by Tiffany Tsao
Forgetting his curiosity about how Nutmeg came to be named after a Known World plant, Murgatroyd guffawed. “You are!” he blurted, before clapping his hands over his mouth and turning red. “Erh, I mean . . . ,” he began. But he trailed off when it became apparent that, one, he had in fact meant it, and two, that Nutmeg, far from looking offended, was blinking, waiting for him to finish his sentence.
“Please, go on. What do you mean?”
“Erh. Nothing. Sorry, leh. I mean, I’m sorry I said that.”
“Why?”
“Dunno,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck, flustered. “I always say the wrong thing and make people mad . . .”
Nutmeg looked intensely puzzled. “It’s okay. I am still brown and round. Why would I be mad? That would be like you getting mad if I said you were pale and skinny with a big nose and yellow hair.”
“Yes, it would,” said Murgatroyd with a nervous laugh, still unable to believe he hadn’t offended her.
Nutmeg was positively tickled now, giving off raspy silent hoots, which Murgatroyd assumed were some form of laughter.
“Or,” she continued, “if you got mad just because someone said your posture is terrible and your mouth hangs open.”
“Yes,” exclaimed Murgatroyd, being coaxed into the spirit of things. “Or if you got mad at me for saying that you have very bushy eyebrows.”
Nutmeg beamed. “Do you really think so?”
“Yes,” Murgatroyd affirmed. “They’re almost like one big eyebrow. I wish mine were like that. Also, why do you do that thing with your nose every time you want to say something?”
“Oh, that. It makes it easier to make sounds, that’s all. I don’t know how you two manage to say anything without doing it.”
Ann, who was observing all this, couldn’t help but smile. “Murgatroyd,” she said, “Before you woke up, Nutmeg was saying that the notebook belongs to her.”
“Yes,” said Nutmeg. “So happy you found it. Sorry we startled you.”
“Think nothing of it,” said Ann pleasantly.
Pleasantly. Murgatroyd looked at her in surprise. Ann paid him no notice.
“And sorry we had to knock you out and bring you here. It was the safest course of action to take.”
“Perfectly understandable,” said Ann in that same unnaturally amiable tone. She followed this remark with an equally unnatural reassuring smile.
Murgatroyd tried his best to play along. “Erh, yes. Perfectly,” he echoed. “And I’m sure the swelling from whatever you used to hit us will go down quickly,” he added, touching the crown of his head.
Nutmeg frowned. “We used a battle cry to knock you out, not a weapon.”
Murgatroyd too frowned. “Then where did this come from?” he said, pointing to his lump.
Nutmeg squinted. “Oh, that’s a bite. From the birds on the lake. They don’t usually attack humans, but when they do, it’s pretty painful.”
Murgatroyd recalled what Garamond had said about the lake not being a popular destination. He sighed.
“We saw you found my notebook,” continued Nutmeg, “and were obviously using it to try and find us. We couldn’t risk you discovering how to get here yourselves, so we took matters into our own hands.”
“That makes sense,” said Ann with a nod. Murgatroyd commenced nodding as well.
“No one else saw the notebook, did they?” Nutmeg asked.
“No,” said Ann evenly and without hesitation. Upon hearing the lie, Murgatroyd felt it all come flooding back—Nimali’s slit throat, the two other murders, the fact that he and Ann had in fact been kidnapped. His tongue went dry, and he could feel himself breaking into a cold sweat.
“Oh good,” Nutmeg sighed. “It’s my fault, really. Benn will be so upset. What a mess I’ve caused.”
“It’s all right,” said Ann. And suddenly, Murgatroyd thought, A cat. That’s what Ann’s tone reminded him of. A very careful cat.
Deftly Ann picked up that name and returned it as if it were a dropped handkerchief. This was the second time Nutmeg had mentioned it. “Why will Benn be upset?”
“People can’t find out about us. It’s for our own safety. We’ve kept ourselves hidden all this time.”
“Ah.” Ann nodded.
Nutmeg pursed her lips. “I should have been more careful. But you see”—she turned to Murgatroyd now and looked at him with an earnest, clear gaze—“it fell out of my pocket when I was bending over her—the woman.”
