“Oh will you, now?” The girl smirks. “And who asked you to do my dealings?”
And suddenly Peyt sees himself through Ned’s eyes. Standing in the doorway, half in shade, half out. A skinny old man with glass in his gaze. Lips scabbed from a thousand little cuts. Wrists jutting from salt-stained cuffs. Pants and jacket worn inside out, worn clear through at the bends. In that smirk, he sees Ned picturing him alone for years in this cabin; she doesn’t believe a woman would shack up with him, that any woman would stick around for long.
He isn’t going to do this for her. Not exactly. Not only.
Wringing the shirt, he looks from Ned to Amelia and back. Both so much older than when they’d first loved him. One all the brighter for being out of his care, the other growing duller and duller within it.
She doesn’t need me, Peytr thinks. She never has.
“Please,” he says. “Take a load off. With that limp, it’ll take you twice as long to find what you’re after. And you know greys and crooks can smell weakness a mile off …”
“It’s no limp,” she says. “Just getting a feel for my land legs is all.”
When she smiles, Ned looks nothing like Mireille. Or Jean. Or him. She’s got a style of brash all her own. “I’ve scooped more crooks than you can imagine, pops. And en’t much they can steal from me now that I won’t get back in the end. One day, their ’winds’ll be filling my sails with the rest of them.”
Peytr’s pulse races as she snatches the shirt and skips down the stairs, getting smaller and smaller as she jogs down the drive.
“Don’t go,” he says, too quiet for any but the greys to hear.
Pausing at the roadside, Ned turns around. Peyt takes a step forward, then another, another. Eyes stretched wide, staring at her hard as he can. Memorising.
“You wanna help?” she shouts, cupping hands around the black dot of her mouth. “Keep them so-called dogs off my rig.”
He stops. Raises a hand. Keeps it up until she disappears around the corner.
After feeding Amelia, washing and changing her, Peytr places her on top of the quilt and clips her nails one last time. When he’s done, he doesn’t tuck her back into bed. He leaves her out in plain sight.
With the front door open, the cabin’s temperature has dropped by several degrees. It’s not cold enough to see frost on Amelia’s breath, but the chill pinks her nose and blues her fingers and toes. Peyt sucks a shard to hush the garish noise of her suffering. Then, hoping she’ll stay quiet and warm for the duration, he snugs her in gloves and socks and knee-high slippers. Jams her nightgown into wool leggings, under a long skirt that laces all the way up the front. Buttons her into the corduroy jacket Mireille neglected to take when she left them.
The chill is bracing. The glass sharpens Peyt’s resolve. Ned’s been gone for a couple of hours—even with a hobble, she’s got to be back soon. Heat blooms in his chest and for a moment, just for a moment, he enjoys an unearned flush of pride. She’s a great kid. And it’s better, he thinks, that she’s not too pretty. That she’s toned down the surface-brightness—no girlish lustre on her fingertips, no embroidered scarves poking above her collar—saving any polish for her mind instead. Ned’s a real spark, that’s for sure. Shining on the inside, camouflaged in brown and grey. She’s resourceful, sky-smart. But she’d have to be, wouldn’t she? After all she’s survived. Today and all the days that came before. Floating free. Thriving among strangers. Living off gumption and ’wind. Alone, she’s more parent than Peyt’s ever been. He doesn’t pretend otherwise.
She’s bound to take better care of Amelia than he has.
A quick rummage through the junk drawer produces two darning needles, each as long as Peyt’s middle finger. They aren’t as sharp as they once were. When junkies pissed her off, Amelia used them to etch sigils into the glass bombs, gouging away more than half of the dream-film. She’d tell them the symbols were potent grey magic, limited stock, and charge them double for half the hit. Now Peyt scrapes the needles clean, then hunts for suitable thread.
It doesn’t have to be sinew or horsehair, the thinks, unravelling a knitted blanket and soaking the strands of wool in a metal bucket he’d found catching drips under the sink. Bringing the tools outside, he lowers his hood and listens for the lopsided drag of Ned’s feet on the gravel road.
