Kzine Issue 18

by Graeme Hurry

  I backed away, stumbling into a chest, dropping the bauble. I was afraid of the way I looked and the way I smelled. There was something terrible and frightening in her goodness, in her beauty.

  “Mother says we should always remember you and your kind. We should always fight and never forgive. You’re the reminder of what the Wizards did when they came to the City.” She reached out a hand to my hood. “What they did to you must never be forgotten.”

  I leapt out of the window. I scraped and clattered down the bricks, trying to gain purchase with my nails. Sparks lit the night and I landed on the ground with enough force to knock the wind from my stomach.

  When I got back to the sewers empty-handed, I heard the laughter echoing across the brown water.

  I know when I close my eyes I’ll remember her yellow hair and blue eyes, the goodness in her smile and voice. Joe says we must hate them, but how can you hate beauty, how can you hate goodness?

  Tenth Day, Fifth Circle

  I have to go back.

  Ever since I’d come back, the others have been scorning me, knocking me with their shoulders whenever they come near. Mocking my Father, asking with bright eyes and big yellow-toothed smiles if I’d found him yet. I feel very alone now. The tunnels feel smaller, the brown water louder, the darkness here more cloying.

  I can’t help thinking of the world upstairs, of the City. The smells and the wonder and the beauty of it. I felt something there call to me, as though I belonged there rather than here, but then I look in the brown water and see my mottled grey face, the sagging eye sockets and the large teeth, and I know I’m only fooling myself. This is where I belong. These creatures are my kin.

  I told Joe what had happened with the girl. He was silent a long moment after I told him. “Didn’t you have the knife I’d given you?” he finally said. He had two of the females sitting next to him on the ground. Both of them looked at me from broken eyes. Both of them have big bellies.

  I’d forgotten about the knife.

  Joe lifted his hood back and looked at me from green-black eyes. They are both heavily hooded, the skin there rippled and tough. “Remember, they are to be hated. All those who surrendered to the Wizards from the sky are enemies to us. You find a lone female and she is to be killed. Your Father knows this and so should you if he had raised you properly.” Joe’s smile was filled with teeth that glistened bright and yellow under the light of the many candles. All around us were baubles of the City, stolen by the others for Joe’s room. “You are still not kin, young one,” Joe said. “And if your Father still hasn’t seen fit to return to us, you’re here on our good graces. You eat our fish on our good graces.”

  He leaned forward and I could only see darkness under his hood.

  I have to go back.

  Twelfth Day, Fifth Circle

  Her name is Daniella.

  It was only as I looked up to that familiar broken window that I realized my feet had taken me there once more. I had sneaked there with my head hung low. The rain soaking my cloak, splashed by passing carts and horses.

  I climbed the wall easily, my nails strong, the bricks bright in the rain. She was sitting by the window watching me climb, and when I neared the window she moved to the far side of the room. This time the room was lit by four candles in each corner, enough to light the room, but still leaving enough darkness for me to hide my deformities.

  “I wondered if you would come back,” she said. “I hoped you would.”

  “Why?” I said. The first word I had ever said to her. My tongue felt thick, and my teeth large, the single word too loud and uncultured. It hung in the air like a broken promise and I wanted to whip it away, hide my shame.

  Daniella only smiled and beckoned to me with a finger, gesturing for me to follow her. She was slim beneath her white dress, and it swayed around her legs when she moved. Her shoulders were thin, blonde curls cascading around them. It took my breath away that there could be such beauty in the world.

  She took me to a window on the other side of the tower and showed me the Ship that had come from the skies, the home of the four Wizards who had come to rule the city. It is a great tower now, a green so dark it is almost black. It has lights the length of it, orange and yellow, and a ghostly blue light that constantly traces up and down its length.

  “That’s where the Wizards rule,” Daniella said.

