“Your eyes itch?”
“Their eyes. They make me itch.”
Her English had improved. A lot. “I’m supposed to figure out whether or not you’re dangerous. Are you dangerous?”
“Are you?”
“Not to you.”
“But you are. You are dangerous.”
Kessler gazed off into nothing. “I suppose I could be. I suppose it’s the same way with you, then? You could be dangerous. But I’ll bet what you really want is to be left alone. Is that right?”
Nothing again.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Outside.”
“You mean the wilderness?”
“I am from outside,” she repeated.
“We need to find out who your parents are. Where you come from. So we can figure out where to put you.”
“Put me back.”
“We can’t do that. You have to have a home. A place to be, with others like you.”
“There are none like me.”
“No parents?”
“No.”
“No family at all?”
“Do you have family?”
He laughed. “This conversation is about you, not me. Tell me about your family.”
“There is only me. Tell me about family. Tell me about yours.”
“All right, fine,” he said. “I grew up in New Petersburg. My father was a soldier and he died when I was very young. My mother passed away three years ago. Lung cancer. I have a much older half-sister who lives in Boston, from my mom’s first marriage, but we never talk. Your turn. Where did you learn to speak English?”
“People. I hear them. I listen.”
“What sort of people?”
“Every sort. They come to the places they should not be and fill them with their words.”
“You say they shouldn’t be there. Should you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She was quiet for a while. Then: “I am not allowed in the city. Or civilized lands. Ever.”
“Why? Who told you that?”
“Does not matter who. Not allowed. Not welcome among kings or gods.”
“We could send you back with us. To the United States. We don’t have any kings there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. We have a president.”
“There are always kings. Always gods. Always.”
“Not here. Not with us.”
“Not that you can see.”
“Is that what you’re afraid of? Kings? Rules? Dictators? Is that what you mean by gods, powerful people who’ll hurt you? Did someone hurt you? Is that why you ran away?”
“I am not afraid of them,” she said. Then, quieter: “They fear me.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
The drapery slid up, and Kessler scooted down so that he lay on his side. He could see just one of the girl’s eyes, with blackness instead of whites and the unsettling irises that seized the brain, drained it of thought, and covered his skin with a slow prickling sensation that radiated from the back of his neck. “There isn’t anywhere left, is there?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Nowhere to go anymore. Nowhere people aren’t. They are everywhere. In every small and large place in the world. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to be unseen, untouched, unthought-of. It is all close together now. Too close together. Like this room. Walls, ceiling, floor, all so close you can touch the two sides with both hands.”
“I guess there’s not much in the way of frontier left, no,” he said.
“Then put me where you will.”
“Tell me where you’re from and we’ll try to put you back there,” he said.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “The place I am from doesn’t exist. Not anymore.”
She dropped the veil back down.
CHAPTER THREE: Through the Gates
Eighteen Months Later
New Petersburg, USA
The elevated train rolled along at window and rooftop level, channeled through corridors of brick and graffiti. The rhythmic clickety-clack of the wheels over the track joints accelerated and they jostled each time the aluminum car swayed outward on a turn. The press of bodies in cramped space had concentrated the salty odor of anxiety that clung to the city and now it suffused Ryn’s clothes as well. She rode beside Victoria Cross, a dark-skinned woman dressed in a crisp suit and slender-framed glasses. Ms. Cross managed the chaos of her unruly hair by pinning it into a clutch, but stray locks danced over her right cheek.
Ms. Cross talked on her cell phone. It went about as well as all her phone calls.
“Level with me, George: are you thinking of hurting yourself? Or someone else? No? Good. All right, slow down. The first thing you’re going to do is sit down and breathe. Ten breaths. Tell me when you’re done.” She paused for a spell. “Now, why did she leave? Did you hit her?” Another pause. “Did she deserve it? Oh, she did? Did she burn your winning lottery ticket? Then no, she didn’t deserve it, George. Well, that’s what happens when you hit a woman. No, I won’t tell her that. Because she shouldn’t come back. Yes, I am a bitch. You don’t get to be a program manager without being a bitch. It’s on my résumé. I underlined it twice.”
