IGMS Issue 33 Read online

  "Then I guess you can't help me." The light in his eyes dimmed. "Thank you anyway."

  "Let me come with you."

  "What?"

  Jeska was stunned herself. She had never thought about the City Without Walls before, and had never wanted to look for it. But she would do whatever the man wanted not to lose the infant's pull on her breast again. "I've never seen it," she said, "but we know it's to the south. I'd like to see it. And how else will you feed your baby?" The words "your baby" sounded strange when addressed to a man, but she wanted to impress him.

  "Are you serious?"

  Jeska nodded.

  Danyel looked at her and the suckling baby. "Okay."

  "Brothers!" Jeska called out. The boys ran up from their gathering and formed a lopsided circle around her. "Listen! This is Danyel, and he will be our older brother. He will protect us from wild boys. We will not eat him, nor will we eat the baby. This baby will be like my baby, the one the wild boys took. Do you understand?"

  The boys muttered assent. "But what will we eat?" Little asked.

  "We'll find something."

  Jeska counted the days they traveled south up to twenty, then stopped because she didn't know any larger numbers. At first they went very slowly, because Danyel got sick and could barely creep along. He didn't want to eat, even when Jeska showed him the best grubs and bugs, and the grasses growing in unpoisoned earth, and taught him to recognize the mutant strains that could not be eaten. He also didn't want to rut, which perplexed her. Perhaps that was why he got sick.

  The baby cried constantly, except when it nursed, and then it sucked with a vigor that made Jeska's nipples hurt. Nonetheless, Jeska considered that she had gotten a fair deal. The wild boys kept far away, frightened by a brother so tall in Jeska's family. Until one day when she saw three together, watching them from a twisted tree.

  Wild boys rarely moved in groups. A group of three meant that they were desperate. Jeska pointed them out to Danyel.

  "What do they want?" Danyel asked.

  "What wild boys always want." She had grown used to explaining things to him. "To eat meat, or to rut me." Danyel hugged the baby to his chest and looked at the far-off boys with sharp determination.

  The wild boys spotted the family walking across the plain, and clambered down from the tree. They stalked through the waist-high grass with lithe, hungry strides, saying nothing. When theywere a hundred yards from the group, one of them picked up a stone.

  Jeska's brothers bunched closer together. "Take the child," Danyel said. He crouched in the grass to intercept the wild boys.

  The hunters charged with a holler, and the family bolted. Danyel snagged the first hunter around the waist, and they spun to the ground, wrestling. The baby cried as Jeska sprinted. Her brothers scattered into the grass like mice, but the other two boys were long-legged and fierce. Jeska heard Little scream.

  She ran a hundred yards before she looked back. One boy raised a bloody stone to bash in Little's skull. The other pinned down his limbs. They lifted Little's body above their heads and carried it, laughing and hollering, back to their tree. The third one scrambled away from Danyel and ran to join his comrades. The baby wailed in Jeska's arms.

  Danyel plodded back to them. The little brothers crawled through the grass and gathered around her, weeping and sobbing and rubbing little hands in their eyes. Jeska patted them on the head and had them sit close to her. Danyel covered his face and breathed deeply. He seemed on the verge of tears. He looked at Jeska, sitting calmly, and suddenly shouted.

  "Are you just going to sit there?"

  "What am I supposed to do?"

  "Don't you ever cry?"

  "I am their mother. I cannot cry." The baby whined and grabbed at her breast, and she tisked and let him nurse again.

  Danyel looked to where the boys tore the flesh from Little's bones with rocks and sticks and bickered over the scraps. "Don't we need to get away from them?"

  "Don't you understand anything? They got what they want. They won't bother us tonight." Jeska pretended to be interested in the nursing child, but she was angry and very sad. Little was the last child born to her older sister. She wanted to cry, but she didn't dare. She hadn't cried when the wild boy stole her own baby, and she would not cry for Little.

  They stayed until nightfall. The wild boys moved away. As the sun was setting, they saw three tall figures and four shorter ones moving across the plains to the south. "More wild boys?" Danyel asked.

