*
A woman with hair black as the chimney was looking at him.
“Hello,” she said, a silky kindness in her voice.
Tears poured from him. “They …” he heaved, “they want to take me back.”
The woman’s brow creased. “He must be pretty young now. Take him back two more years, Ma.”
*
Master Dzogo had his hand on Donys’s shoulder. “We found someone to take you, boy.”
Donys swallowed. He didn’t want to leave. His friends were here. Everything he knew was here. His pyjama top was thin in the cold dormitory, and Master Dzogo’s hand was warm and heavy on his shoulder.
“Can’t I stay?”
“Go to sleep now. They’re coming in the morning.”
“Yes, Master,” Donys said, and slipped under the covers.
“Bring them joy,” said the old man, as he hobbled out of the dormitory and switched off the light.
Donys shut his eyes …
*
He was in a different bed, in a different house. It was strange, how he couldn’t remember leaving the orphanage. His new parents must have taken him while he was asleep.
“Are you my father?” he asked a man with a shiny forehead. The man looked to a striking woman who stood beside him. Her hair was longer than any hair he’d seen. She whispered something in the man’s ear, and he nodded.
“Yes,” answered the woman. “And I’m your new mother.”
“But why are we bringing him with us?” his new father said to her.
“We can’t just leave him.”
“He’s a Brownie. He doesn’t deserve any help.”
Donys didn’t know what Brownies were, but it hurt a little to be called a name, even if he didn’t know what it meant.
“We just … we just have to. He’s harmless now. In his head, he’s ten years old. And anyway, we could use the extra hands on the farm.”
“Alright.” The man sighed.
“We have to go,” said his new mother.
Chapter 15
You’re perfect just the way you are.
– Unknown
“Come with us,” Cyan implored.
“This my home,” said Brann. She held her daughter’s shoulders with strong, knobbly fingers.
“This Brownie won’t be the last to come looking,” said Anand. “You should come with us.”
“I’m staying.”
Cyan was about to protest, but Brann’s narrow eyes cut her short.
“I know Larisa at The Olive Branch,” she said. “Good woman. She’ll take care of you.” Brann touched Cyan’s stomach. “Plenty of food there for you and the baby.”
Anand packed a satchel for the walk. It would take them the remaining daylight hours to reach the farmlands. Cyan had never been that far into the ghetto, but when she was a child, Brann had told her about the distant fields. “It’s quiet there,” Brann would say. “If you watch the wind in the grass, you can hear the color of your thoughts.” Cyan had heard her mother’s tales of the farmlands wide-eyed, as the sounds of drunken pub-crawlers had slouched by her window. She’d wondered what it would be like to be in a silent place. Without shouts and sirens and Cullings.
“We’ll be back after the baby is born, and the next Culling is over,” said Cyan. “We should be safe so far out.”
“Culling?” asked Anand.
The women ignored him.
Brann nodded, but she couldn’t meet her daughter’s gaze.
“What is it, Ma?”
“Nothing for you to worry about, girl. You go. Be safe.” She held her daughter again.
When Cyan eventually pulled away, her skin tingled at the thought that she may never see the old woman again. She strode into the street before her mother could see the tear run down her cheek.
They walked north, the sun directly ahead of them. Anand was behind her, and behind him, the Brownie. Or the boy who had been a Brownie.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
A beam of light slashed through the black clouds, and touched her hair. Cyan closed her eyes, faced the fireball in the sky, and felt the warmth soak her thoughts.
“Donys,” said the Brownie.
“Glad to meet you.” Cyan extended her hand. The boy took it, but hesitated before he shook it.
“My hand feels big,” he said. He regarded his legs, his shoes. “Everything feels big.”
Cyan noticed how Anand refused to look at Donys.
“Know what that is?” Cyan asked, trying to distract the boy. She pointed into the distance behind them.
Donys’s face lit up. “That’s the Wall!” he said. She watched his cheeks swell with pride at knowing the answer. Just like a child’s. He was a child, but he wasn’t. His body was fifteen years older than his mind. What had they done to him? She felt a surge of guilt, hot on her face. The guilt she should have felt for Gemini.
