It takes him a moment to see it. The small mouth. And the hundreds of needlelike teeth within it.
Kenji gasps, recoils, and the dead voice slips from his fingers and goes tumbling under the bed. His hand shoots up to the nape of his neck and he feels a neat row of stitches. The whole surgery was painless, senseless, dark. Whatever mixture of mushrooms Caro gave him, it was effective.
But something isn’t right. His head feels too quiet. Empty.
“There’s a new voice in there, right?” Kenji asks.
Caro nods.
“Maybe it just needs some time,” Eva says. She’s sitting cross-legged on a chair beside him, waiting. Her hands are tight, white-knuckled fists on her knees.
Kenji tries to stand, but the world spins and his legs refuse to hold him. Two pairs of hands catch him and set him back on the bed like a child.
“It’s probably going to be another day,” Caro says, “or two before you can go home. This is still an experiment.”
Kenji starts to nod, but spikes of pain shoot up his neck. He gasps, his vision blurring with tears. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to focus on Caro’s daughter, who’s watching him from the foot of the bed, whispering to her voice.
“Maybe it just needs time to heal,” Eva says again.
“Yes,” Caro replies. But uncertainty threads her voice.
“If this works, it will stay alive for a long time, right?” Kenji asks.
But Caro doesn’t meet his eye, doesn’t answer. She’s worrying her lip and watching her daughter, who has wriggled herself under the bed, perhaps in pursuit of the slimy dead thing that was once Kenji’s voice.
For the moment, the girl has gone silent.
* * *
“Do you ever wonder why no one in the colony ever invents anything new?” Kenji asked Eva one night as they lay bare in bed, Eva’s head on his chest, his arm around her. They had fought earlier that morning about Eva’s new sap glue, which stank up the apartment like rotting fish, and Kenji’s ever-growing chaos of tools and mushroom pulp in the living room.
But now, post lovemaking, that fight seemed ridiculous. They were working toward the same goal. In a workshop, not far from them, Eva’s sculpture of the First Givers’ ship was growing.
“All the time,” Eva replied. “There should be more people like you. Like us.”
“Nonsense,” his voice whispered. Kenji swallowed, kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“I’ve started this new research project. I’ve been going through histories of art galleries and comparing them with public records of the artists. And…” Kenji trailed off.
Eva propped herself up on her elbows and narrowed her eyes. “What did you find out?”
“It just seems like every artist who ever tried to learn more about how the World works or study history deeply ended up dying young.” He said this in a whisper. It felt like an ugly, terrible secret.
“Body or voice?”
“Voice,” Kenji said. “Always voice.”
Eva chewed her lips, and Kenji worried a strand of her hair in his fingers. He knew what she was thinking. The public had started calling them “The Experimentalist and Her Inventor.”
“There were a few accounts of some of these people deciding to go upstream instead of down,” Kenji said eventually.
Eva tilted her head with newfound curiosity. “Why?”
“Don’t know. One artist left a note saying she was looking for a way out of the World.”
“Huh. Wonder if she found it.”
Eva put her head against his chest again. She didn’t speak for a few moments. Kenji could feel her heartbeat and could almost feel her mind turning over this information.
Kenji tried to imagine what it’d be like to travel upstream, past the colonies and mushroom farms. But then he imagined the deep, consuming darkness past civilization and could go no further.
* * *
For the first time in his life, Kenji’s voice doesn’t admonish his curiosity as he wonders about dead voices and curious artists. Neither does it scream. It doesn’t say anything at all.
Caro was right: another night of sleep has made him feel more human. His neck is stiff but bearable. Still, he’s grateful to be rowing with the current as they steer their boat home.
As they drift downstream, they pass fishermen on piers, farmers on barges full of shiitake and portobello caps, painters on rafts trying to capture the light on the water. They pass no funerals. For that, Kenji is grateful.
