CHAPTER 17
Jallin didn’t run. He was caught. He stood at the door of the greenhouse and realized whatever it was he was covered in, he could not rid himself of it, and it would track him back to his bed, or wherever he went. It told the story of everything he had done in the greenhouse since arriving.
He threw the bottle of No Baby down at his feet and smiled with satisfaction as it shattered, a great blue star-shaped splatter reaching in all directions. He half-expected the stuff to burn, sizzle or explode.
A few hours later, he sat against the leg of the table where Kir-Tuko worked and waited. Since Eja didn’t cough or scream, Jallin figured she’d gone to sleep, or maybe she’d forgotten the signal.
The dark panels of glass around him slowly turned a yellowish gray green, like the pages of some ancient book for sale in a street bizarre, where the merchant who wanted rid of it equated age and misuse with value.
Every so often, Jallin felt his head fall forward, his chin trying to land on his chest. He opened his eyes without remembering he’d closed them, and thoughts swelled into dreams randomly, quickly, until he told himself he was dreaming and he was asleep in the greenhouse, and his head popped back up.
Once, the back of his head found the leg of the table with a mighty pang that sent him leaning to one side and groaning.
Now that it was light, he could take a closer look at what was all over his body. It was like rat turds and coffee grounds and the black pitch used to seal ships all ground up and smeared all over him. It didn’t smell, and when he rubbed it between its fingers it went from liquid and slimy to powdery under pressure.
Despite how long he waited, when the chain rattled and growled at the door, like a gremlin at the end of a chain sniffing him out, he started and hit his head on the underside of the table.
“Ahhh,” he said.
The door opened and a shadow with big ears stood silhouetted in the open space, gold morning sky behind surrounding the figure. He knew Kir-Tuko’s growling sigh without looking.
“Vhat the…. Vhat haff ju done? Vhat is this?”
Jallin didn’t answer. He stood to his full height and met Kir-Tuko with all he had of himself.
“Ju? Ju in here?” He said some other things, but Jallin didn’t understand them. They might not have even been words. “Vhat ju do? Vhy ju like that?”
“It’s your stinking spell, isn’t it? What is this stuff?” Jallin gestured to his entirety. The kinto-shah shook his head.
“Trackstain,” Kir-Tuko said, as though it explained everything. “Ju got in here through the garden back there, vhere I tell ju never go, jes? It stick to ju, vecause ju a living thing. It stick to living things good, feed off ju and leave trace all over.” His hand took in the entire ridiculous scene with one sweep.
“I can see that. How do I get rid of it? How do I get it off me?”
The old sho sighed again, a long exasperated sigh which threatened out a few tears from Jallin’s cheeks up to the rims of his eyes. How foolish he must have appeared to Kir-Tuko; he felt like a complete idiot. He’d lost his clothes, and now he’d lost everything else. Unless.
“Can you help me?”
Kir-Tuko closed his eyes, and then ran his hand over his head. He looked as though he’d pull his ears off.
“Vhy ju in here? Vhat vere ju doing?”
Jallin pointed to the blue smear on the ground between them. Kir-Tuko’s eyes glanced at it. Then, they searched the shelves and the black stains like writing there. Again, he sighed the sigh that was really half-growl.
“Ju in a mess, now, voy. Vhy ju do this? Vhy? Mayve I could have helfed ju, but now? I don’t know. Gah! Vhy ju not patient, vhy ju not vait.”
Kir-Tuko’s ears pricked up. They swiveled on top of his head like fast moving flowers towards the sun. Voices were behind him.
“Kri-Vu’s bina-kiché,” the old sho muttered.
“What’ll happen to me, Kir-Tuko? What will Aunty Hurga do? What have I done?”
“Just shut ju mouth a minute,” he said, holding up his hand. The chain wavered back and forth like a dead snake. He looked at it. Then, he glanced back over his shoulder. Aunty Hurga was coming.
Her voice grew like her threat, and now Eja was coughing along beside her.
“I don’t care what he said,” Aunty Hurga’s voice said softly. “No, he’s not right at all. You have to take this medicine. Who do you think knows more about this, your not-even-grown-up brother, or an adult whose thought about it and been educated and can read and everything?”
“But Jallin said….”
“No more. Shut it, Eja, or I’ll give you a smart to go with your coughing. Now shut it.” The world crunched at the woman’s insistent feet, and Jallin looked for somewhere to hide. Then, her footsteps stopped, just out of sight.
“Jallin, are you in there?” Eja called softly.
“What do you want?” Jallin retorted. Eja wasn’t allowed to answer. Instead, Aunty Hurga grew suspicious. Jallin could just make her out trying to look past, under, around, or over Kir-Tuko, who tried to block her view.
