Lightspeed Magazine Issue 49

by Seanan McGuire

  Did she mean that they were going to die? Ayudesh and Wanji?

  “This,” she said, suddenly brisk. “This is for, what would you call them, runners. Foreign runners. It is to help them survive. I am going to give it to you so that you will help Veronique, understood?”

  I nodded.

  But she didn’t give it to me. She just sat holding the box, looking in it. She didn’t want to give it up. She didn’t feel it was appropriate.

  She sighed again, a terrible sound. Out of the box she pulled shiny foil packets, dark blue, red, and yellow. They were the size of the palm of her hand. Her glasses were around her neck. She put them on like she did in the schoolroom, absent from the gesture. She studied the printing on the foil packets.

  I loved foil. Plastic was beautiful, but foil, foil was something unimaginable. Tea came in foil packets. The strange foods that the teachers got off the skimmer came in foil.

  My tea was cold.

  “This one,” she said, “it is a kind of signal.” She looked over her glasses at me. “Listen to me, Janna. Your life will depend on this. When you have this, you can send a signal that the outsiders can hear. They can hear it all the way in Bashtoy. And after you send it, if you can wait in the same place, they will send someone out to get you and Veronique.”

  “They can hear it in Bashtoy?” I said. I had never even met anyone other than Wanji and the teachers who had ever been to Bashtoy.

  “They can pick it up on their instruments. You send it every day until someone comes.”

  “How do I send it?”

  She read the packet. “We have to set the signal, you and I. First we have to put it in you.”

  I didn’t understand, but she was reading, so I waited.

  “I’m going to put it in your ear,” she said. “From there it will migrate to your brain.”

  “Will it hurt?” I asked.

  “A little,” she said. “But it has its own way of taking pain away. Now, what should be the code?” She studied the packet. She pursed her lips.

  A thing in my ear. I was afraid and I wanted to say no, but I was more afraid of Wanji so I didn’t.

  “You can whistle, can’t you?” she asked.

  I knew how to whistle, yes.

  “Okay,” she said, “here it is. I’ll put this in your ear, and then we’ll wait for a while. Then when everything is ready, we’ll set the code.”

  She opened up the packet and inside was another packet and a little metal fork. She opened the inside packet and took out a tiny little disk, a soft thing almost like egg white or like a fish egg. She leaned forward and put it in my left ear. Then she pushed it in hard and I jerked.

  “Hold still,” she said.

  Something was moving and making noise in my ear and I couldn’t be still. I pulled away and shook my head. The noise in my ear was loud, a sort of rubbing, oozing sound. I couldn’t hear normal things out of my left ear. It was stopped up with whatever was making the oozing noise. Then it started to hurt. A little at first, then more and more.

  I put my hand over my ear, pressing against the pain. Maybe it would eat through my ear? What would stop it from eating a hole in my head?

  “Stop it,” I said to Wanji. “Make it stop!”

  But she didn’t, she just sat there, watching.

  The pain grew sharp, and then suddenly it stopped. The sound, the pain, everything.

  I took my hand away. I was still deaf on the left side but it didn’t hurt.

  “Did it stop?” Wanji asked.

  I nodded.

  “Do you feel dizzy? Sick?”

  I didn’t.

  Wanji picked up the next packet. It was blue. “While that one is working, we’ll do this one. Then the third one, which is easy. This one will make you faster when you are angry or scared. It will make time feel slower. There isn’t any code for it. Something in your body starts it.”

  I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about.

  “After it has happened, you’ll be tired. It uses up your energy.” She studied the back of the packet, then she scooted closer to me, so we were both sitting cross-legged with our knees touching. Wanji had hard, bony knees, even through the felt of her dress.

  “Open your eyes, very wide,” she said.

  “Wait,” I said. “Is this going to hurt?”

  “No,” she said.

  I opened my eyes as wide as I could.

  “Look down, but keep your eyes wide open,” she said.

