by Tiffany Tsao
It was a story—Murgatroyd deduced that much. But it was communicated with no words, using the same strange ear-vibrating silence that he had heard in the soup ruby tent and right before the performance had begun. Until now, however, he hadn’t realized the extent to which it could be used to form a language all its own. It came from the storyteller’s lips in different colours, in different pitches. It soared high and dipped low. It bounced in a quick staccato. It glided in long measured strides. It waltzed like a ballroom dancer and tiptoed in place like a ballerina.
Murgatroyd was reminded of a pipa performance he had once attended with Kay Huat during his best friend’s Chinese-classical-music-loving phase. (Kay Huat had been a man of many passions.) He remembered the player’s dexterous fingers—how they seemed to pluck the notes from the strings as if they were plucking leaves from twigs and flinging them spiralling into the air. And he remembered knowing, even as he realized that he was witnessing something extraordinary, how completely incapable he was of fully appreciating the woman’s performance. What he lacked was basic comprehension of the language that the woman, through her pipa, spoke.
This storyteller made him feel the same way. Like all the other listeners, he was enraptured, but unlike them, he could only guess at what the contents of the tale were. There was a sprightly ebullience that grew over the course of the first few minutes that made him feel profoundly joyful, followed by terrifying pulses that made his hair stand on end. Finally there was something climactic—a clash of some sort—then great sorrow and mourning, and more terrifying pulses, ugly and creeping, then leaping, teeth bared, knives slashing, ready to tear their enemies limb from limb. One, two, three strokes of a blade! One, two, three! And then a pause. (The audience held their breath.) Then joy, again. Complete and utter joy.
With that, it was over. The storyteller bowed low, not to appreciative silence as the musicians before him had, but to a resounding unified vibration that reminded Murgatroyd of a cheer. He was replaced by an eager-looking woman with a kazoo.
Everyone began clearing out.
“Like it?” asked Garamond, as he and Murgatroyd strolled back towards the Arms.
“Wah,” exclaimed Murgatroyd in admiration. There was really nothing else to say. “That’s the same kind of thing you know how to do, isn’t it? What’s it called?”
Garamond turned bright pink. “It’s nothing,” he mumbled.
“Don’t say that,” exclaimed Murgatroyd. “It’s wonderful. It really is.”
Garamond looked confused for a while. Then he smiled that shy smile of his. “That’s its name: Nothing.”
“Ah. Right. How come?”
Garamond thought for a while. As if he were about to lift something immensely heavy, he took a deep breath. “Because it’s not ‘something,’ I guess,” he said. Then a look of panic crossed his face. “Don’t tell Dad,” he muttered.
“Why not?” Murgatroyd asked.
Garamond answered, though it was clear that speaking was very tiring for him. “Older people don’t like us using it.” He paused. “Say it’s the same as talk.”
“Who came up with it?”
Garamond shrugged. “Justhappened,” he said, his speech slurring from weariness. “’Snew. Butwuzaround whenIcame.”
Murgatroyd was fascinated. There was so much he wanted to ask, but he was also aware of how tired the boy must be. “One more question,” said Murgatroyd. “That story the boy told. What was it about?”
Garamond smiled and tried to think of the most concise answer he could give.
“Savages,” he said finally. “AttackingFleeTown.”
Murgatroyd went pale.
“Dunworry,” the boy continued, still smiling. “FleeTownwon.”
CHAPTER 7
“If you could wish for anything, what would it be?”
“I would wish that nobody would ever go hungry again.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I want to be president of the United States, because our country is the best country in the world.”
“What do you like best about pageants?”
“I like wearing pretty dresses and meeting new and interesting people.”
“Tell us about your best friend.”
“Her name is Sarah. She has a hamster named Nibbles, and we both like the colour purple.”
Except for the part about the pretty dresses, thought Ann, none of it was true. But she had known as much back then as well.
“Not bad, An An. But when you speak, try to sound a little shy. The judges will think it’s cute.”
Her mother had asked the questions in halting English, but was now speaking fluidly in her native Mandarin. Her younger self replied in English, as she always did.
“You said I should sound more confident.”
“Both. You should be confident and shy.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“An An, don’t argue. It makes you look ugly.”
From the backseat, An An could see her reflection scowling in the rearview mirror. Ma was right. It did make her look ugly. She forced her lips upwards into a smile.
“See? How pretty you are!” exclaimed her mother, eyes looking at An An in the mirror as well. “You’re the prettiest girl in the whole world. And the smartest. And the most talented.”
“Then how come I never win?”
“Because the judges are stupid,” said her mother. “And ‘racist,’” she added. “But you’re so talented and pretty, you’ll win someday. And then you’ll keep winning. You’ll see. We just have to keep trying.”
