Clockwork Phoenix 4

by Mike Allen

  * * *

  At night she would put her hands on her chest in the middle of washing the dishes (it had become her job because she didn’t mind cold water), and feel the slight lump there. Laying a cold hand on it soothed her, like her mother used to do to her when she was small. “Does it hurt again?” the boy asked from behind.

  “No,” Tsurara said, without turning around, “I’m only reminding myself that it’s still there.”

  “Is it cancer?”

  “No.” She had learnt the word from one of the market women, and had thought, herself, that it was exactly like cancer, only she had to live with it forever, if she was to live.

  “Are you scared?”

  “No,” she lied.

  She heard him stand out of his flat cushion. She could feel his breath in her black, slightly wavy hair that was unlike her mother’s very straight hair. She wanted to turn around and hold him, if she hadn’t had an icicle in her chest. But now she couldn’t blame her father; she was a creation of both of them, her father and mother, and without him, she wouldn’t have been here in the first place.

  The boy touched her hair a little, and turned away.

  Her tears didn’t freeze fast enough like her mother’s. They formed icicles down her eyes, which scratched her cheeks and turned them pink.

  * * *

  One night she decided not to float in the sky. She slid into his futon and held to his arm tight, and the uncomfortable warmth kept her awake all night. The next night he held her; her harsh coldness kept him awake all night. Then the next night they kissed, warmth and coldness mingling on their lips, and she let him feel for the tiny, icy lump in her chest. He groaned as if it hurt him.

  The next night, Tsurara no longer cared about her icicle.

  Her heart flinched from the icicle’s sharpness, but she concentrated more on the pain as he entered her, as his warmth warmed her icy body from inside. She felt her whole body becoming too hot, like even the Heat in the sky could never have done to her. She felt her icicle stab her heart and gasped, and clung to his neck and stopped breathing; he held her tighter and knocked all the breaths out of her, and let her believe for one second breathing was needless. She thought she was going to die, and she no longer cared. But then, something happened in her chest.

  The icicle, which had always been there, which had always threatened to pierce her heart, melted and flowed into her veins. Her overheated body was now being cooled down.

  The two of them felt her heart beating strong, so strong like it had never done, without the icicle that had always been suppressing its strength. She had thought her heart had been made of soft snow to the core, but now she learned the core was made of crystal, that had been materialized and nurtured by the mountain, and born to life by her mother and father. The soft snow, which had wrapped it all this time, dissolved and helped her body cool. The crystal heart no longer hurt—no, it did hurt, but for a different reason.

  Later in the complete darkness, they held tight on each other, and she listened as he started to talk. “You remind me of an old tale that my father used to tell.”

  “Did he tell it to put you to sleep?”

  “Right. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  The boy shifted, and let her rest her head between his arm and his chest.

  “Once upon a time,” he started quietly, “there was a farmer deep in the mountain. He loved a woman and they had a kid. They were happy, only, for some reason, the wife wouldn’t let him sleep in the same cave that she and the child slept in.

  “One day as he worked, he came across a horrible-looking old woman, who had a huge cooking knife in her hand. His wife had warned about this crazy woman, told him not to go near her. But it was too late.

  “‘Are you going to eat me?’ he said.

  “‘You are the one who eats,’ the woman said. He asked what she meant. She said, ‘your wife is a snow-woman. So is your child. Your heat is going to melt them down to death.’”

  Tsurara flinched at the word “snow-woman.” The boy didn’t seem to notice—or if he did, he covered it by pulling her tighter against him.

  “‘That’s why she wouldn’t let you sleep in the same cave,’ the woman went on. ‘You are too warm. You must leave them, if you want them to live.’

  “So the man left. He came down the mountain and to the sea. He became a fisherman, and worked very hard so that he would forget his wife and child.”

  “Did he?”

  “No,” he said, stroking Tsurara’s hair, “he met a woman near the sea and they had a boy, but his family in the mountain always haunted him. He even wished the snow-woman would come see him out of the mountain, like in the old folk story.”

  “How does it end?” Tsurara asked.

  “I never found out. If the man lived happily ever after, or if he was frozen to death by the snow-woman. Funny, but I don’t even remember why I never did.”

  Tsurara slowly nodded in his arms.

  “But this snow-woman,” he hesitated here a little. “Don’t you think it sounds a lot like you? I thought, when I first saw you,” now his voice was shaking and the chest boomed uncomfortably, “the snow-woman finally came out to the sea.”

  Tsurara was silent for a long time, and he wondered if she had gone asleep. When she finally spoke, her voice was calm; so much so that the boy might have felt ashamed that his own voice had been so tingly. “Are you scared of the snow-woman?”

  “No. I’m scared of what might be the truth.”

  Her tear-icicles formed and then dissolved onto the boy’s warm skin. “Mountain crone.”

  “What was that?”

  “Mountain crone,” she repeated, looking up into his eyes. “She made him go.”

  The boy said nothing.

  She had always known—both of them had probably known from the start. Him from his father’s old tale, Tsurara from his name, Yukio, which had yuki—snow—in it; she knew, because there was a strange waviness in his hair at the back of the head, just like her; because they had the same obsidian eyes, which her mother often stared into and sighed, as if longing for something too far even to miss.

