Tamaruq (7 page)

When they reach Dien’s tower she gets out of the boat first, then waits for the others to catch up. As Dien approaches the tower entrance she calls out.

‘Hey, Dien?’

The woman turns. Adelaide takes a step towards her.

‘You don’t fucking threaten my friends.’

She swings hard and fast. At this range it’s impossible to miss; her fist connects with Dien’s nose with a satisfying crack. Dien staggers back, hand to her face, eyes wide with shock. When she takes her hand away, blood is dribbling from her nostrils.

Someone grabs Adelaide’s arms.

‘You little—’

‘No!’ snaps Dien. ‘This is between us.’

Adelaide feels her arms released. Her knuckles sting with the impact of the blow, but it’s a good pain, a welcome pain. Dien’s people move back, giving them space. Dien wipes her face and shakes droplets of blood from her hand. All of her focus is on Adelaide.

They move warily around one another. At the entrance to the tower and on the far side of the decking, Adelaide is aware of other, shadowy figures, watching the scene unfold.

Dien rushes her, left arm swinging. Adelaide lifts her arms to protect her head and Dien undercuts with her right fist. The blow hammers her stomach. It’s Adelaide’s turn to reel off balance, winded and gasping. She takes a few unsteady steps backwards before catching herself. Dien moves in, aiming a second punch. She ducks it, darts out of reach. At last she’s found a use for all those fencing classes, her feet moving nimbly over the decking as she recalls long-forgotten sequences.

‘Come on then,’ taunts Dien. ‘
Rechnov
.’

The use of her name is enough. They come together in a fury. Adelaide relishes the moment of impact. There’s no finesse, only passion as she implements every resource she has – fists, feet, teeth, nails – on whatever parts of Dien’s body are exposed. Dien’s headscarf comes off as she yanks at her hair, hearing it tear, bringing tears to the woman’s eyes. Next thing there’s a knee in the small of her back and she feels herself retch in response.

By the time they hit the floor, grappling and scrabbling like two rats in a pit, Adelaide knows she’s going to lose but she doesn’t care; it’s about pride now. All she wants is to inflict as much damage as she’s capable of. She lashes out indiscriminately and hears a yell of protest, knowing she connected with something tender. Then a blow to the temple sends her vision spinning. She collapses against the decking. Oxygen comes in sharp, jagged breaths. Everything hurts.

‘Are you done?’ pants Dien.

Adelaide squints upwards. She is grimly pleased to see Dien’s right eye is swelling viciously. She hopes she’s broken the woman’s nose.

Experimentally, she tries to move. Pain flares through her body.

‘I’m done.’

Dien digs into her pocket.

‘Take this. You’re going to need it.’

She throws something down. It’s a scarab. An old recalibrated model, undoubtedly stolen. Adelaide looks from the scarab to Dien, hair askew, face a bloody mess, and understands that this is an expression of trust.

From here, she knows, there is no going back.

THE OSIRIAN ATTACHES
only one condition to their travelling together: he does not want to be seen. Under this understanding, Mig is the one who goes into the farms and negotiates for food and, on the few occasions when the Osirian agrees they need it, to scout for shelter. The Osirian prefers to stay in the open, regardless of rain or winds, and more than once the pair of them have sat out in the midst of a deluge with thunderclouds clashing overhead, spears of lightning illuminating the flat, miserable land, with Mig curled up soaked to the bones, shivering like he will never stop and cursing himself for throwing in his lot with this casual lunatic.

The storms crash around the valleys, the light a strange yellowish-brown that lifts in the moment the clouds roll away, peeling back like the skin of an orange to reveal clear skies and drenched, sparkling fields. The late spring sun burns the water from his clothes within minutes. Mig is suspicious of these abrupt transitions. It isn’t right. It wouldn’t happen in the city.

The Osirian, by contrast, seems unfazed, sitting with all the serenity of an acolyte of the Houses of the Nazca, watching the skies as though he was born to do nothing but sit beneath storms and observe their passing. Sometimes, when Mig is pretending to sleep, the Osirian opens his pack and takes out a mysterious object – a shiny black stone, about the size of Mig’s clenched fist, but it has no purpose that Mig can see – and sits there, puzzling over it. Mig wonders if having such a close encounter with death has scrambled the man’s brain.

