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Authors: Tobias S. Buckell

Crystal Rain (6 page)

BOOK: Crystal Rain
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Hooves clip-clopped down the packed-dirt road. A horse snorted. Keisha and her husband’s concerned voices floated in. Seconds later Keisha herself burst into the kitchen. John stood at the basement door, keeping out of the way and holding the rifle like a staff, the butt resting on the top wooden step.
“What happen?” Then Keisha saw the kitchen table, the bloodied man, and gritted her teeth. “Where he come from?”
Jerome pushed into the kitchen from behind her and started at the man. “He fall from he airship all stuck up in we mango tree.”
“Get from here,” Shanta ordered. “This ain’t for children.” Jerome dallied, still staring. “Now,” Shanta said. Jerome retreated.
Two mongoose-men came in with Harold, Keisha’s husband. John walked over, leaned the rifle against the door, and shook Harold’s large, calloused hand. “I didn’t realize there were any mongoose-men here.”
“Several of we came in town a few days back,” the first man said. “Been working outside and around town with an Azteca who’s mongoose. He help us flush out a couple informers, but now he and a couple we men missing, so we came in town to see if anyone seen him. We worried. And General Haidan go be mad if he missing. Azteca mongoose-men hard to find.”
“Haidan? Edward Haidan?” John had left Brungstun for Capitol City with a young Edward Haidan, a mongoose-man, years ago.
“Yeah.”
“He’s still in Capitol City?”
“Sometimes. Let’s get out the way here.”
“Yeah. Living room.” John dropped the line of inquiry and moved them away from the wounded man on the table. He had seen enough torn bodies in the north seas. Rotted toes and blackened fingers that had to be cut off. People crushed by equipment or hanged by ropes as they fell from the rigging. He didn’t like facing such horrors in his own home.
 
 
The four men pulled up chairs and spoke to each other in whispers after John relayed the aviator’s warning.
“If a hunting party coming down the mountain, we should find them. You sure he didn’t say how many?”
John shook his head. “He was scared. Must have been a large group.”
“Twenty Jaguar scout could wreak some serious havoc,” Harold said. “Carnival starting up next morning. What you think I should do?”
“Don’t take any risk,” the mongoose-men advised. “It might be a small group, but get you ragamuffin to tell anyone outside town to come in for carnival. Keep ready for anything. We need to try and contact Mafolie Pass anyway, something wrong with the telegraph.”
“That telegraph thing hardly ever work,” Harold noted. “You could wait a day and see if it down for sure.”
The mongoose-men shook their heads. “We going now, just to make sure. And if Mafolie okay, we go ask them for men to go out and scout.”
Harold nodded and turned to John. “You could come stay with us for carnival.”
“Thank you,” John said. “Can Shanta and Jerome leave with you right now? I’ll follow tomorrow, but I want to pack some things up and take them with us, in case this stay ends up being long.” He wouldn’t risk returning to the house until they knew for sure that they were safe. This, along with the strange Azteca activity in the sky, turned John’s thoughts toward finding a small place to stay in town for a while.
“No problem, man.” Harold stood up.
Keisha had been leaning against the doorframe. “Sound like a good idea. I don’t feel safe out here, and I don’t want me sister here either.” She took a deep breath. “The man dead. Sorry.”
“Damn,” John and Harold said together.
The mongoose-men stood up and walked over, jaws clenched. “We go find who did this and make them pay.”
John cleared his throat. “We can bury him here, I have a plot out in the jungle. If you need.”
 
The man’s burial was a simple, somber affair. John and Harold stood by as the two mongoose-men dug a shallow grave. Keisha and Shanta packed a few changes of clothes back inside the house.
One of the mongoose-men reached in his pocket to retrieve a medal. It glinted in the moonlight, and after driving
a sharp stick in the ground, the man hung the medal from it.
“Least a man can do, seen?”
John and Harold nodded. Leaves shook and stirred softly as they walked back inside, boots clumping up the stairs.
 
