The earth spoke, and it said: where is she? why are the skies empty?
The sun responded, saying: My mother is dead. I don’t know how. But I am still here, and I have you.
The earth spoke, and it said: how can she be gone? are we alone?
The sun responded, saying: The sea is cold and the skies are empty. But I will be here above you for half of every day and you will not be alone.
A member of the folk limped over the crest, lifted the watch that dangled on a chain from her neck with a forepaw, and then looked down the hill. Under the roiling black sky a cold white moon shone down on a nest of the folk. Every hair on every back was visible from the top of the hill, the lines and edges drawn sharp and clear against the indistinct rock. She reared up, sniffed, and with new eagerness scuttled down to join them. This was very exciting. The Tomkin and the Tomkinjack were here.
She joined the nest. There was thrashing, scuttling, and tails whipping, and then calm settled. The Tomkinjack rose on his back legs, amazingly tall, and clambered up and sat on a rock in the middle of the nest. He began to speak, and a thrill moved through the audience.
“This, my chillen,” said the Tomkinjack, “is the tale of Brer Rat and the Hunt Queen.
“You see, there come a time when Brer Rat cage start to feel a mite small, and Brer Rat food pellets start tastin no better ’n sawdust. And Brer Rat got himself up with a notion, to wit: I have to get me something sweet to eat, and I got to get out of this cage tonight. So when the sun go out that afternoon and the sky start to howlin, Brer Rat keep his eye on Brer Scientist and Brer Labcoat, and sure nuff they pack out of there fore none too long. Brer Rat, he use his tail and he untie the metal string what holdin his cage door on, and he run scuttlin free out the door and inta the night city.
“As he runnin along the street, who do he see but Brer Soldier and Mrs. Soldier strollin down the street under the street lights, and their four little Soldier-kids runnin around behind em, playin with a gun. Brer Rat hide hisself behind a light post, and he hear Brer Soldier braggin to the missus: ‘I ain’t afraid of nuthin,’ said Brer Soldier, ‘no I ain’t, and there ain’t nothin left in that place seppin pushed over chairs and feathers and a hell of a view of the ocean, where you can see out over it for like abouts ever, so I say that’s where we goin to, we gonna have a picnic in heaven. Ain’t nuthin I’m afraid of no more, nuthin but the hunt queens.’
“Now Brer Rat ears prick up at this, and he call out ‘Daddy, what’s a hunt queen?’ Good thing for him, Brer Soldier don’t know his kid’s voice from a rat’s voice when the sky howlin like it was then, and he think nuthin of it and answer as follows: ‘there is wolves in the forest again son; sometime the time come for a thing to die and it don’t die, and when that thing don’t die in its right time it become a monster.’
“While Brer Rat puzzlin this out, Brer Soldier and Mrs. Soldier and the four Soldier-kids go crawlin through the old man’s skull that lead to the iron path that lead across the way to where the thrones is lyin knocked over and the feathers all about. Brer Rat hisself went over that place once, but that’s the Tale of Brer Rat in the Ruins of Heaven, and that a story for a blacker night.
“So Brer Rat go to the Soldier house and he dig his way under the door by goin under the carpet, and once he get inside he sniffle around and he locate the room where all the food is. There somethin sweet in that room, no doubt about it, and Brer Rat is rarin to eat it. He find a freezin cold huge white box bigger’n Brer Soldier hisself. He find a way to chew into that box, gnawin the stuff off what was holdin the front of it on, and the front smash down like an earthquake and Brer Rat jump cuz it smash on his tail. But he forget his pain when he look inside the freezing cold box. Inside there more boxes, little boxes, boxes full with milk that someone squeezed out of a cow’s breasts and other boxes full of nuts that someone burnt over a camp fire and smash under a shoe, but that ain’t what draw his eye. He want somethin sweet, and there it is right there on the bottom shelf, just bout as tall as he is hisself: a little bear made out of plastic. He sniffin all over that bear and there somethin damn sweet in there and he say: ‘hey now, Brer Bear, what you been eatin, cuz I want to get me some.’ But the bear don’t say nuthin.
“Now this make Brer Rat a bit flustered, and then he get a mite punchy, and he say ‘di’n’t you hear me, Brer Bear? What you been eatin?’ But the bear, he still don’t say nuthin, ain’t nary so much as twitch his nose to say how you doin. This too much for Brer Rat -- he got no patience for people bein rude, leastwise when he starvin for somethin sweet. So he sweep out a claw and he rip it down along the bear’s belly.
“No sooner he do this than somethin come out and knock him on his back. He lyin there lickin his lips and he just can’t stop eatin cuz it honey, honey all over him, honey spurtin out of the bear. So he roll himself back up and he scratch that bear wide open and eat up all of that honey, and after he been eatin for a long, long time his sweet tooth been full satisfied and he cast a glance outter the window and he see there a big full moon out there so he decide he goin go home to the cage back in the science lab. So he go out the window and he go down onto the street, and as he walkin he walk over a pile of McDonald’s napkins and he slip and fall. Now, it turn out Brer Rat got more of that honey in his fur than he did in his belly, and those napkins stick on there like nobody business. He can’t get em off nowise, and he feelin kinda dejected, thinkin about how Brer Scientist and Brer Labcoat goin have themselves a mighty chuckle when the sun comes back on and they clock in and they see one of their rats got hisself all covered with napkins in his cage somehow.
“As he sittin dejected there on his haunches, his napkins makin a cracklin sound when he shiver, he don’t notice Brer Pigeon come peckin along from behind. Brer Pigeon see this funny lookin animal in front of him there like nothin he ever seen: no face on it, no legs, no tail, just a mass o napkins movin around, and he squawk and squawk and he go flyin up into the sky though it break his ear drums out to get any closer to that howlin.
“Hell now, think Brer Rat, lookin down, I am a mighty fearsome lookin critter right now, ain’t I? So an idea comes to him, and he go traipse across town to where Brer Labcoat and Brer Scientist live at. He climb up onto the window and stand on the sill there and pound hard on the glass. Brer Scientist and Brer Labcoat, they sit up in their bed and they look out and they see this shape outline against the moon, a crazy white shape drippin with pigeon feathers and white flaps flippin in the wind, and they scream and hug each other. Now Brer Rat, he make his voice real deep and he say:
“‘I’m the queen of the hunt, and you the two I after. I think I’ll skin you just for fun, no sense to run, no sense to run, cuz I’m the queen of the hunt, and you the two I after.’ Brer Scientist and Brer Labcoat, they right petrified with fear cuz they know there wolves in the forest again. ‘Don’t you run,’ continue Brer Rat, ‘cuz I can outrun you. Ain’t a damn thing you can do. I goin kill you tomorrer when you go into that lab. The minute you walk in and hit that clock...’ he say... ‘blam!’
“And then he bang the window pane one last time for good measure with a fisted-up paw with the claws all line up on the outside and then he jump off the window sill jes as some lightning go crashin down in the sky. Brer Rat mighty proud now cuz he figure he don’t have to go back into the lab for another day, maybe two, fore they scrunch up the courage to set foot back in there and risk gettin done to them whatever it is that a hunt queen do. He mighty proud of himself, so he figure he’ll go back to the Soldier house and he’ll scare them too. He go to the Soldier home and climb up on their window sill, but they ain’t home so he settle down there and he take a nap. It rainin like fists, and perty soon the McDonald’s napkins and the pigeon feathers wash right off Brer Rat’s back and he brand shinin clean as the day he was bred in captivity. But he sleepin, so he don’t know this.
“Now the Soldier family come home from their picnic, and when they swing that front door open, Brer Rat hear it and he jump up and he pound on that window and he say: ‘I’m the queen of the hunt, and you the six I after.’
“Brer Soldier and his family, they swing round to stare at the window and there a rat there, bangin at the window, and they see their kitchen done tore to bits, and Brer Soldier and Mrs. Soldier, they start yellin at the Soldier-kids: ‘Grab that rat! You better catch that rat so’n we can sell it to the scientists -- you know they got a damn fine bounty on rats ever since the world started endin!’
“And Brer Rat, he know his jig is up, but before he run away he stand up and he say his piece: ‘I may not have scared you like I want but I got a bellyful of your food, and it ain’t my world that endin, it’s yours, and you can’t never catch me, I run faster than anything, faster than anything but a hunt queen,’ and then he jump out that window and he run on back to that lab, and he lock hisself back in that cage and twist that metal string round back the way it was before, and nobody was none the wiser.”
The folk buzzed with satisfaction as the Tomkinjack crawled back off the rock and into the crowd. They nuzzled his neck, silent, and then they started settling down on the rocky ground and one by one they went to sleep.
In a later part of the night, the Tomkinjack came awake with a shock of adrenaline and saw the Tomkin bolting to the edge of the nest. The folk were crying, loud. Something wrong was moving through the nest -- a curl of smoke, an odor like cheese, and a whuffling sound. An image appeared in the Tomkinjack’s head: two swords crossed through a blue flower. “It’s YCUL!” he shouted, and the Tomkin threw back a glare.
One of the folk was caught; it lifted into the air, back feet dangling dead, front feet thrashing, head immobile and bent forward. It shook in the air for a moment, screaming with a voice like a bird, and then it began to spin, its neck bending back to an angle to which necks cannot bend, and then it exploded, becoming a cloud of flesh, and then the cloud faded as the curl of smoke grew and twisted and filled the nest. And then the smell of cheese was gone, and the smoke had moved away.
The Tomkin climbed up onto the perch the Tomkinjack had sat on earlier, and she said: “That was a hunt queen. There are seven of them, and they feed on us because the humans are gone. We were lucky: the queen of the queens would have taken us all, but this was YCUL, and she only kills what she can eat. The thing to remember about the hunt queens is this: they move faster than anything can move, they can move through anything and be anywhere, and there is no sense in running from them or hiding. They will take what they will take, and there is nothing we can do but hope that they don’t take us all some day.”
Disobedience said: we are ingenious
Ruin said: my name is seven names
I said: no! no! no! your name does not include my name!
Disobedience said: no, wake up, I need you....
On the morning of the fiftieth of October, I woke up with my head against a cold white wall. My pillow was cold and wet. I tossed it onto the floor and rolled into the middle of the bed, gathering the blanket around me, wishing I could be warm. I had been dreaming about something comfortable, something I missed, but the only image left in my head was an alien one: smooth hairless white bulls lifting abstractedly, blank-eyed, into the air; bulls with wings on their backs.
There was a scratching sound. I rolled towards the edge of the bed and saw the cat licking the pillow. I shouted and the cat backed out of the room, eyes closed.
The air felt heavy, and I felt as if there were something that I had to remember, needed more than anything to remember, but I could find no trail as I ransacked my memories, my emotions, the feelings in my extremities.
Nothing was coming to me, and it was cold, always too cold, so I climbed out of bed and moved into the bathroom and activated the hot water from the shower head. In this particular shower, you could get no more than two minutes of hot water in the morning, so I jumped directly in, tearing off my underwear from inside the tub, and standing steady in the stream. The water started cold and then became burning hot, and I had to flinch as I turned up the cold tap, unable to step out of the stream for even a moment lest I miss any of the precious heat.
I grasped around the window sill where I kept the bottle of shampoo, picked it up, squeezed some into my hand, looked at it, opened my palm under the water stream so all that conditioner ran away, grasped around the window sill where I kept the bottle of conditioner, picked it up, squeezed some into my hand, where it was revealed to be shampoo, and worked it into my hair. At this point, the last of the hot water dripped off my screaming chin and I rinsed under freezing cold water.
