Psychopomp: A Novella (4 page)

They used to try to control the weather. They made it rain on failing crops and over lowering lakes anytime they wanted. During public outdoor events, they would use a machine to disperse the clouds so the sky would be a clean, bright blue, so there was no chance of rain.

In school, I learned drought had nearly always been a problem. We, now, would welcome the clouds they’d once sent away. We’d welcome rain. We’d celebrate as it collected in our unused barrels.

They never seeded clouds anymore. Decades ago, some group had decided it wasn’t wise to engineer the weather. Experimental methods of cloud seeding, along with excessive pollution, had caused extreme chemical damage to our soil. It was no longer safe or fertile. Environmental experts proposed the earth would eventually renew itself, if left alone. It had the inherent ability to heal anything we’d done to it.

I wondered if that principle of renewal could be applied to a person. If you left a girl alone, she could learn to heal herself. She could consciously forget bad things, or at least learn to live with them.

I’d thought Verm might forget about me after one night. But the next day I was in the kitchen when I heard the front door, permanently swollen from moisture and heat, pop open with a loud juddering sound. Expecting Anden, I didn’t turn around. The door slammed. A moment later, arms caught me around the middle, holding me tight so I couldn’t run.

“Relax,” Verm said soothingly. “It’s only me.”

It was hard to relax, though. He’d tucked his chin in the crook of my neck and pressed his hands flat on my stomach. His hips pressed hard against my bottom.

“Verm, I—”

His arms tightened suddenly. “You trying to get rid of me? You want me, don’tcha, Marlo?”

“I…”

The front door jarred open again. I thought Verm might let go but he held on, asserting his possession of me. Anden came in, eyes sliding over us dispassionately. I begged silently for his help.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Verm.

“Come on. Let’s talk.”

My brother made me stay in the room while they discussed fishing techniques. I kept as far as I could from Verm, but I felt the way he watched me.

They talked about blast fishing, which fishers sometimes used illegally to gather large amounts of fish at once. Anden didn’t like it, because the explosion often harmed the underwater habitat, making it harder to collect more fish later on. And you had to be careful not to get caught by the environmental police.

Neither of them cared for cyanide fishing, mainly because rich people looking to populate their aquariums favored the technique. These people would pick a spot in the ocean and pay fishers to pour a cyanide mixture into the water. The cyanide would stun the fish but not kill them, making collection simple.

I’d never thought I would sympathize with creatures that could barely think for themselves.

“You can come with us if you’re ready to leave tomorrow,” Anden said.

Verm nodded. “I’ll be there.” He caught me just as he was leaving. “You can’t avoid me forever.”

I locked the door behind him. When I turned, Anden had fixed me with a burning glare.

“He still likes you?”

“I don’t know.” I paused. “Why is this so important to you?”

Anden hesitated. “I think he’s a good fisher and could help with the catch. But I need someone who’ll work for fewer credits and not ask questions. That’s where you come in.”

I shook my head. This was a new low even for him. “I ain’t no whore.”

His eyes narrowed. “Clean up your room. Verm said it’s a pigsty. And try not to look like such a slob all the time.”

I slept restlessly that night, always half in a dream. One of the bony cats slunk through my open window and curled itself into the crook of my body. And something else was in bed with me, something moving sinuously against my back, around my head. There was makeup smeared red and black all over my sheets.

When I woke, my pillow was wet from tears. But I was glad, because today was the day Anden meant to leave again. This time he was taking Verm with him.

Pell and I went to the docks to watch them go, even though I didn’t want to. The hot air was heavy with the trashy smell of things brought up from underwater. Hands were stained with the blood of ocean life. Feet walked on boards layered with years of fishy grime. This was the place I’d been born to.

I stood in the shade of bait shop awnings and hoped Verm wouldn’t notice me. From a distance, he and Anden both looked strong and hearty, incapable of cruelty. I knew, suddenly, eyes could lie. And however pretty the lie, I knew I didn’t want to live in it. The truth may have been horrid, but lies were cruel.

“He didn’t have to go again so soon,” Pell said. “Why didn’t he stay longer?”

