Hummingbird Salamander

by Jeff VanderMeer

  A crack in the car window to feel the cutting cold, the bitter cold. It had stopped raining. Maybe in an hour it would be balmy again. You could lose your mind just trying to predict the weather.

  The lies I told myself. That I’d sneak back to the farm later, creep into their bedroom, wake my father. That we’d go outside to the porch and finish our conversation. That, freshly woken, in confusion, he’d finally give tongue to his inner self, in the face of Silvina’s letter. To some well of emotions. That we’d laugh together and cry together and forgive ourselves.

  But I already knew he had an inner life. Lorraine told me that in everything she said and did.

  He just would not share it with me.

  * * *

  The cabin had a wan yellow light on outside, fuzzy through the green dimness. An unfamiliar car. Not an obvious rental. I put my money on Hellmouth. I just didn’t think waterlogged, river-bound Langer had been here a month, driven down to kill me, then somehow made it back up. Unless Lorraine was mistaken and the place was vacant.

  I parked in the shadows of trees a hundred feet downslope. I’d cut the headlights well before that. I opened and closed the door with the slightest of clicks. I hobble-crept up that steep slope of a driveway to that too-familiar place. Knew exactly which floorboard on the porch not to step on, to muffle my tread. My Fusk gun in my hand. I was in a mood to shoot first, ask questions after. But, in a pinch, I’d beat Hellmouth Jack to death with my cane.

  I peered in the window from the side. A large man sat there looking at his computer, his back to me. But unmistakable. Bigger shock than Hellmouth Jack or Langer. Emissary from the lost world.

  Inhaled, exhaled deeply. Bracing myself, I knocked on the door.

  A moment’s hesitation. Good. He was seeing who it was first. Not as open and trusting as he’d been a few months ago.

  The door opened.

  My husband stood there. I was shocked. He’d put on maybe thirty pounds, yet his face was hollowed out. Hair long and disheveled. Streaks of gray I didn’t remember. A darkness around his eyes like bruises from punches. I smelled Vicks and cigarettes. He’d never smoked before. Absurd, sick idea that Hellmouth Jack had gotten him addicted.

  “Hello, ‘Jill,’” he said, unsmiling.

  Imagine you’ve seen your father for the first time in twenty years.

  Imagine that in your pocket you’ve got a letter full of revelations, from a dead woman.

  Imagine you’re beyond surprise and shock and you just expect that you will live in this condition forever.

  [92]

  Inside, we sat at the long, family-style table into which Ned and I had carved crude figures of animals. The cabin felt small, cramped, claustrophobic, the rudimentary kitchenette in disrepair. Nothing like how I remembered it, our sometimes sanctuary. The stolen moments of freedom, careful never to linger long. If Shot had found us in there, he would have prowled that place continual.

  “I know who sent you here,” I said. “Why’d you listen to him? He was the one standing in the woods outside our house.”

  I couldn’t get over the altered architecture of my husband’s face. How he drew in light and destroyed it. How still he was. How devoid of good humor.

  “You look like you’ve been in a war,” he said. “Like you actually fought in a battle.”

  “I know what I look like,” I snapped at him. By what right?

  He took that, held it a moment, looked about to snap back. Stopped himself. But the flood came pouring out anyway.

  “I didn’t have a choice in who to trust. You gave me no choice. I didn’t hear from you once. You didn’t try to send a message. You didn’t answer your texts. You—”

  Hurtful. False. Coming from the wrong place. Yet he was also right.

  “I couldn’t. It was too dangerous. This is too dangerous.”

  I was vibrating, my hands fit to thrash if I didn’t steeple them. Like there was energy waiting to pour out.

  But my husband didn’t hear me any more than I heard him.

  “Allie from your work even contacted me, but you didn’t.”

  “Allie? How did she find you?” Another breach.

  “I don’t have your experience hiding. She couldn’t find you. But she could find me.”

  “What did she want?” Wild thought. Allie had been working for Hellmouth Jack or Langer. Faked concern for Larry. Been a plant all along.

  “She’d been badly beaten up and thought maybe—just maybe—if she could find you, you could help her. But I couldn’t help her. Because I don’t know what’s going on and I couldn’t find you.”

  “I couldn’t,” I said, helpless.

  “She got beat up because she wouldn’t tell them where you were. Because she couldn’t.”

  There it was. All those centuries ago when I’d asked her to research Silvina. There was the damage coming back across the divide at me. When it didn’t even register with me. When I didn’t have it in me to care, except in a distant, disconnected way.

  “What did you tell her, about me?”

  “I told her you would be no help, because I knew you would be no help. I told her to stay far away from you.… And then—hey, presto!—this smiling lunatic appears at the safe house we’re staying at, scares the living shit out of me. Says his name is Jack, that he knows where you are. Or, where you’ll be. That he’s sure of it. And he gives me the address of your family’s farm. A whole farm! Which you’ve barely ever talked about. And there’s a new thing I learned about my wife, too. That her father isn’t dead. That—”

  “Why did you come here if you hate me so much?”