Mig has never been outside of the city before. Without buildings, the world seems vast and achingly empty. He misses the narrow streets of Cataveiro, the way the city is always colliding with itself, the noise and the raw stink of it. He can’t feel at ease out here. The country is too exposed and there’s nowhere to hide, not from the elements, and not from whoever they are running from. Because however calm he might look on the outside, the Osirian – Vikram, as he says Mig should call him – is clearly on the run from someone.

It doesn’t matter to Mig who the hunters are. Nothing much matters now, only the terrible crater ripped into his chest by Pilar’s death. He could throw himself into the river and all of its stinking water wouldn’t be enough to fill that hole. He still has the green feather she gave him the first time they talked, a ragged bit of crap now, its fibres all stuck together with sweat and lint, but he could never get rid of it. In the day he walks with his hand in his pocket gripping the feather, and at night he holds it against his lips, as if there might be something left of Pilar in it, something to soothe the inescapable despair of knowing she is no more in the world.

With each step further south, Mig berates himself. He should have looked for her sooner, that day. No – before that – from the second they heard the broadcast about the outbreak, he shouldn’t have let Pilar out of his sight. He should have told the Alaskan to go fuck herself. All those years in her service, running her errands, feeding her and cleaning her, and for what? While Mig and his gang of street kids put themselves at risk, the Alaskan lay on her back like a beetle, antennae twitching, stirring up shit from the safety of her attic. If it weren’t for that nirvana freak and her manipulative schemes…

He can’t suppress a shudder at the memory of their last conversation. A nirvana.
What she is
. Yes, it explains things – like her seeming omniscience, that almost abnormal intelligence that she loves to parade – and it’s not like Mig hadn’t suspected, but it’s different having it confirmed from the source. You can no longer pretend it doesn’t exist.

He nurtures his hatred carefully. It gives him something to focus on. Something that belongs to him and him alone. He doesn’t know if the Alaskan managed to avoid the epidemic but he would bet on it, he’d bet the last of his stash, the stash that was meant for him and Pilar, the two of them, their future – he’d bet every last peso of it that she’s still out there, alive and plotting. The freak is indestructible.

Well, if she is, she won’t remain so forever. He, Mig, will find a way to change that. The Alaskan isn’t the only one who can cook up a plan.

For now, he’s here with the Osirian. Vikram. It’s strange that the man behind the door has a name, after all this time. In his head, Mig still thinks of him as the Osirian. Sometimes he wonders what he’s doing with the man, feels even a little afraid of him – he is, after all, a man who
should not exist
– but it isn’t fear that keeps him at Vikram’s side, not that. He couldn’t say what it is, exactly. Only that he couldn’t remain where he was. Not in Cataveiro. Not where she died. And this man was going south, and Mig has never been south, and why not? Besides, there’s something about the Osirian, something – Mig can’t think of a better way to put it than
special
. He has a sense. A feeling in his gut. The little kids at the old warehouse would say that the jaguar has passed him by.

Of course, they talk rot. He wonders what’s happened to them. Ri, that clown-faced girl, the others. Did they survive the epidemic? He’s seen for himself how quickly the redfleur spreads – you only have to touch someone who’s infected and it’s over. If one of them got it, the chances are they’re all dead. It’s painful to think about it, so after a while he doesn’t. What’s the use? He can’t do anything for them. His life has changed – he’s with the Osirian now. Mig the adventurer. Mig the expeditionary.

As they move further south, Mig finds himself capitalizing on this
special
in order to get what they need. The people who work on the farms are simple. They don’t have much, and Mig can’t imagine they know much, and that makes them the ideal recipients for his message. The first time it’s by accident. He’s bargaining with the farmer – she’s a tough one, and there are two young kids in the corner, sickly-looking brats wearing mouth-and-nose masks, their eyes peeking over like lizards in a hole. Mig almost feels sorry for them, and almost relents, but no—

‘Thirty peso.’ He names his price decidedly. It’s stolen money, but that’s no reason to be bounteous with it.

The farmer drives the price up. Mig pushes back. Eventually they reach an accord. As he’s loading up the pack she says, with a hint of sourness, there’s enough in that bag to feed a skinny stalk like him for days. Mig replies without thinking.

