The Vanished Birds

by Simon Jimenez

  * * *

  —

  “You.” The others tried to hold Aska back, but she pushed them aside. Nothing, it seemed, would get in the way of her and Elby. “Two hours we waited for you, you selfish demon.”

  “And now I am here,” Elby said.

  “Yes. Now you are here. She would never have gone out there were it not for your stories. Your little words. There is no pride to be had in death. You were a fool to teach her that, and— No—no—you cannot come inside, you do not deserve her.”

  She stood in Elby’s path with hands outstretched, as if that were the only way to stop the old woman and her force of will. The family members who remained outside watched the standoff. Elby walked toward Aska until they were a leaf’s distance apart, and though she had always been short, and was shorter than Aska by two heads, history compensated for the height—all she had to do was stare at her niece, and say nothing, until Aska tsked and stormed back inside.

  The crowd of family members, many of whom Elby had spoken to only once or twice, parted for her. In the heat of Osan’s long hut, she observed the body on the table.

  Here she was. Yana’s granddaughter.

  Gede resembled her grandmother in so many of the particulars, it was always a revelation to Elby. It was not just the pointed nose or the arch of the eyebrows or the smallness of her chin. Or the stubborn pride misdirected. The eager fire. It was everything. And it was the reason why Elby plied this young girl with her glorified stories of spilled blood in the forest—those nights by the fire when with relish she scared and delighted the girl with her dark descriptions of the Mondrada’s howl under spear point; she wanted Yana again. A Yana untainted by sick love for the village, but a hunter in the woods, like her, where they could both enjoy the clear smell of the mists in the right season, and be silent together in the brush as they waited for the shadows to move and the animals to cry.

  The clean robe that Gede was dressed in was parted down the middle, revealing the oiled skin of her chest. Elby pressed her thumb in the bowl of soot and pressed the soot into the skin above the girl’s stopped heart, where she left her fingerprint, beside those of the many others; of aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and the lover Gede had only recently taken.

  She bowed.

  The body was burned in the grave fields, on a mighty pyre. It was Aska’s duty as her mother to throw the first torch, but when it was time, she stood before the pyre, paralyzed, a helplessness so total she shucked away her hatred that night and asked Elby with her eyes for help. Elby gently took the torch from her niece, and she threw it without hesitation. The flames steadily ascended into great tongues that licked and spat against a rising wind. And Elby smiled, for love came in many shapes, and hers was jagged. Her arms were not meant to hold soft things, her hands born with calluses ready to grip the hunting spear. There was no grief in her heart as the fire consumed the body. There was only pride and envy and a profound gratitude to the spirits of this world for blessing her grandniece’s death with this beautiful day; that impressionable youth who, on the worst and the best of days, was Yana’s doubled shadow, and was as lovely, and as painful, to behold. Her smile spread as the flame devoured both wood and flesh, and she bid Gede farewell, praying that her last journey would not be long—and that tonight, she too would join her, and her mother, by that riverbank.

  * * *

  —

  After the ashes were tossed into the moisture pits, and those willing went to indulge their grief with drink, and those exhausted by the day’s events went to bed, Elby returned to her small home at the edge of the village and prepared for the long night to come. It was a warrior’s preparation. The unclasping of her spear from the wall and the sharpening of its point. The removal of her cold-weather robe, and the dress of her old one-shouldered hunter’s garb, the leather and freckled skin of her arm exposed for the first time in a long time; she breathed deep its familiar cool. She packed one bag, stuffed it with the food from her storage, enough jerky, enough greens and bread and water to last the few days’ journey to the Second Village. She drew a map of the roads one would need to take to get there. She did not know the roads beyond. Knowledge would have to come upon discovery. And finally, she wrote out a simple letter on barkskin parchment, signed and drawn with her insignia.

  To Uvay, Mother of Hunters of the Second—The young man who carries this note with him carries my protection, alongside the aid of my friends and colleagues, in total. He does not speak our language, and does not know our ways. At any cost, he is to reach the villages on the other side of the Water, before their Shipment Day arrives. His journey is a long one, so please stock him with what supplies you can, and draw for him a new map that will lead him from your village toward Water, and write for him a letter of your own, like this one, for the next Mother.

  It was true midnight when she knocked on the door of the old Dawara house, long since abandoned by its old members, and now used for whatever makeshift purposes the village required of it; a storage house, a prison. The guard who opened the door was Seeva, a hard-eyed little man who seemed confused by the old woman dressed in full hunter’s regalia.

  “Is it just you here tonight?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mother,” he said warily. “It’s late. Should you not be in bed?”

  “I’m here to see the boy.”

  He shook his head. “Forgive me, Mother. No one but the governor is allowed inside.”

  “You misunderstand.” She looked up at him. “I am going to see the boy.”

