"What about Stephens?" I asked desperately. "What is he hungry for? What keeps him human?"
Dill mushed and champed his lips together. His whole mouth had melted like a mudslide into swollen gums studded with sharp teeth. "Waaaaaa," he moaned. Not the least bit human anymore. The kennel burst from his bulk, and the creature that had been Dill fell into the litter-river and I lost him among the others.
I didn't have time to look, because Dill's fall had upset the balance of my own cage, which bucked and bobbed dangerously. I grabbed the cage's sides, but I hadn't had the chance to re-zip the backpack. To my horror, my one and only can of Terrapin beer popped from the open pocket and rolled out the cage door.
"Shit," I said to nobody in particular. So much for maintaining my current number of vertebrae. That left becoming one of Stephen's sharp-nosed litter hounds or jumping down and letting the Has-Beens chaw on me directly. Both options distinctly lacked in Benefiting Quietly.
One of the Has-Beens bellowed and flung litter in the air with its tail.
"Pipe down," I shouted back. "You'll get your taste soon enough."
It bellowed again. The Has-Been lashed to the raft—the one Dill and Opal used—had gone positively bonkers, bucking and flailing and twisting against its harness. The braided plastic ropes dug out gouges in its flesh inches deep. White bone showed through the bloody mess.
"Hey, cool it. You're hurting yourself," I said.
It bellowed louder, twisted and bucked again. The raft rocked. It was caught on something under the litter.
I rubbed my head and wondered how I would tell this story to Imani if we ever saw each other again. She'd call me a liar, probably. For someone with glacier blood, she sure could be skeptical. "Promise you won't eat me?" The Has-Been moaned and bellowed, but it piped down. I supposed it would have to do. "I'm coming down."
I slung the backpack on my shoulders and threw my weight against the kennel, first one way, then the other, so it pendulumed back and forth, back and forth, closer to the harnessed Has-Been and away from the swarm beneath. I aimed for a filthy twin mattress half-bobbing among some sacks of old molding books. Then I leapt out flying-squirrel-like and landed hard against the corner of the mattress. It smarted, but I floundered over to the Has-Been and worked at the twisted plastic.
"We've got a deal, right?" Has-Been blood greased my fingers where I dug the bonds out from its chafed flesh. "When you're free, take me with you."
I tore away the knotted plastic ropes. The monster dove down sharp into the litter. I clung to its back with the remaining tangles of plastic. Down, down, down. Litter brushed and banged me, tore at my hair and skin, smeared me with stink, and then the surface again. The Has-Been skidded along the trash, carrying me away from the Foundry, away from Stephens, away from Imani, into unknown parts of the Under-Ath.
* * *
She brought me to her nest on the shores of the Oak-a-nee in the shadow of a decayed brick factory. It had a hipster-industrial look to it that reminded me of the Normaltown neighborhood back in the real Athens.
The Has-Been had built a nest of aluminum and glass: Coke and juice bottles, lemonade and beer and energy drinks. She nestled into the clattering mess, swirling around and around so the empties rang like wind chimes and threw rainbows on the asphalt. She spat my Terrapin can at my feet, whole and undamaged.
I rolled it between my hands. It was warm and a bit sticky from her spit. "Thanks."
Cans clattered around her swirling tail. The monster nosed through her collection until she'd inched one from the heap. Some Three-Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's. She licked at the sticky residue around its rim. Deep in her throat, she crooned with the same heat that had driven her to gouge ropes into her own flesh.
"You don't want the can at all," I realized. "You want the beer."
Those huge brown eyes, those sad human eyes.
I popped open the Terrapin. It fizzed out all the shaken-up pressure. Automatically I sipped the foaming head. It tasted like flowers in faraway Athens, like hot summers tailgating with Imani and our friends, and while I still wanted a meal, it took the edge off my desire.
The Has-Been whimpered. What did it feel like to be so close to everything you needed, if only a stranger would offer you a taste?
I set the can on the dirt between us. "Cheers."
The Has-Been curled her tongue around the can and rolled the whole thing into her maw. As it went down, she sighed. She shivered all along her length, those vertebrae aching to disappear into shinbones and all that fur wanting to grow backward.
