by Nik Korpon
“Play bird sounds,” I tell the house, aiming to recreate the experience as much as I can.
Cawing seagulls come through the exterior speakers.
“Songbirds, you amadan, not seagulls.”
It switches and they sound more like tropical birds than the ones I’m used to – all those chattering bastards that used to wake up me and Henraek when we were growing up out in the country – but neither of the kids knows better.
They only get halfway through their food before Cobb takes Donael’s remote-controlled plane and flies it out of the yard, disappearing beyond the fence. Donael chases after the plane and Cobb chases after Donael.
I crack open a beer because, why not? It’s only one, and maybe it’ll relax my brain and help me come up with a solution to my most pressing problem: Greig. It’d be easiest if I could just kill him myself. But the old woman has taken a shine to him and would be pissed if he were dead. Better than killing him would be destroying him. The problem with that is, how?
Henraek is the other burr in my ass. Asking about Aífe isn’t going to do anything but break his heart. But once Belousz stops farting around and disappears Toman, it’ll both cut the number of amadans in Eitan down by one and save my friend a whole lot of heartache. One little lie is a small price to pay for not learning that the dead should be viewed through nostalgia, not fact.
Cobb creeps back into the yard. He looks in the bushes, under the patio table. Like he’s stalking something.
“What are you–”
He clicks quietly and puts a hand in front of his mouth.
Sorry, I mouth to him.
He checks behind and inside the water fountain in the middle of the yard, and I have no idea what the hell he’s looking for.
Above him, leaves rustle.
I clear my throat and nod to the tree, but before Cobb can look up, that monkey boy Donael unleashes a war-whoop and jumps off a branch to attack Cobb. But he misjudges the leap, one foot landing on a lawn sprinkler and flying out in front of him. His head cracks against the water fountain’s base.
I push myself out of the chair and lumber over to him, pulling him into me. He blinks out the stars and presses his hands against his eyes, willing away the tears. Cobb circles us, clicking like a maniac.
“It’s not your fault,” I say to Cobb. “You’re fine.”
I rub my hand over Donael’s head, checking that there’s no swelling or bleeding. For all the times I got hit on the head during the Struggle, most landed on my own flat spot, like it was dispersing the pressure. It got me to wondering if someone was messing with me.
Donael shakes my hand off him. “I’m OK.”
“Follow my finger,” I say to him, moving my pointer finger in patterns. His eyes seem to work fine, so I stand him up and brush the grass off his back. “Next time you try to kill Cobb, do it somewhere soft, hear?”
He doesn’t answer, instead taking off back beyond the fence again, Cobb chasing with stuttering legs.
Can’t say Donael’s resilience or hard dome surprises me. After all, he is my son.
One night during the Struggle, Aífe knocked on the door, looking for Henraek. He hadn’t been home for three days. I didn’t want her standing in the hallway all night while I raised the various meeting areas to track him down, so I invited her in. I figured it would give me a little time to sober up so I could enjoy getting drunk again.
When I came back into the room from making calls, she was sifting through the pictures of Liella strewn over my sofa. I gathered them up like I’d been caught with pornography.
“Does it make you feel better?” Aífe said.
I took a long belt from the rapidly emptying bottle then let out an even longer sigh. “They found Henraek. He’ll be home soon.”
She took the photos back from my hands, running her fingers over Liella’s cheek, her whole demeanor much calmer than her normal hurricane self. That was part of what worried me. “Does it help knowing she’s gone forever? Because you never have to lie there and stare at the ceiling and wonder.”
I handed her the bottle with some half-assed platitude of it’ll be different soon, then went to get another for myself. In the years after, it always amazed me that Henraek never noticed the physical similarities. Donael and I even have the same distinctive flat spot on the back of our heads. Maybe Henraek was too busy with the Struggle. Which would be ironic: the thing that brought Donael into the world also being the thing that kept him hidden.
When I returned from getting more booze, she’d traded tears for liquor and drained all my whiskey.
