturesigns the Metro put up to scare littlepoors, of little circleheaded people getting pancaked by trains and deathshocked by the ground and ofcourse mauled by rats. The deathshock one made no sense, thankgod Usher was there to read some important words.

  “It says t that rail in the m middle,” explained Usher, pointing to a tarcolor bar zipping up the middle of the tracks that I guess if you touched it you died.

  So we stood to one side of the tracks and put our right hands on the metal wheelrail and Usher put his left hand on Prayer’s back and Prayer put hers on mine and I just put mine out in space and we followed the tracks back underground into the total blindness and walked that way for three or four hours.

  It was loud, dark, long. You could hear rats rustle and chatter but you couldn’t see them, except when the train was on its way and light was leaking in around the corner, and then yes, as we scouted a place to flop down and wait for the train to pass, always a scene materialized of way too many rats all nestling up in their little chewedout bunkers, cowering from the light and the rumble.

  And when finally we made it to Dockseye Station, there was no clear way to get off of the tracks and up onto the platform where people were waiting. I mean there wasn’t just a ladder up from the tracks for us with a label of Hey Littlepoors, Climb Here, Bytheway Congrats On Getting This Far Without Dying.

  So we climbed the train itself. It was parked but beeping like it was impatient to leave, and we took turns clambering up the wheel, and as you can imagine palsied Usher was not amazing at that, so I had to basically pull him up onto the wheel and then drag him across some cables and finally shove him onto the metal lips between cars.

  After a few stops the doors opened and some middlepoor kids came stomping through and we followed them into a car, and a kind old middlerich man lifted us onto a seat onebyone with his magazine because he didn’t want to touch us with his hands, and he even gave us a few giant hardcandies to gnaw, and the seat was blessedly soft and it did smell like a giant’s peensweat but we still collapsed into it in exhaustion.

  “That was terrible and I’m not listening to your ideas anymore,” Prayer told me, but the truth was, we were atleast headed to law school, and also Usher got to touch Prayer’s sweaty back for four hours, so you have to believe it was the best time of his entire life.

  DREAMWORLD

  Usher took the first watch while Prayer and I slept. I dreamed the train half full of feathery coralcolor munmun bills and we sat in them like the tub.

  “It’s notsogood you tricked Usher into coming,” I said.

  “It wasn’t a trick,” she said. “He wanted to come.”

  “Do you think Usher also wants to help you marry off to some completely other guy from Usher,” I said.

  “I can’t marry someone whose mouth can’t even say the first letter of my name,” said Prayer.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s mean and terrible.”

  “It was a joke,” Prayer said. “Sorry. I like Usher, okay. And look, he’s not stupid. I’m sure he knows what this trip is about.”

  “Well, I’m going to tell him, so, if he runs away crying, your fault,” I said.

  Prayer took the second watch and Usher dozed into the dream. I sundried the bills of munmun up to the ceiling, where they cried paint.

  “Usher, I hate to tell you this, but Prayer isn’t going to law school to study law,” I said.

  “I know that,” he said, unpalsied from the dream. “Prayer can’t read.”

  “Tobehonest I would have to say this law school trip is more about her finding a hubby,” I said. “A lawgrad hubby with munmun so she and my mom can scale up.”

  “I know that’s her plan,” he said. “But anything could happen.”

  “Usher,” I said. “You don’t want hope to make you stupid.”

  “Anything could happen if I’m a good enough guy to her,” said Usher, and my heart just broke for this poor stupid idiot.

  I took the third watch, listening for Sand Dreamough, and the old middlerich guy was still sitting there.

  “Pardon me,” he said, in that deep frummy middlerich style. He was about doublescale and he had a buttcheek in each seat.

  “Pardon me,” I said, because what else can you do with middleriches except repeat and hope it’s polite.

  “I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your dreaming,” he said. “I dozed off and I have to tell you it was quite beautifull, even moving.”

  “Moving, thank you,” I said. “Beautifull, well, thank you again. Please.”