Ryn liked riding beside Ms. Cross. She could focus on the faint aroma of rose-water perfume that Ms. Cross wore so often and lightly that it might have become her natural scent, and it drew Ryn’s attention from the oily layers of stink that plastered the inside of the cramped train car. It was the smell of city people, of gnawing worry, the kind that applied constant pressure. It pushed a person into a perpetually frayed state, where they proceeded fugue-like and unaware that their credit cards, overdue bills, and inboxes had settled into their shoulders and bent their gait. They lived like a man forced to walk, never stopping, until he died.
The train’s vibration nudged down Ryn’s dark sunglasses. She pushed them back up before anyone could see her eyes. Best not to cause a panic on her first day in the city.
The train doors opened at a South Dock Street platform and she followed Ms. Cross into the frigid January air with her bag over one shoulder. Ms. Cross speared through the crowd and continued her conversation.
“Yes, I think it’s very possible she’s talking to the police. I’m sure they do hate you, George. If I had to come down to your place and arrest you twice a month, I’d hate you too. As it stands, I’m sitting at severely disappointed.” She changed ears. “Uh-huh. And how am I supposed to do that if you’re not at group? Yes, you’d better be there. I know ‘sick’ means hung over, and your meds don’t mix with alcohol. I’m not as naïve as my various degrees would suggest.” She led Ryn down the platform stairs and through the brown-slushed avenues. “Glad we had this talk. Remember: meds, group, no alcohol. Hanging up now.” Ms. Cross snapped shut her phone and glanced at Ryn. “How about you? Ready for big changes?”
“Yes.” So ready she could feel every slack tendon in her legs tingle, too long unexercised inside the tall, beige walls of Sacred Oaks. Ryn juked between the shouldering masses and tried to stay in the bubble of space Ms. Cross projected by force of will.
“Out of the institutional pan and into the group-home fire. You won’t be as closely monitored there.”
No. And every inch of freedom returned a portion of her strength. The ancient banishment that had cast her from civilized lands left her power strangely susceptible to mortal laws. Somehow, though, she had avoided the pain of a curse that normally afflicted her whenever she set foot inside their borders.
“You’re ready for this,” Ms. Cross said. “No more regimented schedule, no more group therapy, no more orderlies.”
No more watching the days, weeks, and months zoom by through her window, patiently awaiting release, no more trying and failing to figure out what parroted words the men with clipboards and pens wanted to hear.
“You can meet people your own age. You can get a part-time job. You can go
to a real school.”
She could break out into the night and hunt down one of the ten thousand horrific smells ground into the asphalt. Find the most hateful monsters and spirits that fled to the cities to escape the ones like her—to escape the bigger monsters. Find, stalk, kill. Yes. She could nearly taste it.
“Tell me: what are you going to do once you settle in?”
“Behave.” In front of the mortals, at least.
“And see me the first Tuesday of the month. And, no hospitalizations.”
That had happened only once and Ms. Cross refused to forget it. “I understand.” But she didn’t give her word.
“You’re an awful liar.”
It was true. Mortals were practiced at lying and seeing liars. Ryn barely understood what their faces meant most of the time, and they could divine her every mood based on the tics of her mouth or tone of voice. She’d never realized until now how strangely good people were at interacting with one another—maybe twice across her countless centuries of life had she socialized with a human. “I will try.”
“You say that now. Sixteen months ago, you knocked a tooth out of an orderly. I liked that orderly.”
“He smelled wrong.”
“And from now on when people smell bad, you will use your words.”
Except Ryn could not. She could do many things without effort—anything at all with her hands or body, or with the acuity of her senses. But after observing the human species from the fringes of its campfires for as long as it had built campfires, Ryn had concluded they were not meant to be understood by something like her.
