“But I don’t think it’s right to sugarcoat any of this. People ain’t perfect. I’m not perfect, none of you all is perfect. We do bad things. People do bad things. We do good things too, but you don’t get props for not hurting people. It’s the bad things we do that define us. I don’t know what bad thing Anchor did, but I know it was something.”
Beside me, Vulture’s jaw had dropped as far open as it could without falling right off, and he kept breathing in short little breaths like he was about to speak, about to interrupt the man. Instead, he started walking toward him.
“People ain’t perfect, but Anchor, and Clay, and Rebecca, and Doomsday, they found something that is. They pulled Uliksi right out of the river, and Uliksi knows right from wrong. Uliksi hurts predators, end of story. Hurts people who prey on people. Anchor knew that when he cut open his palm to bring an endless spirit up from the river, and we know it now. If we want to respect Anchor, then let’s respect the best thing he ever did for the world. Even if it killed him.”
Chaos reigned for a moment, as everyone jostled to replace the tall man as he left the head of the grave. An elderly Chicana woman raised her hands and let out a short, wordless shout, and order was restored. She looked at the line and pointed to Vulture as next to speak.
“A year ago there were only three people in this town who’d even heard of the endless spirits,” Vulture said. “Two of them are dead and the third one, Rebecca, she’s off living in the woods and I bet she doesn’t even know what’s happened yet. Eric Tall-As-Fuck, you’re my partner’s best friend and I’ve got nothing but respect for you and the best way I can think of to show you that respect is to tell you that you’re a terrible person and you deserve to die.”
“The hell?!” Eric Tall-As-Fuck knew how to roar.
“What, it doesn’t feel nice when someone feigns respect for you while telling you that you should be dead? Then shut the fuck up about Anchor.” Vulture then looked at the grave. “Anchor, I loved you, you’re great, and we’ll stop the evil demon that probably wasn’t an evil demon when you summoned it but maybe it was and it definitely is now and maybe you shouldn’t have summoned it.”
“What the hell is going on?” I asked Brynn.
“Everything’s about to go to shit,” she said.
She strode into the crowd to join the argument, leaving me alone at the edge of the forest.
She was right, everything went to shit.
* * *
In the end, both sides—for and against the murder of a man by an immortal deer—fell to accusing the other of disrupting the funeral, and the small faction of would-be mediators managed to interject. They proposed the problems be addressed in the morning, at a general assembly, and the town agreed.
It almost came to blows. It wouldn’t have been my fight, but I probably would have acted to protect at least Vulture and Brynn, if not the Days. I fingered the armament at my belt, glad I didn’t need to use it.
With nothing left to say, half the crowd dispersed, while some people stayed to pay their respects to Anchor. A pair of women in papier-mâché masks took turns with sledgehammers, driving a memorial stake into the earth like railroad workers setting a tie.
I didn’t notice Eric until he was right next to me, looming over me. “You must be Dani Cain,” he said.
I didn’t correct him.
“How’d you know?”
“Clay used to talk about you,” he said.
I nodded.
“Listen, Dani, you showed up on a pretty weird day. This isn’t exactly us at our best.”
He was doing that thing where he used my name in sentences to try to charm me. Since I hated the name Dani, it wasn’t working.
“Clay trusted you, so I’m going to trust you. If you want to know what’s really going on, let’s go for a walk or something.”
I looked around for Vulture and Brynn, but they were gone. Even the Days were nowhere to be seen. I could find my way back to the house, sure, but it was hard to imagine someone so callous as to leave a newcomer alone on a night like that.
On a whim, I went with him. I could always stab him if he tried anything, after all.
We stopped in at the Everything for Everyone. A few townspeople were there, filling baskets with potatoes and carrots and greens—breakfast foods, mostly. The place was a bizarre mix of grocery and thrift store, without cash registers or clerks. Near the front, a refrigerated stand held fresh bottled juice and homemade sandwiches. Someone had written, Take one if you’re hungry with Sharpie on the shelf. I took a bottle of green juice. The same person, with the same handwriting, had carved, Return me when empty, asshole into the glass.
Eric, for his part, grabbed a juice box from a stand nearby labeled, Prepackaged snacks. Please don’t hoard. Simple as that, we walked out the door. No money, no accounting, no ration cards, nothing. Trust alone. I’d found a town that worked on trust alone.
We walked another two blocks to the schoolyard, and Eric strode off toward the playground. I followed him. I didn’t open my juice because that took both hands, and I don’t follow strange men into the darkness without at least one hand free for fighting.
We sat at a picnic table, lit only by the moon, and Eric sensed my discomfort and sat several feet away on the opposite bench.
I opened the juice, and the smell of celery and apple and ginger rose up. I took a sip. It was delicious.
“You know why we get to have things like this?” he asked, poking the plastic straw into the top of his juice box.
“A combination of dumpster diving, farming, and food bank handouts?” I asked.
“Because no one has any authority over anyone else,” he said, ignoring my literal answer. “Because no one is trying to accumulate material goods, political sway, or even social capital to wield against anyone else.”
