40, page 17
Jo Sam slid his hands into the bear’s forepaws then reached behind his neck and tugged forward the head. The bear mask locked over his face, he sang in a low Ursidaen growl, “A dream, a dream, it’s all just a dream.”
WE REQUIRE OUR HEROES to employ a cartographer’s eye, intuitively steered by righteous navigation into valiant action. Terror spun my compass. I was no hero. I didn’t harangue or rage. Didn’t storm unto the breach. I left the boat on shaking legs, one feeble step at a time, impotent and having garnered only more questions than answers.
Slumping back through the reservoir with General Özdemir, I could feel my body rending, my ligaments fraying, muscles sloughing from the bone. The freight elevator dark, I was withered and crumbling by the time we stepped again into the red light of the restaurant.
I could tell there were concerns in Donta’s mouth, but she knew to say nothing, and I said nothing, until we were safe and alone in the limousine rushing us from the golden city blurred white under the onslaught of snow.
“Nalli? Have you heard from Nalli?” I finally asked, hoping for news to halt my decomposition.
Donta shook her head.
The car was a furnace. I could taste the salt of my melting. “I have to find out. How can I find out?”
“Where did they take you?”
“I’ll fly and search the channel myself.”
“Where were you, Mazzy?”
“What would they do? Execute their Seraphine?”
Donta touched my wrist, then pressed the back of her hand to my cheek. “You’re burning up.”
My skull was a kiln. I tried but couldn’t remember Ava Lynn’s face. Then Dewey was gone, and Mama was gone, and I shut tight my eyes and clapped my palms over my ears to keep everything I’d ever loved from leaking like smoke from my mind.
“Help me,” I whimpered.
“I’m here,” Donta said. “I’m with you.”
* * *
DAYLIGHT SLASHED IN through the bedroom window. I woke under sweat-damp covers. Donta stood over me. It felt as if she’d just a moment ago carried me into the house and set me into a cold bath, where my feathers floated loose in the water, and I shook and moaned before she lifted me spent from the tub, then put me to bed.
Bruises of exhaustion under her eyes, Donta said the general had come early, and his men were out in the meadow. She hesitated, then solemnly added, “A box came in the night. I don’t know who sent it, but you’d better come and see.”
Though my fever had broken, I still wavered like a flame. Donta helped me on with my robe, and led me to where the wooden crate sat on the living room floor. It was near the size of a case of wine. I wondered what it could hold.
Donta lifted off the top. Synthetic straw padded a large object. I brushed aside the straw. At first, I thought it was some sort of primitive mask. Then I gasped so deeply my stomach seized.
A head mounted on a stand, it took me a moment to recognize her, as her wild red hair had been sheared to the scalp, the entire visage coated with the white wax of paraffin save the spheres of gold set into the sockets that once held eyes. This mask was Meera, the sight so hideous I crouched over the crate and couldn’t feel my hands as I took the lid from Donta and set it back into place.
Donta’s voice was harsh, and maybe a little frightened, when she asked, “What happened to you last night?”
I stared at the crate in a mortified daze. “A dream, a dream, it’s all just a dream.”
Donta knelt across from me. She drew my eyes up to hers. “What happened, Mazzy?”
“I met him.”
“Who?”
“Jo Sam.”
Confusion pinched her brow. “We all met Jo Sam.”
“Not the postman. The real Jo Sam.”
Donta took close study of my face. Then she stood and peered off out the front window. “You’re not safe here anymore,” she said quietly. “We have to get you out of the valley.”
I rose and looked out the window and down through the branches of the tree. The Pearl were gathered in the meadow. “He won’t let me leave. We’re to fly together today.”
“You and Jo Sam?”
“At the end of the rally. We’re to fly off into the clouds. Like gods, is how he put it.”
Donta’s eyes drifted back to the crate. “Raja Garbos,” she said, nearly at a whisper. “Find Raja.”
“Why Raja?”
