by Tiffany Tsao
Initially they still talked about moving on—“where the grass is greener,” the woman would joke, though there had been a time when they thought they would never laugh again. They were experiencing technical difficulties, that was all. Just when both of them had recovered enough strength to make the transfer back to the Compendium, the man broke his leg. And just when his leg had healed as well as it was ever going to (it had set badly), the fact that she was pregnant became undeniable. The prospect of starting again from scratch in a whole new Territory became daunting—at least for the time being. So they agreed to postpone their relocation until after the child’s birth—and to make themselves as comfortable as they could in the meantime.
They stopped foraging and started a farm—a temporary one—so that food could be more readily at hand. There they grew the native plants they liked to eat most—bloodnut bushes and cardinal yams, prickly beets and ironberries. They created an arbour of climbing artery vines so that fresh water was just a machete slice away. They built a larger shelter of better quality bloodwood and finer craftsmanship. One day, out of the red, a pair of strange creatures showed up in their backyard. They were practically tame from the get-go, and the female produced a rich, creamy liquid that reminded them of milk.
The woman gave birth to a girl. They discussed moving once she was older and capable of transferring—her second birthday at the earliest. Then her second birthday came and went, and they still didn’t move. It seemed too much unnecessary effort now, not to mention too much unnecessary risk. Besides, it would be difficult to find another Territory where they could enjoy the same solitude they did in Cambodia-Abscond. At least they hadn’t been disappointed in that respect. They were still the only settlers there. And it seemed, somehow, that they grew to enjoy this state of total isolation more and more each day. It was so peaceful. So quiet. Sometimes they went days without saying a word to each other. It was only when they began to worry about the girl—how silent she was, whether she knew how to make any sounds at all—that they made a conscious effort to talk, to each other and to her, so that she would learn how. (She eventually did, to their relief, though she remained a quiet child and grew up into a quiet adult.)
It was during the woman’s second pregnancy that the second batch of settlers appeared. They came in the middle of the night, heralded by a flurry of insistent knocks on their door, like the rat-a-tat of a machine gun, followed by a moan and a plea for help—for someone, anyone, to help. The man and woman got their machetes ready anyway.
It was a family—a husband and wife and three sons, the second-eldest son very pale. The man looked again and saw that the boy was badly wounded. His thigh was bandaged in strips of cloth, torn from his father’s tunic, but it was leaking blood.
“It was fine before we left,” the husband muttered. “It must have reopened when we transferred here.”
The man opened the door wide then, and he and his wife tried to help. It was no use. They buried the boy the next day.
The remaining members of the family stayed, much to the man and woman’s initial consternation. So much for solitude, they thought unhappily. But they couldn’t bring themselves to be openly hostile. Grudgingly they helped the family build a shelter of their own and shared, brusquely, the knowledge they possessed. They even gave them two calves, for the strange cowlike creatures had multiplied with astonishing rapidity. In gratitude, the second family shared their first grain harvest with them. They had come far more prepared than the man and woman had, with ready-made bundles of seeds and farming equipment they had obtained from one of the three provisions stores in Bolivia-Aspersion. A settlement had recently sprung up around the Compendium. Like a town, they told the man and woman, but smaller. The man and woman had marvelled at this: how much must have changed! The soft wheat and rye planted by the second family sprang up quickly, lush and plump and high, albeit red. Together, the two households built a kiln, and for the first time in a long time, they ate fresh bread.
By the time of the first harvest, the first family’s second baby—another girl—was born. Each family privately came to the conclusion that they would be able to tolerate the presence of the other after all. Coincidentally enough, the second family had come for the same reasons at the first—to escape the past—and although the first family never knew, the second family had been just as surprised at the nonbeigeness of the Territory as the first family had been, and just as unhappy about the first family’s presence as the first had been about the second’s.
Just as there was much that the first family would never share with the second, there was much that the second family would never share with the first: How their boy had been wounded, for example. Or why they had decided not to delay the transfer from Bolivia-Aspersion, despite his condition. Or why, even more so than the first family (if that was even possible), they were unwilling to speak about themselves or the past at all. This suited everyone fine. They continued to live side by side, silent and content.
It was just after the marriage of the first family’s eldest daughter to the second family’s eldest son when new settlers appeared—three women. And after that, a man and his daughter. And some time after that, another man, by himself. The first two families were bewildered. What had happened? What was responsible for this new onset of immigration? The two families convened an emergency evening meeting to discuss the crisis, during which they all sat around a campfire in thoughtful silence.
“The entry got changed,” the woman from the original founding couple suggested finally—by which she meant, “Perhaps the information about Cambodia-Abscond in the Compendium has been changed at last.”
The others nodded. Perhaps so, they all thought—except for the second family’s unmarried son, who instead thought, Oops. He recalled the recent trip he had taken with his father to Bolivia-Aspersion—the first time he’d set foot out of the Territory since the age of three, when his family had moved there. He had gone with his father to get supplies: a hoe, a shovel, rope and sackcloth, new clothes, more cooking equipment, seeds to plant different kinds of crops—as much as each of them could carry. The son recalled how giddy he’d felt when he had followed his father into the heart of the settlement: so many buildings, so many people, so many new and strange things lining the shelves of the provisions store! And the colours! The colours!