She reached out a hand to Anand, but he pretended not to see it. Cyan sighed, and they trudged on, the pebbled road taking them ever closer to the farmlands.
Anand didn’t like it at all. The way Donys’s head swiveled about as if everything was new. Interesting. Exciting. “Beginner’s mind,” Master Dzogo called it. He remembered Donys now, from BIGS. One of the regulars. He was rough with Anand. Hurt him sometimes. Would laugh when Anand complained. And here he was. They were helping him, providing him sanctuary.
Anand cleared his throat, and spat.
“What’s that?” Donys asked, pointing to a lark sitting in a redwood.
“I have no idea,” answered Cyan. “Never seen one before.” She placed a hand on the Brownie’s shoulder. The sight made Anand cringe.
Cyan was set on bringing Donys with them to The Olive Branch. And although Anand had only known her for a week, he’d come to realize that when Cyan got to wanting something, there was no way to change her mind. She got that from Brann. That battle-ax was tough as reinforced polycarbonate. Couldn’t crack her will with a sledgehammer.
“It’s a lark,” Anand snapped. He’d never seen one either. Never seen a bird – they didn’t do too well in the black, smoldering city – but he’d seen a holo-vid about the animals that lived in Shangri before the Collapse. Except it wasn’t called Shangri back then.
“A lark,” repeated Donys, savoring the word as if it tasted of ice-cream. Anand struggled to watch the boy so happy.
They’d been walking for about four hours now, and the sun was low to their right. The flatlands of the shanty-town had been replaced by hillocks. Clumps of trees dotted the grassland. The wide dirt road outside Brann’s house had narrowed to a path just wide enough for two travelers, and in places only one.
Despite himself, Anand started to enjoy the walk. It was idyllic, he admitted. Idyllic in a way he hadn’t known, but had dreamt about. As a boy he’d watched dozens of holo-vids of Bhutan and its unspoiled flora. To this day, he had a recurring dream in which he was standing in a fully stocked kitchen, shaded by vast forests of bamboo and pine. The kitchen floated as if in a bubble, bobbing between the trees and the birdsong, as he baked cheesecakes and strawberry meringue.
“I think we’re close,” said Cyan.
“Look!” shouted Donys.
Anand’s breath stopped when he saw the fields of glowing spinach and broccoli. He’d heard about them, of course. This was where the food at the market came from. But he’d never seen the vegetables luminesce. By the time they got to the market, the leaves had dulled.
“Why does it do that?” asked Donys, eyes wide.
Cyan shrugged.
“They splice jellyfish genes into the crops to protect them from the radiation,” said Anand. He noticed too late that the sulk had faded from his voice.
“What are jellyfish?”
Anand found himself sucked into conversation with the Brownie. And the more he talked, the more he realized that although Donys looked like the man that had hurt him, the boy he spoke to now was not that man. He explained how some jellyfi
sh could live forever; about shrimp and tuna; about the best way to sear a fillet without burning it. Donys nodded thoughtfully.
Cyan placed a hand in Anand’s. Her fingers were cold but fit just right. He smiled despite himself.
They came across a sign.
The Olive Branch – 2mi
As they approached, the trees cleared, and they found the entrance to the farm. Aloes lined the narrow road, bright red blossoms blazing against the smoldering clouds. In the distance was a farmhouse whose details clarified as they neared. Three figures sat on the front porch. One appeared familiar, square and immovable in his chair. And as they neared, Anand saw that it was Chokyong; and beside him, Milton from the guard tower. Milton had his arm around a red-haired woman, and they were all laughing. Long, hard guffaws. Not the short bursts one heard in the city. This was deep, throaty, belly-mirth.
“… and then … and then he said …” but Chokyong couldn’t finish, he was laughing so hard, slapping his fat knees. The woman beside Milton was cackling, the shrill notes of her voice fanning across the fields in waves.
