by Emily Brewes
With apprehension, I looked back up at the man I was speaking with. He hadn’t reacted to hearing Doggo, but he looked a bit of a hard case. He had one of everything except a nose, of which he had half. I hadn’t inquired where the rest of him had gone.
Even with only one eye, he saw my fear well enough. Looking around at his neighbours, he said, “Bit of an easier attitude ’round these parts toward such things. He might be novel, but he ain’t illegal.”
I asked, “What do the tower-folk want dogs for? Eating?”
He shook his head and seemed deeply saddened to answer. “Ah, naw. Worse’n that. Best you don’t think on it too hard.”
I left it there, nodding sagely. He was entirely right. If they wanted to do anything worse than eat a dog, I really didn’t want to know. That didn’t stop my busy mind from trying to figure it out. In thanks, I offered the man our last silver sleeve of crackers. I explained, “They’re mouldy, but it’s an edible kind. Blue green.”
He accepted the package with gratitude. Smiling sent me into a coughing fit that attracted more attention than Doggo. The man looked me once over before he handed the package back, laying his lone grizzled hand over mine. “You need these more’n I do, but thanks for the offer. You’re a dying breed down here.”
Our conversation was interrupted by another coughing fit, which I ended by spitting into a rag I pulled from my back pocket.
“In my case, that’s literal.” I tried to smile but stopped short of triggering a third fit. Some were staring openly now. Some were skirting well around vicinity of the krill stall.
“Blue-green mould might help you get over that cough. Take those down the second corridor to the left, away at the end. There’s a woman there can make a tincture — antibiotic, we used ta call it — might help you out.”
I teared up at the least kindness those days. It made me painfully nostalgic for older days and reminded me how much had been lost. Maybe that’s why everyone had stopped treating each other kindly — so we didn’t all drown in each other’s tears.
“Why?” The question was a loaded one. Why help me? Why be kind? Why not knock me out, rifle my pockets, then drag me to the lift-shaft hospice and leave me to my fate?
The man shrugged as well as a one-armed man could. “Supposing you get out of here and find a young man named Casey Turkle. You tell him he was right. Tell him his big brother Asa said he was right. He’ll know what you mean.”
I closed my eyes and nodded fiercely. My foot shifted, I guess, because Doggo lifted his head to see what was happening. I reached down and gave him a reassuring scritch.
“You got family up there?” Asa asked me.
“Maybe. My dad stayed behind, but he’d be in his seventies now. And my sister left, about thirty-five years ago. Just got a letter said she went to find him.”
The man nodded again. “Better late than never,” he said, then pivoted on his crutch and continued his limping march up the avenue. So much for good-byes.
I roused Doggo and we headed to the medicine woman. It was important to keep hope in check, but if she really could cure me … No, bury it. There was no reason to set myself up for disappointment.
A short line of folk waiting to see her snaked from an aluminum door frame patched with spray-painted plywood, so we took our place at the end and sat down. It was cold being on the floor of this wide-open space with no fire nearby. I got Doggo to crawl into my lap so we could keep each other warm. As the line moved up, I figured out a way to shuffle forward without unfolding my legs or disturbing Doggo too much, since he was already snoring with his snout shoved in my coat’s inside pocket.
The nearer we came, the harder it was to manage my expectations. Surely this line wouldn’t exist if she made medicine that didn’t work. I dared to dream the smallest dream of surviving long enough to reach the surface. No more than that. Even if I died the moment after clapping eyes on the sky, it would be worth near any price she cared to name.
It was strange to be driven by something so powerfully, so late in life. Passion and purpose was always something other people had. I suppose that was another barrier between my father and me. He simply knew, without one shadow of doubt, what he was for and did that. He had a purpose, which he fulfilled dispassionately. Olivia was passionate, but unfocused, without any particular purpose. She had drive but in no particular direction. Or in a direction that simply didn’t exist in the Underground. Perhaps if the world hadn’t ended, she’d have become an artist of some stripe. She had that kind of power.
After an hour or two of waiting, we were next in line. As I took the previous leader’s place, I heard the crinkle of the package in my pocket. Another small thrill of hope shot up my spine. I tried to wrangle it, to sit quietly and wait to be told my condition was incurable, or that the mould on the crackers was the wrong kind to make medicine from.
In my lap, Doggo shoved his face deeper into my pocket. A distinctly wet noise emanating from my coat indicated he was no longer sleeping but instead licking the crumbs from the pocket’s lining. Fair enough, since I’d nothing else to feed him at the moment.
It’d been more than two weeks since we left the neighbourhood, by my best count. I found my mind drifting back to old Mr. Metzler and Stella, then I thought about what the man on the promenade had said about his brother. Tell Casey Turkle that Asa said he was right.
What was he right about, I wondered. That we should never have hidden ourselves Underground? That we should have stayed above and taken our lumps? Or that we should have done more when we had the chance? We should have taken every opportunity to make the world better instead of doing our best to ruin it. Maybe Casey was just right about the scoring in a contentious game of Yahtzee. Whatever it was, it was far too late for regret. Still, I thought, should I come across Casey on this quixotic quest of mine, I’d give him the message.