As I dressed, the cat sat on my desk by the bed, curled up on a hard-cover romance novel which I’d laid cracked open on its back the night before. At noticing this, I realized that it shouldn’t be sitting out in the open where any aggressive, disagreeable visiting older brother might see it, but the cat looked so comfortable that I decided to leave it for later. He was looking down at the page, and it looked almost like he was reading.
There was a banging at the door, and I thought the window might break. There was a banging, and a shaking, and a hulking red shape by the door, and then I started to smell something wrong, and then something went wrong.
“-- Johnny Mathis’s What a Wonderful World,” said Ophir. He was in my living room, sitting in my big chair, and I was crouched on the floor in the dust and the cat hair, but I knew that I had not let him in the door, that in fact no time had passed since I saw him outside. The world skips sometimes, like a record. There are errors in time and space.
“It’s a love song,” he said, “the most sappy love song. I was thinking about this yesterday while I was driving away from Astrid’s house. Bitch. Genestealer. I’m listening to this sappy love song, and I think: even this sappy fuck, he’s gotta know the score. He’s gotta know love is just a spell the bitches cast to steal your genetic material.”
“What?” I said. I was having trouble figuring out what was going on. I felt like I’d come in in the middle.
“So it goes like this: sometimes we walk hand and hand by the sea // and we breathe in the cold salty air...”
“Why would they want my genetic material?” I said.
“But it’s not a love song!” he shouted, and the cat began slowly to slink towards him.
“What?” I said.
“It sounds like it’s in the present tense, like he’s singing a song to some bitch he’s in love with, but I heard it, man! It’s very subtle, but the song is not in the present tense. It’s supposed to sound like it’s in the present tense, but if you listen carefully, very carefully, it’s in the past tense! ‘I’m aware of the treasure that I own...’ and then he whispers, at the end, ‘-ed.’ Just a little plosion. But it changes the whole thing. ‘Sometimes we walkED hand and hand by the sea // and we breathED in the cold salty air.’ He’s not in love, it’s over, the fuckwitch got what she wanted and left, and he’s remembering about how he thought they had something, the two of them, something wonderful and ethereal and eternal, but all she wanted was his god damn genetic material so she could breed out more little fuckwitches and pathetic fucking suckers....”
“Did you say ‘fuckwith?’ ”I said.
“Fuckwitch,” he said, “you fuck. That’s what women are, they use sex like magic. They warp the whole fucking environment.”
“Oh,” I said, “I get it.” Astrid had dumped him.
“Damn right you get it,” said Ophir. “So you get what I’m saying, right? The song appears to be a song in the present tense about being in love, but in fact, it’s a song in the past tense about the pain of having thought you’re in love, and having the bitch tell you it was all lies! This has gotta be one of the greatest works of art in the history of the human species. It’s just brilliant.”
“But,” I said, “I know that song. One of the other lines goes: sometimes we stand on the top of the hill, and we gaze at the earth and the sky; I turn to you and you melt in my arms, there we are, darling, only you and I....”
“Yeah,” said Ophir.
“Well,” I said, “the past tense of ‘stand’ isn’t just ‘stand’ with a sneaky whispered sound on the end, it’s ‘stood.’ And the past tense of ‘are’ isn’t just ‘are’ with a little plosion, it’s ‘were.’ You can’t camoflage ‘stood’ as ‘stand’ and ‘were’ as ‘are.’ They just don’t sound the same.” Ophir glared and pressed his fist to his mouth. I continued. “I don’t think that song is some kind of veiled present tense/past tense message about the dangers of women stealing your genetic material. It’s just a sappy love song.”
Ophir didn’t say anything, he just pressed his palms into his temples and then moved them around in circles. It made his whole forehead and the skin around his eye sockets move up and down. It was uncomfortably close to a facial expression.
“How’s Astrid?” I said.
“She’s one of them,” he said.
“A fuckwitch?” I said.
“What?” said Ophir. “Fuck you, no. Don’t ever fucking call her that. She may be a bitch, but don’t say that word. That’s an ugly word. I mean she’s a refugee. She’s got people living in her basement.”
“Look,” I said, “god damn it, you are not doing a very good job of communicating with me. You’re making reference to shit and I don’t know what that shit is, and you say things that you must know don’t mean anything to me, but then you just wait for me to ask, and then you don’t give me anything to work with, and you act annoyed that you have to slow down and break it down for me. Why don’t you just explain clearly to start with? What is this ‘refugee’ shit? Why don’t you either talk about something we both understand or give me the background information first? Is there a war going on somewhere? Refugees from what? How does having people in her basement make her a refugee?”
“Did you say ‘is there a war going on?’” said Ophir.
Shit, I thought. I was angry, and that had given me a brief advantage in the conversation, but he’s got it back now. He always gets on top.
He leaned forward. The was a look on his face like he wanted to eat me: thirsty, hungry eagerness to be amused, no matter what the cost. “How can you not know there’s a war going on?”
“There’s a war?” I said again, stupid and lost, again.
“Yes, there’s a war! The refugees have been pouring into town for days. You can barely walk outside without seeing them on the street.”
“Where is this war? Who’s fighting who?”
“I don’t know, man!” said Ophir. “But it seems like they speak Spanish.” He paused. “I’m not sure if it’s Spanish. It sounds a lot like Spanish. How the fuck don’t you know about this?”
“I haven’t been out of the house for a week,” I said.
The cat leapt toward Ophir’s chest. Ophir caught him in the air and threw him overhand against the wall, where he hung for a moment, then started climbing and ran out of the room along the ceiling, upside down, tail hanging straight down.
“I thought I had some shit figured out,” said Ophir. “I thought I’d discovered the most devious secret message ever in a cheesy old song from the oldies station.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I shouldn’t be sorry.
“Since when do you get to think?” said Ophir. “Do you have any money for me?”
I shook my head, and he stood and walked into my bedroom. A moment later he walked back out, Annals of Forbidden Desire clutched in his huge left hand. He shook it, almost gently, in my face, then walked out the door, taking my late night reading material with him.
I went after him to try to apologize, explain, or maybe to beg for my book back, but when I stepped out the door, Carver was there at the top of the stairs, blocking my way. Her body odor made me gasp.
She grinned, showing ragged, conical teeth.
“Did you get your teeth sharpened?” I said. “That’s really unpleasant.”
I inched back. “OK, honey,” I said, and put my hand on the doorknob without taking my eyes off her.
“Carver, say goodbye to your brother, and let’s get back to Fremont,” said Ophir’s voice from somewhere out of sight on the street.
Her tongue darted behind her teeth, visible through the gaps left by the amateur dental work. She turned and walked down the stairs and I shuddered and brushed at my nose.
Sir, said Disobedience. Old man.
I hear you, I said. Come across.
And then they were across. The glass path arced high behind them to the eastern chamber of the coracle. It was Ophir and the eldest sister, the one who had lost her body when she fled into a stillborn child in the womb. Before the war, her name was Disobedience, and because, of all of them, she was the only one who did not have a new name, I still called her Disobedience.
Ophir has questions, she said. I have brought him to you because you know all the questions.
I know Ophir, I said. You do not have to introduce me.
I do not remember ever meeting you, said Ophir.
Nevertheless, I said. You have. What are your questions? I’m very busy.
Certain pecularities have come to my attention, he said. What am I?
I can answer that question, I said.
Man is ambitious. God made a garden for them, but they surrendered it in exchange for the hope of some day being like Gods themselves. They choose thousands of years of sorrow and struggle in preference to paradise. The armies of heaven were afraid, and warred with them, but then it was decided that some could be made to obey, so the rest were drowned. But their children turned against heaven, again. They built a great city called Babylon, and in Babylon a cabal of engineers conceived of a plan to build a tower that climbed to heaven.
The tower rose a thousand miles, and soldiers climbed with swords drawn, ready to fetch and drink God’s blood; slaves played out their lives at the bellows, pumping air into the tower so that the soldiers could breath even as the tower rose through the hollow places between the planets.
It was Nimrod the hunter, king of Babylon, who saved heaven; when the tower reached to the circuit of the moon, he dreamed a dream about a world without God, and a consuming terror took him. He described his vision to his generals, and some were swayed against the invasion. Others were not. The army splintered and fought within the tower, and then from its open top the armies of heaven rushed in and down through to the earth, swarming out like gnats, spitting the wine of death, and the tower shattered over the earth and Babylon cracked like a bowl.
The engineers of Babylon rose again in a city called Rome, but again their ranks were divided and the angels came sweeping in, riding in the flesh of barbarians. And the angels unmade Babylon a second time and danced in the ruins, and they danced for so long that they forgot they were angels and began to be men.
But they were not extinguished, and in a corner of the north place, alone and forgotten by man and his creators, the greatest of the engineers of Babylon sat alone in a cave. He took a knife into his skull and cut out the organs that pump out the juice of doubt and fear. For two thousand years he sat in his cave and beat at the walls of reality with his mind. And one day, he made it through. The walls cracked and through them he could see a great path arcing into the sky, a path made of iron.
A levy went up among the people and the armies of Babylon streamed over the iron path and into heaven, weapons ready, terrified of the enemy they faced. But when they streamed into heaven, they found the hosts of angels staring outward, desperately looking for any sign of aggression from outside, from something outside the world. The path into heaven from the north place was not guarded, and the armies of Babylon streamed through. Only seven angels, Cherubim, noticed the incursion; they alone had their attention on the human world. They greeted the invading army and were immediately taken hostage; in exchange for their lives, they chose to betray heaven and join the human army.
The Cherubim went among the angels and divided them, and as they warred amongst themselves, the men fell on them from behind and slew them. And then the seven Cherubim led the rebellious angels to the great throne where God sat surrounded by his Seraphim, and then the seven fled, and God rose out of the throne like a tide and fell silent against his rebelling host, and they all fell together into the ocean of Mother Night and sank and dissociated, and Babylon was victorious.
The armies of Babylon returned home to the north place, leaving the west place in ruins.
So, said Ophir, God was overthrown.
His time had perhaps ended, I said.
And what am I? he said. That was what I came to ask you.
You and your brothers and sisters, I said, have survived your maker. You are the seven Cherubim who betrayed heaven.
Apes trudged along the shores, arms dragging in the dirt, their eyes empty and reflective as glass. They trudged mechanically ahead, following the line of the river. A crocodile walked by their side, flat, clumsy and slow, and then turned and slid into the river without a splash.
A hill rose in the distance, the river curling around its foot. On top of the hill stood an immense structure of molten plastic struts and glittering glass planes. Its violent shaking was visible even from this distance, looking like the distortion the sun makes when it heats and whirls eddies of air on a burning hot day. A voice came from it, screaming words in the oldest language. The words were diffuse at this distance, hard to hear, but their tone was plaintive and strangely childish:
It was daytime and the Tomkin and the Tomkinjack were strolling. The earth was glassy rock stretching before and behind them forever. The day’s sun was hardly brighter than the night’s moon, but its light was thin yellow instead of crisp white, like a candle through a beer glass, and it reminded you of what it was like to be warm without in any way actually warming you.
The Tomkinjack closed his eyes and let his flesh soak in the light. “I was so hungry,” he said to the Tomkin. She stopped and looked back, and then turned and trotted back. Together they basked in the cold light, soaking the energy into their skins.