She raised her gaze to me, her anguished expression telling me she could say no more. “No matter what happens, promise you’ll leave this valley and fly very far away.”
“What’s happening here, Donta?”
“Nothing that can be stopped. So, please, promise me you’ll fly to where no one can find you.”
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes.
“Mazzy. Promise me.”
Dire loneliness swept over me. Reluctantly, I tendered a single nod. Then Donta embraced me so quickly I hadn’t time to hug her back before she released me and said for me to hurry and get dressed as we mustn’t keep the general waiting.
* * *
LEAVING THE MEADOW, I paused to give one last glance to the house in the golden-leafed tree. Virulent anger stirred inside me. Anger at everything that had fostered that tree and meadow. Anger at Jo Sam, anger at General Özdemir and the Pearl. Anger at Meera, and the America that had failed its people. Anger even at the Novae, in their need to have their every fear validated, in yearning for any unflinching voice to name an enemy like a doctor names a disease.
I hoped to never in my life see that tree again, and followed Donta through the snow and the lines of Pearl in their masks and pristine whites. We passed through the gate in the aspen. There stood General Özdemir in his wig and hat. He leaned back against his limousine, his eyes closed, his face tipped to the sun.
“I hope you don’t mind us spending this triumphant day together,” he said, lowering his face toward me and opening his eyes.
It was as if my meeting with Jo Sam had truly been a dream. As if Meera’s head wasn’t packed like housewares inside a crate. I don’t see people, he’d told me. I knew I must spurn my anger and pain. To survive the day ahead, I, too, must be like a general.
“A triumphant day, indeed, sir,” I said. “Even the sun’s shone its face for the occasion.”
With our Pearl escort, we drove into the city in a lane reserved for dignitaries. The entire Novae population was bound for the rally. Traffic snarled in the other lanes, we passed bus after bus, with white-jacketed nationals waving gold flags out the windows, shouting their praise, and dancing in the aisles.
We left our car at the dignitaries’ checkpoint. Donta and the Pearl secured a perimeter around us. Then the general and I began our march toward Silvesteri Plaza, the street bustling with revelers and the clamor of celebration.
Novae Terrae adoration was in full bloom. The buildings shed their golden light over those bowing and parting ahead of us, many crying out their love for Seraphine. The Pearl controlled every corner, security drones hovering. Video screens hung over the road at every intersection, on which looped the words BE FREE and YOU ARE THE CHOSEN, block after block, the message relentless and hypnotic.
Distant music thumped louder as we neared. The chute of the buildings opened onto the bright plaza, the enormous stage at the far end. The span of the plaza was already dense with Novae, the entire plaza encircled by a wall of white tents for vendors.
Gulls wheeled above Xavier Yan’s golden pyramids, hundreds of birds scavenging amid the long row of trash bins. Then I noted the gulls perched and flapping around the impalement cage that once held Whit Miller and dangled, once again, from the crotch of the Glory Gate arch.
Through the flutter of the gulls, I saw gold winking in the sunlight, a bit of white wavering inside the cage. I nearly keeled when I realized it was Nalli Sandoval. Sunlight reflected off her golden breastplate, the hem of her white gown streaked red with blood and rustling in the wind.
Donta glanced back at me. She saw what I saw, and tightened her grip on her rifle’s stock. General Özdemir coldly scrutinized my reaction. Victory at all cost. Pieces not people. Such was the way with men and war.
With the dispassion of a gull feeding on garbage, I turned to the general, and asked, “Will there be food? I’m afraid in all the excitement I’ve forgotten to eat.”
* * *
WE PASSED THROUGH a series of barricades to a large gold tent erected behind the main stage. General Özdemir instructed his detail of Pearl to report to the security station for their rally assignments. Donta lingered while the others hastened away. The look she gave me wasn’t just worry. No, it was something more. Something I suspected but she already knew: we were saying goodbye.
