by Adam Vine
I expected the Vermin to say “yes, ma’am,” or “aye aye” or something, but they only nodded silently and we started our long descent toward the valley floor. Barn Owl’s speech must have made me bold, because I called down to her, “Where are you taking us?”
She didn’t respond, vanishing behind a snow devil blown off the slope. Instead, Cheese Eater hissed, smacked me on the ass with the flat side of his blade, and said, “Shut that flytrap before I sew it. You want to bring the Shells down on us when we’re most vulnerable? Maybe you really are a spy.”
“Ow! No I’m not. We are who we told you we are. Is it really necessary to keep hitting me?”
“I said, get silent before I cut you.”
“Get silent before I cut you,” I muttered to Cheese Eater’s back as he marched past. “Get silent before I cut you. Cut me. Jesus Christ, what is wrong with these people...?”
I didn’t realize Zaea was close enough to hear me until her fingers looped through mine and she squeezed my hand, giving me a sympathetic smile. We helped each other the rest of the way down the broken, debris-littered trail. Holding her hand felt like trying to grasp an ice cube in my palm, but I was glad she was there.
THE BURROW
WE ENTERED THE BURROW two-thirds of the way down the crater, a flight of stairs that was completely hidden between a five-foot drift and the shattered remnant of a house. I didn’t even realize the entrance was there until half of the Vermin had descended it and Bunny Rabbit waved at Zaea and me to hurry in, too.
The stairs led to what had once been the basement of a wealthy townhouse, a large, man-made cavern held up by ornate marble pillars, where the rusted shells of strange, wheel-less cars lined the grime-blackened walls. Most of it was caved in, and the Vermin had a carefully routed pathway through the part that wasn’t, which also would have been invisible to anyone who didn’t already know the way.
A steep, sloping brick tunnel led us deeper underground to a series of cylindrical tunnels that I guessed were sewers, long dry and littered with piles of rat bones and unidentifiable detritus. We followed the sewers for miles, none of us speaking, a hollow drip of echoes out beyond the Vermin’s torches drawing us ever forward through the suffocating darkness. Cheese Eater bared the first two inches of his blade any time Zaea or I so much as scuffed our shoes on the smooth, old stones.
It got warmer the deeper we went, until eventually, I could no longer see my breath. Then it clicked, and I felt like the biggest dumbass in the world. They call themselves Vermin because they live underground. The undercity is their domain; they live here because it’s the one place the Lice can’t go.
We passed through evaporated cisterns, derelict grain cellars, abandoned subway tunnels, and ancient sewers, all connected by precariously hidden modular brick tunnels so small we had to squeeze through them single file. Despite the Vermin knowing exactly where to go, there were no directions or location markers painted anywhere I could see; that is, until I saw Barn Owl using a small, handheld mirror to look at the ceiling. There wasn’t anything written on the arched brickwork that was visible to the naked eye, but her mirror showed clearly-painted arrows to guide our way through that darkened maze.
They use invisible paint as a security measure, probably to keep their enemies from finding their base, but just as likely, to keep prisoners from escaping… which for the moment includes us.
Zaea noticed it, too. I could see her trying to nonchalantly peer over Barn Owl’s shoulder any time the leader produced the tiny, handheld mirror from her sleeve to check where we were. Barn Owl would stop, flick her wrist, and the torchlight would glitter in Zaea’s large, eager eyes as she popped up on her tiptoes to get a glimpse. Carly used to do that, too, when dad showed us techniques in class and all the other students rushed in and grabbed up the best places to sit.
They looked so similar it hurt. For a second I thought Carly was Zaea, and the odd girl I’d saved from freezing to death only hours before was some otherworld version of the girl I loved who had been dead for two years. But it was only a trick of the light. The thought vanished from my mind when Zaea turned, caught me looking and said, “Why are you staring at me?”
“Sorry,” I said. “You just… you look like someone.”
“I am someone.”
“No. I mean someone else. Who I knew from before.”
“Oh. Dan, are you okay? You look so sad,” Zaea said.