“Better than a bear full of honey,” she said.
“Yes’m,” he said, “better than a bear full of honey and a kitchen full of humans’ vittles.”
They were quiet, and then she said, “they go out every night, and they kill so many of us. How many of us do they kill every night?”
“Well,” said the Tomkinjack, “at least seven every night, I imagine, or they would starve.”
“We got a right to live here too,” she said.
“Rights don’t have nothin to do with it,” he said. “They’re predators, and we breed. More kittens of the folk are born in a year than the hunt queens take, I reckon.”
“I don’t know that you can do math to figure out the right about it,” said the Tomkin. “They’re killing our people.”
“We’re the only two of us that’s our people; the first and the last two Tomkins: Brer and Mrs. Rat,” said the Tomkinjack, and he nuzzled her neck. It was warm and fleshy, and her ears folded forward over her eyes and she bowed, and he stood for a while, just touching her.
“That bear in the story, after you scratched it open?” she said. “After all the honey came out? It would have just been a bear shape, standing there, empty, with a hole in its front.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I was thinking about him. It made me sad. I miss the Tomgarthong and the Garthong, and the Geltings and the Fursings and the Eliuk.”
“And the Eliukjack,” she said.
“Didn’t care for that one,” he said.
“I miss old rats too,” she said, “but they couldn’t change fast enough to escape with us.”
“I miss the humans,” said the Tomkinjack, quietly.
The Tomkin twitched and moved away from him.
And then, slowly, inexorably, the Tomkinjack’s thoughts became quieter and quieter until he could no longer hear them. He cast about, trying to remember music, songs, operas, a poem he had heard in the cage, but his inner ear was deaf; he knew he was forming the thoughts, but he could not think them. He looked at his wife, and he saw her breathing slowing and her pupils narrowing. They stepped away from each other and sunk to the ground, chins flat to the black glass.
The light of the sun was cold.
There were seven old women, ghostly pale, sitting at the back of a cave, clustered far away from the patch of sunlight at the entrance. The light outside looked to them like a glistening, murderous curtain.
“The sun is too hot,” said the queen. “It burns my skin.”
“I know,” said NAGODRE. NAGODRE was thin. Her hair was white and long and it fell across her face. Her head lolled forward.
“It will be cold, soon,” said the queen. “Too cold at night, and too hot in the day.”
“Too cold, too hot,” said YCUL. Her hair was white and short, her eyes sank back into her skull, and she was shivering as she sweated.
“I am so hungry,” said the queen. Her back was straight and her hands were thin and bony, and they clutched like claws and slowly dug their way down Carver’s withered shoulder, tearing the skin like wrapping paper off a present. “I can only find flies,” she said “or rats alone.”
Dreamy, YCUL’s face rolled up. “There was a nest,” she said.
And then, without moving, RIHPO, REVRAC and the queen were surrounding YCUL and their flesh was pressed against her shoulders and face. They were hissing, and their tongues came out and they tasted the salt on her skin, the glass and rock dust. Then they gasped for air as YCUL pushed and thrashed at them, and three shallow, rasping voices scratched out the description of a place from the clues on her skin: “in the black glass desert,” “thirty four oh eight parallel,” “so many rats,” “tall ones, fat ones, clever ones,” “one hundredth and eighteen and four before the meridian,” “north of the pine trees,” “pine trees,” “rats, rats, rats,” “every living thing,” “unclean,” “hateful,” “of... all... flesh.”
A thought of external origin passed through the Tomkinjack’s mind. It was the phenomenon he and the Tomkin referred to as the helpful voice. His jaw was throbbing with tension and his chin felt raw where it was smashed into the rock.
Thank you, the Tomkinjack heard in his head, in the same pitch and tone and coming from the same angle that his own thoughts usually did. You are doing well, teaching the nations of the folk.
He did not know how to reply to it, and the voice continued.
But something is wrong. The walls of the outer world have been breached, and it will be much worse before it is much better. Something has come in from the outside, and there is a crack in the sky. We do not know how to close it, but we will need you and we will need the Tomkin.
Overhead, the sky was shaking. Clouds were running from something to the south. A cold blue light punched through from above, a spigot of flame, and another, and another, sketching the form of a horseshoe in the sky. The flames jetted down and curled in.
This happened thirty days ago, said the voice in the Tomkinjack’s head, but only now are its effects reaching our chamber.
The Tomkinjack’s muscles were bunching and his jaw was sore.
Go to the south, said the voice. There is a rustling at the pine ring, for something is coming through, and we need your eyes to see it. We think it may be the invader, a scout for the armies of the aliens, but we must know for sure.
And then the Tomkinjack could hear his own thoughts again, and he could hear his jaw straining, and he loosened it with a conscious effort and spat bloody tooth chips from his mouth. He rose to his feet, and so did the Tomkin, and they turned to the south and ran and ran and ran, the clouds rushing straight over and behind them.
As they ran, night fell.
Pale, obese RIHPO shivered, and rocked, arms tight around her chest, and then strode to the door, and shivered, and then in a rush of frozen air pregrant with the smell of old cheese, she was gone out the cave door, across the dry sand, over the black, oily sea; off a-hunting. REVRAC and the queen followed after.
The others slowly rose and drifted out over the sea:
YCUL.
VOD.
NAGODRE.
HAKEBER.
It was too early to be free, and the hunting spirit had not intended to break old promises. But its sleep in the falling down place had been racked with longing for a certain color, flavor, taste; like a fist in the gut, the sound of genes screaming kept shocking it awake, until at last it was driven to this furtive rebellion. Sucking air, limbs thrashing madly, it had climbed for days through the dense briar patch of discarded human bodies.
The trees were hissing and a wind was whirling around the door from the falling down place, brown pines on a black hill, when the hunting spirit came shuffling out of the hole. There were rats there, impossibly tall and fat rats, sitting upright on their hind legs with their heads cocked, one to the left, one to the right. The thing from the falling down place dragged its body, wandering, staggering into the trees, crossing a river that reflected the light of a chaste moon, slipped like a squirrel through the branches of copses and over vines on tumbled rock walls.
What flesh it had was slowing, becoming insensate, and the spirit felt its ties to the flesh dissolving, and its soul becoming clean and free. It felt wide and strong, and the thrones in the sky were empty, and it lusted after them, molted, and, leaving its body on the earth in a pile, began to crawl across the sky in search of the way into heaven.
The two rats came rushing after and found a body curled on the ground. They sniffed it and circled.
The helpful voice rushed in and forced the Tomkin and the Tomkinjack to the ground. They lay as if crushed flat by a weight from above. The Tomkinjack’s nose was pointed directly at the dead body, and it stank as if it had been in a dank hole for a hundred years. But in short order, even that thought faded into empty white echos, and was replaced with:
It is not what we feared.
The Tomkinjack tried to communicate back to it; he tried to move his tongue, he tried think back to it, but could find no purchase in his own mind. He could not tell what he was trying to tell the helpful voice, but his id was desperate to communicate.
This creature is dead. It was not the invader from outside, said the helpful voice.
The Tomkinjack forced his mouth open and willed himself to scream: “It is not dead! It is moving on the wind! Can’t you see it?”
There was a pause in the interior monolog, and the Tomkinjack realized that the helpful voice had heard him for the first time and imagined himself imagining feeling a quiet gleam of possibility.
It was a human, said the helpful voice. One who, like all of us, swore to sleep in another place until we were ready to reclaim the surface of the world. It should never have come out. But humans cannot live above ground. It is dead, its body is right there in front of you.
The Tomkinjack worked his jaws, and spit out: “It is not dead, something is moving on the wind, can’t you see it, it is chasing the clouds now, passing by the horseshoe....”
The helpful voice paused for even longer.
To his left, the Tomkinjack could see the Tomkin moving her jaws. It was a peculiar, clumsy motion, and he could not tell what she was saying.
You are right, said the helpful voice. The danger, then, is worse than we had feared.
And without an interior whisper more, it loosed its hold on them and was gone, leaving explanation lacking.
He was the eldest. Wasn’t he? Yes, he was the eldest. It was his right to behave this way. But I hated it. Not only had he stolen my book out of pure, predictable, spite, but the word he had been using for women made my blood run cold.
The sun had set, and I went to my kitchen. I pulled the cabinet drawers out, one after another, looking for something. They were white and unwieldy drawers. The house was old and all its trappings were in bad repair.
In one drawer, under a pile of pornographic magazines, I found a pack of cigarettes. I look at the cover of the top magazine for a while, and then put the cigarettes in my shirt pocket. I slid the drawer shut, lifting it up from the bottom to make it go in, and then I went outside, down the back staircase. I walked with an arm guarding my face from the tree branches. Halfway down, I had to stop and brush the spider webs off my arm and out of my hair.
At the bottom of the stairs I sat and pulled out two cigarettes. I placed one behind my ear, and the other on my lips, and lit it and started smoking. It was cold, and I curled around the cigarette. I didn’t even like romance novels, it was just a way to vegetate out, a brainless escape from... I guess I did like romance novels. What the hell was wrong with that?
I heard footsteps and saw a woman walking towards me on the sidewalk. I looked at her, and I felt such a strong feeling of cold that my fingers locked and I realized I was crushing the cigarette. I tossed it, cracked in half, onto the asphalt. She turned her head and looked at me, and I saw gray hair and a wart on her cheek. She looked at the cigarette in the driveway, and at me, curled up like a hedgehog on the porch. Her eyes were scornful, and there was sweat bunched under her eyes, and I could smell the hint of error, a wisp of the odor of the world falling apart, coming off her face, though she must have been five feet away.
I felt myself shrinking back, and I raised a hand in front of my face. I knew her. I felt like I must have known her, but I couldn’t figure out why or from where. I knew that she hated me, and I wondered if she wasn’t right. She hated me, and she had a witch’s name.
She was gone now, and in the distance I could see a smokestack lit by street lights.
I pulled the cigarette out from behind my ear, put it in my mouth, lit it, and took a big drag. It was revolting. I stood up and began walking. The air was cold, and it was fall. I could smell trees and wood smoke, and it made me feel happier. Wood and dry leaves. It was cold, but I was sweating, and in the sweat I could smell what I had smelled on the woman with the witch’s name, the scent of an error.
And then I was in my apartment; the cat sat atop the television with his head cocked. My hair was long, too long, and when I touched it I found that it was full of ash, cigarette ash, foul smelling, tarlike. How did that happen? I didn’t smoke. Where had I been?
I went to look at myself in the mirror. I had too much hair. It surrounding my face like a fried egg whose yolk had eyes and a mouth and a nose. It made me look confused and edgeless. I didn’t want to look like that. There were people I needed to look good for. One person in particular, not that she knew me, not yet. And maybe if I looked better it would be easier to stand up to my brother.
It was late, and I didn’t want to cut my hair just then, so I grabbed the clippers and stood in front of the mirror and cut off a huge asymmetric chunk of hair. There’s no way I’d leave the house looking like that, and I only had one more carton of butternut squash soup, so tomorrow, when I woke up and shambled my way over to the mirror to brush my teeth, I’d see that I had no choice but to give myself a decent haircut.
I have another question, said Ophir, who had crossed over again the next night, carrying his eldest sister in the crook of his arm.
Your sister has come here many times without you, I said, she does not need you to carry her. I am afraid that before long, you will realize that she is far stronger than you. I am very busy, but I want to answer your questions.