By the time they get home, they are both exhausted and sore. They feel like they’ve outrun an enemy, and are on the verge of collapsing or celebrating, though Kenji can’t say if it’s from relief or nerves.
His new voice still hasn’t said a word.
He splurges on a whole fish for dinner, beautiful and silver, a rare find in the Endless River. He lies to the fisherman and says it’s for their anniversary. Truthfully neither he nor Eva remembers which day they started calling each other partner. From the day they met in the middle of the Endless River, they simply fell into each other’s lives.
As Kenji and the fisherman haggle over the price, just at the edge of the River, a funeral boat drifts by. The voiceless woman in it isn’t screaming. Just crying miserably. Her unrelenting brightness shimmers across the water, and both Kenji and the fisherman fall silent.
“I hope if my voice ever dies, I’ll have the strength to walk away myself,” the fisherman says quietly.
“What do you think is downstream?” Kenji asks, before he can stop himself. Dangerous questions, he knows. He waits to hear the voice in his head tsk him for wondering.
But there is only silence.
“Nothing,” the fisherman replies. He says it in that same condescending tone that Kenji’s old voice used to use.
Kenji tries again. “What do you think is upstream?”
His voice doesn’t reply.
The fisherman stiffens, suspicion blooming on his face. “You’re inquisitive, aren’t you?”
Kenji sighs. “So I’ve been told.”
Later, as Kenji cooks the fish, he asks Eva what she thinks is at the end of the Endless River.
“Nothing good.” She’s turned away from him, sketching a new sculpture concept on the living room wall. She refuses to use his paper for her first and roughest drafts, insisting she can’t defile his beautiful work with her ugly starter concepts. Instead, they repaint the living room walls every month or so. “It’s convenient that no one ever comes back, though.”
“Yeah,” Kenji says, and flips the fish in the pan. “Does … does it scare you, Eva?”
Eva twists so she can meet his gaze. “Terrifies me.”
They eat alone, each of them lost in their own thoughts and worries. Until Eva inquires casually about his new voice.
“Well, I never thought I’d miss its judgy commentary,” he tells her.
She cocks an eyebrow. “You let it talk down to you?”
Kenji blushes. “Doesn’t yours? When you wonder about dangerous things?”
“It used to.”
“How’d you get it to stop?” he asks, stunned. Everyone always said your voice was the soul of your art.
“I yelled back at it until I realized it didn’t have any power over me,” she replies.
That surprises Kenji for a moment. It’s a very Eva solution. “Oh,” he says. He has never once considered arguing with his voice. “Why?”
She glances over at the sketch she made on the living room wall. The drawing of her newest sculpture is vague, but the Maw and the figure standing in it is clear. No, Kenji realizes, the figure’s not in the Maw.
It’s on the other side of it. Outside.
If Kenji is judging the scale right, this piece will be larger than the First Givers’ ship.
Eva says: “Don’t know. It just felt like my voice was leading me down the wrong road.”
* * *
Two weeks before Eva’s sculpture was to be unveiled in the historic di
strict, she strode into their bedroom, raging. “They won’t let me add your name as a sculptor! It’s bullshit. This piece belongs to you, too.”
“I’m not upset,” Kenji said as he continued to hang long strips of paper from their bedroom windows. And he wasn’t. Or surprised.
“Well, I am,” she replied, flopping on the bed. She stared at the ceiling, frowning. “They claimed the piece was provocative enough without adding a nonartist. Even though I added the kid on the ladder.”
That had been a late-stage addition. The child on the ladder, reaching up to touch the ceiling of the World, as if in reverence. Drawing the eye away from the deep gashes on the ship and the direction it pointed.
“Honestly, I’m surprised we got this far without getting in trouble,” he said.
Eva pushed her hair off her forehead. “I’m not. You invented something amazing and useful and I made new art out of it. We’re valuable members of the community now.”
“If you say so.” Kenji came over and flopped on the bed next to her.
