The Sky Is Yours

by Chandler Klang Smith

  A dwindled fortune, and our fears.

  I know it isn’t very pretty

  But it’ll be all yours for years.

  You have every right to curse us

  But give two dodderers a break.

  Put down this silly book of verses

  And enjoy life, for our sake.

  Swanny closes Power Suit and stares at the cover. In lieu of blurbs or a book description, her father’s portrait takes up the entire back of the jacket: a gesture of humility on his part, no doubt, since he wasn’t a handsome man. He has a beard but no mustache, giving him a vaguely Hutterite aspect, and a smile that, in keeping with the tone of his last poem, is more apologetic than knowing. But it’s his eyes that hold Swanny’s attention. Looking into those eyes is like looking into the past.

  When was the moment she can see now in her mind? Was she lying in her crib, reaching up toward the mobile of educational creatures who circled above endlessly in her miniature sky? Propped up in a high chair, gnawing a stub of carrot as she cut the first of her many, many teeth? Stubbornly crawling in the direction of the nearest poison cabinet, the impulse toward self-destruction unnamed but squirming in the heart of her even then? Whatever the context, the memory is there: her father, looking down on her with those exact eyes, his expression one of sympathy, guilt, even pain, as he watched her futile struggle, as he saw stretch before her a lifetime full of the same wasted exertion, and worse. He only hoped she’d have a little fun along the way.

  And, never far, there was always Pippi—Pippi, to whom no struggle was futile, no exertion wasted, Pippi, whose belief in her daughter was so harsh and relentless it came across as an accusation: “Make an effort. You’re doing this to infuriate me. If you’d only pay attention. Don’t slouch. You’re not listening. Show your work. Faster. I don’t care if it takes you all night. ‘Good enough’ is not good enough. Concentrate. Stop working beneath your abilities. Don’t disappoint me.” You are my daughter. You will never die. Pippi had felt no guilt about bringing a child into a ruined world. She’d made it her business to assure herself Swanny could survive it—could perhaps even conquer it. Such strange, flawed, irreplaceable parents. Gone forever.

  Now Swanny is disappointing them both.

  Swanny has forgotten that she’s in the public library; her thoughts have transported her home to the velvet fainting couch beneath her family’s bookshelves, amid the desolate grandeur of Wonland County. Only now, when a haggard crone—a Librarian—touches her shoulder does she startle back. Swanny stares up at her uncomprehendingly. This Librarian is the Grayest of the Gray Ladies. Ash seems to line the creases of her face.

  “I’m sorry,” the Librarian whispers, “but you’re distracting the other patrons.”

  “Why? Did I make a sound?” Swanny’s voice is a croak.

  “You were crying rather loudly, yes. But the trouble is, you’re much too young to be here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re distracting the other patrons,” the Librarian repeats, not unkindly.

  “You don’t understand,” says Swanny, hanging her head, eyes fixed on the book in her hands. “I’m dying too—I just found out yesterday—and I don’t know what to do. I haven’t the faintest idea where to start.”

  And then that voice: a sound as sharp and familiar as vodka cracking ice. “Not yet, darling. Give it a few years.”

  Swanny’s head snaps up. “What did you just say?”

  The Librarian blinks, her glasses magnifying her rheumy eyes, and raises a finger to her lips. “Shhh.”

  Swanny leaves the library in a daze. She feels the eyes of the Librarians on her as she passes through the stacks and between the long rows of tables. The iron doors don’t want to budge. It takes all of Swanny’s strength to pull them open. She does it with a sudden desperation she no longer knew she had. The library is a mausoleum, and she’s offended the ghosts. She feels sick and small. Her father’s slim volume, jammed in the pocket of her coat, is her grave robber’s prize, a relic, the tiniest finger bone of a buried giant. How could she have thought her death would be significant, special, noble even? Dying counts for nothing at all; absolutely anyone is capable of it. The doors give and she bursts out into the sunlight.

  “I don’t care what it costs, send somebody,” Ripple is telling his LookyGlass. “Do you seriously not know who I am?”

  “I suppose no one cares that I’ve just communed with the dead,” says Swanny. “Good lord, Abigail, what are you eating?”