  I tried.

  “No,” she said, irritated, “keep your eyes open.”

  “They are open,” I said. I didn’t think she should treat me this way. My da had just died. She should be nice to me. I could hear her open the packet. I wanted to blink but I was afraid to. I did, because I couldn’t help it.

  She leaned forward and spread my eye open with thumb and forefinger. Then she swiftly touched my eye.

  I jerked back. There was something in my eye. I could feel it, up under my eyelid. It was very uncomfortable. I blinked and blinked and blinked. My eye filled up with tears, just the one eye, which was very, very strange.

  My eye socket started to ache. “It hurts,” I said.

  “It won’t last long,” she said.

  “You said it wouldn’t hurt!” I said, startled.

  “I lied,” Wanji said, matter-of-fact.

  It hurt more and more. I moaned. “You’re hateful,” I said.

  “That’s true,” she said, unperturbed.

  She picked up the third packet, the red one.

  “No,” I said, “I won’t! I won’t! You can’t do it!”

  “Hush,” she said, “this one won’t hurt. I saved it until last on purpose.”

  “You’re lying!” I scrambled away from her. The air was cold where the nest of rugs and blankets had been wrapped around me. My head ached. It just ached. And I still couldn’t hear anything out of my left ear.

  “Look,” she said, “I will read you the lingua. It is a patch, nothing more. It says it will feel cold, but that is all. See, it is just a square of cloth that will rest on your neck. If it hurts, you can take it off.”

  I scrambled backwards away from her.

  “Janna,” she said. “Enough!” She was angry.

  I was afraid of it, but I was still more afraid of Wanji. So I hunched down in front of her. I was so afraid that I sobbed while she peeled the back off the square and put it on me.

  “See,” she said, still sharp with me, “it doesn’t hurt at all. Stop crying. Stop it. Enough is enough.” She waved her hands over her head in disgust. “You are hysterical.”

  I held my hand over the patch. It didn’t hurt but it did feel cold. I scrunched up and wrapped myself in a rug and gave myself over to my misery. My head hurt and my ear still ached faintly and I was starting to feel dizzy.

  “Lie down,” Wanji said. “Go on, lie down. I’ll wake you when we can set the signal.”

  I made myself a nest in the mess of Wanji’s floor and piled a blanket and a rug on top of me. Maybe the dark made my head feel better, I didn’t know. But I fell asleep.

  • • •

  Wanji shook me awake. I hadn’t been asleep long, and my head still ached. She had the little metal fork from the ear packet, the yellow packet. It occurred to me that she might stick it in my ear.

  I covered my ear with my hand. My head hurt enough. I wasn’t going to let Wanji stick a fork in my ear.

  “Don’t scowl,” she said.

  “My head hurts,” I said.

  “Are you dizzy?” she asked.

  I felt out of sorts, unbalanced, but not dizzy, not really.

  “Shake your head,” Wanji said.

  I shook my head. Still the same, but no worse. “Don’t stick that in my ear,” I said.

  “What? I’m not going to stick this in your ear. It’s a musical fork. I’m going to make a sound with it and hold it to your ear. When I tell you to, I want you to whistle something, okay?”

  “Whistle
what?” I said.

  “Anything,” she said, “I don’t care. Whistle something for me now.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to whistle. I couldn’t think of anything at all, except that I wished Wanji would leave me alone and let me go back to sleep.

  Wanji squatted there. Implacable old bitch.

  I finally thought of something to whistle, a crazy dog song for children. I started whistling—

  “That’s enough,” she said. “Now don’t say anything else, but when I nod my head you whistle that. Don’t say anything to me. If you do, it will ruin everything. Nod your head if you understand.”

  I nodded.

  She slapped the fork against her hand and I could see the long tines vibrating. She held it up to my ear, the one I couldn’t hear anything out of. She held it there, concentrating fiercely. Then she nodded.

