Sheee let hiiis fuuucking pareeents poiiison iiiit. Should haaave let meeee haaave iiiit. Ooined evthiiing. Dstoooyed famly heeere. Evnn ooon oooth siiide, fmleee issss weeeeaak, loooosing mneee, nooo mooore Powr.
Distraught, Danilo’s speech became more garbled.
“If you had asked instead of trying to steal, she might have helped you. But that’s not your family’s way.”
When it laughed, clots and masses of horror spewed from its jaws.
It’s youuur faaamiiily tooo.
It reached forth and the shadows came to life, slimy darkness and foulness, writhing masses like Danilo. Black except for the coals that were their eyes, sizzling at the edges where they met maggotflesh. All that was left of those slain during the Iron Queen’s Ride.
Leylin hissed. Her torso came away from her legs, her talons unfolded and as she flew above and between Ren and those things, she loomed huge, dangerous.
Leeeaaave, liiiitle ooone. Youuu ooowe hiiim nooothing. Ouur fleeesh is deeeeath tooo a suuucker like youuu.
“Why do you want her house?”
Hrrrr speeeells. Booook. Chaaaarms. Ennoooough power to fiiix meee. Oooownrshiiip will leeet me iiin.
Leylin rose higher into the air, said, “That’s fucking stupid! She couldn’t have done that at the height of her powers when she broke the mountain! Death is Death, even for us!”
They lurched toward Ren.
“It’s okay, LL. You can go.”
She shook her head, ripped a branch free from the trees. “They’ll sludgify you. You will know suffering and never feel a moment without pain. Ever.”
“That’s real sweet of you to worry about me. But I remember enough now. Don’t worry.”
“I can’t run anyway, stupid. My legs are down there, and if that half dies, all of me does. The fuck are you gonna do, Ren? You didn’t know what a spell was yesterday!”
It wasn’t in the mood to talk anymore. Slow and steady and unstoppable, they were moving. Ren supposed that if he died now, the house would pass to his cousin, so this way, with him suffering too, would be far better than him just signing it away for paper. In every world, the Mayores were opportunistic types.
They were twenty feet away, positioned all around him. He saw the pools they left with each step spreading, linking them in an unbroken circle that was shrinking.
“I still don’t know a single spell. Or how to shoot a gun, or swing a sword.”
He took out a Swiss army knife and opened up the biggest blade. All of two inches long.
“Oh, that’s real scary, Ren.”
He slashed his palms. Not deep enough to cut the tendons, but deep enough to bleed freely. He flailed his hands at them, and sent droplets of blood through the night. It was dark enough that he should not have been able to see much, but he realized that the closer he had come to Gram’s place, the easier things had been.
To his eyes, those crimson droplets had golden letters inside them.
They landed on the black creatures, and they screamed. The sound was of all terrible, broken things, children, rabbits, cats, crying out in agony. His cousin too. They hunched over on the ground, and the black receded.
The slime boiled away, the scent of rot replaced by fire.
Underneath, they were translucent and white... but they had the shape of men. They stared at themselves, and were quiet when they faded away. Except Danilo, who never stopped shrieking as his spirit scattered on the wind.
All was silent again, except for the trees and the distant sounds of drums and dogs.
“Holy freakin’ shit! Am I glad I did not try to snack on you!”
“It wouldn’t do anything to you. Having said that, please continue to refrain from snacking on me.” He tore his shirt sleeves, wrapped his bloody hands. Turned back to the path down the mountain.
She flew back down, put her legs back on. “So, what now?”
“Now, I’m going back to the hotel.”
“You’re not even going in the house?”
He looked over his shoulder at the house. It was just a simple cabin made of wood. There wasn’t the slightest bit of power in it. He could picture Gram there, in a rocking chair on the porch, shotgun across her knees, watching over the town below.
“It’s just a house.”
The whole walk back, Leylin demanded answers. Ren could barely explain what he had done on instinct. “She put just one spell in, before she let me go. She said, ‘When you feel most lost, Ren, all you have to do is Remember.’”
“From that you got dead-burning blood?”