“Alright,” I said. It was, I admit, the world I wanted to see.
“People always say anarchy can’t work because you can’t trust people to rule themselves. To which I’ve always said, if people are as untrustworthy as all that, how can you trust them to rule one another? You can’t.”
I’d already figured I was older than the fellow, but I realized by just how much. It wasn’t that I disagreed with what he’d just said, but there was something in the way that he said it. Something in his tone, or his uncynical platitudes. I believed in anarchism. Eric, he Believed.
“Uliksi, we can trust Uliksi. I know this sounds crazy. But he doesn’t crave power. He doesn’t have wants or needs, he just is. He is the power of the people to strike down anyone who takes power over the defenseless. He is that power manifest, that power incarnate in flesh.”
A figure was crossing the field toward us, and I shifted in my seat so I could see it and Eric both.
“So your argument,” I said, “is that man Anchor, the one whose heart I saw ripped out of his chest, did something terrible. He had it coming.”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
It wasn’t, not really. I’d lost track of the people in my life who’d committed horrible acts. Of the people who’d stolen from the hungry and desperate. Of the men who, fine in company, were monsters to me when we were alone. Anchor, I didn’t know him at all.
“What do you think he did?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Eric said.
“I’ve got my suspicions,” the silhouette said as it approached the table. Close up, it was Kestrel—Vulture’s partner.
He sat down on my side of the bench, much closer to me than to Eric.
“Clay’s gone, been gone,” he said. “Before that, he was fighting with Anchor. They broke up on rough terms, neither one would talk about it. Anchor spent more time with the Days after that. With Doomsday. I don’t trust her.”
Kestrel lit a cigarette, took dramatic pauses to suck in smoke like he thought he was in a movie.
They were both ridiculous. Which didn’t mean they were wrong. But they were both ridiculous.
“We know Uliksi on
ly has power when the sun’s up,” Kestrel continued. “He’s comatose or whatever at night. We also know he was summoned on summer solstice, and I’d bet Freedom, Iowa, on it that he can only be dismissed on the solstice too.”
“You think Uliksi is killing his summoners in self-defense?”
“Uliksi doesn’t act in self-defense,” Eric said.
“No,” Kestrel said, taking a drag, “I think Uliksi killed Anchor because I think Anchor and Doomsday were going to dismiss him in order to summon something worse. Something that would let them take power.”
“Alright,” I said, “why are you talking to me, then? What do you want from me?”
“I’m not going to say that I can’t think of ways you can help,” Eric said, “but I’m talking to you because I saw you talking with them, and I wanted to warn you. You’re new in town, everyone loves fresh meat. More than that, everyone knows you knew Clay. For someone who’s trying to take power, someone like Doomsday, that means you’re social capital.”
“Aren’t you Vulture’s partner?” I asked Kestrel.
“It’s been rough since Clay left,” Kestrel said. “That house cliqued up tight, got more secretive. Vulture’s been more distant. And after tonight? After tonight I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen with me and him.”
He lit a second cigarette with the end of the first one. He wasn’t smoking as an affectation, he was smoking because he was scared as hell and trying to keep his cool.
“What’s your plan?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Eric said. Then he thought that over. “No, I know what my plan is. I’m just not trying to tell you right now. I don’t know that I can trust you. But I’ll tell you what I hope happens.”
“What do you hope happens?”
“I hope everyone wakes up tomorrow morning with a clear head and we get together and realize that Uliksi is the reason we have nice things and that any talk of trying to get rid of him is bullshit. I hope that Doomsday and Rebecca leave town and never come back. And while I want those things for my own reasons, I also think they’re the only way Doomsday or Rebecca will get out of this alive.”
Tiredness came over me suddenly. All I wanted was to be in my sleeping bag somewhere, alone, with headphones on, ignoring the world.
“I hope, Dani,” Eric said, “that you’re able to convince Doomsday she should leave.”
There it was. At least it was all out on the table.
I didn’t like it. Whether he was right or he was wrong, I didn’t like him trying to use me. Or maybe Doomsday was too, and Eric was the one who was actually being up-front about it.
I’d heard enough. I got up to leave.
“My name’s Danielle.”
* * *
The walk back to the house, it was getting downright cold. A few people lingered on the street, a few people sat on stoops. The farther down the hill I got, and thereby the closer to the river, the fewer people I saw. A block from the house, I saw those devil birds on the power lines. Silent, just watching.
By the front door, I saw Thursday. Silent, just watching. The house, so invitingly gothic by the light of day when I’d just walked into town, was a monolith of black and glass and evil magic by night. Which, to be honest, I would have expected to be more attractive to me, considering my usual temperament.
“Was wondering where you’d gotten off to,” Thursday said as I mounted the steps.
“Y’all left before me.” I wasn’t looking to argue, but I was pissed.
“Went off really quick to talk some shit over,” Thursday said. “We decided someone needed to head out into the woods to Rebecca’s place, warn her about everything. Vulture went off to do that, the rest of us came back to the graveyard. You were gone by the time we got back.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was a dick move to leave you there.”
“Thanks.”
“Brynn’s still up, I think. Worried about you.”