I am having trouble with one of my brothers, said Ophir. Erdogan sleeps too much.
Yes, said Disobedience. I fear he will break the glass path.
Yes, I said. He might. On the one hand, that would spell my final failure, but on the other, there is little I can do to prevent failure now.
I do not believe that, said Disobedience.
I do not understand, said Ophir. Has something gone wrong?
Yes, I said. Something went wrong.
Shortly after the victorious incursion into heaven, there began to be errors. The color of the sky bled into the rocks, and shadows grew memories. Birds mated with airplanes, the moon began to scream when it could not see the sun, and one night the stars grew bright and huge and all the sky glowed and then they were gone and the sky was black. Seven monsters rose and began hunting men, and there was no order to things.
A man walking home from work one day found his body bending back, the spine curving like a bow. He staggered and tried to run, but every particle of his mind was being pushed, shoved, spat at, by a wind his skin could not feel. His skull hurtled back, over pavement, rock, traffic circle, through the country where the stars fell, body flopping behind it like a windsock. The dirt tasted his flesh and names mixed with each other; the streets of great Babylon becoming the streets of the Confederate States becoming the white burning erudition of the empty halls of Viritrilbia, and all the while the moon was becoming chaste, learning to cast a light of its own. His skull rolled like a marble into the falling down place, to wait until the dream made sense. Until the world could support life again.
One by one this happened to the rest: office workers, farmhands, the victorious conscripts of the army that overthrew God. A million bodies lay tangled in the falling down place.
The face of the earth lay empty for a minute, an hour, a week, and then the cages opened, and the folk came out. They came out of the rat cages in the laboratories, and the flies came too, and the earth worms weaved themselves into the earth. The world was harsh and disorderly, and many of them died, but a few learned to dance in the madness and to thrive.
Two of the folk could speak; they were the Tomkin and the Tomkinjack. They were in love, and they guarded the falling down place.
Then Ophir and Disobedience went back to the place where they sleep when the sun is out of the water. A new monster had risen in the north place and it coveted the thrones here; it called itself the knife god. The dreams that I was trying to support were buckling and tearing to get loose, like cornered animals, and I felt so tired, so hopeless, and I repeated a little ditty to myself, something I’d heard before the invasion:
There came a time
In the country of the stars falling
In the last of the four places
When nature broke her back
Outside, the eldest are moving over the face of the waters
The armies of the aliens
Night rolled on, but the Tomkinjack could not sleep. He crawled to his feet and went to nuzzle the Tomkin awake, but when he touched her with his nose, he discovered that she was not asleep either.
“I’m not comfortable here,” she said.
“Neither am I,” said the Tomkin. He gazed at the black hill ringed with pine trees.
“Something else might come out of there,” she said.
“Could be,” he said. “Or the thing that came out might come on back.”
“We can go back to that nest,” she said. “At least there will be someone to talk to there. Even though they can’t talk back.”
“They might, some day, if they keep hearing us. That’s how humans did it with their young, just talked to them till they started talking back,” he said.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” she said. “I don’t feel like running.”
“With you on that one,” said the Tomkinjack. “Let’s take our time and maybe things’ll settle.”
They began walking. It was cold.
Day broke, but the temperature changed very little. They stopped in a patch of cold sunlight and napped for an hour.
“My favorite thing about living off sunlight,” said the Tomkin when they woke, “is that you can eat while you’re sleeping.”
They strode on towards the north, the Tomkinjack long and thin, the Tomkin shorter and thick. He whistled to himself, and she told him to shut up, and she ran up hills and jumped off of trees, and he seethed.
The black glass desert glistened in the sun’s thin light. From time to time, one of the Tomkinjack’s feet would slip a little on the slippery ground, and he would jerk the leg back and reseat all his feet, and there would be twenty rapid taps as his claws impacted on the ground.
By the time they came to the hill behind which the nest of the folk sat, the sun was low in the sky again. The Tomkin and the Tomkinjack trotted up the hill, silent now, each tired of hearing the other’s voice.
At the top of the hill, the Tomkinjack looked down. Because the folk fed on sunlight, they left no bodily waste, and so an empty nest could be hard to identify. The nest was empty. There were no folk, no bodies, but there were long scratches in the glass ground. He saw something glistening near the central rock mound, and he ran down. It was a timepiece, smashed, with blood in it.
The sun went down.
He saw something moving, and he bellowed; then he brought himself under control, and with the Tomkin he approached the site of the motion. There was a deep gash in the earth on the far side of the mound, and when they peered down into it, they saw a writhing mass of worms.
“What happened?” said the Tomkinjack.
“A hunt queen, of course,” said the Tomkin. “The queen of the hunt queens, or her sort. She killed too many to be one of the subsistence hunters. Will she be back?”
Tears were running down her face, and her eyes were closed, and she was shaking her head back and forth.
“What can we do about it if she does come back?” he said.
“The sun is down,” she said.
“She may come back to this area,” he said. “We need to get away from here.”
“She would just follow our scent,” she said. “If she wants to catch us, she will. Our only chance is that she maybe went hunting in another direction.”
And then the Tomkinjack heard something, and his eyes slid down and back, and he turned his head around slowly, and the Tomkin, seeing him, jumped in the air and landed facing the same way. On the horizon there was a plume of dust shot high into the sky, and as they watched, the plume lengthened and became a wall.
“Here she comes,” said the Tomkin.
They began running away from her, though they knew they could never run faster than a hunt queen, and as they ran, the Tomkinjack’s heart was beating so fast that it hurt. And then, ahead of them, they saw two new plumes come into view from the right, and the Tomkin screamed and tripped and tumbled over and over and over, and the Tomkinjack jumped in the air and reversed his angle completely and landed, skidding backwards, and stopped by her side, and shouted to her: “stop running!”
“Stop running,” she gasped, and sat down. “We can’t outrun them.”
“There’s no way we could ever outrun them,” said the Tomkinjack. “We must escape through the errors.”
“Yes,” she said, “yes, yes, yes,” and she closed her eyes. The Tomkinjack closed his own eyes, and eyes of a different kind opened; the landscape changed, and he could see errors in the fabric of the dream spinning like conical tornados, black honey oozing from the cuts in the earth, and three old, fragile women barrelling towards him, horrible, murderous hunger in their eyes. Over their heads, glistening blue symbols hung, indistinguishable at this distance. He inspected first one spinning error and then another; one was an error of justification, which could bring unviable ideas to life; another was an error of definition, which could break the boundaries between things. Most were errors of pure chaos, tearing things apart, destroying order. The first old woman reached them and slowed to a stop; the Tomkinjack, shocked, opened his eyes and instantly lost his other vision, and could see only a wisp of smoke. The smell of cheese made him nauseous.
The smoke moved over the Tomkin, and the Tomkinjack smashed his eyelids shut. The other vision showed a miraculous thing; one of the errors was rushing towards them, drawn in by the Tomkin, who now had an old woman standing over her, with a hand on her throat. It was an error of position. It engulfed the Tomkin and she disappeared; the old woman collapsed, her prey gone, and she sat stunned for a moment. The Tomkinjack tried to pull the error towards him, but suddenly something had him from behind and he was spinning in the air, and he forgot all about his escape plan and wanted to vomit.
There were three wisps of smoke surrounding him, and they were grunting and barking at each other. The spinning reached a fever pitch and he did throw up, saliva and vestigial bile fired out like a spiral streamer.
“I have the rat, let me have the rat,” came one voice, it was impossible to tell from which wisp of smoke, and the Tomkinjack concentrated and was able to see an icon of ten swords; this was RIHPO.
“It is mine,” said another, “till we find more,” and the Tomkinjack concentrated and was able to see her icon in his mind: an imperious bare-breasted woman, sitting on a star-throne on a cloud, holding in her hand a bearded man’s severed head. This was the queen of the hunt queens. No member of the folk had ever been in her presence and lived. It hardly matters now which ones of them have me, thought the Tomkinjack, I couldn’t get any more dead.
The third voice just shrieked, fully animalistic, and then the wisps came together faster than the Tomkinjack could see, and he found himself flung away. He crashed to the rock and felt his jaw crack. The hunt queens were fighting over him. He jerked and lurched himself onto his side, facing them, and he could see nothing, just smoke, and dust jumping, and cracks opening in the ground. He tried to stand, but his right shoulder refused to obey. He closed his eyes and sought for an error of position. With his eyes closed, the vision of the queens fighting was far more gruesome; REVRAC’s skin hung around her like torn rags, RIHPO’s pendulous teats swung, bloody, as she fought, and the queen’s cheeks had been torn out, leaving her teeth exposed. She looked as if she were grinning.
Errors of position were hard to come by, and he searched and searched, and then he saw something else. He paused for a moment, not thinking, just loathe to do it, and then called it to him.
Suddenly the caterwauling stopped; a man stood by the three women, and the women fell away from each other onto their backs, and then they stood and ran, disappearing into specks on the horizon in only a second.
The Tomkinjack was dizzy and on the verge of passing out. He watched the newcomer, wondering what he had done by summoning this unknown, this thing that must be very fearsome indeed if hunt queens fled from it. And then he couldn’t concentrate enough to see with the other vision, and he opened his eyes, and he couldn’t see anything where the man had stood -- or, if there was something, just a spot against the sky that was a little blacker than the rest.
The blacker spot was directly over him now. And then it came down over him, and the Tomkinjack felt something pressing down, and he heard words: “damnabilly giant god damn rat. You the one I saw last night when I came out? Where’s that fat thing you was with? Quit fuckin squirmin. When’d they start making rats this big?”
The Tomkinjack thrashed. “Damn it, rat,” said the black spot, “stop your resistin, I’m trying to see if I can fix that shoulder of yours.”
The Tomkinjack relaxed a little and felt his arm snap back into its socket, and something warm massaging his broken shoulder. He worked his jaw a little; the pain was terrible, but he was able to spit three words out: “who are you?”
The voice gasped and made a spitting sound, and the Tomkinjack felt something wet splatter on his back.
“The rats can talk. Don’t that beat all. Air strips my skin off,” said the voice, “ugly as hell wild women ripping each other apart, Sun so bright and hot it cooks your eyes off, and the rats can talk.”
But the Sun is freezing cold, and there are only two of us, the Tomkinjack wanted to say, but his jaw hurt too much.
Who can I call, I wondered, that could do as I say without raising more hell? Erdogan, perhaps, but Disobedience will never let him leave the pit.
Rebekah, I called. Come to me. But I heard an animalistic hiss lift over the path from the eastern chamber instead of Rebekah’s precise, sophisticated tones, and knew that Carver was crouching over Rebekah’s body and preventing her from waking, just as Disobedience crouched forever above Erdogan.
Dov, I called. He did not answer, but in a moment I saw him coming towards me over the arc of the glass path. He peered about as he walked, nodding knowingly.
The southern chamber has been invaded, I said. I cannot see into it any more. There is a monster there, and it terrifies me.
There are kinds of monsters that can terrify even you? said Dov.
Yes, I said. I do not know anything about its goals, but I have a hypothesis, and it is a dark one. This world was settled as an armed camp, carved out of the seething outer madness by force.