Our turn arrived, and we moved inside.
There wasn’t much more space than could fit a narrow examination couch and a couple of human bodies, so it was a bit close. The woman was small and dark and wizened, with a scarf tied around her head. I had Doggo in my arms. He sniffed the air with a sleepy look on his face, but the crumbs dotted on his nose gave lie to his act of innocence.
“Is this a food place?” he inquired.
“Quiet, Doggo. It’s a doctor’s office.”
The woman smiled politely and shook her head. “Not exactly.” With no further explanation about what made this not exactly a doctor’s office, she asked, “What seems to be the trouble?”
On cue, a deep rumble crawled up my throat and became the kind of coughing fit that left me dizzy. When it subsided, I looked up at the woman.
“Ya see, Doc. It’s my feet —” I grinned to emphasize the punch-line of my hilarious joke. The woman’s expression didn’t change.
“Please sit here” — she indicated the exam couch — “and take off your coat, shirt, what-have-you to bare chest.”
I set Doggo on the couch beside me, where he immediately began licking his crotch. I was mortified, but the woman didn’t seem to notice, let alone care. Still I jostled him until he stopped and curled up with his tail across his nose.
I hadn’t taken my clothing off since before we left, and the innermost layer was difficult to peel away from my skin. Already embarrassed by my dog’s behaviour, I became more humiliated by my own smell. Not the fresh reek of a lather of sweat but the thin reek of foregone hygiene. It was baked right into my body and seemed to come from everywhere. I reddened.
The woman only smiled, tightly and with closed lips. “Okay. Relax and take a deep breath when I say.” She got in so close, I couldn’t understand how she wasn’t gagging. She pressed her ear against my chest. In that moment, I realized how thin I was, how frail. My torso looked like a picked chicken carcass.
“Breathe in,” she instructed. I did my best to breathe into every spot of my lungs except the part where the coughing lived. “And breathe out.” The breath ended on a tickle, b
ut it fizzled quickly. She repeated the exercise a couple of times, tapping my chest in between commands for inhalation or exhalation. Her dark eyes were serious when she informed me, “You need medicine.”
“I know.” I rifled the pockets of my piled-up clothing for the crinkle of the crackers. “The man in the street told me to bring you these. They’re mouldy.” I handed over the package, gleaming in the underwater light of half-powered fluorescents like an ingot of precious metal.
She took it with a nod and turned her chair to the right, to a tray on a shelf that served as a desk. The crackers, which were almost entirely crumbs, tumbled everywhere once free. Some larger chunks showed spots of dusty blue green. The woman scrutinized the mould. She scratched some off and tasted it from her fingernail. Then she shrugged. “Maybe, maybe” was all she said.
She scooted to a cabinet hung on the opposite wall. There sat a clunky object made of wood and glass and wire, which she wrestled free and took back to the desk. A flake of mould was scraped off with a thin blade, then wiped onto a sliver of scratch-clouded acetate. This was placed in the device, which I realized was a jerry-rigged microscope. Its various limbs and lenses were manipulated as she looked through a set of eye pieces, until she found whatever she was looking for. The discovery was announced with a grunt.
“Well, it’s the right kind of mould, but it will need to be cultured. Then I’ll have to make an extract and compound it into pills. Expensive.”
She looked up, her small face intensely serious. Any trace of her clinician’s smile was tucked safely away. The face of a doctor preparing to deliver bad news. The worst news.
“Medicine may work if we begin treatment as soon as possible. You will need money to pay for the medicine.” Her eyes flicked to Doggo, then back to me. “Many people place high value on such animals. Enough to pay for treatment, maybe.”
I put a protective hand on Doggo’s head. He stretched his legs but didn’t appear to wake.
“Why does everybody down here wanna kill my dog?” It felt like I was choking. Like a fist had reached into my throat and grabbed tight, squeezing in its rage.
“Is his life worth sacrificing your own?”
There was no judgment to her question, only genuine inquiry. She sat back, hands folded across her lap, and waited.
I looked down at Doggo. His tiny, dumb face was empty in sleep, slack and blissful. He wouldn’t really know better if I just handed him over to the butcher, not until it was too late. How long would it’ve taken me to forget his screams of betrayal, chasing me as I walked away?
Then I heard myself saying something not entirely unexpected but nonetheless surprising. “Maybe.”
She nodded. “Maybe. The medicine may not be enough. The money may not be enough. Who can say?”
“How much for one pill?”
The medic drew straight up, like a doll on a string. Her tone was one of disbelief. “One?”
“If I leave you with the mould, and you make as many pills as you can, how much would I owe you for one of those pills?”
“One pill won’t do anyth—”
“How much?”
The woman sat back and sighed. She pulled away her scarf to scratch a scalp heavily ridged with scars and largely bald as a result. The few wisps of hair that poked through the hardened tissue were shockingly white against her dark skin. It looked as though she’d been mauled by a tiger. She looked at Doggo, scowled, and shook her head. “Come back in three days. I’ll give you two.”
I scooped Doggo up from the couch, as much to embrace him as anything. His half-hearted growl at me for waking him dissolved into a yawn.