“That’s not what it does. All it does is... All she wanted was for me not to forget myself. The whole time I’ve been here, it’s grown stronger, undoing all this stuff my parents did.”
“What? That’s what happened to those goons? They remembered what they used to be, and that which changed them was undone?”
He nodded.
Her eyes were red the whole way back. He supposed the smell of his blood was the reason.
“I think, when I tell my pals what I’ve been up to tonight, I’m going to say you remembered some kickass voodoo she taught you when you were eight. That okay with you?”
She was so young. Of course she didn’t understand yet how much just remembering could hurt. And for creatures whose memories were dominated by regret and anguish, there was little that could hurt more.
“Go for it.”
“And you still owe me a copy of Deathly Hallows.”
If he did not think it would cause her to snap and take his hand off at the wrist, Ren would have patted the top of her head.
“I wouldn’t dream of welching on it. I’ll be back in a few months, and I will have your copy. Other books too.”
“Cool.”
She hovered next to him when they reached the town’s edge, her face level with his, legs dangling, swinging back and forth.
“I can make it the rest of the way.”
“Well. Don’t you forget about the books. I’ll be waiting for them. If you don’t bring them by next year, I’m coming after you. You don’t want to see me tapping on your window! I’ll freak out your wife like nobody’s business.”
“Bye, Leylin. And thank you.”
“Eh, I was bored anyway. You’re no Iron Queen, Ren, but you’re not totally uncool. Try not to look like such a miserable dope all the time. See how much worse your life could have sucked? See you.”
#
Ren got an hour’s sleep. Then it was time.
The graveyard behind the Church.
Everyone had something nice to say. The oldest, her contemporaries, wept when she was lowered into the earth. They had so many stories, of the war, of school, of games and gangs and fights in the street, of singing and dancing at fiestas and how she put a beating on anyone who was too fresh with the other girls in the town. After shaking his hand, with her magic in his skin, they could not help themselves. Every moment was new again. The older they were, the more intense the difference was. There were kids too, the ones Gram had given gifts to over the years, notebooks and pens and calculators for school.
They said their goodbyes.
Ren did not sign the contract. “Attorney Bastian, I think you will find that circumstances have changed.”
He was not sure what had happened to the sun-side half of Danilo, but Ren suspected he was now the sole remaining heir. “I can’t let go of the place. When you’ve checked with my cousin, we can discuss how things will go. I’ll be coming back here regularly.”
Every memory was fixed in crystal. It wouldn’t be forever. He would forget things again like normal people as the years went by.
For now, the dreams of his youth were renewed, passion and drive. He had a feeling that he would be a lot better at certain things.
On the bus, he took the last row.
He picked up the phone and called the first entry in his contact list.
“Marie? I had the most vivid dream while I was here. You wouldn’t believe it.
Lots of different kinds of people. And I dreamed of that day we got married. We’re going to be okay.”
Ren trailed off. He ended the voicemail with, “I remembered how much I love you is all, Marie.”
Ikan Berbudi (Wise Fish)
by Jason Erik Lundberg
Mrs. Singh raised the segmented metal gate on her fish head curry stall with a raucous clatter, prompting several sparrows to alight from their feast of kaya toast crumbs on a nearby table and erupt upward into the hawker center’s metal rafters. Block 117 Aljunied Market and Food Centre was sparsely populated at 10 a.m., most of the breakfast diners having already finished eating, and the lunch rush yet to begin. She appreciated the calm and the quiet that came with this time of the morning, a time of reflection and of gathering herself for the onslaught of customers to come. Her stall was not nearly so famous as those on Singapore’s “Curry Row” in Little India, like Muthu’s Curry or Banana Leaf Apolo, but her portion of the hawker center filled to overflowing every single weekday, and she’d done so well last year that she was able to buy her elder son Anand and his new wife their very own HDB flat.
She pushed the gate on its curved track all the way up, turned on the stall’s fluorescent lights and oscillating fan, and looked to the far corner of the stall, where, on a shelf above the stainless steel sink, away from the heat of her gas stove, rested a glass aquarium. Inside the aquarium, lazily treading water, was a grand red snapper with pointed teeth and auspicious markings, and it perked up as she approached. She stroked the side of the aquarium with her index finger and the fish waggled its fins.
