10. Ronin
A/N: I'm having my holidays now, and despite sessions of hockey training three times a week, a family vacation to Japan, a church youth camp for five days and SATs on December 6th, it's still almost one whole month of free time and late mornings. I'm determined to finish this story by the Chinese New Year (January 2004); if I meet my target, at least I'll get the satisfaction of a job finished cleanly.
This is a rather long chapter. Some complications arose when I tried to introduce the crucial scene in the chapter. I get the feeling sometimes I'm being seriously too descriptive, too metaphorical in certain ways. Those who do read, please comment on that, because - if not - I'll be trying to perfect it into poetry. If so, then just appreciate the effort.
I remember seeing the magistrate's men outside the bakery on the chilly day.
Solbrecht weather is as vile as unkempt sores: it lacks all sense of order. The time of the End of the Year is approaching, a time of feasts and rejoicing, yet the weather shows no acknowledgement of such a duty. Last time, the End of the Year was overwhelmed with storm and rain, drizzling unashamedly from dawn till eventide. This year no rain falls, neither are the flagstones polished shimmering with the morning or evening dew. The sun has dug through the season's clouds of the imaginary autumn and has continued, for hours each day, to solely occupy a sky deep maroon with the planet's former bruises. Bruises I have felt.
On the day of my errands with Ershed the sky began its languishing early, and when I had arisen its rays of dead warmth were blazing through the louvered windows that Father put in place to restore the broken glass ones. The air felt parched dry, devoid of any moisture characteristic of this time of the year, and upon my first step outside into the open, it had stung my face with a cold as acrid as the fiery wisp of a sharpened fire.
In Zyjushem there has never been any need for heavy clothing – at least as far back as I can remember. When I was little rain sometimes drifted into sleet, and sleet into hail, but never frost. So when I put on an extra windbreaker, making sure it could wrap my usually bare arms smug, I sauntered down the street to the bakery where Ershed and Tamar would be waiting.
Tamar had, in a manner hyperbolic of an understatement, greeted me with a sharp rise in her eyebrows: that stands for surprise. She had taken my hand in greeting, released it, and then placed it to her heart, as have all of her generation done since Earth was still in existence. I spoke to her of the weather, but Tamar neatly shrugs in response, her frail shoulders rising, stirring the ends of her singed hair that come from her working in the bakery. She reckons it is simply the weather.
"It's an omen, a sign of the most imminent kind," Ershed told me the moment I had entered the bakery. He waved his finger out at the dried-out sun filling the streets with scorch and the frosted panes and the icy straggling breath we gave out, "I have seen enough premonitions for disaster, and this certainly is a sign, a sign from the heavens of the coming suffering of the times."
"Sii, it's just poor weather that's all," Tamar had retorted.
"And you – learn to respect your elders!" Ershed had reproached in return.
When Ershed had toddled away into the murk of the bakery's inner chamber, I recall whispering to Tamar: "He's quite spiritual about such things, isn't he?"
"Spiritual or not, he's the reason I'm not dead." And I remembered Tamar's residence on New Marrakech, her postponement to return because of Ershed needing help at the bakery.
Mother sometimes fails to realise I'm not like Michelle, whose twin loves of making cuisine and learning make her the ideal daughter. I've tried cooking, even with Aunt Cheng reprimanding me at every little instruction, but the truth is I cannot cook to save my life. As Ershed ordered us to knead the dough, then put them in the machine which somehow turns them into pastry. I stumble, the paste forcing its way through my fingernails and the paste of flour and water I somehow convert into a yellow fluid that spills across the table at accident.
Ershed shows us an example: he cups water from the basin into his crafted hands, rains it down on the flour and paste, before shaping it into a perfect mould of dough. Swiftly he puts them all into a container, pitted with holes just large enough for his little handicrafts of dough, and shoves the tray into the machine. It's different from the one that makes bread; the machine has a certain dull veneer of shine to it, as if it was the most polished thing in the bakery with enough gloss to fade into lacklustre. The oven for bread is a yawning mouth cut into an old machine flaking with rust; inside, flickers a flame that does not cease nor lose its power to inflame.
The entire bakery, I notice, is likewise buried under a veneer of old flour – and the centuries of traditions Ershed has retained until this day.