  "No," Jeska said. "A family." She whistled, the sisters of the other family whistled back, and the two families joined for the night. They shared stories and food. The other family had a little meat saved from a dead wild boy they had found, so Jeska's boys got to taste meat for the first time in many days.

  Danyel refused to eat. One of the sisters of the other family laughed at him. She was tall like Danyel and very beautiful, and her name was Sar. She watched Danyel with a sly smile.

  "Are you from Salem?" she asked.

  He shrugged. "How did you know?"

  "Because you won't eat human meat. I wouldn't either, at first."

  "You came from Salem?"

  "Six years ago. I ran away when they paired me to breed with a man I hated. You?"

  "My son was born imperfect, and I wouldn't let them destroy him. We're going to the Other City."

  Sar laughed again, and this time she sounded bitter. "There is no Other City, Danyel, and no City Without Walls. It's just a legend. There's only Salem with the garden and the walls, and the Polluted with the mutants and the cannibals. The sooner you know that, the sooner you'll be able to survive here." She added, "If you try to cross the desert with that baby, it'll die. You were better off killing it in Salem."

  Danyel closed his eyes. "Then at least he'll die in my arms and not at my hand."

  Jeska gave him his child, which made him a little happier. He fell asleep with the baby on his chest. Jeska curled next to Sar when the sisters lay down.

  "Is it true?" she asked. "Is there no City Without Walls?"

  Sar sighed. "I've been all over the Polluted. I've never seen any sign of it."

  Jeska thought very hard. She thought of Little. She thought of her remaining brothers, who would die or become wild boys when they grew older. She thought of the baby who had healed her loneliness, who she wanted neither to die nor to become wild. Maybe there was a chance for him, she thought, if they reached the City Without Walls. Then she finally began to cry, because Sar was there and Jeska no longer had to be the oldest.

  Sar pulled Jeska into her chest. "Poor girl," she whispered. "Come with us. Be our sister. We're three sisters and only four little ones, so we can take your family into ours." Jeska cried harder and buried her face in Sar's neck.

  Sar hushed her, and they slept through the night in each others' arms.

  Before the cold dawn, Jeska woke Danyel. While the sisters slept they stole away, just her and Danyel and the child.

  Jeska did not count the number of days they traveled across the grassy plains. They met a few families, but never slept more than a night with them, and a few wild boys, who stayed far away. The baby was getting sicker. Jeska nursed him as often as he wanted and tried to comfort him, but things did not get better. Danyel tried carrying the baby, but the boy didn't calm for him, either.

  As they went, the grasses grew shorter and the streams fewer, until one day they came to a rocky gully. Beyond the gully there was no more grass: only stones and sand and short, scrubby brush, twisted and hardened by the wind.

  "Do we go down?" Jeska asked.

  "I always heard that the Other City was across the desert," Danyel said. "So we cross."

  They scrambled down the gully, carefully handing the baby back and forth, and trekked into the sand. The sun was harsh and the stones underfoot were hot and burned Jeska's feet. They stopped and took shelter in the shade of a rock, and decided to travel at night.

  There was very little food. There found some bugs, but Jeska di
dn't know how to find grubs in the desert. Sometimes they caught birds or lizards: those were good days. They had to hunt for pools of water to drink from, and they often ended the day thirsty. The baby suckled harder to draw milk from Jeska's drying breasts, and her nipples cracked.

  There came a day when the baby's skin was hot to the touch, and he did not howl, but merely whimpered. They had rested near a spring, and all that day Danyel cupped water in his hands and poured it over the baby's head. Jeska tried to nurse him, but he would not suckle. The sun passed overhead with brutal slowness. When sundown came, neither of them had slept since the previous day's dusk. They fell asleep with their bodies touching and the fevered child between them.

  In the morning the child was cold.

  Danyel dug a pit as deep as his hand. They laid the child in it and covered the body with sand, then piled stones over the place. Danyel stood for a long time and looked at the grave.