“Good morning, fish,” she said cheerily.
“Good morning, dear lady,” said the fish. “Today is the day I will die.”
Mrs. Singh stood there dumbfounded, but not because the fish had spoken; she had enjoyed a loquacious companionship with the snapper for nearly three years, ever since it had pleaded with her to let it live, that it would bring her good fortune and good health as long as she gave it a restful place to exist. And it had made good on its promises; her sales had more than quadrupled in the intervening time, which was a sort of consolation after the death of her husband Harshad from lung cancer. The money could not bring back Harshad, but it did allow her a measure of security and material happiness. Which is why the fish’s announcement terrified her with its consequences.
“Why would you say this, fish?”
“Because it is true. I have lived a long life, in part thanks to you, but it will come to an end later today.”
“Are you certain? How can you know for sure, ah?”
“It is a gift, dear lady, one that all red snappers, communicative or silent, are born with. In my experience, this knowledge is never wrong, and is not to be taken lightly.”
Mrs. Singh let the implication hang in the air as she went about preparing her kitchen for the day. She chopped eggplant and okra and tomatoes into thick slices to be used later in her curries. Her knee was bothering her again today, the result of a hard twist earlier in the week; she’d pop down to one of the neighborhood private clinics later this afternoon after she closed up. Yet another irritant of her advancing age. She had run track in secondary school and junior college, and even won a few regional prizes; injuries were part of any sport, and she couldn’t count the number of times she’d twisted or sprained a knee or an ankle. She thought about the fact that she could no longer recover with the speed of her youth, and let her Chinese chopper come down with added force on each innocent vegetable.
Mrs. Singh also need to prepare the fish themselves, but her younger son Vishal was late returning from the wet market. Again. Where was that boy? Almost eighteen, going into National Service in three months, but more often than not he had his nose in a book. And not in a medical or law book, as she hoped for him, but fiction, of all things. What use was fiction in the real world? she’d repeatedly asked him. He’d tried to explain how experiencing life through someone else’s eyes would make him a more empathetic and understanding person, less likely to be closed-minded or judgmental, more willing to think for himself rather than blindly follow a given ideology. But she wasn’t sure she accepted his argument. When Vishal had been born, his large head nearly killed her—she’d lost a lot of blood, and the doctors had to rush her into emergency surgery, which meant she hadn’t been able to hold Vishal for the first time until the next day as she recovered in the ICU—and she tsked him now in his absence that he would choose to fill up that big cranium with literary nonsense rather than something useful.
While she waited, she began putting together the ingredients for the curry: softened dried chilies, cumin seeds, coriander, curry powder, chili powder, garlic, fenugreek, curry leaves, tamarind paste, coconut milk. She ground the dried chilies, cumin seeds, and coriander in her heavy stone mortar, then placed a metal pot on her gas stove, lit the fire, and poured in ghee to start heating. The recipe was instinct now; she often bragged that she could assemble a curry blindfolded, but no one yet had taken her up on the challenge. Mrs. Singh’s mother brought the recipe with her from Kerala when she and her new husband, Mr Menon (Mrs. Singh’s father), had traveled by boat to Singapore so that he could start his career as a mechanical engineer. Mrs. Menon had passed the recipe down to Mrs. Singh in that same instinctual way, eschewing precise measurements in lieu of feeling her way through the food.
Mrs. Singh paused in her work, and looked to the aquarium. “Fish?” she said.
“Yes, dear lady?” She normally ignored the affectation, but it always made her a bit uneasy, as if it was claiming that she was something more than she really was. She also couldn’t help noting that it was one letter away from “dead lady.”
“I could change your food, buy the expensive dried shrimp from Thailand.”
“It still would not change the fact that I will die.” The fish turned so that its eye fixed directly on hers. “And your ghee is burning.”
