by Martin Kee
It isn’t until she stands in front of the cage, looking up at it, looking up at the back of the photograph, that Bex sees the writing. And it is writing, unmistakable. Nothing on this world besides people use written language. Nothing on this world…
Her legs give out from beneath her, and Bex falls back onto her rump as she stares up at the giant, at those huge weeping eyes as it sings.
“You’re not singing at all,” she says. “You’re crying.”
The giant sees her and wipes its face with those massive hands, and for a long time the two of them just stare at one another before she feels the weight of the key ring in her pocket. She pulls it out and looks at it as the giant pulls the umbilicus to its face and takes a few deep breaths, those eyes watching her with unknown intelligence.
Her hands begin to sort through the various keys. It’s easier if she just does things, easier to move with action than to wallow. If she does something now, she won’t have to actually think about all the insane, spooky thoughts bubbling up from the depths of her mind.
Nothing on this world. Nothing on this world but us reads and writes.
The key fits perfectly in the lock to the cage and she turns it, feeling the heavy-duty mechanism clunk deep inside. She steps back as the gate swings open slowly, the giant just staring at it. She can’t tell if it understands, or if it suspects a trap. If it’s smart it will leave. But instead the big dumb thing just stares at her.
“You can leave, you idiot,” she says. “Go. Just go and leave before they get here. Because when they do get here, they are going to harvest you like they do everything. So whether you are intelligent or not, you’d better just go, go back to wherever it is you came from. Go back to your country or tribe or—” World. “Or whatever cave you crawled out of. But you’d better go fast.” She points off at the distant forest.
*
Kendal can’t understand a word of what she’s saying, just that she seems to be speaking to only him. There is no one else there. The gate is opened and if he wanted to he could crawl out of it and crush her head like a grape. He wants to kill something, to lash out at whatever these things are, but he can’t hurt her. In fact, she’s been the only decent one he’s met.
And who would you really be lashing out at besides yourself? Let’s face it, champ, that’s the person you’re really mad at here.
“So you’re saying I can go…” he says.
She flutes something in reply and he hasn’t a clue what it means. She takes another step back and watches him intently. Looking at the picture of Jessica one last time, he places it in his inside pocket and feels the pill there. Still one last shot. You could end this little adventure a free man.
“I have nowhere to go,” he says. “I don’t have a home anymore and even if I did, I don’t know how I would get there. They barely even know about this planet, and I don’t even think our ship was supposed to come this close to it. Besides, I’d die before a rescue party even showed up. These stitches, I think they might be infected, and I can barely breathe here. Do you understand?”
She flutes a short reply, which means nothing.
“No, you don’t. I can’t leave.” He gestures with his hands and feels immediate shame when she jumps back a little. “Fine.”
He inches his way out of the narrow opening and stands over her and the surrounding farm. “Where’s the other one?”
More fluting.
“Crusty. The old one… Never mind.” He looks around, up at the stars, barely visible through the thick clouds. Whatever is in those clouds is part of what kept them from getting clear readings of this place, not like there was a lot to report anyway. He takes another puff from the air tube and looks down at her. “So what now?”
She looks around, almost comically so, like a housewife looking over her messy child’s room. A moment later, she walks over to a fence—
*
It’s in desperate need of repair; everything on Vin’s property is, and if her newest pet won’t run away she might as well see if he’s useful. Maybe she can convince them to rethink their proposal if the creature can be used as labor.
She points to a fallen log that has come loose from the rest of the fence. It’s too heavy for her to lift, or even three of her. Looking up at the giant’s big dumb eyes (not so dumb now) she says, “Can you lift that? Just hold it there?”
It blinks, looking from her to the fence, then grumbles something and steps forward, lifting the rail with one hand, holds it there, and looks at her. It mumbles.
“Hold it right there,” she says and runs into the farm. She doesn’t even really have time to think, no time to really consider the absurdity of the situation. And we patched it up. We covered it in shells and plates and sewed them to its flesh… unless that wasn’t really skin at all… There’s a hammer and some long iron nails, which she picks up and rushes back outside. The giant is still standing there, holding it, waiting for her as if it actually understands what she is trying to do.
“I’m trying to save your life,” she says. “In case you were wondering.” She then hammers the nails into the post. The giant lets go and stands upright again, looking down at her, waiting.
“Let’s do another,” she says, unable to contain her excitement regardless of whether the creature even understands her at all.
Chapter 15
THEY ARE up until dawn, lifting walls, carrying water barrels from the well, changing out the hay from the barn. Bex finds it as simple as walking over to a tree, or a stack of bricks and pointing. She then pantomimes lifting, or carrying, finding that the creature understands her actions more than it understands her words—which seems insane to her, since Bindo is smart for a plainsteer and even he understands her words. It’s like a game, trying to find new ways to communicate with her hands and body.
And people are starting to notice, heads staring from distant windows with narrow eyes.