  We talked long into the night. Or rather, she talked long into the night. She told me of the Wizards War. Some had fallen to their knees, worshipping these visitors from the sky, but some had stood before them, refusing to bend the knee. There had been a great man who led the resistance, a man called Kinar. He was a wizard himself, but the final clash had been of such bitter strength between the armies, that the magic had spilled over the field fouling anything that stood in its way.

  I looked at my hand when she said this, clenched my twisted fist. She’d reached for my hood, then. “Let me see,” she said. “There are those who remember what your ancestors fought for, what they sacrificed.”

  I pulled away, then. “Here, before you go,” she said. I can hear her voice still, if I close my eyes. “You were looking at this the last time you were here. I’d like you to have it.” She came to me and pressed the yellow bauble into my hands, closed my misshapen fingers over it. How hard and cold my skin must have felt to her.

  The bauble is in Joe’s tunnel with all the others now. He has great piles of precious things scattered about. He always says these precious things should belong to us, they are but a small part of what the soft-skins stole from us.

  My heart felt cold when he put Daniella’s treasure onto the pile with the others.

  I wish I’d kept it so I could hold it and think of her.

  Joe says I am nearly kin now and I might be able to stay if Father doesn’t return.

  He will though, he will come back. I want to tell him of Daniella. Who else can I tell? Who else can I speak to of beauty and goodness? All Joe and the others know of is hatred and bitterness.

  Fourteenth Day, Fifth Circle

  Father isn’t coming home. Joe came to find me today. He took me through the tunnels.

  Father was there in the brown water. His throat had been cut. He was staring at the sun through the grates above.

  Joe said the soft-skins must have found him and thrown him through the grate. He shook his fist and vowed revenge.

  He embraced me but I felt so alone.

  The night feels dark and cold down here next to the brown river.

  Second Day, Sixth Circle

  Joe has been coming to me a lot lately. I sit in the dark and watch the brown river oozing past. I think of Father lying in the water, his hair filthy from the waste in it. I think of the water licking his gaping throat.

  “We spend too much time thinking of the past,” Joe said, sitting next to me, watching the water. “That was your Father’s mistake. He thought of what we once were, soft-skins who loved to read and write. He never thought of what we are, of what we can become.”

  After he left, I took out the dictionary and this diary. The words, the act of writing, make me feel closer to Father and the mother I never knew.

  It makes me feel closer to Daniella.

  Dac and Liand have come here now, they look at the dictionary with dull eyes and at my writing with ill-concealed scorn. To them I am weak, a soft-skin lover.

  I say nothing to them.

  Seventh Day, Sixth Circle

  It seems many days since I last wrote in this diary. The memory of my Father seems to fade with each passing day. Will he soon be little more to me than my mother? A fleeting memory of a colour, the passing refrain from a song? Did my Father even sing at all? I can’t remember.

  The others spend more time with me now. I went fishing with them in the brown river and we took the catch back to Joe’s room. He watched us from his chair as we ate. No fire. It tasted good. Wet and rich and juicy. It was always so dry cooked on the fire.

  Better this way.
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  Tenth Day, Sixth Circle

  Joe told me we’re dying. Joe doesn’t lie. I see this now. We stood together looking at two young ones. They were Jen’s, two born together. One looked strong, but it had no face that I could see. It was as though the mottled grey skin had sloughed over it inside Jen’s belly. Strong little arms grabbed at its sister on the ground next to it. The girl was weak and mewed at us from a swollen mouth. This one had a single blind eye and twisted legs.

  We are dying.

  Joe told me the soft-skins betrayed us and left us to our fate here in the darkness next to the brown river. I looked at the young ones and saw the foulness of the Wizards’ magick there before me.

  I picked the pitiful things up and dashed their brains out on the ground. The sound was soft and wet and the grey blood reminded me of the fish from the brown water.

  Joe smiled and patted me on the shoulder. He said I might become kin after all. It felt good. Even the others speak to me more now, and make room for me at feeding time.

