PATCHER

by Martin Kee

  Jess sits across from him, her face her own, and yet not: a collage of body parts that vaguely resemble Jess. Her eyes are shiny and black, the eyes of some subterranean creature. Nose and lips seem to be suggestions, a snout of shaped plates mounted on shoulders of jagged bone. Limbs armed with scythes and swords extend from her back and sides. She places coral-covered hands on the table, and leans forward. Her voice is a strange warbling birdsong barely comprehensible. The mouth moves, a complex amalgam of insect mandibles, reptile jaw, and deep sea teeth, a maw from nightmares.

  “Little time. Patch coming loose. I ask. You answer,” Jess says to him.

  Kendal looks at the empty café. Clouds swirl outside the windows. “We haven’t eaten yet.”

  “No time for food/Time for answers/Time is limited/Time runs out.” The sentences overlap, double meanings and multi-layers. Kendal feels as if one word could have fifteen definitions.

  Context. It’s all context. “What happened? How are you here?” he asks.

  “I ask. You answer.”

  Kendal shakes his head. “No. I ask. You ask. We answer each other.”

  The Jess thing blinks, taken aback, then nods.

  “This body dying/Floating in Godcloud of mind. You and I. We see the same.”

  “Am I dying too?” Kendal asks.

  The Jess-thing makes a choking sound that he feels is laughter. “No. Bex made deal. You will not die/Not yet.”

  “Bex?”

  “Your Tender. She follows you/She claims you as Ward/You are hers to care for.”

  “Bex?” He hears the name in his head. Even with his mind catching both translations, both meanings, it still sounds like warbling birdsong. “Who are you?”

  “I am Veerh.” A screeching, falcon call with overtones he can’t even comprehend. “I am the Preserver who wears your patch.”

  “Patch?”

  “Enough!” Veerh barks. “Now you answer. I ask.”

  “Okay.” It’s hard to look at the defiled face of Jess. The collage shifts, resembling something more like an armadillo with hands. She leans back into the booth, frozen for a moment.

  “Apologize. Language here is emotion/No meaning/No context.” Jess clears her throat. “What is Flier? Up on WorldHorn?”

  “The ship?” Kendal asks. “That’s what is left of the ship.”

  “Ship. From across Bone Sea?”

  “Not a ship for the sea. Not a ship for floating on water.”

  “Where then?” Small black pebble eyes bore into him. A long, white, machete blade sprouts from between Jess’s eyes.

  “From space.”

  “Space?”

  Kendal nods. “Yes, from up above the sky, above the clouds.”

  “There is nothing above the Godcloud/Only death and deconstruction. You lie.” The creature’s eyes burn at him with cold black light.

  “I’m not lying,” Kendal replies. “That’s what it is.”

  “How?” The creature shifts on the booth bench. Outside the window sand dunes shift and refocus behind the glass.

  “It’s…” Kendal shrugs. “I don’t know how it works. I didn’t build it. Plasma drives, I guess. There’s a reactor that generates power. Also has a hyperdrive when it needs it.”

  “You did not build. You are not—” It makes a shrill, unintelligible word from clicks and song. “—the Sky Climber. You did not grow it?”

  “It’s not grown. It’s built. The same way you put arms on yourself, the way you take parts of one animal and stitch them to another. That’s how we make it.”

  “What Donors?” The word rattles in Kendal’s brain, mixed-metaphors and colors. Words beyond language, yet the definition seems to hang just beyond a mist of vague meaning.

  Kendal shakes his head. “No. No Donors. It was made. Built.”

  “All things are made. What made from?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “Donors?”

  “Nothing living.” Kendal shakes his head. The language between them feels barely tangible.

  “All things are living.”

  “Not everything,” Kendal says. “Rocks aren’t living.”

  “Even rocks were living at one time. All things get a chance at life.”

  “Well, then, rocks were the Donors.” Kendal feels the sand move around him, feels the world shift. He is being lifted onto something, a litter or a gurney. But he can’t move his limbs. “This isn’t a dream, is it?”

