by Dyrk Ashton
Since Firstborn are fully aware of their own existence, they can usually see through the cloak of others with ease. Whether they wear real clothing, the illusion of clothing, or none at all, it matters not. Some are better at cloaking than others and can take all manner of forms, particularly the elders. Most, like Tanuki, always retain characteristics of their Trueface, just morphed to human understanding. Like all of them, however, Tanuki can easily appear as the species of his mother, as a lump of earth or stone if he lies still, even a shadow in dim light.
It is kind of sad that the watoto are so easily duped, but this simplistic perception of theirs is also the primary reason they’ve survived as a species. There are advantages to going though life with blinders on. If at any time throughout their existence they had full comprehension of how truly vulnerable they were, any real inkling of the odds against their survival, they may have just lain down to die. Thanks to their unlikely combination of qualities, however, being at once brilliant and ignorant, adaptable yet naïve, and most of all tenacious, they’ve now reached the highest rung of the evolutionary ladder. Well, almost.
Tanuki contemplates his reflection. He’s little more than 5’ 8” tall but more or less humanoid in shape. A bit on the chunky side, though he likes to tell Arges that it’s because of the fur. His arms and legs are as hairy as the rest of him, with short black claws on his stubby little fingers and toes. He has a wet black dog’s nose, deep brown eyes and sharp little canine teeth top and bottom, with fuzzy peaked ears high on his head. There are dark circles around his eyes, but they aren’t from fatigue. Tanuki may be young for a Firstborn, but all have endurance and constitutions far beyond that of any mtoto. He could carry his pack at the pace they’ve been keeping today for weeks on end, without food, drink or repose. He wouldn’t like it, but he could do it. No, he isn’t tired. He has circles around his eyes because he’s Tanuki. The Tanuki, in fact. The only one left. It’s just the color of the hair there. He gets it from his mother, a natural Tanuki, Nyctereutes procyonoides viverrinus, a canine species native to Japan that survives to this day. They’re also called “raccoon dogs” because of their surprising resemblance to the nimble-handed creatures, right down to their short pointy snouts, bushy tails, and black bandit masks.
Tanuki has all those traits, including the bushy tail, though he can’t see it in his reflection because it’s behind his butt where tails are supposed to be. He can see his big fuzzy balls, though. It’s difficult not to, considering the angle of the water below and the fact that they are pretty big. But they’re covered with short dense hair, the same color as the rest of his fur, so he doesn’t consider them obscene or even all that obvious.
He’s stirred from contemplation of his fuzzy nutsack by a high whistle, the sound of the Abbottess signaling the monks to prepare to move on. Tanuki ascends from the pond and stoops to his backpack. In a blink he’s cast in shadow and out of the corner of his eye he sees a dark patch flit across the sun’s reflection on the water. He jerks his head up and scans the sky, but there is nothing there. He looks back at the monks, who are busying themselves with a final tightening of straps on the wagons. There’s no indication they’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Just a wisp of cloud, or maybe a bird, he rationalizes. But there are no clouds, and it would’ve had to be a damn big bird. Must have been a jet. A very fast, high-flying jet.
Gullible as ever, he scolds himself. Still, he has a hard time shaking the inexplicable chill that’s come over him.
CHAPTER SIX
Flowers & Figs 2
Fiona Megan Patterson wakes. I’m supposed to remember something, is her first sleepy thought. Aren’t I? A dream, maybe? She knows she dreams, but she doesn’t remember many. That’s very common. She’s read about it.
Fi stretches under the covers, groans and looks out her bedroom window. The bright morning sunlight has turned the paisley design of her lace curtains into a soft white frieze.
Surprise of surprises, she’s woken up horny. Imagine that! It’s a curse, she swears, one she’s had to bear every day since puberty. The memory of last night floods back. Not only did she not finally have sex, she was totally humiliated as well. And had a seizure! Right in front of Zeke! She moans, mortified, pressing her forearm over her eyes. It’s not just the humiliation or the “relationship” problems, either. She hasn’t had an episode in ages. What if they’re back, for good? She decides to keep it to herself for now. Meanwhile, she’ll just have to live with the nagging fear that it could happen again, any place, any time. She remembers that feeling. It sucks.
