The Crumbling Kingdom

by Jeffrey Hall

  “What can I help you with tonight, my hatchling?” said Risa. “Are you injured? In need of a blessing? Perhaps you wish to stand before the eggs and warm them awhile?” She came before the closest cluster of statues, where the candle provided just enough light to allow them to see each other.Her great, green eyes met Wish’s, and her tail swished with aggravation. “You again?”

  “I’ve come to make an offering to the Nest of the Great Bird,” said Wish, fumbling into his pouch and producing a single lunar.

  Risa looked from the lunar back to him. “Is that it?”

  He eyed the nearest hallway. “I think so.”

  She looked him up and down. “All your scars have healed, Wish. Why do you keep coming back here to open them up again?”

  “What do you expect me to do? Walk past her and ignore it?” He had tried to do that for months.He had tried to hurry by this place and pretend it was nothing but another run-down building filled with people he did not know and did not care about, just like she had told him to, but couldn’t. Despite what he told his father, despite what he told Moso, despite how sick he felt every time he entered this place, he felt worse walking by it.

  He felt worse trying to close down the path of his mind that constantly led him back here.

  “Countless others do without ever looking back. Perhaps you should use that lunar for a few good nights in a brothel. It could alleviate your suffering.”

  Wish shook his head, grabbed her hand, and put the lunar inside of it. “Take it. Make sure they are fed. Fix this place. This city is becoming worse. All it will take to tear these walls down is one good knock from the wrong person.”

  Risa smiled, showing her fangs. “Thank you for your offering, my hatchling. It will be put towards wherever the Great Bird wills it.” The way she said it Wish knew she really meant she would use it for whatever she saw fit.

  “Grand Priestess?”The figure of a lesser priestess emerged from one of the hallways. “He’s getting worse.”

  “I’ll be right there,” said Risa. She turned back to Wish. “Your lunars are always welcome here.You, however, are not. If she wanted to see you, no one is stopping her. Remember that.” Risa pointed to the door and entered the hallway from which the other priestess had come.

  Wish chewed his lip, fighting to restrain himself from yelling at the woman.Risa was the one who kept them in this cage. She was the one who’d cast her spell of religion over the others. That’s why they couldn’t leave. Or at least that’s what Wish told himself.

  He turned to push open the doors and return to the Fangmoran streets, but stopped when he heard the cry of a baby echo out from the nearest hallway.

  Just keep going, you fool, he told himself.

  But the baby wailed again, and this time when he heard it he was reminded of the time he stumbled across a potto trapped in the net of a hunter out in the forest. Normally he never interfered with another’s business in the jungle, but its cries were so helpless and loud that he could not just keep going. The potto seemed to call out to him, begging for him to help.Begging for him to release it from its suffering with its wild, wide, and panicked eyes.

  They were familiar eyes.

  They were the same ones he saw in his own reflection the night the illness finally took his mother. That night when he had slipped out of their home, wandering aimlessly, lost with sadness, until he found a corner of the Trough where only puddles from the prior night’s rain existed. There he let loose the emotions he had been holding onto, things he gripped tightly to keep away from his fatherand his dying mother, two people already suffering enough.

  That day he wanted nothing more than to escape. He wanted nothing more than to cry with someone. But there was no one except his own reflection in that murky plash, staring back up at him, helpless, weak, and lost.

  Alone.

  He couldn’t let the potto suffer the same way. So he cut it down and set the beast back on its way.

  The baby’s cry reminded him of the potto’s.

  He dropped his hand from the Nest’s exit and slowly crept across the main chamber, afraid that if he were too loud Risa would return and berate him for encroaching upon the inner hallways of her sanctum. He entered the nearest hall.Two adjacent doorways were built off of it. The dueling, flickering light of candles played strangely with the darkness, shaping it to look like figures transposed against the walls.He stood beside the doorway to the right and hesitated. His heart sped up to the point where he could feel it pounding in his head.The only thing louder than it was the small mumble of a child and a woman shushing it just on the other side of the wall. He clenched his fist as if he were about to engage in a fight, tried to swallow away the tightness he felt in his throat, and entered the doorway.

  A human woman sat in a chair with her back towards the doorway, topless, only the unclasped robe that lay puddled around her waist preventing her from being completely nude. Her long hair fell over her shoulders like black pathways set to take his eyes from her head to the small of her back, a place which made his throat feel even tighter. She looked out from the lone broken window onto the Fangmoran streets, which looked chaotic compared to the somber peace that radiated from her.

  There was a bed on either side of her.One was empty and unmade. The other was occupied by an old Lemura, his fur so white that even the black rings beneath his closed eyes were gone. Boils grew along the man’s pointy ears.He breathed shallowly.A pan filled with wretchedness lay beside him. A lone candle was placed atop it to help combat the dreadful, sour smell that emanated from it. Wish should have been distracted by the Lemura’s presence, but his eyes did not leave the woman in the chair with her back still towards him, yet unaware of him.

  And he was thankful for it.

