Kzine Issue 18

by Graeme Hurry

  I just asked him how old he was when the Ship came from the sky. He said six summers. I wonder what a summer is.

  Sixteenth Day, Third Circle

  Father says not to read my dictionary or write in my book when the others are about. None of them can read or write, he says, and they might get jealous if they saw me. He says they might steal the precious books. People get jealous when they can’t do something right, he says. Especially us living down here in the dark away from the sun, we hate those who live upstairs and we steal from them. They surrendered to the Wizards from the Ship and we hate them for it, but we are jealous, too, we wished we were there with them in the sun.

  Father says a lot of things in the darkness, while we’re huddled together away from the others. I don’t agree with him all the time. I can’t imagine the sun. Wouldn’t it burn my skin, hurt my eyes? And the Wizards of the Ship, those who came with the magick that burned us all, turned our skin hard and our nails long, they’re still there, upstairs. I wouldn’t want to be near them.

  But when Father talks like that, his eyes look faraway and I just let him talk while I go to sleep. Sometimes then I dream of the sun and it is large and red and burns my skin and Wizards from the Ship watch and laugh.

  Second Day, Fourth Circle

  Father and Joe have been arguing again. Father’s skin was even greyer than usual when he came back to our corner.

  One of the others found an old chair in one of the tunnels and brought it back. The paint is peeled and the back ripped, but Joe claimed it for his and now he’ll only speak to anybody while he’s sitting in this chair. He still has the black gown as well that Tim stole for him last circle.

  Joe thinks I need to be blooded, Father says. Father says nobody needs to be blooded and warned Joe to stay away from me. Last night, though, Father said he might be away for a day or two. He told me to hide my precious books, not to get them out while he was away. I don’t like it when Father goes away. Joe always comes to talk to me when he is. When Father is here, Joe ignores me.

  Father is getting ready now. He’s put his boots on and his cleanest cloak. It’s green with a hood. When he hides his skin and eyes, I know where he’s going. Upstairs. He has a knife, too. It looks dirty and rusted, the handle is broken. Father has tucked it into the folds of his sleeves. He’s told me he has to do something. He doesn’t want to do it, I know. But he’s going to do it for us, to keep us safe.

  I’ll miss him. When he isn’t here, I sit in our corner and watch the others in the flickering shadows. Usually Joe will choose a woman while Father isn’t here as well. He always goes first and then lets the others after. I don’t like that. The screams are loud down here, echoing off the ceiling. And then, when the candles go out and the screams are loud in the dark, that’s when I feel alone the most.

  Father’s told me to stop writing now. He says he’ll be back as soon as he can and that he’ll miss me.

  Sixth Day, Fourth Circle

  Father’s back! He was gone longer this time. But he’s back now. He looked tired, his skin greyer. I noticed there was blood on his cloak, but he smiled and said it wasn’t his blood. I wonder whose blood it was. I was full of questions for him, but he had to talk to Joe first. He was there until the candles were nearly burned out, and they shouted at each other.

  The others waited outside Joe’s tunnel, and they murmured and looked at each other every time they heard the shouts. They looked hungry, hunched and waiting like that. I didn’t like the way they itched and shuffled whenever they heard Father raise his voice. It made me worry about him, I don’t know why. Everyone is afraid of Father, even though he isn’t the biggest.

  He’s back with me now. The others are in Joe’s tunnel and I can hear him speaking to them, almost shouting at them. Some of them are shouting back, or cheering. Father looks tired and he sits across from me, the fire casting quivering shadows on his grey cheeks. He’s still in his cloak, the hood thrown back. His hair looks thinner, sticking up in tufts. He caught a fish on his way home and now he cooks it over the fire. None of the others cook their fish, they eat them raw and bloodied. Father says it’s important to cook the fish from the brown river.

  He’s read some of my book. “You’ve been practicing,” he says. “This is an important book.”

  I didn’t know how anything I wrote down here in the tunnels can ever be important. Nobody else here can read apart from me and Father.