  Jeska was not sure if she could cry. She did not know if Danyel was older than her, or if a brother counted the same as a sister in deciding whether it was okay to cry. She leaned into his chest, and glanced up at his face.

  She was surprised to see his cheeks were wet with tears running silently into his beard. She was also surprised to find she was not lonely. It was strange to feel for a man the way she had felt for her sisters. She had no word for it, but she was glad.

  "Danyel?" she said.

  "Yes, Jeska."

  "Do you think there really is a City Without Walls?"

  He took a long time to answer. "It doesn't matter. Better this than . . ."

  He fell quiet and looked back towards the Polluted and the iron walls of Salem. Then they turned their faces to the south to find the Other City.

  Small Creatures and Large

  by Michael Haynes

  Artwork by Jin Han

  * * *

  Murzah thinks I don't know what he does at night when the rest of us are asleep. But I'm quiet and I've followed him before, gone to the dirty unused room in our orphanage that he sneaks to when the lights are out. I've watched him cobble together the bits and pieces of his creations. He thinks no one has seen the things he makes but I have and I love him for it.

  He almost gets caught tonight going through the halls. An older boy, one of Mother Sharna's guards with his wisps of beard coming in, steps through a doorway which Murzah has just passed by. The guard will notice Murzah in just a moment. I run my fingernails along the wall to make a skittering sound, like a rat or some other vermin making its way through the night. The guard turns at the noise, looks my way. I am deep in the shadows and have crouched down small. He takes a step toward me. I hold my breath as he peers down the hall.

  Finally, he shrugs and lets out a low whistle. Amirala, older than Murzah and I but younger by a couple of years than the guard, passes through the same door he had come out. He reaches out, strokes her cheek and runs his hand down her neck, her chest, to her waist. She smiles at him, leans in and kisses him, but she is looking my way and I see the smile is not in her eyes.

  "Come," the boy says as he pulls away from Amirala. "Let's get you back."

  They walk closer and I press myself against the wall. I am looking at her, afraid to look at the boy, and I know that she sees me here. But she casts her eyes forward and they pass by in silence, so close I can smell the warmth of their skin.

  It's been seven years since I came here. My mother died of the Grell Plague when I was five, my father lost his life in the Ten Nations' War before my first birthday. It won't be many more months before the older boys look at me as they look at Amirala and the others her age. The gods surely disfavor me, but I believe they have given Murzah a great gift.

  I count to twenty before I stand, then walk as quickly as I dare. I want to see what wonder he will make tonight.

  His workroom has old filing cabinets covered in dust. Occasionally rats must run across its floor. There are small droppings, evidence of their passage, here and there.

  Murzah sits with his legs crossed, fingers working quickly, bits of wood and metal and whatever else he's scavenged coming together to make a form. I kneel by the arch from an alcove to the filing room, the place where I have hidden before to watch him work. The angle he's sitting at affords me little view, though, and I can't tell what he's building.

  I ache for him to turn around, to let me see, but he doesn't and I can do nothing except wait for him to finish. The pricks and tingles slowly build up in my bent legs but I don't move. I'm rewarded when Murzah places what he has made on the floor. He runs a hand over it and when he's done I see that it's a small frog with buttons for eyes, pieces of pliant bamboo for the legs and feet, a chunk of wood for the body.

  The frog jumps and Murzah lets out a tiny yip of delight. It jumps again and again. I think that maybe I hear it croak once.

  Murzah watches the frog and I watch them both.

  This is his best one that I've seen. The cricket just rubs its legs together and the snake only slithers around. Seeing the frog hop about the room -- and, yes, this time I definitely hear a low croak come from it -- I can't help but clap my hands together.

  His head snaps up. "Who's there?" Murzah looks around the room. "Kirun," -- Murzah's younger brother -- "is that you?"

  Murzah snags the frog, stills it, and stuffs it into his pouch. "I know someone is there. Show yourself."

  Maybe I could have kept myself from clapping my hands together. Maybe I wanted him to catch me. I don't know. But I climb from my knees and step out into the room.

  He frowns at me. "What are you doing here, Geetal? You should be in bed."

