Alight (29 page)

Purple raises the spear. I close my eyes—I’m just too tired to fight anymore.

Something hits the ground in front of me.

I look—my spear lies flat at my feet.

Purple shoves the handle of the gore-splattered hatchet into its belt, then hops to its friend. Spingate scoots back, wanting desperately to help, knowing she can’t.

Purple’s thick hands grab the wounded Springer’s leg, one on either side of the disgusting break. The wounded Springer says something soft and short, then Purple
yanks
. I see the bone slide back into flesh, hear a disgusting
crunch-snap
. The wounded Springer’s toad-mouth opens in a silent scream.

Purple beckons me to join him. He pantomimes, points to the wounded Springer, points to his own narrow shoulders, points down the trail. I think he wants me to help carry his friend. I don’t know if I’m strong enough, but I have to try.

“Spin, gather up the muskets,” I say. “And take the bags of the two dead ones.”

Booted feet splash through the mud as she runs to obey.

I look at Purple, nod.

It grunts something unintelligible. We both get under the wounded Springer’s arms, and we lift.

Good
gods,
it is heavy.

Struggling to stay upright, I let Purple guide us down the trail.

The wounded Springer, it’s
warm.
The Grownups were cold, disgusting. The Springer is neither: if I close my eyes, I could believe I was helping one of my own kind. It would feel much the same.

It is all I can do to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. The wounded Springer’s weight is harder on Purple than it is on me. He can’t hop, he has to put one foot in front of the other—a movement that turns him from graceful leaper to stumbling, awkward walker.

We struggle on for a long while until Purple finally stops. He points off to the left. Through the trees and the pouring rain, I see a six-sided ruin. Most of it is knocked down, vine-strangled like everything else on this planet, but part of it still stands. Matilda’s memories call up something from our childhood—am I looking at a church steeple?

At the very tip, a copper sphere. Two rings surround it, the inner one with two opposing dots, the outer with four.

Spingate catches up, struggling under her load of muskets and bags.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she says, staring up at the steeple. “That’s the same symbol we saw on the Observatory. If we’re the first people here, how can the Springers have that same symbol?”

I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want to help keep this wounded Springer alive. Maybe that will balance against all the killing I’ve done.

Maybe.

Purple adjusts his position under his injured friend. I do the same. Together we walk toward the steeple.

I
use the tiny scissors to cut the last stitch, then put them back into the white case Spingate brought.

“All done,” I say.

Spingate sighs. “How does it look?”

It looks awful. The bump on her head has a jagged red line across it marked with six ugly black stitches. It would have looked bad even if I didn’t have two broken fingers, swollen and screaming each time I move.

“It looks fine,” I say.

“Liar. Gaston will think it’s hideous.”

We’re inside the steeple, the base of which is a decent-sized room with an uneven floor, part stone, part dirt. We sit on chunks of broken wall surrounding a small, crackling fire. The place smells of smoke, dampness and burned toast. Rain drips in through multiple cracks, creating several twitching mud puddles.

The wounded Springer lies near the fire, asleep. Spingate stitched his cuts first, then mine, explaining to me how to do it as she did. Five stitches on my cheek, three on my chin. The fire warms us some, but I’m still cold, wet and hungry. It’s been a full day since my last meal, which I threw up after I killed that Springer.

I hurt all over. They beat me so bad. Except for my fingers, though, I don’t think I have any broken bones. For that, at least, I am grateful.

Two dead Springers lie at the base of a wall, both covered in vines. One is only a partial body, a decapitated half-torso with one arm still attached. Purple brought his dead friends here, one at a time. After the second corpse, he pantomimed that Spingate and I needed to stay here, then left yet again. He’s been gone for over an hour.

Strange, waist-high stone statues line the room’s edges. The statues are chipped and cracked, streaked with dirt. Many limbs are broken off. Some statues lean against the old wall, as they are too damaged to stand on their own.

Most of the statues are Springers. The stone is carved to show they wear long coats, pants covering their strange legs, long sleeves for their tails. Ruffles, folds, pleats…the clothing seems formal. Were these Springers important? If so, how long ago did they live?

A few of the statues aren’t Springers at all. I don’t know what to make of them. Legs that bend the wrong way, like those of a praying mantis, but much thicker. Narrow body with a middle set of arms positioned just above the hips, arms that end in heavy, clumsy-looking hands. The trunk rises up to a misshapen head with one large eye and a vertical mouth below that eye. From the sides of that head, just under the eye, another set of arms, these thinner, more delicate. They end in dexterous-looking fingers.

“Those statues seem weird,” I say. “What do you think they are?”

Spingate shrugs. “Maybe Springer gods. Or their demons. What I want to know about is that symbol on the steeple. This building must be older than the ones in our city, so how can we have the same symbol on the Observatory?”

She touches the bump on her head, winces. “I wonder if Smith’s coffin will heal my cut so I don’t have a scar.”

I think of O’Malley, so concerned about fixing his face.

“That scar is yours and yours alone,” I say. “Your creator didn’t have one like it.”

She thinks on that for a moment, then gives me a smile and a funny look.

“That’s good,” she says. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

I should be pleased, but I’m not. That funny look happens when I say something
smart
. Spingate is my friend, we work well together and she seems to accept me as leader, but deep down inside she doesn’t consider me an equal.

Purple left some firewood. I put a fresh log on the fire, careful not to make the flames too big. Wouldn’t want a spider to come crashing through the wall and kill us by mistake. I’ve had enough fighting for one day.

I see something in the dirt on the far side of the room. Is that a tiny
hand
?

I walk to it, brush away rubble and debris. It’s a plastic toy, a chubby baby Springer wearing a tattered green outfit. Not scraps of fabric tied together for camouflage, but delicate, beautiful clothing.