  He stood there, content with the silence, appreciative of the extra moments where he could attempt to dissipate the nerves causing his hands to shake and enjoy the time in her presence where he wasn’t expected to produce awkward words.

  But that time was quickly over when the baby the woman held to her chest unlatched and cried, causing her to stand abruptly. She went to switch the baby to her other arm, but froze when she saw Wish standing in the doorway. Her eyes met his and at once he started to blabber.

  “I-I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have said something before I entered.”

  Marli Davi, minor Priestess of the Great Bird, brought the crying baby to her nipple, where it started to suck and quickly quieted. Thanks to the darkness and cloth she was wrapped in, the only feature of the baby’s face visible was her right ear. A coiled ridge of flesh. Perfect. Beautiful.

  “How...how is she?” he said, breaking the silence.

  “Why are you here?” said Marli. Her brow furrowed, but there was no anger in her voice. Only confusion. Only concern.

  It made Wish feel better. “I came to make an offering to the Great Bird.”

  “Oh?” said Marli, her great dark eyes widening like mouths ready to consume. A smile came to her face, an expression she had been trained to have anytime she talked to a potential follower of the Great Bird. It was a beautiful thing to look at it, but Wish hated it. “The Great Bird’s progeny will look kindly upon you when they are hatched and finally descend. Perhaps they will take you away during the Flight.”

  “Perhaps,” said Wish, agreeing with her only in hopes of breaking the strangeness that had settled in their conversation.

  “Perhaps if you sit round the clusters more and offer the eggs your warmth they will look upon you even fonder.”Marli sat back down, tucking the baby into her lap. “It is said that they will know their followers by their heat.”

  “Maybe I will,” said Wish. His nervousness was changing to aggravation. They both knew that his beliefs would never align with hers or the Nest’s. She was attempting to keep him at bay, attempting to protect him from the hurt he sought. He should have left then, but like a fool he lingered at the doorway.

  “If you would like me to take you to the clusters or
call the Grand Priestess to show you where they are, I would be—”

  “You know why I am here, Marli,” said Wish, ending her ramble.

  Her smile left.

  “I don’t,” said Marli. Her voice sounded stern, fierce. It was the voice he first heard when she’d first approached him at the Lavender Light those many months ago. “There is nothing for you here.”

  “Nothing for me here? That’s my daughter.” He pointed to the baby still clutching her chest. The words my daughter trembled as they left his tongue.

  “The offspring of the Great Bird have no father,” said Marli, unflinching from his gaze.

  “Hoatzin mata!” swore Wish. The nerves were gone. Anger had replaced them. Though he had prepared himself for this type of conversation the entire walk over to the Nest, he still struggled to keep his voice in check. “Enough of your religious smook. She is mine. Look at her and tell me she is not.”

  Marli shrugged. “There are many mates who can fertilize an egg when the Great Bird’s disciples are nesting.”

  “Were there others, Marli? I remember those weeks. There was barely a waking hour we did not spend together. If you found another in that time then your Bird is really capable of miracles.”

  The old Lemura stirred and coughed, yet his eyes still did not open.

  “You’re disturbing my care,” said Marli.

  “Your care will be dead in days. How about attending to one who still has to live with your lies a little longer,” said Wish.

  Marli’s lips pursed. “I’ll ask you again, why are you here, Ati?”

  “I just told you. That’s my daughter.”

  “And what do you want to do with her? Stay with her? Raise her? Take my hand and circle her together like the countless others who pull up a child from the weeds of this forsaken place and try to get it to blossom in the dark? Her. Me. This place. This life you keep trying for. It isn’t for you. You said it yourself.”

  He remembered those words.He remembered telling her he didn’t understand how anyone could settle down in this place and not feel restless, not feel like they were wasting away. It wasn’t like the jungle, a place overflowing with life. But a lot had happened after he had said that. He pointed to the baby. “That was before I met her. That was before I met you.”

  “Who is living with whose lies now?” said Marli.

  Wish shook his head. “Does it even matter? You would never break your oath in the first place. All a lesser priestess needs is a baby in her belly to satisfy the sister moon, isn’t that what you told me? My purpose was served. You won’t have me even if you want me.”

  “The Great Bird only needs mothers to hatch her offspring. Not fathers.”

  “I hope these eggs of yours hatch soon enough. It seems to be the only thing you’re counting on to take you away from this place,” said Wish. He wasn’t even sure why he said it. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted what he was asking for.

  She leaned closer and smiled again. “Is that your plan? To take us away from here, my brave jungle-diver? What have you done to prove you can? What have you given up for her?”

  Wish clenched his fist to keep from flashing his five fingers and telling her to fuck off, but the baby unlatched and started crying again, undoing the ball of his anger as quickly as it had come.

  Marli held the child over her bosom and bobbed her, soothing her.The small wisps of the baby’s black hair looked like the legs of an insect transposed against the light that came in from the window. All Wish wanted to do was put his hand on her head and see if he could be a part of the reason why she quieted, but he didn’t dare take a step closer for fear of what Marli would do or say, or even worse, what it would mean if he made her cry harder.