  “For posterity,” Father says, helping me spell the word. It means for those who come after us, he says.

  I say I didn’t think any would come after us. When our young are born, we wrap them in towels scavenged from upstairs and put them in the brown river.

  Father looks even more tired when I mention this. I think he thought I didn’t know. But I’m getting older, I see more. I hear more, too.

  “Yes,” Father says, “you do hear more.”

  He’s told me to put my book away now.

  Tenth Day, Fourth Circle

  Another young one was born yesterday. Nearly all the women have big bellies lately. Gert was the one; she fell to her knees screaming and waking everyone even before the candles were lit. It was noisy and dark and everybody was running about. I slipped into the water and my clothes still stink.

  It seemed like Gert screamed for hours. Joe was pacing about in his black cloak, and soon he started shouting as well. He said he was going to kill Gert if she wasn’t quiet, so Father gave her a stick from the water to bite on. Her eyes were big and she looked scared.

  When the young one came, I knew it was the same as the others. Joe, Father, Kirt and some of the others circled around the creature as Gert begged and pleaded behind them.

  Joe shouted and swore, and then punched the wall until it cracked and the ceiling shook, candlelight flickering all about us. Father looked sad, and for once, he and Joe spoke to each other quietly. It reminded me of when they had been friends.

  The quiet didn’t last long. Gert was still begging and pleading for her young one when Joe pointed at me. ‘The boy needs to become a man!’ he shouted, the little creature screaming in his arms. It was small with big arms, its skin hard and it looked as though it had only one eye and its teeth were large in its little face.

  “No! He’s too young,” my Father said.

  “Young? Look at this!” Joe shook the creature in his arms. “We need men! He hasn’t even been upstairs yet. You coddle the boy, let him become a man!” The young one in his arms screamed and tried to bite Joe’s hard skin.

  I stood. I wanted to support my Father, but he’s looked so tired lately. I thought part of that was his efforts to keep me from the others, in arguing with Joe all the time. “I’ll do it,” I said. I knew what Joe wanted of me.

  Joe smiled and Father looked disappointed. I tried to keep my eyes focussed on the young one. When Joe gave me it, it tried to bite me, twisting it’s large head, its teeth yellow in the candlelight, its one eye was distended, and its grey skin mottled more than any of ours. It was a monster.

  I wrapped it in a blanket. I wanted to cover its face but somehow this seemed a cruelty too far.

  I could hear Gert’s screams follow me all the way down the dark tunnel as I looked for somewhere quiet to give the young one to the brown water.

  Thirteenth Day, Fourth Circle

  Father didn’t speak to me for almost a day after I took the young one. Joe had seemed unusually happy. He’d even slapped me on the back with one of his great clawed hands. His nails are thicker even than Father’s, his teeth large and yellow when he smiles.

  I think Father has forgiven me now. He’s just been telling me of upstairs. He says upstairs people live in buildings that are taller even than Joe’s tunnel. He says they have windows, big holes filled with glass that they can look through and watch the City beyond. He says there is no sludge up there, and the people have soft skin and clothes that aren’t torn and muddied. He said he once saw one of the four that came on the Ship, Father says they are great
Wizards and rule over the City with an iron fist. I don’t know what iron means, but I’ll look it up later.

  I was falling asleep when I heard Father mention mother. He said she still had some soft skin when she lived down here. She wasn’t like us, all grey and tough and mottled. He looked sad when he mentioned mother; he always does. He then said that’s why he protects me from life down here, because mother would have wanted more for me.

  He went to sleep then, but I couldn’t. It makes me restless when I think of mother. I can barely remember her. I remember a soft voice. I think she was singing, or maybe her voice just sounded like music to me. I remember white, as well. Perhaps she wore white once. After thinking of mother, the tunnels here seem small and dark and constricting, and the water sounds loud and greedy, stinking the tunnels with the foul waste that festers on its surface.

  I think it will take me a long time to get to sleep tonight.