With all that had passed between us, all the talks and tension and intimate trials, our goodbye deserved more than the moment afforded. She stood at attention and saluted. I saluted back. Then Donta broke her stance and offered a sorrowful glance, a wary nod, and strode away to catch up with the others.
That was all. That was goodbye. I turned and followed General Özdemir into the tent, where dignitaries drank mimosas around the jaundiced old man posing as Jo Sam, who sat on a makeup stool, his tricorn hat crooked upon his head, the hem of his white robe filthy.
The old impostor waved the general and me over. He gnawed the knob of a chicken bone while a gold-frocked barber slathered his cheeks for a shave. The general asked how the rest of the night had gone. The old man snorted a chuckle, said they were up all night and had some adventures.
I was angry and disgusted, and fought the urge to holler for all to hear that he was a nothing but a postman, sickly from cancer, a disposable prop for young Joseph Samuel Pfarlier, the real Jo Sam.
Instead, I politely excused myself. I waded through the molders of the old world and new, and searched, as per Donta’s instruction, for Raja Garbos. I smelled him before I saw him, the alcohol reek. I turned and he was there, unshaven, wearing a white robe and brandishing a bottle of bourbon.
“A drink?” he said. “For Nalli?”
* * *
I WENT WITH RAJA across a lot swarming with Pearl, to a grouping of smaller tents set up as changing rooms for the talent. He spoke under his breath and said he’d never seen so much security. The Pearl had scoured everything, even confiscated the prop rifle he’d planned to carry onstage for his role in the rally.
I followed the actor inside his tent. He waved at a stool for me to sit. He set the bourbon on the vanity, then dragged over a wooden crate, turned the crate on its side, and sat facing me.
Raja reached toward the vanity, but instead of grabbing the bourbon he opened a makeup case and withdrew an eyeliner pencil wrapped in silver metal and etched with an ornate design. He removed its cap and raised the pencil near my eye, as to outline my lids.
His gray eyes gazed into mine. “There was a second boat.”
“A second boat?”
“Nalli arranged it all,” Raja said, and straightened my chin and told me to close my eyes. I did as asked, and the pencil’s tip stroked my eyelid. “They’d discovered Dewey’s boat,” he said. “The second boat was her idea. I want you to know all that Nalli did, that she was braver than any character she ever played.”
He paused, and I peeked.
His misty eyes fell, then came back up. “Close them. Please.”
Tracing the contour of my lid, Raja told me he’d taken the old postman out to Township 18. “Got him stone drunk,” he said. “Then snuck away and met with our friend who knows things.”
“Meera?” I said, my eyes still closed. “You mean Meera?”
“Was that her name?”
Raja huffed a breath, and said he’d heard about the gift I received that morning. He added that our friend told him they’d found the bearskins in the redwoods, but no one inside, and that the second boat had left through the southern channel.
My eyes sprang wide. “They got out?”
“As far as the channel. That’s all we know.”
“And Nalli? What happened to Nalli?”
“This fucking den of wasps.” Raja lowered his head and took my hand. “I’m sorry I brought you here. I swear, I didn’t know it’d come to this. Astoria made assurances, but she was in deeper than I realized, and then she was gone. We just wanted our city back. What the Pearl did, well, we had to do something. I thought it was all just a big show until it wasn’t. Then it was too late.”
“Who’s we?” I asked. “Are you the Resistance?”
“Resistance?” His cheeks flexed as he stiffened his jaw. “We’re just a bunch of old Hollywood hacks, looking for one last role. Now they’re all gone. All but me. And you. If we didn’t have our parts to play for Jo Sam today, our heads would surely be in crates.” Raja stared off at the opening of the tent. “Our friend also told me the war’s coming here.”
“When?”
Raja shrugged. “She was going to learn more today, but—” He lowered his head. Through clenched teeth, he said, “Now, we’ll just have to save ourselves. And save the whole fucking world, too.” He let go of my hand and looked at me. He was careful with the words to follow. “Is it true you’re to fly with a special bird today?”
Fearful and hesitant, I nodded.