‘My friend needs to eat. He has to keep his strength up.’

‘Your friend is sick?’ The farmer is instantly wary. She shifts her stance, placing herself between Mig and the two children.

‘He was,’ says Mig. He shouldn’t say what he says next but something propels him on, perhaps the faces of the kids, staring at him like he’s a curiosity, a boy fallen from the sky. ‘But he survived.’

The farmer is reluctant to pursue the conversation but Mig holds out, allowing a tantalizing silence to expand, and in the end she can’t help herself.

‘Survived what?’

Mig whispers, ‘The redfleur.’

There is the briefest of pauses.

‘Get out,’ says the farmer. ‘You should know better than to joke about that.’

‘I wouldn’t tell a lie,’ says Mig, which isn’t true, although in this instance it is the truth. He directs his next words at the kids. ‘There’s scars on his face and all the way up his arms. The redfleur came for him but he survived, he’s as alive as you or me.’

‘Enough.’ The farmer is angry now, but Mig isn’t alarmed; rather he’s aware of the weight of what he’s just revealed. ‘Take your things and go.’

The kids’ eyes are round as peaches. Mig feels a peculiar spread of satisfaction as he hikes the pack onto his back and heads out of the farmhouse into the dusty, suffocating heat of the day. The blue sky yawns above him and the fields stretch out on all sides for as far as he can see. Usually his loneliness would fall upon him in this moment, like a curse, but telling the tale has done something. It’s staved it off, for now at least. He returns to the Osirian with a swagger in his walk.

‘Good haul?’ asks the Osirian, with a smile.

Mig nods.

‘Good bargaining.’

That night they eat well and it does not rain.

By the middle of the night Mig is overcome with guilt. What was he thinking? He resolves to keep his mouth shut. He is resolved all the way to the next farm where somehow it happens again, and this time Mig does not have the excuse of an accident, this time, he can’t resist provoking the farmers, and the sense of importance which fills him in the telling.

Farm by farm Mig embroiders his story. He adds little details. The man is from the ocean. He eats fish raw when he can get it. The scars from the redfleur are in the form of scales, golden, like fish, or like a simurgh from the old tales, yeah, lizards with wings. When he brings back the supplies the guilt returns and he tells himself this is the last time. He’ll confess to Vikram; he’ll stop this stupidity.

But he can’t help himself.

His story garners different reactions. Sometimes people are angry, and he guesses that, like him, they’ve lost a loved one to the redfleur or some other horrible plague. They don’t want to be reminded. Other times they can’t get enough. Wanting to hear more, they bribe him with extra food. Perhaps he’d like to stay for supper? They can spare enough for another mouth…

Settled in his role as storyteller, Mig starts accepting the occasional gift. A lemon from the groves, its skin thick and waxy, the flesh a bursting tartness on the inside of his mouth. He insists on eating the fruit straight, to the mirth and delight of his hosts. He wants to say to them, you think you get lemons two a dozen in Cataveiro? The next day it’s a plate of enchiladas cooked fresh, with seasoning plucked straight from the fields. Then a tumbler of wine. He says no, the first time, knowing it’s best to refuse this particular type of hospitality, but at a second entreaty relents and accepts. What’s a drink, after all?

The wine tastes rough and acidic and Mig doesn’t care for it, can’t believe people would drink this stuff for pleasure, but after a few gulps it becomes more tolerable, and by the end of the glass he is feeling faintly light-headed, warm and relaxed and ready for another. Yes, he’ll take another. The farmers – a brother and sister, both with the same narrow face and clouded eyes – press him for details about the man who survived.

Mig is in an expansive mood. His inventions grow wilder and less plausible with every sentence, and he watches with satisfaction as they swallow it down. He has found that the kick he gets from telling these tales is exponential to how far his fabrications deviate from the truth. By now he has settled on a style of delivery: a mixture of wide-eyed innocence and bewilderment. When the farmers ask how he came to be travelling with such a man he says he was bewitched, or thinks he was – his head is so foggy now it’s hard to remember. After the second round of wine he stands to leave; he really has to go. Won’t he take another? they ask. But Mig is firm this time. He has to go. He smiles, thanks them, and heads for the door.