-- the new flesh, Burns thought.
The notes of a familiar instrument (familiar to Rodenje, at least) pealed like startled birdsong, mingling with the low, constant hum of a hymn. The girls beside him weren’t chatting; they sang, as did everyone Burn could see.
Other than the girls, no one paid him much attention. Burns didn’t resist, and after a while, the pressure (gentle as it was) from the girls relaxed. He was on a cart. He twisted see a stunted horse with patched brown hair pull the cart between the hills with easy strides. On the animal's hide were old scars, claws with the spread of a person's hand.
Burns sat. In a disinterested way, it occurred to him that he should find this embarrassing, intolerable -- sitting naked, surrounded by strangers. He reckoned all of Rodenje was around him, from infants in mothers' arms to old folks. On occasion, children running in packs taunted goats and calves led by men. The men paid them no mind, other than to tighten the tethers when the animals panicked.
-- this is a pilgrimage, he realised.
All the men wore pelts. They had strange strides. The pelts no longer hung from their frames, but moved with the muscles and sinew of the bodies. Several women carried staffs capped with skulls sculpted out of their original forms (or maybe they came from deformed animals); many skulls had tattoo-like paintings. Each staff-bearer was genuinely pregnant, many heavily. Burns thought these women acted as loose nuclei for the crowds, leading irregular circles of townsfolk.
The nakedness of Rodenje people no longer shocked him, but among the canvases of bare skin, he saw welts and cuts similar to those across his ankle and back. Yet many of the cuts still bled. He looked for signs of the old mothers prowling among the crowds. Instead, he saw several women (naked, of course) drag ropes with crude metal orbs at the ends. When they were near a man, they swung the metal weight to strike him, usually across the backs of thighs and calves, on napes, and creating harsh hollow whacks when they beat skulls. The men stumbled, but their attackers only walked past, zigzagging through the loose crowd to select another arbitrary victim (arbitrary, Burns saw, so long as the victim was male.) Judging by the bloody gashes they left, small spikes must adorn the crude maces.
Burns caught the whiff of burning leaves. It reminded him of the incense he'd left beside Elsie in the hotel; it made him think she was beside him now, a ghost taunting her killer -- it hadn’t come to mind earlier, but couldn’t Elsie, confused and sick, have risen from bed and used the counter for support, and knocked over the incense? She might have fallen back to sleep while it ignited the carpet.
Burns couldn’t find the source of the fragrance. He also couldn’t find the musician, though the music continued. The playing adopted the sombreness of the townsfolk's hymn. Ahead of the pilgrimage, crows stirred in the sky like grit swirling in a glass.
*
The land turned flat and wooded. The horse continued to tug the cart, the young women on either side of Burns continued with the rest to sing, the musician played on, and Burns sat and waited. Without instruction, the children stopped playing. As they walked through the woods, Burns noticed the women with the makeshift maces had increased their attacks on the men; what were once arbitrary strikes across the bodies were now brutal and specific. Several men fell against multiple blows. A few, Burns noticed, remained on the forest floor, blood blossoming from their punctured and quivering bodies.
Now, it seemed any woman could (and most did) strike the nearest male, with fists, with feet, with rocks and branches taken from the forest floor. Young girls attacked boys. Women also beat young boys with enough force to dislocate joints and on occasion, leave them twitching on the ground. Mothers tossed screaming infants aside. Burns knew this should horrify him, but he felt above it, as he imagined a farmer would feel above livestock. As the old mother in the temple had said, this was for him.
-- was Elsie another tribute?
He wormed from the idea, but not before he thought Elsie had been right to question his conviction. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had faith in their relationship.
Something fell from overhead and softly struck the ground. Burns barely registered it, before it happened again, and then several more pattered around the cart. He thought them husks, casings that had withered and decided to fall. He looked through the verdant canopy, and saw long angular bodies that might have been mistaken as lithe except for their bloated stomachs. The old mothers tossed more husks from overhead, pelting the ground. Those weren’t husks; they were the mutilated bodies of little orphans.
*
Burns guessed the pilgrimage's destination. Many adult and young males fell before the people collected along the edge of the valley in the woods. The women seemed done with their attacks. Most of them tossed their blooded rocks and other weapons over the rim.
The singing and the music stopped. The young women beside the cart coaxed Burns to stand. When he did, his legs felt weak and stiff, as if he hadn’t walked in days. His guides took him to the edge of the drop. The townsfolk came together behind Burns. Between the people, close to the ground, the old mothers approached. Their stomachs scraped the grasses and rocks.
Above, crows continued to circle. He'd never seen their species spiral in flocks. There was something languid in their manner, as if they swirled inside an eddy.
Burns' young guides drifted behind him and other hands take his. These palms were rough, the fingers thick and stunted.
-- the idea of hands, he remembered. The old mothers were smaller than he expected, save for the contents of their obscenely distended and cumbersome stomachs, which had pushed aside and broken several ribs. He wondered if only boys curled inside their dead wombs. In their gaze, he saw hatred and peculiarly, something close to adoration. Holding their hands nauseated him.