  He gave me a smile that was buttclenched with pity or something. His skin was about the lightness of palmwood, sunsplashed with black and gray, and the hair on his head was like trees on a mountain, up to the ears and no higher.

  “May I ask where you are headed?” he tried to say quietly.

  “Yes, please,” I said. “The law school in Sand Dreamough.”

  He snuffled a little and his brows climbed his head.

  “Well goodness, what a coincidence,” he told me, he lived nearby up in High Dreamough and could carry us from the station.

  “Goodness goodness,” I nodded, “a coincidence for sure.”

  I woke up Usher and Prayer and we discussed it quietly, ontheonehand this will save us a bunch of time, ontheother can we trust him, ofcourse we can he seems nice, but what if he eats us, Warner you idiot that doesn’t happen, forstarters middles have way better food to eat than littles, infact what if he gives us some.

  So I told the old middlerich that sounded good and a few stations later he scooped us up into the outerpocket of his smoky-smelling leather bag. There was more hardcandy floating around in there, magazines, books, bottles, plastic bendy sheets that were probably screens or cameras or something, no idea how to use them though.

  We bounced in his bag, peeking over the pocketlip, as he strode through a middlepoor neighborhood, ducking the awnings and overstepping carts and bikes. I tried looking for a law school. I knew a little what it might look like from other people’s dreaming, basically oldtimey parthenons like stone grills hatted with pyramids. But I didn’t see any, just dusty middlepoor twostorys crowding the parkinglots and cardstock signs and foldingchairs he had to dance around.

  It was a different landscape from Dockseye for sure, lots of shops and restaurants and middlemalls, mostly halfscale to middlescale. We zoomed over the heads of old middlepoors playing cards and eating soups, young tatty daves leaning on janky halfcars and also eating soups, giggly sceneteens eating even more soups, what the heck is this, Neighborhood Souptime.

  Off the sloping streets above us nowandthen I could see some real palaces nosing over the trees.

  Then we got a better look at those palaces when he turned up one wide slopestreet and started bounding uphill and prettysoon it was just super groomed middlerich houses hugging the cliffsides, walled off from each other by forests.

  After a while it became hard not to worry about whether we were actually heading toward a law school.

  “Oh,” I announced eventually. “You know, I don’t recognize this part of Sand Dreamough, perhaps you could kindly tell me about it, I mean not to be rude, nopressure.”

  “Well, now we’re in High Dreamough,” explained the guy.

  “Ah,” I agreed, while we all tried not to get
too freaked out.

  A few minutes later I piped up again, “Well, I guess I’m curious about where law school is from here exactly, and you know what, come to think of it, we can probably just walk the rest of the way, so, what I’m saying here ofcourse is, if you please, thank you.”

  “No no no,” he said. “We’re not far. I can’t drop you off here, anyway.”

  We traveled another mile or so.

  “Are we going to law school or what,” hissed Prayer.

  “I guess I am a little curious about whether we can be close to a law school if around here it’s all just homes and dwellings and forests,” I said to the guy.

  “You’re quite perceptive,” he purred.

  I had no idea what the crap that meant so I just said, “You’re quite perceptive, thanks.”

  “I just need to make a quick stop at my house, if that’s allright with you,” he said.

  There was nothing really to say to that except okay fine.

  We rattled in his bag as he bounded up the steps to his huge fairytale house.

  LIFEANDDEATHWORLD

  The smell of the house put us all on edge. It was fake vanilla and lemongrass but to cover the high sharp notes of animal piss. In the great hall atleast six middlepoors zipped around in atleast three cleaningcars, craning and laddering up the walls and tabletops to wipe and scrub. The guy’s wife appeared in a hallway, folding up yetanother big bendy screen.

  Middleriches have big facefeatures, forthatreason they can be terrifying even when they’re not trying to be. So this woman’s big blazing eyes on your eyes were like hands on your throat, and when she opened her mouth her teeth leaned fiercely out of there. But definitely the worstofall part was, her hands gripped and cuddled a nasty crappy lynxcat, and it stared at us too with round hungry eyeblacks.

  “Oh great,” she boomed. “Some new houseguests, huh.”