  A hard thwack of the butt end of her spear tossed him to the floor. She stepped over his unconscious body and stood in the main room, listening to the sounds of the house to ensure that he had told the truth. When she was certain no one else was there, she crept down the corridor into the back room, where, tucked in the corner, was the square of wood with unmatched grain. A latch, with a hook, easily undone from the outside. She threw open the hatch, and with the candle that Seeva had made use of in the main room, she made her way down the old steps, into the dust and dark of the basement.

  She discovered him behind the large pot, cowering in shadow, every muscle in his body taut.

  “You do not belong here,” she said.

  Slowly, he raised his head, and she remembered those eyes, as wide and haunted as the forest itself.

  * * *

  —

  Away from the torchlight, where the world was a dark road that curved around the hills and the red moon gazed over all with its tired eye, the two of them fell into their true nature. The hunter and the young man from the Quiet Ship did not speak as they walked, neither given to words that night, and perhaps that was the very reason why they both felt comfort in each other’s presence—this mutual understanding that there was no need to explain themselves, or their next step. The road explained itself.

  It was at the third curve of the road where Elby stopped. She gazed down the hill, where the land bubbled into the forest they called South Lantern, for fairy-tale reasons to which she had never given much thought, her life concerned with the practical, and the blood. She turned to the young man. The look she gave him made it clear that this was where they would part ways, and though he seemed not to know why, he knew that there would be no arguing the matter. With the end of her spear she made pictures in the dirt. A long curved line that swam around triangle hills and crossed the parallel lines of a river and rambled across the dotted plains. Beside these simple directions, she drew the sun and the moon, and made three tally marks. The young man understood. It was a three-day journey to the Second Village. She handed him a slip of parchment, a letter written in her language, with a name writ in bold on the flap, along with a copy of the map she had just drawn for him. She acted out what she wished him to do—that once he arrived, he was to hold that letter up to the guard, and be shown to her friend. Her friend would keep him safe. He nodded.

 
“I never knew why Kaeda was so taken with you,” she said. His head perked up, recognizing the name. “It was difficult for my sister to hold his attention for more than a few minutes. With me we spoke of work. But for you, he gave his entire days. All of his music. I never understood that. Why he was called to a stranger.” He didn’t move as he listened to her speak to herself, the whisper heavy. “At the time it frustrated me that he never answered when I asked him why. But it doesn’t frustrate me anymore. I’ve made my peace. I know now how difficult it is to explain what we are compelled by.”

  She nodded at him, and then, for a reason even she was not entirely sure of, she knelt down, licked her thumb, and pressed it into the sandy dirt. She then pulled at the angle of his robe to reveal his chest, where she pressed the thumb against the skin above his rapidly beating heart, and left behind her fingerprint. It was a ritual he had no concept of, but the act of it was enough that he was only a little scared of the road before him.

  And then she left.

  She walked into the forest alone, following the hunter’s trail through South Lantern Forest, in search of the broken trees, her road to the Butcher’s mouth. Prowling through the mists was not the same as when she was young, her legs tired too quickly and her eyes unable to distinguish shape from shadow. But she continued anyway, with spear in hand, because despite the complaints of her body, her heart had never been more certain of its course. She walked to her death that night with no regrets, not even for the days she let slip by without telling all the ones she loved how much they had meant to her. Like Kaeda, her life had been spent in a willful dream, and it was only now that she had awoken, and knew where it was she was meant to walk. Away from the village that was never her home. And away from the sweet stink of the fields’ aurora. Her place was here, where the trunks were snapped in half and the air was thick with blood. It was the place between the trees, and through the pillars of red moonlight. She blew into Gede’s whistle, calling out to the ones who had passed before her, and who, in their passing, had taken with them her home.

  She heard in the distance a howl; with a quiet breath, she drew her spear.

  Soon she would see them again.

  * * *

  —

  He heard her whistle song in the distance. He listened for a time before he shouldered his pack and followed her directions down the long road, through the night and around the hills. His view was of the mists that rose from the forests like cold breath, lifting up toward the sky that did not call out to him. The small stones in the path chewed through the soles of his sandals as he walked. He ignored the scrit of movement from the trees and the hungry howls. His life had taken a turn into the surreal; he knew there was nothing to fear from a dream. The worst had already happened to him, years ago.

  And it was so good, to be out of the dark.

  The road sloped down the hill and rose again in the distance—a pattern that would repeat itself for many hours, according to the old woman, before he reached the river crossing. Up and down the hills he went, the fear settling against the routine of his steps, and, as people do when the road is long and there is little else to occupy his thoughts, he began to wonder about himself. What elements composed the ability that had left him here, and what it was about this world that called to him time and again. Questions with no answers. And as his surroundings shifted from forest into wide tracts of dhuba stalk, he was unnerved by the nostalgia that reached out from a time before his first visit to this place. An echo of an echo, the true message lost in the bounce, its source a memory he had no access to. Twice now he had come to this world; the beginnings of a pattern he did not understand, but could only detect by the troubled surface of his subconscious. But without a key, or even a lock to put it in, he pushed aside these wonderings and he moved on. Wiped away the spring of tears as he looked up at the red moon, and past it, searching for her coordinates.