  “Your father,” she said.

  “My father?”

  “Is my father.”

  Tsurara could see many things creep into Yukio’s eyes: confusion, sadness, and perhaps even conceding. “But it’s impossible,” he said anyway.

  “It’s not.”

  It was a statement, not an answer, nor a doubt voiced. Tsurara explained who she was, where she was from, and then, slowly and painfully, he understood.

  So they wept. They feared, but waited, for the dawn to come.

  * * *

  “Will I never see you again?” In the morning he hesitantly asked, but he didn’t sound like he wanted an answer.

  “I don’t know,” Tsurara said, shaking a bit in the bright Heat, “I might leave the mountain again someday, now that I’m stronger. But first I have to go back, and tell the truth to Mother. Then Mother and I’ll both have our revenge on the mountain crone.”

  “Right.”

  Then she departed without looking back. She knew where to go: Up. She would even run, as fast as she wanted, oblivious of all the warnings she had heard all her life. With a chest no longer inhabited by an icicle, with a heart that was stronger, she would embrace her mother and tell her that they had both been loved.

  LESSER CREEK: A LOVE STORY, A GHOST STORY

  A.C. Wise

  Standing on the trestle bridge, a boy and girl stand side by side. They can just see the water through the trees. Directly below the bridge, abandoned rails curve gentle to their vanishing point. Weeds grow between the cracked ties, and two children walk, kicking stones along the track.

  On the bridge, the girl looks at the water. Lesser Creek. It seems familiar somehow. The greenery does its best to swallow the sparkle and shine, keeping the light at bay. But all along the bank, running parallel to the tracks, muddy paths cut through the
growth, and run down to the water’s edge. Hoof-paths, paw-paths, and foot-paths, carve gaps in the green. They are made for stolen sips and stolen kisses, midnight swims, and midnight drownings.

  She remembers fireflies.

  Maybe it wasn’t this bend of the creek, but some other. She wants to remember blue shadows between the trees, and the secret-wet smell of earth, bare feet trailed in cool water, and luminescent bugs flashing Morse-code transmissions from another world. And so she does. Who’s to say her truth is wrong?

  “It wasn’t always like this, was it?” Memory nags, and she asks the question, wishing she didn’t have to break the silence that has stretched between them for so long.

  The boy beside her watches the children’s dwindling figures, following the rails.

  “Do you think we could catch them all?” he asks.

  For a moment she thinks he must be talking about the fireflies she wants so badly to remember. But his past isn’t her past; his memory is other-wise, and as inconsistent as hers. Who knows what meaning the creek and the rails hold for him?

  Side by side on the bridge, the boy and girl are roughly the same age: fifteen, sliding backward to ten and upward to twenty, depending on who is looking. It is the age they’ve always been, for as long as they can remember. Which isn’t very long.

  She remembers fireflies, and sometimes, she remembers drowning.

  She looks at the boy side-wise, wondering how he died. If he died. Have they had this conversation before? She picks up a stone, weighing it a moment in her palm before letting it fly. It pings the steel, reverberating like the memory of trains.

  Maybe one of the children looks back at the sound, and maybe they don’t. Everyone knows these woods, that bridge, these rails, that water, are haunted.

  The girl picks up another stone, frowns, and closes it in her hand.

  “Will we bet, then?” she says. This seems familiar, too.

  “Yes, A bet,” the boy agrees. “And a tally, on that big rock in the water.”

  He points through the trees; she knows the stone—a big boulder planted firm in the creek’s middle, dividing the current.

  “At the end of the summer, we’ll count up the marks, and see who wins,” the boy says.

  A cicada drones. The sound means heat to her, summer-sweat and irritation so sharp she can taste it. She shivers all the same. It won’t take much for the boy to win, between the airless nights and the far worse days, the sun beating down on everything and pushing people to the edge. She bites her lip, but she’s already nodding.

  The rails, stretching one way, lead to the horizon, and in the other, they lead to a town. It nestles around a vast crossroad, and maybe, for that alone, it’s cursed.

  Could it be the town that calls them, again and again, this boy, and this girl, in their myriad forms? Or does the town exist because they come here again and again to stand on this bridge, over these rails, beside that water, to bet on the town’s souls?

  The town has never borne her any love, the girl thinks. Not for the boy at her side, either. She should take joy in the reaping, but she never does. There is a hunger in her, a hole deep at her core; it is in her nature to wish that hole full.

  She isn’t greedy. One soul, just one soul, ripe and sweet as the last summer peach, might last her all winter long. She looks sidelong at the boy beside her, and breathes out slow.

  “Deal,” she says.

  “Deal.” The boy spits in his hand.

  The devil’s own twinkle shines in his eye. They shake on it, and go their separate ways.

  And so the summer begins.

  * * *

  The first time you see her, you think: She isn’t real. Because you’ve lived in Lesser Creek your whole life, and you’ve never seen her—never even seen a girl like her—before.

