Interzone #267 - November-December 2016

by Andy Cox [Ed. ]

  “Okay then,” I say, pretending to take some time to think about it. “Let’s eat.”

  We sit on the floor and I tell Xiao Wei to take small bites, even smaller. Sand crunches between our teeth.

  “Do you think it will make us fat?” Xiao Wei asks, his mouth full.

  “The dumplings?” I want to laugh at him, though I don’t. In the dumplings are thin slices of peppers, coaxed into life in our little plot of ground, treasured. The dumplings will never make us fat.

  “No, not the dumplings, the sand.” He starts drumming on his stomach. “To see if I can feel it bouncing around,” he explains.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I tell him, but I try it anyway, and I am a little bit afraid because I think I can feel it inside me, like the way water sloshes around, only all dry and whispery.

  We finish our dumplings far too quickly. I take out a flask and let Xiao Wei sip first.

  “Count!” I shout at him.

  “I’m counting,” he mutters. “There, that’s three.”

  I take my own sips whilst Xiao Wei clambers onto the pile of blankets which is Auntie Tiger’s bed, and sighs contentedly. In the story, this is where Little Brother sleeps, and Auntie Tiger cuddles him, singing him lullabies so he will dream sweet dreams to make his flesh more tender. Older Sister sleeps on the floor, and I am about to curl up and ask Auntie Tiger if my brother is sleeping well when there’s a familiar tap-tap of a walking stick outside, and a knock on the wall. I groan. Xiao Wei bounces off the bed and shouts, “Nainai!”

  A wrinkled face peeks in. “I hope Auntie Tiger isn’t here to eat me up,” she says.

  “She’s sleeping,” says Xiao Wei, grinning. “Don’t worry.”

  We call her Nainai – Grandma – even though she isn’t our grandma. She doesn’t have her own family but lives out here on the edge of the city by herself. Mama used to tell us we had to be kind to her, so now we’ve got into the habit.

  She shoves her walking stick into the ship, then climbs in after it, elbowing me in the stomach, and squats on the floor next to Xiao Wei. The ship starts to smell of feet, and something else, musty and sweet at the same time.

  I mutter to Xiao Wei, “We’ll be here all day now.” He glares at me.

  When the Company came to the city most people had already left. Nainai said it was the last straw. She went off into the mountains by herself and only came back after they’d gone, after everyone thought she must have died out there, all alone in the wilds; everyone except Baba, who said he always knew she was far too stubborn for that.

  She calls the Company people a bad name. So bad I can’t even say it here. But sometimes, in the dark, Xiao Wei and I whisper it to each other to see who can be the first to make the other giggle.

  “Well then,” says Nainai, “what’s doing today?”

  “Tell us about the snakes,” Xiao Wei begs her, as always. “Tell us about the time you got poisoned and your feet turned purple.”

  He listens to her with his mouth open. He believes everything she says.

  “Did you see tigers?” he asks.

  “Once one chased me up a tree,” she says. “I only got down three days later when it had got so hungry it had to go and chase something else.”

  But I know she is lying because there aren’t any tigers any more, there haven’t been any for years and years, not since the city ate up all their homes. And even when the city got quiet, the tigers didn’t come back.

  Once after a sandstorm we found bones in the shape of an animal. They were all curled up, like it had walked all the way into the city, beneath the eyes of all the apartment blocks, then just lain down and died, right in the middle of Freedom Square.

  “It’s a tiger,” said Xiao Wei, after we had looked at the bones for a long time.

  “How do you know?” I said, but I knew they were tiger bones, too. We wrapped them in a cloth and carried them out to Auntie Tiger’s forest and they became our secret thing, buried between the burnt-out ship and the comms mast. We used to burn paper money for the tiger, so it would be happy in the underworld and wouldn’t come back and eat us. We still try to keep the sand swept away, and though Nainai always says she’ll help us she just leans on her broom and tells us what to do.