  Instead he said, “Can you at least tell me her name?”

  Marli’s eyes left the baby, only for her to tell him, “No.”

  Though he knew she refused in order to keep any ties he felt with the child severed, he still didn’t understand why. Were the restrictions of her damned religion really that limiting, or did Marli fear that if Wish connected with her baby it would mean there was still a connection to her?He wished he knew. If he did, maybe he wouldn’t have felt as defeated as he did.

  Wish forced a smile to match Marli’s.“Then may the Great Bird’s progeny enjoy my offering. Perhaps they will tell me your secrets before they rip you away from here for good.”

  He turned from the doorway and bumped into Risa, who was just coming down the hallway.

  “How dare you disturb the inner sanctum—”

  Her voice became lost in the noise of the city as he exited the Nest and spilled out onto the Gold Row. A current of dark bodies filtered through the night, only unveiled momentarily by the austere illumination of the glow-blossoms blooming in the darkness. Their whispers and subdued voices sounded like a river tumbling over stones. The only thing to outdo them and drown out their murmur was the Singer, the shadowy, faceless Gibbon who took it upon himself to welcome each new night with his own songs and remind the Fangmoran citizens of Notha’s sacrifice, calling out from somewhere high on the city rooftops. That night he started with the song, “The Leaf with No Tree.”

  Was it the wind who took me?

  Or was it the breath of you?

  Here I am, on the floor.

  A mat now made for the capybara’s door.

  The words echoed down the stones of a nearby building, carrying the Gibbon’s voice straight to Wish’s gut as he lost himself in the nighttime tide of the Gold Row. Yet the street offered him no escape from his frustration and the tightness he felt in his throat. Still somewhere above the din, despite the Singer’s song, he thought he heard his daughter cry.

  He moved faster, pushing past people who walked in his way, ignoring their whispers and stares as he passed. But even though he hurried, he could not outpace the panicked wail that called out to him, asking him where he was going, asking him why he ran and didn’t stay and fight like he had with machete and spear on countless other occasions.

  He had no answer other than to run faster and put more distance between him and that cry.

  He was so bent on outpacing her cry that he barely noticed the crowd gathered beside a body on the corner of the Trough as he entered its main street. It was just another obstacle, just another thing standing in the way of his escape.

  Finally he pushed aside the door to his home and found his father asleep in his chair, snoring. The sight of him, the sight of his mother’s bones on the shelf nearby, should have quieted the clamor chasing him, but it didn’t. Marli’s words, and the baby’s cry lingered in his ear like a demon whispering curses.

  He climbed out the lone window still open despite the coming night and the supposed dangers that lurked just on the other side of the wall. He followed the small path that wound behind and through some of the Trough houses, staying out of sight of the others who still populated the nearby street, and crept through a fissure in the wall.

  He emerged into a small clearing, a place where the jungle had been hacked back as another line of defense, but was slowly reclaiming the territory by sending out its vanguard of vines and fronds and moss. Only yards away, the forest rose before him like another wall, this one more formidable and unconquerable than anything civilization could build.

  And even as loud as the city was at his back and no matter how insistent the cry of his daughter and the words of Marli replayed in his head, the jungle was louder still.

  It screamed.

  The voices of a thousand creatures melded into a maniacal yell that blared from the shadows concocted by the trees and the night. What sound could stand a chance against it?

  Nothing.

  He entered the place without fear of the creatures that lurked there or eyed him from the darkness, the ones sizing him up as a potential meal. If they attacked, he would face them like he always did, like he had for countless of years, and he would fight them as he knew how. For even though they stalked and preyed from the shadows
, he understood their methods.He understood the reason for their attacks.

  They were much less frightening than those of the people at his back whose motives and moods were even harder to see than the nocturnal creature from the jungle.

  Thanks to a small shaft of moonlight that penetrated the canopy, he found a gulga tree with a sloping, wide branch and climbed it. Once there he settled into the nook where the trunk and its limb met and put his head against the tree’s smooth bark.

  And though there was a snake that slithered on the tree beside him, and he heard the fight of two rival cara cats below, and a black bee nest buzzed close by, he closed his eyes and relished the silence that clamor of the jungle gave him.

  In it there were no Green Men asking for money.In it there was not his father tapping his cane as he limped across the floor. In it there were no whispers of a thousand gossiping mouths telling false tales and tossing inaudible insults in his direction.

  And most important of all, in it he could no longer hear Marli’s voice telling him no as his daughter cried out with her questions, the ones that he could not answer.

  And in that silence he found comfort.

  In that place he found peace.

  Marli looked out the window from her seat in the chair.Her hatchling had finally fallen asleep after what felt like hours on her breast.Only after he had left.Only after he had spoken in his funny, rich voice that reminded her so much of a frog’s at night, calling feebly out into the darkness for companionship. The same voice that had tempted her the first time she heard it below the hoots and yells of that wild place Risa had sent her in hopes of finding her seed-bearer. The same voice that drew her towards him. A stranger more strange than any of the rest of the menagerie of miscreants and degenerates that occupied that place.