She packed her body into a human-sized bag, neat as can be and became a woman tough as bone. Her skin was so dry and rice paper-thin I thought her skeleton might walk right through it. She was six feet tall and still licking the sticky rim of the Terrapin beer can. A single drop of beer hit her tongue. I wondered how many empty cans you had to lick to build up any kind of buzz.
"Ahhh." The woman leaned toward me like it was the first day of Spring and I was the long-lost sun. "I've been waiting a long time for a beer." She extended her hand. "Thanks, friend. Name's Briar."
"I'm Quietly," I said. "Is the change going to last long?"
Briar slouched against the factory steps and wrapped her arms around her bell bottoms. "Probably not. Gotta eat every day, same as everyone else. Shame you can't get much of anything without Stephens's stash nowadays."
"It wasn't always like this?"
"Nah. Used to be there was enough to go around. Used to be most of us weren't monsters, just hungry all the time. Until Stephens showed up and 'organized' it all." Briar tossed the can away hard so it avalanched down the bank.
"Why don't y'all just go back to the Over-Ath?" I asked. "Plenty of beer there."
"Sometimes we try," she said. "But we wind up lonesome and lost in the waterways, no closer to our desire than before. The Oak-a-nee eventually washes us down to the sea, and that's oblivion for a Has-Been. Piece of advice: don't ever immerse yourself in the Atlantic, not unless you're sure of yourself."
"What's so bad about the Atlantic?" It struck me as a cuddly barrel of kittens after what the Pacific had put me through.
"The Atlantic's made of love and parting. Quaker brides and rough explorer men, and all those people ripped from their homes in Africa. They tossed their tears like bottles upon the waters and prayed them across the waves until they lapped at Florida and Haiti, where they saw such sorrows they returned again, even more tearful. Imagine trying to find your own desire in all that. You'll lose yourself if you try."
It seemed like a sad existence, pushed forever away from Athens, away from your heart. "Tell me about the ocean that passed through recently."
"I haven't seen that much water in the Under-Ath in all my time," Briar said. "It took the form of a woman and smelled of anger and ozone. Made a righteous wreck of the Oak-a-nee Grayway, carried off half the trash before rushing toward Downtown. You can see Lexington Road again. Shouldn't be hard to track her down if you follow it."
Briar pointed out the gorge that ran along the river's far side. A glacier's angry path all the way to the Foundry and beyond. "I tried down that way already. Stephens wouldn't let me near her. Said she works for him now."
"Of course he would say that. Stephens desires what he can't have. Anything new's bound to catch his interest," said Briar. "That's why he hates the Has-Beens so much. He can't stand that some of us would say no to him. So he enslaves us once we turn monster. You'd better not leave your ocean with him too long. He'll find a way to subdue her."
I tried to count up the days since finding salt in Imani's bed, but recent grief made the dates run together. "She's already been here a while. Days. Weeks."
Briar wrapped her hand around my wrist so tight it made my nerves blood-drunk. "Don't you wait. You get to her now, before he makes her forget there ever was blue skies and muscadines beside a lazy brown river."
I remembered crickets so thick they blocked out sight and sound, and still I hesitated. "H
e called her a private ocean. Said I had to sign a contract to see her."
"People under his employ can always leave," said Briar. "That's always been the rule. Most of them don't, but they can."
"He said he owns her."
"Well, that's something new," Briar admitted. "Trying to bend the rules in his favor. Well, convince her to leave. He can't hold her if she says no."
That was that, then. Imani needed me. I had a clear path and only Stephens to stop me. "I better get going."
Briar tossed me a smile worn soft around the edges from use. "Good luck. And thanks for the beer."
I shook ash from my Crocs and cinched up the backpack, now a little lighter without the Terrapin. My empty stomach hurt something awful, and my head spun a little on account of the alcohol. I didn't know how to stop Stephens anymore than I knew how to put back an ocean, anymore than I knew how to rein in Imani's wild, wonderful, destructive moods. But far away in space and time, a woman and a glacier had sailed around the world after a star, and had at last found each other. I could hope for that.