None of this was true either, except perhaps for the part about the judges being racist. (Her mother had learned the English word from a Vietnamese coworker at one of the beauty salons where she worked—the same coworker who liked to mutter under her breath, ‘American melting pot, my ass.’) But Ann—grown-up Ann, inside whose head all this was happening—held her tongue. She knew she couldn’t intervene even if she tried. She knew from experience that the past wasn’t live theatre, but a movie she had no choice but to enact and watch herself star in—both at once, as older Ann and little An An. It was like 3-D, but with consciousness instead of space. This was how she always dreamed the past.
An An looked out the window. The same dreary landscape. Grey guardrail and concrete barrier flashing by. Other cars, lagging behind them, pulling ahead, shifting lanes. Eternal freeway. She picked up Greenie from where she had fallen on the floor and began tracing the green flower on her belly with her finger.
Ann watched as her younger self looked out the window, sighed in boredom, and began playing absentmindedly with a green Care Bear with a four-leaf clover on its stomach. She remembered that doll—she had taken it everywhere until she’d accidentally left it behind at a motel.
An An sighed. Ma heard her.
“Do your articulation exercises if you’re bored.”
“I did them this morning.”
“An An . . .”
She knew what that tone meant. “I did!” she protested, squirming.
Yet another untruth, thought Ann. Her childhood had been full of them.
“An An, don’t lie to me. I know the truth. I can see it in your eyes.”
She glanced inadvertently at the rearview mirror, and Ma caught her gaze.
“Practice. I don’t want the judges asking you if English is your first language again. How embarrassing.”
She clutched Greenie tighter and buried her face in the soft fur.
“Peter Piper picked a peck . . .”
“Take your face out of that bear,” Ma barked.
She lifted her head.
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers—”
Ann’s eyes flew open. She sat up. Files and loose documents were scattered all over the bed, which she’d fallen asleep on. The moonlight streaming through the windows stained the whole room mauve. She rubbed her face, stretched her limbs, and tried to orient herself. Then, realiz
ing how cold it was—the fire had almost burned itself out—she slipped under the fur covers with care to keep the papers from spilling onto the floor. It always took her a few minutes to recover from these dreams, which weren’t dreams in the true sense of the word. Dreams were fiction. What she experienced were memories—scenes from a miserable childhood back in the Known World that never dared rear their heads when she was awake. But they were cunning. Only when Ann was sleeping and helpless would the memories emerge, scuttling from their dark holes to cavort on the sands and frolic in the waves.
The night memories didn’t visit often. At least, they didn’t use to. They used to come only once every few weeks, leaving her to slumber peacefully the rest of the time in a black soundless void. But lately they had begun to do more stirring than ever before. They came every few nights now, and occasionally in pairs.
Staring at the ceiling, awash in the cool paleness of night, she meditated on what could have possibly roused these memories so. Perhaps the sudden deterioration of the One’s health had affected her more than she was aware. The sudden and bizarre display of jealousy she’d exhibited towards Mildred sprang to mind. Yes, perhaps that was it. After all, the One was the closest thing she had to a mother—a real mother, that is. Not the deranged, pageant-obsessed stage mother she’d left behind. At the very thought of her biological parent, Ann’s eye socket began to throb.
Abruptly, as if to fling her thoughts in a new direction, she turned her head to the side, and noticed for the first time, on the bedside table, a wooden bowl upside down on a wooden plate, and next to it, a small wooden mug of water. There was a note: For Ann. Dinner.
It was Murgatroyd’s handwriting. She lifted the bowl and found an enormous pile of bloodnuts topped with a triangle of squashed purple pastry and a wedge of cheese. Even though the bloodnuts were stone cold, Ann bit into them with caution. Her first experience eating them had been much like Murgatroyd’s. The liquid they exuded tasted pleasantly like jellied liver. Ann popped a few more into her mouth and took a bite of cheese. Then she put the documents back in their proper files and skimmed through them, creating short synopses of each victim’s details in her head.
Victim One: Hans Andersen, early forties at time of death. Murdered in Tunisia-Bathtub in 2004. Numerous stab wounds, throat slit, and nose sliced off. The body was discovered in a state of advanced decomposition two and a half months after he’d failed to report to the Compendium when he said he would.
Victim Two: Jonathan Wilson II—so dubbed not because of any previous Jonathan Wilson in his ancestry, but because he was, coincidentally, the second Jonathan Wilson to join the Quest. Aged thirty-one. Killed in 2005. Throat slit. Body found on the ringed shores of France-Paranormal.
Victim Three: Nimali.
Just Nimali. She’d had another name too—a clan name, she’d called it when Ann had met her. “It’s a Sinhalese thing,” she’d added, before a certain hardness crept into her face. Then she’d said, “I’m just Nimali now.” Ann, being “just Ann” herself, had sympathized.
Ann frowned at the memory’s intrusion into her thoughts and shook it out of her head. She started over.
Victim Three: Nimali. Aged sixteen. Killed in 2006 in Jamaica-Fallacy. Body discovered near Flee Town, Cambodia-Abscond. Throat slit. Words written on left palm in thick black ink: Flee Town.