  Cutting through the recriminations because they struck me as so meaningless now. No future could contain them or make anything better.

  He recoiled, leaning back against the chair. Looked like I’d slapped him.

  “You broke everything. You cheated on me. You lied to me. Then when I’ve gotten over that, you lie again and you disappear after a frightening phone call that destroyed our lives. You met some guy at a convention named Jack, who works for the government, and gave him a fake name. A Jack who said this was my last best chance to see you and I should take it. I don’t even hate you. I just don’t fucking care about you anymore.”

  The smell of hides ablaze as I rolled to avoid them. So tattered and old I couldn’t tell what they’d been. Stench of burnt hair.

  “Why are you here, then?” Said flat, so maybe he’d just tell me.

  He looked down at his hands.

  “Closure … and I need money.”

  “Seriously?”

  Mistake. Now the anger really spilled out.

  “You maxed out all our cards! You took what was in the joint bank account. Our savings. I wake up one morning, a week after you disappeared, and it’s all gone.”

  “I needed it.” I still needed it.

  “Meanwhile, I’m paying all the bills, the mortgage, everything else.”

  “You have your real estate business.”

  I said it, but I couldn’t look at him.

  “You mean commissions on sales that don’t fucking exist? I have no incoming revenue. No one’s buying houses in this market. The world’s going to shit. I have no access to money other than the pittance you left in the accounts and loans from my family.”

  My husband never swore.

  “I have a bag of money in the car,” I said. “You can have most of it.”

  He wheeled out of the chair so fast and hard, it fell over. Went over to the window, as if afraid if he got close, he’d strike me.

  “As if that solves it,” he said.

  “You said you needed money.”

  That look from him again. Couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t be that person, but kept being that person. Couldn’t look him in the eye.

  The table had a history. It would’ve meant something to find a salamander carved into that table, a hummingbird. But Ned and I had mostly drawn creatures that didn’t exist, like bats with human heads or cats with win
gs. Still could faintly see a crude sailing ship like an ark, full of all manner of imaginary beasts. I’d forgotten that. A mythos of discover and escape. Created together in such a way that I couldn’t recall who had done what.

  “You haven’t even asked about our daughter,” he said.

  Rambunctious, curious, mercurial child. No, I had not.

  “She’s not here. That means she’s somewhere safe.”

  He would not have left her unsafe. If I knew anything about my husband the bear, I knew that.

  “She is,” he admitted.

  “Where?”

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  Good.

  “Do you have a photo?”

  “No.”

  A lie, but I had no right.

  “Don’t you know what this is all about? Why I’ve done this?” Why this has been done to me.

  His look was pitying, like my father’s. He’d made up his mind about something and he didn’t understand what I meant. But that was okay. I could let him go. I really could, because I already had.

  I took in the contours of his face. Really looked at him, past the weariness and wariness. Fix him someplace in memory that meant something real, before he faded. Before I never saw him again. We had an urgency once. We did. We had a rhythm and a secret language. I could half remember it, even in that moment.

  Don’t you know? I wanted to say to him. Don’t you know that I don’t worry about our daughter? I worry about you.

  After a while, he stood, looming over me.

  “Let’s just go get that money.”

  * * *

  I watched him drive away from the old family cabin he’d never known about a month ago.

  Didn’t my husband know I thought my daughter was better off with him? That I wouldn’t see a photo of her now and demand to know where he’d hidden her? That I knew how devastating it might be for her to see me like this? Broken down. A different person. In thrall to an idea, a person.

  But I’d taken one risk. I’d left an anonymous message in the inbox of her account for an online game she’d outgrown. An account I’d set up. Maybe someday she would remember to check it. Become nostalgic to play the game. See the message. Know that I had reached out. Or maybe not. But it made me feel better to know she might see it.

  “I’m okay and I love you. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…” Don’t look for me. Don’t remember me if it hurts. Don’t be like me. Don’t don’t don’t

  The old, dead things Ned and I had carved, the roughness, to recall what had been good then.

  I didn’t want to be alone. Didn’t trust myself alone. I called Jack. No one else was left.

  “You set my husband on me.”

  “I wouldn’t put it like that. But now I’m certain I know where you are.”

  “To set me up?”

  “You didn’t call me for this.”

  Pathetic comfort of a familiar voice in my head, someone who claimed to understand me.

  “Do you want to know what Silvina was up to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Meet me at my house. The place where you used to be a creeper in the woods.”

  “When?”

  “Just be there.”

  Didn’t give a fuck if he had to wait a long time. Like, forever. But maybe it would keep him close but not too close.

  Me, I was going back to the storage unit.

  Knowing I was a murderer without real cause or claim.

  Shot hadn’t killed Ned.

  [93]

  The letter had no signature. It was addressed to no one. It was in Silvina’s handwriting.

  I have thought about this moment for many years. How to say it. How to express it. What might be meaningful. I know that your life has hinged on that moment. I know that you took action based on that moment. And I remained silent. Because I was forced to, but also because I had to.