She squirms, watching patterns of light and shadow from the window play across her colorful star-patterned quilt. Mrs. Mirskaya, her old babysitter and one-time employer, made it for her using patches of fabric and intricate needlework to craft Russian folk designs of swirling fairy tale birds, minarets and gray thrushes, colorful onion domed bird houses, matryoshka dolls, and pomegranates with blooms.
Her eyes roam over her little bedroom. It’s one of the smallest rooms in this enormous house, but Uncle Edgar let her pick any room she wanted when she moved in. She chose this one because it’s intimate and cozy. She loves its worn wood floor, the uneven horse-hair plaster and lathe walls and ceiling, and the window of wavy dimpled green glass set in an original wood frame with weights on cords that rumble in the walls when you open it. There’s just the one window, but it’s always been her portal to imagining what life might be like in the wide world outside Toledo. The collection of travel posters and cheap paintings tacked to the walls attest to her wandering spirit. London, Paris, Venice, Berlin, Prague, Norway, Greece, Egypt, India, Africa, and many more. Edgar has been to every one of these places. Fi’s been to none of them, but she’s promised herself she will. Some day. There’s also a poster of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out, which she just thinks is funny, and a graphic chart of human anatomy, a sign of her chosen area of study. Lame, she thinks. It’s all lame. She manages a self-deprecating smile. Just like me.
Her eye catches the only two pictures she has of her mother, standing in frames on her dresser opposite the foot of the bed. In one of the photos a smiling woman with shining red hair sits holding a silver flute, a publicity photo for the symphony. In the other, five year old Fi leans her head on her mom’s shoulder in the park, both of them grinning. Fi has no pictures of her father. She never knew him. He left before she was born and they’ve had no contact, not a single letter or even a card on birthdays. She used to fantasize he had a good reason for leaving, that he lived a secret life doing something really important, but now he’s just dead to her. As far as she knows he might really be dead, but she’s learned the less she thinks about him the better.
When Fi was seven her mother was killed in a plane crash on the way back from a concert in Vancouver. Fi was staying with Old Lady Muskrat. That’s what she calls Mrs. Mirskaya when she’s not around, much to her uncle’s chagrin, (but she does have a mustache and buck teeth). When the police and an airline representative showed up at the door with the news, Uncle Edgar was right behind them.
From what Fi understands, her mother met Edgar shortly after Fi was born. He had recently moved to Toledo from London, but some months before then he’d received a letter from Fi’s father, whom he claimed was his cousin, telling him about the new love of his life and their unborn child in America. Apparently Edgar had seemed quite saddened to hear that Fi’s father had abandoned them.
Fi’s mother had no living relatives, so the day after her death Edgar took Fi to Children’s Services to begin the custody process. The courts wanted proof they were related. DNA tests confirmed they were, and not too distantly. He also had paperwork that linked him to her father’s family. The courts were satisfied, she was given into his care and he took her into his home. This home. That was ten years ago. Edgar could have left the country, Fi reminds herself, just not shown up for her, or downright denied custody. But he didn’t.
She’s very fond of her unc
le, though he frustrates her at times, embarrasses her at others. Still, sometimes she feels bad that she doesn’t spend more time with him. Sometimes she feels like she doesn’t know him at all. He doesn’t talk about himself or his past. She doesn’t even know his favorite color. When he is in a talkative mood he just goes on about ancient history, the foibles of science and “jolly old England.” She feels bad when she gives him a hard time, too. It has to have been difficult for him. He never had any children of his own, then suddenly took it upon himself to take care of a sad little girl he hardly knew.
She was worse than just sad, though. After her mother’s death she turned into a brat. Hyperactive, bored at school, depressed, unable to concentrate. So she took it out on Edgar, and Mol. She acted out, talked back, threw snit fits. Not violent or vicious, she was just such a grouchy little turd.