  Seventeenth Day, Fourth Circle

  Joe called me into his tunnel today. I know Father will be mad when he reads this, but I think Joe is right. Father has been protecting me too much. I know the others look at me differently, even those I grew up with like Brin and Dex, even Iris. They think I’m weak and wrinkle their noses as I walk past.

  Joe sat in his chair. He’s got some kind of staff now with a golden orb on the top of it. He’s taken to wearing his hood up when he ‘holds court’, as he calls it.

  He said I’m the last of my breed to go upstairs. All the others have been upstairs and brought back some trophy or other to prove they are kin. I’m the last. Joe wanted to know if I was kin or not, or some soft-skin.

  Joe’s tunnel is full of treasures from upstairs now. Gold and silver things that shimmer in the candlelight. He says that if I prove to be kin then I can take a turn with the females. I thought of Gert and the creature I let slide into the brown water, and I thought of the screams I hear when the candles are burned out. I wouldn’t want that, but I do want to be kin.

  I’m sorry Father, but I do want to belong.

  First Day, Fifth Circle

  Father was angry when he read my last entry. I knew he would be, but it was the disappointment I saw in him that hurt the most.

  We had a long talk and he told me that he would take my turn this time, and when he gets back he will tell me of why we’re different to those who live in the City, about why we hide down here. He says it’s important to understand this before I go upstairs.

  He also said I should learn of what Joe will want of me when I go there. I didn’t like the look in Father’s eyes when he slid the knife into his sleeve. He pulled his hood up and didn’t look back when Joe called to him.

  I saw the way the others looked at me when Father left. I’d never noticed before, but now I saw it for what it was: scorn. They think I’m weak and hide behind my Father, letting him do my work for me. Being weak is the worst thing anybody can be here.

  Now I’m here in my corner alone with the candle burning low, I feel afraid as I hear the others shuffling about in the darkness, and hear the females’ screams.

  Fifth Day, Fifth Circle

  Father isn’t back yet. I’m worried about him. I even dreamed about him one night. I could hear his raised voice, arguing with Joe, as usual. It must have only been a dream, because he still isn’t back.

  Joe called me to his tunnel today. He had his hood pulled low over his face and sat proud in his chair. The others huddled in the shadows, snuffling and watching me.

  “Your Father has been gone too long,” Joe said from the shadows of his hood.

  I had to admit that Father had been gone for longer than usual.

  Joe smiled and the candlelight flickered on his black robe. “I’ve often worried about your Father’s love of the soft-skins,” Joe said. “He’s brought you up more soft-skin than a true brother. I know you feel it in your bones.”

  I know I’m different to the others. Even as I sit here writing while they are in the darkness whispering, some of them fighting further into the tunnels, I know I’m different. I didn’t want to admit this to Joe, though.

  Joe beckoned me closer with a wave of his hand. He has grown his nails longer, they’re thick and tough, a sign of his strength. ‘Let me tell you of the soft-skins,’ he said. “You know what they are?”

  Father told me they were the survivors of the Cataclysm, the survivors of the Wizard War after the Ship came. I knew that this wouldn’t be the answer Joe was wanting somehow.

  “They’re the craven,” Joe said. “Those who surrendered to the Ship from the sky. They are the ones who left us to suffer and burn under the magick of the invaders. They live up there now under the sun and sip from glasses and ride through the City on their horses. They stole that life from us and leave us here to cower forgotten in the darkness.” He clenched a fist, his thick nails scraping on the grey skin. “This,” he said, throwing back his hood and showing me his mottled forehead, the sagging eyes and large teeth, “this is what we and our ancestors got for standing and fighting against the invader. They are the ones who should be hiding in shame, not the ones who stood and fought.” He smiled and lifted back his hood to cover his face. “Am right or am I wrong?”

  Joe has a way of talking that makes me think of strength and what is right. I think that’s why he can work the others into a screaming frothing frenzy sometimes, work them so that they draw blood fighting one another.