And of course they didn’t try to communicate with it this way. There are no normal gestures when your arms are grafted from a lombock or a sandskitterer. She looks up again at the creature as it works. Even underneath the grafted armor it is just a single organism like her. And perhaps that’s the only thing they have in common, but it’s enough.
By the time morning dawns she is both exhausted and giddy. The morning sunlight paints the refurbished farm in dull orange, but to her it sparkles.
“This is just… just great,” she says, looking up at the giant. It looks back at her and bears its teeth. It’s a horrifying expression, like a maw full of spades, but she’s seen the picture now and she can only assume this is some kind of friendly gesture, though she can’t imagine how. It makes her think. “You need a name… or do you have one? If you can even talk with that face full of shovels.”
It cocks its head, and shapes its mouth into a small hole with those large nimble lips. A low tune escapes through the hole, deep as an alarm whistle. It makes her hackles raise just listening to the sound, ghostly and strange. It takes a breath and does it again.
“SCCCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP.”
Bex blinks. Before she can respond, it makes the same word again.
“SSSCOOOOOOOOP.”
A closer approximation to the word is “shovel” but scoop is the closest synonym, an abbreviation which comprises the best effort considering the rigid and inflexible dentition of the creature. As she gawks at it, the giant bears its horrifying teeth, and once again purses its lips. “SCOOOP!”
“Yes… Yes a shovel. A scoop.” She once again feels the world shifting under her a little. She probably couldn’t be more surprised if Bindo opened his mouth and started reading a book to her. “That’s exactly what you big ridiculous teeth look like. Shovels. Scoops.”
“SCOOOOP!”
“Great. Yes. That might as well be your name. Scoop.”
It raises its arms in the air. “SCOOP! SCOOOP! SCOOOP!” It spins in a circle with horrifying speed as it continues to whoop the word, shaking the ground with its massive
feet and scaring a nearby flock of landgrouse. “SCOOP!”
She’s gotten enough practice of the miming down to hold her hands in the air. “Okay. You get it. Yes, very good. Now keep it down.”
“SCOOP!” Those bared teeth flash again and come apart, then chomp.
“Yes, very smart of you. You’re a clever boy. You just need to stop screaming your name. Scoop. I mean it.”
“Scoop.”
“Yes. Listen Scoop.”
“Scoop.”
“Listen to me. I need you to keep your voice down, because pretty soon the scavenger crew is going to show up and I need to prove to them that you are not only my Ward, but that you are valuable to the community. You got that, Scoop?”
“Scoop.”
Scoop still stares down at her with those big dumb eyes. Smart enough to know his name, but too dumb to understand her.
“Are you listening? I need you to go back into the barn and wait. When the scavenger crew shows up, we’ll present you as my Ward okay?”
“Scoop.”
It’s maddening and she does her best not to show her anger, but it’s daylight already. Soon people will start to talk. If she doesn’t present proof that Scoop helped her do all this work, they might not even believe her, especially with Den’k looking for any excuse to carve the thing up to feed the city coffers.
She stomps over to the barn door, swinging them open. “In!” She jabs a finger at the barn, and can see the hesitation on Scoop’s face. “I know it’s cramped, but I need you to go in there for now. It’s safer in there. I have to somehow convince these people that you helped me and—Vin!”
“Scoop.”
“Yes, in you go.”
Scoop begins to move into the barn on all fours. Once inside he turns, sits, and pouts at her.
“I’ll just be a minute.”
Barring it from the outside, she races across the grounds to the back door, swings it wide and slips across the floor to the cellar. No time to listen for the snoring, Bex flings it open with a creak.
“Vin! Vin I need your help!” She descends the steps two at a time, sinking into the darkness of the cellar. It’s a common thing for people to seek places in the ground when they are old. The coolness and darkness of going subterranean helps with the joints and also makes it easier to sleep. But she doesn’t have time for this. He can sleep when he’s…
His clothing and backpack sit alone in the center of the dirty floor, already collecting dust from the calcification process underway. Bex walks over to his possessions and stares for a long moment, afraid to take her eyes off them, knowing full well what she’ll see next.
She finds Vin in the corner—it’s Vin, the best she can tell, anyway. Contact with the ground this deep has accelerated the process, drawing the calcium from his body out into a shell as hard as rock. He lies on his side, legs pulled up to his chest, the chrysalis forming a thick coating that grows outward, fusing him to the ground. She drops herself to the floor, her mouth open in despair as she watches the slow, final process unfold, until there is nothing left but stone, until Vin resembles the very egg she tried so hard to protect. She reaches out and runs a finger down the surface of the shell, feeling every fine bump and dimple. In time, the outer layers will shed, falling away until the Rebirth, when all things emerge from the ground. But until then, whatever made Vin “Vin” is gone for now, might be gone forever.
It’s hard to say how long she sits like that, just resting a hand on the shell, thinking about the huge responsibility she’s been left with. It isn’t even until she hears the howl from up in the yard that she stands and races back up the stairs into the warm sunlight.
