American Hippo

by Sarah Gailey

  And then Ysabel had come, and there hadn’t been room to keep asking. And Hero had kept on healing, had kept on slowly recovering. They’d helped with the baby here and there, although they didn’t know much of anything about babies and didn’t care to learn. And the pain in their belly had faded.

  Hero dug their hands into the coarse sand and watched the still surface of the water. The pain in their belly had faded, and Adelia had recovered from Ysabel’s birth. It was time to leave. They knew it—had been thinking about it all day. They would tell Adelia that night, after the baby was asleep. It was settled. Hero would be gone by daybreak.

  But where? Home? Back to their little house with its little pond, to be alone for the rest of their lives?

  Because, if Hero was honest with themself, that was why they’d stayed with Adelia for so long. It was easy to focus on the wound in their belly and Ysabel’s birth and the work of finding food and starting fires and staying two steps ahead of the law. It was easier for Hero to do all of that than it was for them to think about going home, sitting alone on the front porch, and looking at the empty rocking chair that Houndstooth should have been in. It was easier for Hero to do that than it was for them to wonder why it was that they’d survived the collapse of the Harriet dam, while Houndstooth—

  No. No, they thought, slamming a door in their mind. Don’t think about that. They turned their mind back to the problem of why Adelia hadn’t killed them, and then realized how closely that question fit with the question they weren’t going to think about. Something else, anything else.

  They looked at the water, and gripped fistfuls of sand, and thought about how to keep a lit fuse dry. A sense of calm washed over them as they considered waxes and weights, how to keep the fuse from attracting fish, the problem of seepage, the problem of oxygen. And what if the fuse itself was on fire? Could they make it burn so hot that the water wouldn’t matter?

  They were drawing equations in the sand, calculating how many grams of gunpowder an inch of cotton wick could support—but then a scream cut through the muggy night air. Hero was used to screams cutting through all manner of night air at this point; sleeping a few feet away from a newborn baby will have that effect on a person. But this scream didn’t sound at all like Ysabel.

  It almost sounded like … Adelia.

  Hero scrambled to their feet and pelted back toward the campsite. They slipped on a patch of loose scree, their leg shooting out behind them, but they caught themself and continued without breaking stride. Another scream—this one from Ysabel—and shouts, more than one person. “Shitshitshitshitshit,” Hero chanted under their breath as they ran. They held one arm in front of their face to guard their eyes from twigs; with the other hand, they reached down to unstrap their fat-bladed kukri—usually reserved for utility, but it would do the job that needed to be done, whatever that job might be.

  Except that it wasn’t there. They groped at their hip even as they had a vision of the knife, sheathed, on the ground next to the kneeling saddle they’d been polishing. They would have sworn, but they were already swearing. “Shitshitshit.”

  Hero burst into the little clearing where they’d left Adelia and Ysabel not fifteen minutes before. There was a resonant thunk next to their head—they looked, and saw the handle of a knife sticking out of a tree trunk less than a foot from their face. They pulled up short, their breath frozen in their throat.

  Five men surrounded Adelia in a wide circle. Kerchiefs were tied over their faces, and their hats were pulled low, leaving only their eyes exposed. Adelia’s outstretched right hand gripped the butt of Hero’s kukri, and she turned in a slow circle, keeping the men at a distance and stepping around the empty sheath at her feet. In her left arm, a swaddled Ysabel whimpered steadily.

  Hero’s heart pounded in their chest so hard that it hurt. The odds in this situation were decidedly not in their favor. They weren’t a fighter. They did poisons and explosives, the weapons of a thinking person. They had tolerable skill with a knife, theoretically, but against five people? They didn’t stand a chance.

  “Alright now, that’s enough,” one of the men said. “We ain’t gonna hurtcha none, just—” Adelia swiped at him with Hero’s kukri and he jumped back with a shout.

  You don’t have to fight, a small, reasonable voice whispered inside of Hero’s mind. You could just walk away from this. Hero had been with Adelia for nearly two months. Adelia was more than recovered from Ysabel’s birth. You don’t owe her anything, the reasonable voice said. You don’t have to get involved in this at all.