Ann shut Nimali’s file, popped a chunk of pastry into her mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. None of it made any sense. What possible motive could anyone have for murdering these people? What did their murderer hope to accomplish? And even if she could answer these questions, how would it help her track down the killer?
Flee Town. That was the one concrete thing she had to go by. Did Nimali somehow manage to write it before she died? If she did, she must have known that her killer was going to transfer her there. But what was the point of writing it down? Or did the killer write it? If so, why? The only reason would be . . .
Ann sprang out of bed and ran from the room. She sprinted down the hallway to where Murgatroyd was sleeping and tried the door. It was unlocked. She flung it open and looked inside. There was Murgatroyd, fast asleep in bed, drooling all over his pillow.
Relieved, she went over to his window and made sure it was fastened. Then she left, locking his door from the inside and making a mental note to be more careful in the future.
As she walked down the corridor back to her room, her train of thought picked up where it had left off: the only reason the killer would write Flee Town was if he or she wanted to lure them here, into a trap. But what trap would that be? The One herself had come and gone without anything happening to her. (Not that the One was the type to be dissuaded by threats of personal danger.) Perhaps Nimali really had been the one who’d written it after all. But still that question: Why?
Leaving her door ajar so she would be able to hear any sounds from Murgatroyd’s room, she sat on the edge of her bed and steered her thoughts towards the unhelpful conversation she’d had with the man in the purple coat who’d discovered Nimali’s body:
“Where did you find it?”
“Field.”
“Which field?”
“Edge of town.”
“What did the body look like?”
“Flat.”
“Was there anything unusual about it?”
Here, the man had stared at her. “Yes, it was dead. And flat.”
“Were there any marks on the body?”
The man had pointed at his left palm.
“Anything else?”
The man had shaken his head. “Now leave me alone.”
Still sitting on her bed, Ann turned her thoughts back to the writing on Nimali’s hand—Flee Town—and what it could possibly mean apart from the obvious. Unexpectedly her mind swerved and went careening into an imaginary scene: Nimali in the last moments of life, sprawled on wet earth, her head flopped to the side like a spent balloon. An awful gurgle bubbled from the wide red gash splitting her throat.
Ann rushed over to the washstand, poured out some water from the pitcher, and splashed some on her face. Nimali vanished, and she was alone again. This isn’t me at all, thought Ann. I have to get some sleep.
She took out her contact lens, rinsed and stored it, then washed her face again. As she slipped under the bedcovers, she removed her eye patch and placed it on the table by her bed. If she had to make a choice between memories of Nimali and dreams of her past, she supposed the latter was the more sensible choice. At least her past had a happy ending.
Both very far away and not very far away at all, someone sat hunched over a table. The table was unfortunately constructed—hence the hunching. And the occasional splinter in the fingers and palms. And the pens and pencils that would roll off the edge, no matter how deliberately and firmly he set them down. The light was bad too, but the table wasn’t to blame.
Occasionally these things would irritate him, but he was usually too absorbed in his activities to notice. There was too much work to be done to bother about ergonomics. Yes, he knew all about ergonomics. Not only was the word in his beloved dictionary, but he had become more familiar with its usage through a tattered pamphlet that one of the others had found during a scavenging trip in one of the settlements: Office Ergonomics: Healthy Work, Healthy Life. It was no Odyssey or Green Eggs and Ham, to be sure, but it had made for good light reading.
For the past two days, however, he hadn’t done any reading at all, heavy or light. Inspiration had struck, and he’d spent almost all his time writing the latest instalment of his autobiography. Techniquewise, this was a particularly challenging chapter—a scene from his infancy. (He’d long given up writing the chapters in chronological order. Perhaps he would rearrange them sometime in the future, once he was finished.) He’d made several false starts before and concluded that, to have it ring true, he would have to unlearn all the skills he had learned thus far even as he exercised those same skills to their fullest. Or to put it another way: the scene must read as utterly ar
tless, even as the execution required great artistry. The problem had baffled him for weeks. But now, as he read over his most recent attempt—the mere eight lines that had taken hours for him to compose—he believed he finally had it:
Warm. Arms. Heart. Love. Warm. In arms. Here is heart. Here is love.
Big heart beats. Dub dub dub dub. Big lips nuzzle. Nuzzle nuzzle. Dub dub.
Here’s my heart. Dub dub. Here’s her heart. Dub dub.
Fingers. Wave fingers. My fingers. Her fingers.
Fingers tickle. Lips nuzzle. Love. This is love.
Lips on my tummy. Burble burble! Joy! Joy! She is love.
I am loved. Hello sun. Hello heart. Dub dub.
Joy! I am loved. Here is love. Loved. Love.
He was still weeping when a woman appeared in the doorway to his room. “They came,” she said.
He’d been waiting for this news. “Both of them?” he asked eagerly, rising from his seat.
“Yes. They’re staying at the Bovquito Arms.”