  ***

  Nainai likes to try and teach us things, even though we know them already. She thinks now that Mama and Baba aren’t here anymore we don’t learn anything. “Look here,” she always says, “Look here.” Today she fishes around in her clothes where she keeps scraps of paper wrapped up in cloth like they’re treasure. It takes her a while to find one with writing on only one side. The scraps are getting smaller and smaller. Then she gets out her pen and ink. Her pen is clear plastic. The end is all chewed into a scrunched up point. She won’t tell us how she makes the ink. It’s black, and smells of something from a long way underground.

  “Look here,” she says, finally, spreading the scrap of paper out on the floor. “This is Tiger.” When she writes it, all the lines are wobbly because her hand is all shaky. “Here is how you write tiger. Look here – first you draw this, this is the tiger’s skin. Then you draw this, this is the tiger’s feet.”

  We look at the wobbly shape. “There’s only two feet,” says Xiao Wei.

  “Ha!” says Nainai, hauling herself out of the ship. “Tigers are clever at hiding things. You should remember that.”

  ***

  In the books the Company left us there are pictures of things we have never seen, like “reservoir” and “bio-dome”. The Company people smiled at us and patted our heads and we had to pretend to like it because we wanted those books, we wanted them almost as much as we wanted the little packets of food they passed out, and the sweet drinks that made our teeth feel fuzzy and strange. They hung up huge red banners on our houses with big white characters that Mama said meant “Working Together for a Prosperous Future”. When Baba saw them he said that Nainai had the right idea.

  The Company also gave all the children books about animals. These books were the ones we liked best, the ones that made us want to look and made us scared of looking at the same time. This is how we know what Auntie Tiger looks like. She has orange and black stripes and yellow eyes. She is coming out of a forest of tall trees and looking straight at us. Her yellow eyes are saying, “I’m hungry” and even when we were very little we knew that she wanted to gobble us up.

  ***

  In the middle of the night Older Sister hears the sound of crunching and says to Auntie Tiger, “What are you eating? I am also hungry.” So Auntie Tiger gives her a date, and Older Sister is so hungry she is about to pop it straight into her mouth, but she stops, and she feels it, and she finds that it isn’t a date at all but a human finger. And although Older Sister is very hungry, she isn’t hungry enough for this. So instead she says, “I have to go outside, Auntie Tiger,” (in those days, there weren’t any bathrooms) and Auntie Tiger says, “Let me tie this rope around your waist, then you won’t get lost my dear,” but when Older Sister gets out into the moonlight she sees the rope isn’t a rope at all, but human entrails, all pink and slippery and bright under the moon.

  ***

  We’ve made our entrails out of plastic bags tied together, with a bit of sand in each to make it heavier. We’ve seen real entrails, when there used to be animals to eat, and we’re quite pleased with how our fake entrails look. When I am far enough away from Auntie Tiger’s house, I untie the entrails and climb up a tree as quick as I can.

  The tree isn’t a tree but a comms mast – or what’s left of it – with a ladder up the side. From up here, if you look one way you can see the city is getting thinner, some buildings falling apart and some never finished. You can see more and more light through its ribs. If you look the other way you can see all the way into the flat distance, and we don’t know what’s there. Whichever way I look I can’t see any people and I imagine that there is just us here, just me and Xiao Wei in Auntie Tiger’s forest, and the world all empty around us. It makes me
feel shivery, even though it is hot.

  On the horizon, where the sun is going down, there’s a dark line like someone’s smudged their finger just above the ground. Somewhere over there is a storm.

  ***

  The sand swallows things up. Fields and animals and buildings and people. It swallows pretty much anything. The Company promised that their machines could keep the sand away. They talked to Baba and Mama and all the other grown-ups who lived at the edge of the city about businesses and opportunities. They talked to us about the new little friends we’d have. Then they leant down with their hands on their knees and said, “Won’t that be wonderful!” and smiled at us through glasses that reflected us back.

  “Why can’t we just go to where you come from?” said Xiao Wei. “Wouldn’t that be easier?” But the Company people just laughed and ruffled his hair.