  Abby looks at the tiny drumstick of roasted meat she’s munching. “Chicken?”

  “Chicken,” the bird lady affirms, in a tone that leaves no room for argument.

  Hooligan runs up, noses at Swanny’s crotch. Swanny swats him with Power Suit.

  “I need a private detective,” she announces. “Also, a pistol, a shooting instructor, and a good attorney. I intend to avenge my mother’s death.”

  Ripple covers the LookyGlass microphone with one finger. “Avenge her death? Seriously? Swanny, if those torchies got away, you don’t want to go after them. They learn to chainsaw before they can walk. You were lucky to make it out of there alive.”

  “I’m well aware of the dangers, but I don’t see what choice I have. It’s my destiny, my redemption, the one mark I’ll leave upon this uncaring Earth.”

  “What are you going to do? Wander around the sewers till you bump into them? Go to Torchtown?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh, no offense, but you wouldn’t last five minutes down there. Those pros would eat you alive. You should leave this to the actual authorities.” He returns his attention to the LookyGlass.

  “As effective as your method may be—” Swanny hazards.

  “Fuck! He put me on hold.”

  “I feel mine is more direct.”

  Ripple shrugs. “OK, so you’re going on a rampageathon. I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

  “You’re contractually obligated to support and encourage my Personal Enrichment Endeavors.” Then, softer, almost tenderly petulant: “You have to help me.”

  “Fem, I don’t have to do anything. I’ve got my own family to think about. And I already promised Abby I’d help her find her parents. She has no clue who she is.”

  “Yes I do,” says Abby quietly, ruffling the purplish feathers on Stumpy’s throat.

  The bird lady takes Abby by the hand. “Dearie, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I didn’t know who I was until one morning I woke up, boobs a-droop, kitty-cats burnt to a crisp, and a little birdie told me, ‘We’ve been singing your name all this time. How come it’s only now you listen?’ ”

  “What is your name?” asks Abby.

  The old woman makes a guttural sound, half coo, half whistled trill. Abby repeats it back, raising the pitch at the end as if she’s asking a question. Hooligan cocks his head.

  “You’re my husband,” says Swanny, “you can’t simply—”

  “Husband schmusband. I’ve got to keep my priorities straight. Maybe we’re married, but Abby’s the one who’s gonna give me a whole litter of Dunklings. Pop ’em out like bam, bam, bam. She’s probably got the nine-month chunk already. Her tits seem bigger all the time.”

  Abby peeks down inside her sweatshirt.

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You’re absolutely disgusting,” Swanny tells him.

  Ripple is distracted again by his LookyGlass. “Hey, you must be that other guy’s supervisor. Are you punishing him for how he just talked to me?”

  This time, the LookyChat image is even grainier, an abstraction of outsized pixels and a voice that’s all gravelly distortion.

  “My officer informs me that you’ve threatened to bring charges against the police department.”

  “Fuck yeah, you insult my family and I come at you with fire.”

  Fire. As if on cue, the street darkens. A smell like sulfur fills the air. Ripple looks up.

  From below, the dragon does not resemble a living thing.
It is an oppression, a ceiling on the world. It booms terror the way a speeding HowFly booms sound. Hooligan covers his eyes and peeks out between his fingers; Abby clings to the bird lady; Ripple trembles. Only Swanny is motionless, transfixed.

  The creature is so endless, it takes a full minute to pass. The humans gaze up at the underside of its jaw, a vast spiny ridge; the undulating belly, algae-green scales fractaled out exponentially, some still barnacled with strange, otherworldly growths; the claws, the cruel, curving claws like pitiless carnivore tusks. This body is not the body of a single “I”; a lone personality would echo forever through such a yawning chamber of air and fire. So when it roars, the dragon is a cacophony in which every tone denies the others, every tone asserts itself and itself alone. The noise assimilates the teenagers, their voices, the thrum of their minds. They vanish into its smog.

  When the fire pours down on the library, it is relentless—as though gravity has finally pulled the sun itself under its sway. The heat is volcanic.

  “My God,” Swanny yells over the popping and crackling of the flames dancing on the building’s roof, “I was just inside!”