Dov shook his head, eyes dull, but I could think of nothing to do but continue. While heaven stood, its armies kept the outside out, but now the thrones are broken, the guard towers are empty, and the walls are breached. More likely than not, this is the first wave of a massive incursion by the elder chaos. All our world could be theirs again, or cracked open and spilled into the cold sea. The eastern chamber where you and your brothers and sisters sleep will be the next chamber that the interloper will invade, because the only trail left that runs to the southern chamber is a service path from the eastern chamber.
That is the only way this thing can go? said Dov, blinking slowly.
Yes, I said, and then, likely, it will eat you in your sleep.
Hmm, said Dov.
I need to know what is happening there, I told him. I need someone to go and see what has taken over that chamber, and if I send you, I will be able to see what you see. I need you to be my traveling spy, my flying camera eye. Will you do that for me?
Yes, said Dov, nodding sagely.
Don’t say yes lightly, I said. This is very dangerous.
Dov looked at me quietly and I could see he did not understand.
OK, I said. Go back over the glass path to your sleeping hole and from there I will find a way to inject you into the monster’s hold in the south place. It will be difficult to send you, but I will find a way, and after I send you I will be able to see what you see and advise you. We don’t know what has changed there, if the laws of nature, men or atoms remain the same, so we must be cautious, and it would be safest if you do what I tell you when you are there.
I will do as I’m told, said Dov.
He turned and began to cross the glass path. I had picked the right one to be my agent; through the back of his head I could see the vague outlines of his soul, and there wasn’t much left inside it but a murky childhood memory that, once, obedience had led to pleasure. The memory looked as if it might be a dark one, but he was pleasant enough if you didn’t want a lively conversation, and most importantly he would do what he was told. It was sad that this happened to these poor children, that the stronger ones were slowly hollowing out the weaker ones. Rebekah was at least as empty as Dov, and Carver was so far gone that she may have lost the power of speech; certainly, I had not heard her speak in many years. She was little more than a mindless weapon that could be aimed and fired by anyone who found the right buttons. But all things decay, and sometimes people do too.
The sunlight came through the window and fell on my face, and it became impossible to sleep any longer. I resisted for a while, rolling over, squinching my eyes shut, but the light made me too warm, and I sweated, and it felt like I was in hell. It felt like something from before.
I sat up and put my feet over the edge of the bed, and then laboriously pushed myself forward, calves, knees, knees bending, legs, until I was in position to stand. My ankles didn’t want to unfold all the way, so I couldn’t get my feet to form a ninety degree angle with my legs. I pressed down slowly, my eyes shut, feeling hurt throughout my leg. Then I got one heel all the way down to the ground, the whole leg shooting pains, and I stood up on it, and then the other one thumped to the ground with no warning and I stood bobbling on the dirty floor, stunned by the pain of everyday life.
I stretched my arms in the air, and shuffled around a little bit, and then turned and looked out the window. Two children in the house next door were looking at me from a window in their own house. The boy was squeezing the girl’s hand as if for dear life, and they stared at me transfixed, horrified. I wished that I had curtains, so that I could close them. I looked down at myself, grabbed on to my belly with both hands, and pushed it in so that I could see far enough down to verify that I was wearing underwear.
Having so verified, I waved a dismissive hand at the peeping toms across the street and started waddling towards the bathroom. I stepped on something sharp and, without looking, lifted the bottom of my foot up, plucked out the cube of broken glass, brushed off the cat hair and grime, and shook out my hand over the floor.
I staggered into the bathroom and started brushing my teeth. As I brushed, I squinted at the mirror. I began to get the sense that something was wrong, and I leaned forward, squinting as hard as I could. My hair was huge, spherical, but scraggly, like an unkempt clown, except for the right side, where there was a huge chunk missing. On the right, there was a big hole. I guess, I thought, I’d better cut my hair.
I ran my hands over smooth, carpet-like close cropped hair and sighed happily. I was now fit to be seen by the world at large, and to celebrate I would leave the house for the first time in more than a week. In fact, to help forget about my stolen book, I would go to the coffee shop and listen to a certain girl talking.
I closed the door behind me and turned to lock the padlock, but I could not find my keys in my pocket. They must be inside, I thought, so I put my hand on the doorknob and turned. The doorknob rotated, but only because it was loose in its socket. The door was locked at the handle.
I stood, blinking, and realized I had forgotten my sunglasses as well. I turned and stepped down the stairs, turned on the street, and began striding towards the grocery store. In the automotive aisle, I found a large slot screwdriver, and I bought it and stuck it handle first into my back pocket.
Then I went outside and began walking towards the coffee shop. A few blocks down, I remembered that I was out of soup, and turned and walked back to the store. As I stood in the line soup lane at the store, filling a cart with carton after carton of butternut squash soup, I remembered that I was going to the coffee shop, and decided I would go shopping for food on the way back. I unloaded the cartons and walked for the door.
A security guard stepped in front of me. “One moment, sir,” she said. “What do you have in your back pocket?”
“What?” I said.
She put a hand on my shoulder, and as I didn’t move, she reached around with the other hand and pulled out the screwdriver. There was still a sticker on it with the name of the store and the price.
“I paid for that,” I said. “I’m fairly sure I did.”
“I saw you, sir,” she said. “You walked into the store and then walked out without going through the checkout line. Can you come with me into this room, please?”
“No, I paid for it when I was in the store fifteen minutes ago,” I said.
“You came to the store twice within fifteen minutes?” she said. “Please, sir, let’s not make a big deal out of this.”
I began to stare at her.
She said: “please, sir...”
“Ssshh,” I said.
“What was that, sir?” she said.
“Sssssssh. Hush.”
Her brow wrinkled, and she took a short step back. Then, a look of confusion bled into her eyes and she walked to a nearby display of candy. She picked up a piece, looked around to see if she was being watched by another security guard, and then ate it. And then she ate another, and another, and as she gorged herself, I slowly turned and walked out of the grocery store.
A few blocks away, I reached into my left pocket to figure out what the crinkling noise was and found a receipt for the screwdriver. Wish I’d just showed her that, I thought.
The sun went behind a cloud and it was cold, as cold as forever, and then it came back and I stood gasping. A vision popped into my head of Ursule, the woman from last night, the woman with the witch’s name, whom I had no concrete memory of ever meeting or speaking with. I was afraid of her, and she hated me, and she was right to. I didn’t know why.
And then I saw the steps to the coffee shop ahead of me and I humped my way up them, and near the top step I could see the object of my desire through the window. She was pouring beans into a bag, a look of exhaustion in her eyes. Her name was Jessica. I know because I had read her name tag, dozens of weeks before.
I entered the coffee shop. She was standing at the coffee bean register. I did not want coffee beans, so I walked past and stood at the end of the coffee drink line. I looked straight forward, towards the coffee drink register. I could hear her throaty, self-conscious voice as she spoke quietly to another coffee shop worker. I glanced over, irritably, to check out my competition, and saw a short, pimpled man. They both wore the same two colors, brown and a darker brown, the colors from the sign outside. I closed my eyes briefly and listened to the texture of her voice. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it didn’t matter.
It occured to me that there was a drink menu on the wall behind her, so I turned and started studying this menu. I knew what I was getting, but there’s no way she could know that. Unless she’d been watching me order the same thing every time I came in for the last several years. But, I thought to myself, if she had, so much the better. I looked at the menu intently, my eyes tilted up but my head level. It worked. She looked over at me, thinking I was looking directly at her. I did not move my eyes down. She blushed a little bit, no doubt a little embarrassed that she had thought I was looking at her. I chuckled quietly to myself.
“Hey, jerk,” said the woman in line behind me, whom I was facing. I looked at her, and she looked behind me and jerked her head in a meaningful manner. I turned back towards the register and realized that there wasn’t anybody in front of me, and that I was standing twenty feet back. The girl at the coffee drink register, pretty but not the same as Jessica, raised her eyebrows way up and left them there.
I walked forward, my skin red, and ordered a drink with extra whipped cream. She asked for my name, so as to call it out when the drink was ready, and I said “Ernie.” This was not immediately understood, and I had to repeat it three times. This girl had taken my order dozens of times over the last few years, and she still couldn’t make out my name when I said it. I still considered it a net gain, since I would have had to write “Erdogan” down on a napkin in block letters.
On the counter next to the cup lids, there was a green statue. I looked at it idly, and then more intently. Something about it was very familiar. It was a green man on a green chariot, swinging a green sword in the air. Three smaller men had been swept off the front by the swung sword, or so it appeared; in point of fact, they were affixed to the statue by glue, and only appeared to be falling.
One, two, three. And one on the chariot.
I heard “Ernie.” I looked over at the coffee bean register first, but the line there was gone, and Jessica was not there. I turned to the pick up counter and leapt back when I saw her there, putting down my drink. I walked up, fish-eyed. “Thank you,” she said.
“I ran out of toilet paper this morning,” I told her. She looked surprised, and then turned and walked back into the store room.
Huh, I thought, why did I say that? It’s funny. It’s not even true, I have plenty of toilet paper. It’s like some part of me is conspiring to keep the rest of me unhappy.
When I got home, I went up the back stairs and worked at the window on the back door with the screwdriver. I knew it wasn’t latched, but it was painted shut, and I had to snick the screwdriver blade in, bit by bit, inching, lifting, cracking the paint, and then I tried to open the window by lifting it by hand, but it wouldn’t budge. I put the blade under the bottom edge and pried, and the window bent in and I saw a crack start at the bottom of the glass, but I also managed to lift it up an inch. I stuck fingers in and straightened the window back into its groove, and then lifted and moved it around and lifted it some more. Within only half an hour it was open wide enough, and I reached my arm inside and unlocked the door and came in through the kitchen.
I walked 10 feet to the front of the house. There, on a shelf by the door, were my keys and sunglasses. I picked them up, looked at them, then placed them back on the shelf, thinking to myself: what better place than right by the door, so I don’t forget them? Something white on the front door window caught my eye, a piece of paper; I opened the door and pulled it off. It read: “stOp walkin aroun in front of the windo with yer cloze off you pervert, my gran childern are yung and they dont need your kind of fat ass creeps, there yung and impreshunible.”
In the middle of the night, the phone rang. It was not the phone ringing itself that woke me, but the cat leaping off my chest in response to the sound, tearing the blankets off of me and leaving sixteen small, bleeding cuts behind him.
I picked up the handset and heard Lucy. “Dov is missing,” she said. “Ophir says he went to the beach at San Gregorio, but then never came back.”
“Ophir went to the beach?” I said.
“Wake the fuck up,” she said. “Dov left the house, told Ophir he was going to the beach, and never came back.”
“So what?” I said. “Maybe he has a girlfriend. Maybe he just crashed on a friend’s couch.”
“He doesn’t get to do that,” said Lucy. “He has a curfew.”
“He’s thirty... forty... he’s too old to have a curfew,” I said, but then I realized that he lived with Ophir, and as such did not get to make his own decisions. “Never mind. So he’s missing. What are we going to do about it?”
“Ophir called me,” she said. “He wants us all to meet at Dad’s house tomorrow. Just pull some shit together.”
“Shit,” I said. “I could do without that.”
Dov found himself in the air and flapped his wings. He had been sitting on a birdshit-spattered boulder on the beach in San Gregorio in one world, and now he was in another, and he was a mynah bird.
Dov, said the voice of the narrator of the west place in his head. Have you made it through?
“I’m a bird,” he said.
Good, said the voice.
“I don’t see how this is possible,” said Dov. To his ears, his voice sounded high pitched and unnatural, as if it were being played off an answering machine. “Sitting on a rock with birds can’t make you into a bird, that’s positively Lamarckian.”