Take the road… . Take the road… . Take any road …
Stretched from pole to pole in all directions the power lines are mute, the hum of evening energy still a few hours off. The dogs have denned until dark, their greedy limbs curled around the growls that drive them from hiding each night. Across the way, a communal garden’s gone to seed, the caretaker’s hut bulldozed. Tall steel stakes jut from the flattened earth, rusted lengths spray-painted orange and green and fluorescent pink; an architect’s code that builders have left half-deciphered. Two blocks over, frayed nylon cords clank against tall poles lining the highway. Tattered flags flail in the wind, guiding all eyes to an embassy too white and marble-slick for its own good. Closer to home, thermals play rooftop ’stacks like pan flutes, sending haunting notes across the construction site, parking lot and street, down the drive, up to the porch where Peytr stands listening. Hearing such longing in the music. A summons to another life. A hint of somewhere after.
Between his fingertips, he spins the wool thin. Sucks a point into its tip and threads the first needle. Starting with the left sail, Peytr sews. With uneven stitches, not too tight and not too loose, he pokes metal through fabric woven from words, quivering for flight. Gently, he pinches serifs, sentence fragments, nonsensical ramblings and holds their ragged edges together. Under his fingertips, repetitive cries for help. Confused questions. Exclamations in more languages than Peyt’s ever seen. He sews them all, looping strength and flexibility into the wings. He sews until the needle breaks. Then he threads the second one, eyes on the glider, ears on the road. Take the road… . Take the road… . Take the road… . When blisters form and pop on his fingers, he rubs the liquid into each new seam, as if such a small splash of himself can seal what he’s done, make it permanent. Shadows deepen as he works, forcing him further and further off the porch, into the gravel yard. Being so exposed makes him nervous, but he needs to see what he’s doing even at the risk of being seen doing it.
Anxiety lends him focus. For once his limbs do what they’re told.
He works quickly.
The wool runs out with less than a hand’s width of the right wing still to be stitched.
Close enough? He tilts the frame this way and that. Letters continue to trickle from the small tear, one or two at a time. None of the losses make sense, though. None are important commands. None, Peytr hopes, will interfere with propulsion. Navigation. The glider’s ability to soar.
Pushing harness rigging aside, he crawls underneath the reinforced tarp and takes a few deep breaths. Sucking in the smell of dirt and sweat and humid tents, he starts to shiver, then centres himself before standing, the sails a welcome weight on his back. He can hardly feel the new seams bolting in jags across the wingspan. He can hardly feel the ground.
Afternoon has slumped without his notice. The sky has adopted the ’ray’s shade of rubber. Aloft, he thinks, the craft will be near-invisible, blending with cumulus and haze.
Perfect time for take-off. Peytr hefts the thing easily, getting a feel for its balance. Holding the control bar, he reaches up and strums the battens. Imagines them illuminated in flight, each strut glowing as starfire shines through bone. As he strokes the spines, countless farewells dart like minnows in the surrounding material, avoiding then pursuing his touch. Grazing the sails, his ’wind capers. Nervous words kiss nervous words. In his grip, the glider thrums.
Peyt isn’t a big man, but he’s heavier than the skybunker girls. Definitely heavier than Neddie—probably Ned and Amelia combined. The metal sings as he bounces the control bar on his upturned palms. How much bulk can this thing bear? Overburdened, how far can it go? How high?
How hi
gh? How high? How high?
The ’wind-fabric responds to the turbine of Peyt’s thoughts, billowing with urgency. He glances at the cabin door, ears perked. Amelia isn’t stirring. Turning, he scopes the road: empty from tenements to construction site to corner. Hurry, he tells himself. Hurry.
Ned is wearing the only harness, but there are straps and clasps hanging from the kingpost and crossbar. Fingers clumsy with haste, Peytr clips whatever he can to his belt. Front and back and sides, the cords tug, eager, taking control, jamming his belt up under his ribs, pulling pants up, knees up, feet up, up, up …
Peytr runs. Fast, faster. Legs pumping, boots crunching, soul light. Halfway down the drive, thermals pluck at the wings, tickling the skin, the whirring cloth-thoughts, catching. Faster, faster, he runs. Through the burn, the doubt—how much can it hold?—aching for height, aching to coast above the dead fields below. Gasping, he runs. Off the lot, across the street, to the once-garden, away. Leaving a trail of last words behind him. Approaching the stakes, their tips vibrant, runway beacons, he tilts the keel skyward. Hoping Ned isn’t here to see it. Not yet. Arms strained—will it hold?—he jumps. Sails snap taut, ’winds gust, toes skim rocky soil, and now he is laughing, now he is weightless, now he’s enveloped in air.