“I just want him back,” she said between sobs. “I want our lives to be normal again.”
“We never had normal lives. Not since before the Wars. That’s what we’re trying to fix.”
“Henraek and I were fine. We had each other. That was all we needed. And now?” She motioned around my apartment. “When he leaves, I never know if I’ll see him again. When he comes home, I never know how long he’s there. When he holds me, I never know if he’s thinking about me or fantasizing about bombing something.” She sniffed hard. “I just want to know.”
I gave her a hug, closed my eyes, and swam in the familiar smell of sweat and jasmine. Her hands clawed against my back, then she looked up at me and her breath rolled over my face, some kind of desperate need to be acknowledged, to not be alone, passing between us. And, for the ten minutes that stretched out to whatever plane my dead wife’s soul occupied, Aífe was Liella. I always thought she imagined me as Henraek.
Donael’s scream cuts through the air. My skin prickles. I sprint toward his voice. Only twenty feet and I’m already panting. Sweat drips into my eyes.
He tears around the fence and stops in the yard, turning to face whatever’s chasing him.
“Get over here,” I yell. “What’s wrong?”
He points into the neighbor’s yard. “He’s trying to put it on me.”
“What?” I slow my steps as I near him, trying to suck in air through my mouth and nose at the same time. “What on you?”
He points again, and I watch Cobb pivoting through the bright green grass holding the body of a foerge, an ash-colored bird of prey you usually only see in the mountains. Must have gotten lost to end up here.
“He’s chasing you with a dead bird?”
Donael nods vehemently.
“Drop the carcass. Picnic’s over,” I say. “We’re watching a movie.”
I shepherd them back into the house, holding Cobb in my arms so he won’t rub whatever germs live in dead birds all over himself, then wash his hands at the kitchen sink.
Donael has already reclaimed his position on the couch, picking up the bowl of popcorn he didn’t finish for breakfast. I turn on the TV and tell it to find something funny. Cobb climbs up next to Donael, head lolled on his brother’s shoulder and snoring before the movie can even upload.
I tell it to play, then sit beside them. Archrivals armed with dead birds one minute, then best friends with shoulder pillows the next. Such is the relationship between people, one could say.
And then it occurs to me. Cobb had a dead foerge. I need a dead Forgall.
15
Henraek
“An Amergin mob wouldn’t go near Clodhna,” my aching asshole – they might as well have taken a crap on the front step.
I spent hours canvassing the streets of Macha looking for Toman’s new store, not finding it until long past dark, at which point it was closed. The buildings’ bright façades glimmered in the night, a stark contrast to the darkness that envelops Findchoem and Amergin. When I arrived home, the lights were off, Emeríann breathing heavy with the hint of a snore. I couldn’t sleep because of the adrenaline, so I fidgeted and exhaled and stewed, replaying the memory of Aífe’s death until it was flash-burned into the back of my skull.
I dressed and left for Macha before Emeríann had even woken, then spent ten minutes wandering around Toman’s store. Observing, surveilling—taunting, maybe. I lift
ed a piece of bread when he was flirting with one of the mothers perusing the aisles, then paid for a drink to see if he’d notice. Even when staring right into my eyes, he showed no hint of recognition. The encapsulation of everything the Tathadann hated, the face that stared out from countless wanted posters and bulletins and bounty sheets, the man whose wife he murdered. Yet nothing fired in the reptilian part of Toman’s brain, the part that binds us together by blood. The events that ruined my life did not even register with him.
So now, in the late afternoon, I’ve been watching the store all day, biding my time so I can have Toman alone. I sit on a wobbly stool in a deliberately broken-down cantina across the street – to give the people of Macha the thrill of slumming it without any of the danger – sipping at my bourbon and picking at the pilfered bread.
