The Tiger Flu

by Larissa Lai

  Soon, steaming dishes are placed on the long communal table, and Kora is invited to eat. The food smells strange, and she has no appetite. One of the sisters loads her plate and places it in front of her. There is no way around it. She eats.

  Kora recognizes some of the flavours. There are vegetables from the elevator. There are also mushrooms that she doesn’t know and wet, sour fruits that have been cooked into a grainy, meaty pudding. Not pleasant to her taste buds, but she doesn’t want to offend these silent, benevolent sisters.

  As she eats, she feels a presence to her right? “Mom?” she whispers. The presence pats her leg. She feels a presence to her left. The goat nudges her old left hand.

  The sisters help Kora back to the cushions on the floor. They lie down beside her, and collectively all life in the Dark Kitchen falls into a deep slumber. Kora dreams again, stranger things than she dreamt in the Dark Baths, things without words or images.

  40

  ENG’S FIGMENTS

  KIRILOW GROUNDSEL // NEW ORIGINS ARCHIVE

  NODE: AUTUMN EQUINOX

  DAY: 9

  I’M AWAKENED BY A DULL THUD, AS THOUGH SOMETHING HEAVY HAS landed atop the roof of the New Origins Archive. Our Mother of blood and bacon, it’s a fleshy thing that weighs down both the building and my spirit. I’m overcome with journey weariness.

  There’s a knock at my door. I open my eyes. Haul my leaden body upright. I light a candle, yank my tunic over my head, and drag my feet across the lush if worn carpet. Place my hand on the knob. I shiver.

  Blink my eyes open. I’m still in bed and someone knocks insistently. Had I dreamt I was by the door? Go away, go away, who needs you? The knocking becomes thumping, bang bang bang. I haul my carcass out of bed for real this time, light my candle, put on my tunic, and go to open it. Myra stands there in a yellow nightgown, looking ridiculously unlike herself.

  “Let me in. Quick!” She pushes past me and shuts the door.

  “Someone has taken Kora Ko. What should we do, Doctor Kirilow?” Her eye twitches oddly.

  “What do you mean ‘taken’?”

  “I mean kidnapped. I mean imprisoned. She’s not in her room. Go see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  She grabs my hand and pulls, barely giving me time to snatch up my robe. We tiptoe down the brightly lit hallway. If anyone comes, there’s nowhere to hide.

  I hear footsteps behind me. Our Mother who art artful. I pull Myra quickly around the corner.

  “We’ve been seen,” I whisper. “We should go back.”

  “Not possible,” says the feisty Cordova girl. A scale beetle scuttles over the crown of her head. “Come on.”

  We turn another corner. Here’s the room they gave Kora. Myra pulls a bump key from beneath her nightgown. She inserts it in the lock. The key promptly snaps.

  “Our Mother’s guts,” I curse.

  “This kind of lock is so obsolete.”

  “Everything old is new again,” I say.

  Myra’s got small fingers, ones used to picking locks. But they are no use in this ancient building. I push her away and, with my large but practised surgeon’s hand, manage to fish the broken key out of the lock. I pull a needle from my tunic pocket and try again as the footsteps echo closer and closer. The lock clicks and we push in, just as I catch a glimpse of an animal at the corner of the hall. My mind must be playing tricks.

  The bedclothes sprawl in disarray. No Kora Ko.

  “Of all the dishonourable, sneaky, Mother-cursèd things,” I hiss.

  “I told you. What should we do?”

  “Elzbieta thinks I’m no good for my debt.”

  “Or she wants my delinquent Cordova sister more than renminbi.”

  “I found that girl,” I say. “That little Susie belongs to me.”

  “Someone really doesn’t think so,” says Myra.

  It feels wrong to go through her things, but we do it anyway.

  I find Kora’s torn and muddy blue dress, a small bag with three pieces of hard tack in it and a tube of that nasty eyeliner that all the Cordova girls wear. In the luxe private bathroom, the tap’s been run and the hairbrush used. A bit of metallic scale casing sticks to it.

