Ever Winter

by Hackshaw, Peter

  The Birdcage was empty. None drank grog or punched blocks of ice until they cracked and tumbled to the ground. It was eerily silent and in the distance was Moonbird, the palace, reached by a narrow bridge.

  The sounds of the mob drew closer. Dark clouds wrung themselves of all the rain they held and pendants of water carpet-bombed the Favela, finding percussion upon the tactical helmet adorning Henry’s head.

  Atop the vast hill, there was nowhere for Henry to hide. No camouflage to be made, or shelter to be had. No crowds to blend with. It was as sparse as the Lantic itself.

  Henry crept to the side of the square furthest from the Birdcage.

  Thirty-Eight

  Shaming Shadows

  A sallow-faced old man with a cemetery of wonky teeth not unlike the Bone Yard bent himself doubled on the floor of the Birdcage and raised his hands to the sculptured ceiling in praise. Shapes around him shifted between the rimy pews.

  “Praise him! Here he comes. That old saint Nick,” he cackled.

  “Shut up, old man,” spoke a hushed voice in the darkness, “you’ll get us murdey’d!”

  The old man laughed and gave the shadows a better view inside his mouth. His teeth were grays and browns, with some black tar.

  “He comes to take each an’ every oneya up that hill and into the pit, si? I seen um do! Nonaya ever believe. But now? Praise him, out there in the driving rain like I ain’t seen in a hundy!” The man’s arms shook from old age and excitement. They shook like he was possessed by an unseen spirit and the shadows around him cursed and told him to keep his voice down, or else.

  “In here, oh Lord! We all in here!” the old man announced, then just as quickly found his voice stifled as one of the shadows reached out with a blade from one of the pews. The man fell sideways, twitched a couple of times, then fixed his final stare upon the arched entrance to the hall.

  Sporadic shots rang out in the distance, presumed by some to be thunder and muted to some extent by the rain that beat down outside.

  Silence fell in the Birdcage, and from the rear of the room, she came. The Canary. Wild and beautiful. A little fractured. Somehow delicate and dangerous at the same time. The girl with the healing voice. The starlet of the gilded ice cage.

  Each of the shadows became still in her presence. It was always her room. Her audience. She commanded it. None of those in the room had known her how she once was; a deliriously happy little girl living on the ice with her family. They saw and heard what they wanted to see, never imagining joy beyond the Favela. Nothing like that was ever permitted. Those who had left were always hunted. Those who challenged the as-is were made examples of. To the punters and regulars of the Birdcage, the Canary was Favela-born. The very best of them.

  “I was sleeping. What’s out there?” she asked all and no one. Iris rubbed her eyes, smearing the ashen paint around them. Iris noted the man lying sideward on the floor. “Why you all on your knees? And what’s been done to him?”

  “A demon! I see it!” came the answer finally. Other voices spoke up in hushed tones.

  “Diablo!”

  “Ain’t no devil. It’s a spirit!”

  “I see it. It’s a child, but something wicked about it.”

  “Old serpent, that’s what he is.”

  “No child. Thissa man. Watched him creep like I’ve never seen, then snap another man’s neck!”

  “Verdade.” Truth.

  “A man can’t do that. It’s a spirit of one of the Great-Greats!” whispered another.

  Iris knelt beside the old man and followed his stare toward the entranceway. She used the palm of her hand to close his eyelids, as if that was the thing needed to let him take his final nap. The long sleep. She would go back and check his pockets for a weapon of any kind, but only when the shadows were distracted.

  “You all scared of an old man?” Iris asked the shadows. “Well, are you?”

  “He was yelling. Was gonna give us all away!” said the one who’d sent the old man sideways, still in the shadows.

  “Whatever is out there, it ain’t a devil. I spent my life on the icescape, out on Lantic. And the only devil I ever saw wore a coat of sewn-up patches and you all know him very well. He who wears a Big White pelt like he skinned it himself.” She paused at the thought of Father’s coat. “If something comes for us all and it’s out there, I’d rather you all go out there and show me what you got. This is my place. My hall. And cowards aren’t welcome in here. No songs ever for the unworthy. No drams either.”