Even with a pair of halting pneumatic legs ferrying him around, Toman still handles fruit the way an archeologist might a fossilized wing. He has emphatic conversations with customers, uses firm yet reserved gesticulations probably meant to convey some type of authority in the arena of produce. The floor is almost immaculate, black and white checkerboard tiles contrasting with the ornate wooden moulding along the ceiling. The antique scale is completely functional – though also completely superfluous because of the mass scanner sitting at the checkout – and probably light to the customer’s advantage, all of it creating a wash of nostalgia for simpler times, which no doubt helps customers spend more money. He has transitioned nicely from the man who set Amergin on fire and shot my wife in the face to that nice grocer on the corner. Macha is not the type of neighborhood where children stand on garbage piles and shout that they are Queen of the Struggle.
Jars of water line the top shelf behind the cantina’s bar. Various glyphs indicate the depth from which it came, indicative of the quality and mineral content. Both are far better than what’s at Johnstone’s, which is to be expected in this neighborhood even though this seems to be a laborers’ bar. It’s telling that even workers here drink the good stuff.
A few stools down, two men whisper, clock me with sidelong glances then confer again before moving one stool closer. One man has a prosthetic copper jaw and the other is missing his hand. A bottle of water sits between them. I consider ordering a glass of Whistling Pigs.
Sixteen years ago at the Parkhead, Walleus and I ordered two glasses of fancy bourbon for a last taste of something nice before devoting ourselves to the Struggle. Walleus chose the one with the pigs in top hats because he liked the label. We toasted to the future, remembering that it was only with each other that we were able to get this far – to not starve or be disappeared by the resource companies in Westhell County, or get robbed or find ourselves on the wrong end of a knife once we’d escaped to Eitan City – and that we were only as good as the other.
Aífe could be stubborn as a dead mule – a willful woman, she used to call herself – but she always had a good heart. She was the anchor that kept me from spinning off into some insane orbit, and blackmail would be too underhanded for her. Dominance, not coercion, was her style, a game we both loved to play, trying to outlast the other. Which Walleus knows. Which is why I don’t buy that she was trying to blackmail anyone.
He knows more than he’s letting on, but I don’t know what that is. He’s protecting someone. My money is on whoever is keeping his position in the Tathadann safe.
The men shift one stool closer.
I’d never admit it to Walleus, but part of the reason I smacked him so hard when he told us he was leaving our obviously failing revolution was that, owing to our promise, he was lowering me to his level and marring the reputation I’d worked hard to build. Another part was because he had the foresight to make the move and I didn’t. Mostly, though, it was because my best friend was abandoning me.
The men assume the stools beside me. I toss back my drink, ready to break the glass and swing when the one next to me with the jaw says, “You’re him, aren’t you?”
I keep the glass ready. “Nah. Wrong guy.”
“Yeah,” he says, the jaw hitching slightly when he speaks, making his words bounce off his tongue. “I know exactly who you are.” He extends his hand. “Mister, you need to drink with us. Be an honor.”
I set my glass down and shake. “That’s very kind of you.”
They wave to the bartender for another glass, pour me water from their bottle.
“I seen all those things you done a couple years ago. Goddamn, I told my wife then, if there’s anyone we need right now, it’s more men like you.”
Shrugging it away, I say, “I was doing what any man would’ve done if called on.” I take a long drink of the water and my hair stands on end, long dormant taste buds perking up, synapses lighting up in parts of my brain I haven’t used for years. “I was only as good as the men around me.”
“Including the rats?” One-hand says.
I take another long drink, unwilling to let him ruin this sensory experience. Even if Walleus was a rat, this man didn’t fight next to him for years and hadn’t earned the right to insult him. “If you’re referring to Protectorate Blaí, we all have our own path.”
“That son of a bitch,” the Jaw says. I notice patches of oxidation where his chin should be, almost like a goatee. “Rat bastard traitor.”
“He’s human like the rest of us.”
“Yeah,” says One-hand, “but he don’t let you blow up that electricity barn–”
“No, it was one of them transportation buildings,” the Jaw says. “You always tell it wrong.”