  When I return to the bedroom, Myra is gone. “Hey, Cordy!” I call. “Where are you?”

  I go back out into the hall. No sign of the Cordova Dancing School’s best thief. What I do notice is a bit of animal fur caught in the textured coral plaster of the hallway wall. I pull it off and sniff it. It smells like elk.

  I pull Kora’s bedroom door quietly shut and follow the trail. It leads farther down the hallway, drawing me deeper into the archive. I round another corner. Halfway down the hall, there’s a small blue door that gapes wide open.

  Apprehensively, I go to it. It opens onto an abysmal darkness. I stare down the dark passage, and as I do, the weight of my travel-weary body returns as an ache in my bones. I catch a whiff of something unpleasantly familiar. N-lite. I try to call for Myra, but only a hoarse rasp emerges from my throat. “My … ra … Cor … dy …”

  The darkness thickens like mist. The drug enters my lungs and a green film descends over my eyes.

  “My … ra …” I groan.

  There is no answer. I put a foot into the darkness and step onto something round and smooth. It rolls down the stone steps with a fleshy bump and thump.

  “Myra?” This time a hiss-whisper I can’t control.

  In the darkness, a hand reaches out and grabs my arm. A yelp escapes my mouth.

  “Sh!” says a familiar voice. Not Myra’s. So familiar and so homey I can almost smell bitter greens steaming.

  I fling my arms around the dark figure. “Mother double! Glorybind.”

  “Quiet, daughter,” she says. “You’ve entered a precinct of Our Mother, a holy hallway of Eng.”

  I pull away. “Mother Glory? Is that really you?”

  “Of course, my daughter double. I’ve been waiting so long.”

  It feels like her. But a little worm in my brain cries, Careful, careful.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Come with me,” she says. “I will take you to the starfish. She may not seem herself. She has eaten the five forbidden roots and the shed flesh of the emigrants to Chang.”

  “Our Mother’s hooves and feathers,” I say, myself for a moment. “I have eaten that flesh too.”

  Old Glorybind claps her hand over my mouth. “Do you not understand where you are, child?”

  I shake my head, and she releases her hand.

  “These are the blessed convolutions of Our Mother, the holy hallway to eternal life on Eng. You must not take her name in vain. You must feel the remorse,” she says, touching my head. Where she touches, remorse floods through me.

  “Praise be to Our Mother of flow,” I say.

  “I raised you well after all,” says Old Glorybind.

  But she can’t stop the questions that pour out of me. “Is it really you?” I gush. “Have you been here all this time? Why didn’t you leave? And come look for me? Are our sisters here with you? Why did Isabelle Chow launch that batterkite against us? Mama?”

  She gazes at me as though she knows the answers to all these questions, but she says not a word.

  “Mama Glory, come on!”

  She smiles sadly.

  “If you love me at all, answer me. I’m your only living daughter double.”

  She gazes at me long and hard. Her eyes brim with tears. They spill over and splash on the cold stone steps.

  She takes my hand and tries to pull me farther into the darkness.

  “Why are you crying? If you can’t answer me, Mama, I can’t follow you.”

  Still she doesn’t speak. She pulls my hand harder, as though to say, Follow me and I’ll show you the things I can’t speak about.

  “I’m looking for a girl called Kora Ko. She has starfish abilities, Mama. Like my own lost beloved Peristrophe Halliana. Do you understand? I found another starfish, just like you asked. Is she dow
n here?”

  She grips my hand tighter and pulls harder.

  “I’m looking for Myra Mao too, a thief from Saltwater City who was travelling with us. She was ahead of me just a moment ago.”

  She pulls my hand even harder.

  “Why won’t you speak to me?”

  She pulls so hard, I stumble down several steps and nearly fall. “What terrible trick of Our Mother is this?”

  I burn with suspicion, but I so want this to be real. Her hand in mine feels the same as it always did.

  The green haze of N-lite surrounds me, dissolves my will. I allow myself to be pulled and step farther into the darkness. We enter a small cavern. I feel the space expand around me before I realize there is light. Phosphorescence glows softly off the stone walls, and I can see. There’s a face the size of a frying pan up in mine before I even know where it’s come from. I shriek. The breath is foul.