“Food. We need credits.”

She was stubborn. “He could have stayed a little while.”

“Pell,” I said, “why do you like my brother?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems like he’d take care of me. Then I wouldn’t have to go to Cizel anymore.”

“I want to love someone who sees me. He won’t stop loving me no matter what I look like or what I do. And he’ll be kind. He’ll never hit me or make me do things I don’t want.”

“Good luck finding a guy like that.”

The guys set out, their boat drifting from the harbor, and the weight of their presence fell from my shoulders.

For a place located in the heart of a city, the institute was strangely isolated. Claire could feel the isolation all the way down to her bones. She’d always lived at the institute, so she’d always felt that way. A high wall topped with spiky iron bars separated the grounds from Cizel, preventing her from seeing anything but the tallest of the gleaming glass buildings. But she could always hear the whoosh of the rail, the laughter of people passing by, and sometimes screaming when the bombs fell.

From her room, she could hear the angel shuffling across dusty floorboards in the attic. She could hear the sad melodies he coaxed from the forgotten piano beneath the eaves. Did he play the piano? They were beautiful melodies that haunted her sleep. He was miserable and self-pitying, she imagined, after what her sister had done to him. He watched the girls with lightless eyes.

But only Claire knew he existed. And she knew
she
was the one he’d been watching for.

So one night she answered the beckoning of his songs. She climbed out of bed and moved down the shadowy hall outside her room, hypnotized and near tears with the sweetness of the piano notes. These familiar strains were embedded so deep within her memory they never left her completely, even when all the other memories slipped away.

Soon, she faced the attic door. It was the only door in the building forbidden to the girls, but Claire had to see the angel with her own eyes. When her sister had sent him away, Claire had feared she’d never see him again.

“What are you doing out of bed?”

With a small gasp, Claire turned at the teasing voice. She narrowed her eyes. Ethan leaned against the wall a few steps behind her. He was seventeen, confident and capable of melting a heart. And he had captured many hearts. It was easy with that rakish, crooked smile and those velvety brown eyes. His hair was black, worn just a touch too long. He crossed the institute grounds with a long-legged gait, excited whispers trailing after him.

Claire had never whispered about him. She was so quiet all the girls ignored her, and she had no one to whisper with. She’d followed Ethan with her light brown eyes because he was the only boy she knew, besides the angel, but she’d never thought he’d notice her.

“I thought I heard something,” she said to the headmistress’s son. Her voice cracked because she hardly ever spoke. She cleared her throat so she would be ready for the next words.

Ethan grinned. “You should go back to sleep or I’ll tell you were wandering around afterhours.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not a patient here. I don’t have to follow the rules.”

“Whose room were you in just now?
She
obviously wasn’t following the rules.”

He shrugged, eyes gleaming with silent laughter. He didn’t care if a girl got in trouble because of him. He didn’t care if they got transferred to Rueville, and a good number of them did after he stopped seeing them. Claire had watched it all.

Eyeing him distrustfully, she edged past him and slipped back into her room. She breathed with anger, pacing the floor. Another night lost. Ethan had ruined her chance, and she didn’t know where she’d found the courage to speak so forcefully to him.

The next day, she sat by her window, half-heartedly working on one of the coloring books Ms. Gilsig collected for the girls. She could see all the way to Rueville, but it wasn’t much of a view. Beyond the rails and arching magnet roads, everything was dust.

Below, Ethan strode across the green, artificial turf. Then he disappeared into the music building. Just moments before, Claire had spied a girl going in there. She’d seen this before. They would stay in there an hour or more, or maybe only a few minutes. When they emerged, separately, they would both look satisfied in a strange way. The girl would appear more confident and Ethan’s swagger would be more pronounced.

Today, Ethan looked up, and it seemed he met her eyes through the glass.

Claire leaned away from the window and wondered how he managed. He wasn’t supposed to socialize with the girls—at least not in that manner. Most days he never looked at them, not even the ones he met in the music building; Claire knew this because she watched him obsessively. So why would those girls bother with him when he gave them such scant, scattered attention? Other than good looks, what did he have to offer?

