The Apex Book of World SF 2 (21 page)

But it wasn't. Phil
staggered and nearly fell but fought to keep on his feet. The "bully will
respect you" theory, but Lex knew it wouldn't work. "Stay down, Phil, for fuck's
sake," he yelled, tears welling up in his eyes, a lump in his throat.

Craig got off the
bike and with the same lack of malice, gave it a shove towards the drop and the
water below. It rolled most of the way there, balanced on its wheels as though
it had an invisible rider, then clattered onto its side and slid over the edge.

Lex forgot about
Phil and the
crack crack
of punches still rocking his friend's head
back. There was just a long dark angry tunnel with Craig at the end of it. It
was the casual way he'd done it, absolutely nothing personal in it. All those
mornings in the hot sun, barked at by dogs, chased by one, riding up that hill
on Gyp Court, swooped by magpies, wasp nests in letter boxes, folding fucking
Coles and Food-Store pamphlets together all Friday night till his fingers were
dark with ink. It had all been for Craig, to provide him five seconds or so of
entertainment.

Lex's hand picked up
the flat rectangular stone all by itself. He moved automatically as he drew it
back and shoved it into that utterly-hated, squinting, freckled face.

Craig grunted in
surprise. That was the point at which Lex's memory erased what followed, which
was, of course, his hand—so much smaller—being grabbed tightly, the rock being
taken out of it and the favour returned with interest, as Craig swung it down
on his head. His body dropped in the long grass some way from Phil's and about
ten seconds after.

 

When sight returned,
there were only the stars and clouds above, all spinning about slowly and
lazily. A continent of thick grey cloud slowly swallowed the half-moon, dulling
out its light. Crickets chirped. Pain throbbed down from the top of Lex's skull
as if Craig were right there thumping him with the rock every two seconds.

 

There was rustling
nearby, the tickling touch of long grass, a faint lingering stink of cask wine.
A gnawing, crunching sound. Like Phil's dog Jules at work on a bone. Sucking,
slurping. Crunching, gnawing.

He lifted his head,
but the spike of pain made him rest it back on the grass. Tenderly, he touched
his scalp; there was a sticky, tacky patch of blood. He moaned quietly. The
background sounds—the eating sounds—ceased.

A listening,
watchful silence ensued that instinct told him not to break. It went on for a
long time. There were footsteps padding through the long grass, moving away
from him, then towards him, then away again. Slow, heavy steps.

Keith and Craig?
he thought.
Both of them, still here?

The footsteps
stopped. The eating sounds began again. There was a low murmur of someone's
voice saying something, mostly inarticulate, but amongst the babble he made out
the words "good, good".

Slowly, Lex sat up,
hardly disturbing the long thick blades of grass around him. A shape loomed ten
or twelve metres away, set against the sky behind. A large man hunched forward
on the shorter grass where Lex had ridden his bike over the drop, with his back
to Lex. The big hunched-over body was just a silhouette against the cloud. It
moved in jerking, sawing motions.

A soft moan.
Mournful, Lex thought, or maybe a note of pleasure. Though he knew he must stay
quiet, he was too confused to be scared. He thought back to rumours about the
bogan kids who came here with their girlfriends to screw. But this was no kid.

Up on his elbows,
Lex watched the man's strange movements, still not comprehending, as the
minutes passed. Not till he sat up, and the clouds shifted, the moon's light
coming out from hiding to reveal the large man crouched over Phil.

Phil was looking
right at Lex, so it appeared, eyes wide and unblinking and with a strange kind
of grimacing smile, his lips peeled back. Lex gestured to him as if to say,
Are
you okay? What's going on?

Phil did not react
at all. His head was in a strange position to the rest of him, a most unnatural
angle. In fact, as Lex's eyes adjusted, he saw that it wasn't Phil at all but
actually some kind of doll, for the head had been pulled right off. He rubbed
his eyes as if it might change things, but no, the head wasn't attached to the
body at all.

A dark pool spread
about the body. Phil's chest and belly had been ripped open. The man by the
corpse of his best friend was digging around in it, sawing off handfuls of
flesh with a knife and lifting them to his mouth. The sight did not quite
register, did not make any kind of sense at all. Lex did not think he was
really seeing it.