  I whistled.

  “Okay,” she said. “Good. That is how you start it. Now whistle it again.”

  I whistled.

  Everything went dark and then suddenly my head got very hot. Then I could see again.

  “Good,” Wanji said. “You just sent a signal.”

  “Why did everything get dark?” I asked.

  “All the light got used in the signal,” Wanji said. “It used all the light in your head so you couldn’t see.”

  My head hurt even worse. Now, besides my eyes aching, my temples were pounding. I had a fever. I raised my hand and felt my hot cheek.

  Wanji picked up the blue packet. “Now we have to figure out about the third one, the one that will let you hibernate.”

  I didn’t want to learn about hibernating. “I feel sick,” I said.

  “It’s probably too soon, anyway,” Wanji said. “Sleep for a while.”

  I felt so awful I didn’t know if I could sleep. But Wanji brought me more tea and I drank all that and lay down in my nest and presently I was dreaming.

  • • •

  IV.

  There was a sound of gunfire, far away, just a pop. And then more pop-pop-pop.

  It startled me, although I had been hearing the outrunners’ guns at night since they got here. I woke with a fever and everything felt as if I were still dreaming. I was alone in Wanji’s house. The lamp was still lit, but I didn’t know if it had been refilled or how long I had slept. During the long night of winterdark it is hard to know when you are. I got up, put out the lamp, and went outside.

  Morning cold is worst when you are warm from sleep. The dry snow crunched in the dark. Nothing was moving except the dogs were barking, their voices coming at me from every way.

  The outrunners were gone from the center of town, nothing there but the remains of their fire and the trampled slick places where they had walked. I slid a bit as I walked there. My head felt light and I concentrated on my walking because if I did not think about it I didn’t know what my feet would do. I had to pee.

  Again I heard the pop-pop-pop. I could not tell where it was coming from because it echoed off the buildings around me. I could smell smoke and see the dull glow of fire above the trees. It was down from Sckarline, the fire. At first I thought they had gotten a really big fire going, and then I thought they had set fire to the distillery. I headed for home.

  Veronique was asleep in a nest of blankets, including some of my parents’ blankets from their bed.

  “They set fire to the distillery,” I said. I didn’t say it in English, but she sat up and rubbed her face.

  “It’s cold,” she said.

  I could not think of anything to respond.

  She sat there, holding her head.

  “Come,” I said, working into English. “We go see your teacher.” I pulled on her arm.

  “Where is everybody?” she said.

  “My father die, my mother is, um, waiting with the die.”

  She frowned at me. I knew I hadn’t made any sense. I pulled on her again and she got up and stumbled around, putting on boots and jacket.

  Outside I heard the pop-pop-pop again. This time I thought maybe it was closer.

  “They’re shooting again?” she asked.

  “They shoot my father,” I said.

  “Oh God,” she said. She sat down on the blankets. “Oh God.”

  I pulled on her arm.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Hurry,” I said. I made a pack of blankets. I found my axe and a few things and put them in the bundle, then slung it all over my shoulders. I didn’t know what we would do, but if they were shooting people we should run away. I had to pee really bad.

  She did hurry, finally awake. When we went outside and the cold hit her, she shuddered and shook off the last of the sleep. I saw the movement of her shoulders against the glow of the fire on the horizon, against the false dawn.

  People were moving, clinging close to houses where they were invisible against the black wood, avoiding the open spaces. We stayed close to my house, waiting to see whose people were moving. Veronique held my arm. A dog came past the schoolhouse into the open area where the outrunners’ fire had been and stopped and sniffed—maybe the place where my father had died.

  I drew Veronique back, along to the back of the house. The spirit door was closed and my father was dead. I crouched low and ran, holding her arm, until we were in the trees and then she slipped and fell and pulled me down, too. We slid feet first in the snow, down the hill between the tree trunks, hidden in the pools of shadow under the trees. Then we were still, waiting.