  Sometimes we play Company people. Xiao Wei puts on his special accent which he has to wrinkle his nose and raise his eyebrows to do. “A hopeful future for all!” he proclaims, wagging his finger in the air. “Progress is within reach!” I have to admit that he’s quite good. He takes an exaggerated swig from an imagined bottle of water and smacks his lips together. “The taste of change!” he declares, and I give him a round of applause, I can’t help it, even though it turned out that the Company people weren’t as clever as they thought. All their machines and numbers didn’t do much of anything in the end, and we never got to see the things they showed us in the pictures, the great bowls of water in the earth and the shining silver buildings that would grow up beside them, and we never got to find out what change tasted like.

  Nainai says she always knew they’d have to give up in the end. “No staying power,” she says of people she disapproves of, and she always spits after she’s said it.

  ***

  When Auntie Tiger has waited a long time, she pulls on the entrails to bring Older Sister back. But when the entrails return Older Sister does not, and Auntie Tiger gets very angry. She crashes out of the house and she shouts up to Older Sister in the tree, “I see you!”

  ***

  This is Xiao Wei’s favourite part. He scampers around on all fours beneath the mast and shouts, “Come down, come down, and I’ll cook you some food!”

  I should be taunting him, gloating to Auntie Tiger that she won’t have me for her dinner. But I can’t keep my eyes from the horizon and its dark, smudged line.

  “Come down, come down, your little brother is scared!” He makes his voice high-pitched and sing-song.

  I hold out my thumb. The line is about half the size of my thumbnail. As I watch, it starts to grow.

  “Come down, come down or I’ll come and get you!”

  My legs are heavy and all of a sudden I am very tired.

  “I’ll chew on your brains and pull out your eyeballs! I’ll pull out your guts through your nose!”

  I watch the line. I feel like all the sand and dumplings in my stomach are being pressed together. I tell my legs to move. When that doesn’t work I shout at them. It seems like a long way down, much further than on the way up.

  “What are you doing?” shouts Xiao Wei. “I’m not finished!”

  I can feel grains of sand begin to whip onto my face.

  “I’ll gobble you up,” he says, uncertain now.

  I start to scramble faster. I know I should shout to him, tell him to run, but the wind has stolen my voice. Something is roaring. The wind tugs at my hair and my T-shirt. When I’m about two metres off the ground I jump.

  “Are you blind?” I yell, straightening up and grabbing his hand. We start running.

  The sand is too fast. I only look behind for a second but it’s enough to see what’s behind us. In our picture book there’s a wave, and below the wave is a little boat. The mountain of sand looks just like the wave, and we are just like the boat, all the way far underneath it. I try to look around us, one arm over my face but all the places that might give us shelter seem too flimsy, too full of holes – they are just the skeletons of things that used to be useful and finally we crash into what’s left of a wrought iron barrier. We throw ourselves behind it and as Xiao Wei burrows his head in my stomach I try to put my arms around him and over my head at the same time and the sand sweeps over us, on and on and on.

  And there is only the dark, and sand all around, filling my ears and mouth, pressing down like it wants to keep me forever. There is only silence, and I have lost which way is up, lost where the ground was before it swallowed me, and all I can think is that I want Baba and Mama back, I want them to reach down their strong hands to haul me up, to lift me out.

  It seems like a long, long time before I realise I am still clutching my brother’s hand, that I am not buried all alone. That we have to move, to dig, and the more we dig, the more sand falls in and even when we wriggle out it is hard to breathe. The air is a dirty, browny yellow. It is as dark as evening and it feels like we are a long way from home because there is nothing around us that I recognise. Our hair is matted with sand and our skin is all stubbly. Xiao Wei looks at me, his eyes big and glittery. I start to giggle. The relief makes me feel light and floaty.

  ***

  We are brushing ourselves down, still shaking, when we smell something wrong, something musty and strange and old. And after the smell, a growl, long and low, and we know what it is even before yellow eyes come out of the dust like the cleverest looking lamps you’ve ever seen.

