First Cycle - Spring

by Sarah Kassem

  He went back to bed, cried a little, and then finally fell asleep.

  Haploid

  The next day Viktor was very confused.

  He’d slept very badly, and could not eat any breakfast. His mother, upon seeing the half eaten bread and jam – the jam even being blackberry and therefore Viktor’s current favorite – had reacted with alarm, putting her hand on his forehead and looking at his throat for any sign of illness.

  His troubles didn’t stop there though as, in school, he miscalculated a math task that he had to solve in front of everyone on the board. He had to divide ‘345’ by ‘5’, which, any other day, he would have found easy. This day however he just couldn’t think of how many times ‘5’ went into ‘45’. He stood there, chalk in hand, and tried his best to think, but his brain did not seem to want to work. Eventually he simply took the first numerical combination that came into his head and, thinking that ‘5’ went into ‘45’ 34 times, he decided on the number ‘90034’. The teacher looked at him in surprise and asked him why he thought the answer was ‘90034’. Viktor thought about it for a minute and, not knowing why but thinking that ‘900’ was in fact too high, he rubbed it out and replaced it with ‘70’ thus giving the figure, ‘7034’ which, apparently, was also the wrong answer. The teacher as such sent him back to his place.

  During the break, he sat on a bench and tried to eat, but nothing really had any flavor and so he ended up dumping the contents of his lunch box into the trash. Shortly after, Gem and some others asked him if he wanted to play volleyball, but he simply waved them away and went back to starting at the floor. Gem came over and asked what was wrong before then inquiring if he had to throw up again. Viktor got upset by this and ran off to seek solitude in the bathroom. He locked himself in a cubicle and tried to control his mind, but it was too crampt and the floor was too dirty for him to get in the right position, so instead he ended up leaning his head against the wall. When the bell rang after half an hour he was more thankful than he thought he could be.

  When he got home, everything was just as out of sync. There was no lunch ready for him, his mother was yelling into the phone and Oded was discussing something in frantic tones with the others. He heard such words as ‘union’ and ‘value added tax’ and other indefinable things. This was too much for him.

  His mother covered the phone up briefly and whispered, “Go to Rocco’s, honey. We’ve got too much to do here but you can get something to eat there”. She then promptly went back to screaming away on the phone.

  As Oded and the others didn’t notice him and he was in fact hungry, he grumpily took his backpack and walked out of the chaotic studio.

  Rocco was sitting in the sun on the stairs in front of his bar, absently strumming his guitar with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He looked up in surprise when he saw an angry looking Viktor arrive and declare, “I’m hungry!”

  Rocco asked no questions and instead led Viktor into the kitchen where his mother was baking.

  She gave him a plate of potato stew and two slices of bread, all of which Viktor took to a table in the bar and ate in silence. This food, at last, tasted normal and as such he even asked for a second serving. When he had finished, he thanked Rocco’s mother for the food, even going so far as to shake her hand, an action that prompted a sigh and a hug from her.

  He then sat down next to Rocco on the steps and watched the road. There was nothing going on. The owner of the small store across the road seemed to be having some problems as he angrily waved one hand in the air while holding a phone to his ear and shouting. The sun was very warm and Viktor was sweating in his school sweater, his eyelids became heavy and soon he ended up falling asleep.

  Rocco was surprised when he turned to Viktor and saw him with a reclined head, open mouth and dribble of salvia coming from his bottom lip.

  When Viktor woke up in the late afternoon, he was in a strange room that he didn’t know at all and fear gripped him tightly.

  But when he saw the well-known guitar in the corner, he calmed down. He stayed lying down in the cool for a while as, not only did he still feel strange, but he was convinced he must be getting sick.

  He could hear Rocco’s voice downstairs, grumpily telling some customers that not only did he have no margaritas and noodles, but that none would ever appear on his menu. Viktor got up and did his best to make Rocco’s bed look tidy, rearranging the sheets and pillows. His backpack was standing beside the bed and Viktor glanced into it to see if everything was still there. Thankfully, Rocco had not stolen his school supplies as everything was still in its place.

  Rocco’s apartment was big. As it was directly above the bar, it was as big as the bar and kitchen downstairs. The bedroom was huge as well, as big as Helena’s entire apartment. Viktor knew that there was another floor above, and that Rocco’s mother lived there.

  He felt the need to look at everything in more detail, but didn’t dare, because his mother had once given him a long, terrifying monologue about snooping. Instead, he took his backpack and went down. The stairs led down directly to the bar and he saw a few people sitting at tables and it all it smelled like apple pie.

  Rocco waved at him, gave him a piece of pie and another piece wrapped in a napkin for Helena, and sent him home.

  Sunset was a short process in Hedera Helix with no long drawn out dusk. As soon as the sun touched the horizon, it was then gone in less than ten minutes and the residual light disappeared almost instantly. Viktor had already observed the sun in other parts of the world. In Helsinki, it never seemed to want to go away at all. As such it would be bed time, 10pm, and the sky would still be as bright as day. In Canada it had been the opposite, or near enough, as it had been dark already by 3pm. Viktor found these two countries very creepy with those strange machinations in the sky. He could not imagine why someone would ever want to live in such places. In Hedera Helix, it was bright in the morning when he woke up, the sun rising at an ever reliable 6am. In the evening the same was then true as the sun set every day at 6pm. To Viktor, light meant it was time to be awake, dark, time to be asleep. In Canada it’d been dark when he woke up and dark when he went to sleep. In Helsinki it’d never gotten dark. All in all he had no plans to ever have anything to do with either country again.