*
Kendal isn’t sure if it’s the sight of the little multi-eyed guy and his henchman, or the others that bother him more, but he sees them through a crack in the barn, hears them even further than that with their whistling bird songs that seem to carry forever. It’s a lynch mob from the old Frankenstein movies, except these are the monsters now, carrying pitchforks and long metal spears with claws, pincers, tentacles, feet. They march down the street towards the barn, and he begins to feel icy panic build in his heart.
“Hey!” he yells out to the door, hoping the little host is still within earshot. “Hey, you still there? I think we have a problem.”
Shit. Nothing. He can hear the crowd now, squawking and chirping like a tree of angry finches, all marching this way. It doesn’t require an in-depth understanding of the language to know they aren’t here to throw a birthday party.
“Hey. Hey you! Little salamander chimera thing!” But then, she only really responded to him when he tried to whistle that little tune she made. It wasn’t much, just a note or two, but he managed it, and she sure as hell spoke back. For all he knew he was calling her mother a cow, but it was a start. Baby steps, right?
It’s hard enough to whistle sometimes without the added pressure, but now, in this moment of panic, his lips just won’t work. Too dry. He licks them. Too wet. The muscles just don’t cooperate and Kendal feels hot air blowing between them as he tries to whistle a happy tune while a mob of angry monsters marches slowly towards him.
Fuck it. He puts two fingers in his mouth and blows. The sound is shrill, and even the mini-ox beside him perks his ears up at the sound, backing away and snorting. He scoots his ass toward the door, no longer willing to wait. Kicking against it, he feels it give, but only a little. Someone has barred it from the outside, and now he can hear the flock of angry birds grow even louder. He whistles again and is about to kick the door with the flat of his foot, when it swings open, blinding him momentarily.
“It’s about time. Jesus did you see the—”
But it’s not her, and not old Crusty either. Kendal stares into the small black eyes as it stares back, the right side of its body armed with twitching spears. It’s no use trying to whistle again, and Kendal doesn’t even think he can as it raises a sword the approximate size and shape of a kitchen knife, and opens its mouth to shriek.
Chapter 16
BEX IS already up and out of the cellar when she hears the second cry. It isn’t his name anymore, it’s just a longwinded scream that dies off and falls away. Then she hears the voices, a hundred of them, arguing and ranting. Footsteps approach with the sound of clacking spears. But it isn’t until she hears voices at the barn that Bex begins to really run.
Flinging the back door open, she spins to see Veerh, his bone sword unsheathed, as he pulls the bar from the barn door and grabs a handle.
“Stop!” she yells, running across the grounds at him. “What are you doing?”
“You have a lot of explaining to do, Tr-Bex,” he says, gripping the handle even tighter.
“Me?”
“Keeping a secret this dangerous from us? Are you mad?”
Bex can only gawk. “Dangerous? What are you even talking about? He just helped me rebuild half the clinic grounds. Scoop is harmless. He’s smart!”
“You not only keep it a secret from me that you are bringing a volatile situation into our presence, but then you release it from its cage?”
“I just put it in the barn for the night.”
“Save it for the trial,” Veerh spits. “You’ve obviously missed the decree sent down by the Ameer.”
“The Ameer? What does he have to do with any of this?”
“The courier came back with the message. It’s been posted on the town hall doors. These things are to be brought before the Ameer immediately and without question. But that seems to have slipped your mind when you were smuggling this into our town. You may have endangered lives by keeping this a secret.”
“Things? You mean there are more of them?”
Veerh only smiles at her. “Don’t play coy with me.” He swings the door wide, and Bex watches in slow motion as he turns, raises his sword—
And flies backwards with the force of a cannon, hitting the fence (the same fence Scoop helped her repair) and breaking it. A foot the size of a battering
ram appears in the dust in Veerh’s place, and Bex watches in cold terror as a second foot emerges, then a leg. Scoop slides out of the barn on his haunches, staring down at Veerh who lays unconscious against the broken fence. Blood trickles from beneath a bladed limb.
“I told you to stay in the barn,” she yells up at him. “What have you done?”
Scoop only mumbles something, then straightens to his full height, nearly three times hers. He looks around, then sees the incoming mob.
“Scoop, you need to run,” she says, running to stand in front of him. “Look, I was going to get Vin, he was going to vouch for you, but he’s already started his journey into the ground. There’s nothing I can do to stop them, Scoop, and I’m really worried they might kill you.”
But there’s simply no getting through his thick skull, and before she can say anymore, the townsfolk arrive. They flow onto the grounds, flooding the yard and filling the air with the stench of fear. It’s too late. Scoop stands, surrounded by blades and spikes, held in a thousand angry hands. He looks at her and lets out a long, defeated moan.
“Wait!” Bex yells out, running into the crowd and throwing her hand into the air. The townsfolk keep their distance so far, too scared to approach. They look at her with angry eyes.
Den’k stands at the front of the crowd, his goggles focusing on her from different angles, blinking at different intervals. “You let it out?” He seems horrified as they all stare up at Scoop. “How did you let it out?”