“What’s going on in there?” Aunty Hurga demanded. “Get out of my way, slave,” she said, and Jallin saw her hands appear on Kir-Tuko’s shoulder like they might have around the edge of a door and start to push him out of the way. Now, they both stood in the doorway, Kir-Tuko turned sideways to Jallin and Aunty Hurga taking up the rest of the light from outside with her body.
“What the hell is this?” she shrieked. “What is this? What did you idiots do?”
“Idiots? Vhat ju saying Hurga-Seduka?”
“What is this?” She hollered at the both of them, encompassing each of them with her scorn like dragon’s fire over a boat. “What a mess. The master’ll have your hide for this, you can be sure. Is that…is that trackstain? All over the place? How did…Jallin….” And now she took it all in. Her eyes honed in on Jallin, pinched him between them like a larva between two fingers. “You worthless piece of absolute trash. After all the things you’ve been given, after what everyone’s done for you and your sister, here’s how you repay them? Really? You break into this place and completely destroy it?” She took a step at Jallin, but Kir-Tuko blocked her. Aunty Hurga was fierce, but Kir-Tuko was far stronger and his arm not only hindered her entrance, but forced her backwards.
“Don’t go in there,” he said. “Ju get trackstain all over ju foot and all over this place. Just stay vack.”
“Go get the remover, damnit. Get him cleaned off and out of there so I can kill him.” She splayed her spidery fingers across her hipbones and waited, but Kir-Tuko didn’t move. “Well?”
“Vell vhat? This my greenhouse. This my problem, not ju. Ju go get the remover.”
“How dare you talk to me like that? How dare you? You just remember your place, slave.” She reached up and wrapped her hand around a group of Kir-Tuko’s unsuspecting whiskers. She may have taken a few of them out, but Jallin wasn’t sure, before she let go. Kir-Tuko howled, and stomped his feet, holding his eyes tightly shut.
He snorted and shook his head violently and braced himself with his hands against the doorjamb, still effectively blocking her access to Jallin.
By this time, the rest of the household seemed to be alerted to the problem. Eja was coughing and trying to talk to the master at the same time: “…ster…a…ccid...ent…Hurga’s…mad…please…don’t…mad…
Mast…N…shó,” she sputtered as though choking on it.
“Vhat-occurring here? Vhat-doers here, you?”
Now everyone talked at once. Kir-Tuko put up his hands to an invisible audience and tried to talk but every time he started to say something, Aunty Hurga cut him off to tell her story, even though she really didn’t know anything, so it sounded like two halves of two different arguments glued together with wax.
“Ve have a little….”
“…covered in that trackstain mess…”
“He vas….”
“…trying to steal….”
“Vhat-doers? Vhat-sayers?” the master tried, but couldn’t get a foot in the door.
Jallin jumped back as something briefly shimmered in the air of the greenhouse, and then landed at his feet, skittering across the black stains and bouncing until it was almost under Kir-Tuko’s workspace. Jallin went and picked it up and had to rub his finger along the edges of this object before he realized what it was. Now, stained all over with the inky trackstain, he held a key in the palm of his hand. He recognized it immediately: the key to the lock on the greenhouse. Kir-Tuko had thrown it at him.
“…only trying to help me... I make mistake….”
“What?” Aunty Hurga suddenly stopped her tirade. “What did you say?”
Kir-Tuko turned his face towards Jallin, and his lip went up so that his sharp front teeth peered out. He flipped an ear at Jallin, then turned back to his audience, now blurs through the glass of the greenhouse.
“I make mistake,” he said again. “Hurga-Seduka never give me chance to explain.”
“Vhat-explainer?” said the master.
“Master Tho-Shiko, sir,” said Kir-Tuko. “Come look, please, Master. See vhat happen. Ju slave sometime act stufid. I vas stufid, and ju see vhat happen.”
Aunty Hurga stepped back away from the door, and now the smallish shape of Master Tho-Noshó came to stand beside Kir-Tuko’s silhouetted profile. His ears were as high as they could go, and Jallin could see the round tips of his ears now. His whiskers twitched fiercely.
“Mess-makers ju vere,” he said. “This-doer ju how?”
“I lock key inside greenhouse,” Kir-Tuko said. “I vas looking for extra vun, thinking maybe I had it, vut ju have it, Master, and…vut vhen I try to come back and tell voy avout it, he already in there, making vig mess, like this. I told him not to go into garden, vut he didn’t know avout the trackstain, master, and when he saw it all over, he got scared and he make vig mess and knock jar of medicine for Eja on ground and vreak it. I am sorry master.”
“That’s a lie,” Aunty Hurga spat at the two of them. “You know that’s a lie.”
“This-knower how ju?” the master asked.
“Jallin, show master key.”