The man's head
turned sideways and Lex could see the chewing motions of his jaw. Inarticulate
sounds came from his chewing, gargling throat interspersed with "good…good".

For Lex, everything
span around again, very fast. His head fell back down on the long grass, making
it rustle.

The eating sounds
stopped. The man got to his feet. For a moment, his heavy excited breathing was
the only sound. Heavy footsteps padded swish-swish through the grass. Lex felt
and heard him coming but didn't care because he couldn't. He still didn't
understand.

The man stood, tall
over him, stretching far above like a statue, legs that were concrete pillars.
It was the man they'd seen ogling the magazines in the news agency. For a long
time, the longest minute in Lex's life, the man stared down at what the
moonlight had revealed to him in the tall grass. His blood-smeared mouth hung
open just as it had when he shambled out of the shop towards them.

A car swept past,
swishing up puddles of water where the road dipped, then it was gone.

The man was trying,
it seemed, to speak. Gibberish came out, a language of stuttering grunts,
interspersed here and there with words. Lex discerned only, "Where we come
from…makes us hungry."

 

In the long years
later, on therapists' couches, in bed tearfully telling his wife about it for
the first time after twenty-one years of marriage; after waking from every
nightmare where he was, again, a kid lying in long grass next to the water…

 

All the while
driving himself through business school, through board rooms, from success to
success, ever higher and faster as though to get away from a shambling monster
on the road behind him…

Through memories of
the funeral, of the police interviews, the witness stand with the monster
blankly watching him answer questions in the trial that eventually put the
monster in a hospital, not in a prison…

From trying to work
out why, why
he
hadn't been taken as well; why
he'd
been spared
after he'd passed out in the long grass, utterly at the monster's mercy, only
to wake later and find what was left of his friend spread across the dewy
ground…

Till he was an old
man, rich and lonely, fading from life in his last days, bitterly wishing that,
of all the memories his mind so eagerly shed, good and bad, why
those
memories
above all others must remain till his very last day…

He would, throughout
all this, seek some secret meaning in those words his ears had barely discerned
amongst the grunts and stutters that had burnt those words—with whatever secret
things they meant—into his mind, into his life, as a never-fading scar.

 

Nira and I
Shweta Narayan
 
Shweta Narayan grew up in India and Malaysia but currently lives in the U.S. Her short stories have appeared in
Strange Horizons
,
Realms of Fantasy
, Ellen Datlow's
Beastly
Bride
anthology, and elsewhere.

 

Nira and I are with Hemal on
the day she dies. She is teaching us a clapping-song game, a remembering game.
She is winning.

 

We call Hemal by
name, though that breaks respect law because she is my mother's younger sister.
She says being called
jal-amaa
makes her feel old. She is sixteen, which is
old; Nira and I are five.

My
amaa
opens the door screen and says, "Hemal, we must talk. Nira, go home; your
amaa
will worry."

Hemal's eyebrows pull together, scrunching up her caste marks, like maybe she ate all the butter
or forgot to douse the cook-fire. She gets up and ruffles my hair. "I'll be
back soon, little ones."

She ducks outside. Arms grab her. She fights. My father shouts, "Don't try to lie. We saw you with
that boy, that fisher-caste scum! And all this time you were living in my
house, luring in the mist…"

Nira says, "Your
ataa
won't beat her, will he, Shaya?" Her voice is small.

I say, "Shh," and put my arms around her.

Voices pile on each other, words like "Law" and "Honour", words like stones. Nira's eldest brother
says, "Fishers use children's fingers for bait." He is supposed to marry Hemal.

Amaa sobs, "Sister, little sister, how could you?" and Hemal says, "How could
you?
"

Then the half-bricks
start, and cobblestones and broken bottles. Shadows huge and sudden against the
door screen; the thud of Hemal falling; screams and wet breaking noises.

"This isn't
happening," I say. Sounds blur outside. Shadows lighten.

Nira huddles closer
to me. I put my arms around her. "It's all right," I whisper. "Remember, she
said she would come back."