  “There may be a way we could survive,” Joe told me as we walked back to his throne room.

  I walked next to him, enjoying the looks of the others as we walked together. I see the respect in their eyes now Joe chooses to confide in me.

  Sixteenth Day, Sixth Circle

  I was blooded tonight. Joe says I am almost kin now. I went upstairs with Barc and this time I saw the City for its true self. I saw the food rotting on the pavement. I saw the giant houses with empty rooms. I saw the richness of the clothes. Everywhere I looked I saw waste and extravagance and it sickened me when I thought of our own tunnels beneath the ground.

  Daniella said they resisted the Wizards from the sky, honoured our memory, but I saw nothing of that tonight. All I saw were smiles and waste and wealth. Thinking of Daniella, I did look over to where her room was, but all I saw was a forest of dark towers with bright windows. I didn’t go there for her tonight.

  Barc chose the soft-skin. This soft-skin was balding with thick hair on his cheeks and a ripe soft belly. It wasn’t raining for once, but the mist hung heavy in the night, drifting like restless ghosts in the candlelight.

  We followed the soft-skin into a dark alley and Barc cut him. Once. Twice. And then three times. Blood spattered on black bricks and Barc and I stuck our hands into the open belly.

  When we returned to the tunnels, my brothers were waiting with wide yellow-toothed smiles and they hugged me and patted my back.

  Joe watched from his throne and smiled, too.

  Tenth Day, Seventh Circle

  I gave Joe my dictonry today. He asked me for the book. He said I don’t need it. It is a softskin thing. I agreed and gave it to him.

  I am stronger than a lot of my brothers now. That is importint. It means I get the first choise of fish even if I don’t get them from the brown water. The best ones are the fat ones with the belly like the softskin. They burst open in your mouth and the blood is hot. I like that. My brothers cheer for me when they see the blood run down my cheeks.

  After todays eating time, Joe waved the others away and asked me to stay. He told me we are dying. I was shoked but he only nodded from his chair. He said we can’t have young ones, they are always weak and feebel. We need to be strong.

  I know this. Being strong is importint.

  Joe said we need softskins. We need them down here with us. He showd me the bright things in his room. The things we stole from the City. He said now we need to steal the peple. He tuched my arm. Joe says I am the strongest now. I can be like him and even have my own chair.

  I told him he was right. The softskins are brite like the things in his room. I rember one of them had long yellow hare. I rember liking that. Joe smiled and said I know best. Thats why I am clever and strong he said.

  Last Day

  I fownd this book today. Im giving it to Joe. Id forgoten I had it. Why rite a book when nobody can read. Its dark down here and I can hardly see the words.

  Mayb the softskins coud read it. She was the first, my softskin with the yelow hare. She remberd me and came with me wen I went to her window. Joe was pleesed and gave me a chare of my own.

  More of my brothers got softskins after that. There screems are loud in the dark. I sumtimes go and see my softskin. She screems at me. I wach her. I like her yelow hare.

  We all like the screems in the dark.

  THE BLADES

  by Fred Senese

  First time I saw him, I was picking blueberries on the hilltop. It was the last perfect day of September. We’d had first frost, the night before, and the blueberry leaves had gone blood red around the edges. The berries were soft and fat and they fell into my bucket without any coaxing.

  I stood up, a full bucket dangling from each hand, and that’s when I saw him. He wore a hard-hat. Arms crossed, leaning against his truck, watching me the way a tomcat watches a rabbit. He didn’t belong there. There was no road there. He must have ploughed right through the berries; he must have left a swath of broken bushes all the way down the mountain.

  I was sixteen then, old enough to know what he was thinking, old enough to know better than to run. You run from a bad dog, it’ll chase you. So I picked up and walked fast as I could, without looking at him. A blueberry bush caught one of my buckets by the handle and yanked me back. I dropped it. When I turned to pick it up I saw that he was following me now, pushing aside the branches, pretending like he was in no hurry. I could see the roof of my house poking up through the trees in the valley below, I could see the mouth of the path home on the edge of the field, but it was a long way away.