 
Shanta wasn’t thrilled John was staying behind. She hefted a bag full of clothes. “Why you can’t just come with us now?”
“It could be long,” John explained. “When we were out with the Frenchies we saw airships flying over the reefs. Maybe more Azteca will be harassing people inside the towns. We need all our stuff.”
“Be careful,” she warned. “Please be careful. If you hear anything, just leave as quick as you can. You hear?”
John kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be careful.”
“I thought I lost you when you left for north. Don’t leave me again.”
“I’ll be there before lunch tomorrow. I’ll join you at carnival, okay?” They hugged, then Shanta got onto the buggy behind Harold and Keisha. Jerome perched next to her.
“Hey, Jerome,” John called out. “We’ll have some fun tomorrow. I’ll buy you any lunch you want, okay?”
Jerome smiled, though his eyes were a bit bleary. “You think you go find me during carnival?”
“What, you have plans?” John asked.
“I go be hanging with me boys,” Jerome said. “We go get a good seat to see carnival.”
“I’ll hunt you down.” John smiled. Harold looked over. John nodded.
“Hah!” The horse looked back at Harold, turned around ever so slowly, then picked its way down the road. John stood and waved until they turned a bend and disappeared.
The two mongoose-men stood at his door.
“I have extra rifles for you, and I can pack you food and water.” John smiled. “Don’t worry about taking them”—he held up his hook—“they’re damn hard to fire with one of these.”
“Thanks, man,” they said.
He supplied the two mongoose-men with food and watched them disappear straight into the jungle, not even bothering to use the road. Then John walked around, finding valuables and packing them onto a cart. He stopped only once, to hold up a pendant he’d given Shanta just after they’d married. He smiled at the chiseled engravings of scudder-fish hanging from the silver chain. Then there were Jerome’s toy boats, and illustrated books, to pack.
Outside the open windows the bushes shook in the wind, constantly rustling as John packed their lives onto the cart, making decisions about what to leave so he could pull it down to Brungstun in the morning. As John walked around the house, turning off all the lamps one by one as he retreated down into the basement, he lingered at each room’s doorway. He loaded the pistol lying in the bottom of his chest, an easier task than loading the cumbersome rifle. He held it in his good hand and slept on the basement floor next to the chest.
 
 
A sound woke him. A single footstep creaking the kitchen steps.
John sat up, looked down at the pistol, and wiped the sleep from his eyes with his good hand.
The kitchen door creaked open.
John tiptoed quickly across the basement past his easel. He stopped at the far window, on the other side of the house from the kitchen. Mouth dry, he slowly opened the window and pulled himself up onto the sill with his elbows. They scraped along the concrete, leaving skin. John wiggled through onto the grass and pulled his legs through, then closed the window.
Another door creaked inside, and he heard whispers.
He jogged across his lawn toward the road, keeping as low as he could. The bushes to his right rustled.
“Ompa. Ompa, nopuluca!
”
Shit. John ducked and fired at the voice. He fumbled, trying to hold the gun to his chest with the hook and reload it as he ran.
“
Nian
,” the voice screamed.
John shook the spent cartridge out and got the new one
in. As he turned, a lead weight smacked him in the face. Netting draped around his feet and hands. His vision watered and his nose dribbled salty blood.
He stumbled and fell, unable to see through his tears. The netting tightened around him as he struggled. Slow down, he told himself, listening to feet pounding closer. He still had one shot. John blinked the tears free. The first moon lit up the area enough for him to see that three Azteca surrounded him. Younger warriors with sandals, simple loincloths, and painted from head to foot. They yanked on the net, pulling John through the grass.
He aimed the pistol and they froze. Three more warriors stepped up and pointed rifles at John’s head. They pointed their chins at his pistol and jabbed the rifle barrels at him.
John let go of the pistol. They snatched it from him, fingers grabbing in between the netting, then kicked him in the side.
Every Azteca horror tale flicked through his head as the warriors laughed with each other and dragged John across his own lawn in the moonlight. He didn’t understand a word they said.
John yanked at the netting. All it did was snag his hook until he couldn’t even move his arm. He screamed, but the Azteca only laughed. He grabbed the netting with his good hand and pulled his back off the ground so he could see his house one last time, then he let go and slumped into the netting.
At least Shanta and Jerome were safe, he told himself.
 