Movement over the bottom of the valley caught his attention. Someone in colourful red and green robes left the chapel's dark archway to wait in the immaculate yard. He recognised Pais. He felt her watch him.
The old mothers led him down the side of the valley. They made exceptional guides. He wondered if they took him down the same path he had led Elsie through. They sniffed through the grasses, and certain ferns and rocks as if passing a code.
-- nothing before today matters, he thought: It was all so irrelevant.
*
At the base, Burns turned to see the people of Rodenje above. From this distance, he understood why Pais called them orphans. They were unclaimed, lost, and trivial. Yet they were changing. Many silhouettes suggested newer forms. Burns watched men at the edge take knives to the throats of animals to gush blood into the valley. The bodies tipped into the valley and folded over as they rolled down.
The old mothers took him to the top of the mound, where they released his hands and left him facing Pais. She waited at the edge of the yard. Between them, wild grasses like innumerable fingers luring Burns closer. The old mothers slipped across to the yard and hunched on either side of Pais.
-- except she isn’t Pais today, Burns thought.
Her name didn’t matter. He walked toward her. He could see she wasn’t the same as when they had walked together through Rodenje. No single change was as aggressive as the alterations inflicted on the other townspeople. He thought her similar, yet fuller.
He stepped toward her. She reached to him. He groaned in expectation. When they saw his erection, they both slavered with the promise of its use. Somehow, the murky stink of the old mothers and the subtler perfume of the grasses now struck him as alluring. Even his revulsion harden him. Pais took his hand. Something nervous and alive crossed between them. Part of it was fear, hidden yet restless in their chests.
"You can feel her now?" she asked Burns. "The Lady will shape us, like we shape rock."
Pais drew him closer, until their abdomens touched. She dipped her hips to press her pelvis to his. The energy in the air danced over his eyes and lips and over his tongue. It made his hand and her hand feel part of the one body, as if the blood ran from her hand into his.<
br />
When he saw their hands remained separate, a keen grief rented him.
-- it's a promise, he thought. A promise of the new flesh.
"You must pay a tribute," Pais said. She turned and walked to the chapel. Burns followed.
"I have nothing," Burns said.
"Flesh for flesh. Then you will have your book. A new gospel."
She curbed her pace for him to walk ahead. She stroked the long, healing gashes of his back. Instead of pain, minute bursts of pleasure filtered through his body.
The old mothers followed, quiet except for their stomachs scratching the yard. Near the chapel door, Burns saw the dug earth, the dark mound of soil beside the cramped hole. A person could sit cramped between its dank walls; eyes would peer up from a foot or so below the ground. It was empty.
Inside the chapel, the bitter fumes of burning leaves filled his lungs again. The fragrance mingled with the decaying carcasses of the little orphans piled around the statues. Ahead, on the slab Burns had presumed an altar, were tufts of flowers and mosses still with their roots, sprays of blood from something much bigger than the wrens, and two bronze cups on either side of what Burns first thought to be a crown with bull's horns, until he saw the bloody skullcap that sprouted the horns.
He stepped toward it. This time, he drew Pais after him. She willingly followed. The cool air wafted around him as if curious of his body. Depthless dark concealed the ceiling, except it seemed to Burns that it moved like murky water, like smoke. He hardly looked at the statues, feeling embarrassed that he'd ever thought them significant. Pais had been right -- why would a god care about stone?
He heard a small, sharp cry and thought a wren had survived the culling, but when he looked past a complicated grotesque, he saw another form huddled by the walls.
"Elsie," he said.
She flinched, but raised her head. A white mask covered most of her face. Lizard-like scales covered the cheeks, and a forked tongue clung to the chin. Burns hardly recognised the eyes staring through the mask's eyes. Her stare was that of a terrified animal. Her lips through the mask's wide mouth looked aged and appeared to have subtly drifted out of place.
-- Elsie is gone from those eyes, Burns thought; I don’t know who -- what -- this is.
Tangled hair fell over her mask like a tattered and knotted veil. She wore no clothes; indiscriminate grime patched her skin. Burns suspected she'd experienced the company of the old mothers; scratches crisscrossed her body and jagged moon-shaped teeth marks mottled her skin.
Then recognition brimmed over her gaze, and she leant shakily forward before she folded to her knees. Burn left Pais to lean to Elsie. She reached for him. Her skin was cold and felt too soft, but instead of withdrawing, he helped her stand. She shivered. She tried to tuck herself into Burns. While keeping hold of her hand, he stepped to the door. Elsie took a faltering step forward. When Burns took another step, she did likewise.
Elsie only glanced at Pais without seeming to differentiate her from the statues, but she looked at the ground rather than face the old mothers. She pressed her free hand over her stomach, where the bites, fresh, infected, or scabbed, were most prominent. She tried to curl into Burns, and again, he stepped ahead. She said his name. Her nails dug into his skin. She must have fought when she had strength; the fingernails were jagged, and drew blood from him.
She sobbed under the mask, as if suddenly ashamed. "I've seen her. I've seen the Lady," she told him. "She's old. Ancient. It's not new flesh. It's ancient." She let him go, and scratched her own skin. In the light of the doorway, Burns wondered how much of the damage came from the old mothers, and how much Elsie tried to inflict on what moved under her skin, remoulding muscles and bones as if they were clay.