  * * *

  —

  She shouted his name down streets lit by the vibrant glow of the streetlamps, shouted till her throat was red and raw. The lamps beaded paths through the darkened city like so many colorful necklaces, and led her through its alleys, in circles. She ignored Sartoris’s pleas to return to the ship. “Nia,” he said, catching up to her. “We need to go back.”

  “We will when we find him.”

  “We need to go back and collect ourselves.”

  “He’s out there. He’s alone.”

  “The Haus will dispatch guards in the morning. This city is too large for you and me alone to search. Nia,” he said again. “We need a better plan than to wander heedlessly.”

  A window from on high snapped shut. A small animal prowled around a bag of trash. She had no idea what street they were on, or how far they were from the port. “Go back to the ship,” she whispered. “I’ll meet you and the others soon.”

  “Nia—”

  “That was an order. Not a suggestion.”

  Sartoris asked her once more to reconsider, hands held out with palms up in pleading, before she gave him her final answer, and he, defeated, returned to the ship alone. Nia continued on through the dark streets, the side streets, the crowded streets, along shadows that seemed to stretch from nothing. Walking down empty alleys with her hand rested by the pocket pistol Sonja had lent her. She had never shot a person, but in this moment, she believed she could. Each muscle in her body articulate and ready to strike. When she heard a crash, she flashed her torch on what she thought was movement by a darkened threshold—it was a small girl, wild-eyed and startled, who sprinted away.

  Her torchlight flickered. She gave it a few hard shakes, and as the light of her torch blinked on and off and on again, Morse-coding the alley she faced, it occurred to her, without fanfare, that maybe he had Jaunted. That Fumiko was right, and now he was gone, was now far away. The sky was black and starless from the light pollution, bleached of signposts or direction. A map with no key or continent. Maybe he was gone. She slammed her palm against the torch until it stopped flickering, and searched another alley, for she knew that no matter what had happened, all she had was the search, which went on for fruitless hours.

  She returned to the ship empty-handed. Through the cold corridors she walked, the place that was once home now a foreign thing to her, a collection of metal and wire. The crew was in the common room, listening to Sonja, who detailed the search plans for the next day, the sectors where they would inquire. Nia would be debriefed later; for now, she would be alone. She soon found herself standing in his room. The room itself had a long lineage. There was Yvon, who’d painted the walls with her family tree, which was many-branched, and took as long to chip off as it had to compose. And there was Ponchi, who kept his treasured pipe beside the bed, smoking himself to sleep, his ecstatic dreams recounted in loving detail the next lights-on, during breakfast, to no one’s amusement but his own. And then there was a time when no one lived in this room, when it was just a space, empty, waiting to be filled.

  It was filled now with music—a dozen varietals of instruments from the worlds they visited. An orb that played different tones depending on how its surface was massaged. A toothed metal twanger. A tautly wound drum that she and Sonja and Em had built together for Ahro’s fifteenth birthday, the skin from a hunted beast on a desert continent, and the wood whittled down by Em’s expert hands. She remembered how Ahro’s eyes brightened when he was given the drum, this dumb, treasured thing, and the days he played it under dual suns.

  The flute.

  She picked it up, her thumb pressed into the engraving of his name. She did not know why she lifted the mouthpiece to her lips and played; why it was vital to her, to remember the notes, the sound of him, at that moment.

  * * *

  —

  On Umbai-V, the young man stopped walking.

  Heard, in the far, far distance, the note.

  The sound of her.

  * * * />
  —

  She knew few songs.

  This was the easy one.

  A lullaby.

  * * *

  —

  It was like an itch in the back of his mind. It came from a place at once outside of and within himself. The breeze roared into a wind and kicked up the dust on the road. He could hear the music coming from above—the plucking of stars. Something beneath his heart, an ancient instinct, coaxed his eyes shut, his mind quiet. The world beyond him narrowed out, the road and the fields and the forests, until he was suspended in empty space, like all those years ago when the Grav had failed, and the food flew, and he let out his first bright laugh. And then he saw the path—a current that arced up into the sky; a current of many colors, shifting, not true colors, but something beyond the realm of the senses; as if it had been waiting for this moment to reveal itself.

  He rode the current off that world, through the nebulae, through the asteroid motes and gas giants, the stellar rings and mythic constellations, he an ancient and new creation, breaking through the laws of this reality, crashing through the established walls, the cans and cannots on his way back home, flying past the thousands, millions of other lines that spread out in an infinite network, old paths traveled, and new paths yet to be walked. He flitted past all of this, until the Painted City spun toward him, gaining in terrifying scope, he an infinitesimally small thing crashing toward it, toward the smoothstone spaceport, through it and its materials, the layers of metal and lastique and tamed quarry rock, slower now, drifting down, down through the quiet dark of the docking bay, toward the Debby, through the Debby’s charred hull, ancient hull, hull that had spent countless ages in transit, carrying with it thousandfold stories, and down, gently, into his hatch, the world flexing, and pulsing, before returning to its original, solid shapes.