The Tiger Flu

by Larissa Lai

  She lifts her tunic. “Your own mother double did it for me at my groom initiate ceremony when I was thirteen.” She lifts her right breast to show me the small scar.

  “Good,” I say. I pass her two more puppies.

  The seventh, I pull to my own right breast. Glorybind Groundsel gave me the nursing surgery when I declared my intention to become a groom at age ten. But I’ve never done this before either. Our Mother of bread and roses, the surge works. I’m squirting sister juice like a regular heifer. For a minute I’m disgusted, but soon I relax into the sensation. I’m washed in family love as the three of us nurse together.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I ask Bombyx Mori.

  “My Radix would not have liked it.”

  I nod, understanding her messy emotions at Auntie Radix’s deathbed differently now.

  The screams of the sisters by the fire tear at our ears afresh.

  Bombyx and Corydalis’s eyes bulge wide and terrified.

  A jolt of fear runs through me, wants to come full throttle. I push it down so as not to feed it to the suckling sister puppy.

  “Remember your prayers,” I say to Bombyx and Corydalis, hoping my own need for comfort doesn’t show.

  While we nurse, we sing for our sisters young and old, “Our Mother of songs and sighing, Our Mother of stone.”

  The screams from the clearing are broken by a bout of machine gun fire. Disembodied fear rides ungodly shrieks, tears through the forest and in through the door of the magic bus. We shudder collectively. We chant.

  Our Mother of light and darkness

  Our Mother of soup

  Our Mother of wood and city

  Our Mother of owls

  Now is the hour

  Of our holiest howl

  Birthing and bleeding

  For the ones to come

  Remember night for us

  As safety under cover

  Rest and gestation

  Deliver us from humans

  For thine is the garden, the pathway, the story

  Forever in cycles

  Now until the hour of our rebirth

  15

  THE WORST THING DONE FOR FOOD

  KORA KO // SALTWATER FLATS

  NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD

  DAY: 6

  “WHAT’S THE WORST THING YOU’VE EVER DONE FOR FOOD?” IT’S Myra, the scary one with charcoal-rimmed eyes who leads them all.

  “Raid a garbage can?” Kora’s pretty sure the one with curly black hair and neatly darned camouflage pants is called Soraya.

  “Steal from us at the wet market?” The wiry thin one with large brown eyes, torn yellow T-shirt, and white-blonde hair is Modesta.

  “Catch and roast a rat?” Cropped brown hair, green eyes, and the kind of mushroom-fibre tunic more commonly worn in the quarantine rings. The frightful one from the night of Kora’s arrival. Tania.

  “Ha ha, we saw you doing that, you and your brother. We saw you chase it down that alley,” taunts Myra. “We saw you bludgeon it with a shovel. We saw you build a fire, roast it up, peel the skin off, and gobble it down. You’re a rat eater. Don’t lie. Your mom and dad were too poor to feed you properly.”

  “Not true! Don’t bring them into it. And Wai is my uncle.”

  The memory makes Kora’s stomach lurch. She turns away. She doesn’t want them to see her retch. She retches.

  “Ha ha. You gonna puke?” Soraya says. “If you puke it means you ate it. If you puke we’ll make you eat your puke.”

  She pukes. The four girls grab her and shove her face in her own vomit.

  Others surround the fray. “Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!”

  They begin to kick her head. “This is what you did to that rat. Because you’re a rat. A dead rat.”

  “Stop! Stop hitting me!” she screams.

  They mush her face around in her own vomit.

  “We won’t stop until you lick that all up.”

  “I won’t,” she wails.

  “You will.” They kick her until her ribs scream.

  She opens her mouth and licks. The acrid, rotten taste of her own puke brings up more. For the second time in a two-week solar node, she barfs and barfs and barfs.

  Finally, they stop kicking her and leave her on the street outside the school in a pool of tears and blood and vomit.

  NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD

  DAY: 7

  “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done for love? Your family can’t love you much if they’ve sent you here.” Myra is on Kora again.

  “They sent me here because they love me more than anything,” Kora says.

  “If they loved you, they would keep you at home,” says blonde Modesta. “They would give you the tools you need to survive.”