Burns coaxed her outside. The old mothers followed. Above them, the people of Rodenje murmured as one, a soft sound that trickled into the valley as their voices coalesced another into hymn.
Burns took Elsie's hand again, and gave it to the nearest old mother raised its own hand and pulled Elsie's grip from Burns. Elsie let out a harsh cry of disgust and terror and reached to Burns, but he stepped inside the chapel.
He wanted to tell her he finally believed in something, but saw no need to explain -- belief was in Elsie's obliterated gaze. The other old mother pulled Elsie's exhausted and damaged body to the side of the chapel, where the narrow pit waited.
Pais went to the door and closed it. Without windows, the dark enveloped them. Burns listened to Elsie's cries. He heard fists on bodies; she fought, but it wasn’t long before he heard only her cries again, smaller now, exhausted and lost. He listened while handfuls of earth hit her, and fell around her. He heard every cry before the earth drowned the sounds.
The dark moved around Burns, through his hair and inside his lungs, exploring him and bringing even denser wafts of burning leaves. It wasn’t incense now, he realised; it came from the dark breathing over him. It came from the Lady.
"What now?" Burns asked the dark.
Pais’ voice was soft yet it filled the chapel. "Now, we become what the Lady wills us." She brought the horned crown to him and set it on his head. In the first moment, it felt irregular and hard over his head, clumsily balanced, but within a breath, it settled over him, as if feeling over his skull for the best fit.
"The new flesh," Burns said, and thought one last time of Elsie sitting in the grave beside the dead mothers.
The Collector
By William Patrick
Read on for a preview.
Available for Amazon Kindle.
1. Lemon Biscuits. The Stranger. Keepers.
"Come out, Nazi!"
Nic peered through a chink between the boarded living room window, at the boys beating broken bricks on dented pots and hollering at the house. Nine stood across the street, wearing the school uniform of short trousers, pale shirts, and light jackets that were too small on most of them since rationing prohibited squander.
"Come out, you ruddy Nazi!"
Before the war had crossed the sea, Nic had went to school with those boys, worn their uniform, played soccer with them. Cricket, too, though he had no fondness or flare for the game. They'd exchanged comic books and talked about Buck Rogers and Denis the Menace.
Nic wondered if the pots and pans they beat came from the rubble of the Silverstone's house, the first home in Elisabethville destroyed by the Luftwaffe. He had seen the remains, a smashed and soulless crater … a grave.
"Nazi! Dirty Kraut! Come out here!"
Their accusatory chorus sounded like a butchered nursery rhyme.
Nic dreamily touched the scab on his forehead left by one of the first stones thrown at him after the bombing. Sometimes, he picked at the brittle crust, prolonging its healing. After the rock-throwers had chased him back from the schoolyard and smashed the every pane, he had covered every window of the house. It made the house appear abandoned – a useless disguise – while every day indoors was a prolonged dusk.
"Hun!"
Behind Nic, his mother barked from her chair, "Oh, quack-quack-quack, they go! Tell them you're not German, you're Russian."
Nic reluctantly turned from the street, since he'd come to the window to avoid speaking to his mother. She was a form tucked into the couch in the dim corner beside the cathedral radio. Age had dulled her red cardigan. Her long blue skirt and dark hair were barely visible, and her pale hands and face floated like bluish pipe smoke. Only the delicate and perfect form of the bone china teacup and saucer she nursed seemed fully there. The burled mahogany radio was older than Nic. It had been mute since the town's power went down, yet in the evenings, between six and nine, his mother tapped her favourite tunes on her armchair, recalling mostly American performers Nic's father had claimed to dislike – Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald … A list Nic knew well enough to know by the taps on the armrest. Nic remembered watching his parents dance to the tunes, his mother leading while his father smiled despite his apparent dislike of the music.
"They won't believe I'm Russian," Nic said, thinking – You’re Russian, mom, but I'm not, just like I'm not German. I was born in this house.
"Well, wait for your father to return. He'll be a hero, like your grandfather."
"Dad's German, Mum. They'll hate both of us."
"He'll come with his army," she said, undeterred. Nic leaned to the boards again, his eyes hungry for the brightness outside, and his mother said, "Leave the window alone. If they catch you watching–"
A rock thumped the boards and dust scattered through to pepper Nic's face. His mother sighed as a voice from the street broke the taunting chorus to shout, "That one is from my gran's house, Kraut. Your ol' man bombed it!"
"You're father isn't in the Luftwaffe," Nic's mother said.
"They won't listen to that."
Nic turned from the window and saw a form stand in the dimness behind his mother. He could see it was tall and male, wiry as a greyhound, and it watched his mother. It blinked out before Nic could react.
"You should make them listen," his mother advised with the air of a shaman, while he convinced himself that he'd daydreamed the indistinct form. He felt very tired. She said, "It's not healthy for you to stay in all the time, lad."
Dead Birds: The Dark Orphans Collection Page 13