 
Jerome had been annoyed to have to pick a few favorite toys and clothes before the ride to Auntie Fixit’s house. Uncle Harold was okay, he’d given Jerome a cookie before he’d rushed off for town. But Auntie Fixit insisted he go to bed right away. No one in the house slept, though, least of all Jerome. The adult voices kept him up, so after a few
hours he went out and opened the door to the kitchen. His mother looked tired, and Auntie Fixit’s dress was still stained with blood.
“Could I get something to eat?” Jerome asked. “I can’t sleep.”
Auntie Fixit sighed. “Okay. Help you-setf.”
Jerome found some bread, then took a red velvet pillow from the couch in the living room. He walked out onto the porch so they could keep talking without him. He sat on the wooden porch bench and looked at the stars. The Spindle was out tonight. So was the Triad, the Eastern Cross, and Brer Rabbit.
His mom came out and sat next to him. “You okay?” she asked.
“Never seen no man all shot up before. Make me feel sick.”
“Me too.” She hugged him. “What you doing, watching the stars?”
“I thinking about that one story you tell me. Ten mirror.”
“Ah. Ten mirror. Ain’t too late already for stories?”
“No!” Jerome wiggled around and laid his head on her lap.
“Well, remember, I see, I bring, but I ain’t responsible—”
“You always say that,” Jerome interrupted.
“It mean the story change sometime when we tell it,” Shanta said. “And that sometime the thing people do in it may not be right. It’s just what it is. No more, no less. Okay?” Jerome nodded. She continued, “See, them old-father realize Nanagada was too cold to live upon. So they build great big mirrors, ten of them, to fly up in the sky and heat the ice. That was when they had fight the Tetol hard, but was losing.”
“That’s where the ragamuffin had come in,” Jerome said.
“Right. Most of the ragamuffin already dead, trying to stop the Tetol. So the ragamuffin Brung thought hard for a real-real long time. Then he crack the sky in explosions and killed all the magic machine the Tetol was using, and destroy the worm’s holes. But he also kill all the magic machine our old-father in Nanagada use.
“For a long time people struggle to live, but you could still see them ten mirror in the sky. But then they began to fall and burn. Most landed in the ocean. But one time a mirror fell into the middle of Nanagada, by Hope’s Loss. It
left great slivers in the forest that would twinkle at night. One day a little girl lost in the forest—”
“Hope’s Loss?” Jerome squirmed.
“East, in the middle of Nanagada, where the Tetol dropped rocks from the sky and destroyed the land. They say the land still poisoned today, and no one can live there.”
“Oh. That why the Triangle Tracks don’t go through there to come here to Brungstun?”
His mom looked over at him. “No,” she said sadly. “No train tracks come from Capitol City to Brungstun because of the Azteca. If they ever came over the Wicked Highs, they could get back to Capitol City before people had time to prepare.”
Mentioning Azteca ended the tale for the night. They both fell silent, looking west back toward their house. Jerome got off the bench and stretched. His mom grabbed his waist and looked Jerome straight in the eye. “You dad been all over the world, first by road all the way along the coast to get to Capitol City, then by boat to sail the north seas. He go be okay just getting stuff out the house.” She smiled.
Jerome nodded. But he wasn’t sure whom she was reassuring: him, or herself. “I know, Mom. He fine.”
He left her out on the porch, looking out at the stars.
Dad better be in town by lunch. Jerome would look him up and make sure he bought him a big, tasty meal. And maybe Jerome would show him where he was going to watch carnival from. Dad always loved carnival; he’d like the place Jerome had found to watch carnival from.
BOOK: Crystal Rain
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