  “They couldn’t.”

  “Because they were too poor. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done for food?” Soraya asks, menacing.

  “Nothing. Please.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” Tania asks, and not in a friendly way.

  “No. I don’t know any boys except my brother.”

  “Maybe your brother’s your boyfriend,” says Myra.

  “You’re sick. Of course he’s not.”

  “Maybe your father’s your boyfriend.”

  “I’ve never met my father.”

  “We saw you with an older man. You look like him.”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “Maybe your uncle’s your boyfriend.”

  “Shut up. I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

  “Ha ha, pussy. You can’t kill anything bigger than a rat. You want to go kill a rat?”

  “No.”

  “You do. Go kill a rat.”

  “Maybe she likes girls.”

  “I do not.”

  “Do you like me? Huh? I’ll do you if you want.”

  “If I liked a girl, it wouldn’t be you.”

  NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD

  DAY: 8

  In addition to teaching a dance class every morning, sourcing kittens, and pressing catcoats, Madame Dearborn runs the Cordova School clinic. She’s tired all the time, grumpy, and worried. What will become of these girls when she is no longer able to care for them?

  When Velma brings Kora down to the clinic, Madame Dearborn is furious.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Two days ago,” says Velma.

  “Why didn’t you bring her right away?” To Kora, Madame Dearborn says, “You look awful. What happened to you? Myra and Tania?”

  Kora says nothing.

  Velma says, “Yes. Soraya and Modesta too.”

  “I don’t understand the girls these days.”

  Velma helps Kora up onto Madame’s examination table. Madame pulls out a precious flashlight imported from the United Middle Kingdom and shines it into Kora’s eyes to check for concussion. Sure enough, the telltale pupil dilation.

  “Those little shits. For all the good they do the school, they do twice as much harm.”

  “Maybe not twice as much,” says Velma. “But they aren’t very nice.”

  Madame gives Kora a cold pack from the barely running freezer and some precious-if-stale ibuprofen from the time before, foraged by Myra and Tania a few seasons ago. “They are the best leadership we’ve got to replace me when I’m gone. Which is to say the school is in deep trouble. I’ll beat them myself.”

  Velma says, “Maybe you shouldn’t. Last time …”

  “Yes, I know. I was more hurt than they were. I’m too old for this.”

  Kora groans. “I want to go home.”

  “They just went off into the quarantine rings to forage. You’re safe for a few days,” Madame Dearborn says.

  “Well, darn.” Kora smirks to hide her feelings. Modesta and Soraya are still here.

  “I’ve fixed you up the best I can. Stay down here overnight,” says Madame Dearborn. To herself she mutters, “This school needs a real doctor.”

  16

  STORM TRAVELLERS

  KIR
ILOW GROUNDSEL // GRIST VILLAGE TO PENTE-HIK-TON

  NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD

  DAY: 6

  Our Mother of carts and horses

  Our Mother of shoes

  Our Mother of fish and roses

  Our Mother of flames

  Now is the hour of great decisions

  The hour of time and place

  The house of beginning and ending

  The howl of the long O

  Circling and diamonds

  Wise as wolves

  Edging a clearing

  WHEN OLD CHANG PEERS THROUGH THE DOOR OF THE MAGIC BUS ON his early-morning route across the sky, I leave Bombyx Mori, Corydalis Ambigua, and their new litter curled together in a sleep of exhaustion and dread. It’s still dark out, but I can’t stay in here anymore. I go look for my old mother double, muttering the old songs under my breath.

  I’ll sing you one, O

  Green grow the rushes, O!

  Along last night’s trail of terror, I retrace my steps. How could I not have seen that Salty for what it was, the advance guard of HöST Security, or one of the for-hire militias deployed from the towers of HöST sent to protect and purify Saltwater City and its surrounds? Why did I not fight my sisters over their ridiculous bonfire? Ha, there’s vanity. I wanted honour for my beloved Peristrophe Halliana too desperately and closed my eyes to the extent of the danger. Against the edicts of Our Mother, I made too much of my own grief. And now, it’s payday. Payday and May Day. If I ever see that Salty again, I’ll burn it alive on a pyre twice the size of last night’s, I swear I will, just you wait and see. I should never have let it go. If these are the proceeds of my generosity, then my generosity is over and done. I’ll hunt that Salty like an animal. I’ll stick a knife in it, slice it open like the walking carcass it is. If this is war and all is fair, I’ll get my share.