She never had many friends, not close ones, anyway. The mean kids in grade school called her an orphan. Technically that’s true, but she told them they were stupid, that orphans have no family and she lived with her uncle. They’d laugh and call him “Uncle Hippie Mutton-chops.” When she played soccer (not very well) he’d pick her up from practice in his old beat-up Bentley. They’d call out, in bad English accents, “Oh Fee-oh-nah, it’s your but-lah, come to fetch you home!”
Her “episodes” didn’t help, either. It only happened once at school, in third grade, but that was enough. Most kids just stayed away. Others teased. She’d wet herself that time, too. It didn’t always happen, but often enough. For many of her old classmates she’ll always be remembered as “pee-pee Fi.”
Thank God it didn’t happen last night with Zeke! Which reminds her, she’s going to have to talk to him today. Definitely not looking forward to that.
She got terrible grades in middle school, detentions. Never dyed her hair pink, pierced her nose or got tattoos. But she thought about it. Her experimentation with cigarettes, pot and alcohol didn’t last long. Except for the occasional glass of wine she never liked it, no matter how cool it was. She just isn’t cool. That’s all there is to it.
She finally got her shit together a few years ago. Mostly a matter of focusing her OCD tendencies on school and staving off the ADD. She’s never been officially diagnosed, but she swears she’s both. She’s always dived into things intensely, whatever caught her fancy, whether it be fantasy books, drawing and painting, playing the flute or jigsaw puzzles, and would stay up all night for weeks on end, completely devoting herself to her flighty focus. Then she’d suddenly lose interest and something else would take its place. She can do schoolwork regularly now, she just considers it a job, never misses a class and way over-studies. She aced all her classes sophomore and junior year and actually got to graduate early. She’s always wondered, though, if the school just wanted to be rid of her.
Now she’s enrolled in pre-med in college. Straight A’s, so far. Edgar encouraged her to study whatever she wanted, said that he’d manage to scrape up the money and cover the rest with loans. But that’s the problem. She just doesn’t know what she wants to do. What do you want to be when you grow up, Fi? Huh?! Grow up? Hell, most of the time she doesn’t know what she wants at all, period! She thought about international business for awhile, then journalism, so she could travel, but settled on health care. For now. It is the practical thing to do. And honorable, her uncle says.
For all the trouble she’s caused him, Edgar has never grounded her or punished her in any way. He has never even given her a talking to about responsibility, mutual respect or common courtesy. In one of her more maudlin moments in her younger years, when feeling guilty about having a tantrum over not being allowed to have chocolate cake (in spite of the fact that they didn’t have any chocolate cake and she already had ice cream for dessert), she asked her uncle why he put up with her. He looked genuinely taken aback and said, “Why, this is what family does, dear.” Then he made her a chocolate cake.
As crazy as Edgar makes her sometimes, he’s the only father she’s ever known, and she truly believes he’s done the best he can. She’ll be grateful to him forever. She just has to learn how to show it.
Fi hears a soft tick tick and muffled hiss coming from the old radiator in the corner of the room. Edgar must have turned on the heat last night. Not because it’s all that chilly yet but to test the boiler before the real cold comes. He does the same thing about this time every year. Her uncle is nothing if not a creature of habit--Oh shit!
Speaking of habit, every Sunday morning since she first came to live with him, Edgar brings her breakfast in bed before going to church. At 8:00 AM, on the dot. And it’s Sunday morning. Over the years she’s tried everything she could think of to dissuade him from it, but it’s become a tradition, and her uncle is all about tradition.
She checks the clock. 7:59 AM. She needs to get some clothes on, right now. She tosses the covers back and hears Edgar coming up the stairs, whistling “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” his favorite song. Maybe the only song he knows. Well, that, “Amazing Grace,” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
He’ll knock, he always does. She leaps to her dresser, grabs a pair of boy short underwear from the overflowing, half-open drawer and tugs them on. She catches her own bright green eyes in the dresser mirror. “Irish eyes,” Edgar calls them. Her hair is somewhere between light auburn and soft copper in color and tumbles down over her pale shoulders. Even when in a ponytail or bun there are strands that escape across her brow and cut down the edge of her left eye, threatening to obscure her vision, so she pushes them back over her ear often, as she does now. She’s been asked a dozen times if she dyes her hair that particular shade, but it’s entirely natural. She gets it from her mom.