Until, just as quickly, he’s not.
Peyt’s bitten tongue throbs. His knees are scratched and bruised, not broken. There are several new dings in the ’ray’s crossbar and one of the strap-hooks has yanked loose, but the wings are no worse off than before—Peyt protected them first as he fell. Shouldering the rig, he limps back to his yard. Mamma! Mamma! tumbles from the sails onto his head and snags in his collar. Death-blurts and final pleas glint on his wrists, apologies encrust his knuckles. When he’s settled on the stoop, he presses the stray cries back into place. He is heavy enough without extra worries on his back, too heavy for one spirited glider to carry.
It needs more thrust, he thinks, watching the cloth writhe and lift with each reabsorbed word. Maybe the panic wears off after a while? The frantic energy of last thoughts, fizzling, needing bodies and blood to keep them churning. Who knows how long Ned has been weaving this material, how many layers upon layers she’s salvaged from battlefields and schoolyards and shelled office blocks… . How much fuel she gathered from the dying before glass-makers came to wash faces and hands and chests. Who knows why girls like her carry only some wounded up to the ’bunkers, leaving so many others to rot on the ground. Are the chosen ones special? Peyt hopes not. He hopes they’re all very plain.
Ned rescues more than most, he decides. She’s Jean’s granddaughter, after all. She’s got the spine for it. She’s got the fuckin’ guts.
And Neddie’s ’wind has always been overactive—yes, maybe that’s it. Maybe the silliness Tantie scolded her for, the silliness Mimi encouraged, boosts his girl that much further than everyone else. Peytr chuckles. A stream of Ned’s would-be-names pours through his mind, from Arabella to this latest, this Valla.
Trapping all but the last, he tears Neddie’s pseudonyms into syllables—Grigognelle, Adelle, Orrelline—and crushes them into the canvas. The wings ripple, demanding more. So Peyt gives them Agnetta, Carlotta, Nanette. Serafina and Raha and Karaleen. Rowena and Tatjana and Dove—he gives them all, the inked and the spoken, the wished-for and the wished-to-be-rid-of. Finally, he gives them Ned, who was born Nell. He imagines her to life, full of colour and song, and he embroiders the glider with every detail, every flaw, every mistake that makes her his. With needle and thought, Peytr says his goodbyes.
When the girl appears at the end of the road, he sees only Valla: skybunker girl, final vision of the dying. Collector of farewells. Captain of the ’ray hovering at shoulder-height beside him.
Hurry, he thinks, wrapping his hands around the crossbar. Hurry.
It isn’t working.
Peytr runs and jumps and thinks light thoughts. Steam, breezes, balloons. Airships, trapeze artists, geese flying in a vee. Even full-bombed, he’s never felt so unbound, so aerodynamic. He’s a jet-fighter. A missile. A human cannonball. But no matter what he thinks, Valla is getting closer—she’s almost here—and he can hardly get off the ground.
A sob from nowhere, and tears, and gut-clenching frustration. Anger blooms in Peyt’s chest, a heat that trembles through veins, dredging long-buried hurts, pushing sweat from pores until he’s soaked, shaking, shivering, quaking with impotent motion, and he can’t do a fuckin’ thing about it, can he, and Amelia isn’t stirring, and he’s just standing here, grounded, going nowhere, and dying, dying to go.
In his grip, the glider thrums, whispering songs of the near-dead.
But that’s the problem, Peyt realises, anxiety hardening to certainty. I’m alive, he thinks, now running, now flying, away from the road, away from Valla and the driveway she’s racing towards. My ’wind isn’t enough. After wedging the ’ray between the porch rails, he sprints into the cabin, wordwind cursing:
I’m alive… . I’m alive… . I’m alive …
In the living room, he scrapes the divan over to what’s left of the glass-grove, climbs on it and starts picking. With only his shirt for a basket, he harvests the whole crop—enough bombs to annihilate a full platoon. One by one he licks them, testing their strength, tossing none aside. Brewed to last, Amelia’s tinctures are still potent. A final taste and halos bleed around the transparent spheres, the fingers holding them, the couch beneath Peytr’s feet. Time slows as he descends. An hour passes before his soles meet the floorboards. Years stretch between each of Valla’s boot steps, sprinting closer and closer outside. Cradled loosely against his body the glass chimes, a symphony of ice and mountaintops and snow.