  Your second thought is: She’s a ghost. Because everyone knows these woods are haunted, and didn’t a girl drown here years ago? All the stories say so.

  She’s sitting on a wooden bridge over the narrowest part of the creek. Her legs dangle over the water; one hand touches the topmost rail, fingers curled as if to haul up and flee at any moment. Her hair screens her face, but you know she’s chewing her lip in concentration. Just like you know exactly what color her eyes are, even though you haven’t seen them yet. They are every color you can imagine, and so is her hair. Because even looking at her full-on in the sunlight, you can’t tell anything about her for sure.

  She is definitely a ghost.

  You sit next to her, legs dangling beside hers, close, but not touching. Your mismatched laces trail from scuffed shoes. She doesn’t flee, and so you say, “Hey.”

  You say it carefully, not looking her way. You think of a deer, ready to be startled, though she’s nothing like that at all. She could swallow you whole.

  Where she sits, the air is cooler, like the deepest part of the creek, where the sunlight doesn’t touch. Viewed side-wise, you can see right through her. Her skin is blue, her hair moonlight, and you just know, when she finally turns your way, her eyes will be stones, and her lips will be stitched closed. And you decide that’s okay.

  Then she does turn, dropping her hand from the top rail to the sun-warmed wood, almost touching yours. And she’s as real and solid as you.

  “Hey,” she says, and smiles.

  Nothing changes. She isn’t real. She can’t be. Because girls like her don’t smile at you. They frown, and they’re suddenly very busy, always with somewhere else to be when you’re around.

  This girl smiles at you. So she must be a ghost, even though the sunlight catches the fine down on her legs and turns it crystalline. You know it’s a lie. The hair brushing her shoulders, the shadow in the hollow of her throat, the peach-fuzz lobes of her un-pierced ears, and the scab on her left knee—these are all a skin stretched over the truth of her. She is a hungry ghost, and she will devour your soul.

  And you decide that’s okay, too.

  She tells you a name that isn’t hers. You give her one in return. The water murmurs, and you talk about nothing. Time stretches to infinity.

  Maybe, just maybe, her fingers brush yours when she finally stands up to leave.

  “Will I see you again?” you say, hoping your voice isn’t too full of need.

  She doesn’t answer, but her teeth flash bright in a nice, even row.

  And so your summer begins.

  * * *

  The first murder occurred on a Tuesday. Or rather, it was discovered on a Tuesday, but the body had been cooling over two weeks, based on the flies buzzing over the sticky blood, and the discarded pupa cases nestled in the once-warm cavities.

  Crime of passion. Scratches, bruises, evidence of a struggle, but none of a break-in. Spouses—one dead, one fled.

  On a Thursday, the missing spouse turns up two counties over. A confession ensues.

  Outside the county sheriff’s office, the boy from the bridge leans against sun-warmed brick, and smiles. He chews bubblegum, shattering-hard, packaged flat in wax paper with trading cards. Collectors throw away the gum, keep cards. Not him. He savors the dusty-blandness, the unyielding material worked by teeth and tongue until it bends to his will. He throws the cards away, precisely because he knows they will be collectors’ items one day.

  He listens through an impossible thickness of brick, plaster, and glass to the blubbered admission of guilt. There are tears; he can smell them, even over the cooked-hot pavement crusted with shoe-flattened filth. It smells of summer.

  Sweat and stress and a tipping point—all the ingredients he needs. A beery night, a whispered word, a suggestion of infidelity. A death born of rage. This is the way it’s always been. His finger, the feather, the insubstantial straw snapping the camel’s spine.

  The boy pushes away from the wall. Struts, hands shoved deep in too-tight, acid-washed pockets. Hair, slicked back. He might have a comb tucked into one pocket, or a pack of cigarettes rolled in one white sleeve, depending on the slant of light that catches him.

/>   He commands the sidewalk. Dogs, children, old men, fall into step behind him. Old women tsk from the safety of their porches. Young girls, well, it’s best not to say what they do.

  He heads west, strolling past scrub-weed and abandoned lots to the fullness of wild fields, cuts left to the creek.

  He shucks shoes, wades in, and lays a hand against the massive boulder splitting the water. It is graffiti-strewn, perfect for sunbathing. Perfect for other things, too.

  The boy chooses a sharp-edged stone from the current, and makes a single mark on the boulder’s side—a white line on the grey.

  His summer has just begun.

  * * *

  This is what the world tells us about girls: They are always hungry.

  They are cruel.

  They will suck out your soul, and leave a dead, dry husk behind.

  They will laugh at your pain.

  That’s why we stitch up their mouths with black thread. We cut out their eyes, and replace them with stones to stay safe from their tears.

  This is what the world tells us about boys: They are hungry, too.

  They grab food with both hands, stuff it in their mouths, careless of what they eat, never bothering to chew.

  They are too loud.

  They break everything around them, without even noticing it is there.

  That’s why we catch them by the tail, so they won’t turn around and bite. That’s why we cut off their heads, fill their mouths with dirt, and bury them at the crossroads. That’s why we burn their hearts, because unlike girls, we know they’ll never feel a thing.