Murgatroyd’s blood froze.
There was the briefest of pauses before Ann responded. “I can see how that would happen.”
“I wanted to make sure she was dead,” Nutmeg continued.
Ann nodded. Murgatroyd’s heart raced.
“Awful,” she sighed. “Whoever killed her was cruel. The Worlds really are a dangerous place.”
Murgatroyd almost collapsed with relief. Ann looked noticeably relieved as well, though she attempted to keep her expression unchanged.
“They are,” Ann agreed. “So, she was dead when you found her?”
Nutmeg nodded. “There was nothing I could do to help her. And I knew someone would find her before too long. I knew the chickens would drain her when they came across her body, but that couldn’t be helped.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Ann echoed.
Murgatroyd could contain himself no longer. “You didn’t kill her!” he exclaimed.
Ann turned her eye on him sharply.
Nutmeg frowned. “Of course not!” Her expression changed to one of horror. “Is that what you thought?”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that there are stories we heard in Flee Town about savages who . . .” Murgatroyd trailed off when he realized that Ann was glaring at him.
Nutmeg was alarmed. “There are stories about us? They think we kill people? How much do they know?”
“Nothing,” Ann said smoothly. “Nothing at all. They’re just rumours. And they’re all completely wrong.”
Nutmeg looked suspicious. “Are they?”
“Yes,” Murgatroyd affirmed hastily. “Completely. They call you savages and think that you’re ghosts who eat people and go back and forth between Territories. But only a few people think this. And nobody else believes them.”
Nutmeg’s expression grew troubled anyway. “Benn is really going to be upset.” The lines in her brow deepened. “And why do they think we all can go back and forth between Territories? Only one of us can do that.”
Ann didn’t respond immediately, but when she did, her tone was all nonchalance. “Absurd, isn’t it?” she remarked breezily. Then almost as an afterthought: “When you say ‘only one of us,’ you mean . . .”
“Only one of us,” affirmed Nutmeg.
“You?” Ann asked.
“Oh no,” Nutmeg said hastily. “I mean, I wish I could. How fantastic would that be! Imagine!”
“Yes, imagine,” agreed Ann, though she didn’t have to at all. “How long have you been here?” she asked lightly.
“My whole life.”
“I mean all of you. This whole . . .” Ann searched for the right word. “. . . Community. How long have all of you lived here?”
“Oh, ages,” answered Nutmeg.
“How many years?”
Nutmeg laughed. “Too many to count. Ever so long. Before my great-great-grandparents’ time. Before my great-great-great-grandparents’ time.”
“Amazing!” Murgatroyd exclaimed. “But how do you know English?”
“Benn taught me. It’s his native language.”
“And how did you get here?” Murgatroyd continued.
“Maybe you should ask Benn,” said Nutmeg, looking wary all of a sudden. “I’m not sure how much I should be telling you. I’ll take you to him after this. In the meantime, dessert?” She lifted the lid of the other pot and began ladling a thick soup into two bowls. It was the texture and colour of boiled clay.
Murgatroyd thought about how to decline as politely as possible. �
��I should finish this first,” he said, pointing to the stew he’d been neglecting.
“You can eat it later,” said Nutmeg, holding the bowls out to them. “You should taste this now. I think you’ll like it. It’s our specialty.”
Ann accepted the bowl, and reluctantly, Murgatroyd did the same. They raised the unappetizing-looking concoction to their lips. Each took a tentative sip.
For a split-second, time stopped. For a split-second, the world stopped. For a split-second, their hearts cracked open and out bubbled streams of fresh joy.
“How can?” Murgatroyd murmured.
“Can’t be,” Ann murmured at the same time.
But it was. Beyond a doubt. Yusuf’s ice cream.
“It’s one of my favourite flavours,” said Nutmeg. “Elation.”
CHAPTER 11
Despite Cambodia-Abscond being one of the first Territories discovered by the Quest, there were two things about it that remained a mystery: What had caused the Territory to turn from beige to blood red all of a sudden—literally blood red? And where had the blood come from?
No one had come up with any truly satisfactory answers to these two questions, but as intriguing as these questions were, far more intriguing were those that went unasked. For example, wasn’t it peculiar that Flee Town’s younger generation had come up with an entirely new nonsound-based language?
