It amazes Son, how she can be both so lovely and so tough. Not to mention stubborn.
He also tells Eva what to do and sometimes she listens.
•
"Daddy!"
Eva's all excited. Nothing new there.
"Daddy, look."
Son turns toward the splashing, to where she points. Ducks rise through wisps of morning mist on the glassy pond. He has seen pictures of ducks, back in the Bunker.
"They're lovely." Eva laughs. "They're yellow."
Yellow ducks, who knows why. On the ascent, their feet trail like floppy toboggans. That's what Eva says, though she has trouble pronouncing the word toboggan, and even more trouble explaining what one of these things might be.
"It's for sliding on snow," is the best she can do. Son's knowledge of snow is only secondhand. Where would Eva have learned about it? "What's snow, then?" he asks her.
"Don't know. Something like ice, but not ice."
The foggiest ideas of what toboggans are and what they're good for, God knows where she gets this information, and now look. Ducks with toboggans for landing gear.
"Don't get too close to the water, Eva."
Son notices that Spiff, Poof and the fuzzy‐wuzzy have deployed themselves in a rough line between Eva and the pond. He wonders whether that's deliberate.
Eva laughs, and says, "I'm not planning to fall in."
Only four years old, and she's planning whether or not to fall in the pond. Four years old, nearly five and going on fifteen.
•
"Sometimes she seems older than four," Dee Zu has said.
"I guess. I really wouldn't know. She's the only kid I've ever met."
"I know, but that's my impression, okay?"
"What's really scary?"
"What?"
"She gets more grown‐up with every passing month."
"For sure she's learning stuff fast."
"It's like everything in this landscape takes a hand in her education."
Eva knows all kinds of things she shouldn't. She has no books, no vids, no Lode. Yet she commands an amazing general knowledge. And here's the thing—she knows things from times past, as well as things about the Land now, that neither Son nor Dee Zu know. How can that be? She's the only child either Son or her mother has ever known, mind you, so who can say for sure she isn't standard issue?
It's more than that, of course. Never mind she's only four years old, Eva negotiates the legoite substrate with a real passion, lots more adept than either Son or her mother. Unlike them, Eva was born to this world and she and the Land have clearly reached an understanding. Though what it means to suggest such a thing, Son can't say. "She's going to your school," Dee Zu has told him. "And Poppy's."
"What do you mean?"
"The School of Hard Kicks," she says. "But she and the Land maybe trade softer kicks. Something different."
With Eva it's more a matter of negotiation. Whatever. They need to put a hold on new stuff in the Homestead and on the Land till they piece together a working ken for this world of theirs.
And Son has no idea how fast children grow up, but he gets the feeling sometimes that Eva's becoming an adult way too fast. At least in some ways. Especially since the onset of the brianthings. The fuckinfucks.
•
Yellow ducks don't quack. Aside from the splash of take‐offs and landings, they're silent. According to the nursery rhymes Auntie and Gran‐Gran taught Son, ducks quack, though these don't and neither did the other ones, which weren't yellow and didn't have feet like toboggans.
Auntie was a biohistorian of the old world and would have loved exploring ways these ducks might be related to ducks of yore. Son remembers a time, not that long past, when a single bird, the mere sight of one, would be a marvel. Still he marvels. At not just one bird, but at many more than he could ever count. And all kinds of birds, more than there ever were. Maybe even back before the Troubles. Every time he looks, new ones appear. And some may be birds only at first glance.
"Shave‐and‐a‐hair‐cut…" The jaunty chorple issues from the big tree in front of the house, a snatch of rich, round notes. No actual words, only the fluting jingle.