  “No, Sister Caulis,” says my mother double. “Groom Kirilow has not yet decided to join us. She has nothing to offer and nothing to say.”

  The large face pulls back, disappointed. Attached to it is the body of a very old woman with stringy grey hair, drooping breasts, and a sagging belly, naked as the day she was born. Her eyes are large and deep. She gazes at me balefully.

  I remember a Caulis Entadae at Grist Village. She was a quiet sister, older than me but younger than my mother double, who used to live at the edge of town with her sister double and two house cats. But she looked like the rest of us—dark hair, round face, short legs.

  “Mama, is this Sister Caulis of the blackberry pie?” I ask.

  That look again, of helpless sorrow. Why is it that she can speak but not answer my questions?

  Her gaze is so grim and hopeless, I wither beneath it.

  Finally, she opens her mouth. “Don’t mind Sister Caulis,” says Old Glorybind. “One day we will find a way to help her. Praise be to the great inventor Isabelle Chow—she is trying.”

  I brush my fingers along the phosphorescent wall, feel the damp earth crumble away at my touch. My fingers contact something smooth. Metal? I glance at it. The point of a triangle touches a circle. I brush away more dirt and can read part of a name. “Von Brau …”

  Her footsteps are getting away from me, echoing in the deep. I hurry after her.

  Hundreds of sisters emerge expectantly as we descend towards the planet’s tugging core. For a minute, I think one of them is Kora. “Hey, jailbird!” I yell. But she recedes into the earth of the wall and becomes part of it. What is this place?

  At last, deep down at the very bottom of this ancient copper quarry, we reach a pool of water, deep, warm, and strangely alive.

  “The mouth of Eng,” says Old Glorybind. “You must get in, daughter, to prove you are not afraid.”

  I feel fear. But also a strange attraction.

  “Go on,” says my mother double.

  I shudder.

  There’s a faint hissing sound then. The scent of N-lite intensifies, and the air grows subtly thicker with green gas.

  I feel my brain become spongy soft.

  “The opening won’t last forever,” Mother Glory says.

  I shed my clothes and step into the water.

  Its heat is soothing, and I half close my eyes. I wade in up to my waist. I float up onto my back and close my eyes. I see Peristrophe Halliana, or at least, her body, lying beside the body of Auntie Radix on a cedar pyre the height of a house from the time before. I see the descent of the batterkites that sit, squid-like, atop the old skyscrapers of Saltwater city, sucking up the biological remains of the flu-sick men who journey in mind only to Chang. I see HöST Security men round up terrified Grist sisters. I see nets of writhing sisters swing below batterkites lifting from the ground, up and away to Our Mother knows where. I strain to stay with the kites as they sail towards mountains, as wakefulness pushes me to feel the cooling water in which I float.

  My eyes blink open. There beside me, up to her ribs in dream water, stands not my mother double but my own dearest beloved, Peristrophe Halliana herself. Somewhere in the soggy sack of my brain, I’m aware that I’m supposed to be looking for Kora, not Peristrophe. Peristrophe is an impossibility.

  But I pull her into my arms and kiss her deeply. “Peristrophe! Alive after all? How can it be? I felt your stopped pulse. I laid your body on the pyre and brought a flame from our own hearth to light it.”

  She gazes at me from her full brown eyes with such grief.

  “Look how well your eyes have grown back! But who’s been taking care of you?” My eyes search the darkness for another groom, a rival, but I see none.

  I pick her up and cradle her in my arms, assisted by the buoyancy water gives. She weighs in my arms exactly as she should. “Come on, you’ll catch cold. Our Mother of hearts and roses, here you are, never mind how.”

  Something is not right, but I don’t care. She is here with me.

  Her hair streams with dream water, and bright new eyes shine from her head. She smiles sadly at me but says not a word.