  “New emergency!” Ripple screams into the LookyGlass. “This fucking dragon just torched the library!”

  “We’re dispatching someone now.” The digitized face of the police commissioner shifts into a smear of flesh and shadow as he presses a button screen right. “He’ll be there shortly.”

  “Didn’t all the firemen quit?”

  “Don’t be alarmed by his appearance. Oh, and he may need your help.”

  “What?”

  The Metropolitan Police Department severs the connection; the LookyChat goes black.

  “Nobody talks to me like that,” Ripple insists, unconvincingly.

  “Don’t you worry none,” says the bird lady, reaching down to soothe her winged charges. “Library’s caught fire more times than I can remember, but it won’t burn. When we’re all dead it’ll still be standing there. Like a big know-it-all headstone.”

  This last word dissolves into coughs, as thick smoke is now billowing from the venerable institution down onto the stony steps. The fumes are so black and gritty, it’s impossible to see two feet away. The birds take flight, briefly clearing the air with their flapping, and Ripple shoves the LookyGlass back into his cargo pocket. He, Hooligan, and the girls make their way down to the sidewalk and across the street. Only the bird lady stays.

  “Fascinating how she can breathe in this,” observes Swanny. “A person can adapt to most anything, I suppose.”

  Ripple doesn’t answer; he’s doubled over, having an affluenza attack. He digs through his duffel, tossing random items onto the pavement.

  “The fuck…is my…inhaler?”

  Swanny inspects the lighter shaped like a naked woman’s torso. “What does it look like?”

  “Dunk, don’t die!” Abby tries to wrap her arms around his neck. He pushes her away.

  “Relax…I just…gotta…” He finds the inhaler and takes several hits off it in quick succession. His wheezing slows. Relieved, he sinks down to the curb. “Phew, I’m still alive. No thanks to you fems.”

  “I would have helped if you’d become unconscious. Mother taught me CPR in our Domestic Violence course.”

  Ripple starts repacking the bag, then stops. “Hey, do you hear something?”

  Abby tilts her head to one side. “Like, ‘whooo-ooh, whooo-ooh’?”

  It’s a siren, all right, but something about it sounds off—an ambient crackle, a slight abstraction of tone, as if it is reaching toward them from the echoey caverns of the past. It takes a moment before they see why. The sound isn’t blaring from a rescue vehicle, or from a megaphone mounted atop a pole. It’s emanating from the duct-taped speakers of a battered Boom Blaster, held aloft on the shoulder of a figure half-visible in the smoke: a man in a gas mask, red peaked helmet, and yellow slicker. He pushes a hot-dog cart, packed with water tanks protruding from the top, trailing a length of hose. Black galoshes encase his feet, canvas gloves his hands. He breathes his own air. Nothing human of him shows.

  16

  URBAN LEGEND

  Late one night, a little boy woke up to see a fireman standing at the foot of his bed. The fireman had on a helmet and gloves and a gas mask, so you couldn’t see his face.

  “Is the building on fire?” asked the child. “Have you come here to rescue me?” The fireman walked out of the room without saying a word.

  Years passed. The little boy grew from a child into a man. One night, when he was shaving, he saw the fireman’s reflection in the mirror behind him. The gas mask was made of old brown leather, stained and scarred. Behind the eyeholes, only darkness showed.

  “Is the building on fire?” asked the young man. “Have you come to rescue me?” When he turned around to look at the fireman, the fireman was gone.

  The young man married and grew older and moved into a new apartment with his wife and children. One night, when he was up late reading in bed next to his sleeping wife, the fireman appeared outside his window and beckoned, once. The man followed the fireman out onto the fire escape and then down the rattling metal steps to the alley below.

  “Wait!” the man called after the fireman. “I’ve wondered all my life who you are and what you want from me. Please show me your face.”

  The fireman stopped and looked back at him in the darkness. He slowly reached up and unbuckled the mask. There was nothing where his face should be, no skin or bones or muscle, nothing at all but empty air. His hollow clothes collapsed into a pile, releasing a plume of ash. The man heard sirens behind him. His building was burning down with his wife and children inside.

