Authors: Jeremy C. Shipp
“They’re inviting me for tea.”
She laughs.
The crow nudges at one of the bluebursts with his beak.
“Go ahead,” I say.
So the crow pecks away.
“Go ahead what?” my mother says.
“I was talking to the crow.”
“Never mind the beast. You write a letter to Grandma Thundershine and thank her for the offer but tell her you’d much rather devour your own legs.” She chuckles.
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you talking to me or the bird?”
“You.”
“How dare you speak to me that way? I’m not here for myself, you know, Gourd. I’ve given up a lot to stay and counsel you.”
“I know, mother. Thank you.”
“You won’t visit them, will you?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
But the truth is, I have.
I reach out to pet the crow, and he bites at my finger.
“Sorry,” I say to the bird.
“I’ll forgive you this time,” my mother says.
Maybe one day I’ll honor my mother and carve her festering blotch of a face into a spirewood log, but for now I feel like tea.
*
Stepping through the archway into the Thundershine longhouse is almost like stepping into one of my mother’s books. The men wear suits. The women wear dresses. The problem is that no one’s greeting me with a handshake or even a smile.
I follow the bird, and my bare feet smack against the intricate flowers and vines painted on the stone floor. I try to lighten my step without looking even more stupid. It doesn’t work.
As soon as I enter the dining room, the conversations that died when I first entered the house suddenly come back to life behind me.
“Close the door,” someone wheezes.
I do as I’m told.
“You’re going to regret this,” my mother says.
The crow hops onto the table, and the work of art, or what I assumed was a work of art, starts to move. On closer inspection, this skeletal sculpture is actually an old woman, not much more than skin and bones that cling together so tight there’s hardly a wrinkle anywhere. Her hand quakes all the way to the bird.
Then the crow speaks, in a soft feminine voice. It says, “Forgive me for not serving you, Gourd. I’m afraid I can’t stand.” The old woman’s lip lines move a little as the bird releases the words.
I pour some tea into a cup painted with elaborate blue flowers that match the old woman’s dress. I drink. Rich, warm.
Still my mother says, “She’s trying to poison you.”
The woman lifts a cup with her free hand, but the shaking causes most of the contents to spill out. A drop or two spatters on the bird. I expect him to fly away or at least flinch. He doesn’t.
I’m angry that no one but the bird is here to help this old woman.
“Can I hold your cup for you as you drink?” I say.
“It’s alright,” she says. “The tea wouldn’t do any good for me anyway.”
I set my cup down.
“What are they saying to you?” my mother says. “Don’t listen to their lies.”
“My name is Stone, though most everyone calls me Grandma,” she says. “I’m sure your mother spoke of me often.”
Hearing the word Grandma is enough to gnarl my innards.
As a child, I hated Grandma Thundershine with a blind intensity that only a child can perfect.
I hated her cruelty. I hated the toys and the cousins she kept away from me. Mostly, I hated my mother’s eyes every time she talked about this old woman.
And of course, part of me still does.
“I’ve invited you here because I’d like to give you a chance to prove yourself,” she says. “To prove that you belong with us.”
I smile.
I smile at the enemy, because I want smiles and handshakes in return. I want to wear a suit.
“You’re talking to her, aren’t you?” my mother says. “She’ll ruin your life, Gourd. She’ll destroy you.”
Every wonderful part of life that was taken from my mother exists here, in this house.
“I’m sorry that you and your mother were punished for ideals that have been passed down generation to generation,” Grandma says. “It’s no one’s fault, really. Many hoped that we could finally rid these values from our family once and for all, by keeping you and your mother outside these walls. So that they would die with you.” Her hand slides off the crow and rests on the table for a while.
I sit in silence, waiting.
After a few moments, she manages to lift her arm again.
“I understand as much as anyone the benefits of sacrifice,” she says. “But I’d rather give you a choice. Luckily, my family feels so guilty about the sacrifices I myself make that they’ve agreed to honor my request.” She closes her eyes. “You should know that this is a dangerous situation, and I do have an alternative motive in asking you to be a part of it.” She opens her eyes again. “I’m not very attached to you, Gourd. If you died, I probably wouldn’t mourn much at all.”