Which suited her. What was there to like, besides how the wicked ones tasted?
Salt caked the cars and the slush pushed into her thin-soled shoes. The brick buildings were many stories tall, windows dark or dingy, and graffiti decorated building sides, mailboxes, and street lamps. Shop fronts were squashed together and steam rose from sewer vents. Wintry gusts swept in from the bay and people screwed down into their coats. Ryn hardly felt the cold, and kept her face up to greet it, savoring its salty sting and lonesome moan.
“What is the name of the couple who run your group home?” Ms. Cross asked.
It was a test. “Judy and Albert Birch.”
“Yes. And how do they feel about girls who growl at them?”
“They don’t like it.”
“Good. And how are you to treat them?”
“With respect.”
“And?”
“Check in every night. Check out every morning when there’s school. No exceptions.”
“And?”
Ryn scrunched her face up. “…no hospitalizations?”
“Good.”
She hated Ms. Cross’s quizzes, and her finger point that indicated where Ryn ought to go or stand, like a trained dog. But Ryn couldn’t read humans, or decipher lies, or sense their true motives, and she discovered considerable diversity in their trustworthiness. Her instincts insisted Ms. Cross was safe, a non-predator, no matter how grating. All she could do was cling to the woman, otherwise adrift in a complex web of social interactions and cues that meant nothing to her.
They stopped in front of a seven-story, brick apartment complex that was squat and perhaps a little sad, labeled with a cornerstone: “Roosevelt Place, est. 1922.” Its crumbling stoop led to incongruously modern glass doors. Ms. Cross buzzed in and they rode a rickety elevator. Ryn hated elevators. They reminded her that humans didn’t enjoy the feeling of their hearts beating inside their chests. Sometimes she wondered if they enjoyed being alive at all.
On the fifth floor, they knocked and an apartment door swung wide. Ms. Cross smiled, chatted amicably with Judy and Albert Birch, and introduced Ryn, who remained silent and non-aggressive and stifled the reflexive growl when Albert Birch came too close. Instead of being pleased, Ms. Cross chastised her for darting back.
“How many?” Ryn demanded.
They all stared and Ms. Cross scolded her for interrupting. Ryn hadn’t been paying attention to their words, so they probably hadn’t been important.
“What do you mean?” Albert asked, stooping to her height with his hands on his knees. Ryn liked him even less at eye level.
“How many?” she repeated, counting chairs at the table. “How many stay here?”
“Oh, well, my wife and I, you now, and six other young people, ages nine to seventeen.”
“Where am I?” People liked to assign rooms. Organized like that.
“Right this way; I’ll show you,” Judy Birch said.
Ryn was guarded with Judy and Albert Birch. They didn’t feel safe like Ms. Cross or Sergeant Kessler, and Albert Birch had something in his eyes she couldn’t place. Too beady. He smelled like salami left out in the sun, and she was happy to get away. Judy led her through a living room cluttered with knickknacks and toys, but no filth.
There was a cuckoo clock in the kitchen and Ryn smelled an asura living inside of it, but of course the humans didn’t notice the little spirit.
Her room was a converted dining nook with two doorways into it, one from the living room and one from the kitchen, curtained off by thin sheets. It had nothing akin to privacy. It was barely large enough for the bunk beds and a dresser, which sported two drawers labeled “Rin.” She had no idea what to do with two entire drawers.
It had one good feature: the bay window. It stuck out from the side of the building and Ryn immediately perched on the cushioned seat beneath the frosted panes. She gazed through the bars and into the ice-glazed courtyard between Roosevelt Place and the surrounding buildings. It was littered with rusty bikes, a bent basketball hoop, and jacketed people working charcoal grills.
Ms. Cross came in. “That’s no good. Those bars are a fire hazard. They come off.”
Albert Birch scratched the back of his head. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and after Ms. Cross looked at him in a way Ryn didn’t understand, he added, “The bars are on the outside of the window and five stories up. Can’t get to them until spring, when they wash the outside of the building. I’ll talk to the super.”