  The command she held, something taught by the old lady, Catharin, went out in the room like two mighty hands that picked out the men in the shadows and lifted them onto their feet. None wanted the Canary to think lowly of them. The Birdcage was their light, and in it, the Canary was the governess of it all.

  The adults moved toward the entranceway and left the old man to his quiet slumber.

  Iris pilfered the man’s pockets and smiled to herself, feeling the handle of a tool sharpened for only one purpose.

  It was a test. Loyalty. Command. As she watched them leave the grand hall of the Birdcage, she supposed the power of her songs might just one day lift the rabble to turn Ginger Lanner inside out before her. Her songs were power. In her own way, she was ascending the Favela.

  Thirty-Nine

  Man, Made Flesh

  Henry was finally discovered.

  No longer a phantom or wraith, he was made flesh in his gray battle-suit and recognized by Dookie, the woman with short, jet-black hair who had been part of the original raiding party. She was accompanied by three disheveled men armed with makeshift clubs, a whalebone blade and an ornate sword. The tallest of the group, a man wearing a knitted hat made sodden by the rain, held a pistol in his hand and seemed to wait for approval from Dookie, his superior, to fire its precious bullets.

  “This is what all the noise has been about?” she laughed, then nodded to her companion with the gun.

  Realizing he was a sitting target, Henry started moving his body so he became harder to hit and zig-zagged a route toward them.

  “Eat this, cunk!” The man in the knitted hat fired the first shot and it missed Henry by several feet. He corrected his aim and prepared to fire a second shot, but Henry tossed a blade across the space between them and watched it embed in the man’s heart, yanking his body to one side and sending his second, final shot skyward, toward the clouds that still wrung their contents out.

  Without hesitation, the man’s companions confronted Henry with their weapons drawn, but he used his war-lance well and cut ribbons and bows into them, his blades splitting the falling rain into smaller droplets. Henry put his training into practice; Krav Maga, Jukendo, Okinawan Karate. Every move had a rhythm to it. It seemed automatic and he did not tire yet.

  “He’s a warlord,” declared one of the companions before he died. The man almost looked impressed with Henry as he took his final breath.

  Then a familiar face appeared in Henry’s field of vision, a figure that leaped out from the crowd. Unmistakable. More than deja vu. Memories flickered in Henry’s thoughts, like the projected moodlift on the side of the container ship; laughter, made-up games, play-fights, arguments, cuddles, the bonds of love. He’d expected her and had hoped he’d see her first. If he could choose to see only one of his sisters, it would be his youngest, who he doted on.

  Though he’d expected he might see her, Henry was mesmerized. A second passed. Then two. She’d changed so much, but there in the flesh, across the square in the doorway of the Birdcage, there she was. Iris.

  Henry, distracted, failed to see Dookie pick up her comrade’s gun and take aim at him. It was a grave mistake and in losing concentration, Henry had invited his enemy to take a fatal shot.

  The warrior squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet forth impatiently, hitting Henry on the upper arm, rejoicing as it made contact. Henry dropped his war-lance as he instinctively went to grab the place where the bullet had struck him. He looked down at it, confused. Feel
ing stupid. Forgetting everything he’d rehearsed in a second and letting his enemy take the cheapest shot. Yet there was no blood from the wound. His battle-suit, the garment he’d found so long ago in a military container, had not allowed the bullet to penetrate its mesh of material. But the force of the bullet alone had been enough to render his arm useless and cause damage to the muscle. His arm throbbed and hung at his side uselessly.

  On the other side of the hilltop, beyond the rocky bridge, on the gangway of Moonbird, stood the two men Henry wanted to end the most. Ginger Lanner and the king himself. He had their attention finally. He saw, with his enhanced eye, that they smirked in admiration as Dookie closed in on the injured boy, with an arm stretched out before her ready to take the next shot.

  It was over, then. The king and Lanner were already making their way to the square to defile Henry’s carcass and celebrate his failed revenge. Henry raised his uninjured arm in a feeble attempt to block the next bullet. It was pointless and he knew it.