Son knows where the bird got its song. Eva loves this meaningless ditty. Though she says it isn't meaningless. A goshdarnit‐thing told her all about it, but now she forgets. Dee Zu has presented this as more evidence that some goshdarnit‐things, at least, are in fact learythings. Back in the malls, in the holotanks and the Worlds, a man named Leary—Cisco's father and one of the last ESSEA mallsters, maybe the last—sometimes sang this jingle as a homespun QED in bringing some argument to a close. "Homespun QED" didn't really do it for Son, and neither did "verbal rimshot," when she tried to explain. In any case Eva loves to use it when she thinks she's won a debate with Son. She goes, Shave‐and‐a‐hair‐cut …TWO, BITS! The way Poppy used to go "BAM, BAM" to conclude a good point, rapping Son's head with his knuckles for extra emphasis.
Just yesterday, Son spotted her talking to a big rabbit down by the creek. Son watched awhile, but by the time he decided to go investigate the rabbit had vanished. He found Eva sound asleep on a mound of mossy grass where her visitor had stood.
"Was the rabbit another brianthing?" Dee Zu asked.
"Eva said it was. Said it told her a story, something about how the world began. Among other things, it claimed legoite wasn't something new at all, that it has been with us from the beginning. She says it was a long story, full of difficult words, and she forgets the rest."
"Eva shouldn't be playing with these things." Dee Zu looked worried, which is something she never does unless she's sure there's something to worry about. "I don't trust anything about them."
Son doesn't tell her about the other thing he found beside the creek not far from Eva's grassy bed. He's pretty sure it was a monkey. A big one. He could see no more than an eye through the tight ball of vine‐like tendrils that enshrouded it. The ball twitched a couple of times after he noticed it, and then went still. The next day there was no sign of it, beyond the usual ground cover of skinny green runners.
"It was a badthing," Eva told him. "But the huggivines take care of me. And the tapdoors." She says it was a fuckinfuck that told her the names for these things. For all his watching and all his experience, Eva sees things he never does.
Maybe it should comfort him that the Land is throwing up an army to watch over her. But what's to say these things won't take Eva next? Or Dee Zu.
Son also didn't tell Dee Zu how he thought he saw the grassy mound shrug up on Eva as he approached the sleeping child. Only slightly, and he couldn't really be sure. Nevertheless. "So what do we do?" he asked her.
"Probably nothing. But I don't like it."
"Neither do I. Eva says the otherthings have also been telling her stories. Who knows what stuff they've been filling her head with."
"Not that I want to be a worrywart," Dee Zu says, "but we know Brian was a monster. So what nice stories has the brianthing been telling our Eva?"
Eva calls Son and Dee Zu worrywarts. Worrywart is another word that lay outside their ken till Eva introduced it. One more gift from the otherthings.
•
Son's heart grabs. Eva's skin has gone the same gray as Dee Zu's foot. No. It's only a trick of the light. He wants to hug her, but she's busy with Spiff.
prettythings
"Shave‐and‐a‐hair‐cut …"
Son waits for the two notes to follow. They don't come, yet the birdsong demands completion. Those final notes hang there, only implicit, unsung in the cool morning air. He knows how the song ends, the way Eva sings it.
"…Two. Bits."
These notes are clearly evoked, even though the bird, still unseen, does not sing them. The melody, not the words, dwells there in his head. "Shave‐and‐a‐hair‐cut…" Son hears it yet again as the bird reveals itself as a flash of emerald green and gold high in the tree. Twice as big as an average duck, the creature launches forth, surely meaning t
o clear the pond. In no way does it resemble an aquatic bird. In fact, it little resembles any bird he has ever seen. This is something new. Wings and tail feathers all a‐rustle, it plummets from the tree, almost pulling out of the dive before it plows into the water and sinks like a stone.
The ripples subside, the pond once more like glass. Probably the bird's first flight ever, this was also its last.
"I'm sorry," Eva says.
"Why?"
"It was supposed to fly." She looks as despondent as she ever gets. "I thought it would."
"So did it."
"Yeah." She giggles. "Did you like the way it sings?"