Blinking back tears, I said, “I’m fine.”
Barn Owl snapped for us to be quiet. She halted next to a small, medieval-looking iron door a short distance ahead of us, rapping six times between the fat, sharpened spikes. A window in the door slid open a crack, and the sound of a swallow chirping echoed softly from inside. Barn Owl cupped her hands to her mouth and who who’d in response. The door groaned and swung open.
A group of men was waiting for us inside the narrow, two-storied cellar. They were so well camouflaged that I didn’t see them at first. It wasn’t until they moved, relaxing taut bowstrings and lowering blades that had been poised to slash open our jugulars, that I was able to pick their black shapes out from the stage of dancing shadows.
The men rushed to check our bindings and search Zaea and me for weapons. “How much of this shit before you trust me to do my job, Gator?” Barn Owl said, a little disgusted.
The biggest of the men in black, who I assumed was their commander, a huge, beefy man with a back made of clothed barrels, gave Barn Owl an unfriendly slap on the arm and said, “How much shit before you let me do mine, little cousin? Where are you taking them? To the Salt Mine?”
Barn Owl cringed. “No. These ones are headed for the Last Station. Got my orders directly from the boss. Any captives we find are to be taken to her once they pass quarantine. So, here we are.”
Gator estimated Zaea and me with a rising smirk. “Let me guess. I’m not supposed to leave any marks?”
Barn Owl stepped toe to toe with the big man, driving a finger into his chest. “You touch them at all, and I’m gonna forget what our grandmother said about not whooping your ass anymore. In fact, I’m gonna forget it’s against the Common for us Vermin to hurt each other at all, and I’m gonna cut those tiny mouse nuts off and feed them to you. We keen, ‘cos?”
Gator’s smirk widened. “Sweet cousin, I was only kidding. But, fine. I’ll give the next batch you bring me something extra to make up for all the fun I won’t be having with these two. You may proceed.”
Barn Owl shook her head no. “Actually, we’re leaving them with you. Got another mission tomorrow, and we’re already late to briefing. Wash and shave them – gently – and have them to the boss no later than two candles from now. We’re going to try this on faith, Gazzo. You mess this up, and I can guarantee you’ll lose this nice, cozy post you’ve got protecting our valuable ale stores. You’ll be the newest member of my Surface Party before the end of the week.”
It was the first time I’d heard any of the Vermin referred to by their real name. The smile fell from Gator’s face. He swallowed and said, “Well, we wouldn’t want that, now, would we? Come along, valued guests. Right this way. A nice, lukewarm bath, complete with soap and moss for scrubbing, awaits you just beyond that door…”
Gator grabbed me by the shirt and shoved me through another, smaller iron door to the rear of the cellar, into a torchlit stone hallway alive with the echoes of dripping water. My hands were tied and I couldn’t prevent my face from smashing into the wall as I stumbled in. Gator chuckled and got even rougher. He pushed me into a tiny prison cell.
They took Zaea somewhere else. Her eyes flashed at me as they led her away. She didn’t scream, except to say my name.
A few big men including Gator followed me into the cell and locked the door behind them. They made me take off my clothes and splashed me with freezing water from a bucket. Then they made me scrub with a sponge so hard it took off pieces of my skin. Gator grunted when he saw the wound in my shoulder, and made me turn around while I was shiveri
ng so he could get a closer look. He stuck his thumb in the hole where the shrapnel had gone in. I admit that I screamed, but I didn’t cry. Gator kicked me in the gut and told his men to shave me.
I had already figured out by then that the reason everyone in this world was bald, or close to it (except for Zaea), was to prevent outbreaks of lice, since the people here lived underground. I hadn’t realized that meant they kept their body hair shaved, too.
When they were done, they held a mirror up to my face and let me examine their handiwork. Their rusty knives had cut my scalp in ten different places. My chest and armpits weren’t so lucky. Thankfully, they’d been gentler with my groin.