He recalled how he had followed his father’s instructions exactly, making no eye contact, speaking to no one as his father presented the sacks of bloodnuts and wheels of pink cheese to the store owner for barter. He recalled how apprehensive he’d felt when his father responded to the owner’s questions about the goods with a simple, plain silence, and how relieved he had been when the man finally shrugged and resigned himself to sampling the wares to estimate their value. He recalled how they had dragged their new possessions to the outskirts of the settlement, where the days they spent regaining strength for the transfer home, sitting mutely together in a solitary tent, seemed to stretch into months. Bored out of his mind, he slipped into town on their last night there, once his father had fallen asleep.
How his heart pounded as he entered the candlelit interior of the tavern, or lounge, or whatever it was. He’d made note of it on their way back from the store—the people seated on mats on the veranda, sipping drinks and puffing on little sticks that garlanded their faces in wreaths of smoke. Most of all, he’d made note of the sign out front: OPEN LATE. Panting from hurry, from anxiety, from excitement, he made his way to the counter and set down a small cloth bundle.
“What’s your pleasure?” the bald, bearded owner asked, eyebrows raised.
“I—don’t know,” he stammered before pointing at his bundle. “What will these buy?”
“What are they?”
The boy unwrapped them—the twenty bloodnuts he had roasted to perfection over the campfire earlier that evening just for this purpose. Their unique aroma wafted into their nostrils—copper and lemongrass, gun smoke and cinnamon. The owner was obviously impressed
and amused by this gangly teenager before him, so obviously new in these parts, so obviously there without the permission of whomever he answered to.
“How long do they keep?” the owner asked.
“The sooner eaten, the better,” the boy said, truthfully. Which the owner appreciated. Someone more cunning would have given a more strategic answer: “several days,” “weeks” even.
“Your choice,” he said generously with a cackle that would have sounded like a hearty belly laugh if he were a larger man. He pointed at the items listed on the chalkboard behind him. “Whatever your heart desires!”
The boy studied the board in confusion. The man shook his head with a smile. “If I may make a recommendation,” he said. From beneath the counter, he produced two small black bars, passed one of them back and forth through the flame of a candle on the counter, and stuck its tip first into the boy’s mouth.
“What is it?” the boy mumbled, gripping the bar between his teeth.
“Stinger grub,” the man replied. He held the second bar under the boy’s nose so he could make out the legs, the mandibles, the eyes. “But we like to call it Peace of Mind.”
As the warm, milky liquid dripped into the boy’s mouth, he let out a happy sigh.
“Exactly,” the man cackled, pressing the second bar into the boy’s hand and motioning in the direction of the people on the veranda. “Now go make friends.”
What had he said that night in that circle of men, genial and relaxed, who welcomed him warmly and asked him many questions? Questions he’d answered before the effects of Peace of Mind had worn off and he had crept back to take his place beside his father’s still-sleeping form? Of the content, he had no recollection—only how light his tongue had felt! How free!
But that had been several months ago, and his tongue didn’t feel so free anymore. It seemed easier to hold it rather than confess. The mystery of how Cambodia-Abscond gained its reputation in the More Known World as a place for the truly irredeemable, a place to live as a silent ghost among silent ghosts, was never solved. Nor was the mystery of who killed the boy’s father months later. He was found garrotted in his prickly beet patch one day.
Flee Town. That was the name on the lips of the newcomers who trickled in. No one knew where the name originated, or how, but the Territory’s inhabitants accepted it with a shrug. It wasn’t as if they had come up with a name for the settlement themselves. Flee Town’s infamy spread and its population grew, and eventually, a conscientious Questian did see fit to update the information in the Compendium, adding a third index card to amend the obsolete information of the first two.
Now blood red.
Between this updated piece of information and Flee Town’s unsavoury reputation, settlement in Cambodia-Abscond continued to lack general appeal. And additional cards, when they were finally added, didn’t boost its popularity either.
Still, objectively speaking, it wasn’t a bad place at all once you got over the blood. And the red. And the metallic smell. And the fact that all your neighbours were most likely dangerous lowlifes (which by rights shouldn’t have bothered you, because if you were thinking of settling there, you were probably a dangerous lowlife yourself). Crops grew easily. Potable water was in abundance. It was home to a creature that was not only domesticable, but immensely useful. (Domesticable and useful didn’t always come in a single package, as denizens of the More Known World well knew. Take, for example, the eminently domesticable but decidedly unuseful Big Fat Useless Bloodsucker of Greenland-Haste.)
No, reflected Henry, gazing beyond the cattle-studded pastures at the setting sun, red and throbbing like a beating heart. Not a bad place at all.
That Mildred woman didn’t think much of it. The disdain in her eyes and the curl in her lip told him as much the moment she and the One had entered his establishment. But he was a civil man, hiding his wounds as best he could behind a wall of courteous silence, even when she’d had the gall to pepper him with intrusive personal questions during the lunch he’d held in honour of their arrival.