I opened the door and walked in, following the tiny LED lamps that vaguely lit the damask wallpaper of the entry hall. In the living room, Brynn sat cross-legged, worrying her way through a cup of tea. The room was lit only by candles in jars. Squatters know candle safety.
“You leaving in the morning?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. My safety and sanity insisted I should go. My curiosity and stubbornness insisted I stick around.
“Wouldn’t blame you.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want tea?” she asked. I sat next to her on the couch, and she poured me a cup from a silver teapot.
I took it and drank some. Nettle, by the taste. Had been made at least a half an hour ago, by the tepidity. Still, the act of drinking it was enough, and I calmed down some.
“I showed up in December,” Brynn said. “I was traveling with this guy I used to date, and he’d known Ben. Said he wanted to see where they’d buried him. We didn’t know the whole story, of course. But we showed up right after a storm, got his truck stuck in the snow by the highway, hiked in. We go see Ben’s grave, and everyone is so nice to us. I think there must have been sixty people who helped dig out our truck the next day. My partner took off, I stuck around.”
“Did you know?”
“About Uliksi? No. I stuck around because look at this place. No cops, no bosses, no landlords. No poverty. No laws. Hard work and community and freedom and all that shit that we ought to have. I think it was the work part that scared my partner off. But it’s not enforced, there are a couple people who just skate by. Mostly we all figure out ways to contribute.”
“How’d you find out? About Uliksi?”
“On our way back from digging out the truck, I saw some of the geese, down by the river. People told me the whole story. It’s strange how quickly it’s normal, there being magic in the world. It’s strange how little it changes about who we are as people.”
“Maybe,” I said. I didn’t really believe her though. If magic was real, everything had changed.
“My room’s in the attic,” she said. “If you want, you could sleep next to me. Maybe cuddle. If you’d rather not, I’m good to sleep on the floor, or you could take one of the couches down here.”
“Cuddling sounds nice,” I said.
* * *
It should have been nice. The moonlight came in through the circular window, and she laid on her back as I nuzzled up with my head on her. It had been months at least since I’d been with anyone, even slept next to anyone, and my skin was alive at her touch. I could hear her steady breath, smell her pheromones. For a moment, just a short peaceful moment, I was able to revel in that simple pleasure. Then my mind went back to racing through the day.
“Why didn’t they shoot it?” I asked.
“What?” She was halfway to sleep.
“Doomsday, Thursday. Why didn’t they shoot the deer?”
“It’s immortal,” she said, like that was just a natural, logical thing.
“How does it work, then? What’s the deal?”
“It’s only active during the day. Kills predator animals by ripping out their hearts. Those stay dead. Any prey animal that dies around here, it like, raises from the dead or whatever, by, well, ripping out their hearts. Those aren’t immortal, though. A friend of mine ran over an undead goose in her truck, and it stayed dead that time.”
“That’s fucking crazy,” I said.
“Yeah,” Brynn said. “I thought the whole thing was kind of cool until tonight though.”
“I could see that.”
The conversation drifted off, because Brynn was half-asleep. I closed my eyes, but it was all too much. The town, Uliksi, Brynn. All too much to take in. My heart rate increased, my breathing got a little shallow.
“What’s wrong?” Brynn asked.
“Panic attack.”
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I told her, because I wasn’t.
It hit like a fever or dr
ugs or something. A panic attack just drops you through the ice into freezing water. Even when you drag yourself out of the water, you’re left with the memory that forever and always, you’re walking on ice. It’s worse than anything. It’s worse than watching a demon eat a stranger’s heart.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Talking about it makes it worse.”
If she were someone I knew, if she were someone my body trusted, she might have been able to help a little bit. Distract me with words or touch. But she was just another alien thing in this alien world I’d landed in.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She squeezed me for a moment, then her body jerked as she fell into sleep. I wasn’t going to be joining her for a while.
After the worst of it, the paralyzing fear, passed, I slipped from the bed and down to the front porch. Thursday still stood there, just outside the door, sentinel. His pistol held in his hand.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.
“Me either.” He nodded at the power lines. The ghouled birds were still there, their little chests still splayed open, their eyes boring down on us.
The fresh air wasn’t fresh enough, and I wasn’t looking for conversation. I went back inside and made my way to the attic. Brynn was sleeping in the bed, blissful. I curled up in the corner of the room, hugging my knees.
I would leave in the morning. No answers were worth this.
Slowly, over the course of another hour, I fell into a restless slumber.
FOUR
A few hours after dawn, I walked up the street with Brynn. The sentinel birds were gone, replaced with real birds that still had all their bones. Birds that sang normal bird songs. I broke open a tangerine, and I scarcely noticed the juice running thick down my hands. I scarcely noticed anything.
Morning hadn’t brought me clarity or peace of mind. But with the fog of panic cleared from my thoughts, I realized I wasn’t going to leave. Not yet. I’d never live with myself.
Brynn was relaxed, and I tried my best to mimic that. I hadn’t slept well enough or long enough. But I’d slept, and that mattered.
I tried asking about banalities.
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion Page 3