“Do you ever wonder what will happen when we ask one too many questions? We’re going to. At some point,” Eva whispered.
“Yeah, we will.” Kenji took her hand in his. “I can make a pretty good guess.” He touched the back of his neck, where there was a small raised mound. “Question is: What will we do when our time comes?”
* * *
Kenji stands naked in front of the bare spot in their living room, the flesh of the World, curtain crumpled in his hands. It’s been a week since the operation, and his neck is still a little stiff from Caro’s handiwork. He’s glowing with a fierceness. All those nutrients that aren’t his to keep.
The new voice in his head still hasn’t said a word.
They say you need your voice to give back to the World. Now, he supposes, he’ll find out.
Eva paces behind him, biting her thumb, worry lines crisscrossing the scars on her face. Kenji inhales, places his left ankle against the flesh. Then his right. Eases back, slowly, carefully, he nestles his head into the warm, gray, living tissue.
The World shoves him away. The strength and ferocity of it takes Kenji by surprise. He lands badly on the living room floor, sprawled out, stunned. Through a fog, he hears Eva swearing, feels her wrapping him in her arms.
“This is bullshit! We’ve done everything the World asked!”
Kenji can’t breathe. Despair falls on him suddenly, crushing him like an avalanche. Even through the strength of Eva’s embrace, he feels her shaking. They stay like that for a long time.
Finally, he says: “You should give back. I’ll wait for you in the bedroom.”
“Like hell.” She holds him tighter.
“Eva.” He takes her hands in his. “They’ll strap you to a funeral boat, too. That will kill me.”
She resists, holding him tighter, for one moment longer. Then she relents, her shoulders sagging. “Fine, but I’m going to see Caro in the morning. We’re getting you another voice.”
That night, they make love like a long goodbye. It’s difficult to stop, to let go. It’s impossible to hide any emotion on their faces in Kenji’s too-bright glow.
Kenji’s tracing her ribs, studying every line of her face, etching each detail into his memory, when he says, “Promise me that you’ll keep on making art as long as you can. You are one of the only artists doing something unique in this World.”
She’s studying him with the same intensity. Kenji can almost see her drawing his face in the sketchbook of her mind.
“You know what bothers me most about my sculpture in the historic district?” she says. “People fixate on the kid, but that’s not the important part.”
“What is?”
Eva doesn’t answer.
The next morning, Eva goes to Caro’s house to see if anyone died recently. She returns by evening, with the slam of the door and an angry scowl. Kenji isn’t surprised, but his heart sinks anyway.
“She said maybe in a few days.”
So they wait. Kenji battles his nerves by making as much paper as he can. If this is going to be his last contribution to her art, he wants to leave Eva a princely gift.
In contrast, Eva pours herself into the sculpture concept on their living room wall. The Maw grows unforgiving teeth, shredding the little glowing figures that are trapped inside. Except for the two figures that stand beyond the Maw, nothing escapes. It is not an image of a gentle, benevolent World.
This piece is going to upset a lot of people. But Kenji suspects that’s the point. It’s as if Eva’s baiting her voice into dying, too.
Kenji aches to tell her to stop being so reckless. But he fell in love with her because she was the only person he’d ever met who was more curious than he was. He stayed in love because she never stopped asking dangerous questions.
And right now, as he watches her, full of her anger and her courage, he loves her fiercely.
The days pass, and Kenji grows brighter. He glows through the thin walls of their apartment. The neighbors begin knocking on their door, first with concerned looks on their faces, then wary ones. Eva keeps them at bay with lies, something about a new art concept she’s working on. It’s a flimsy excuse, and Kenji imagines a malevolent crowd growing daily outside their door.
They can’t stay here much longer.
That night, they steal away in a boat. Even wrapped in all the clothes he owns, Kenji’s traitorous skin shines through the layers. He hurries, grabbing the oars, as Eva pushes off.
But there is no place in this World for the voiceless.