I was too weak from pain and exhaustion to protest. My burn hurt worse than any injury in my life, and the reopened shrapnel wound sent bursts of paralyzing aches all the way down my arm whenever I flexed.
I noticed something strange about my reflection. My scalp and eyebrows were shorn bald, only it wasn’t my scalp, and they weren’t my eyebrows. The face looking back at me from the handheld mirror belonged to someone else.
They drugged me, I thought. But I didn’t feel like I’d been drugged. I studied the stranger’s face staring back at me through the mirror: the large, dark eyes; the angular, scar-slashed jaw and hawkish, broken nose; the huge mouth split by an ugly cleft that parted my upper lip all the way to my left nostril; the giant, lumpy flaps of cauliflower tissue where my ears should have been. I was older, bigger, meaner, and I was ugly as shit.
No, it isn’t a trick. This is my face. This is me. This is what I look like, what I looked like in the crypts when Zaea examined my wound. But it isn’t me, too, because I’m not Daniel Harper. I’m in someone else’s body. I am seeing through his eyes, hearing through his ears, feeling through his skin.
The men around me suddenly seemed anxious. Maybe they sensed that I was on edge, but they spent a lot of time muttering amongst themselves. They snatched the mirror away and bandaged my wound in a rush, applying a thick, smelly paste of herbs to my burn. They gave me new clothes, a tunic and trousers made from itchy bag fabric, as well as fresh blankets for my bed. Then they locked the doors and I was alone.
I lay on the moldy mattress and thought of Zaea. I hoped she was okay. I closed my eyes and pictured her whiskey-colored hair, the way the torchlight had clung to it, the same as Carly’s looked sitting in front of the fireplace at Christmas when we’d sip hot Mexican chocolate and open each other’s gifts. I hadn’t had much time to think about it until now, but meeting Zaea had forced me to confront those memories, feelings I had suppressed for far too long because they were too painful for me to bear. Now that the gates were open, they resurfaced in a deluge of old regret.
I knew the next time I saw Zaea her hair would be gone, and I got sad. But I was asleep before I could think about it for very long.
III
Through shadowed wood Arkadius went
A knight of glory, heaven-sent,
Afore ten thousand razored spears
All broken men too mad to fear.
The trees were twisted, black, and old,
They whispered in the gnawing cold,
Evil words that pierced skin and maille
Their magic brought a sudden hail.
The soldiers cowered ‘neath their shields,
But that grim spell would not repeal,
Chunks of ice that tore through their clothes,
Three-sided wounds that would not close.
The column halted, the men broke form,
Sanity’s dirge an eldritch horn,
Bodies crushed under hoof and boot
To turn the snow as red as root.
“We serve the one you would dethrone,”
The trees chanted in subsonic tone,
“We are the Viwa,2 true as stone.
You shall never pass this road.”
But great men are not wont to die
‘Til giving fate an earnest reply.
The Good Knight stood, gave up a cry
And charged the trees with blade held high.
2*Mythological forest demons who could summon storms
THE CITY
KASHKA WAS still asleep when I woke up, the warm autumn sun already shining high through the gap in the curtains. My body begged me to roll over and try to get another four or five hours of sleep, but my mind was racing, full of thoughts about Zaea, Carly, the Night Country and its Vermin. What a messed-up dream, I thought. I need to write it down before I forget it.
I checked my phone. It was 11:15 in the morning. I rose and stretched, trying to shake out the nagging ache in my left shoulder. I wasn’t too hung over, just a little bit delirious from not sleeping. I slept for ten hours, I thought, simultaneously thinking, I didn’t sleep at all… I’ve been up for days. The hole from the Louse’s shrapnel is still in my shoulder.
It wasn’t, though, when I went to the bathroom and checked. My skin was whole, smooth and unburned. What had I expected? It was just a nightmare. I always had those after a night of binge drinking. Ink had said something about the Blot, and the snow, that planted those images in mind. Then, the combination of stress, alcohol, missing Carly, and the endorphin rush of finally breaking my two-year sexual dry spell had culminated in me having an extremely lucid dream about some really crazy shit… or, so I told myself.