Thankfully he almost never had to deal with people like her anymore—the prying busybodies outside Cambodia-Abscond who considered a man nothing more than the sum of his history. This Territory was his home now. More than that, it was his sanctuary, his refuge from his past.
Henry looked forward to the evening milkings. They allowed him to spend quality time with his son and stretch his legs. While most Fleetowners preferred the warmth of the day to the chill of the night, he enjoyed the wind lashing against his body like an invisible whip, slicing the rims of his nostrils as if it were wearing ice skates. It made him feel both dead and alive, and he enjoyed experiencing these contrary sensations at the same time. They were emblematic of the life after death he had sought in migrating to the More Known Word. As if on cue, a gust came barrelling across the dark plain towards them, bowling little Garamond backwards into his belly.
“Are you all right?” Henry asked, steadying the boy.
Garamond just smiled in that melancholy way of his and kept walking. At such moments, Henry worried about the trauma that must still linger in his son’s being, incubating in the very marrow of his bones, waiting to burst into bloom. He checked himself. Don’t think like that. That’s all in the past. We’ve made a fresh start. He’ll be all right. It’s you who cares about the old life, not him. It’s you who’s haunted. He probably barely remembers her. This life will come naturally to him, not like you, you pointy-headed intellectual. You professional bookworm. Word tinker. Scribblers’ worst enemy and best friend . . .
The epithets were forced, his once nimble mind stiff from years of disuse. Words got harder every month, it seemed. Every week. Hard to believe they were what he once did for a living. He tried again, setting his mind to free association in an effort to oil its cogs.
Fire would be nice. Firefly. Firelight. Lightbulb. Onion bulb. Tulip bulb. Tiptoe through the tulips. Walking on eggshells. Egg on your face. Familiar faces. Never forget a face.
Then, in a flash, her face was before him, rising from the grave like Banquo’s ghost. Not again, he thought. The memories came less often these days, but when they did, they were as painful as ever. This time, she peered at him from her spot on the other end of the sofa they’d had back in London, her attitude a mirror image of his, back against the armrest, knees up and draped in a tartan throw, socked feet pointing towards his socked feet, but with a cup of hot tea in her hands instead of a manuscript. She always disapproved of him bringing work home, but he did it anyway. It couldn’t be helped.
“How is it?” she asked, pointing her chin at the manuscript. “Will it be the next bestseller?”
“Not bad,” he replied. “Strong opening. Suspenseful so far. Quick pace. Typed in Garamond font too.” He looked up at the ceiling, towards their son’s bedroom. “Best font in the world.”
“Only you would name your son after a font,” she said with a sniff.
He grinned. “But you agreed!”
“I know. I’m far too agreeable. It’s my weakness.”
“My tolerant darling,” he said, making a playful effort to bend forward and pinch one of her big toes.
She took another sip of tea and smiled.
That smile, he thought, returning to himself, lowering his behind onto the squat wooden stool and positioning the empty bucket below the bovquito’s waiting nubs. At the time, he’d interpreted it as incontrovertible proof of how happy his wife was, despite her gloomy spells and complaints. In hindsight he realized the smile was forced. Oh, Cassie, my darling. Grasping a sticky nub, he coaxed a thin pink stream to come shooting into the bucket. They say it’s memory that plays tricks, but it’s the moment that blinds you.
A sudden wetness in his ear made him jump, though as he brushed the trunklike proboscis away, he also gave it an affectionate pat. In response, Jane Seymour emitted a low hum of contentment and shifted her haunches. He looked over his shoulder to see how Garamond was coming along with Anne of Cleves and
shook his head at her abdomen, stretched almost to bursting with creamy pink liquid. She should be milked twice a day. She looks like . . . a pink water balloon, he thought, the poetic impulse failing him as it often did. But then again, the name was poetic enough: rose milk. Funny how we are about names. We call the grass bloodgrass and the wood bloodwood, but we won’t call the milk for what it is.
As Henry massaged the last nub, he tried again at free association, starting with blood. But only one phrase came to mind, darting out from the fog of a past life, that bookish life, when he used to go to the theatre and quote Shakespeare by heart: Out damned spot.
There was Cassandra’s face again, this time pale and cold, lids and lips death blue. Even now, all these years later, he couldn’t understand why she’d do such a thing.
If only she’d told me.
Ghosts can read minds.
“If only I’d told you what?” she asked, the lips parting, the lids flying open. “What I told you over and over again all those years, until I got tired of telling you? ‘Henry, I’m not happy.’ ‘Henry, I’m so lonely.’ ‘Henry, I feel overwhelmed.’ What would you have done?”
You fancied yourself a good reader, an eagle eye. Always caught the plot inconsistencies. Always spotted the typos. And your own wife slipped herself away right out from under your nose. How could you have missed it all? The dizzy spells, the nausea, the cramps . . .
The blue lips spoke again. “You didn’t miss anything, Henry. All the clues were there. You didn’t miss them, you dismissed them. That’s all.”