“Better me than a loved one,” I say.
She nods. “It’s not that I couldn’t come to love you. I simply don’t know you.”
“I understand. I’ll do whatever you want.” I take a gulp of tea. Strong, cold, like I feel.
But my mother still says, “You can’t do this.” She sounds like she might start crying, but of course she won’t.
She can’t.
*
I expect a claustrophobic desk surrounded by colossal walls of portly books. I expect a clean cut man in glasses wearing a black suit, standing in front of a busy chalkboard. In other words, I expect the illustration on the cover of one of my favorite books growing up:
The Fast Learner
.
I don’t expect an underground burrow with a mound of dirt in the center. I don’t expect a very short man without a shirt on, sitting on that mound, encircled by candles.
And I don’t expect a hug.
“Sit with me,” he says.
So I join him inside the circle.
“You’re Antash?” I say.
“I’m one who goes by that name, yes. Hopefully you’re Gourd and not an Enforcer. Because if I just hugged an Enforcer, I’d need to bathe for a few days, and I don’t have time for that.”
“I’m Gourd.”
“You’re a disgrace,” my mother says.
Antash grins.
Then the crow hops in from the darkness of the stairway and flies onto a perch that I didn’t see before sticking out of the wall.
“It seems Avalanche likes you,” Antash says. “He goes where he pleases, and he’s come to help you.”
“Oh,” I say, and try to suppress my smile. He’s only a bird after all.
“Before we do anything else, you need to meet Miravel,” Antash says.
“Miravel?” I say.
“The Spirit of Life and Death. You haven’t heard of him?”
“No.”
“Never mind that.” He holds my hands. “If he ends up not wanting to work with you, Gourd, don’t blame yourself. He’s a strange spirit. I’ve known him for years, and I still don’t see any rhyme or reason behind his decisions. The only advice I can really give you is to compliment him on his hair. Other than that, just talk to him.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“They want you dead,” my mother says.
“You’ll be fine.” Antash closes his eyes and buries his hands in the dirt.
When he opens his eyes again, all the candles burn out, and his pupils illuminate the room with crimson light.
I want my hut.
“You woke me from a very pleasant dream where I was beaching a whale,” Antash says. Miravel says.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Are you going to introduce yourself, or should I call you Dream Spoiler from now on?”
“I’m Gourd.”
“Dream Spoiler is more interesting. What am I doing here, Dream Spoiler?”
“I’d like to work with you. Please.”
“I could grant your request.” His hand thrusts from the earth and clamps my neck. “Or I could kill you.”
“Please,” I try to say. I also try to pry off his small fingers, but fail at that as well.
“I told you,” my mother says.
Avalanche swoops down. He bites and claws at Antash’s neck. Miravel’s neck.
Miravel releases his grip on my neck, and replaces it with one on the bird’s.
Avalanche squirms, squawks, chaws.
I watch.
“You’d let me strangle this bird after he saved you?” Miravel says.
“I don’t think I can stop you,” I say.
“You’re a fool,” he says. “I’m in a mortal body with mortal weaknesses.”
Still, I watch. I say, “You have nice hair.”
I hear a crack. Avalanche collapses, like every villager collapses after an Enforcer finishes the job. And Miravel smiles, the way my mother would smile when she had lips. When she forced me to watch the bloody scene outside the hut.
“Do you still want to work with me?” Miravel says.
“Yes,” I say.
I want a suit. I want to stay in this longhouse and never see another villager fall. They make me sick.
Miravel tosses the bird. In mid air, his wings burst with life and he soars to the perch.
“I’ll kill you another day, Dream Spoiler,” Miravel says, and unearths his hand. The light of his eyes fade.
We sit in the darkness.
I hear weeping.
“Antash?” I say. “Are you hurt?”
“Miravel sends me to my family when he inhabits my body,” Antash says. “I can’t take the memories back here with me. Only the feelings.” He lights a candle, and I can see his tears.
“You’re not a Thundershine?” I say.
“No,” he says. “But never mind that. We need cockroaches.”