Her thoughts trailed away, as they often did when it got too difficult to focus. What, she wondered dreamily, did she have to offer the angel? She had always adored him, even when he’d loved her sister.

She adored him even more now that her sister had broken his heart.

I stood in line all day, dust streaked with sweat on my skin. I got drawn and shuffled home, but I forgot to look for the yellow eyes.

We were in the living room. Blanca was trying to get the baby to crawl and Pell was painting her nails before work. I’d found an old sewing pattern in the library some time ago and now absorbed myself in trying to decipher the lines on the thin pages. It was a map that had nothing to do with land or sea. The creases were torn and bits of the soft paper crumbled off in my hands.

Verm and Harkin burst through the door, one after the other. Harkin wedged it shut. All of us looked up in surprise.

“What’s going on?” I asked nervously. “It’s too early. You only just left.”

Pell stood up, casting a wary glance at me. “Where’s Anden?”

Verm looked at me rather than her, resting a heavy hand on my shoulder. He spoke in a gentle voice. “Anden’s not coming back. There was a rogue wave not long after we left and he went overboard. I tried to save him, but the water was too rough.”

“But—”

“It happens.”

“He’s dead,” I said.

“Yep.”

He tried to put his arms around me, but I ducked out of the way. His false sympathy was one thing I couldn’t stomach. Blindly I ran from the house, skittering down alleys until I reached the docks. Shouts and insults and rude laughter assaulted my ears from every direction.

I stopped running and took a deep breath. I didn’t know where to go, but I didn’t want to go back home.

After walking for a few minutes, I came to the cart of an old woman whose name I’d never known. She’d been selling little fish empanadas for as long as I could remember. From a few feet away, I watched as she wrapped an empanada in wax paper for a customer. The movements of her knobby brown hands were slow but practiced.

She glanced over at me with rheumy eyes. “Quién es? What are you doing standing over there?” she called in a voice like a dry breeze. Lifting a hand, she beckoned me. “Come closer. Ah, I recognize you.”

“My brother’s dead,” I blurted. “He fell overboard and drowned.” It didn’t escape me that maybe Verm had been at least partially responsible for the accident.

The woman’s wrinkled face wasn’t sympathetic. “It happens to most of them, sooner or later. The ocean has no mercy.”

“I… I don’t think I’m sad.”

“What good does sadness do? It won’t change nothing. He’ll still be dead and you’ll still be here.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Verdad. I been around a long time.” She reached for one of her empanadas and folded the wax paper around it. “Here you are, pobrecita.”

The empanada was warm and fragrant in my hand. “Gracias.”

She busied herself with empty baking sheets. “Bah. It fell apart in the oven. Couldn’t sell it anyway.”

I thanked her again and meandered back toward the house. The empanada was warm and flavorful. I thought I might love that old woman.

As I walked, I thought about how I would never see my brother again. For the first time, I knew it was possible to love someone you hate. There was no way to erase any of the things he’d done or made me do, but he was my brother. In his own way, he’d looked after us, and that was all any sister could have asked. Whatever grief I felt at his absence confused me, because there was also the absurd relief he was gone.

I’d expected Verm to leave, but he was still at the house when I got back. Before I could say a word, he slapped me and told me never to run from him again.

“You’re mine,” he said.

I held my stinging face and wondered why he wanted me so bad.

“You could be good for me, Mar,” he said that night, a whisper in the dark. The soft sound of his voice and the gentle caress of his callused fingertips stirred something tender in me. It was possible I’d misunderstood him all along and he was just a boy looking for love.

I almost said his name. I almost told him I understood.

“Don’t ever leave me,” he hissed, breaking the spell. “Ever.” His fingers stilled and dug into my skin, warning me.

“I w-won’t,” I said, shrinking from him.

I clung to that one moment of flawed affection, tortured by the scent of salt and sweat on my sheets. I needed to know why he thought I’d be good for him when he obviously wasn’t good for me.

His gentle voice haunted me, following me into my dreams. I wanted desperately to believe in it, even just for a little while.