Mrs. Singh cursed and turned her attention back to the pot, scraping in her curry paste to fry. In her large rice cooker, she steamed enough basmati to get her through the initial rush. Vishal finally showed up, laden with a Rubbermaid container full of red snapper. She’d once asked the talking fish if he was bothered by seeing so many of his kind butchered, beheaded, and served up as food, and he’d said, “Of course. Wouldn’t you be disturbed seeing a stall selling fresh ‘long pig,’ with human heads cooked in curry? Your practice makes me shudder to the root of my self, but what can I do about it? Even Buddhists, who work toward the enlightenment of all sentient beings, eat fish.” Since that conversation, she’d asked Vishal to have the fishmonger scale, gut, and behead the fish they bought, so that at least her friend would not have to see her doing such violence to them; it was worth the extra cost.
She checked her watch; it was getting on to 11:15. Fifteen minutes until she officially opened for the day. As she finished her preparations, Vishal checked the stocks of rectangularized banana leaves that she used as eating surfaces, as well as utensils (a true devotee of curry ate with her fingers, but most of her customers were Chinese men and women who lived or worked nearby, and she didn’t expect them to do so) and plastic trays. She noticed a growing group of potential diners gathering at the tables nearby, and pointedly looked toward the small handmade placard affixed to the front of her stall: No Early Queueing.
At 11:30, she flicked the switch that excited the neon in her Open for Business sign, and the loiterers rushed to form an orderly queue. No one was interested in filets or steamed whole-body snapper, they were all after her fish head curry. She cooked as quickly as the orders came in, with Vishal acting as waiter. The temperature in the kitchen rose, and she turned the fan to high, glad that she had long ago given up wearing a sari whilst working; a simple t-shirt and capri pants did nicely enough. Although, at times, the choice, practical as it was, made her feel as if she were turning her back on her homeland.
She paused again in her work and addressed the fish: “What if I buy you a new tank? O
r a pond in which you can freely swim? Someplace where you can feel more at home.”
“It will not matter, auntie. I will still die.” The fish blew a few bubbles, and they popped inaudibly at the top of the water in the tank. “And you are still bargaining.”
“But there must be something can be done. I have always believed that your life is what you make of it, not the result of the whims of chance.”
“I am sorry, dear lady, but this is not a thing you can control. It is karma, and is therefore inevitable.”
“Fish have karma?”
“Of course. All living beings have karma. We cannot escape it, but carry it with us from one life to the next. It is very likely that you yourself were a fish in a past incarnation. My actions have determined that this afternoon, shortly after you close your stall for the day, my body will expire. It is the way of things. But I do ask for one kindness in return for the years of wealth I have brought you.”
“Anything, fish.”
“Cook me as you would any of my brothers and sisters, and then consume me yourself.”
“What?” For Mrs. Singh, the request bordered on cannibalism, as if one of her sons, or her best friend from junior college, had asked her to eat them. She wasn’t sure when she had crossed the threshold between considering the fish a fish and considering it a friend (regardless of species), but there it was. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Please, auntie. Consider it my deathbed request.”
Mrs. Singh exhaled. “Very well.”
“Hey, Ma,” Vishal said, poking his head into the kitchen, “orders are backing up. You talking to that fish again, ah?”
“Never mind, you,” she said, and turned back to the task at hand. Vishal couldn’t hear the fish, and teased her for holding conversations with it, but this just went to show that his big head wasn’t all filled with smarts. Mrs. Singh kept her head down and concentrated on producing the best food that she was capable of producing, which was, after all, all anyone had a right to expect.
The afternoon passed quickly, and at 2:30, she served her last customer, having exhausted her pescetarian supplies for the day, excepting a few errant vegetables. She and Vishal thoroughly cleaned the stall, scrubbing down every visible surface, and some that were not; Mrs. Singh took pride in her cleanliness, and in the “A” rating that her stall had received from the government, one of the few in the whole hawker centre. She made a list of ingredients for Vishal to pick up in Little India for the next day, and he tucked it into the pages of the book he was reading, a short story collection by a science fiction writer named Vandana Singh (their shared surname was common enough that she hardly took notice of the coincidence). He kissed her on the cheek and then walked off to his motobike; Vishal was such a good boy, even if she didn’t always understand him. She hoped he’d meet a nice Indian girl and be happy like her elder son Anand.
OUTPOURING: Typhoon Yolanda Relief Anthology Page 30