“You have rules for people coming in and out of this room, right? I don’t like the curtains at all, not for girls; they should have a door,” Ms. Cross said. While they talked, Ryn noticed the other bunk’s occupant, an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl, silently swept away in a thick book. She was reedy and large-eyed, with dust-colored hair and a tendency to blend in. Ryn liked her.
Ms. Cross stayed long enough to levy a dozen more criticisms of their accommodations until Judy and Albert Birch made a series of attempted farewells, following every new requirement with something to the effect of “Fine, fine, it’s been a long day, we’ll see you to the exit.” Perhaps a half-hour after the first time they said that, Ms. Cross let them push her out the door.
Ryn leapt onto the top bunk in a clean motion and lay back, staring at the pattern of plastic stars on the ceiling. Judy and Albert came in and said some things, none of which seemed terribly important to Ryn, other than that dinner would be soon. Judy in particular asked a lot of questions and Ryn found the best way to deal with too many questions was to not answer any of them.
Judy left muttering things about attitudes.
“I don’t think she likes you,” the girl beneath Ryn’s bunk whispered.
Ryn slid off the bed halfway, gripped the edge, and dangled to have a closer look at the other girl. “Does she ask fewer questions when you read?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you read?”
“I suppose so, at first. The house gets loud. The boys are all out at the Y and they’ll be home for dinner. That’s when it’s loudest. I’m Susan. What’s your name?”
“Ryn.”
“Why do you have those glasses on?”
“I have an eye condition,” which Ms. Cross had coached her to say. Ms. Cross had had a friend write the prescription for dark glasses after a bad group-therapy session—of all the people to react to her eyes, schizophrenics li
ked them the least. Ms. Cross said keeping her eyes covered let them save on haloperidol costs.
“You mumble some,” Susan said.
“I do.” It hid her teeth.
“You don’t like to talk, do you?”
“I don’t know why people fill the air with so many words.”
“The conversations in my books are better. So are the people.” Susan held up her book for inspection. “I guess I don’t like small talk either.” That was the name for it, then. No, Ryn did not like small talk.
Susan found a thinner book and gave it to Ryn. She lay back on her bed and leafed through yellowed pages, which gave off a mildly vanilla odor. Most of the book in her hands had been alive once—paper, ink, glue. It was dead now, but inside, the words lived in front of her eyes. She had learned the mechanics of reading English, of long division and algebra and other pointless tasks, at Sacred Oaks as part of a plan to “mainstream” her into a place called high school. Her book featured a very useless female who kept getting into trouble, except that she attracted the interests of a man who was a pirate and whom Ryn would have preferred the book to be about.
Soon, the apartment filled with tromping feet and the brash voices of “the boys.” They met at the dinner table and Ryn regarded them, with some unease, as a rabble of disparate youths, two of them twins, who operated in mob-like togetherness. They pounded their silverware on the tabletop and chanted, “Feed us, feed us, feed us!” and Albert turned up the volume of a television set on the kitchen counter.
Judy served rice, two microwave family dinners, and the contents of three cans of vegetables mixed together. This was treated as a big affair. Albert poured about a fistful of salt onto his food and the Rabble battled over the leftover Salisbury steaks: “…give, it’s mine you ass…” “Ow, he bit me!” “Did not!” “I’m bigger, give it.” The patty smelled to Ryn like the train and she avoided the vegetables for the same reason. She scooped her patty to the quietest of the Rabble and ate rice, wishing there had been fresh fruit on the table.
“You a vegetarian?” Albert Birch asked with his nose at an upward tilt.
“No.” She’d eaten her share of animals and people, but she wouldn’t call what they ate “meat,” and she preferred to only eat flesh when she’d killed it with her hands. Animals that lived wrong or that ended wrong carried wrong flavor. Nothing here tasted right.
The One Who Eats Monsters (Wind and Shadow Book 1) Page 4