 

Nira and I are six
when her eldest brother loses his way in the mist. Three days later, his bones
get home. An extra finger sprouts from the left hand, and the skull has no eye
sockets. But his clothes dangle from the shoulder blades, and dry knuckles
scratch at the door for two days before the King's men come.

 

This happens, but
not to us. We are rememberers. We know each corner, every cobblestone. The mist
cannot tempt us into a street that never was, can never make us think that we
are home, or that we are kittens or fish. We are the city's traders, its
messengers; we know it from wharf to hill. We roam through the dead market,
piled high with bananas and seaweed but smelling only of age; we cross the
tricky bridge, whose planks dissolve underfoot when we aren't there to
remember. We are not trapped, huddling in tiny neighbourhoods. We matter.
Travellers pay us to lead them safely through the mist, and our families work
even in the palace. Granted, we may have little changes—forked tongues or grey
eyes and skin, or feathers for hair—but nothing to bring the King's men. Our
caste is pure. Till Nira's brother is lost.

Nira's
amaa
keeps her home after that, keeps her brothers home. All the mothers do, holding children
closely and safely when we should be learning the city. And every day we grow
more scared.

I am eight when I
see Nira again. She appears out of thick curling twilight with her brother
Abjit, who is ten, gripping her hand so hard it hurts me. I can see through
their feet. I do not imagine what they might become. Nira says, "They're lost.
All lost. Amaa and Ataa, and Imar, and Garun. They've been gone a week, and we
are so hungry, Shaya, so very hungry."

I pull them in and
shut out the mist. Wrap blankets around them, feed them spicy coconut rice to
wake them up. Taking care of Nira again. A knot loosens in my heart.

Nira comes back fully, but I do not remember Abjit as well. One of his feet is grey, and
clawed, and much too small. Mist-burnt. "How did you find us?" I say.

Nira says, "Hemal
showed me the way."

The next day Abjit
will laugh at her for this, will taunt and tease and pinch. But now he stares
around wide-eyed, and touches every wall and stool and bit of floor, and says
nothing at all.

 

Ataa clears out
Hemal's old loft room and buys straw for Abjit to weave two more mattresses.
Until they are done, Nira shares mine. We stay up far too late at first,
trading stories, and one night, after Ataa starts snoring in the next room, I
slide the window open. The blown-glass window eye swings back and forth on its
string. I say, "Hemal?"

 

There is only mist,
so thick that the ground and the neem tree are gone. It pokes a finger into my
room, right around the eye. I cringe back. Nira says, "Listen."

Hemal is singing.

Nira and I listen at
the window most nights until I am nine, though Nira is still eight. We learn
teaching songs and sad love songs and sometimes fishermen's ditties that make
the ground sway under us. We are not scared.

It's a fisher song
that Amaa hears. She slams the window shut and locks it, her lips a pale tight
line, her fingers trembling. "I should beat you," she says.

"Like you beat Hemal?"

Tears pool in her eyes, glint on her cheeks. She stumbles from the room.

 

Ataa is grave the
next morning. Amaa is ill. Abjit says, "Is she mist-sick?" Ataa does not
answer.

 

"It's Shaya's fault,"
says Abjit.

Ataa says, "Something
is in the mist."

I shrug. "Just
Hemal."

"No," says Ataa. "Hemal's dead. Stoning is part of culture law; it keeps us safe, keeps the dead from walking."

Nira and I look at each other. We know.

 

Amaa does not get better, not properly. She forgets where she is. She forgets what she is doing.
Now it is Amaa who must stay at home and safe.

 

So Ataa inks caste marks into Abjit's forehead, and he starts running messages, though he limps. Nira
and I teach my little sisters. We teach them the city and we teach them Hemal's songs to find the way. And we teach them not to sing around Amaa.

We keep the love
songs and fishing songs to ourselves.

When Nira and I are
ten, Amaa calls me Hemal. I run outside, leaving Nira to soothe her.

The next day, Ataa
gives us our caste marks.

 

Nira and I go
everywhere. Though we are little, we are fast and we never lose our way. Nobody
knows how we do it. Nobody else sees Hemal. The mist is not threatening where
she is. It is her. And though her eye and lip are swollen black and blood drips
over her caste marks, she never frightens us.