  The gun blast sounded and Henry felt his head explode as the bullet hit the side of his tactical helmet and ricocheted. The sound erupted in his eardrums and shook his skull and all that was in it. Henry found himself lying on the ground, with all about him just a whirling mess as his vision faltered. Blood trickled down his face where the helmet had been crushed inward above his temple and Henry spent an age working out where he was and what had happened to him.

  Dookie stood above him then and took a final aim with her companion’s gun. He closed his eyes, waiting for the shot that would end him and take him to see Mother and Father on angel’s wings.

  The shot never came. Henry opened his eyes to find Dookie lying next to him, staring back at him. She was dead. Henry couldn’t see an obvious wound, but he was still in a daze. He had no idea who had saved him. The icescape swirled around him and the thought came to Henry that the two of them, lying next to each other in the middle of the square, looked quite absurd. He tried to lift his head, but he couldn’t raise it. His legs felt like blubber beneath him. He thought of the bairn, trying to walk, and then much younger, lying on his back, kicking his tiny legs out.

  Henry could taste bile, along with the blood that seemed to cover him. All around him, the square had erupted into battle, and from where he lay, Henry could see faces of those whose names he couldn’t instantly recall; a girl with an overbite, an orfin boy with frostbitten fingers, two siblings, someone who had been with him when Martin died, a strange boy who talked to fishes and a girl so beautiful that his heart almost stopped right there. He’d dreamt of her and imagined scenes and futures over and over again. Then she was lost in the crowd as blows were exchanged between the adults of the Favela and the children they’d treated as outcasts and made into lowly urchins.

  Henry saw a giant of a man trying to shake two of the children off his back and saw the gleam of a shiny silver belt buckle about his waist that stated ‘California State Bull Roper Champion 2027’ upon it. Henry’s gift to Father. The children clung on, scratching and clawing at Needol, biting and tearing at him, until his knees went from under him and he sank under the trampling feet around him.

  Yet the brief triumph was short-lived and replaced by immediate sorrow; a young ‘un that Henry did remember, Little L, was held high above a woman’s shoulders and thrown to the floor with a sickening crack. Henry could only catch a glimpse of the child through the carnage unfolding and realized in an instant that he was already dead, his back and neck broken.

  Henry tried to stand once more. He cried out in rage at the death of Little L, but his voice was defeated by all the other sounds around him. Then, Henry caught a glimpse of the dead boy’s elder brother, distressed and afflicted by the violent end of his kin.

  All of the hurt around him, was of Henry’s doing. He’d bought his war to the favela. Yet, from where he slumped, he could see the orfins rising up against the adults, fighting with all the strength and courage they could muster.

  An electric glow crept toward Henry, until brilliant light engulfed him and a dome encased him safe from the outside world. Hepburn was with him and had encased him in his healing dome, built by what seemed like a million digital insects. Henry, unsure if he was dreaming, realized that this had happened before. Yet, the last time the robot had encased him in a healing dome, he’d been unconscious as it was happening.

  The robot was dented and scratched. Its faceplate cracked on one side so a digital-smile leaked pixels into the real world as a shiny, metallic liquid.

  “Hep…” Henry tried to speak, but he was enervated, breaking out in a cold sweat.

  Mimicking the ricochet from when Dookie’s bullet hit the tactical helmet, a sound echoed in the tent and a dent the size of a mouth appeared in the side of it. Hepburn regarded it, his expression puzzled, then annoyed. Another dent appeared a meter from the first.

  “Bullets,” the robot announced. Seemingly satisfied that the dome would hold, he continued his work. Henry cried out once more, the image of a broken Little L transfixed in his mind.

  “You have a concussion, Henry. I’m administering a cocktail of medicines to help you to continue to fight,” the robot inserted a line into Henry’s skin, “and a shot of Aexacylin to bring sensation to your injured arm, minus some of the pain. I’m obliged to tell you this could cause long-term damage to your limb…”

  Several more dents appeared. The dome remained intact.

