by Larissa Lai
“Don’t have friends. Definitely no Salty friends.”
“Saltwater City is a big place, Groom Groundsel,” says she of the excessive black stuff. “You’re gonna have to let go of your bigotry.”
“She needs tea,” whispers Calyx, still so full of fear.
“No tea,” I say. “Don’t you dare groom me with my own teas. I’ll slaughter you all. Don’t you doubt it for one split second!”
“Are you sure this is the famous doctor Kirilow Groundsel?” Myra asks Calyx. Finally, she stops touching me.
The idiot Calyx nods. “We lost our whole village. She is not herself.”
“The Salt Grist sisters been seeking her a long time.” Myra says. “I didn’t believe she was real, they been searching so long. Sure is a nasty thing.”
“You’re a nasty thing,” I hiss.
“Of course she’s real. I told you where I was from,” says Calyx. “If you were looking for her, why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Thought you were fooling when you said you were a Grist sister,” Myra says. She looks at me, then Calyx, then back at me.
I squirm beneath her discomfiting gaze.
“The doctor’s older, yes? But otherwise you look exactly the same. Freaky deaky.”
I shoot her my most resentful stare.
The other one comes in then, with a cup of my own forget-me-tea.
“You don’t groom me with my own teas! Our Mother damn you for all eternity!”
The one called Myra holds my nose. The one called Tania pours it into my gasping, spitting gob. Filthy Salties!
I wake up for a split second. I’m in a sling tied to a long straight pole. There’s a Salty on either end, schlumping me down the far side of the terp. So undignified! So sleepy. Out.
21
FORAGE DANCE
KORA KO // SALTWATER FLATS
NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD
DAY: 11
MODESTA STOPS KORA IN THE HALLWAY AFTER LUNCH. THE MORNING rains have just stopped and the sky looks bright. Old Chang looks benevolently down on them. “You can’t just eat and not work.”
“I’m willing to work.”
Soraya is right behind her. “Good. We will teach you the forage dance.”
“I’d just as soon go with Velma.”
“Madame asked us to teach you while Myra and Tania are away. Something could happen to them at any minute and we’ve got to share skills. Besides, it’s time. You know our main trade is in cans from the time before. We found a buried supermarket at the border to the second ring. You’re going to come help us clear it out.”
“Velma says there are no more supermarkets in Saltwater Flats.”
“Well, she’s just a kid. What does she know?”
“I don’t have a catcoat yet.”
“You don’t need a catcoat, spoiled brat. You have to learn to do this without. That’s how you earn one. By the time the day’s done, you’ll be a better forager than Myra herself.”
They take the school’s only truck and put two furry, mewling catcoats in the back. It’s a long ride across the city, through the East Side where all the scale manufacturers have their factories, through the commercial zone where they sell their wares, farther east and through the massive Eastern Night Market. At its edges there are hawkers selling tea eggs and radish cakes from small carts with charcoal braziers, disposable shoes and clothing from the UMK, zeptocameras, DIY heart bypass kits, foldable motorcycles, while-you-wait genetically tailored pets. Farther in there are vendors of things from the time before: old radios, rusting bike parts, motherboards and hard drives from ancient computers, battered nylon jackets, inventive toys made from bits of old blenders, plastic bottles, incandescent lightbulbs. There are vendors who sell clothes too: warm coats made from processed seaweed, beautiful shoes with pointed toes, long skirts made of heavy zeptohemp across the surface of which old movies play. Farther still, different dancing girls flog found or stolen cans. Modesta points her index and third fingers at them and gives them the toy gun salute.
On they drive, into the uncertain suburbs that line the Stó:lō. Most houses are boarded up, sad and forlorn. But that does not necessarily mean empty.
“Watch the houses for any sign of activity, and tell me right away if you see anything, Lady Kora. Girls have lost their lives out here.” Modesta speaks kindly, to Kora’s great surprise.
Soraya drives them to the very edge of the first ring. They stop beside an old landslide. There’s earth heaped on one side of the road, and on the other, a row of empty, dilapidated houses stands.
“Is the supermarket under there?”