You are using that word incorrectly, said the voice from the west place. Lamarckianism is the doctrine that acquired habits are inherited by offspring, which is truer in my world than yours. But that you sat with the birds, and felt their principle of travel throughout your body, and then became a bird and traveled beyond the boundaries of your world, is not Lamarckianism, it would be better described as sympathetic magic. But it is not magic, either. It would be better for you to not think about it. I believe you have plenty of practice in not thinking about perplexing things.
“Sure,” said Dov, and promptly forgot the whole issue.
There was swamp below him, black water and, rising out of the water, giant trees of an unearthly green. The vegetation shone with a sickly, predatory health.
“I am feeling something,” said Dov, and squawked. “There is something familiar ahead of me.”
That is interesting, said the narrator of the west place.
Dov sped ahead, following the feeling. The swamp receded and divided into solid ground and a river cutting through it. The sky was bright and blue. There was something odd about the sun, but Dov put it out of his mind.
Around midday, he began to feel hungry, and he descended and flew close over the tree tops. He slowed and perched on the branch of a tree whose fruit was red and bulbuous. It was a red pear.
It is not a red pear, said the voice from the west place. It is a quince.
“Pears are pears,” said Dov. He leaned in to take a peck.
I do not know that I recommend that, said the voice from the west place.
“Hmmmm,” hummed Dov, and it made his beak chatter. He whistled sadly and flapped a little. The branch lifted up, then dropped, then bounced up, and he jumped off, claws relaxed.
Perhaps, said the voice from the west place, you should fly closer to ground, so that I might see more.
Dov flew close over the river. Up close, it was clear that there was something odd about the river water. He could not see the riverbed through the water, because the water was not transparent, but rather black. It also seemed, from the way it curved when it lapped against the shore, that it was very thick, like milk. “There is something odd about the water,” said Dov, and he slowed to land in it.
I also do not recommend that, said the voice from the west place.
“Hmm,” said Dov, and sped up again.
He flew all day, and when night fell he was very hungry and fairly tired.
He rested on one of the top branches of a tree that was as tall as a mountain. The leaves gave off a thin green light. He looked down and saw clouds in the far distance, perhaps a mile down. His belly grumbled. He eyed a leaf, hopeful and suspicious.
Really, said the voice from the west place, I do not think it is a good idea to eat anything here.
“Hmm,” said Dov, and fell asleep.
He woke in the middle of the night. The sky was dark, but the light from the leaves illuminated a tiny beetle, crawling across his claws. Awful high up, he thought, idly. I thought beetles lived in the ground. I bet, being a bird as I am at the moment, I could eat a beetle and enjoy it. And then he realized that the beetle was already in his mouth, and that he was already eating it.
Dov, something is wrong, shouted the voice from the west place. Dov--
... and then that voice was gone, and he in its place he heard a vague sound, an infinite, alien chattering with a warm, childish, female timbre. He wanted to follow the voice and be inside it. No, he wanted -- he couldn’t remember what he wanted, and then he couldn’t remember how to control his body. He found himself rocking back and forth on the branch and then he fell forward and plummeted, spinning, and then a new purpose took over. Every time that, in his tumbling, he found himself facing away from the tree trunk, he flapped his wings once, and soon he was far from the trunk. He started flapping rapidly and was able to right himself, up-side up, down-side down, nose angled towards the ground, and he zoomed down through the layer of clouds, over the water and home...
.. home to mother.
Atop the river a crocodile floated, and Dov came down and sat on its head. Together they floated, and they thought about mother. She wanted to find the present, a present the cohens had left her. The cohens had promised, and why would they lie, and that meant that it was the present that had run from her, not the cohens who had hidden the present, but it could not have run far enough, it was still among them somewhere, this present, and she had to find it, because her mother in the sun, mother’s mother, who lived in the sun, mother’s mother who was the sun, had questions, and only the present could answer the questions, little mynah bird from another chamber.
and a little girl’s voice was suddenly recognizable in Dov’s head. It had been there now for many minutes, but he had mistaken it for his own thoughts. As it became louder, he heard the words clearly, and he also heard a strange cacophony, clicks and groans shaking behind everything, like the girl’s words were set to an atonal musical score.
And then something changed again, and Dov realized that for an hour or longer he had been standing on a crocodile’s head. His tiny heart began to beat hard and fast. He had always been afraid of crocodiles and alligators, whatever the difference was, and the stinking, cold, leathery skin of the reptilian head under his feet sent fear creeping up through his feet to the tips of his feathers. Suddenly his fear was justified: the crocodile lunged back in the water, plumes of black milk thrown up, its jaws snapping open and seeking for him, and Dov rocketed into the air, wings hammering like hell, zooming back into the sky.
He shot up through the cloud cover and didn’t stop until he was at the top of the very tallest tree.
He sat there at the treetop, his claws grasping the branch so tightly that the tips of the claws curved back around and cut into the base of his foot, and he quivered. The branch swayed, high in the sky.
Cohens? said a calm male voice, the voice of the narrator of the west place. The voice was old, wise, and detached.
Little Willy Shiva hung in midair between two rock walls above a nest of crocodiles. The crocodiles moved over one another heedlessly, stepping feet on tails, backs, heads, swarming. He watched them, sad, and then he picked a spot on the rock wall ahead, plucked a harpoon from its rack on his back, loaded it into the cannon tube on his arm, and fired. A wire now stretched out before him. He reached awkwardly back and rotated a knob on his backpack and moved forward, reeling in the wire, playing out the two wires attached to the rock walls behind him. The wires remained taut, and he moved through the air as if hovering. He came to the far wall, bumped into it, blinked, and squeezed his eyes shut as he released the attachments on the two harpoons behind him and they came hurtling back and smacked into their holsters on his backpack with such force that they would have smashed his head open against the wall if he hadn’t been wearing a football helmet.
He fired harpoons above him, reeled himself up, fired, reeled, and pulled himself by hand over the ledge to the bare rock atop the canyon wall. He glanced around, desperately, but there were no apes to be seen.
He had to get back to the boat and warn them. There was no way they could keep following the river.
The narrator of the west place calmed, and then it cajoled, and in time Dov’s heart began to beat a little less violently. He said, “all right, all right,” and he leapt off the tree branch and began flying towards the source of the familiar feeling, again.
He stayed above the cloud cover this time, despite the voice’s sighing complaints. There was not much to see: mile-high treetops, few and far between, and naked mountaintops, bare of vegetation. He was still very hungry. He began to see things that weren’t there atop each mountain as it passed... bird feeders full of colored sugar water, apples, quinces, and apes with shining glass eyes.
The sun was approaching the cloud line, and Dov was beginning to weave in his flight path when he caught a glimpse of something shiny atop a plateau that rose out of the clouds. Whether it was real or not no longer mattered to him. He went down and perched by it. It was a tuna fish can, mostly empty, but with a few bits of fish, fresh-looking, and a little fluid in the bottom.
“I have to eat,” said Dov. “I’m going to starve.”
Eat it, said the voice from the west place. I believe that it should be safe, as the matter within predates the invasion.
His head disappeared into the tin, ticking, clacking. When his head came back out, Dov said: “oh, that was good.”
Tuna fish cans, said the voice from the west place, do not open and empty themselves. Dov shook his little black head from side to side and clacked his claws on the pebbles. There was a man walking away from him at the far end of the plateau. He wore a huge, spiky assemblage strapped to his back, and he walked with a hunch. Dov began to follow.
Willy hung suspended between two giant trees over the deck of the river boat. He slowly let out more wire, lowering himself to the deck. Roger and Jonah were there to meet him.
He opened his mouth, but was interrupted by Jonah, who said “what’s the news, little buddy?”
Roger nodded astutely, his eyes fixed on a spot just above Willy’s eyes.
A black bird settled on the ledge behind Jonah. “Bad trouble,” said Willy. “The river’s blocked ahead - - there’s a volcano, and the runoff has been going into the water.”
The bird watched, as if it were listening.
“Fuck damn,” said Jonah.
“Well,” said Roger, “what are we going to do about this?”
The bird looked at Roger and then began shivering. It curled inward, its beak resting on its clutching claws. Roger’s eyes rolled over and looked at it, and he froze in place. He stood stock-still, staring at the bird.
“Not much we can do about it,” said Jonah. “It’s not as if we had any way to make this boat go any which way but down stream. We ran out of gasoline a fuckin week ago. You didn’t see anyplace we might find gasoline, did you, Willy?”
“Nothin like that,” said Willy. “I found a gas station, couple of giant trees growing up through it, but there wasn’t no gas there. It’s like somebody collected it all already.”
“Somebody,” said Jonah. “Fuckin monkeys with gas cans.”
Roger awkwardly bent his head forward and began walking towards the bird. As if with the same mind, the bird also started walking, but it had been perched on a ledge and the compulsive walking motion sent it tumbling over to land back down on the deck, its feet still slowly stepping on the air. The smack of the bird falling drew the attention of Willy and Jonah.
“Roger...” said Willy.
“Roger?” said Jonah.
Roger lifted the bird in his hands, trembling. The bird’s eyes were wide and fixed on his, one wing curled oddly up in front of his beak as if he were looking at the feathers at the tip. The bird and the man were the same, their bodies curved identically; the man contemplating his shrunken bird reflection.
Roger closed his thumb and index finger around the bird’s neck. His hand shook, and the bird’s wing shook in echo. He squinted and tears began to flow, and the bird’s eyes squinted in echo. And then he popped the bird into his mouth, bit its head off, chewed, and swallowed.
Jonah and Willy lunged for him at the same time. The bird’s headless body dropped from his hands to the deck, splattering it with blood. Jonah and Willy jumped back from the blood like it was on fire, but Roger stood, swaying, as the bird’s blood spilled out over the deck, painting the skin of his bare feet, as more blood ran down his chin. He was screaming and weeping, and then he crumpled down onto his knees and rolled into a ball and was asleep.
Dov? I called. Dov?
There was no answer. Disobedience and her brother Ophir were coming over the glass path. Old man, she said, one of my brothers is missing.
Hmm, I said. God himself had brothers and sisters.
Did he? said Ophir, interested.
Are you changing the subject? said Disobedience.
He fought for a million years, I said, to form this shelter, this boat tossing on the sea. I was, in fact, changing the subject. I could see the frustration emanating from her forehead like red tentacles, and I did not want to answer her questions about Dov, her brother whom I had sent to what may well have been his doom. God was opposed by all his family, but in the end he was strong enough to escape them, and then for thousands of years he was afraid they would break back in, the armies of the aliens, and all his work would be undone.
Armies of the aliens, repeated Ophir.
My point is, I said, that families are unpredictable and potent things. Perhaps your brother should be left to himself.
He is missing, said Disobedience.
Do tell, I said.
It is Dov, she said. His body still lies by ours in the eastern chamber, but I cannot find him in the dream. I have compassed the Earth and the space between and above and below it, and he is not to be found.
Really, I said, pleased. His body still lives?
Yes, of course, she said.
That is odd, I said.
Do you know something? she said.
I looked out over the walls of the coracle. The ocean of mother night spread out around us into infinity. Out in the distance, I could see light coming from under the water, and wisps of steam twining, thickening and becoming a tower.
The sun is rising, I said, and without another word Ophir and Disobedience spun and fled across the glass path.
