The Other Normals

by Ned Vizzini

  “We’re not allowed to. He’s not appointed.”

  “Oh, well … I guess …” I take a deep breath. “God rest the souls of these two creatures—”

  “Friends,” Ada corrects.

  “Was Pula really our friend?”

  “He said he was yours, at the end.”

  “Friends, then. Take them to a better place, and, ah, please lead us safely on our own journey, amen. And help Mortin with his new decision not to smoke earthpebbles. Amen. And please help me find some more clothes because this itches. Amen.”

  “Very good. Can you walk?”

  I nod. The adrenaline that ran through me when I escaped in Subbenia is back in full force. I feel like I could walk for days.

  72

  THE MOON REACHES THE TOP OF THE sky. The stream burbles and widens as it winds east; it looks like black glass under the stars. Ada asks, “What’s that?” A dark shape lies beside the stream bank.

  “It’s not a body, is it?” I ask.

  “If it were a body, the dog-heads would’ve taken it,” says Mortin. We creep closer. It’s a pile of rucksacks. The moon shines off buckles and snaps. Mortin kicks the pile. The bags clank against one another. We dig in, tearing everything open. I find a saucepan, a spoon, and a lighter (traditional, not tail). Mortin finds metal sporks and sleeping bags. Ada finds bottles of wine. That’s not even counting the weapons: a hefty broadsword, a pair of axes, a trident with spiral tips, a few daggers, and … yes! A war hammer, like Pekker Cland’s! “I call the war hammer!”

  “Stop,” Mortin says. “Consider what happened here.” He picks up a bag and holds open a ragged hole at the bottom. “Do they all have holes like this?” Ada and I nod. “And what’s missing from them?”

  “Food!” I say, raising my hand. Partly I know the answer just because I’m hungry.

  “Exactly. This is the equipment of three members of Ophisa’s rebel horde. You’ve got three sleeping bags but enough weapons for six. They go armed to the teeth. What else don’t you see?”

  “Firewood,” Ada says.

  “Right. They were passing through and got ambushed like us. The dog-heads made one of them take the wood to the campfire. Then: barbecue.”

  “What were Ophisa’s followers doing here?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, but their loss is our gain. Let’s sew up these holes and start traveling in style. Ada, can you open a wine bottle?”

  “Didn’t you just say you weren’t smoking anymore?”

  “This is drinking, it’s different.”

  “Mortin—”

  “I need something, okay?”

  “Open it yourself.”

  As Mortin looks for a corkscrew, I check the bags and find something curious: a small leather case attached to a mirror. Inside is a two-inch comb, perfect for a mustache. There are two people I’ve met recently with mustaches—Officer Tendrile and Dale Blaswell. Only now do I recognize that they have the same mustache. Looking at the mirror, at myself, I start to think I might be putting more of this correspondence thing together.

  73

  I WAKE UP WITH AN UNGODLY HEADACHE on one side of my head, the side I slept on. I’m snuggled inside a sleeping bag beside the stream. I remember Ada giving me the sleeping bag around when she took away my bottle of wine. Was that my second bottle? What time is it? The sun assaults me. I get on my hands and knees and dry heave. “Rise and shine, buddy!” Mortin says. “I told you to drink some water before you crashed out!”

  I crawl forward. It’s a beautiful morning, from an objective, nonheadache perspective. Ada has started a fire with flammable items we didn’t need from the rucksacks we found. “What happened?” I ask.

  “You tried wine for the first time,” she says. “You and Mortin started … talking.”

  It comes back to me. Mortin opened the first bottle, and I asked if it was any good. He told me to try some. I thought about how I didn’t want to end up like my brother, but then I thought about how I’d just seen two people torn open alive and I decided this was when you were supposed to drink. I took a sip. The wine made my mouth shrivel and my nose wrinkle, but after I passed it to Mortin and watched him take a few manly swigs and start telling Ada about how this stream had to meet up with the Warbledash River soon, and we were going to be in Upekki any day, and his brother Leidan was going to be there, and it would all be all right, I decided I wanted more. Ada didn’t drink any, and she shot me a look when I took a second sip, but some switch that controlled whether I cared about her had been flipped. I cared more about being cool with Mortin. I drank—I saw the stars behind the bottle—and then I talked, and then I forget what happened.