“Anyway, you don’t blow it up, none of those other people get killed in all them other firefights.”
“Excuse me?” I set down the water glass.
The Jaw says, “That football match, those apartment buildings, that kids’ center–”
“That was a community gathering point,” I say.
They both shrug. “Not what we heard,” the Jaw says. “But that ain’t the point. Without your brains–”
“Sorry,” I say, looking around him to One-hand. “What exactly are you trying to insinuate?”
He sips at his water. “Heard that man turned Tathadann before y’all went in. Told all the men inside to high-tail and if they don’t make it, don’t give no fuss. Lay down arms and go quiet, they weren’t being killed.”
“Who told you that?”
The two look at each other. “Everyone,” they both say. The Jaw adds, “Heard someone say he was the one said it.”
“It was a power substation – not a barn or a transportation building – that supplied electricity to half of the governmental communications centers that, once downed, allowed us to make the strategic strikes your friend enjoyed so much while limiting the impact on non-Tathadann-affiliated civilians, achieved through meticulous planning and the valor of some good men.”
They both lean away from me. One-hand puts up his one hand. “It’s cool, paírtí. Ain’t no big deal either way. I saw pictures and that place blew sky high, so however you did it is cool, OK?”
“You need to learn your real history and stop listening to them.” I look away so I won’t punch this mouthbreather, and see Toman closing up the market. I pick up the glass of water and pour it on the floor beside him. “You talk to this ‘everyone,’ and you tell them I kneel before no one.”
I grab a newspaper from the rack by the door before leaving, see an archival photo of Macuil Morrigan on the front page used to announce the statue dedication a week from tomorrow, then throw it on the ground.
Outside, Toman shakes hands good evening with the greasy-handed cabbie tinkering on the engine of his vintage car. I’ve never seen one like that in real life, only photos. I suppose people over here can afford to piss away their earnings. A plume of smoke bursts from the car. He passes by me, still with nary a flicker of recognition. The pneumatics of his legs hiss, stopping and starting intermittently. I follow, pretending to read a wrinkled Tathadann bulletin. One of the rods on his legs begins to pump too fast, incre
asing his pace and throwing him off balance. He hurries across the mouth of the alley, arms flailing as he swerves, trying to stay upright. I hide behind a morbidly obese woman wobbling on an ivory leg adorned with some type of filigree then duck past her to a group of teenagers with backpacks. He bangs at his leg, now at a near gallop, trying to adjust the pressure.
Then an explosion rips through the air. I drop and cover my face by instinct. Behind me, I can hear the patter of concrete and wood raining on the sidewalk. Screams fight each other to be the loudest, the most violent, this neighborhood unaccustomed to bombings. A mother shelters her children with a housecoat held over them, hurrying away from the blast. A teenage boy scoops a fallen man off the sidewalk before the alley, winging the man’s arm over his shoulder as they hobble away. More people rush toward the sound, stepping over debris and coughing against the cloud of dust.
Through the chaos, I catch a glimpse of Toman hurrying away, back to his house. Where he’ll be alone with a head full of memories that will explain why he shot Aífe and maybe what happened to Donael.
Six blocks down, I find him going into a building. Sandstone façade, recently bleached to an ivory shade of bone and coated with lacquer so as to look similar to Donnculan, the Tathadann neighborhood Walleus lives in, all the houses immaculate and white. I wait for a moment to put some space between us.
Despite the impenetrable fortress the building looks to be, there’s no porter and the door doesn’t fully close. I slip through the lobby to a brass elevator without a glance. A browning palm fern sits in a tarnished planter, a water feature wrapping around the planter but without any water running. The exterior might look spectacular, but the rest of this building is several pegs below the housing in Walleus’s neighborhood, which is an appropriate metaphor for the party itself. The Tathadann has a curious way of showing Toman their appreciation for donating his body to the cause. Still, the people here likely have consistent hot water and don’t have to time their blackouts.
My forearms tingle with anticipation.