All endings should sound like this, Peytr thinks, ignoring the sharpest notes.
The room spins until he’s facing the door. Valla’s slow-turning into the drive, a bag bouncing on her back. New buckles sparkle on her harness. Leather straps stretched from the fall have been clipped, repaired, reinforced. Good. He nods. That’s good. No point to it if she can’t support the extra weight.
Do it now, he tells himself, looking away for a second. A long, last second, looking at Amelia. Cocooned in winter layers, her cheeks have flushed. Braids have unravelled and fists have unclenched. Her lips are parted, gently curved. The extra clothes have filled her out; suddenly she looks plump and thirty again. For the first time in weeks, she looks comfortable. She looks, almost, better.
Irises bulge beneath her eyelids, roaming, following Peyt’s movements across the living room. She’s watching, he thinks. Not dreaming. She’s picturing what this place will look like without us. Wondering how long it will take the greys to move in. For the herd to realise we’re gone.
He looks at their life together, these four solid walls, the velvet warmth, the stability of treasures amassed, the wealth earned together, the wood and iron, the dreams—and nearly changes his mind.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a wordless eternity. “I hope—”
Amelia doesn’t ask him to finish. Not that it matters. She isn’t pink and plump and thirty again. She isn’t better. Her eyes are sunken graves. Breath clots in her lungs. Her nails grow and grow, puncturing skin. Time is making an empty sack out of her. And Peytr doesn’t know how else to stop it.
Outside, he dislodges the glider one-handed. It bobs up beside him, eager to fly. “Hold your horses,” he mutters, taking the steps two at a time. At the bottom, he throws it down and pins the right wing with his feet.
“Hey, pops!”
Should’ve taken off my boots, he thinks, but it’s too late. He steps onto the sutured panel, releases the hem of his shirt, drops the bombs. Follows them down.
“Get the fuck off her!”
On all fours, Peyt scrubs his stash into the sails. Dream-blizzards melt beneath his knees. Nightmares scrape his palms bloody. Valla’s a spitfire diving, attacking, shooting at him from all sides. Hollering nonsense, she drums her small fists into his back, shoulders, ears.
&nb
sp; “Enough,” Peyt says, smearing and scouring until everything’s scarlet. Crystal-coated words vibrate and buzz, the ’wind-wings crackling high. “Look.”
Valla tackles him and the dream-hyped glider slips free.
“Catch it,” the girl shouts and Peytr does, barely, stretched to his full height and jumping. With it firmly in hand, he locks his elbow around a porch rail to keep the thing from dragging him skyward.
“It’s ready to go.” He holds the ’ray up, well out of Valla’s reach. She tears up the steps behind him, primed to spring. “Calm the fuck down and look at it.”
Finally Valla stops. Looks. Listens to what he’s saying. “So give her here, then.”
“I’m trying.” Peyt smiles sadly. Doesn’t feel Valla’s punches. Switching hands on the crossbar, he cranes to look inside. “Please. Take her with you.”
Arms crossed, Valla follows his gaze through the doorway. “She’s on the brink all right. But how’s she to blow my sails when she en’t got no ’wind?”
“Doesn’t need one,” he says, smirking. “She always gets the strongest dreams.”
The skybunker girl eyes her craft warily, then takes another look at Amelia and shrugs.
“Please,” Peyt says again. “She’s light as glass.”
The next day, Peytr buries Amelia’s belongings in the backyard. The camp stoves Rupe gave her, the beakers and alembics. The dancing ladies off the kitchen sill. The good mugs. The sewing kit, minus two needles. The silk handkerchiefs and embroideries. The chamber pot and sponges and threadbare towels. The fine clothes she never wore, the bed linens she always did. The clippers. He can’t do much about the furniture, but he strips curtains and cushions, takes planks from the dining table, leaves cabinets without doors or drawers. It takes a day to dig a hole big enough to fit everything, and another to fill it in. His palms weep as old blisters reopen beside the new. He wraps them in Amelia’s flannel cloths, keeps digging until he’s exhausted. Much later, he lies curled on the bare mattress, using his full pack for a pillow. He leaves the front door open, reacquainting himself with the moon-dark cold. Listening for the herd. For the sneak and quiver of greys. He lights a candle stub, and listens to it burn.
Lament for the Afterlife Page 34