  Leather Lungs. That’s what they call the phantom fireman, the keeper of false promises, the bearer of bad news. Leather Lungs. Sometimes he doesn’t save anyone. He just comes to the fires to watch.

  Back in underschool, Ripple heard all the stories—no two of them are quite the same. Sometimes Leather Lungs is hideously burned beneath his snozzled hood, his cauterized flesh exposing patches of blackened skull and a pearly, lipless smile. Sometimes he has the face of a friend or sibling or grandparent who died unrescued in a blaze—someone with a grudge. And sometimes, at the tale’s end, his victim feels compelled beyond all reason to pick up his ashy costume, the heavy domed helmet, the mask of hose and hide, and put them on—to slip inside the skin of Leather Lungs and live the curse himself. It’s this last idea that always scared Ripple the most: the thought of losing his face, his name.

  “Who are you?” Ripple demands now of the apparition masquerading as his childhood nightmares. It’s as if Leather Lungs isn’t himself a presence, but rather the powerful absence of something else. Like the time Kelvin gouged his hand in Power Tools class, and Ripple couldn’t stop staring at the meaty little notch in the side of his thumb. Leather Lungs is a notch taken out of the world. Ripple steps in front of his wenches and canine protectively. “Back off, pro. I’ve faced old ladies and torchies, I don’t have to take this shit.”

  Leather Lungs does not respond. He plods steadily toward Ripple, toward the fire, as though the dragons have opened a portal back to his interdimensional hell world and he intends to return with a guest. Ripple stands his ground. Hooligan tugs on Ripple’s pant leg and growls a warning.

  “I’m not gonna say this again. Don’t get any closer.” Ripple’s not used to his bluffs getting called. It occurs to him that it’s dangerous to grow up with power before you have the physical strength to back it up. “I mean it.”

  “Metropolitan Police Department,” says Leather Lungs. Through the mask, his voice sounds like his prerecorded siren—another echo from the past. “Independent extinguishment contractor.”

  Oh.

  “Can I see some ID?” Ripple asks shakily.

  A walkie-talkie crackles on Leather Lungs’s utility belt. “Special Officer, confirm your position?”

  “Ten-four, position confirmed,” Leather Lungs radios back. To Ripple, he
says, “This is an emergency conscription. By your presence here today you have waived your right of noncompliance. Any attempt to resist performance of your civic duty, or to disobey orders, can and will be used against you.”

  “Wait, what? Conscription? My dad buys me exemptions for that. I’m Duncan Ripple the Fifth. You can’t just conscript me in the street. Pro, back the fuck up.” Ripple puts up his fists.

  “Dunk, don’t touch him, he’s a People Machine!”

  But before Ripple can deliver his punch, Leather Lungs has throttled him and single-handedly lifted him by the throat two inches off the sidewalk. For the second time in five minutes, Ripple feels the breath squeezed out of him. He kicks at the air as Leather Lungs ominously raises his free hand, which Ripple now sees is no ordinary hand but a claw, two stainless-steel crescents connected by a hinge. It’ll be murder by dissection. Leather Lungs closes it around Ripple’s neck. Ripple waits for the scissory snip, the slice of metal into flesh and the feeling of light-headedness that he always imagined would go along with being decapitated. But instead, as Ripple tumbles backward onto the sidewalk, the claw still holds him in its grip. It is detached from Leather Lungs now, an appendage with a mind of its own.

  And Ripple can’t get it off. He paws at the gizmo, which glimmers with light-emitting diodes and gives off a faint buzzing noise. It stays on snug, just below his chin. Leather Lungs doesn’t stick around to guard his handiwork. He continues on his way as the girls and dog huddle around Ripple.

  “Oh no, a collar!” cries Abby. Hooligan shakes his head sympathetically.

  A collar! Wait. What?

  “Did that claw-slinging fog-nozzler really just try to conscript me?”

  “No, he’s chosen you for his pet,” Swanny counters dryly. “Or perhaps for torture. At any rate, he owns you. Pity, I was hoping he’d do away with you at once. I just renegotiated the widowhood clause with your father yesterday.”

  “I can’t get this thing off. Fems, do either of you have a hex key? Turnscrew? Multitool? Nail file? Toothpick? Nothing? Nothing, for serious?”