  “It hurts … ,” I tell Ada. I kneel by the stream gulping handfuls of water. As soon as it hits my stomach, I heave it back up again.

  “That’s what happens when you guzzle Jiringian wine. You better keep some of that down. You’re dehydrated. Your brain is dehydrated.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what a hangover is.”

  “What you have to do,” Mortin says, “is drink twenty-one handfuls of water before you go to sleep. I tried to tell you.”

  “Where are … ugh … the dog-heads?”

  “Having a party eating Gamary, or maybe passed out. We’re ready for them anyway.” Mortin shows off his new arsenal. He has a sword on each hip, two daggers above his crotch, and an ax strapped to his shoulders. Ada has the other ax, two more daggers, and the trident. That leaves me with—

  “The war hammer,” Mortin says.

  I take it. “In C and C, my character makes war hammers.”

  “I know. In the World of the Other Normals, you get to use one. Slightly more impressive.”

  Ada brings up a pot from the stream. Inside are three silver, flopping fish. Ada slices them open and lays them out on a metal rack over the fire. Mortin and I stand guard (stand guard!) as she cooks them, their oil dripping and sizzling. I hold my stomach. “I’m hungry, but I don’t think I can eat fish.”

  “What do you want?” Mortin asks. “McDonald’s breakfast?”

  “Yeah! How’d you know?”

  “It’s the best hangover food. I know, I’ve had it.”

  Ada hands me a fish on a metal plate, split in two, cooked in its own skin. Its eyes are dried and creased. I dive in with a spork.

  “It’s good!”

  “I can cook,” Ada says.

  “I mean it’s really good! I think my headache is going away!”

  “You saying you want to do the dishes?”

  Ten minutes later I’m washing them in the stream. I investigate my wounds: hand, head, leg, ankle. Everything looks slightly better. We mix up sulfurous mud, splat it on to hide our scents, and start off, following the water. I wear a cloak that we found in the rucksacks. “I got my prayers answered,” I tell Ada. “I prayed for new clothes and here they are.”

  “What do you say about that? ‘Amen,’ right?”

  “Amen.”

  74

  WE MARCH FOR MOST OF THE DAY without incident. The Echoing Hills even out, and we see less of the huts that indicate cyno settlement. One of the bags I shoulder is empty, and every time we come across a piece of wood, I pop it in. By early afternoon we have enough for a fire; we eat more fish. The stream is wider now and slower moving. I feel braver than the day before. It’s amazing how brave you can feel when you’re armed.

  “Are we still not going to fight Ophisa? Because, I’m just saying, look at these weapons!”

  “Perry, no. Drop it.”

  “I think you better get used to the idea. Because I’m not going back to camp.” No one answers. “I tried it once and it didn’t work.”

  “Perry—”

  “Don’t call me that, Mortin, okay? Why can’t you be respectful like Ada? My full name is Peregrine, and by now I’m at least a level-three warrior, master of the war hammer—”

  Mortin draws a sword and brings it up to my cheek with one swift stroke. I stop. He holds the blad
e flat against my skin.

  “Don’t get cocky, kid. You’re not the master of anything except luck, and that runs out.”

  “Stop!” Ada says. “What’s wrong with you? Are you trying to act like stupid boys with weapons?”

  I inch my hand toward a dagger I have strapped to my thigh. Mortin whips out another sword and presses my fingers against my leg. “Eh, eh, ehhh … don’t get tricky with me.”

  “I wasn’t gonna do anything. Just … show you my skills.”

  “Your biggest skill is your honor.” Mortin draws back his weapons. “So think about that when you think about not going back. People need you.”

  “Who?”

  “Your brother, for one.”

  “My brother doesn’t need me for anything except a sounding board when he’s wasted. What’s he have to do with this?”

  “Don’t take your brother for granted.”

  I’m tired of riddles. “Mortin, who’s my correspondent?”

  “Can’t tell you that.”

  “Is it a frog-head? A dog-head? Is it you?”

