Sheep and Wolves

by Jeremy C. Shipp

  “How dare you—”

  “You could have left this village to start a new life. We could have been happy, but you stayed here to take your anger out on these people.” I reach under the table and retrieve the sacred club. “You spied on them. You lied about them. You got them beaten and imprisoned. You separated parents from their children. You make me sick!” I smash her chair, over and over. Then I throw the sacred club out the door.

  “If you don’t apologize, I’m going to disown—”

  “Shut up, mother!”

  And finally, she’s gone.

  I place my hands on Antash’s chest again and remember the first time my mother forced me to sit on her chair, and watch through the doorway as a villager was attacked. The villager’s name was Kyar.

  Back then, I didn’t hold back my tears.

  Back then, I wasn’t afraid to care.

  My mother slapped me. “Don’t you dare cry for them, Gourd,” she said. “They’re the reason we’re stuck out here.”

  But I didn’t feel stuck.

  I liked when Kyar taught me how to dance, and Vyen taught me how to sing. I liked playing with Bayarg and Chirwa. I was only a little boy, but I liked my home. I liked my people.

  My mother thought the Thundershines were wasting their powers on these simple primitives, no better than animals.

  I don’t.

  Thundershines, demons, spirits, villagers, animals. I’ll fight for the good of them all.

  Anytime someone uses Miravel’s power, there’s a chance the spirit god will take the life of the caster.

  Still, I take the chance.

  Miravel’s power rushes through the ground into my feet, through my body, out my fingertips.

  Antash opens his eyes.

  I spin around and place my hands on Fireball.

  I’m afraid it’s too late, but I allow Miravel’s power to flow through me anyway.

  I wait for death.

  It doesn’t come, however, and Fireball opens her eyes and breathes.

  “I hate dying,” she says. Then she hugs me. “Let’s finish this”

  Me and Antash follow her outside.

  She blows her whistle, and the gigantic monkeys retreat to the forest.

  The still conscious Enforcers stare at Fireball the Immortal. She’s alive and unwounded.

  She points her sword. “Leave here and never return.”

  “I think we’ve done all we can here,” Enforcer Yor says. “We should return to the Capital.”

  “Release your captives, then go.”

  The Enforcers walk and limp into the barracks.

  After a short time, dirty and emaciated villagers leave the building. Even in their weak state, they hurry toward the others.

  Family’s reunite.

  Enforcers retreat.

  Avalanche lands nearby, dotted with blood, and I feed him some spicenuts I kept in my pocket.

  As I smile, a memory bursts in my mind. I remember a spirit I played with as a young child. My mother told me he was imaginary. She told me to forget about him, and eventually I did. He was a crow.

  I look around for Fireball, but don’t see her. I have a feeling she’s behind a tree, crying over the body of an old friend.

  “We should say goodbye to Grandma Thundershine before I release her,” Antash says.

  “Release her?” I say.

  “Her time to enter the spirit world was a long time ago, but she asked me to keep her alive. Her life was the only thing keeping the State from devastating this land. The villagers would have been driven out. The forest would have been annihilated. The earth itself would have died. But now we’re safe again.”

  I’m afraid that the Enforcers will return, but I know Antash is right.

  The Heavenly Texts state that there’s no such person as Fireball the Immortal. There are no demons anymore. No demonic powers. There are only simple worshippers with primitive minds, who need to be converted and civilized.

  And so, when something contradicts the Heavenly Texts, the State destroys it. And when it can’t be destroyed, the State does its best to ignore it.

  The Enforcers won’t come back.

  “Antash,” I say.

  My mother says nothing.

  I’m not afraid to care anymore.

  I take a deep breath, and do what I need to do.

  Antash smiles.

  The Rules

  First, test the accused with a kitten or a bunny—preferably one that you’ve taken care of for a few days. Don’t hesitate to name it after one of your own children, if you have any.

  “We’re not them,” the man says, again.