Chokyong saw them, and his smile swung to Anand. “My boy!” he shouted, and stood so quickly his chair tumbled backward. Anand climbed the wooden steps of the porch, and Chokyong took both of Anand’s hands in his as they shook.
“What are you doing here?” asked Anand. “What about BIGS?”
“Ah,” said Chokyong, his smile tempering, “it was time to leave anyway.”
“Hello again,” said Milton, extending a long, freckled hand to Cyan. “W-w-welcome to our home.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Who is this?” asked Milton’s wife. Anand couldn’t help staring at her hair, ruby as the aloe blossoms, and just as striking.
“That’s a long story,” said Anand. His lips tightened as he glanced at Donys.
“He’s harmless now,” said Cyan, “and he’s here to help.”
Donys nodded, and shifted his weight from one foot to another, eyes fix to the ground.
“It’s good to have g-g-guests,” said Milton.
The woman cocked her head when she saw Cyan’s swollen belly. “How far along are you?”
“One week,” said Cyan, “one week to go.”
“Come with me,” said the ruby-haired woman, wrapping her arm around Cyan’s shoulders. “You must be starving. I’m Larisa, by the way.”
The women’s voices faded as they stepped into the creaking farmhouse. Milton followed them inside. And then there were three men on the porch – the serviceman, the Brownie, and the pimp.
Donys’s back erupted in goose bumps at the feel of the spinach between his fingers. Hairy and cold. Heavy. He began plucking them from the soil when the rooster sang in the mornings, and stopped when the sun dipped behind the old dam on the hill. He liked the colors of the farm. The beige of the grass. The blues and golds of the wildflowers that sprung up as he worked.
His new mother was kind, but his new father didn’t look at him. As though Donys had done something wrong. That didn’t surprise him. Ever since he could remember, people had looked at him that way. It wasn’t too bad though. Master Dzogo said “you should be grateful for what you have.” So he was. He pulled up the spinach, and watched the glow fade from its leaves. But sometimes, before he separated the roots from the earth, he would wrap his fingers (they were so much bigger than they used to be), around the base of the plant, where the stalks perforated the soil. And he waited. The plant changed. It glowed. It pulsed, with his pulse. Every second or so, it turned a bright-green for just a moment. The spinach was beating with his heart.
He reveled in the feeling of something outside his body being a part of him.
“Donys!” shouted Larisa. He liked her. She was pretty, like Cyan. Yesterday, while everyone was eating lunch on the porch, he asked to be excused, and ran upstairs to Larisa’s bedroom. He found her makeup box on the dark wooden dresser. It opened with a click, and he stared inside. Every color he’d ever seen, more than in the fields, shone from the case. Green eye shadow, purple lip gloss, pink nail polish. He stared at the colors, and they stared back.
Now, sitting in the field, he wrapped his hand around a spinach bushel. The colors of the plant pulsed with his heartbeat, and as he thought of the colors in the makeup box, the spinach pulsed its colors faster and faster. He would try the lipstick first, he decided.
“Donys!” Larisa’s voice travelled through the wheat, lapping over the spinach leaves. “Donys, come quick.”
He released the plant, and ran to the house. The rows of spinach wrapped around his calves as he dashed through the field. Since he’d left the orphanage, his legs were long and hairy. He could run faster than ever. Faster than the wind in the wheat.
He bounded up the stairs to the porch, his feet pounding on the wood. “What’s wrong?” he asked, barely panting.
“Cyan is having the baby.”
The house was quiet. Sacrosanct. Something was happening upstairs. Instinctively, Donys dropped his voice to a whisper. “Can I see?”
Larisa smiled. “Come.”
He tip-toed up the staircase after Larisa, and opened the bedroom door. Cyan was lying on the bed, Anand on one side, a woman on the other. Donys had never seen the woman before. She wore a brightly colored turban, and had black-black skin. He gawked so long he almost forgot about the baby.