  He smiles. “It’s not me.”

  “I demand to know!”

  “You never meet your correspondent. The consequences are too great. You could meet him and shake his hand and go back to Earth and suddenly have been born a flipper baby.”

  “Do you know who your correspondent is? Do you, Ada?”

  “No, and I never want to.” She keeps walking, and we follow. The stream widens and joins other rills and brooks. By evening it’s too big to jump across. By nightfall it’s a river. As it grows, the grass around us gets thicker and longer. Tangles of vines spread across the ground. The soil, so dry in the hills, turns moist and friendly; sometimes I step in a patch and need help from Mortin and Ada to shlooooop out. We camp in a flat marsh landscape of whistling reeds.

  “We’ve been going the right way all along,” Mortin says. “Ever since that campfire, we’ve been on the darned thing.” He goes to sleep without any wine or pebbles, which he makes sure we notice, and then starts snoring; he sounds like a cross between a frog and a lion.

  “Is that going to attract animals?” I ask Ada.

  “Might repel them.”

  “Do you know anything about my correspondent? Is he brave?”

  “Your correspondent could be a woman, Peregrine.”

  “Oh no; if that were true, I’d understand women better.”

  She sighs. “We’re people. I’m a person. Remember? Not a mystical creature out to get you.”

  “Anna’s not a mystical creature. You actually are! If I were to describe you to someone, what would I say? I’d say you were a highborn attenuate other normal with pointed ears and blue hair and sparkling fingers and toes.”

  “You wouldn’t say I was a cool girl who could catch and cook fish?”

  “I guess I’d say that too.”

  “You’re getting better,” she says. She turns in her sleeping bag to face me. “When you get back, maybe you’ll do just fine with Anna.”

  Anna isn’t the one I want to do just fine with, but I don’t say so. Ada has to know. How can she not? The force of need in my brain is manifesting itself physically at this very moment. I want to touch her tenderly but with unstoppable confidence. I understand, now: some part of me believes that if I touch Ada naked, I will connect with the infinite and be free of earthly concerns forever. The word horny doesn’t sound like it contains these emotions, but they’re in there.

  “Are there constellations?” I ask, trying to change the subject. “Like, other-normal constellations? Different from ours?”

  “See the Hequet?”

  “Kind of …”

  “You call it the Big Dipper. And see those three stars? That’s Orion’s Belt on Earth. Here that’s the Sword of Hentator, the great ferrous other-normal warrior, and that star on the right is his tail.”

  “I see it!”

  “And that one …”

  She keeps going. The longer I look at the stars, the more depth they generate, like thakerak threads reaching underground. Her voice, too, is lovely. My brain calms and my body slackens. The last thing I see before I close my eyes is the moon, full and high, distorted in the ripples of the

  WARBLEDASH

  RIVER

  75

  THE WARBLEDASH RUNS SOUTH OUT OF the Ouest Beniss Range past Upekki, which we reach the next day. It’s a small trading station populated mostly by frog-heads. Ada shows us on the map. In two and a half days we’ve gone as far as the overhang of my nail on my index finger. Speaking of which, I bite it. Dirt is packed underneath.

  “Ew,” Ada says.

  “This is gonna be great,” Mortin declares. “No one cares about Upekki; the authorities won’t be terrorizing it the way they are Subbenia. And hequets are laid-back.” He’s been in a jolly mood since breakfast: barbecued crabs. They sizzled like bacon in their shells. The smell nauseated me at first, but as soon as I popped the white flesh out of the first steaming leg, my body demanded more.

  “Hequets have a reputation,” Ada explains, “for being—”

  “Partiers! Gamblers, smokers, and degenerates. My kind of people.”

  “I thought you weren’t smoking anymore,” I say.

  “I can still get excited, can’t I? It’s a lot better than getting eaten by dog-heads. And Leidan will be there.”

  “What are we gonna do for money? Or whatever you call it—di-?”

  “Don’t worry. We’ve got my good name.”

  “I thought you had a terrible name. I thought you owed people money.”

  “Then we’ll sell your war hammer, smart guy.”