  Under the forest’s cool cover, at the edges of Mourning Rock clearing, I lurk, scan the area to make sense of last night’s atrocities. The clearing is quiet, strangely so. There are no bodies, no hawks, eagles, ravens, crows, or carrion birds of any kind. Just a heap of charred logs, still smouldering. How can this be?

  I pull my knives out, one for each taut fist. Step one foot into the clearing. There’s a rustling.

  I duck back under cover, then stumble over something warm. I let out a sharp gasp, which is echoed by the warm thing’s own quick intake of breath. I pounce like a coyote on a rabbit.

  It yelps, then kicks and thrashes.

  By Our Mother’s milk. It’s a sister. I turn her over. Calyx Kaki.

  Her eyes stare a wide, terrified green. She has drunk way too may cups of forget-me-do.

  “What happened?” I demand. “Did you see?”

  Her too-green eyes water, and a thin stream of drool runs from the corner of her mouth.

  “Sister Calyx, come on. What’s wrong with you? This is no time for a party. Snap out of it!” I shake her.

  She jumps at me so sharp I jump too.

  “Batterkites,” she whispers.

  “What did you see, Calyx? What happened?”

  “A whole fleet of them just passed over.”

  She closes her eyes and falls back into her forget-me stupor.

  “Sister Calyx!”

  She’s gone all floppy, completely inert.

  “That was last night. They’re all gone now,” I say. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  But as I speak, I hear a scuffling sound. And from the same direction, on the other side of the clearing, a groan.

  “Mama …” moans Calyx, echoing the voice on the other side of the clearing.

  “Who’s over there?”

  “Don’t go look …” she rasps.

  “Grist sisters or Salties?”

  “Don’t go there. You don’t want to see …”

  “Are there sisters there, Calyx? Have you seen Glorybind Groundsel?”

  “Womb bomb …”

  “I’ve got one here. Let’s go.”

  “No go. No, no, no …”

  “Don’t be a baby. Come on.”

  “No!” she cries.

  “The sisterhood is truly not long for this world if all that’s left are the likes of you,” I say. It’s mean, but I don’t care.

  She lets out a sob, then draws in a great croaking gasp of air.

  As my mother double taught me, I skirt the clearing on the lightest feet. There is pine and dry brush to push through, but it’s better than exposing myself to sight. Dark shapes move over my head, above the trees. A second batterkite attack? I glance up. No. Only storm clouds promising the first floods of the rainy season. They are dense and dark. A flash lights up the whole forest. In the distance, thunder rolls. I pick up my pace, less heedful of the sounds my feet make as they snap bracken.

  The next lightning bolt strikes bright and close. Fearsome thunder roars on its heels. I think I hear screaming beneath the roar. I run towards the sound.

  A third flash lights up the beast. A hundred arms and legs writhe, tangled in a strong mesh net. A hundred bright eyes stare out. The whole mass groans. How could I not have seen it before?

  I step back in horror. There’s another crack of lightning. Our Mother who art artful, it’s not a beast. It’s my own Grist sisters, bound up tight in a mesh net, not unlike the womb bombs that my mother double and I make to catch wayward Salties who stumble too close to our woods. But this womb bomb is huge—vast enough to swallow a whole village of sisters shivering and howling in terror.

  I reach for my knife as I hurry forward. The rain descends in sheets now, and the sky grows so dark it feels like night. My trapped sisters shout and cry as I attempt to cut the net.

  “Keep still, by Our Mother’s nasty nails! I don’t want to cut you.” The fibres are finer and stronger than I’ve ever been able to achieve. I hack and hack, but my blade just slides off. Each strand takes slow, agonizing minutes to cut. The sisters shout and clamour the whole time. I don’t realize they are speaking sense until I recognize Old Glorybind’s voice, pleading with me through the fray.