  “I don’t see why we can’t hurt her a little bit,” another of the men said. Blood seeped from a cut on his thigh. “Just knock her out, boss.”

  Hero took a slow, quiet step backward. They were good at being quiet—they could melt into the brush and no one would ever have to know that they’d been there at all.

  “You knock her out, if you’re so damn smart.”

  “Fuck that, she already cut me. You do it.”

  Hero took another step back. You don’t owe her anything, the small voice whispered again.

  “Jesus Christ, you two,” a third man growled. “It’s a woman and a baby.” He shook his head at his colleagues, then lunged.

  “No!” Hero heard the shout before they realized it was their own voice, and then they were running. They yanked the knife from the tree trunk with a back-wrenching tug, and then they were fighting.

  It was exactly as awful as they’d feared. The men all looked the same, and even though Hero was certain they’d counted five before, it seemed like they were everywhere at once. Hero punched one of them in the gut, and another took his place right away. A fist connected with Hero’s eye and everything went white, and then hot blood was getting into their eyes and they couldn’t see anything. Hands grabbed at Hero’s arms, and their pulse pounded in their ears, and they were being dragged away from Adelia. Ysabel was screaming. Adelia was cursing. Hero lashed out blindly behind themself with the knife and felt it catch on fabric and a man’s voice near their ear said agh hey watch it. They lashed out again, and the knife caught on fabric again, and then they pushed.

  The blade sank in with almost no resistance at all. The man who had said watch it made a sound like he was confused, or maybe startled. The grip on Hero’s arms slackened, and they yanked themself free, wiping blood from their eyes with one sleeve. There was a meaty thud behind them, but they didn’t stop to look, couldn’t stop to look, because Adelia was shouting and the men were grabbing at Ysabel and the trees were shaking—

  Wait, what? But before Hero could fully register their own confusion, the treeline exploded in a shower of leaves and loose moss, and three thousand pounds of damp, grey, furious hippopotamus thundered into the clearing. Zahra scattered the bedrolls under her close-set feet, barreling toward Adelia with all the momentum of a coal train. She knocked two of the masked men aside with a brutal shoulder check—one of them landed next to Hero with a splintering thud and didn’t get up again.

  Zahra’s jaws gaped wide, revealing her cruelly sharp teeth, and she snapped at the remaining two men. The one farthest from the hippo turned to bolt and knocked hard into Adelia. The two of them fell in a tangle of limbs. The man’s companion yanked him up by the arm and they both ran. One of the men Zahra had knocked over scrambled to his feet and followed them. Zahra started to charge after them, kicking up dry grass, but Adelia whistled sharply and the hippo trotted to a reluctant stop. She stood snorting at the place in the treeline where the men had disappeared, the vast grey expanse of her trunk heaving like a bellows.

  “Adelia,” Hero shouted, running to where she sat in the patchy grass of the clearing. “Adelia, are you alright? Where did he get you?” Adelia’s breath was ragged, and she was clutching at the grass by her thighs with both fists. When she looked up at Hero, her face was clenched in naked agony. “Show me,” Hero said, kneeling next to Adelia, not touching her but holding their hands a few inches from her shoulders as if they could sha
ke the injury away.

  But Adelia was shaking her head and tears were brimming in her eyes.

  “Show me,” Hero whispered. “I can help.”

  And then Hero realized that they could hear Zahra’s huffing breaths, and they could hear the singing insects that were starting to come out as the sun went down. They could hear the groans of the man they’d stabbed. They could hear the crackle of dry grass under their own knees.

  They could hear things they hadn’t heard since Ysabel was born. For the first time in six weeks, it was quiet.

  Hero stood up and scanned the entire clearing. “Adelia,” they said, trying to keep their voice calm. “Where’s Ysabel?”

  Even as they said it—even before Adelia’s anguished, furious scream split the night open—Hero knew the answer.

  Ysabel was gone.

  Chapter 2

  “No one ever suspects the fat lady, hmmm?”

  Regina Archambault whipped around to see who had whispered in her ear—but no one was there.

  “Archie? Wassamatt’r?” The man Archie had been talking to a moment ago swayed toward her, his bourbon breath scalding her nostrils.