I pissed, drank a glass of water, and climbed back into bed to snuggle next to Kashka. I kissed her cheek and she grunted, pulling the comforter tighter under her chin. She looked older in the morning light than she did at night, with makeup and softer lighting. Even asleep, the lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes were more pronounced. She had big, hairy moles on the back of her neck and behind her ears that had been hidden by her hair.
I kissed her again, she woke up, and we had sex. It was better than the night before, probably because we were both hurting too much from our hangovers to care about putting on a performance. We didn’t fall asleep again after. I got up and made us breakfast, half hoping she’d leave, and half hoping she wouldn’t.
We didn’t speak much as we sat and ate our scrambled eggs and pan-toasted country bread, except for minor fluff about how I made the coffee too strong for her taste, or how I had a nice apartment, or that my building was new and thus might be a target for thieves, or how quickly the weather had changed. “Amazing. You wouldn’t even know it snowed last night,” I said, pulling the curtains aside to peer out at the sunlight shining through the dead branches.
Kashka shrugged. “And tomorrow it will rain again. It is a land of extremes. I read on Internet today will be the last good weather of the year.”
“Then we should enjoy it while we can.”
“Did you sleep? You look very tired,” Kashka said.
“I just drank too much. Had some crazy dreams,” I said.
I admit I wasn’t highly invested in the conversation. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dream of the Night Country. I remembered every face, every word and detail. Dreams fade the farther they slip from us, because they are lies. The truth, however, doesn’t diminish over time. It becomes more convincing, not less.
The more I thought about the Night Country, the more it felt like an actual memory rather than something imagined.
“Dan? Is something wrong? Do you want me to leave?” Kashka said. She was staring at me over the rim of her coffee cup, eyes angled in a defensive slant. Her eggs were cold on her plate, barely touched. I realized neither of us had spoken in almost five minutes.
She thinks I’m trying to make up some excuse to get her out of here. I decided I didn’t want her to leave. I didn’t want to let that spark go just yet, to flutter off and die in the wind. There was a person under all those weird neuroses and fake sex screams that I thought I could love, maybe have a future with, if I could save her. I didn’t want to treat her like Ink would, to fuck her and chuck her like she expected me to. And, I didn’t want to be alone.
“No, sweetheart. Nothing’s wrong. How are you fee
ling?” I said.
Kashka shrugged, eyeing me, and slowly set her coffee on the table. “I’m a bit hanged over. You say hanged over?”
“Close enough. I understand. Do you want some Tylenol?” I said.
“What?”
“Painkillers.”
“No, I’ll be fine. Tell me, what are you doing today?”
“I’m supposed to be at work, but I’d rather hang out with you. I’ll tell them I’m sick. You look like you’re suffering a little. Are you sure you don’t want something else? You didn’t finish your eggs,” I said.
A childish smile bleached the suspicion from Kashka’s face. “Maybe beer.”
I chuckled. “Oh, Jesus. Fine. Beer it is. I’m just gonna jump in the shower first, then we’ll go.”
“Okay. So, I am waiting,” Kashka said.
I emailed my boss telling him I wasn’t feeling well. He responded almost instantly, telling me not to worry, and that he hoped I would feel better soon. An icicle of guilt grew in my stomach over skipping work. What if somebody saw me? But the weather was nice, and the last thing I wanted to do was try to focus on translating Arkadius.
I took a ten-minute shower, letting the scalding water massage the pain from my shoulder with minimal success. When I got out, Kashka was still naked, lying on my bed and studying the picture on my nightstand.
“What is it?” she said, handing me the photograph.
It was the picture of Carly and me with my parents, taken at the West Coast Invitational Kendo Championship in San Francisco two years earlier. Carly had her arm around me and we were both smiling. Evan was bombing the back corner of the photo, throwing up dual peace signs like a moron. My mom and dad stood proudly to either side of Carly and me, though it was clear from their body language and whose shoulders they were grabbing who they were actually there to support.