  "As should you."

  His lips twitch, a hint of a smile. "Do you know what they'll do to you if you're caught out here?"

  I do, but I don't want to think about it. "Will you show me what you made?" I ask him instead.

  Murzah hesitates before opening the pouch and pulling out the frog. I reach for it. He doesn't stop me so I touch its back. I want it to feel like a frog, but I'm disappointed. Its back feels like what it is, a piece of wood.

  Something clatters in the hall and Murzah hides his work away. He puts a finger to his lips.

  Murzah slips to the door and peers out. A minute later, he waves for me. "We walk back together. I'm not going to have you being noisy and getting us both caught." For a second I want to tell him just who it was that kept the guard from catching him earlier tonight but I hold my tongue.

  He grabs my hand and we walk back like this, watchful and silent.

  Minutes later we are back in the huge dormitory. We separate; he goes to the boys' side, I to the girls'. I get into my bed and try to sleep. Someone is crying nearby. Someone is always crying here. I think of Amirala's eyes and wonder if the tears are hers.

  It's nearly a week later. Murzah and I are in line for dinner; I've managed to queue up by him.

  "Hello," I say.

  "Hi, Geetal." He acts aloof, like we've never snuck through the orphanage's halls in the dark, hand-in-hand.

  "I've had the strangest dreams recently."

  "Really?"

  I nod. "Yes. I see all these animals in them. Crickets and snakes and frogs." His eyes dance a bit. He didn't know that I had seen the other creations. "And they are all so real that I think I could touch them. But I wake and they're gone."

  He glances around. Everyone else is occupied with their own conversations, their food, their thoughts.

  Suddenly in his hand there's a disc of metal, several inches across. "That's funny," he says. "I dreamt of a tortoise recently." The metal disappears back into the folds of his clothing.

  "I wonder if a tortoise will be in my dreams."

  We're almost to the front of the line where we'll get rice and dal and a piece of bread that's always tough. "Tonight," he whispers in my ear. Then he's taking a bowl and making nice to the old man who serves the food. I watch the man give him an extra half ladle of the dal.

  I try to be nice to the man but I get nothi
ng for my trouble.

  I'm unable to sleep when night comes. The sounds around me fade as the others nod off. Finally, a light rustle of feet and a low whistle. Murzah passes by the end of my bunk. He doesn't stop and wait for me, but I catch up easily.

  We have no trouble getting to the workroom. I watch as he puts together his tortoise, marvel at how delicately his fingers work the pieces together.

  Murzah sets it on the ground and we watch as the tortoise starts to creep along the floor.

  "It's amazing," I tell him and his chest puffs out.

  "Here." He pulls a smaller bag out from his pouch and scatters a few bits of unused materials on the ground. "I brought these for you. They're for a grasshopper."

  I put them together, doing it just as he tells me. But when I set it down, nothing happens.

  "Try tightening that wire," he says. And I do so, but still the grasshopper sits, a sculpture made of junk. Murzah's tortoise continues its crawl around the room.

  He picks up the grasshopper and fiddles with it a moment. I can't see what he's done differently than what I had done, but when he sets it down, it hops away.

  "What did you do?" I ask.

  "I just fixed it."

  "But how?"

  He shrugs. "I . . . I don't know exactly. I just felt what was wrong and what needed to be done."

  "Maybe one of the gods told you what to do?" I say it teasingly, but he doesn't laugh.

  "Maybe," he says after a long silence.

  The grasshopper hops and the tortoise scuttles and we watch them, side by side on the dirty floor, hands inches apart from touching.

  I dare to close the gap and slide my hand up against his. Immediately, a distant bell tolls twice and Murzah utters a low curse. "We need to get back," he says, standing abruptly.

  I gather up the grasshopper and he takes the tortoise. He stills them both and puts them in his pouch.

  We're halfway back to the dormitory when we round a corner too hastily and run right into one of Mother Sharna's guards. He grabs Murzah and I jump back.

  "Geetal!" Murzah cries out. I don't realize it's a warning. I step back again and then feel hot arms around me as well.