  I still felt feverish and nothing was real.

  The snow under the trees was all powder. It dusted our leggings and clung in clumps in the wrinkles behind my knees.

  Nothing came after us that we could see. We got up and walked deeper into the trees and then uphill, away from the distillery, but still skirting the village. I left her for a moment to pee, but she followed me and we squatted together. We should run, but I didn’t know where to run to and the settlement pulled at me. I circled around it as if on a tether, pulling in closer and closer as we got to the uphill part of the town. Coming back around, we hung in the trees beyond the field behind the schoolhouse. I could see the stabros pens and see light. The outrunners were in the stabros pens and the stabros were down. A couple of men were dressing the carcasses.

  We stumbled over Harup in the darkness. Literally fell over him in the bushes.

  He was dead. His stomach was ripped by rifle fire and his eyes were open. I couldn’t tell in the darkness if he had dragged himself out here to die or if someone had thrown the body here. We were too close.

  I started backing away. Veronique was stiff as a spooked stabros. She lifted her feet high out of the snow, coming down hard and loud. One of the dogs at the stabros pen heard us and started to bark. I could see it in the light, its ears up and its tail curled over its back. The others barked, too, ears towards us in the dark. I stopped and Veronique stopped, too. Men in the pen looked out in the dark. A couple of them picked up rifles, and, cradling them in their arms, walked out towards us from the light.

  I backed up, slowly. Maybe they would find Harup’s body and think that the dogs were barking at that. But they were hunters and they would see the marks of our boots in the snow and follow us. If we ran they would hear us. I was not a hunter. I did not know what to do.

  We backed up, one slow step and then another, while the outrunners walked out away from the light. They were not coming straight at us, but they were walking side by side and they would spread out and find us. I had my knife. There was cover around, mostly trees, but I didn’t know what I could do against a hunter with a rifle, and even if I could stop one, the others would hear us.

  There were shouts over by the houses.

  The outrunners kept walking, but the shouts didn’t stop, and then there was the pop of guns. That stopped one and then the other and they half-turned.

  The dogs turned barking towards the shouts.

  The outrunners started to jog towards the schoolhouse.

  We
walked backward in the dark.

  There were flames over there, at the houses. I couldn’t tell whose house was on fire. It was downhill from the schoolhouse, which meant it might be our house. People were running in between the schoolhouse and Wanji’s house and the outrunners lifted their guns and fired. People, three of them, kept on running.

  The outrunners fired again and again. One of the people stumbled, but they all kept running. They were black shapes skimming on the field. The snow on the field was not deep because the wind blew it into the trees. Then one was in the trees. The outrunners fired again, but the other two made the trees as well.

  There was a summer camp out this way, down by the river, for drying fish.

  I pulled on Veronique’s arm and we picked our way through the trees.

  • • •

  There were people at the summer camp and we waited in the trees to make sure they were Sckarline people. It was gray, false dawn by the time we got there. I didn’t remember ever having seen the summer camp in the winter before. The drying racks were bare poles with a top covering of snow, and the lean-to was almost covered in drifted snow. There was no shelter here.

  There were signs of three or four people in the trampled snow. I didn’t think it would be the outrunners down there, because how would they even know where the summer camp was, but I was not sure of anything. I didn’t know if I was thinking right or not.

  Veronique leaned close to my ear and whispered so softly I could barely hear. “We have to go back.”

  I shook my head.

  “Ian is there.”

  Ian. Ian. She meant her teacher.

  She had a hood on her purple clothing and I pulled it back to whisper, “Not now. We wait here.” So close to the brown shell of her ear. Like soft, dark leather. Not like a real people’s ear. She was shivering.

  I didn’t feel too cold. I still had a fever—I felt as if everything were far from me, as if I walked half in this world. I sat and looked at the snow cupped in a brown leaf and my mind was empty and things did not seem too bad. I don’t know how long we sat.