"The dough must be the right size and flexibility if you want a good pastry," Ershed instructs me, listlessly, "if there's too much water the pastry will turn soggy. Too little and it will shrivel into charred ash."
Tamar grins, and my second attempt to mix, knead and perfect the round little ball of dough fails. I flatten the dough into a disc so sharp that I have to peel it, in layers, from the table. Ershed observes with disappointed disapproval, and he clears his throat to let me know of my error.
"Flatten, do… but not till it becomes thin to the point of invisibility!" he chastises, "here let me do it for you."
But as he completes the craft he has started, my eyes fix themselves on something more unacceptable; something much more unfitting.
A cluster of aliens assembles outside the house and shop of Rusty and Spike, its awnings drawn and metal grilles shut to signify its being closed fore the day. I recognize out of them: a tall, robust frame, with arms that grasp onto stretches of muscle and an expression raw and tight with clenched scrutiny. He is Juniraxian, and no doubt related to Arhelus. The leader of the group, his face a spread of sentiment unreadable, raps impatiently on the grilles with his knuckles, and I pick out the signet of the magistrate on the ring on his third arm. His other arms occupy themselves with a chain.
"What is that?" Tamar questions.
I cease my futile crafting of pastry, and scurry across the street to the gang besieging the pilots' house, Tamar close behind me. A mob of aliens, from the outer neighbourhood, mass at the edge of the square at the end of the street where the road is, desperate for any interesting fuss we might provide. But I worry. And the signet of the magistrate worries me even more. I look to the houses along the street for assistance. Not even Doug stands watch over the scene. The street is dead.
Finally, the pilots' father, Edward Johnson, pulls open his door to face the troublemakers. The aliens stiffen as if in anticipation. The metal grilles divide them, like shroud of safety for Edward.
"You are Mr. Edward Johnson, human refugee, are you not?" the leader asks, as if he is unable to discern the obvious.
"I am indeed," Edward replies, "What is your business here? I'm afraid I'm closed for the week. Come another day…"
The leader's face reforms itself into another, neutral tone, but his voice continues to threaten with authority. "Under orders from the magistrate of Zyjushem himself, you are to be taken to the reformatory for questioning… nothing serious, I guarantee you, just a short talk with the officials."
I register the metaphors hiding in the alien's words. "I have done nothing wrong!" Edward protests. "I have paid my tax, for goodness' sake! I have…"
"Mr. Johnson," the leader acknowledges, amending his talkative frankness into cold command, "these are the magistrate's orders. Failure to comply would mean you will make it permissible for us to coerce you out of house."
The metal grille between Edward and the aliens now becomes a barrier, isolating him from both help and himself. The Juniraxian has his hands on the grille, his arms slowly beginning to harden, an look of ill upon his face. Edward stares wildly towards the brash official, then out into the street, sweeping it in all directions and, eventually, noticing us. I have seen that stare. In Zechaat. On that rainy evening when the aliens launched themselves upon a friend by my side…
With a manner of complete defeat, he gives in. The moment he unlocks the metal grille, swinging it open to meet his captors, the leader seizes his hands, and strings the chain across them; the Juniraxian hinders all other protest. Disgusted I run towards the gang and Edward.
"He hasn't done anything wrong!" I yell at them, before I can control myself. "You have no right to take him!"
"Push off, human," one of them sneers. His arm flings itself across to stop me, but I parry it. I move another step closer, eyes keeping focus on the chain that they wring around Edward's hands.
A blow stuns me, slamming into my lower jaw. The pain provides an extra sting. I fall. My vision recedes to the gaps in the flagstones on the pavement for a second – then recovers into consciousness. The presence of the aliens I regain feeling. I scramble to my feet. The jaw throbs. The Juniraxian leers over me. Tamar provides the divide now, as the grille was between Edward and the aliens.
"Back off!" she warns the burly creature, with one hand stretched out before her, and the other helping me back up to my fearlessness.
"The chain is a precaution," the leader examines me, "but if you attempt anything else, human, I'll make it a necessity on you. Come on, let's go."
The Juniraxian continues to face us, his motions and stance heavy with confrontation. I do not shirk away from his stare, overconfident as they slip from his wide eyes rimmed with his clenched face. Tamar prevents me from giving into assault – and holds him away lest I foolishly do so.