  Although at this point, of course, you’re convinced he isn’t a man. He’s sweating and trembling, the way all demons do.

  Still, part of you hopes your instincts are wrong. Sara’s an innocent in all this, and you like how she purrs in your arms, trusting you the way you’d never trust anyone.

  Nevertheless, Sara is a lesser being. Her purpose on this planet to is to be used, and nothing more.

  So you continue to wait, knowing that demons can’t control their most basic impulses.

  Like a stab in the gut, you feel the foreign presence penetrate your body. You feel the dark essence worm its way up your chest, into your arms, your hands, and then it happens.

  You grit your teeth, twisting Sara’s head until it snaps. Hot urine sprays on your tunic.

  You toss Sara aside.

  Before the demons can make another move, you put on your amulet and say, “Try that again.”

  “I didn’t do it,” the demon says.

  You spit out a laugh.

  “Please,” he says. “Let my children go.”

  You glance at the spawn in the corner, and you seem to have tied one of them too tight, because she’s purple and writhing on the floor.

  As soon as the father notices this, he screams. He howls with tears.

  Now’s the time to remember the most important rules, because these demons will hit you with spells that fill you with guilt and shame and disgust. They’ll make you feel like the vermin they are. They might even convince you that you killed Sara yourself.

  Ignore any tears, even your own.

  When you’re carving them with the sacred blades, they’ll beg for mercy, the way all demons do.

  Wear earplugs if you have to.

  The spawn pleads in silence, squeezing her dead sister.

  Expect a lot of blood.

  And never, ever look them in the eyes.

  Trust me.

  Flapjack

  Wall #4’s bumpy blemish showed me an environment capable of imperfection, and yet the Prisoners, AKA the Wee-the-People, AKA the Captivated Captivitized saw eternal only the wrongness of their own little selves. Of course, my thinker could produce not a one example to justify such sham-shame thoughts. These Wee ones never harmed each other. They had chances many, oh hai, but caused not a bloody scratch with their forenails. They were Hopper Lites (meaning wimps), the lot of them, just like me.

  Once my cellmate Humpty ran his mind so far downwards, listing that and that and that his Sin, that I couldn’t take it anymore, and I said, “I’m so sick and tired of your blubbering blubbery cheeks!”

  He cried with crinklier eyelids. “I must be the worst man in the world to be yelled at by one of us.”

  “The Flapjack is filled with much worse!” You must keep in mind that rarely ever had I erupted such fury—the truth being I’d never known such a pitiful creature as this Humpty in my life.

  His whimpering shrunk to a sniffle in a bug-flap. He stared at me, not with anger (as I expected, since I had just spoken blasphemy), but with fear. If Wall #2 wasn’t blocking him, he might have kept walking backward until I twinkled out of sight.

  My body trembled as my anger trickled down. More than anything, I wanted to alleviate his anguish, so I resolved to tell him the tippy truth. “It’s not what you think, Humpty. I speak from experience. I’m from the Flapjack.”
r />   He laughed awkward through his nose, and mumbled something like, “Verily not.”

  “I know you don’t believe me and that’s fine for now. But I’m begging you to stop pleading so much.”

  “A prayer in the mind is worth nada,” which was something I was beginning to understand about the Wee-the-People. They preferred speaking out loud—to walls, to floors, to anything inanimate. Speaking to other people was just as worthless as thinking to one’s own self.

  “Could you try to be quieter then?” said I.

  Humpty stood from his knees. A sort of smirk tugged at his lips. “You’ve been so silent ever since you came here…I assumed you were a mighty careful man. I thought verily that you kept your body and mind tippy pure. But perhaps your lack of prayer has more to do with lack of care. Verily. I shall have to pray for you as well as I, as would any good-bearing man.”

  “I appreciate your concern, but praying isn’t going to help either of us. If you verily care about my concordia, then allow me your ears for a short tiempo. I need to speak to a person.”