  “I am dreaming/I am the Dreamer,” says the Jess-thing.

  “My turn to ask,” Kendal replies.

  “Ask. Time is short.”

  “I’ve seen you and—and Bex. I’ve seen you talking to one another. Something has happened in the village? Can we go back?”

  “No going back. Murder happened. People blame you. Say you burned/ate one. Young child. Very bad/Village angry. This was you?”

  “No,” Kendal says.

  “It was the other?”

  A sinking feeling washes over him. “You know about Chaz?”

  “What is a Chaz?”

  “The other one. He’s older than me. He was on the ship.”

  “This one kills me.”

  “What?” Kendal wants to open his eyes from this nightmare.

  “Thunder from Horn/Spire. Veerh flies, finds him. Veerh lies in defeat.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  The Jess-thing waves this question away. “Little time. My turn.”

  “Ask away,” Kendal says.

  “Where does… ship sail from?” the Jess-thing asks. Her right arm peels away in a cloud of smoke, revealing burnt fiber and bone. Blisters bloom and pop with white pus.

  Kendal points up at the swirling clouds. “It sails from beyond this sky.”

  “Unacceptable.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Nothing beyond the Godcloud. Only death.”

  “How do you know?” Kendal asks. “Have people even tried?”

  “Some tried. In fairytales/stories. They ceased to be.”

  “You mean they died?”

  “They ceased to be.”

  “But I came from above the—the Godcloud.”

  “Unacceptable.”

  “Look,” Kendal says, feeling a little annoyed. “I should know. I am from there. Just saying you don’t accept something doesn’t make it true or not. There are worlds above the Godcloud, beyond space. Planets like this one.”

  “Impossible place. That ship is your world.”

  “No. That’s not a planet.”

  “What is a planet?”

  “This—this world you live on. It’s called a planet. It’s a solid ball of rock. I come from another solid ball of rock, orbiting another sun.”

  “What is a sun?”

  “It’s a star,” Kendal says.

  “Stars over Bone Sea. They are points of light. Too small.”

  “They are only small because they are so far away.”

  “Impossible.”

  It’s like talking to a stubborn five-year-old, or describing space to a deep sea creature. How do you explain stars when they can’t even see beyond the clouds?

  “Not much time. Who is Other?”

  “You mean Chaz?”

  “Yes. Chaz. The Chaz kills me. He pins me like the flier/building speared at the end of the horn/spire. He burns my body. My time is limited/over/past.” The Jess-thing’s arm falls away, revealing exposed meat. The meaning comes across loud and clear.

  “You’re dying?”

  “Yes. Bex dying too. Soon we all die.”

  “Wait!” Kendal feels himself struggling his arms pinned, something rests on top of him, some invisible force. “Bex is dying too?”

  “He finds weapons/gun/shooter. He toys/plays with her like a—” A squealing gurgling noise. “—in a trap. Soon we all die. Now I ask: He killed the child? The Chaz? Not you? You tell me truth.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Kendal says. He feels his skin prickle. “Where are you? Where is Chaz?”r />
  Smoke and burning hair and meat fills the café, filling his nostrils and throat. Kendal chokes, lungs burning. The Jess-thing opens its mouth in a grotesque parody of a smile. “Too late.”

  His eyes fly open and Kendal feels his head coming apart. He can’t hear out of one ear, just ringing. Something slick and warm drips down his neck and he shudders. Something soft and moist presses to his skin, a disgusting stench of rotting vegetation. He recoils, twisting his head around, looking into the eyes of the ox-thing. It snorts.

  “Where is she?” he asks, panicked. He’s shivering.

  A small hand forces him back down into the mat where he’s been placed. He looks up into a nightmare face, covered in piercings of bone and teeth. A human ear hangs around the creature’s throat on a cord. Kendal knows that face, the face of a hunter who had once pursued him into the woods. The creature is a hunter, a killer.

  “You!” he sits up again. “Where is she?”

  The poacher chirps something unintelligible and at the same time familiar. Kendal studies the other faces watching him, all of them curious, scared. All of them strangers.