He stared into his lap, rolling the silver eye pencil between his fingers. “I’ve been thinking about that story you told me. About your daddy’s boy knocking the Popsicle from your hand, how your mama said you had to fight so people don’t take what’s yours. I’ve made a living off stories about killing, and one thing that bothered me was that a Popsicle stick just wouldn’t do. To do the job proper, you’d need something sharper. Something that wouldn’t break.”
Raja lifted the pencil upright before me. “I thought it’d be me to do it,” he said. “Oh, how I wanted to be the one.”
He slid the cap back onto the pencil, set it into my palm, and closed my fingers into a fist. The pencil’s cap knife-sharp, its shaft wrapped in silver metal, made a tiny spear. I peered into him, and he into me. An understanding passed between us.
“It was Nalli’s,” he said. “She’d want you to have it.”
I tucked the pencil into my sleeve. Raja plucked his eye patch from the vanity and secured it onto his face. He snatched up the bourbon and unscrewed the cap. His one visible eye beautiful if forlorn, he raised the bottle and toasted as if reciting lines of poetry.
“The windows to our soul, like panes of glass, do break.”
GENERAL ÖZDEMIR gathered the talent backstage, extolling our glorious day of independence and urging us all to perform, as would the Greeks, to please the gods. He pulled me aside and said my time in the spotlight would come at the end, when Raja and I would flank Jo Sam while he made his declarations for the new nation.
I was to fly when the lily fell from Heaven. I’d know what that meant come time, and though the moment was large, the crowd immense, I’d be fine as long as I kept my head.
He said it just like that, the monster. I turned away, for fear he’d see the birds clawing the back sides of my eyes, and didn’t speak for fear birds would fly from my mouth.
The crowd in the plaza was a sea of gold and white. I didn’t know how many had gathered, but when they cheered the sound vibrated up through the soles of my boots. A hodgepodge of acts performed, some I knew from the penthouse, others who’d arrived that very morn to harness the winds of revolution.
The deeper we moved through the slate of acts, the more the joints of my fingers ached. My wings gave off a foul odor. I could smell the stink of my wings, and slumped off to the corner of the grandstand, far away from everyone.
Bela Mingo was last to perform. His set ended with “A World Without Worry,” the entire crowd singing along. Then the drones buzzed in overhead, scattering the gulls and setting their security grid high above the plaza. General Özdemir gave a rousing introduction for the old dying postman they all believed was Jo Sam, who took the stage to a thunderous ovation that went on for minutes.
The old impostor read from a teleprompter, his voice echoing across the plaza. “The President of the United States is dead. As is the vice president, the Speaker of the House, ninety members of Congress, thirty-eight governors, all eleven Supreme Court justices, and every remaining general of every branch in the United States military. America had become a nightmare to us all, but now we’ve awakened to a new day. This day, the day of 40.”
The plaza rapt in hush, I’d never seen so many people so quiet. I peered into the crowd, trying to be the opposite of a general, to see the individual faces, people of all genders and ages and races, like the promise of America that America betrayed: a Black man with braids cascading from beneath his gold beret; a young white woman with large ears and a shaved head; an old man with tattoos covering his dark-skinned face and a gold kerchief tied neatly around his throat.
So many faces, I could look all day and still not see each one, none of them knowing the truth behind the ploy that had lured them to that valley. They deserved the world without suffering they’d been promised. Not this brutal charade. This trap of faith.
How many would die when the war came here? Throughout history, how many had perished in war? I considered the centuries of dead not shoulder to shoulder, but laid in the earth, striations of corpses, layers of decomposition, incrementally broadening the globe’s diameter, generation by generation, war after war.
Death was the ground beneath us.
I spotted Donta among the Pearl guarding the stage. She’d protected me, and now I’d repay her. I glimpsed Nalli, just a glint of gold in her cage at the far end of the plaza, and pressed the flesh of my thumb against the point of the pencil in my sleeve.