"I know you, you're the human girl Arhelus talks about," he grunts, framing the sickened smirk of his humour. He reaches out to touch me. I jerk away. "And you're as feisty as he said you were."
He turns away, and leaves me red with the shame of his words. His voice continues to echo inside, turning up all the heaps of disgrace of my own race – of my own self. The buildings corner me with their unearthly expressions of question. The sky make me realise I am myself. A human. A human. A human…
He lumbers away across the square, where his gang has passed. The mob cheer, as if Edward were a prisoner, and then they close in to taunt him. Tamar moves aside, spits on the ground where the Juniraxian had stood. "Dog," she curses. "Inhuman dog."
I have heard that so often, I don't even know what it means anymore.
The next morning, the sun touches the buildings, then succumbs to shadow. The word spreads that Edward is gone.
"Dead," says Spike, helplessly sifting through the houses of all those along the street for a sympathy he cannot accept. "They say he died during the questioning because he was sick."
Mother and Aunt Cheng listen, aghast with shock. Edward liked our spices.
"So they took his body away and burned it."
"Is Rusty taking it well? I haven't seen him all morning," I ask.
"In the house. Staring at the window facing the city. Hasn't said a single word all morning since the news came."
Spike turns back down the street, his elbow flickers to his face; I know he doesn't want to be seen crying.
"The shop. Who's going to run the shop?" Aunt Cheng asks.
"Oh, the shop? Rusty will, I guess. I mean, we have to go on making a living, don't we? I'll do the cargo hauling alone. Greening had said he could take over the entire business permanently if needed."
Trust Keane Greening to think of business now!
"He's going to D'Armara soon, that Mr. Greening, says that the situation on Solbrecht's becoming rather unstable since the riots," Spike tells us. I can sense a hint of displeasure in his voice. "The Solbrecht chancellor can't guarantee safety for any human businesses on the planet anymore. After New Marrakech, the Drej's silence is unnerving everyone."
"Fine for Mr. Greening then," Mother exclaims, "running away like a coward."
Spike turns to her, shoulders slightly hunched. "Well, at least he won't die."
When the afternoon allows the sun to shine for a short time, even though unconvincingly dull, I accompany Spike to mortuary beyond the square, at the far side of the road that leads to the Zyjushem markets and city hall. They must have sent his father's remains over there.
"My Dad always wanted to be buried on a planet, after earth…" Spike informs me with great difficulty, "but, at least he'll know he can fulfill this last wish."
Iain agrees to follow us. Both Mother and Aunt Cheng had protested against my being in the company of Spike, and added that anywhere beyond the square would be unsafe for any human. Father just managed to overrule them, especially since Rusty was still staring out the window in the shop-house that he had helped build with Spike and his father.
The street empties into the square, and the orderly flagstones transform themselves into the blank concrete surface that marks the end of our little neighbourhood. Passing Keane Greening's apartment to the left and Vanessa's beside it, the bare, shattered concrete finishes at the road, spilling into the dusty asphalt and hardened ash, falling into the murky districts of everything non-human. Mother used to erect a wall, visible only by her discipline, to prevent us from crossing over into this land of hostility when I was much younger. I blink. Such memories of threat spar with those of serene gardens and friendly neighbours on earth. I cannot separate the two experiences.
I blink again. It is not the moment to think of such things.
We cross the lonely frontier of the square, our faces as blank and bare as the mien of concrete beneath, forfeiting the protection the square and the warped recollections it gives us.
The street that immediately follows the square stretches down east towards the City Hall and up north winding through the outskirts of Zyjushem, the neatly arrayed disorder before us. Tenements litter the sides of the twisted road; warily I notice their eyes – not their windows – but within them. I dare not count, though I know there are sure to be thousands, some lighted and dangerous, others narrowed with suspicion. But this I know: all of them are strangers'. Spike, in the lead, does not shirk to the left, or to the right, but has his vision on the road. I marvel at his constancy.
The streets are now unknown and alien. The mutilated, scarred tenements bear names I don't know, faces that I can't identify. The city encloses, with its unfamiliarity, and isolates; suddenly, again, I am myself. I am not them. Iain is himself, and Spike is the human at the head of the pack. The tenements and the squat, gaunt shops that rest by their sides leer at us. All things that held friendship with my identity have surrendered into the confusion of the alien. There is no humanity, save what is walking towards the mortuary and in the confines of the road, where I am myself.