  “You’re a strange man, Newton, but hai. I’ll harken, for harmony’s sake.” His face then metamorphosized before my peepers, with a new exhibition of expression he had never shown before. Some might dub it interest or even curiosity. I, however, would call it waking up.

  *

  My first rememberable memory, I told Humpty, involved a thing which I at first mistook for an unwrapped candy-dandy, but was verily my sister’s severed thumb. My father held the stained feeler close to my nose and said, “See this? Do you smell it, child?” Then he lifted me higher and higher and higher to his tippy reach, onto his shoulder, so I could say hello to the bloody beddy bye, where my sister wriggled. The tear on her face melted me, but my tearburst was silenced by my father’s stone hand, and, “Hush child! This is your sister’s time.”

  So I watched in silence, fighting myself, as my mother applied skin glue to my sister’s wound. “Do you see what the Greens have done to her?” my father said. “Do you see?!?”

  I opened my mouth and might have said, “Hai.”

  Gloria, my sister, only then seemed to notice me. She smiled a little, sickly sweet, as if to say, “I’m glad you’re with me now, but I’m so sorry you’re with me now.” I was whooshed back down to the floor, and covered my sniffer, afraid my father would stick baby pinky back in front of me. But he didn’t. Instead, my familia—my mother, my father, Granner, Gramper, Uncer, Aunter, and others—hugged Gloria. They said things like, “You’re a real woman now,” and, “The first one is the hardest.”

  Solus, I felt—being the #1 and only child in the room. The second youngest person was Gloria, who was at the time about fourteen. Far ahead than poor smally me. Soon, everyone said their goodbyes and left, except Gloria and my mother. I, of course, remained stuck to the ground, as if the bottoms of my feet had been ripped off and skin glue was applied before I landed.

  “Take your sibber with you when you go,” my mother said to my sister. “Do you feel dizzy when you stand?”

  Gloria stood and shook her head.

  “Good,” said my mother. “Go when you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready,” my sister said.

  So Gloria clutched my hand with her fivey, and led me into the hallway.

  Just moments ago, I’d felt like I was in a monsterworld, where my familia wasn’t really my familia. I’d felt like I wanted to leave. But now that I was actually leaving, I felt a thunder urge to run to my parents’ beddy bye and hide under the coverings. My mother’s words, “Take your sibber with you when you go,” I took to mean that me and my sister were leaving eternal. So I released my tearburst and yanked to free myself.

  She only held on mightier. “Sibber, stop. We’re only going outside for a minuto, then we’ll come right back.”

  I stopped struggling, though I didn’t believe her verily. But the tranquility of her voice calmed me.

  She pushed the sliding door with her foursies, very careful. We went into the backyard, and she led me to the sad drooping tree. We sat together.

  She started to dig a hole with her fivey. “You can help me if you want.”

  So I did. Every scoop intensified the cold nothingness in my feelers. “That’s enough,” she said. And she held out her foursies. Only then did I notice that she was clutching her separated part. She dropped it into the hole. And while we covered it with dirt, we had a conversation something like this:

  “It doesn’t hurt too much, sibber,” she said. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me. Things like this happen all the time.”

  “How come there was blood?” said I. “The Body Fairy makes the parts go whoosh with no blood.”

  “Sibber. There’s…no such thing as the Body Fairy.”

  When I breathed out, I saw a little fairy form in my cold air. “Then where do all the parts go?” Of course, I should have known the answer to that, considering what we were doing at that very momento.

  “The Green familia does it, sibber. They cut us. That’s what happened to all of Mommy and Granner and Aunter and everyone’s parts. There’s no Body Fairy.”

  “But…why do the Greens do that?”

  “Because we’re at war with them. They cut us and we cut them.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t have to worry about that now. Nobody’s going to chop your parts until you’re my age. So don’t worry.”

  And the truth is, though it seems ridiculous, the momento I returned to the house, to my room, to my beddy bye, I did stop worrying. I went back to having a tippy unstressed childhood, except for the one little idea aft of my mind that Thumbelina the Body Fairy was dead and buried in the backyard under the crying tree. Crying, because I knew that one day my life would change.