I struck off toward the gorge gashed through the litter, the mark left by Imani's passage. I got about five steps away before I tripped straight into California's fist.
* * *
The suckerpunch stunned me so bad I tumbled, dazed and winded, into the ankle-deep litter. A Birkenstock and a Big Foot sock landed at the edge of my peripheral vision, wafting in the odor of stale weed and stale cyclist.
"Grab her legs," said Washington, "and get her backpack."
"Watch out. There's another one," said Oregon. I heard Briar cry out, then another solid thwack from California's mean left hook, and a thunk as Briar tasted dirt. That bastard had gotten her too.
They pinned me spread-eagle to the litter. I struggled hard, but they had six hands, and I only had the two. We must've made a funny litter-angel in the trash. I didn't stand a chance, winded from that suckerpunch. I got this odd sense of calm, like when you know the car is going to hit you and all you can do is accept it. I found myself giggling uncontrollably.
"Where's Hawaii, anyway?" I asked.
They flushed a little and craned their necks upward. California glowed orange against the ever-gray sky. "We don't need to talk about them," he said. "They have nothing to do with this."
"The heck?" I giggled even harder. "If y'all are so mad, shouldn't Hawaii be out for my blood and muscle and my great-grand's bones?"
Oregon worried her lip between her teeth. "We don't always agree about changes. Hawaii doesn't want the ocean back. They like all the extra space."
"That's messed up," I said.
"Seriously," California agreed.
It was strangely companionable for an instant, except for the part where they had me pinned on my back. "Hey, let me up? I bet we can get this sorted if we just talk it over."
"I don't trust her," said Washington. "She'll run from us again."
"Let's just transform her now and be done with," said California. "Home by tomorrow morning. Sooner, if the wind blows in our favor."
"Go right ahead and make me your ocean if you'd like. I don't care," I said. "I'll probably turn into a monster anyway. Thing is, this has gotten a lot bigger than your quarrel with Imani. Wouldn't you rather have the real Pacific back instead of an East Coast knockoff?"
Oregon closed her eyes and inhaled deep. "She's right. The Pacific is here somewhere. I can smell it. I feel it surging in my bones. God, but it aches."
California let go of my arms. I sat up, elbowing him in the face totally accidentally without even a hint of grudge or malice.
"Okay. We'll hear you out, but make it quick," said Washington. "Where are you keeping the Pacific?"
"Briar?" I called out. "Briar, you okay, friend?"
Briar stirred in the litter nearby and moaned. She was outgunned in her elderly human form. "I'm alright," Briar said. "Got me twisted up in the six-pack rings again." I helped her untangle and stand up. Briar stretched her long arms up toward the ash-gray sky and rubbed her bruises.
"Now. About the Pacific," I said. I explained all about my adventures at the Foundry and about Imani's captivity. "The problem is that cricket-swarm in a suit. He seems to lay down the law around here. He claims Imani's private property now, but Briar says it's against the rules of this place." My skin crawled all over like dirty little cricket-legs marching up and down inside me. "He don't seem human to me."
"He's definitely not human," said Washington.
"He's a Hypothetical," said Oregon. "Same as us. He exists to meet some purpose, and he's not going anywhere until he fulfills it."
"And what's that?" I asked.
California placed a hand on my shoulder where a bruise had formed from one of my tumbles into the litter. I flinched, and he snatched his hand back. Maybe he finally made the connection between human bodies and frailty. I sure hoped so. "Everyone in this place is hungry for something," said California. "Stephens exists to satisfy the people here."
"There is no river in the Under-Ath," said Briar. There was weight to her voice, like heavy stones sunk down deep. "People here are endlessly thirsty. There's no satisfying the Under-Ath."
"A Hypothetical gone mad," Washington whispered. "Unable to finish his mission, unable to quit."
"Or unwilling to," I said. "What happens when y'all finish your missions?"
"We return to whoever created us," said Oregon. "Like meltwater to the lakes and rivers in Spring."
"So you cease to exist," I said.