  “Where is she?” he yells. “She’s in trouble! Chaz is gonna kill her!”

  The poacher chirps again and tries to make him lie down but he brushes the creature’s arm aside. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

  Other hands start to pull him down as people try to tend to the wounded. On the other side of the camp, the spire lies on its side, facing away from them all.

  The spire. Right. And the explosives. But she was with him. He carried her to safety.

  “Where is…” Kendal scrunches up his face, trying to say her name. The poacher watches him curiously as he tries to force the foreign words from his mouth. “Bex.”

  The poacher’s eyes go wide, almost frightened. It chirps something more and Kendal shouts.

  “Yes! Bex… or whatever. Bex. Right! She needs help.”

  More chirping. The poacher doesn’t move.

  Kendal turns to the ox-thing and kneels down. “Take me to Bex.”

  A chorus of angry birdsong follows him as he starts to run. He doesn’t care. As long as they don’t stop him, they can follow. His breath grows weak, his head throbbing, and he wonders if there’s a spare breather still in the cave. Or maybe it was with Chaz. He can’t remember, and even if he could, there’s no time.

  *

  For a gun that doesn’t make any sound, the thing sure hurts a lot.

  Bex crouches behind an upturned table, partially shielding her from the weapon’s intense heat. Without the dust everywhere, it’s almost impossible to tell where it’s going to burn next. She figures if he can see her, she’s dead, so she curls up as tight as she can, waiting.

  She looks down at her left leg, a charred stump of bone and gristle below the knee. Her foot lies halfway across the room; it had fallen off after the first burst. The smell of her own flesh burning makes her stomach do backflips.

  The giant taunts her, voice shrill, even though it knows she can’t understand.

  But as long as it’s after me is won’t finish off Veerh. She figures she can give up a couple more limbs to keep him alive for as long as it takes. She’ll crawl on one hand if she has to.

  You know that’s a stupid idea, right? The ghost girl sits nearby, watching her. He’s eventually going to just give up on you, kill Veerh, then light this whole place on fire with you in it. That or he’ll tear the room apart just to get at you. And then he’ll do to you what he did to me.

  She tries to push the girl’s voice away, tries to silence it, but she can’t. There’s nowhere else to run. Just her, a monster with a gun, and a ghost. She chokes on the smoking air, and turns to the girl.

  I’m sorry it happened to you. You didn’t deserve this. I should have offered you an apprenticeship right there, but I didn’t. And you know why?

  Why?

  Because I didn’t want to. That’s all. There was no logic behind it. I was selfish. I wanted to be the only Tender. I liked being the only one, not some nameless face in a crowd. The town hated me and you know what?

  What?

  I didn’t even care. They noticed me. They knew I was special. And most of all, they knew they needed me, even if they hated it. I did it because it made me feel special to be the one who could heal them, the one they crawled to and asked for help. I saw the looks in their eyes every time, and instead of spitting in their faces, I fixed them. I fixed them whether they wanted me to or not. I fixed them while they hated me, and it made me feel good.

  Bex shuts her eyes and waits for the end. Soon, the giant will tear through the wall, finish the job. It’s all right, she tells herself. She did all right. But the longer she waits with her eyes closed, the longer the silence draws out. When she opens her eyes, she’s met by nothing but cold metal wall now. No ghost. No noise. The giant has fallen silent. In fact, she can’t hear much of anything, just distant voices.

  “Bex?” someone calls.

  She inches painfully around the corner of the table. The opening to the shaft gapes at her, but there’s no sign of the gun barrel now.

  “Who’s there?” she calls.

  Somewhere in the echoing chambers, she hears something else, a familiar snuffling, hooves, then a snort.

  “Bindo?” she calls out.

  The beast lows from somewhere inside the building. Voices fade in, echoing through the hard walls: people praying, singing hymns.

  “Bex?” A head appears—black eyes, a dangling necklace, bone jewelry. Ak’klin. “It’s safe.”

  “What happened?”

  His face is grim. “Veerh is asking for you.”

  “I’m hurt.”