  “Up, up, up! Look!”

  “Mother Glory?”

  “Look up, Kirilow! You have to run!”

  The deepening dark I registered a moment ago was not cloud darkness after all. A giant batterkite fills the sky, bulbous, fleshy, and pulsing.

  “Mother Glory!”

  “Run, Kiri!”

  “I won’t! You are almost free!” I hack at the strong, slippery fibre with the strength of the desperate.

  “You need to be smart now. Not so stubborn. You’re not a child anymore. Go to the city and find a new starfish. My friend Elzbieta Kruk at the New Origins Archive will help you. Remember everything I’ve taught you. Find your feet. Play fewer games.”

  I hack and hack and hack.

  The batterkite crashes through the treetops. Splinters fly in a thousand directions as pine and eucalyptus come crashing down.

  I keep hacking.

  “Go, Kiri!”

  One last hack and the strand I’ve been working on breaks.

  “Go! Now!”

  “Mama …”

  “Run!”

  I do as she says. I turn and flee, scramble just ahead of the trees as they fall behind me. I cry like the little child I cannot be anymore, tear away from the depression in the forest floor, the writhing mass of my very own sisters, and the massive, hungry ship that descends on them.

  I glance up. I see the chain of sisters, clinging hand to hand as they fall through the hole in the mesh. Miraculously, none fall to the ground as the batterkite rises high above me and sucks the whole tangled, howling mess of net and sisters up into its undermouth.

  As I run, my heart bursts with days and intergenerational years of hatred for that wicked Salty. I should have knifed it in the back. What an idiot I was to let it live. Rock and a hard place, says the voice of my mother double within me. That Salty with the starfish hand remains a chance to save the sisterhood—if I can find it.

  There
is a flash of orange hair in the trees. It can’t be. I turn towards it. It runs, tall and gangly. I don’t care if it’s my tricky mind or the real thing. I take off after it, never human but now superhuman in my rage and grief. For all its awkwardness the Salty is fast.

  The sky grows dark overhead. The batterkite follows me just above the treetops. Its massive oily belly bulges into the branches and leaves a slick of mucus wherever it brushes. Something thick and fleshy pushes out of its distended belly, a suction tube made of quivering, greasy meat. The Salty is so close I can hear its ragged breath. The tube’s puckering orifice makes a grab for me. I dodge, zigzag through tight-knit woods. It makes a hideous suctioning noise, whacks the trees out of the way. I throw my knife at the Salty—a last desperate attempt to bring that hateful creature down. The batterkite’s grasping arm swipes at me. I roll quick as a cub into the lucky hollow of an ancient arbutus. The tube gropes around the forest floor for me, sucking up leaves and branches, pulling up smaller trees. The kite hovers so low that I can hear my sisters wailing inside its belly. The arbutus is an old one from the time before, a tree that has survived all the changes. Its roots go down into the spacious earth. I follow the path of a thick, twisted root with enough space underneath for a Grist sister to slide down. I follow its spiralling length as low as it will go. In the womb of the earth, I curl myself into a ball. Above me, the ripping and sucking continues. I can still hear my sisters sob and howl, though faintly now. Inside the hollow cavity of my chest, my heart thunders, threatening to burst open like the sky at the start of the new monsoons.

  At last, the batterkite gives up. I hear the trees spring upright as it lifts away. I stay furled in my hiding place for a long time.

  A torrent of rain hits the ground above. Water rushes into my hiding place. I attempt to scramble back up the way I came, but it’s slippery and I fall back in. Water gushes over my face and I gasp for air, scramble-wriggle furiously to get out. I dig my claws into mud. I’ve survived a full HöST invasion; I will not drown in the roots of a tree, not even a very old one. I squirm. I claw. I’m tossed up onto the slippery forest floor, covered in mud like blood but otherwise intact. One lucky sister, praise be to our Holy Mother, truly she is great.

  I scour the forest floor for my knife, kick at dead pine needles, sand, succulent, and sage. No luck. That cursed Salty has taken everything. I will hunt it and murder it to little pieces. At least I’ve got my second, smaller knife.