  Now, on the short way home, Viktor was also not satisfied with the situation. It was almost dark, but he had slept all afternoon and that made everything feel back to front. Waking up means you have the whole day ahead of you, not that you have to go back to sleep again soon.

  It can all go fuck itself, thought Viktor.

  At home he found his father sitting with his mother at the kitchen table, both of them brooding over a stack of papers while occasionally tapping something into a calculator.

  Normally, Viktor would have been pleased as punch to see his father at his home, but today he just grunted in passing to his astonished parents and disappeared behind a slamming bedroom door.

  He thoroughly looked under his bed and searched the whole room before drawing the curtains to and laying down with his back to the window and with a Spiderman comic in hand, his homework the last thing on his mind.

  Tonight, he had no desire for any visitors.

  But the disaster was to come the next morning.

  Even before he opened his eyes, he was frightened and knew that it was going to be a crazy day again. Oded was in his room saying something. Viktor tried to ignore him and fervently tried to control his mind. He gathered that his mother reportedly had an appointment with the regulatory body in Salix Alba. As such Oded had to take over the shop, then drive around and other such nonsense.

  Viktor reluctantly pulled himself out of bed, reluctantly cleaned his teeth, and reluctantly went with Oded down to the studio, where he reluctantly sat with Hala and Gem in the kitchen and extremely reluctantly ate his breakfast.

  He felt ill and almost gagged twice during breakfast. Maricel had made porridge and, although Viktor had nothing against porridge, that morning it w
as for some reason quite unbearable. To be first woken up by Oded, even though his mother had woken him every day since birth. Then to not eat breakfast in his own kitchen, where he could watch Helena’s hectic running around or her lazy newspaper reading, but in someone else’s. Then to have porridge rather than bread and jam, which he had had for breakfast since he had teeth. Then to even be eating with strangers, not that Gem and Hala were strangers, but early in the morning everyone was a stranger who did not look like Helena. All of it was just too much.

  Viktor stared at the table cloth with a mixture of despair and hostility. It was an ugly tablecloth. An ugly, ugly tablecloth. A perverse, disgusting, despicable tablecloth. He gagged once more. Gem asked him something, and Viktor’s response was just to jump slightly and look right then left before mumbling and delving back into his examination of the tablecloth as he spooned porridge into his gagging mouth. It was a hideous tablecloth. At the edge of his consciousness, Viktor was aware that his mother had the exact same table cloth directly above him because she had ordered a 20-meter roll of the material from China and all the employees had helped themselves. But that was beside the point, what was important was that it wasn’t his mother’s table cloth, not on his mother’s table nor in his mother’s apartment, and as such it was horrible.

  Viktor sighed as Oded proclaimed that they should all get ready to leave for school. He looked outside, it was raining. The raindrops pounded softly on the window and he saw a few birds in the trees, all of whom sat with ruffled feathers.

  He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to control his mind. He knew that Cristobal would come in the evening, or at least he hoped as such, and he could not wait. He thought of his next karate class as well and looked forward to it.

  He whispered softly “Ossu!”, took his backpack and followed Oded and the others to the car.

  Phytohormone

  Viktor and Cristobal closed the gate behind them and walked quietly down Aquifolium Street. Rocco’s Bar was dark and quiet, a single light still burning on the first floor as they passed.

  They walked along Pacific Road, crossed Holoarktis Square, walked past the cemetery on Cherry Avenue and walked along Azores High Street. It was pitch black, the streets deserted and the only signs of life being the occasional lit window of a house and the odd car that drove past them.

  The meeting he’d had earlier that night with Cristobal had been both solemn and unsettling. With sunset had come the usual troupe of magpies, all settling themselves on his window sill. He had looked beyond them and seen a couple of large birds that looked like eagles, all slowly making their rounds in the sky as they did each evening. He’d closed the curtains, immersing himself in his children’s encyclopedia when, having just read the entry for Easter Island, he heard a soft knock at his window.

  At first he hadn’t wanted to look, thinking the knock came only from the magpies’ constant patrolling. When the knocking had continued however, he’d had little choice but to go to the window and pull the curtains open a tiny bit in order to peek outside. The magpies were of course in their places, haughtily arranged in their rank and file, though at their centre stood Cristobal, looking in at him anxiously.

  Viktor was worried about opening the window, fearing that if he did so the magpies would come pouring in as well. Such fears had to be put aside however as Cristobal looked at him urgently while knocking repeatedly. Viktor opened the window just a crack and Cristobal flew in.

  “Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you,” the hummingbird said before he sat down on the bed.

  “Who are they?” Asked Viktor.

  “Who?”

  “The birds.”

  Cristobal brushed his left wing and said: “Magpies belong to the Guard Battalion.”