  I knew him, but not what he did for the family. I talked to him several times. From the house up on the hill. I thought that Roger employed him to help with the gardening. I didn’t know at first what my family did in those parts. I didn’t know we used local boys as couriers and suppliers.

  It’s my fault. I liked him. I let him come into the house. I fed him lunch sometimes. He seemed so sad, and he was beautiful and so smart. He felt safe to talk to because he wasn’t family or one of my father’s friends. But, once, he came to the house when I wasn’t there, let himself in, and saw something he shouldn’t have seen, in a place he shouldn’t have been. My father was even less merciful when younger.

  I was away on vacation. I hadn’t told him because I didn’t think it mattered. My father didn’t let me go back, after. I was kept under what you might call “house arrest.” My father feared I would find some way to go to the police. But even then I was already working on my plan. I couldn’t involve the police. I couldn’t do anything.

  I didn’t know you would kill your grandfather. I didn’t even know you existed until you killed your grandfather.

  I broke with my father over this, and many other things. I held on to the guilt. I used it.

  Roger Simpson murdered your brother and made it look like drowning. I’m sorry.

  I don’t know if you’ll read this. I don’t know if you’ll make it this far. But I needed you to make the journey to feel it, to understand it.

  Maybe you ignored the gifts I gave you. Maybe you never understood why I chose them. Maybe that’s why you never read this letter.

  Nothing can ever change what happened. But you can judge me and find me guilty. I’m at peace with that. Who better to judge me than the sister of the person my family murdered.

  We try so hard to escape. But we cannot escape the world. That is the point.

  Salamander.…. . Hummingbird

  A photograph, along with the letter. Folded, as if it had been in a wallet for a long time. I knew it was the original. Maybe the only one. Browning from the years. Silvina and Ned standing in front of her family’s house up on the ridge. Silvina is smiling, but Ned’s look is ambivalent, complicated, half in shadow. I can’t read it. People I didn’t know stood to either side. Employees? Gardeners? More people Ned had known, at least in passing, that I hadn’t known at all.

  “The fools on the hill,” I recalled, or thought I recalled, Ned saying once. “The fools on the hill.” But said with a kind of envy that was regret. Like he really meant the fools on the farm. The only time I remember him saying anything about them.

  I liked him. I let him into the house.

  Did I hate Silvina? No, I didn’t hate her. Did I hate Roger? Yes, but he was dead. Langer had delivered my revenge for me.

  He seemed so sad, and he was beautiful and so smart.

  You could say anything in a letter. Tell the truth. Tell lies. Half-truths. Create whole lives for people that weren’t real. Harder to do that with a photograph, if easier every day. I knew doctored photographs, had analyzed so many of them at the day job. This one was real.

  A bitter vindication. That I wasn’t random. That I wasn’t just bait or distraction. That maybe that was also true, but there had been a connection between me and Silvina. That I had known her, in a sense. If only through Ned.

  I didn’t feel remorse about Shot. Not really. In time, Shot would’ve killed one of us, made me into him even more than he had. I felt regret, but that was different. No one was ever going to save us but me.

  What else did I feel? I don’t want to tell you. You might not understand. The dominant thing I felt.

  What I felt was relief.

  While all the world was in motion, colliding, nonsensical.

  Imagine what it feels like to have an answer. To come to rest.

  Because I knew what she wanted me to do.

  Go back to the beginning.

  [94]

  The giant salamander felt through its skin even though it didn’t want to. The giant salamander kept receiving the world even if it didn’t want to. Even if the world poisoned it. How if
the world was right, the salamander was healthy. If the world was wrong, the salamander was sick. If the world was wrong, Silvina was sick. I was sick, but not because the world was wrong.

  Salamanders live in two worlds: the terrestrial and the aquatic. Humans can’t do that. Humans find themselves caught between, having to choose. Salamanders don’t have to choose. Part of both. Leaf litter and the banks of forest streams, in vernal pools, swamps. Foraging by night, capturing prey hiding in crevices.

  To minimize danger, salamanders hide in rotting logs and under rocks. The stone foundations of old houses, like memories. If seen, the two wide yellow stripes of the road newt warn off predators. The yellow is produced by chromophores bound to proteins in the skin. These visual pigments pulse light at a specific wavelength visible at night. The pigments are toxic. The yellow lines are poison. When attacked, the salamander expands its spine and its ribs pierce open the poison cells into the skin, releasing venom in a powerful sting.

  The attacker is injured, but so is the salamander. It must repair the skin to avoid infection. It must hurt itself to defend itself. So it knows its enemy by the self-inflicted damage. Knows, on some level, the state of the world.

  When the moon is right, the road newts creep in great numbers to their natal forest ponds. Always the same pond, returning to the place where they were born. They know. They just know. That home may be changed beyond recognition. It may no longer be a safe place, or never was a safe place. But the newt has no choice but to return.

  In the water, they lay eggs, and when the eggs hatch, the immature salamanders breathe through gills. Years are spent in this miniature stage, to prepare for their transition to the harsh terrestrial world. They must have every advantage to survive in their mature form. The hazards until they, too, return to the pond of their birth are many and unpredictable. Many never make it back.