It let out a yelp. The thing was tiny. Shorter than the length of his forearm, and pinker than the lipstick in Larisa’s makeup case. He tried to think of something else that had that color. When he pulled up the spinach by the roots, and dusted them off, some of the tendrils were that pale, fleshy pink. It was a sumptuous color. He licked a bead of sweat from his upper lip.
Donys watched the way Cyan held the baby, naked on her breast. The way Anand looked at Cyan looking at the baby. They were close-close together. One thing together. And he was not a part of that thing. His toes curled.
“Get us a towel, Donys,” Larisa whispered.
He left the room, and found the linen cupboard. There were two towels on the shelf, one a little newer, a little whiter. He chose the dull towel.
Anand laid a hand on Cyan’s shoulder as the baby suckled. He tried not to show that he was listening to Chokyong and Milton whispering in the corner of the room.
“It’s a girl.”
Milton shook his head, eyes closed. “F-f-for all we know, they’ll skip this farm. They skipped us last year and the year b-before.”
Chokyong nodded. “When does it happen?”
“Middle of April,” whispered Milton.
Anand peered at the flickering LED calendar on the wall. 12 April 2051. From the look on Chokyong’s face, his eyebrows heavy enough to droop over his upper lip, Anand didn’t want to know what happened in the middle of April.
The week that followed was frigid. Spring was reluctant to take hold. But after four days helping Cyan with the child, Anand needed to get outside, beyond the dark curtains that were always drawn to help Cyan sleep. He had to stretch his toes in the wet loam.
Cyan was sleeping when the baby woke on that fifth day. The tiny creature wasn’t yet able to cry, not loudly. But she struggled in her makeshift cot beside their bed, wriggling about, knocking her head against the bars. Anand held her warmth in the nook of his arm.
He swathed her in two blankets, and crept down the staircase, and onto the porch. There were gaps in the black clouds this morning. Small windows out to the blue sky that hardly ever appeared. The tiny girl gazed through the opening in the blankets, through the opening in the clouds, and considered the heavens silently.
Anand stepped into the fields, past the wheat, and into the rows of sunflowers. Their massive petals tickled his cheeks as he walked, and by the time he was half-way through the field, his shirt was stained yellow and black with pollen. He closed his eyes, and listened. No cars, no bikes, no people. Nothing. Nothing but the north wind whistling through the sunflowers. The baby had fallen asleep with the rhythm of his
gait. The world was still.
A gunshot, hot and near, pierced the morning.
Chapter 16
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Tax Man was not happy.
When he wasn’t throwing bed pans and drip bags at the nurses, he lay in a seething morass of tubes and despair. He was furious. At Chokyong – who’d fucking shot him –, at Gemini, at Cyan, at Anand. At his fucking supervisor.
“Tax Man 16,” the aging queen with peppered hair said, “your hedometer reading is lower than acceptable. And your closure rate is abysmal. Open cases piling up around you.”
The Tax Man just lay there, listening to the faggot chirp.
“I’ll have to devote further resources to your caseload.” The old man flapped his wrist as he spoke. “Perhaps we should reassess whether you’re fit for the Tax Bureau.”
The Tax Man failed to appreciate veiled threats. He liked his intimidation as he liked his porn – explicit. So he lay there, buried under tubes and shame, as his supervisor paced the ward, suggesting but never stating how much trouble The Tax Man was in. Eventually when the old queen left, The Tax Man stretched out his lank body, and sighed.
He knew how difficult his situation was. Nobody was immune to the reach of Shangri law. Not even he. The Tax Man had to get out of this hospital bed, and find those fucking runaways. It was no longer an option to rely upon Donys to locate Anand and Cyan. He’d have to track them down himself, even if that meant getting his hands dirty.
The problem was the tube in his chest. Made it hard to breathe, as black liquid was sucked out every so often. Despite yelling at the nurses that he needed to leave, they seemed adamant that he was staying the week. When he was done finding those two lovebirds, cracking open their skulls and taking every fucking memory they owned, he’d find that Chokyong fucker and tear him open, nose to pubes. By Lord Buddha, he was ready to do some damage.
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