  I take her warm, soft hand in my own rough, scabby one. “Can you talk? You have no idea how I’ve missed your voice, our conversation. I’ve seen so many things since you—left us. I went to Saltwater City and lived with a whole convent of lady Salties. I met the men who live with the tiger flu. They have a technology for saving minds if not bodies. They threw me in prison, but I escaped. And then a new police force took over the city … Peristrophe, can you hear me?”

  She radiates love. I close my eyes, relax for the first time since I saw that dirty Salty below the bluff near my cave. I help her stretch long and then float beside her.

  “What’s happened to you since I last saw you?”

  She doesn’t reply.

  “Are you still there?” I blink my eyes open to make sure. She smiles.

  “Will you wash my hair?” she asks.

  She does speak! Delight surges through me.

  “Of course, my love.” I drop back down to my feet. The pebbly bottom is pleasant against my toes. She continues to float, relaxed and lovely. I have no soap, but I massage her scalp, and run my fingers through her long hair so that it fans above her head in shifting, undulating strands.

  “I don’t want to give Auntie Radix my heart.”

  “Then you won’t give it to her, dearest. You are worth a thousand Auntie Radixes to me.”

  “Your mother double says I have to, and I have to do it now, or Auntie Radix will die.”

  Auntie Radix is dead. You are dead, says my head. But my mouth says, “I’ve never disobeyed my mother double.”

  “Would you disobey her to save me? Do you love me that much?”

  Yes.

  Glorybind appears above us then. “It’s time, my daughter double. Auntie Radix needs Peristrophe Halliana’s heart now. It’s now or never, dearest one.” Her face looks sad, so sad, but her words are firm and unwavering.

  I lift Peristrophe Halliana out of the water and up the underwater stone steps. She is so light!

  My mother double wraps us each in a towel. “Cutting table now. There’s no time.”

  In spite of my promise, I carry Peristrophe in the direction my mother double takes us. There’s an open door in the wall. Glorybind goes through it, and I follow. I’m in my operating room back at Old Grist Village. I’m wearing my worn operating smock. How can this be? All my favourite scalpels are laid out on a tray for me. There’s a pot of forget-me-do, and a small dose of precious poppy too.

  “Please,” Peristrophe begs. “Don’t cut me, Kirilow.”

  “It will be all right, my love,” I say. But my own heart is thumping in my meaty chest, loud as monsoon thunder.

  I give her the precious poppy.

  “Kiri, I’m afraid. I don’t want to.”

  I give her a cup of forget-me-do. Obediently, she gulps it down, but she is crying. “Please, please, dearest groom.”

  “The sisterhood won’t survive without us. We are the last line of defence against
our own extinction. I have to cut, my darling.”

  No, no, no. Don’t make me do this!

  “Please don’t. I will die. I have the flu. I’m not strong enough to root a new heart.” She’s sobbing now. I pull her up into my arms and cradle her until, under the influence of precious poppy, she falls asleep.

  I don’t want to cut her. Please don’t make me, Mama Glory. My hand picks up the scalpel and I begin to cut.

  She is so thin it is difficult to cut without damaging major arteries. I have to cut a rib. It pops unpleasantly. Not enough. Another. Pop! Still, I don’t have the space I need. One more. Pop! When I finally get inside the body cavity to the most secret of chambers, I see her heart for the first time. It is small, much smaller than in my imagination, like the heart of a young deer. I harvest it with the gentlest incision. Although she remains asleep, she releases a thin, sad whine.

  I carry her live heart, pumping and thumping in the bowl of my hands. Outside the room, Auntie Radix’s young groom, Bombyx Mori, is waiting. I place my beloved’s heart in Bombyx Mori’s waiting hands. I turn to go back to Peristrophe Halliana, to check the new heart that should be rooting now in place of the old one. The door to the operating room is gone.

  I’m awash in horror and grief. I cannot bear it. The blue pool is still there. I shed my clothes and step into it. Cleanse me, Blue Mother, wash me clean.

  I fall into a sick sleep.

  I OPEN MY EYES. GLORYBIND GROUNDSEL SITS BESIDE THE POOL WITH A towel. “What was that, Mama? Was that real?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “But she died in my arms, you remember, back at Grist Village.”