They spill onto the pier like spores. Their neighbors, friends, and fellow artists. They rush up on the pier and grab at Kenji’s layers, shouting, “Given! Give back!” The funeral mob glows, but not as brightly as him.
Kenji pushes back, but the mourners are as greedy as the World. Their fingers tear at him. Their voices ring in his ears. His glowing skin illuminates their angry, frantic faces.
Kenji swings his oars in wide, defensive arcs, stumbling into the belly of the boat, buying Eva time to pull the boat into the water.
It works. They escape the grasping hands and begin to drift with the current.
All while voices on the pier are screaming, screaming, screaming.
Something hits the back of his head. Hard. Suddenly, his legs won’t hold him. Suddenly, there’s water around him. It’s icy and dragging him down.
He feels Eva grab him by the necks of his layered shirts. He tries to tread water, but it’s cold, so cold. And the World has become blurry and vague.
He hears Eva shouting: “No! No yet!”
He tries to fight, but he can’t feel his hands, his legs. All he knows is water, brackish and frigid, and the way his body is being pulled and carried by the current, by hands. He knows the taste of mushrooms, this acrid, earthy blend.
Then he knows nothing at all.
* * *
“What do you think is outside of the World?” Kenji asked, the night before Eva’s sculpture was unveiled.
“Nothing,” his voice hissed.
Eva took a bite of her dinner, a portobello-and-eel skillet, and considered the question. “It could be anything, really. What if there’s other colonies, but they all live in ships like the First Givers?”
“What if there’s only mermaids left?” Kenji replied.
“Or only poisonous mushrooms?”
“Or only the most generic folk tunes?”
“Oh, that would be terrible,” Eva said in mock horror. “Maybe this isn’t so bad then.”
“Yes,” said his voice.
Kenji stabbed a piece of eel on his plate, thinking of the Maw. “Maybe we can just be happy here, making groundbreaking art.”
Eva smiled from across the table. “Yeah, maybe we can.”
* * *
The pain in the back of his neck is familiar. That’s the first thing he notices.
The second thing is that he’s been in this bed before, this room. Caro has covered the walls wi
th thick, dark curtains, and he hears her daughter playing in the other room. Kenji groans, turns, expecting to find Eva sitting on the chair beside him.
He finds Caro in the seat there instead.
“I’m sorry, Kenji,” she says. She looks tired, pale, deeply sad. “I tried to convince her to stay, at least until you woke up.”
Fear constricts Kenji’s chest, making it hard to breathe. With a shaking hand, Kenji touches the base of his neck. There are fresh stitches there.
“Whose voice did you use?” he asks. Barely above a whisper.
The voice in his head says: “She never stopped asking questions, either.”
Kenji gasps, knowing then, heart breaking with the answer.
It’s Eva’s voice.
* * *
The day of the unveiling, Eva and Kenji stood side by side a little apart from the swelling crowd. It felt like everyone in the colony had come to see this massive paper sculpture. They circled around it, openmouthed or talking in awed tones as they reached out and touched the creamy white paper, the likes of which were only First Givers myths before this.
“I think you’ve made an impression,” Kenji murmured to Eva.
“Shit, they’re focusing on the kid on the ladder,” Eva said, frowning. “That’s not the point.”
“What is?”
Eva shook her head.
“Some people will get the message. The ones who look a little closer,” she said.
“Maybe one day, that’ll be me then,” Kenji joked.
Eva smiled at that and took his hand in hers.
“Maybe it will.”
* * *
Eva is gone.
Caro apologized over and over. She hadn’t wanted to use Eva’s voice, but Eva was so frightened as she carried an unconscious Kenji into her house. Eva was so stubborn. Her voice fought the whole time. And Caro had been so nervous performing the operation, this dangerous new science, that she didn’t realize Eva slipped away while she was working on Kenji.
“I just want to learn how to save people like my daughter,” she says. “I want to leave something better than art behind.”
Questions Asked in the Belly of the World Page 3