  “I’ve seen you writing,” Joe said. “What good are words on paper here? Who will read them? Words,” Joe made a dismissive gesture, the sleeves of his robe shivering with the gesture. “Words are like the tears of the dead to us. We need strength. Your Father needs strength. Do you know what the soft-skins will do to him if he is captured up there?” I saw a flicker of a smile within the darkness of his hood. “He loves them I know, but they hate him. They hate all of us because we are a reminder, a reminder of their own cowardice when the invaders came.”

  I couldn’t help but hear the sneers and jeers from the shadows of Joe’s tunnel when I said I would look for my Father. Joe’s eyes looked bright when he gave me a knife to take on my journey.

  I’ve practiced here in my corner of the sewers, practiced slipping the knife into the sleeves of my robe as I’ve seen Father do so many times. It falls with a clatter to the floor when I try.

  I heard the sniggers in the darkness, so I reached for this book instead.

  It makes me feel closer to Father.

  Seventh Day, Fifth Circle

  I did it. I went upstairs.

  I emerged in a dark alley. Water was falling from the sky. Not brown water like our river, clear water falling from broiling clouds in a dark sky. Towers loomed all about me, some with dark windows, and some that seemed to burn orange in the blackness of the night. Some of the towers leaned towards each other, almost touching above the alleys as though they whispered furtive secrets to one another.

  I stumbled from one alley to the next, making sure my hood covered my face, my cloak wrapped tight around me. Everything was so loud; horses clattered past me, great chariots rumbled through streets still thronging with soft-skins despite the late hour. And those soft-skins! They had curled hair, even the men. They wore fine clothes that clung tightly to their bodies. They spoke in clear voices and used words that only Father and myself would have ever known.

  Some soft-skins called out from stalls that had food sizzling over hot fires. Meats spat and glistened in the light of great candles. The air was thick with the smell of it. I felt weak at the sight and smells of it all and reeled away to somewhere quieter.

  I prowled down dark alleys and cursed myself for a fool. Something told me I belonged here. Here with the soft-skins and their grand clothes and pretty, unmarked faces. Here with their fine foods and great towers. But how could I? Deformed and grotesque as I was. I thought of this book and the dictionary hidden away near the brown river, and I hated myself.

  I would get Joe’s bauble and leave this place. How could I ever have th
ought to find Father in such a place? The noise, the colour, the forest of dark towers all about me. There, a quiet window far above me. I looked this way and that, and saw no soft-skins. I jumped up, my nails clinging to the rough brickwork, and I climbed up to the window. My nails are good and strong, nothing like Father’s or Joe’s, but they made the climbing easy enough. The rain still fell, running in rivulets down the great tower I climbed and spattering on my cloak and hood. All around I could see more towers, dark in the night, and shimmering shadows cast by the great candles.

  The window broke easily under my fist and I slipped in. Rainwater dripped from my cloak onto the thick rug beneath my feet. The room smelled fresh and bright, not like the thick sludgy smell of home.

  There was a bed in the centre of the room, candles around it, and pictures on the wall. I thought of Joe and his hatred of the soft-skins. I picked up a bright, shining thing to give to him. It was heavy and cool.

  “Hello?” she said.

  My immediate reaction was shame, not fear. I pulled my hood around my face and turned to jump out of the window. Seeing all the soft-skins had made me think of my own terrible appearance, and the quiet voice almost made me tremble with self-hatred.

  I was close to the window when she said, “No, don’t go.”

  I stopped and cast a fearful glance at her from the confines of my hood. She held a candle, long and white, in her hand and it cast fleeting shadows all around the room.

  “You’re one of them aren’t you?” she said, peering over the light of the candle. “One of those who live beneath the streets. I saw one of you before, when I was a little girl. He was being chased and climbed up the wall of a house to escape. I was afraid of him but my mother said you’re the lost ones, those who fought to the end. You’re to be admired.”

  I looked at the bright thing in my hand, some bauble made of yellow and white metal. I felt ashamed.

  The girl walked closer, holding the candle up high. She was about my age, taller and thinner. They look so soft and weak, these soft-skins. The smell of her made me think of wide open spaces and cool breezes. Of places I had never been. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. “Are you hungry? Can I get you something to eat?”