  He nods, then climbs through to meet her, wincing as he sees her leg.

  “It will be fine,” she says. “How is Veerh?”

  He says nothing as he helps her through the opening into the main chamber. They emerge together into a sea of bodies. People stand along the walls, staring at the structure around them. Scoop towers over them, arms outstretched as they touch the fabric of his clothes, poke and prod him. The second giant lies flat on its back, eyes closed. Ropes bind its ankles and arms as the two guards prepare it to be dragged from the building.

  “You got your giant,” Bex says to the Poacher as she leans on him.

  “So it would seem.”

  “Will he be harmed?”

  The Poacher shrugs. “That is not my concern. I doubt very much he will be killed. Though, I am curious: Would you really feel that badly if he were?”

  She has to think about it. If she had run into that giant first, instead of Scoop, might things be the opposite of how they are now?

  Nearby pilgrims notice her injured leg, rushing over help her. Scoop sees her and smiles his hideous smile. He calls out his own name: “Scoop!” and wades across the crowd to her. Seeing her leg, he cries out something, pointing at her charred stump as if he wants to help but doesn’t know how.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”

  But as Ak’klin ushers her across the room toward another broken shape lying on the floor, she’s not so sure anymore. Veerh is still, his breathing shallow as she kneels beside him, the pain in her leg momentarily forgotten as she places a hand on his chitinous chest. A hand’s breadth away, metal juts from a wound. Veerh’s eyes flutter open, one of them red and swollen. The other rolls to look at her, the socket crushed. Much of Veerh’s body has been reduced to a charred husk, and Bex suspects he giant had taken out his frustrations on Veerh rather than her.

  “Got his attention,” Veerh rasps. “Was going to start a fire… just to get you. Got his attention though.”

  She can’t help the tears rolling down her cheeks, only vaguely aware of the people around her, of Scoop and Bindo nearby.

  “Why does every friend I make have to die?” she asks him.

  His eye goes wide. “You think death doesn’t come to friends? I’ve known too many friends to count. All gone now. They live
d on in me. They lived on in others—” He looks down at her leg. “They should live on in you as well.”

  “What—”

  Veerh unfurls a scythelike arm and brings it down on his own leg. The limb falls free. An alarmingly small amount of blood flows from the wound.

  “I believe that will make a good fit… sorry there’s nothing to measure.”

  A pilgrim takes the leg and wraps it—perhaps expecting her to patch it to herself. Bex doesn’t care.

  “We can still get you to the city,” she says, but Veerh shakes his head.

  “No. Too late. Whatever was in Scoop… isn’t good for me. Perhaps the knowledge is poison. Who knows?” He coughs, pulls her closer with a sub-arm. “But listen. He is special, pure like you. He is from… beyond the Godcloud, maybe even a god. All I know is this—was once a great ship. Not a house or a building, but a ship. Where he comes from… more like him.”

  “A ship?” Bex looks around her at the blackened walls and strange shapes. “We’re miles from any sea.”

  “Not a sea ship. The legend is true, Bex. The children’s stories. Pequesmattl. Or maybe one of his descendants.”

  She shakes her head. “That can’t be. It’s not possible.”

  Veerh swallows. “Ask yourself. How big do you think our world really is? How much more is there to know? That giant of yours: unlock his words. He knows more than you think.”

  She runs her hands along his shell, wet tears falling in dark spots along the armor. “You can’t leave me,” she cries. “You can’t leave me alone.”

  “You aren’t,” he says, his voice faint. “Part of me goes with you. Scoop goes…”

  Bex waits for him to finish the thought, but realizes he has fallen still. His eye stares past her, half open. She scrambles at first, trying to find a way to fix him, patch him. She’ll take some of her own flesh and fill in the terrible holes in his body—she’ll grab a kit from one of the pilgrims and stitch him up. But she can see the creeping crust along his wounds, the inevitable calcification that comes only with death. His body has given up.

  For a long time she lies across his broad chest, crying, until a hand pulls her gently away. Scoop looks down at her. He points to the wrapped package being held by one of the pilgrims.