"The way it sang. Sure I did. That was your song, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
The thing looked as though it should glide, at least, but it totally had not. Its flat golden beak and broad golden back might have been solar panels, or insulation, and maybe they were too heavy. The green wings and tail? They could well have been photosynthetic, overkill on the energy production front, or purely for the art. Or something else altogether. The real question is, where did the design come from? Assuming Eva negotiated this thing, where did she get her ideas? She's not yet five years old, and can't know about the old worlds. Though it often seems she does.
"That was a wonderful bird," Son says. "All green and gold."
"Yeah. That was just so fucking pretty, eh?"
"Please don't use that word."
"You say it, sometimes."
"Okay. I won't say it again if you don't. Deal?"
"Deal."
"You do say it, though."
"Maybe sometimes. Not often. Anyway, you're a little girl."
"So?" Eva sounds more like her mother every day.
"Where did you learn to talk like that?"
"The fuckinfuck says it a lot."
"I told you not to use those words."
"Sorry, Daddy."
"Plus Mommy told you, and I told you: You mustn't talk to the brianthings. Do you understand? Or we won't let you play down by the creek any more. Unless Mommy or me goes with you, we won't let you leave the Homestead."
"No, Daddy. Please. If I can't go out, then I have to go under the stairs."
"If you ever go under the stairs again, I'll lock you in your bedroom. I won't let you see Spiff or Poof. I'll only let you out to eat meals. Believe me."
"You can't do that, Daddy."
Now she's crying. Eva never cries.
It's as though Poppy has snuck in to take possession of him. "Sorry, chum," Son says to her. "But you have to listen to what I say. I'm your father, and I know best."
"You can't do that."
stay dead & stay away
If any part of their world is haunted, it's this spot by the creek, with the propagator rumblings and the Hole. Though he can't actually see it, Son can't forget it's there. And the nook, this patch of only at‐first‐glance barren soil, is like a relic dune, more blur dust than soil.
This is where Dee Zu paid tribute to her friend. To Cisco. That was about six years ago, just after they arrived. And this is the place where Eva most often encounters her otherthings. So if you're looking for a conduit to a rich spirit lode, some broadband channel to traces of worlds past, maybe this is it. Spossil City.
"Poppy?" Son says. "Can you hear me?"
Even supposing Poppy tried to respond, Son wouldn't hear him over the sudden rustle and rush of leaves.
"Poppy?" He feels a proper fool. "Give me a sign if you can hear me, okay?"
Nothing. The creek chuckles with a surge of water from upstream at the same time the shimmery trees on the other side get hit with another big gust. As always, it's like trying to read something skirting the edge of intelligibility.
"I didn't want to kill you. You gave me no choice. You know that yourself. And I didn't want to get involved with Auntie that way. It just happened."
There's no response. Nothing. The creek and the trees remain mute, their earlier stirrings maybe only imagined. Then he says, "I'm sorry, okay?" However foolish, the words unburden him a little.
Son steps away from the embankment to have a pee. He lets fly, enjoys yet another source of liberation. There's plenty of water for the drinking in this world and, far from wasting his piss, he's giving it back to the Land. When did the Land cease to be their enemy, instead becoming both primary recycler and provider? Their Doll, if you go with Dee Zu's thinking. Which he doesn't necessarily.
•
"Daddy!"
"Hi."
"Who were you talking to?" Eva says.
"Nobody."
"What's that?" She points to the nook in the embankment. Dee Zu's second Doll.
Gray things like butterflies come peeling off the soil and take flight. "What the hell?" he says. Now the cloud of butterflies, maybe two dozen of them, settle in the dust surrounding his piss‐pool.
"Did you do that?" Eva is laughing.
It isn't clear whether she's referring to the piss‐pool or the butterflies. Whatever. "No," he says.
Their wings slowly folding and opening, folding and opening, the butterflies sip from all sides of the pool. Which is weird. The trees on the other side of the creek have synchronized. Their leaves rustle in what could be simple code.