  I take hold of Xiao Wei’s hand. His fingers curl round mine. “Auntie Tiger,” he whispers. We stand very still. The yellow eyes are followed by orange and black fur rippling with each step, coming towards us, coming closer, and I know that we were right, she is hungry, and the sand has brought her all the way here to the city to gobble us up.

  I think she can smell us; her nostrils flare, we must smell like good food. Her claws rake the sand. I’ve always thought that Auntie Tiger’s not very clever if she doesn’t realise that Older Sister will untie the rope. But this tiger isn’t like that. This tiger is like the tiger that Nainai writes. She looks like she is thinking. She looks like she has secrets to hide.

  “It’s only a game,” I whisper, and I don’t know whether I’m talking to myself or my brother. “Auntie Tiger doesn’t exist, she’s only a story.” She’s only a story, just like the ones the Company told us. Just like the giant bowls of water in the ground and the silver buildings touching the sky. Stories aren’t true, we’ve learnt that by now. But my voice has gone thin and high and it’s not convincing anyone.

  Auntie Tiger has gobbled up my brother again. This is my bad dream. I dream it night after night and it’s always the same. I am not the brave Older Sister our parents told me I had to be. I am too scared to run away, even though I know how the story goes, that there is a tree out there for me to climb, and that Auntie Tiger will not be able to trick me down and gobble me up.

  This is my bad dream and this is when I should wake up. But I don’t wake up. There are no trees to climb or tricks to try.

  Xiao Wei holds my hand tighter. The tiger bares her teeth. I want to say to him I’m sorry, but the tiger has stolen my voice. I want to run but my legs are too heavy and I think maybe he’s right, maybe the sand is weighing us down. It has swallowed up all the sound. It has swallowed up the sky. I put my arms around my brother and I hold him close because I don’t know what else to do. Because this wasn’t in the stories.

  Then Xiao Wei shouts, “Look. Look!”

  I don’t understand at first, but then I see it. Another wave, coming towards us with a roar, faster even than last time and there is nothing we can do but crouch together and hold on, our arms wrapped around each other as everything around us turns black and angry and somewhere out in the darkness are long claws and sharp, sharp teeth.

  ***

  The sand swallows things up but it uncovers things, too. That’s what Mama used to say. Once after a storm she found a silver necklace, just peeking out of the sand. “This necklace,” she would say, touching the
thin chain around her neck, where she’d hung a pendant shaped like a bird. “See, baobei, you can find the hidden things, if you look.”

  The storm passes. It feels like it has sucked everything out of the air. The quietness makes me afraid. We keep our heads down and listen for the tiger’s breath.

  But what we hear is the tap of a stick, and someone scuttling towards us crying, “Aiya! Look at the state of you!”

  Nainai is moving fast, her dress flapping around her. She is saying “Aiya!” over again and shaking her head but we are too busy digging ourselves out of the sand and looking about us at the empty space where the tiger was waiting.

  “Where did it go?” says Xiao Wei.

  “What?” says Nainai.

  “The tiger. The tiger was going to eat us.”

  “Ah!” says Nainai, “And I would have liked to see it! What a shame!’

  We watch her carefully for signs of mockery.

  “It wanted to eat us,” says Xiao Wei, just to make sure she’d heard the first time.

  “Of course it did, it’s a tiger,” says Nainai.

  Xiao Wei and I look at each other. I try to make my look say Crazy old lady. Xiao Wei makes his look say Shut up.

  ***

  This is the end of the story: Auntie Tiger runs to find her tiger friends to help her tear Older Sister from the tree. But Older Sister climbs down quickly, ripping her clothes on a branch. When Auntie Tiger comes back she says, “Look – there is a human in the tree,” but all her two tiger friends see is torn clothing so they think she has cheated them and they are angry like only tigers can be. Older Sister watches from a distance as they pounce on Auntie Tiger and gobble her up, and then Older Sister runs out of the forest and never comes back, because she is clever and knows when to learn a lesson.