  “The what?”

  “The Guard Battalion. The guards. The protectors.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re smart and see and hear a lot. Oh, and they have a good warning cry and alarm call.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  “They are guarding you. Abramskaya issued a special command and declared you the highest priority. That command states that you have to be guarded now.”

  “Why?”

  Cristobal flew to the window and pulled the curtain open just enough for him to be able to peer outside. He pointed to the trees beyond the window and said: “Those Blackbirds there, that’s the Corvusbrigade - Jackdaws and Ravens and Crows. The Corvusbrigade is part of the fighting force. Those big birds there in the sky, those are the Falconiformes, they belong to the Air Force that’s guarding the area.”

  Viktor had joined Cristobal and was looking at all the birds outside.

  “The Owls,” Cristobal pointed at the glowing eyes in the branches and leaves, “they are the combat support troops of the engineers. A couple of Owls belong to the Physical Protection Regiment of the Air Force and the others are in charge of scouting the area, making sure that we know all we can and are ready should there be an emergency.”

  He pointed to the many small, brown birds. “They are the infantry. Throttle and Sparrows and Woodpeckers and a few other birds.”

  Viktor nodded, though he was quite overwhelmed.

  “This is all that we could put together in such a short time. Soon enough though our other troops will be mobilised. So don’t be scared if you see more birds coming over the next few days. They’ll do nothing to you, they’re just there to guard the area and keep an eye on you.”

  Viktor nodded.

  Cristobal flew back to the bed, sat down and sighed.

  “I’m so tired,” he said. “The last few days have been exhausting. In fact it’s been fifty-two hours since I last slept. I was taken to Abramskaya by a condor and it’s so cold there. Sooo terribly cold, I almost died!” Cristobal’s shoulders slumped, and he stared at the blanket.

  “What did you do there?”

  “I had to see the Emperor penguins. They wanted to see me in person and hear my report. After that we had to unlock Cahuc and take care of some final preparations.” Cristobal sighed again. “I don’t know the last time I ate something. On the flight there and back I had special training with no breaks. In fact the only thing we got to eat was just a pre-packaged sandwich. Do you have anything to eat?”

  Viktor ran into the kitchen and came back with a jar of honey. He watched as Cristobal greedily ate it, thinking about everything and nothing as he didn’t know what he should be thinking about, focusing instead on Cristobal as he lapped up the honey.

  Afterwards, Cristobal had said he wanted to go for a walk to which Viktor had asked whether it was safe to go outside. Cristobal had answered, “Your neighborhood is currently the most secure place in the city!”

  “Can you put me in your breast pocket?” Cristobal had asked as Viktor put on his jacket. “I’m so tired and cold.”

  Then they had walked, Cristobal wrapped in a handkerchief in Viktor’s breast pocket, his head just poking out as they had crossed onto Azores High Street.

  “Look,” he said, pointing upward at the large birds of prey who were circling around and following overhead. Around them trees and bushes rustled while various birds flew silently from tree top to tree top.

  They turned onto Quercus Street and stopped before a large rhododendron. “This is so pretty, isn’t it?” Cristobal said wistfully. Viktor nodded. “But it can’t be eaten as it’s toxic,” added Cristobal. “Even daffodils. And primroses. And hyacinths. And violets.” He sighed. “So many beautiful flowers are poisonous, it’s such a shame.”

  They arrived at a large square that, though lit from all sides, lay abandoned and empty. Viktor sat down on a bench. It wasn’t cold, a warm breeze was blowing and the sky was dimly lit by stars. It smelled like chamomile, Cristobal noted, which was a smell he liked, and he flew a few slow laps around the square and chirped softly. A few birds answered him quietly from the surrounding bushes and trees.

  He came back and sat down on the arm of the bench. The two o
f them sat there for a while in silence, enjoying the breeze and the scent.

  “I reported the lizard that visited you, passed on his description as well,” Cristobal said. “Our intelligence services have looked into it and they know who it was.”

  Viktor waited for Cristobal to speak again, but when nothing more came he was prompted to ask, “Who was it?”

  Cristobal still said nothing and Viktor didn’t dare to push, the two of them instead remaining sat there for a time in perfect silence, side by side as they looked at the square in its bath of delicate orange light from the street lights. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance.

  Finally, Cristobal flew up and sat down on Viktor’s shoulder.

  “The lizard is called Edison. He is the deputy chairman of the Reptile Association Against Sola Fide.”

  Viktor nodded.

  Again some time went by before Cristobal continued.

  “We, the League of Birds, are at war with the reptiles and their Association Against Sola Fide. We have been for millions of years but since the last Convention of Noahrk we’ve been in a kind of cold war. They don’t attack us, and we don’t attack them. Both of us just go our separate ways, avoid each other and not interfering in the other’s business.”

  “But not anymore?” Asked Viktor.

  “Edison shouldn’t have come to you. That’s a breach of the convention, of all we’ve adhered to in order to keep the peace. We still don’t know why he came to you, nor what they want nor why he visited you. But either way it was a breach of the convention! You are our responsibility and he interfered with that, something he just can’t do.”