“There is no supermarket. We’re going to take a plague house.” Soraya points to one of the boarded-up mansions, one with a gnarled old apple tree on the front lawn, just coming into bud. The lawn is overgrown and wild. The grass comes up to Kora’s waist.
“A plague house?”
“We scoped it out a couple of weeks ago. There’s lots of cans in there that no one needs.”
“Is everyone dead?”
“We don’t know for sure. If they’re alive, they’re not very alive. We can take them.”
Kora is horrified. “I don’t think Madame would want that.”
“Well, Madame doesn’t need to know, does she? There are no supermarkets left in the first ring. Madame wants to believe there are, and it’s our duty to uphold that belief. We used to cross into the other quarantine rings, but Cosmopolitan Earth has just closed the One-Two border, even to us. The city needs more cans, and it’s our job to get them. So. In you go.”
“I’m not going in there.”
“Of course you are.”
The house is a large single-family dwelling, shaped like a horseshoe, with a long courtyard before the front door. If there’s anyone alive inside, they will see the Cordova girls way before the girls see them.
“Better to go round back,” says Modesta.
She makes them tromp through the wet, overgrown side and backyards, three princesses storming Sleeping Beauty’s castle. There are cleaver vines growing over the already overgrown bushes. By the time they get to the back, all of them are covered in little itchy, spiky burrs. Modesta and Soraya pull off as many as they can, then put on their catcoats and vanish from sight. Kora feels exposed and alone, so far from home, with no catcoat to cover her and make her invisible.
“Come here, I’ll teach you the door-opening dance,” says Modesta, very close by. She presses something into Kora’s hand. “This is a bump key.”
“I don’t want to. You do it.”
“We didn’t take you here for entertainment purposes. We took you here so you’d get good at the heist. Take this.” She pushes a screwdriver into Kora’s other hand. “Come on, try it.”
Reluctantly, Kora sticks the key in the lock. By touch, Modesta shows her how to pull it out a notch, turn it slightly to the right, and tap it with the handle of the screwdriver. The first time, it doesn’t work. Nor the second. But the third time, the key turns in the lock, and Kora pushes the door inward.
There is something blocking the door. It takes the three of them, shoving hard, to get it open. The back foyer is full of corpses, rotting in the advancing summer heat. The stench is incredible.
“Our Mother,” says Kora.
“Can’t afford to be squeamish, Princess Kora,” says a voice from her other side. Soraya. “If nature’s done the killing for you, then you don’t need to do it yourself.”
How did my life come to this? Kora thinks. She steps over the putrefying bodies, trying not to look. Her heart fills with pity for the dead. Her brain races, hoping desperately that her immunity is as good as it has seemed to be so far.
“Come on,” says Modesta. “Soraya, you check the kitchen. I’ll go upstairs, and Kora will go to the basement.”
“I don’t want to go to the basement.”
“Don’t be a baby. You gotta learn this somehow.” Modesta pushes her towards the stairs. She presses a small pistol into Kora
’s hand.
“You shouldn’t have,” says Kora.
“In case nature needs a little help.” Modesta shows her how to hold the pistol high on the grip and lay her support hand thumb over thumb. How to release the safety, line up the sights, and pull back the trigger smoothly with the pad of her index finger.
“At least come with me.”
“How you gonna learn if I go with you? It’s simple. Go down there and see if there are any cans. If there are, fill your bag and get out. You’re the closest to the door. We have to go through the whole house.”
“What if there are more bodies? What if there’s someone alive down there?”
“That’s what you have a gun for.” Modesta fits a headlamp over Kora’s head. “Don’t turn this on until you’re sure you don’t have company.”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” says Kora. She has nowhere to hide her terror.
“Madame can’t know, or we’re all expelled. Go now.”
“Dog damn it,” moans Kora. “Doggy doggy doggy damn it. I want a catcoat.”
“Well, you don’t have one,” Modesta says. “Now go.”
Kora steps into the dark and pads down the stairs on the softest, lightest feet she can muster. There is enough light coming from the main landing that, as her eyes adjust, she can make out a hallway and the doors to several rooms.