The butterflies are iridescing the colors of oil on water. They lift off a few at a time and paste themselves back on the embankment.
"That's cool."
"Have you seen those things before?"
"No," Eva says. "Dinner's ready. Mommy says come."
Neither one of them ever pays any attention to him. Dee Zu actually sent her out, on her own, to come get him. Jesus Christ. But what can he do?
"On my way." He turns to follow Eva up out of the ravine. Then he stops. "You go on ahead, chum. I'll only be a minute, okay?"
•
No sign remains of the butterflies. Son rubs at the embankment, half expecting it to flake away as insect wings. Nothing. He pinches some off and rubs it between his fingers. Dry and fine‐grained, it feels like soil. However faintly, it also feels abuzz with life.
Shaped by who knows what influences, all manner of things are arising from the Land, whether to serve some need or just for the hell of it. It's often impossible to say which. More than it was before the Sleep, beyond its many animating spirits, the Boogoo, now the Land, is itself alive. There's no evidence of Gran‐Gran's god in these developments, only a living world inhabited by spirits beyond number.
Once again he stands where he tried raising Poppy's spirit. "Yo, Poppy," he says. "I'm probably only talking to myself. But I need to say this."
An unintelligible rumble arises inside his head, a prop or a dreckad. Son waits for it to clear before he continues.
"You were my father and, according to your lights, you taught me well. I thank you for that. I'm still alive because of it. But no matter how much I respected you, you got lots of things wrong. And there was plenty more you never knew. Some part of you will always be part of me, and that's good. Other parts aren't welcome.
"Bottom line, I'd say you're pretty well dead and I'm telling you to stay that way. Don't ever put me in a position where I have to kill you again. Because I'll do it. Just like that. Bam, bam. So wherever you are and whatever shape you're in, stay away from me and stay away from my family."
The prop rumbles in his head loud enough to half smother a manic rush of leaves and water. There's no sign of storm in the sky.
•
An afterthought, before he goes home for dinner.
"Brian?" Again, he feels a fool. "I figure you're in there, somewhere. More likely you than Poppy. And maybe you can even hear me."
Son looks around to see whether anybody's watching. Then he says, "Anyway, I don't know whether you know who I am, but I'm asking you to stay away from my little girl. She's a stubborn kid, and way too trusting. She's a great kid, for all of that, and no harm should come to her."
He doesn't know what else he can do, so he says, "I guess that's all. Bye."
Bye? After all that he says bye? Jesus.
sickothings
Son is better than he was yesterday. He feels good. Somehow cleansed.
"Eva?"
"Hi."
"Where's your mommy?"
"Down by the creek."
"Where by the creek?"
"Where the butterflies came."
"What?"
"When you peed."
"What's she doing there?"
"Talking to a sickothing."
"What?"
"A sickothing."
"You mean a ciscothing?"
"Yes."
"Aw, Jesus."
"Is it okay to say 'jesus' that way?"
"Eva, I want you to go to the house and stay there till I come back. Okay?"
"Okay. What about 'Jesus Christ,' is that okay?"
monsterthings
The land is agitated. The leaves in the trees on the opposite bank thrash away as though a great wind blows among them, except there's no wind. Higher up, behind the tree, swarmy patches of meadow shift this way and that. The banks along the creek shudder, triggering a series of small landslides.
Dee Zu stands at the nook in the embankment. She has opened the backup ball, and she's talking to a fresh spill of soil.
"What are you doing?" Son says.
"Stirring things up. Attracting attention."
"Give me the ball and come back to the house."
"You go on ahead."
"Please."
She twists it this way and that. In the woods across the way, swarms rush this way and that with much snapping of twig and rustle of dead leaf. Off in the distance, Ahuk erupts, scattering mantas. A row of highrise structures, ridiculously long‐range GPS projections, briefly appear along the ridgeline of Long Lookout and the Pyramid flashes steel and glass and clean edges.
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