  “Pan?” Henry managed.

  “It’s all right, Henry. I’m your friend and I am looking after you.” The robot smiled, even as more liquid sprayed out from its faceplate.

  Another dent appeared on the side of the tent where Hepburn was operating, then another.

  Sparks flew inside the tent as Henry’s head-wound was sealed by a laser. The lightning ceased as quickly as it had begun and no mark of it remained on Henry’s skin.

  “It going to be fine. I’m just bringing you around now, Henry. You’ve done very well. You could say that I am quite proud of—”

  Hepburn was unable to continue his commentary as a sudden boom shook the dome. Flames engulfed the air around them and the sky opened up above, letting the rain back in. Hepburn took the full force of the explosion and his final expression was one of dismay, that some of his own body parts were strewn across the square, beyond the dome that had sheltered them.

  Forty

  Falling Dominoes

  The king, still in his wedding attire, hurried impatiently to the battlefield with a grenade launcher in his hands that had never been fired before. He bent to one knee, as if he was proposing, and he fired the rocket at the dome that had been erected over the boy who wanted to kill him more than any other in the Favela. He didn’t care if he hit his own people. The boy was a nuisance who had somehow returned to challenge his very being, and he couldn’t tolerate it.

  The king was furious. He tried to recall how he’d instructed his guards to leave the boy. The boy, Henry, was never meant to survive. He’d taken his eye and they’d left him in a blizzard in his undergarments to freeze. Yet there he was; reborn. Fierce.

  Never had the king been challenged in such a way. His rule over the people was robust and immaculate, his word distinct and final. Yet in front of him was an uprising. He saw Orfins lashing out and stabbing their elders, and elders challenging the well-armed peacekeepers loyal to the king. If ever he had imagined a worst-case scenario, this was it.

  The grenade propelled backward in the direction of Moonbird, instead of in its intended direction. Had he cared it would have caused the king great embarrassment. The grenade hit the top deck of the palace in the backdrop of the battle and sent two guards hurtling in the air to their deaths off the far side of the cliff, pedaling their legs and flapping their arms as if to encourage unnatural flight. Lanner grimaced and the king swore at him and ordered him to kill anyone who defied him. The great usurpers.

  The king spun the rocket launcher so it faced the correct way, reloaded it, aimed and fired at the dome. This time
, the shell turned in the air and homed in on its target perfectly, striking the dome where several bullets had failed to penetrate. This time was different. One second the dome was there and then it was gone.

  Flames licked the air, then diminished at the taste of rain. Bodies dropped, some voluntarily, others because the rocket had brought their death swiftly unto them. For brief seconds, it was impossible to tell which was which.

  Lanner, for the first time, did what he was told and already stood within the smoke and the confusion, searching for Henry’s body, to ensure he’d perished, or help him on his way before the gathered populace. The lesson needed to be learned, a second time.

  The machine, some kind of relic from the time of the Great-Greats, was no more. It bled nickel gray and seeped a translucent gel substance onto the ice, which fizzed in the pools it created. The pieces of the robot were scattered amongst the human forms that lay at all angles. It sparked, but none of the pieces jolted to life. None of it re-assembled as it once was. It was like the cadavers and skeletons in the Bone Yard. Something that was no more.

  It seemed like only Lanner was on his feet then, continuing the fight, because even those far from what had been the dome had ceased their battles, as if shell-shock had fallen across the square and the brutality of what the rocket had caused, such swift destruction, had taken the fight out of everyone. Full circle; once more, everything as futile as it ever was.

  Then Lanner, the man in the patchwork cloak, a technicolor nightmare, found his prey lain down on the ice, beneath the torso of the machine. Henry was unarmed, but even then, Lanner didn’t take the risk and loaded his shotgun.

  Part of him admired Henry. He remembered the defiant looks Henry had sent him in the igloo his family had called home. He remembered feeling a pang of jealousy at the life that boy had, which was completely unlike his own childhood and certainly unlike everything he’d experienced as an adult. The way the boy had made him feel was the very reason Lanner needed to end him once and for all.