  “Not a thing, chérie, not a thing.” Archie placed a steadying hand on his shoulder, making the movement seem like a caress. The man—forty-something, white, all his teeth but none of his hair—looked down at her hand as though he were going to lick it.

  “D’y’know,” he said, casting a half-squinted eye at Archie’s satin-swagged bosom, “that I’m the riches’ man on the Pochnaroon?”

  Archie pressed a hand to her chest, feigning surprise while tugging the neckline of her gown an inch lower. “Well, now, Mr. ’Aberdine, I never would ’ave guessed such a thing!” She gave Haberdine’s bolo tie a tug, aimed a plump-lipped smile his way. “The richest man on the Ponchartrain, and so ’andsome as well? ’Ow could you keep this secret from me?” She pouted in the way a man like this would expect a Frenchwoman to pout. “I thought we were friends.”

  “It’s not going to work.”

  That voice again, but this time Archie didn’t turn to look at who it was. Whoever they were, they’d find her eventually. She wasn’t going to play their game.

  “I own”—Haberdine stifled a belch—“well, I used’t’own all the boats on the Ponchatrawn and half th’ns on the Missississip, an’ I tell you what, I—” He stopped midsentence, his eyes on Archie’s leg. She’d reached into an inner pocket of her gown while he was talking, and she’d tugged on a strategically loosened string. A significant slit had opened up in the fabric, running from her calf to the top of her thigh.

  “Tell me what,” she whispered into Haberdine’s ear, letting her leg edge toward him so that he could see the sheen of her stocking. His fingers trailed along the rent in the fabric. Her fingers trailed along the lining of his inner waistcoat pocket.

  “Well, now, Ms. Archie—I was gonna say that if I thought I was rich before…” Haberdine licked his lips as his thumb traced the clasp of her garter where it met the top of her stocking. “T’ain’t nothin’ to how I’m set up now I’ve sold my boats.”

  “Sold them?” Archie murmured, tracing a fingertip along his earlobe while feeling in his trousers for a billfold.

  “Sol’m to Whelan Parrish, m’dear,” Haberdine said. “Why, that boy’s buying up all the property he can get a handful of—”

  Archie jumped prettily, and Haberdine chuckled. “Oh, mon dieu, Mr. ’Aberdine, I—”

  “Who’s your friend, Marcus?”

  Haberdine snatched his hand out from under her skirt. Archie’s lightning reflexes, honed over a lifetime of grift, were the only thing that saved her from dropping his wallet on the ground between them. She slipped the wallet into a pocket in her bustle as she turned to see who Marcus was sweatily eyeing.

  “Marcus, my love, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” There was no mistake to be made—it was the same voice as the one that had been taunting Archie all night, from the moment she’d “bumped into” Haberdine on the dance floor to the first drink he’d bought for her. The young woman belonging to the voice was, in many ways, Archie’s opposite. Where Archie was pale, she was dark; where Archie was broad as a pistol’s grip, she was thin as a knife’s edge; where Archie’s hair was piled in a tower of blond ringlets, this woman’s was close-cropped and glossy, set in immaculate waves. But there was something more there. Where Archie was tired, this woman’s skin seemed to glow.

  Where Archie was enjoying playing with Haberdine, this woman’s eyes spoke to hunger. This wasn’t a game to her.

  “Cayja,” Haberdine slurred, grinning at this new woman. “I was jus’ talkin’ business with this’r upstanding lady. Meet Ms. Archie—er, Archie…”

  “Just Archie is fine,” Regina said, extending a hand.

  “Acadia,” the other woman drawled, ignoring it. “Marcus, dear heart, we had probably better get back to our boat.”

  “But th’party’s just getting started!” he said, gesturing expansively to the crowd that surrounded them. He was right—their party boat, just like every other one that floated on the surface of the Ponchartrain, was packed with shouting, dancing, drunk people, and the crowd was growing livelier by the minute. “In fact, I could use a refill—” And with that, Haberdine gracelessly excused himself from the company of both women.

  “I am sorry,” Archie said, “I didn’t know that ’e was spoken for—”

  “Git,” Acadia said through gritted teeth. Her fists were clenched in the full pink skirt of her gown, and Archie could see her holding back a formidable anger.