*
Here she is, the key to my salvation: a middle-aged woman named Fireball the Immortal, who even I’ve heard of. She tosses her wooden sword on my table. Then she sits on my chair by my fire.
“So you’re him, huh?” she says.
“I’m him,” I say.
“Can you believe the rain out there?” She pulls back her hood, revealing her infamous red hair. It’s not as striking as I thought it would be. “This is why I hate coming home.” She pulls off her boots. “Do you have any food in here?”
“No.”
“Can you get me some? I’m starving.”
“Okay.” I head for the door.
“On second thought, I’m too tired to eat. Which pile of fur is my bed?”
I point.
“Can you move it closer to the fire?”
I do.
After she’s cocooned herself in layers of fur blankets, she says, “How many Enforcers would you say live in those barracks?”
“Maybe twenty,” I say, though I know for a fact that there are twenty two. I also know all their names, and they know mine.
“That’s too much,” she says. “This is going to be horrible. I hope I never wake up.”
I worry about how to respond, until I hear her snoring.
“You can’t fight the State,” my mother says. “You’re going to fail. You have to end this now. Use the knife I gave you.”
“Goodnight Mother.”
*
Once again, the tiny legs twitch and quiver until they don’t twitch and quiver anymore, and Avalanche stares at the cockroach from across the room.
“Are you concentrating?” Antash says.
“Yes,” I say.
“Please stop. Consciously, all you need is intent. The rest comes from where your feelings live.”
“I can’t do this.”
“You can.” Antash places his hands on my shoulders, gentle, as if I deserve to be touched.
“You told me I’d be ready by now,” I say. “And I can’t even help a stupid bug.”
“They’re not stupid, and you will be ready soon. You’re simply blocked up inside.”
My mother says, “Stick with them, and you’re doomed to play with insects the rest of your life. They’ll never let you read in the study or dance in the ballroom. They won’t share their cologne. They’re going to betray you.”
Antash holds out his open palm, so I drop the insect on top, because any longer and it would be too late.
In an instant, the cockroach jolts and scuttles off his hand onto the mound of dirt.
In another instant, Avalanche swoops down and swallows the little life whole.
*
They’ve done something stupid again, like attempt to hide a shrine in their hut, or speak the name of a demon in front of a snooping Enforcer. I know this because I hear them crying, a man and a woman.
They never learn.
They make me sick.
Fireball ties open the front door flap and sits on my chair, staring outside. She clenches her wooden sword. And her teeth.
She says, “Bastards.”
I don’t have to watch. My mother isn’t forcing me to this time.
Still, I watch as Enforcer Yor smashes a young woman across the head. She falls next to her husband or brother or whoever he is. Heavenly Law states that the beating must end as soon as the culprit loses consciousness. So obviously, the Enforcers avoid the head for as long as possible. It’s usually Enforcer Yor who carries out the final blow. He once described himself to my mother as, “The Hand of Mercy.”
A little boy with flower petals stuck to his hair clings to his mother’s leg. He’s been there the whole punishment, and so that leg remains unbloodied and untouched by clubs. The boy, however, drips with his mother’s blood, and some of his own. The Enforcers tried to avoid hitting the boy, but no one’s perfect.
Enforcer Yor pries the boy loose. He hands him over to an elderly villager and smiles, motioning to the sky. He’s saying something about Heaven’s plan, I’m sure. And I’m sure no one’s listening but himself.
The Enforcers drag the man and woman away, towards the barracks. The boy would follow the trails of blood they leave behind, if he wasn’t held down by three other villagers.
Fireball releases her sword. She cries.
I don’t.
Yes, the situation outside is a little sad, but it’s also normal. It’s life.
It’s The Way Things Are.
“I’m finishing this tomorrow night,” she says. “You better be ready.”
“I need more time,” I say.
She wipes her face with her sleeve. “Don’t talk like that. You’re making me nervous.”
“I really need more time.”
“No, time isn’t the secret to accomplishing great things. You just need to take a deep breath, and do what you need to do.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“Yes it is. Go do it. But bring me some water first. My mouth is dry.”
Antash holds me in his arms, and I wonder if he’s like this with all of his students, or if he somehow knows that I’m starving for contact.