"In a manner of speaking," Oregon said slowly, haltingly, like she had never seen it that way before. "I suppose it's no different than you humans. Where are you before you begin, and what happens when you end?"
"Even still," I told her. "Even still." My throat got all lumpy, thinking on the implications. I actually managed some pity for California. If he ever brought his ocean home, he'd dissolve into it forever for his troubles.
We all got real quiet, measuring the weight of it. I clutched my backpack close to my stomach. The Oconee River swirled against my ribcage through its jar. My one true friend left in this place. I remembered Imani's thirst in her final days, all that brine in her hair, and how she made eyes at the Pacific like a lovelorn bride. A sick tickly feeling wormed through my stomach. Only days before, she'd made those eyes at me. The same night California called himself into existence to tear us apart.
Sometimes the only cure for one desire is finding a new one.
"Tell me one thing," I asked California. "Those curses—those gifts—you wished on Imani. Yearning. Abandon. Peace. Can you give them to other people?"
"Of course," said California. "Anyone we choose. As many times as we choose, infinite as the Pacific."
"Then I know what we need to do," I said. "It's time to fix the Under-Ath."
* * *
I had Briar take us right to the thick of the Has-Beens, the deepest dark of the Oak-a-nee where the Grayway gaped open on what should've been the road to Atlanta.
Imagine if instead of Highway 316 rolling through the countryside west of Athens, an ocean of garbage spilled into a huge pit. Picture litter roaring down from the city forever, taking the last of its sins to a final grave.
I'd found the gyre at the heart of the Under-Ath.
"It's swarming with desire down there," Briar said. "All the oldest Has-Beens make their way here eventually. They can't swim up the litterfall once they slip over the edge."
The Hypotheticals hovered just behind me on the shore, smelling of all those someplaces I'd never been. Meeting them had changed me. Forever after, the scent of Douglas fir would give me displaced nostalgia.
"Take a good look," I told the Hypotheticals, waving down to the gyre. "Those folks down there need you. They've been so obsessed with climbing out of their own failure that they've forgotten about the yearning that drives them. The harder they grasp it, the quicker it runs between their fingers. Let's give them something new to yearn for. California? Point their hearts toward the Pacif
ic."
"All of them?" asked California.
"Yes, all of them. And you," I turned to Oregon, "Give them abandon. Help them release the past. If they could learn to let go, they could leave."
"And the gift of peace?" Washington asked.
I wasn't rightly sure you could ever get peace so easy outside of a graveyard. Lose desire, and you'd just quit life. "No, not that one. Not here. Not yet."
Briar plucked an empty beer can from the river and considered the sticky rim. "Desire alone won't be enough to get 'em up the litterfall. It's too steep. They'll kill themselves trying once you point them toward the Georgia Theater."
My eyes prickled with unshed regrets. I'd bruised my heart on such a wall before. I clutched my backpack tight, blood roaring in my ears. "I know. I know. But I think I know another way."
The truth was Imani couldn't possibly be Imani anymore. No more than the Pacific was just the Pacific. They'd swallowed each other up. She'd changed, transformed, outgrown even her own glacier-blood. No glacier ever touched two continents at the same time. What swirled deep in her waters now, I didn't know. It scared me just wondering.
"We're ready when you are," said California.
I unzipped my backpack and set down the Jittery Joe's tin and Oconee River jar side by side. "Y'all better find a raft. When this is all over, make for the Foundry and do what you can about Stephens."
That left the rest to me and the Oconee.
We had a good heart to heart, the river and me. I unscrewed the jar, and the water flowed up to my lips and spoke in wet river-words that tasted like rocks and fish scales and more than a little mud.
I'm dangerous to drink, Quietly, it whispered to me. Different from the Big Waters. If you drink me down, you'll lose yourself in me, and ain't nothing going to bring you out again.
"Don't you think I know that by now," I told it. "Don't you think I know why Imani don't just bust out and wipe this whole damn town from its shadow existence." I was scared as shit we'd find her too late, that she'd become the Pacific as truly and permanently as she was part glacier on her mother's side.
Every River Runs to Salt Page 5