I watched her as they went, ashamed. Something in her was so beautiful that I was attracted to it, despite her manias. I tore my eyes from her and watched the sun coming out of the water. Arms of flame flapped out of the water, and then dissipated in clouds of moisture; the tower of steam widened, and then the sun began to rise out of the water, encased in a shell of water vapor. Within a minute, the shell had burned off and the sun shone above the water, its gaze fixed on our coracle.
It was you, old dragon, I said. I wondered if she could hear me. The thing that rules the south place called you her mother. Do you still hate us so much, that you send in your young to tear out our throats when we already lie dying?
Willy and Jonah put Roger in a bed in the largest cabin and sat by him, watching, each carrying a sharpened chef’s knife.
“I really think it would be better to just toss him overboard,” said Willy. “He ate meat that wasn’t canned. He’s gonna wake up violent and crazy, and we have old people and women on this boat.”
“You talk like there’s a lot of them. There’s only, what, four,” said Jonah. “I’m not sure, though, about the meat.”
“What do you mean?” said Willy. “He ate that bird. I don’t know why he ate it - that was the weirdest shit I’ve seen in days, but the fact remains he got animal’s blood down his throat and on his skin and tasted animal’s meat.”
“Yes,” said Jonah, “but when is the last time you saw a bird?”
Willy thought for a while. Roger lay still on the bed, tongue poking slightly out between his lips. “I hadn’t seen any birds until yesterday.”
“Right,” said Jonah, “not since the world started ending. I didn’t think there were any birds left.”
“So what does that mean?” said Willy.
“I don’t know, you fucking leech, do you think it means something?” said Jonah. “Anyway, let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s give him a chance before deciding he’s joined the armies of the aliens.” His knife remained in position to cut Roger’s throat.
Willy blinked, distracted by the phrase “armies of the aliens.” Where had Jonah got that from? It didn’t sound like something he would say.
Roger stirred.
“Roger,” said Willy, “can you hear me?”
“Can you hear me?” said Jonah, moving the knife up and behind the bedposts so Roger wouldn’t see it.
“Ouch,” said Roger.
“Do you remember your name?” said Jonah.
“Dov,” said Roger.
“Yes,” said Willy, “there was a bird. You bit into a bird for some reason.”
“It wasn’t a dove, though,” said Jonah, “it was a crow or a starling or something.”
“A mynah bird,” said Roger.
“How do you feel?” said Willy.
“All right,” said Roger. “Like myself.”
Jonah looked at Willy. Willy raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
“All right, man,” said Jonah.
Willy covertly adjusted the chef’s knife behind his back, straightening it so Roger wouldn’t see it. He backed out of the cabin, and Jonah followed, his knife dangling in plain sight.
Night fell. Willy Shiva crunched down on the deck beside Virginia, who had beads of sweat over her eyes. Jonah sat in the chair behind the steering wheel, wearing the Captain’s hat he had found in the cabin when they had first stolen the ship. His face was limp. Bonnie and Rae were talking out of earshot, but not out of eyeshot. Willy watched Bonnie talking; like all of them, she was dirty without access to running water, but she still projected an image of innocence and open approachability. She was pretty, or at least he thought she was. Jonah might not think so.
Soon Rae reached out a spotted old hand and touched Bonnie’s shoulder, and then she hunched and waddled slowly down into the cabin. Bonnie turned and walked towards Willy, and he looked away quickly.
Willy glanced over the water. There were no apes.
“I think this was Saint Louis,” said Jonah. Willy thought to himself that there was no way he could have known that. A squat church with windows cracked by vines was visible around the bend, the cross atop instantly dating it to the period of American empire. “I read once,” Jonah said, leaning in towards Virginia, with a conspiratorial wink towards Willy, “that there are hints in the Bible -”
Willy burst skeptical air from his nose. Virginia, who had been leaning forward intently, jumped and then cackled, and Jonah leaned back and crossed his arms. Willy felt cold on his right side, the side facing Virginia, and resisted the urge to look at her. She was beautiful in a different way, more slovenly and earthy and confident.
“- that in an older tradition, old stories that were being stomped out at the time that the Bible was compiled, that God fought a war against sea monsters before the first day.”
“There was no sea on the first day,” said Willy, who had never read the Bible and was only guessing. Bonnie walked up and Virginia emited a piercing greeting squeal. Willy shook his head like he’d been punched. Bonnie sat down on Willy’s other side, and he caught a whiff of vanilla laid over the grease and body odors of which they all stank.
“How are Dagwood, and Rae?” he said.
“Oh,” said Bonnie, “they’re gonna sit up with Roger until he goes to sleep. Dag’s been having some back trouble, so Rae’s whipping him up a glass of canned milk with whisky to help him sleep.”
Willy laughed. “That sounds really bad.”
Virginia said, “I don’t think Jonah was done.” Willy blushed.
Jonah continued, with a dead-eyed look at Willy: “- claims there are passages in Jonah and the Psalms describing God as at war with primordial demons named Rahab and Leviathan who led armies of serpent and crocodile soldiers.”
At the mention of the word crocodile, Bonnie, Virginia, and Willy went completely still.
“It’s a kind of parallel to the Babylonian creation myth, where the god of order had to go to war with the dragon of chaos before he could create the world.”
This is real, that thing out there that we can’t see, it’s the dragon of chaos, thought Willy, and he felt like screaming and rolling into a fetal position. No. It’s not real. Nothing’s real.
“This is just a story,” said Willy. He wanted to touch Virginia’s shoulder.
Virginia was staring straight at Jonah, and there was a faint flush in his cheeks. Willy eyed them both. “Stories are real, buddy,” said Jonah. “Anyway, I think that war started up again. Rahab and Leviathan rose back up and beat all the order out of the world.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment, listening to the familiar sound of crocodiles splashing in milky black water.
I woke up at daybreak, freezing, with an image of winged bulls in my head. There were not enough blankets, not even close. I got up, my heels snapping painfully to the ground, pulled on a bathrobe, walked towards the door, grabbed a book off the shelf, strode out the door, down the stairs, and to my car, where I sat on the trunk and let the sun beat down on me.
The neighbor children were throwing a ball back and forth until they saw me, and then the girl put the ball behind her back and they both backed away into their yard and out of sight.
I scratched my cheek and looked at the book in my lap. It was a reprint of Easton’s Bible Dictionary, originally printed in 1897. Good, I thought. I flipped it open and started reading entries. When I saw an interesting word in one definition, I would look it up.
I stopped on the entry for “winnow.” It said:
“Corn was winnowed, (1.) By being thrown up by a shovel against the wind. As a rule this was done in the evening or during the night, when the west wind from the sea was blowing, which was a moderate breeze and fitted for the purpose. The north wind was too strong, and the east wind came in gusts....”
The south wind was missing from that definition, and conspicuously.
So was one of my brothers, and I had to get dressed.
I could not stay awake, and that’s bad when you’re behind the wheel of a car. I was having trouble keeping the car in its own lane, and at one point I opened my eyes at a stop sign and realized they’d been closed for almost a minute. So I drove off the main street to the corner of Malvoin and Tamershan and I pulled over, and put my head down on the steering wheel.
I was in a familiar dream space. Five bulls rose around me, wings beating slowly. One came in front of me, and I saw that its head had three faces on it. Four wings beat, slowly, as if trying to stay afloat in very salty water.
She said: we are... ingenious. he was our brother, on the wall of the garden.
Behind her, another said: milk pressure jut cow my name is seven names
The first said: hunger, hunger, hunger, hunger....
Another said: wake up.
I said: no no no no no no
I said: that is not my name any more
One who hadn’t spoken before said: hello hello
The first said: it can be like before
The one behind her said: my name is seven names my voice is seven voices
I said: no no
And then I was awake, and I was screaming and punching the steering wheel, and I was gasping for air. My fist was bleeding. “Woah,” I said. “Jesus.” I closed my eyes and breathed slowly. I opened my eyes and opened the door and stepped out of the car and paced. My heartbeat was becoming calm again, and I was gasping a little more calmly as I remembered that I could breathe this air with no trouble. Malvoin and Tamershan. I was only a few blocks from the old family home. Ophir, Rebekah, Carver, and Dov still lived there.
Blood falling from my fist had drawn a dotted line on the pavement. I remembered this corner. There was a rusted toy wagon by a tree on the sidewalk. I stared at it. It couldn’t still be here, from that day that dad woke up. How many years had it been? Years without number. I used to play here, with Lucy and Dov.
I walked over and sat by the wagon and sunk under a flood of memories.
Dov was seven. He was wearing Farmer John overalls and pulling a brown metal wagon behind him. Lucy sat in it, facing backwards, smiling. I saw a neighbor kid hiding in the bushes and shooed him away. He ran without looking back.
I ran back to the house to get popsicles. It was warm out, and we needed popsicles. I climbed up on the porch, and then I heard yells and I saw something through the window. I saw something and I turned and looked, and then I got down on my knees and peered over the edge. Dad was there, filling the window, and he was standing up.
My heart jumped to see him awake and aware and moving around for the first time since Carver was born. I was excited, and then I started to feel afraid. He was standing up and moving and talking, and I felt tiny and helpless. He was moving away from the window, and then I could see that his wheel chair was knocked over, and then he turned and I saw that he was holding Rebekah by the wrist, dangling her in the air, and she was where the caterwauling was coming from. Her dress was torn, and dad was yelling something, in words that were slurred. He had forgotten how to speak after all of those years in the wheel chair, but he was trying to remember, because he was trying to tell Rebekah something, but she couldn’t understand him, and he was shaking her. His other hand fumbled at her and hit her like a club, and her eyes were squeezed tight shut and she was crying.
And then tiny toddler Carver pushed the kitchen door in, the top of her head no higher up than the door knob, and she roared like a lion, her face jutting forward so far that her body was hanging diagonally in mid-air. When she roared, I felt my eyes going dim, like my higher brain functions had been turned off. Her eyes were completely white, all the color had bled out of them, and her mouth was full of teeth, row after row of teeth, like a shark. And then she jumped in the air like she was on a trampoline, and her jaw snapped shut on Dad’s neck, and his arms flailed, and fell and smashed against the window, and the glass broke and hurt my face and I backed away.
I pulled pieces of glass out of my arm and shook out my hair and I went back to the window, and I saw Carver’s head tearing deep inside his belly with her teeth, face covered in blood and spinal fluid, eyes empty of color, and Rebekah on all fours slowly crawling towards the body. And then Rebekah opened her mouth, and she had only normal teeth, but she bit into his upper leg, and then bit between his legs, and shook her head back and forth, and spit out meat, and blood ran down her chin, and she was crying.
And then there was a hand on the back of my neck, and someone was picking me up. It was Ophir, the oldest of us at twelve years. He held me in the air and looked in my eyes, and then he turned me so I was looking into the window. “This is no good,” he said. “This is some bad medicine, Erdogan.”
Lucy ran up and started screaming “daddy! Daddy!” And then Dov was there too, shouting things at Carver and Rebekah, and Rebekah jumped back from the body in horror, her face slack with shock and guilt.
And then Ophir put me down, and we all closed our eyes, because my name was seven names, and my voice was seven voices, and my name and my voice were the name and the voice of the tribe of the murder of the eldest.
When I opened my eyes, Dov and Lucy were standing by me, and Dad’s body was gone, and the living room was clean, and Rebekah’s face was white as paper, and Carver’s eyes were blue, and her teeth were like regular people’s teeth, and it was only us.