Such oversight was understandable. Certain qualities attract more attention than others. An individual with a booming voice will always draw more attention than a soft-spoken one. A man dressed in a neon-yellow moose costume inevitably overshadows the woman next to him in an understated grey dress, however elegant the dress’s cut. In the same way, it was perfectly natural to mistake the colour of Cambodia-Abscond—its bloodiness, and before that, its beigeness—for its defining attribute. The irony was this: the preoccupation with the Territory’s hue actively prevented those who sought to discover more about Cambodia-Abscond from perceiving what really set it apart. One might even have been tempted to think that the Territory was deliberately using colour as a distraction, as a red herring (or a beige herring, as the case may have been) to detract attention from the true self it sought, for reasons unknown, to keep hidden away.
If people had puzzled more over the new language of the Flee Town youth, rather than dismissing it as “nothing,” it would have led to other questions along the same lines: Weren’t the denizens of Flee Town suspiciously silent—even for individuals desperate to escape their respective pasts? Wasn’t it strange that the Compendium reports on the Territory had, until Christian’s intervention, been excessively brief? Wasn’t it curious that Fleetowners, on the rare occasions they travelled out of the Territory for an extended period of time, began to experience a slight and gradual loosening of the tongue—especially if they were of a younger generation who had not sufficiently internalized the pressing reasons for their parents’ flight to a wholly unfamiliar land?
In sum, these questions would have disclosed a surprising fact—one so well concealed that nobody knew a revelation of any sort was required. And that fact was this: the true defining characteristic of Cambodia-Abscond—its essence, if you will—was its silence.
For those who communicate through sound, the diversity of silence is impossible to fathom in any really meaningful way. We think of silence as absence when we should think of it as presence. Or to put it another way, we think of silence as empty when we should think of it as invisible—presence disguised as absence, existence disguised as nonexistence. It’s true that we have a handful of different words for silence and being silent—pause, lull, quiet, still, mute—but what we really need is an entire book. Something akin to the encyclopaedic guides one can buy on, say, South American fungi, or pottery of the world, or fine wines. Wine is an especially fitting analogue for silence. For just as the complexity of good wine is such that it demands the deployment of words that don’t technically have anything to do with wine (butter, blackberry, and tobacco, for example), the innumerable shades and qualities of silence would best be done justice via similar means.
Such descriptions were exactly what Murgatroyd had unwittingly come up with in his head when he had witnessed the storyteller’s performance at the market back in Flee Town. If he could have articulated the images and sensations he had experienced that night and presented them convincingly to someone of authority at the Quest—perhaps the One, or even Ann—the initial groundwork would have been laid for revolutionizing current conceptions of silence. But he hadn’t. And since he was the first and, thus far, only Questian to know about this new medium of artistic expression, his experiences remained unvoiced, ensconced in the spongy recesses of his brain, wrapped in a silence reminiscent of warm honey, velvety and sticky, blankety and sweet—the same variety of silence that permeated all of Cambodia-Abscond, not unlike the thick black fog that enshrouded China-Plummet. It was the silence through which everyone in the Territory unknowingly waded that weighed them down imperceptibly at first, but exerted its pressure a little more each day, so that, while no effects were apparent by day seven or even fourteen, by day thirty-five or so, one’s tongue began to feel a tiny bit more sluggish than usual—a sluggishness that by day sixty-two would have evolved into a flabby indolence, accompanied by a growing aversion to needless speech that would plateau finally at day three hundred, or four hundred if an individual happened to be especially loquacious.
This was the primordial silence from which all man-made silences in the Territory were created, as wine from grapes, as pots from clay, as cheese from milk, as music from notes. It was this silence that the storyteller back in Flee Town had plucked from the air around him in order to tell his tale. It was this silence that the other young denizens of Flee Town drew on for their everyday communication, gathering and tossing it at each other like children playing in the snow. And it was from this silence that those who had dwelt in Cambodia-Abscond for generations upon generations, long before any settlers had arrived and long before the Quest’s discovery of the Territory, constructed their own language, which differed as much from the Nothing of Flee Town as whale song from bee buzz.
