AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The late afternoon light played in Sei's hair, turning it turquoise and black, like the light at the bottom of a lake, like the light in hidden places.
Two women stood on a wide pavilion of crushed white stones and high orange pillars, one with blue hair, and one with a blue skirt. Hand in hand they sought out the row of heavy bronze bells with their ponderous red ropes. They clapped their hands and rang the bells for the soul of Amaya Usagi; they gave their coins to the gods and stood in the shadowy alcoves in contemplation of statues with dead eyes. They tied wishes to the trees, and did not tell each other what they wished for—there was no need.
They drank silver sake and fell asleep in each other's arms, without kisses, without farewells.
THE ZOO THAT ONCE SPRAWLED over Ambuscade Street is empty. The cages are still there, and pigeons have found them acceptable housing, being full of slow, fat lizards and flies like blackberries. But the animals have gone. There are kiosks whose awnings were once gaily gold, and sold frozen green apples and phials of crystal honey-but they are empty now, and the spilled seeds have long sprouted so high that each of them is a small grove, and if children ever ventured here any longer, they would find the apples so cold, so cold and sweet.
At night, the moon sweeps through the paths like a tumbleweed. The stars sit on the benches and smoke corncob pipes and throw petrified peanut shells at the ghosts of giraffes.
There is no mynah bird left to tell you what happened here.
But I will tell you, for I feel we have become friends, you and I. Casimira, beloved of my soul, fought with such weapons as she had: vermin, and insects, and scurrying creatures. Her cannon, her artillery her cavalry were all these things-oh, the days when the rabbits of Casimira were larger than horses! When her elephantine crows soared high, casting their gargantuan shadows over whole districts! Was there ever a general like her, ever a creature who dared more? How could I not love her? How could I not give myself to her?
The opposition could not bear her strength, and her soldiers seemed to be endless, as ants and bees always seem to be. They felt, Ululiro felt, that they must become as she was if they were to save the city from her green hands.
So the Ambuscade Zoo was confiscated, cordoned off, and the animals in it brought to a building like a palace, but not a palace, where they were penned up, frightened, shaking, cats with cats and fish with fish and like with like. Ululiro herself underwent the procedure, as a gesture of loyalty and I did love her then, too, in that moment. But my heart was given, given already. Ululiro wept as they cut into her, and into the shark, and her blood is yet upon the door frame of that palace which is not a palace, indelible as the stone.
Thus the soldiers of the opposition became as Casimira: innumerable beasts, stronger limbs were sewn in the place of weak human ones, stronger teeth, more vicious heads. And because they were ashamed, because to become what they became was to become inhuman, the surgeons cut out the larynxes of all the poor souls they altered, so that they could not speak of what had been done to them, or what they would do in service of the war. Perhaps they knew, even then, how uncharitable their cause had become. I cannot say-they do not speak of it now.
I know you weep for these things. I weep for them. And more for those brave, gallant souls of Casimiras tribe who underwent such procedures secretly, without glory or fellowship, in order to be trusted by the opposition, in order to fight well, who took mule-legs for her sake, and bear-feet, and frog s heads.
Ambuscade Station is a dreary, dank place since there is no zoo to draw the laughing or the moneyed. The shouts of the not-too-distant Troposphere barely penetrate the gloom. The platform is empty, and spiders crawl along the poles, ticking, clicking, and November can almost understand them, they are close to bees in language, but in the end they are beyond her, their paeans to Casimira private and eight-versed.
She stands, and cannot imagine what time the train might come, but she knows the train is the right thing, she knows the girl with blue hair is nearby, and she trusts, she trusts now, that the golden, liquid hymn vibrating within her will call it like a river-lure. Please, she thinks, oh, please.
The train arrives like an answer, and the doors slide open. She is surprised. It is a long, silver train, bright, new, gleaming like an arrow shot from the moon.
Would you like to ride upon the Leopard of Little Breezes? she thinks, and leaps before her stomach can answer.
The carriage is lined in silk
, red silk, and women in long, glistening masks the color of blood and thick, layered kimonos stand at small tables set with tea services. The tea is red, and there are lumps of black within. A few men and women sit hunched at the tables, and the women look proprietary, caring, possessive of their charges. They glare at her coldly They offer her nothing.
She walks slowly down the polished floor of the carriage, and as she passes the women with their poised teakettles, they turn their heads as one to regard her with icy disdain. They smell of metal and cherry pits.
“Get out,” one of them hisses. “You can't have her.” November runs and steps into the space between carriages, her heart throbbing.
Where are you, Amaya Sei?
The next carriage is vast, covered in rice terraces stacking up to a genuine sky, a genuine sun. All along the terraces folk stand in red hats fringed in gold, lined up perfectly along the water s edge, staring down at her with wintry, hurt expressions. She begins to walk under their gaze, but it is very far, the carriage is so long.
“I am thirsty!” she calls out.
A little boy with a jangling hat screams down: “There is nothing for you here! The rice of grief is withered because you have set foot here, where no one wanted you!”
“She wants me!” November cries. “Amaya Sei! I will find her!”
“She is ours! We have made all these things for her! You can't take her away from us!”
And the villagers of the second car let loose long copper ladles from bows of rice roots, and November runs again, she must run, through the pleasant countryside, and even still the ladles strike her and bruise her and the bees within her shriek in terror. A fusillade crashes into the carriage door as she closes it, and Novembers belly flinches with every blow
She passes through the carriage of cabbages, and the plants recoil from her. One opens and there is a thing inside it, a word, in black print that wavers like skin crawling: stranger. It hisses at her, and ink spatters her already-black cheek. She passes through a carriage of pine trees, and men in long black suits scowl and spit upon her. As she passes them, they reach out to clutch at her coat, her breasts, her hair.
“We do not want you,” they slaver.
Amaya Sei, she thinks, is this your kingdom? Amaya Sei, is this your hive?
November passes through a carriage of crusted white rock and hanging reeds. There is a rabbit-man there, a veteran, she thinks, mashing rice in a barrel with a great hammer. She tries to inch past him, but he blocks her way with a withered paw.