  *

  I trotted downstairs in the white tunic, thinking blue, pink, blue, pink, and then pondering how little I cared. The living room ravaged my nose with hospital-smell, but the stinkeroo turned out to be emanating from the plastic wrapping around the furniture and tele and even the floor. My ceremonial place was in the center of the room, so there I stood. After they sang the Happy, Happy Self Day song (verily badly), my father said, “You are a boy.” I closed my eyes and pinched my nose as they splashed me with smally paint balloons. My white tunic stained blue. However, this was not the same blue tunic I would wear for special occasions the rest of my life, as I’d first assumed. My father would soon give me a different wearable blue tunic, while my painted blue tunic would remain unworn eternal.

  After I showered and the plastic wrappers were thrown away, we ate cake. I knelt beside my sister, and watched her grip the fork with the only three fingers on her right hand. Soon, she’d have to be fed by a man, like the other older women. By that time, she’d be married.

  “Do you feel any different?” my mother said.

  “Not verily,” said I.

  “You can start growing out your hair now. Aren’t you hypered?”

  I wasn’t really excited, but I nodded my baldness anyway.

  My father stopped feeding my mother, and stood. “It’s about tiempo this smally boy has a name, sure enough?” He walked behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “We have decided his name to be Newton.”

  “Hello Newton!” everyone said, but me.

  My father continued, “As we all know, every given name has a double meaning. First, Newton is the name for someone intelligent, and we all must agree that my smally boy here is intelligent.” (The familia agreed with yeses and nods.) “The second meaning is that he has a prox relationship with gravity.”

  Everyone laughed, and I smiled.

  What they were saying, of course, was that I had a great frequency for falling—tripping, even when there was nothing on the ground to trip me. Ergo, I thought my name captured both my tippy and bottom traits. Though I soon came to understand that my lack of coordination didn’t worry my familia one whittle whit. My father once told me, “Boys like you will probably never become
a samurai, or gladiator, or wrestler, or knight, but you can still become a mighty crazy horse. Even wild randomness had its place in war, son.”

  Anyway, though the slight majority of children born with inward genitalia were made women, I was made a boy named Newton.

  *

  You can imagine my surprise when Humpty interrupted me with, “And…and where was I during all this?”

  “Where were you?” said I.

  “Hai. What was I doing, I mean. Did I eat the cake? Did I throw those balloons at you? And if so, what did they feel like in my hands? What did the cake taste like?”

  He continued on like this, in ramble. One might—if one hadn’t seen the laetitia, the tippy happiness, in his peepers— have mistaken his words as spawns of sarcasm or teasing.

  Obvious to me then, he didn’t believe a word I was saying. But he liked the words. Verily. Enough to want to be a part of them.

  “Hai, Humpty, you were there,” said I. “Invisible though, you were at the time. Invisible to everyone but I. You were my best amicus for life. Eternal.”

  “And what do I…did I look like, if I may ask?”

  “Oh tippy beautiful, Humpty. The most beautiful woman on the whole Flapjack. But when they looked at you, they couldn’t see that.”

  “I thought you said I was invisible.”

  “You were, at the time of the party. Things would change in time.”

  “But things never change.”

  “Hai, verily they do not. But sometimes they can.”

  *

  My mother looked down at my bloody beddy bye coverings. “It’s nothing to be afraid of, Newton. That’s the blood of our ancestors. Let’s go tell your father.”

  We went into the family room and my mother forced me in front of the tele.

  “Haste, Newton, what is it?” my father said.

  “There’s blood on my bed,” said I. For some reason, fear clutched my tum. I half expected him to yell at me or even slap me.

  Instead, he happy-faced. “Newton, that’s great!” He turned off the tele. After a biggy bear-hug, he said, “That blood came out to say that tonight you’ll become a man.”