The voices of the tenements murmur among their doors and windows and stairwells – a slurred, secretive sound that has no meaning, but plenty of intention. They rail against myself, the only self conscious enough to notice. The dead trees and blackened paths are the marks of their words, of the poverty and neglect from which every sentiment is begotten.
Amidst the tall tenements and their voices and eyes, the mortuary stands, as a temporary bystander, at the next twist of the road, flanked by deep, shadowy alleys that gouge closer to the soul of the eye and the voice. One of its windows has been shattered; the outside bin is overflowing and split by its sides. Its walls are like the others: faceless, numb stone. A potted plant in the counter is withered and dead.
Inside the air tightens and the stench of nothingness overwhelms. A Solbrecht native, diligent with his four arms in sorting out the papers and files, dominates the counter. The white doors to the other rooms queue in the passageway, hiding grief behind their innocent décor.
The clerk notices us. "What do you want?" he demands.
Spike leans forward. "I'm here to collect the remains of my father, Edward Johnson."
He studies us, taking in the full measure of the three humans waiting on him. He glances at the records in all his hands. "Nope, no one by that name sent here."
"They should've. The reformatory has a duty to fulfill by letting my dead father's remains be collected," Spike says, on the edge of departing from the controlled restraint I saw earlier. "Check your papers again."
"I've checked," he says after another glance. "Your father's remains haven't been shipped here."
"Let me see that then," Spike orders, but the clerk moves out of reach. "Let me see it for myself!"
The clerk's eyes narrow and he counters, "I hear they chuck the remains of criminals down into recycling. You'd be better checking the bin outside…"
For that vengeful second, the rage in Spike – cautioned and barricaded since this morning – flashes into freedom, lunging him at the clerk from across the counter. Just before he seizes one of the stunned clerk's arms, I evade his flying right arm, the force collected carefully in my hands. Iain seizes him by the other.
"Spike, calm down! Don't let him provoke you…" Iain pleads.
I push against Spike's struggling frame, and with Iain's strength on the other side constraining him, he topples and tumbles to the ground with Iain. His first reaction is to blather; the fall somehow cures him, as if it was the stun needed to exhaust his anger. Iain helps him to his feet.
"Hey, Spike, are you alright?" I ask.
"Yeah I'm…"
"Good. Don't listen to what they say," Iain calms him, while throwing a glimpse at the clerk. "Your father was a good man…"
At the mention of it, Spike begins to cry. He sniffs hard, before blinking back the tears dripping from his eyes. He turns away, and uncontrolled, he cries.
"It's alright, Spike," I add.
"Come on, let's get him out of here." Iain decides.
But the brawl with the clerk seems to have been more obvious and prominent than we thought. A crowd masses outside the mortuary, and upon our exiting it, they confront us, taunting, leering, foul. At the sight of Spike in tears they strengthen themselves and move to surround us. I see Arhleus and Glein among them.
"Cry for your parents, human. You're their vile spawn!"
"He deserved the death he got. The scum!"
My jaw moves to clench itself with a flicker of courage, bracing myself against the insults; I prepare to run lest it comes to blows. Iain's face is hardened into self-control; I can see that he is preventing himself from lashing out like Spike did.
Then Arhleus says something that cuts me deeper than anything else.
"Mourning for the dead, human?" he sneers. "I hear he bled from every orifice after they were finished with him.
"That's what awaits you, human!"
I halt. The aliens' laughter doesn't sting, it cuts, like a guitar string on an unhealed wound, slicing the rottenness of the surface into the blood boiling beneath. The similar spirit of rage that possessed Spike I suddenly inherit and, upon will, the strength seeps into my hands and impulse crowds my vision. Before I realise it, the wrath reaches for the clogged bin, hurling it at the mob of aliens in the decreasing distance with a force of insanity. It crashes in the very thick of them; and they all recoil, too shocked by the speed at which things take place.
But their shock wears off, giving way to their malicious intent and crazed fury.
"Kill the human!" one of them shouts.
"Hoi! Stay where you are!"