  He could have caught me before I got there. As it happened, he didn’t.

  Mama told me never, ever go up there again.

  We watched the hilltop from the porch over the next few months. One day an impossible tower rose up above the trees. It was white as bone, ten times as high as the hundred-year old oaks on the edge of the woods. Another day three gigantic blades were hoisted to the top by steel cranes. It stood over the valley like a wind-up Martian death machine.

  “That’s our property,” Mama said. “I’m sure it is.”

  “Can’t we stop them?”

  “Somebody will,” she said.

  One day the blades started to turn. We heard them and felt them before we saw them. It wasn’t just the terrible swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. The blades dragged sound across the sky, invisible ripples that I could feel inside me. And they never, ever stopped. Day or night. We couldn’t sleep. Mama moved her bed down into the cellar, but it didn’t help.

  By the end of that summer, there were thirty-five of those towers standing along the ridge.

  There were meetings, after church. Words were spoken, words like “infrasound” and “brain slush” and “eminent domain”. Everyone gathered under the blades of the first turbine after church, carrying signs they’d made. The pastor gave sermons about the strong and the meek, how the meek could stand up against the strong.

  One day some company man showed up, flanked by cops. He told the pastor that this was private property. That the time for talking was before the turbines went up, and that time was long gone. Papers were filed two years ago, he said, and none of you said a word back then. Someone shouted that their hens wouldn’t lay, and the man laughed. Go ahead, lay all your troubles on us, he said. See where that gets you.

  They put up a chain-linked fence around the tower. The pastor had us line up outside the fence and sing. A lot of good that did. Fewer and fewer people showed up. Mr. Glotfelty put his farm up for sale. So did the Broadwaters. No one would buy land that close to the turbines. They moved out, anyway. Weeds took their fields. Owls nested in their kitchens.

  Few of us were left after a year. Our heads ached. We were dizzy, all the time. We couldn’t think. We couldn’t speak. It was like those blades were whirling around behind our eyes, now.

  * * *

  The second time I saw the man in the hard hat, I was seventeen. I’d learned a lot over the last year. How n
ot to think. How not to eat, or sleep, or speak.

  I didn’t need those things any more. I’d learned where they get you.

  I’d heard that he came to inspect the turbine, every month or so. And tomorrow was the day.

  It was snowing hard. They’d cut down all the trees around the tower, so the snow was the only cover I had. I threw my sack over the fence and climbed it easily. There is no fence that cannot be surmounted by scorn. But I’d forgotten to bring gloves and my fingers were bleeding and blue by the time I hopped down on the inside.

  I closed my eyes, stood under the tower for a minute, feeling the whoomp whoomp whoomp up close. It almost felt good, it was so strong. I was so tiny, so insignificant in comparison. Looking up at it made the world tilt sideways. I wondered if this was the way he saw the tower. If this was the way he thought.

  His truck was parked by the door. I hadn’t counted on that. I should have. I’d heard that he actually stayed inside the tower overnight, sometimes, on his little visits.

  I set to work on the truck. I’d originally planned on breaking the padlock on the door and seeing what damage I could do inside his tower, but this was better. Men love their trucks.

  “What the hell,” he said, from the open door. I looked him over. He had nothing. I turned and walked away.

  “Crazy little bitch!” he shouted. “Stop right there.”

  I kept walking. I could hear him running through the snow after me. I stopped and turned. I tightened my grip on the axe. “Come closer,” I said.

  We stood there in the snow, looking each other over. His breath steamed out of his mouth. His eyes were wide and white. They made me smile.

  “I remember you,” he said. “I know where you live, blueberry girl. You’ll pay for that truck.”

  “I’ve already paid,” I told him.

  * * *

  The third time I saw him, I went looking for him. It was the day after I buried Mama. I was eighteen.