At 5’ 4” tall, Fi considers herself medium height. There have always been shorter girls in her classes and some much taller. “I don’t know what they’re feeding people these days,” Edgar has commented. “It’s a known fact that human beings have been consistently increasing in height as a species for a very long time--but today! You would have been considered an Amazon in my time, dear. I was thought to have quite an impressive stature in my younger days, now I am average height at best. My father was considered a veritable giant among men, and he was just six feet tall!”
Fi squints at her reflection. She doesn’t think she’s particularly attractive, not like her mother was, but she’s slim, athletically built (if not athletically inclined), and has high perky breasts--which she thinks are too small, and her round butt sticks out more than she’d like. Still, she thinks she looks okay. Not good enough for Zeke, obviously!
There’s a firm rap on the door and Edgar’s voice comes from the other side. “Miss Fiona? Breakfast!”
“One second!” She flings clothes from a pile on the floor until she finds a tank top that doesn’t look too dirty and pulls it on. She runs to the closet, throws a jacket off the door hook and snatches her bathrobe from underneath, slips into it and jumps back in bed.
“Come in!” she shouts, dragging the quilt over her legs.
Edgar opens the door and peers in to make sure it’s safe. Fi fears he’s never gotten over the time when she was 14 and feeling ornery and hid in nothing but underpants and bra to jump out in front of him as he headed up the hall to the bathroom. “Flabbergasted” is a good word to describe his reaction. He ran away faster than she’s ever seen him move. He never mentioned it afterward, but since then he’s been cautious when coming anywhere near this part of the house.
Assured that all is clear, he enters, wearing the only suit he owns, maybe has ever owned, a three piece navy blue pinstripe with a golden silk necktie, and carrying a silver tray with a plate under a dome cover. “Good morning, Miss Fi. Happy Sunday to you.”
“Good morning, Uncle Edgar.” Mol trots in and throws himself down with a loud thu-whump, hard enough to shake the room. “Good morning, Mol.” The big dog grunts, rolling onto his back and wriggling to scratch himself.
“And what are we busying ourselves with this morni
ng?” Edgar asks, eyeing the unfolded clothes on the bed, open dresser drawers, laundry on the floor, desk strewn with papers and open books. “Ah, tidying up, I see.”
“Funny, ha ha.”
“It’s your sanctuary dear, do with it what you will.” From the look on his face, however, the condition of her room is not what he’d prefer.
He steps up bedside, pulls a folding stand from under his arm and sets it up. On it he places the tray, which also contains a glass of orange juice, a steaming cup of coffee, a bowl of cut fruit and buttered English muffins--real ones, not the spongy American knock-offs--with a dollop of orange marmalade on the side. He lifts the lid and steam rolls out. “Voilà! Eggs Hussarde with heirloom tomatoes” (of course he says ‘toe-mah-toes,’ like a good Englishman should). “I even made that foul black substance you like to drink,” he adds. “What is the word for it?”
“C-o-f-f-e-e,” she plays along.
“Oh yes,” he grimaces.
Fi pulls the tray to her lap and digs in. At least she knows he won’t bring up the fact she missed dinner and came in late last night, and never will. He isn’t one to dwell on things. “What’s done is done,” she’s heard him say on more than a few occasions. Usually after she’s done something rotten or broken something.
“You know, Uncle,” she says, taking half an English muffin in one bite, “you really don’t have to do this anymore.”
“You don’t like the Hussarde? It’s the Marchand de Vin, isn’t it? Too much thyme?”
“It’s delicious, as always, thank you.” Whatever else Fi might say about her Uncle Edgar, he’s a damn good cook. More like a chef. “You know exactly what I mean. Breakfast in bed, every Sunday. I’ll be 18 in a month.”