  “Pardonnez-moi?”

  “I said git,” Acadia spat, something like fear glinting in her eyes, and Archie revised her earlier assessment. This wasn’t a woman. This was a girl dressed up as a woman.

  “Are you alright?” Archie asked softly, remembering other times she’d met desperate young women wearing pearls that older women had loaned them. “Is ’e—are you safe ’ere?”

  Acadia stepped closer to Archie, glancing around them before she answered. “Well … I suppose maybe I can trust you…”

  Archie bent her head to listen. “Of course, chérie.”

  Acadia’s lips brushed Archie’s ear at the same time as a needle-sharp knife pricked her hip. “This is my grift, Regina Archambault.” Her voice was low, husky, a shade above a whisper but more intimate for it. Her breath was hot on Archie’s throat. “That man just sold his empire, and I’ve been working on him for a fucking month, and the fortune he’s sittin’ on is mine. So git.”

  Archie nodded. “I see. Thank you for letting me know.” She put a fingertip on the girl’s knife and pushed it away from her abdomen. “It is as I said: I did not realize ’e was spoken for. I’ll take my work elsewhere.”

  “To another boat,” Acadia said. “There are plenty here. This one’s mine.”

  Archie nodded. She couldn’t help respecting the girl’s work—after a few hours in Haberdine’s company, she’d been tempted to pitch him overboard. A full month … the girl would be earning her fortune. “’Ave a pleasant evening,” Archie said. The girl gave her a curt nod, and with that, they parted ways.

  Archie smiled to herself as she paid one of the Ponchartrain gondoliers a penny to ferry her back to the Marianna Fair. It had been a good night, even if she’d been called away. She reached into one of the pockets of her skirt, the one where she’d slipped Haberdine’s wallet before being so rudely interrupted. The wallet was fat, ripe with bills—likely his advance on the sale of his empire.

  She felt in the pocket again.

  There was a rustle of paper there. Thick, heavy stock, debossed or imprinted with something. She pulled the paper out, held it up to the gondolier’s lantern, and laughed.

  It was a calling card. The girl had left a card in Archie’s pocket—nervy as hell, that one. She felt around in the pocket again, and realized that, while the wallet was still there, the two watches she’d lifted from other marks that night were gone.
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  “Well earned, Acadia,” she laughed to herself, studying the calling card. “I’ll ’ave to be in touch with you, eh?”

  For the rest of the trip between the party boats and the Marianna Fair, Archie watched the water. Strictly speaking, she shouldn’t be worried—the ferals hadn’t made it as far as the Ponchartrain yet, at least according to all the latest accounts. They wouldn’t like the brackish, choppy waters of the lake. It was why there were so many people on the water even this late in the season—everyone was congregating in places they thought the ferals were avoiding.

  Still, Archie watched the water. She flinched every time a ripple crossed the surface.

  * * *

  Archie eased open the door of the suite she was sharing with her old friend, tiptoeing so as not to wake him. But when she got inside, she found him standing at the little desk that took up half their room, working by the light of a single gas lantern.

  “I’m just—hang on,” Houndstooth said distractedly, waving a hand at Archie without looking up.

  Archie sighed, unclipping her skirt and tossing it on the bed before pulling on a pair of well-worn breeches. She didn’t bother trying to tuck herself behind a screen—Houndstooth was too wrapped up in his work to notice her partial nudity. She needled him, even though she knew he wouldn’t listen. “You should go to sleep, Winslow. It must be two o’clock in the morning, my friend.”

  The only response she got was the sound of his grease pencil smudging across the map, and the lapping of water against their boat. She frowned at Houndstooth. He was bent over the tiny desk, a long parenthesis in the flickering light of the gas lantern. Archie tutted. She didn’t care to be ignored. She turned away from Houndstooth, bumping into furniture on her way to the washbasin. She loosened her corset, washed her face, took out her false curls, began putting her hair up into the crown of braids she’d be sleeping in. She could see the entirety of the little room in the palm-sized mirror that hung on a nail over the washbasin: the narrow bed, the narrower chair, the postage stamp of a desk. The little window that wouldn’t open to let in the salty breeze coming off the lake.