She opens the first and the reek of rotting flesh rushes at her and makes her gag. She turns on the headlamp. Three half-rotted bodies curl together on a mattress on the floor. She retches softly. Pulls the door shut.
In the second room lie an adult man and woman and three children, all dead and decaying. She tries not to let the sight into her head. She pulls that door shut too.
The third is a storage room. Full of cans, bottles, and jars of everything Cordova girls dream of. Peanut butter, tuna, tomatoes, soup, juice, beer. She rapidly stuffs her knapsack. She hears scuffling above. A scream. A door slam. Are Modesta and Soraya outside laughing? She grabs cans and jars at random and fires them into her bag. When it’s full, she pulls the drawstring at the top shut and turns to leave.
“Got everything you need?” says a deep voice behind her. She looks to where the voice is coming from. There’s an old man, sitting on the floor in the storage room, his face covered in lesions. He is very thin. He sucks in a great wad of snot.
“I do,” she says. “Yes.”
She turns and runs.
He gets up, barrels after her.
She runs down the hall and up the stairs. At the top, the door is closed. What the hell? She turns the handle. It’s locked. Crawling below her on the stairs, the old man grabs at her legs. She draws the pistol, levels it at him as best her shaking hands can manage. Kora really does not want to kill anyone. Especially not a sick old man.
“You steal from the dying. Is that the kind of honour you live by?” He grabs her ankle, and she slips. The gun goes off.
“Oh Mother. Modesta! Soraya!”
He lets go of her ankle, slips helplessly back down the stairs. Did she hit him?
“Are you okay?” she yells, stupidly, into the stairwell.
There is no answer.
She could go check on him, but she doesn’t. She fires at the handle and the door pops open. She runs out, over the heap of decaying bodies, and into the sunlight. Modesta and Soraya are there on the back lawn, laughing their heads off.
“I think I might have killed an old man.”
“If you did, you gave nature a hand,” says Soraya, eyes bright with amusement.
“Don’t laugh!”
“Come on, come on, let’s go,” says Modesta. They run through the burrs and brambles back the way they came.
“Why did you lock me down there with him?”
“We couldn’t make your work too easy.”
They jump in the truck with their loot, tear back across the city. Modesta and Soraya laugh and hoot. “Wooooooooooooooo-hooooooooooooo! Cordova School revolution!”
Kora’s head is full of the repulsive, desperate old man. Is he still alive? He could have been her uncle Wai. And she did exactly what he accused her of. She stole from the dead and dying. And then she shot him. She thinks of her goat Delphine, bleeding to death in her rickety shed. She would give anything to have Delphine back, and to go back to the arms of her family before there was sweet goat blood on Charlotte’s hands.
On the other side of the Eastern Night Market, a HöST Security hummer faces them at the solar stoplight. A jolt of fear runs through her, and her breath catches. That’s it, she thinks. We’re done for. But the light changes, and the hummer goes right on by. Kora breathes again. She wants to cry, unsure whether it’s because of loss or guilt or fear or simple relief. She stares fiercely out the window of the truck.
22
GROOMED FOR TRAVEL
KIRILOW GROUNDSEL // NEW ORIGINS ARCHIVE AND COSMOPOLITAN
EARTH COUNTRY (SECOND QUARANTINE RING)
NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD
DAY: 9
I WHIZ THROUGH SPACE. MAMA GLORYBIND! I’M IN A TIME-BEFORE wheelbarrow tearing along the ruined highway at such speed. I never knew that working wheelbarrows still existed. The desert rips by. Where are these horrible children taking me?
My mother double and I bred this strain of forget-me-do for intense dreams. I tumble into one. I’m in a cavern deep below the earth. The walls shimmer the beautiful pale green of rusted copper. I recognize my sisters all around me. Caulis Entadae, Concha Arcae, Flos Carthami, Gelsemii Elegantis, Lapis Chloriti, Stigma Croci, Thallus Laminariae … My heart spills over with joy and relief. I must free them! But their eyes are wide as river rocks, their pupils so black and round I fear falling into each sister as I pass her. The cavern is convoluted. We follow its curves. As we go deeper, I hear the sisters fuss and mutter. What are they doing down there? Where the line ends, there’s a woman with a knife and a wooden block. The knife falls and Sister Lapis Chloriti screams. My sisters have lined up to have their right hands chopped off. Then I’m not looking at them anymore. I’m next in line.
NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD
DAY: 11
I’M AWAKE IN THE SOFTEST, CLEANEST BED IN A WHITEWASHED ROOM hung with colourful rugs. The rugs blossom knotted flowers beautiful as Our Mother could make them and then some. I remember these flowers. I’m at the New Origins Archive. This is the same room Elzbieta Kruk put me in when I came here last year with my mother double for my rite of spring. Pale sunlight pours in through the high windows, and outside birds sing brightly. Although I’m not sure why I do it, I check my hands to see if I still have both. Flex and stretch the fingers of each, marvelling at their wholeness.
Last thing I remember, I was in Peristrophe’s waterproof tent with Calyx and those two nasty Salties. Someone was holding my nose, and someone—that traitor Calyx!—was pouring my own good tea down my very unwilling gullet. Mama Glory, I’m a prisoner! What will become of me now? Courage, daughter, I say to myself in her voice. You’ve got to be strong.
“Finally, you’re awake!” Calyx beams brightly from a chair in the corner. How did she get in here? “They are preparing a gurney to take you across Cosmopolitan Earth country before the borders close. Thought you would sleep for days! The fourth wave of tiger flu is official in Saltwater City, and the CEC is closing borders to prevent infection in the plague rings. The world is upside down as a dead deer. We gotta go now if we want to get there at all. Isn’t it exciting?”
“Not really,” I say. Of all the sisters who could have survived, how did I get stuck with the annoying Calyx Kaki?
“The CEC is granting a last diplomatic passage because of me. Because we initiates used to cross their territory all the time, on our way to Mólkwcen Mountain for ice.” She glows with foolish pride. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can damn well walk!”
Save me, I say to myself in my mother double’s voice.
“You should have a little respect,” says Calyx Kaki, as she comes to the b
edside to help me up. “The CEC is a nuclear power. They could blow us all to kingdom come anytime they want.”
What’s that, kingdom come? Where does Calyx get this language? I let her help me out of bed. My tunic has been washed and hangs over a rail at the foot. How long have I been here?
“Daydream later, Groom Kirilow,” Calyx says. “Look, I repacked your sack for you. Nice and neat, and every item accounted for. See?” She holds the top open as though I could actually see what’s at the bottom. “Cordova girls may be thieves, but they didn’t rob you this time. They’re gonna help us find our sisters. And that Salty too.”
My body aches from lying down so long. I stretch and twist. Then I yank the bag away from her and dump it out, undoing all her careful work. Needles, womb bombs, knives, and food tumble to the bed. A spare tunic and summer shoes. The precious tent. Maybe these Salties are trustworthy after all.
“Come on, Groom Kirilow. Cosmopolitan Earth is closing its borders. We gotta go now!”
The door opens, and the high priestess of the New Origins Archive, Elzbieta Kruk stands there, pale and lovely as a spirit of the air. “I took the liberty of paying passage for you from the Third Quarantine Ring to the second. Because your mother double was my friend,” she says.
“My mother double dead?”
“You don’t know that, my young friend. Go and find her now. You can pay me back when we meet again.”
“Do you know what happened to my sisters?”
“All I can tell you is that four days ago, many batterkites passed over the archive. I assume there was a major offensive through the quarantine rings by HöST, since they are the only ones this side of the Pacific Pond who have batterkites. But I don’t know anything for sure. You should go now, while Cosmopolitan Earth is still feeling hospitable.”
“Their only condition is that we wear these blindfolds,” Calyx Kaki says, holding up two soft scarves, one dark green, the other dark blue. “Pretty, aren’t they?”
“I won’t be blindfolded.”
“You gonna stay at the New Origins Archive then, and never see your sisters again? And never catch that Salty?”