  “No you won’t!” I step away from the river and take a few swings. The war hammer is a metal bar as long as my forearm with what looks like a railroad spike mounted perpendicularly on the end. I arc it down, then flip it around and swing back up, mentally dechinifying an attacker. I love how the hammer’s heavy but I can still handle it—no, that’s not the word—wield it!

  “You better watch that thing,” Mortin says, “in case someone sees you and thinks you know what you’re doing.”

  Upekki squats on the river ahead of us: a group of dingy brick buildings with creaky wooden docks sticking into the water. None of the buildings are more than three stories high. They exhibit a color range from brown to red-brown to red. It looks like Queens. It’s a sleepy town; I don’t see any smoke rising from chimneys or hear marketplace hubbub. But it’s still morning.

  A road from the west joins our riverside path. “Bartleby Way,” Mortin explains. “Probably how Leidan’s getting here.”

  “Why didn’t he come with us?”

  “We couldn’t fit another person on Gamary. And he gets annoying in close company.”

  “My brother does too.”

  Ada sighs in relief as we merge with Bartleby Way; it’s nice to walk on something devoid of thistles, slippery rocks, and muddy pits. The town grows closer. Fishing rods stick out the windows of the buildings on the river, with lazy lines trailing down. Suddenly, one of them jerks, but instead of being reeled in, it hops out the window and kssssshes into the water below.

  “Who’s holding the rods?” I ask.

  Mortin draws his swords. “We should’ve seen somebody by now. We should be fighting off drunken frog-heads—it’s almost noon.”

  I tap my war hammer against my palm. Ada holds her trident across her chest. My heart pounds as we edge forward. Upekki stays quiet. Surrounding it is a tall metal fence with a gate. Bartleby Way runs up to it. A guardhouse stands to the side, no bigger than a token booth in the subway, made of red brick, with barred windows. Its door swings freely, the top hinge mangled. A figure lies on the steps in front of it. His big frog head is still.

  “Hey! You okay?”

  Mortin runs up to him. The hequet wears a cloak with a pin around his neck like a sheriff’s star. He’s dead. At his side is a curved scabbard. The sword that goes in it is a few feet away in the grass. Through his fo
rehead, from front to back, is a neat circular hole. Blood pools around him, drying.

  “Careful,” Mortin says, “not to touch his poison sac.” He points at the frog-head’s cheeks. “That’s where we get hepatodes from.”

  “She doesn’t have a poison sac, Mortin. She’s a she.” Ada points out the slight bulges beneath the cloak.

  “That’s a bullet hole,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Right there. Entrance wound, exit wound. I don’t know what caliber it is or anything, but I’ve seen enough cop shows.”

  “Bullet hole? But guns aren’t approved. Nobody’s got guns!”

  “Someone does. Maybe Ophisa?”

  Mortin squints at the hole. “I don’t know. Look at that. Dead in an instant. Have you ever heard a gun? I hear they’re louder than volcanoes.”

  “I’ve heard bangs near my house, but my parents always said they were trucks backfiring. They would, though. Where’s the bullet? That’s important evidence.”

  “I bet her ears were still ringing when she died,” Mortin says.

  We search for the bullet but can’t find it. We retrieve the hequet’s sword and place it in the scabbard at her side. Ada closes her eyes. “Say one of your prayers, Peregrine?”

  “Ah, may God rest the soul of this hequet, and, ah, keep us safe. And thanks for all the free weapons and clothes. Amen.”

  “You’re getting better,” Mortin says.

  We leave the hequet on the ground. There’s no time to bury her.

  “Could the Appointees have approved guns while we were on the run?” I ask. “Maybe they’re allowing the cops to have them, so they can search for the princess.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. And it’s not good. Backs together. We’ll find out more in town.” We form a triangle. The bags over our shoulders clank against one another as we crab-walk into Upekki.

  76

  THE TOWN IS ABANDONED. BARTLEBY WAY passes through the iron gate and becomes the main street, cutting between taverns, rooming houses, and commercial establishments that don’t have any identifiable characteristics and which I therefore assume are dens of iniquity—or were. Everything is empty. A few dogs patrol the streets—when we first see one, I think it’s a dog-head and clench my war hammer tight.