I fling my head in the direction of the voice: an unmistakably human voice – a girl's voice – half-hoping to see Vanessa with Rusty or Tamar or someone else. Instead my eyes fall upon a girl I haven't seen before. Her stature is lithe – her stance proves it – her shoulders square against a face that stares through her eyes, secure and steady. Then I realise she and I are of the same race. I notice her hair is a mixture of purple and solid black that can only mark the drifters.
I don't know why she's alone in such a place. She seems – alien herself.
"Get away from them," she warns.
We move over to her side, lending strength to her presence.
"You don't threaten us, human," Glein scoffs, "don't forget, you're on our territory now."
His words force the truth back into the already dead fantasy of rage and revenge. I know only too well that Glein is right. What good are four humans against a mob?
She moves forward cautiously, measuring defiance in each step closer. I narrow my eyes in disbelief; I notice Spike and Iain, while in position to run, are torn between pulling her back. I agree. This is foolish. This is suicidal.
Glein advances out to confront her. Both human and Akrennian face each other, trying to find a reason to strike out. What chance does she think she have with Glein? She is but human.
But things speed into action without warning. Glein moves in to strike her – darting, she swings her foot as his already curved right ankle – curved with the weight of his strike. He buckles. The mob charges at her. Before I can hardly take in everything, she bounds into me, nearly knocking me over. My right arm grasps to her diving shoulder for assistance. Iain's scream overrides all the chaos.
"RUN!"
Our bodies deflect off each other in confusion; blindly I seize whatever my hands can lay hold on and drag it along in my first few fumbling steps. The fumble straightens into posture, and posture quickens into speed. When I next open my eyes, there is a heavy, omnipresent din, half-garbled with curses, half-sweaty with grunting. It echoes in the background. Like bass. Then I hear my feet: the slapping of soles against the flagstones, the rapid pacing of limbs so fast that wind beats upon them. Like treble.
I become aware of the tenements, above the static air that hits me flat on the face. They spring up from ahead, and their dormant eyes and voices awaken with clamour and explosion. Spike twists to dodge a rock; it drifts through the air, and crumbles in a mixture of yells, fragments and running. The girl darts ahead of me, and as I quicken my running, I realise I'm the last. Soon, the tenements, like walls on both edges of an endless, futile road, taper off into squat shapes blurred by speed. My eyes, misty with adrenaline, hang on to Iain's sprinting figure, guiding us away into the square.
Halting, the air becomes tranquil again, as I eagerly take it in with my panting.
"We can't lead them – back to the street," Iain says, without breaking his stride. "They'll wreck – our houses."
"The cemetery!" exclaims Spike. "We can – lose them… in the cemetery."
As I throw up all my adrenaline to begin the dash, the undertone of yells and curses deepens. Iain flings himself aside, adjusting his sprinting towards the small mud path at the far end of the square. I have been this way few times. Scrambling down the path, the grass smothers the sound of my soles on flagstone, converting them into the stirring of the trees on a windy day.
Here the path ends. Grass and weeds fill my breathing now, and all around me my running acknowledges the mounds of earth and the still tombstone. Soon the grass is so thick that it overshadows my eyes. No one ventures in this deep. A hand tugs me into the darkness. Iain's hand. The grass deadening all sounds except my own, Iain draws me to the ground, into a thicket so dense that I can hardly notice the coil of branches where I enter.
There is no sound, save our panting.
"I don't think they'll find us here," Iain says, his voice croaking under his gasps.
"I don't think anyone's come this far in," I reply. "We must be in another neighbourhood, the one behind the square."
"No one will find us… I think we're quite safe here."
As the darkness reflects off Iain's face, his eyes catch the scarce light. Brushing a lock of hair from my face, his hands entwine in mine, and all I can see are his eyes, circles of black against the darkness around us. He moves towards me, until his breath warms my face; stirring, his lips touch mine, and as we fall my nostrils are filled with the scent of wet dew on the grass in the morning.
The scene in the bakery is not a detailed, approved method of making bread or pastry of any sort. I'm just recalling what I can remember from watching how a man at my neighbourhood market does pastry. He makes sweetened pastries called butterflies that he sells for fifty cents each.
Certain styles of imagery and impressionism during the walk through the tenements were ideas inferred from William McIlvanney's Laidlaw.
Written by shelter