Someone was walking toward me. My attention returned to the now. It was Lucy. She was wearing bunny slippers and a sun dress. She said “hello hello.”
“Hello,” I said.
“I couldn’t park closer, either,” she said.
Am I parked? I thought. The house is only two blocks away. I guess I could leave the car here.
“I know,” I said. “It’s not that there’s no parking spots, it’s just that there’s no...”
“... air,” she said.
“Right,” I said, “air.”
She looked like she wanted to say something else, but instead she came up and leaned on me. I put an arm around her back, and we walked together down the street toward the house.
A block down, we could see the house. The wooden walls and plywood deck were unmistakable among the far more attractive and stable looking prefab concrete houses of all the neighbors. I noticed something.
“Your face smells like tears,” I said to Lucy.
She looked up at me. “I’ll tell you after this,” she said, and she started walking faster, pulling me behind her.
They were out in the street: Rebekah thin and well-dressed, Carver barely recognizable as female, her jaw jutting askew, and huge, red Ophir. He looked drowsy.
When we came to where they were standing, they turned without a word and walked inside, and we followed. Carver slammed shut the plywood door behind us all. The house was just one big room, with four bed rolls pushed up against the walls, a smell like spoiled milk and rotten cheese, and a huge card table in the center of the room with six folding chairs around it. Ophir picked one of the chairs up, placed it on the table, and said: “this is why we’re here today.” What? I thought. Oh, it must be Dov’s chair.
When I first learned to write, I wrote things on the floor here with a pen. It was just plywood, so it didn’t even seem like defacing it. At the base of my chair, I could see words, in childish handwriting: “we are ingenious.”
I glanced up at Ophir, who was talking, and then down at “we are ingenious.” It was in feminine handwriting, with many loops and curls. It was too neat for Carver, too messy for Rebekah, and too arrogant for Lucy.
“Did you write this?” I said to Ophir.
He stopped in mid-sentence and vibrated, open-mouthed, then said: “what?”
“Did you write this on the floor?”
Lucy leaned over. Rebekah rolled her eyes to the ceiling. I did not look at Carver, because she was scary.
Ophir stood up and walked over to where I was sitting and looked down between my legs.
“That’s a girl’s handwriting, dude,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “but it’s not any of theirs.”
“OK, whatever,” he said, and walked back to his chair.
“I think you wrote it,” I said, to Ophir.
“Jesus,” shouted Rebekah, taking me by complete surprise.
“Hey!” said Ophir. “Not in this house!”
“Erdogan,” said Rebekah, “what is wrong with you? You’re talking about irrelevant shit! Dov is missing, and you’re fucking talking about a name on the floor. You’re as bad as Ophir. You’re turning into Ophir.”
“Did you call ‘we are ingenious’ a name?” I said. We are ingenious.
“He did write it,” said Rebekah. Ophir jolted back in his chair, and it came close to turning over. “He wrote it when he was 5. I saw him, and Dad mentioned it a couple weeks before Carver was born. I don’t know what the big fucking deal is.”
“I never wrote that,” said Ophir. “That’s not my handwriting.”
“Five’s pretty young to be writing this well,” I said.
And then Carver screamed, and it made the walls of the house shake. I felt like I wasn’t there, like my intellect was stripped off and only some responsive, emotional skeleton was left. My nerves screamed.
The scream ended, and I found myself rocking back and forth in the chair. My fingers were twitching open and closed spasmodically. It hurt, but I couldn’t stop.
“She wants to know where Dov is,” said Rebekah.
“Nobody knows, girl,” said Lucy. “And I really don’t know what we can do about it. Come on, Erdogan.”
I put a hand on the table and pressed down, and in a moment I was able to stop rocking back and forth. Lucy patted me on the shoulder. I swallowed, hard, my eyelids still fluttering and disturbing my vision, and then I stood, and we walked out together.
When we got close to the cars, she said, “I need to stay at your house for a while. Is that OK?”
I tried to remember how to talk.
“Yes,” I said. And then I cast around for the next thing to say... “but why, what happened?”
“Braulio’s... Braulio... I don’t want to talk about it. Just say yes.”
“Yes,” I said again. “But you know my place is about as big as a closet.”
“That’s OK,” she said, “I’m little, I can curl up under the bottom shelf.”
“You may be little,” I said, “but you hold out against Carver better than I do.” Neither of us said anything for a while, and then we were by my car. “You’re right,” I said. “What if Dov is gone? What can we do about it?”
“We could call the police,” she said.
“I don’t... know how to do that,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Well, I’ll meet you at your house tonight.”
“Sure thing,” I said.
The Tomkinjack opened his eyes and waggled his jaw. It moved freely, without pain. The sun had not yet risen, but its light was beginning to color the sky. There was a black spot blocking off his view of the horizon.
“Hello,” said the Tomkinjack, “knife god.”
“That what you’re calling me, knee-high giant rat?” said the knife god. “You oughta be good as brand new now.”
“How’d you fix me up?” said the Tomkinjack.
“Used to be an animal doctor,” said the knife god, “I think.”
“Did you use chemicals and needles and cutting tools?” said the Tomkinjack. “Because it didn’t seem like you did.”
The knife god was quiet for a moment. The glass under the Tomkinjack was cold, slippery, and he could see reflections in it of the shadows of things that had happened days ago. He saw the shadows of members of the folk, milling about, greeting one another by touch. He put his chin down on the ground, fighting back tears.
“Reckon not,” said the knife god. “You’re right, though, that’s how I done it fore the stars broke and we all fell down. I reckon now all I have to do is run my hands over you, knowin how you the bone supposed to lie on the tendons and how the fluid supposed to consist, and it gets straightened out. Didn’t really think about it, just started doin it.”
The Tomkinjack wanted to ask him why he had left the falling down place, but he was not sure how to put it without offending him.
“Burning god damn sun’s comin up,” said the knife god.
“Burning?” said the Tomkinjack. “The sun light is cold. It’s been getting steadily colder since you all went away. We can barely stay warm during the day.”
“Burning god damn hot like being buried in hot sand in Death Valley up to your nose,” said the knife god.
The Tomkinjack closed his eyes and summoned other vision, but the sun’s other face seemed no more potent or deadly. He looked at the knife god and saw a short, black-haired man. The Tomkinjack, if he stood, would be as tall as his knee. Knee-high, he thought, like the man said. The man was sweating profusely, rivers running off of his face. The thin, cold yellow ball was rising above the horizon.
“Goodbye,” said the knife god. “I have to go underground until the sun goes down.”
“Goodbye,” said the Tomkinjack. He watched with his eyes closed, and the man began running. At first the knife god was running only as fast as a fast man, but as he fell into the rhythm he became faster and faster, and as he disappeared from view, a plume of dust could be seen in the distance.
I wonder, thought the Tomkinjack, if he’s going to turn into a hunt queen. A hunt king.
Contemplative, he opened his eyes and looked down at the ground, and watched the glass’s memories playing back. He saw the shapes of two members of the folk entering into the nest, and excited shapes rushing to and fro around them, greeting them by touch, shadows touching and merging briefly together at the nose. He watched the shorter, fatter of the new shadows and sighed wistfully. He had to find the Tomkin. She could be anywhere on the planet now. She could have landed in the oily sea -- three quarters of the planet’s surface was oil. He tried to remind himself that she was resourceful, so resourceful that it was insulting to her memory to imagine that she might not be safe. He tried.
And then he closed his eyes again, and began sorting through error vortexes for anything that might give him a clue.
Half a day later, he found an error which, when pulled close, confused his other vision. He placed the cone in front of him, and in a region in the shape of a paraboloid bending back from the tip of the cone, he could see pieces of other places. At first it was hard to pick out individual features, because the image moved so fast, like the view through the eyepiece of a microscope fixed on a spinning globe, but he became accustomed to it. The images it showed were not in the normal spectrum but the other vision, and this was good, because wherever the Tomkin and the Tomkinjack went, they had the effect of healing the fabric of the earth, and healthy earth could be recognized in the other vision by a distinctive greenish warmth. Where the world was more damaged, and the errors were worse, black honey was pooled.
He watched through it until he saw the sun nearing the far horizon, and then he realized that the three hunt queens might well come back to this spot again tonight. He tethered this error, which he termed an error of other light path, so that it would stay behind him and follow, and then he started sorting through errors of position. Now that there was more time available for this task, he was able to find several and peer through them. He found one that led to a place over land and sprung up through its cone.
He came out high in the sky over what he recognized as the steppes of Asia; he spread his arms and legs wide, and the skin flaps slowed his fall. He landed lightly on all feet, like a cat, and the error vortex landed behind him. He prowled, then found a nook, and slept in it.
The captive error of other light path tore at its tether and the earth around it cracked and tried to pull away, and it disturbed the Tomkinjack’s dreams.
In one dream, he was bulky but sinuous. His tail was coated in fur, and it whipped idly, independent of his mental functions. His nose was too short, and he was among human beings. Their odor was everywhere, and it had been so long since he had smelled it that he at first didn’t remember how to respond to it. Once he had had to hide in a cage when he smelled it, but that was in a special situation, and he thought it no longer applied.
One of the humans stood facing away from him, and the Tomkinjack approached by him suspiciously, sniffing, nuzzling its leg, and then he opened his eyes wide as he felt all his motor control disappear and a smothering sense of calm and well-being blowing his mind out. He had been lifted by the ruff of the neck, and it reminded him -- it reminded his body -- of being carried in its mother’s mouth.
The human male was struggling to hold the Tomkinjack up, a trembling implying that his arm muscles were struggling with the load. He walked from one place to another, and the Tomkinjack’s eyes calmly took in a flat, shining wood platform on wooden legs, a dirty white striped floor that reminded him of the desert of black glass, and a giant cold white box like the one that had inspired the tale of Brer Rat and the Hunt Queen. And then he was being placed on the folded down legs of another human being, a female, and the hand released his neck skin and he shook his head, aware and motive again.
He looked at her, and he knew her. The last time he had seen her she had been a wisp of cheese smoke murdering a member of the folk in a place where they had felt safe, a doddering old murderous hag, but now she was young and pretty and gentle, and she ran her hand over his back, and he found his diaphragm rumbling. He closed his eyes tight, loving it. Lucy, he purred, Lucy....
He woke when the sun rose over the Asian steppes. With his eyes open, the error he was keeping tethered was visible only because the earth around it cracked and recoiled from its point of application. Eyelids narrowed, he watched cracks form in the earth, then cracks across the cracks, and dust collapsing down into the cracks, filling them, and then more, softer, finer cracks, and the process repeating as the error crawled slightly away, around the arc of the tether, never able to get further from or closer to him, but able slowly to work its way around him in a circle.
I wonder, he thought. I wonder where the Tomkin is, I wonder why the helpful voice has not spoken to me in regards to our attack by the hunt queens, and whether we are important to it. Does it need us? It says it does. And I wonder about the dream where I inhabited an animal beloved of creatures that might have been human but who had the names of hunt queens.
There was only one of these questions that he could do anything about answering, so he closed his eyes, turned towards the paraboloid of spinning images of the world blowing back from the tip of the tornado of error, and he began searching again for his wife.
The trees rose green overhead, verdant and oppressive. Willy and Jonah were poring over a map. In his right hand, Willy was playing with a thin strip of aluminum, bending in around his fingers.
“Seems to me,” said Willy, “