It’s a doll.

Like the dolls I had when I was a little girl.

How old is it? This ruined city that surrounds us, was it once full of children with toys? Parents, children, families?

How many living beings did our creators kill?

I hear movement outside. I grab my spear, wincing at the pain that comes from my broken fingers, and move to the old double doors that open to the jungle. Spingate picks up one of the muskets, grunts as she cocks back the hammer and locks it into place. She hasn’t fired one yet, but she figured out how to reload it.

The doors swing open—it’s Purple, his musket slung over his narrow shoulder, his knife and hatchet safely tucked away.

I lower my spear. Spingate carefully releases her musket’s catch.

The clearly exhausted Springer waves us outside.

The rain has died down to a steady sprinkle. We follow Purple around the back of the ruined building. Tucked in behind a broken slab of wall is a narrow, wheeled cart. The cart is made of sticks and boards, bound together with dried vines. The wheels are mismatched. One is metal and reminds me of Spingate’s symbol—it used to be a real gear in some large machine, perhaps. The other wheel is made of splintery wood. The wheels are close enough together that the cart would probably make it through the jungle’s narrow trails. Two long handles, so someone could stand between them and pull the cart behind.

Atop the cart is a long pile of vines. Purple reaches out, lifts a handful so we can see beneath.

A human face—Visca.

Spingate hisses in air, covers her mouth.

Visca’s dead eyes stare out. He was always the palest of all the Birthday Children. Now he is sheet-white. Dried blood crusts the bullet hole in his forehead. There are bite marks on his cheeks, and one of his ears has been chewed off—the jungle animals had started in on his corpse.

Purple looks at me. He wants me to understand. He brought us the body of our fallen warrior. It is an apology, maybe, or perhaps an effort to show good faith. Whatever the motivation, this gesture moves me deeply.

“Thank you,” I say. “This means a lot to us.”

Dolls, families, love, revenge, honoring the dead…our two cultures are similar in so many ways.

Purple covers Visca’s face.

We return to the steeple. Purple checks on his friend, who is finally awake.

“We need to talk to them now,” Spingate says. “We have to find out about food.”

“How? We don’t speak their language, they don’t speak ours.”

“But they
have
a language,” she says. “Maybe we can make each other’s sounds.”

Spingate steps toward them. She raises her hand to her chest, taps her sternum twice.

“Spin-gate,”
she says. She reaches across, taps my chest.
“Em.”

The Springer stares at us. It taps its own chest.

“Bar-kah,”
it says, the words half-growl, half-chirp. It points to its wounded friend.
“Lah-fah.”

A single, stunned laugh escapes me, makes Purple twitch in surprise and caution.
Barkah, Lahfah
…are those their names? Purple understood us?

Spingate points. “Barkah,” she says, doing her best to imitate the sound. Then she points down: “Lahfah.”

The wounded Springer’s eyes widen and the toad-mouth opens, letting out a sound like shoes grinding on broken glass. It’s as shocked that we can understand them as I was they can understand us. That sound—just like me, Lahfah is
laughing
.

Purple—I mean
Barkah
—points at Spingate.

“Singat,”
it says. Then it points at me.
“Hem.”

Lahfah’s mouth opens wide again, filling the room with that grinding-glass laugh. For having a broken leg and two dead friends lying close by, this one seems full of good humor. I wonder what he’s like in happier circumstances.

Are we making a connection here? Can we do this? Can we succeed where the Grownups just made war?

Barkah points at me again.
“Hem. Yalani
.
”

I look at Spingate. She shrugs. We have no idea what that means.

“Yalani,” Spingate repeats, mimicking the sound as best she can.

Barkah stares at us, then unslings his bag and starts digging through it.

“Pellog jana chafe,”
Lahfah says.
“Rether page chinchi wag.”

He’s babbling. He must think we understand all of his language, not just a couple of names.

“Yollo bis,”
he says, then roars with body-shaking laughter.

Barkah pulls out a piece of cloth and a black stick. When he does, another piece of cloth falls from the bag and lands, mostly flat, on the dirty floor. It is the picture of the Springer I killed.

“Ponalla,”
Lahfah says softly, mournfully.

Barkah stuffs the drawing back into his bag. He unfurls a blank piece of cloth, lies it flat on the floor, and sketches. Quick, purposeful lines. His hand is steady. He knows what he’s doing—this alien is an artist.

The image takes shape before my eyes: the Observatory. And on it, tiny but clear, several layers up, a human figure.

Barkah points to it.
“Yalani.”

“He recognizes you,” Spingate says. “From the statue of Matilda.”

I don’t know what to say, what to think. What do the Springers know about our city and that massive building? Did he want to shoot me because I killed his friend, or because of something to do with that statue?

Wait…the statue of Matilda is tall, but insignificant compared to the size of the pyramid. Even if you’re on the same street, the statue is too high up to make out any details. He couldn’t possibly recognize me unless he had been close enough to see the statue’s face.

I point to the base of the drawn Observatory.

“Did you go there? Did you watch us?”

Three green eyes blink at me.

I hold a hand over my eyes like I’m shielding them from the sun. I pantomime peering out, first this way, then that, my eyes squinting.

Barkah grunts, taps his chest, taps the bottom of the Observatory, points to me, then points to Spingate. He starts drawing madly.

“I don’t believe it,” Spingate says. “Is he saying he was there?”

We watch, amazed, as Barkah sketches. Bodies take form, as do faces. With just a few curves and shapes, he captures the essence of people I know: Bishop, Visca, Aramovsky, O’Malley, Spingate and me, all in the elevator, facing out.