Exactly how long these people had been there was difficult to say. Centuries, at least. But not forever, for there was a detailed story about how their ancestors—a whole group of them—had sailed from another world into this one on a boat. They had been heading somewhere else to make a new home on another island, using the stars as their guide. They were far enough into their journey to be sick of the endless water and start yearning terribly for land and mountains and trees. And then, all of a sudden, they found themselves on a pale sand-coloured sea facing a pale sandy shore lined with pale sandy trees below a pale sandy sky. At first, they tried to sail back to where they had come from. That was before they figured out that the sandy sea was a lake.
They decided to make do with the island where they had initially disembarked, but the soil was chalky and poor, and the only crop that would grow of all the tubers and seeds they had brought was the yam. Even then, the yams they planted took on the same light colour as the earth and tasted skinny and bland. They had no livestock: the chickens and pigs and dogs that had been in the boat with them had vanished when they had crossed over into the new world. But they found a new species of chicken: scrawny, hairy, winged creatures of about the same size, with similar but stringier flesh and long, flexible snouts instead of beaks. Although the first few years were difficult, over time the people came to know the land better, and their farming skills improved.
This was one of the two oral accounts that composed their collective history. The second account told of a much more recent event called the __________. Or in English, the Reddening.
It started with the lake. The afternoon sun was low in the sky, and those who had gone out egg collecting in their boats were just starting to return to shore. One woman swore that it was she who’d seen it first, blood spreading through the water as it might through a cloth pressed against a wound. At
first, she’d thought someone must have been injured, and she’d paddled over to help. But by the time she had reached the spot, the redness had radiated far and wide, out to the other boats scattered here and there on the horizon and rolling on the waves onto their island’s shores. The sand soaked it up first, and then it crept up to the soil, and even the rocks. The grass was next, followed by the flowers and bushes and trees, including the crops. And then, as if the plants were bleeding into the air, there came the pinkening of the sky and the sun and the moon.
Needless to say, everyone was disgusted. The mere thought of eating blood-infused food was so horrifying that the community exhausted its supplies of preserved foods first, on the off chance everything might unredden—which, given the miraculous nature of the event that turned everything red to begin with, wasn’t an entirely unreasonable thing to hope for. But an unreddening did not happen, and once all the cooked, dried, and fermented foods had been consumed and the water reserves drunk, they began to nibble gingerly on tainted crops.
To everyone’s relief, the Reddening had made nothing poisonous, even if it did make everything taste faintly of __________ (which in English translates roughly to the warm tingle you get on your tongue when you slice it on something sharp). As the weeks passed and they resigned themselves to their new fate, it quickly became apparent that the Reddening was not so bad after all. Within a few years, the yams started to swell and taste sweet rather than plain. The nuts became rich and pulpy and robust. The beets grew to five times their average size. A species of wild bramble they had been treating as a weed burst into berry one day.
There were good effects on the fauna too. The birds that buzzed over the surface of the lake octupled in size, and so did their eggs, which used to taste nutritious but unpleasant, and now tasted even more nutritious, and creamy and sweet. Not only that, but the chickens they raised for meat and fur were transformed beyond recognition, becoming so enormous that they could be used as beasts of burden. Their meat wasn’t stringy anymore—it was marbled and melt-in-your-mouth tender. One didn’t have to sew together fifty pelts to make a cloak; a single chicken hide was enough for an adult-sized cloak, a pair of socks, and a decent hat. Their wings grew in proportion to their size too and became flexible and tough, which made them suitable for sailcloth and windowpanes—and they held pigment well, which made them good for drawing on. But perhaps most astonishing of all was the substance the chickens began to excrete: a thick, pink, opaque fluid that separated when left in a pot for a long time, the fat of it rising to the top and leaving a blobby moustache on one’s upper lip when one took a swig. It was surprisingly versatile: it could be churned into a rich paste, fermented into a pleasing sour drink, or solidified into chewy globules of lip-smacking delight. This substance they called ___, and on the nourishment it provided, everyone grew plump, began to live several years longer, and got a lot better at surviving illnesses. And even though the literal English translation of ___ was chicken fluid, Benn preferred to translate it as milk.