“Three days,” I repeated. “Here. Two pills. Thank you!”
“It won’t cure you,” she insisted, pointedly.
“I don’t need a cure,” I told her as we left. “I just need a bit of time.”
DOGGO AND I FOUND ourselves back on the promenade, this time with nothing to trade and no food besides. I found us an alcove out of the way of the main drag to huddle in and wait. Three days? No problem. I could last three days with nothing. After falling into a doze of boredom, I was roused by the thump and scrape of Asa coming back from wherever he’d been with a load of goods. He stopped in front of us, a satchel over his good shoulder. Must’ve had it earlier, too, only it was empty then.
A scrapper.
He dropped the satchel at my feet and pointed to the end of the square with his chin.
“Carry that to my place, I’ll let you stay the night. Take my place at the scrap while you’re here, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”
I picked up the satchel and roused Doggo. He was less than pleased but brightened when I told him we were going to find food. Asa’s place was about the size of my closet, though it had a pair of deep cubbies punched into one wall, each big enough to sleep in. Not having a separate bed saved precious floor space, making his place seem like a palace. Asa parked himself in a much-patched recliner upholstered in dusty blue-checked felt.
“Soup’s in the pot. Been cooking for twelve years now, so it ort be done.”
I dished us out some soup, which Doggo polished off in record time before dropping back to sleep. I decided the best way to pay back our host was with a story, if he wanted one.
“Go on then,” said Asa, closing his eye and pulling the handle on the recliner.
So I did.
By the Mane of BardyJin
Once upon a time, a girl rode her father’s horse across a snowy mountainside. The horse’s flank shone polished chestnut in the sharp light of high-altitude dawn, nearly the same colour as the girl’s curling tresses. They were fleeing the only home they’d known, pursued by agents of the king.
They had come in the night to take the girl as a bride for the king. Any girl in the kingdom could be selected for such a privilege. But this girl’s village was so far from the capital that none of the king’s agents had ever been there. It was only bad luck that their cadre had become lost in a heavy fog, blown over the foothills from the sea. And worse luck that they had fetched up at the door of her father’s small patch of farm.
“Kind sir, as agents of your king, we ask your hospitality this night. In return for serving us well, you will receive three gold crowns.”
Her father had never seen such wealth before, let alone been offered it. He was so dizzied by his good fortune, he could only nod in agreement.
“First, you will curry and feed our horses that they will be ready to travel come morning. Then you will serve us the finest food you have, along with a measure of wine to warm us. You will give us your best beds, pillows, and blankets to sleep on, and you will keep the fire well-stoked all night. Should we be well pleased with all of this, only then will we pay you what is owed.”
What her father could not know was that they had no intention of paying him. The king’s agents were little more than bandits in livery. Overcome by even a modest man’s avarice, he did as he was told.
Or rather he commanded his daughter do as he was told. She led the horses to the barn (for they had no stable) that was built beneath the back eave of their house. She curried them well, rubbing their flanks and their legs so they wouldn’t get stiff, then fed them new oats and corn that were to do their winter’s porridge. Surely that was no matter in the face of three gold crowns!
Next she fixed a supper of stew and ash cakes, accompanied by generous helpings of small beer (for they had no wine) warmed through with mulling spices. It ruddied the men’s cheeks all the same, which was surely enough to earn their due.
And then she piled every mattress in the house onto the wide rope-strapped frame in her father’s room — hers and her father’s, and the one that had been granny’s until last winter. She stoked up the hearth well to make coals for the bed warmers and even got in the bed herself to lend her warmth to every nook and cranny. It was as she was climbing free of the bedclothes that the captain of the king’s agents first saw her well. Her pinafore was folded over a chair
to keep it from creasing, and her hair had come half-loose from its plait. When she saw him, she blushed deep crimson and curtsied nearly to the floor.
He waved away such formality. “No need to bow to me thus, chicken. Not when you’re to be a king’s wife.”
“Surely not, my lord. I’m too homely by half and stupid besides. Father said I’m hardly good enough to do for him and curses me for a son.” This was only partly true, and most often said when her father was deep in his cups.
“Then come, my duck, and be honoured as you deserve. A king’s wife has no worries and no wants. Only bear the king a son and you’ll live a life of carefree leisure.”
The girl was not so much a fool as she made out. She said nothing more save to bid the captain good-night and then, taking up her pinafore from the chair back, took her leave.
Before her father sat himself by the bedroom hearth (the better to keep the fire stoked all night through), she brought him aside and whispered, “Father, these men mean to steal me from you. And I suspect they may mean you harm.”
“Nonsense,” her father replied with a chuckle. He’d shared a mug or two of beer with the agents and was more than a little ruddy himself. “These are men of honour, and we have done well in our service.”
“Even so,” she insisted, “please do me this favour. As you sit by the fire, mark the passing of each hour by exclaiming,
How pleased is a man
to serve well his lord?
How pleased is a lord
to serve well his folk?
Another hour struck,
how well pleased are we all?”
Her father refused. “Surely that would wake the king’s men and set them on me for disturbing their sleep. Worse still, we’d not be paid at all.”