Jallin held up the key, a peculiar object to him now, some magical device Kir-Tuko had made to get them both out of this with their skin intact.
“You know that’s a lie, Tho-Shiko,” Aunty Hurga said. “They’re lying. Look what they’ve done. Look at that on the ground? Why’s that the only bottle they broke getting in here? I’ll tell you why. Because that’s Eja’s medicine, and Jallin doesn’t like Eja to take her medicine. And why did Jallin go around to the back of the greenhouse anyway. He could’ve gotten in right next to the door, couldn’t he?”
“I…I wanted to keep us out of trouble, Master Tho-Shiko,” Jallin said suddenly. “I didn’t want all this, but I didn’t know about the…trackstain.”
Kir-Tuko flipped the ear nearest Jallin again and Jallin didn’t venture any further explanation.
“Counselor Dursus bought that medicine for Eja, didn’t he?” Aunty Hurga demanded again, this time of the master himself. Master Noshó turned on her.
“Vhat-teller ju tovards me vé. Seduka-being in my house, not master, ju. Master-being me.” He slapped his hand against his chest. Kir-Tuko, hands-putter on vall.”
“Jes, Tho-Shiko.”
What did he say?
“Shi-Feo, whip-getter ju. Quiet-maker ju, Hurga-Seduka. Remover-getter ju now from shed-Kir-Tuko.”
“Yes, Tho-Shiko,” Aunty Hurga said. The blurs all separated outside, each moving in a different direction. Jallin wasn’t sure what was happening, but he could see Kir-Tuko go and stand by the front gate of the household, putting his hands on the wall. He seemed to remember something and stood up again. He removed his shirt and tossed it in the mud near the wall. He resumed leaning on the wall.
“Master Noshó, what are you about to do? Please, Kir-Tuko, he….” But Kir-Tuko looked over his shoulder and his big dark eyes met Jallin’s. His lip quivered and rose like a curtain, and one of his long, yellow teeth shone in the sun. He flipped his ears as though a million flies were biting them. Then, like he turned his nose up at bad soup, he looked at the top of the wall.
Aunty Hurga came back around the greenhouse, holding against her stomach a barrel about the size of her head.
“Please, Master Noshó, please, it was an accident. It was only the one bottle, sir. It won’t happen again, I promise. Please, sir.”
But now, here came Shi-Feo, an entirely different apparatus in her hand, a whip with several flails hanging down from the ominous handle. Her ears were back, and her eyes seemed to wander the heavens. She handed the whip to Master Noshó and stepped again out of view.
No, no, no. Jallin was not about to watch him get whipped for this. No. He would not. But what could he do?
“Master Noshó, please, sir. Please. He didn’t do it. He didn’t.”
“Shut ju stufid mouth, Jallin,” Kir-Tuko barked at him. “Helf clean up the greenhouse.”
Jallin made for the door of the greenhouse, but Aunty Hurga stood in his way with the strange barrel. She moved into the greenhouse with him and slammed the door behind her. She blocked Jallin’s escape and smiled at him. She crossed her arms, as if that would make her somewhat more imposing.
“Think you are so very clever don’t you, you little worm. I know what this was. I know. Don’t think I don’t know.”
He heard the whip, and he flinched.
“You can’t tell him. If you tell him what we are, then what do you think he’ll do? He’ll get rid of us so fast it will make you wish you were born a raig in an alleyway instead of some bastard child of a whore. Trochaya is not going to let you ruin his plans for us, Jallin. We have a place here because he wants us here, and Counselor Dursus has plans for you. He does. I don’t know what they are, and you don’t need to know, but he has plans for you. Why do you think you never got sick, like Eja or your mother? Because Trochaya didn’t want it for you.”
“Because I was stealing to keep us alive, you rotten bitch,” Jallin growled at her. “While you were eating our food and holding out on my mother.”
Whack!
“You were just another mouth to feed for her, you idiot. I did most of her work for her at the river, and I didn’t take anything from her. Not like you and that stupid little girl did. You two were like walking stomachs, always hungry, always cold, always needing something. That poor woman would have been alive today if it weren’t for you, but Trochaya helped you come alive, and now he’s got plans for you.”
Whack!
“Counselor Dursus is a great man, an educated man, and he knows what to do with you. He knows. And all this, all this you’re doing, amounts to nothing in the long run, because all you’re doing is delaying Trochaya a little with his plans.”
Whack!
“What plans? What’s Trochaya want, to make everyone sick, to make everyone just die? Why would anyone worship that? What’s wrong with you?”
“It is inevitable, Jallin. We’re made to die, Jallin. This monstrous thing called the Highest put us all here to watch us suffer and die, plopping us all on this world like dung. But see, Trochaya sees us as something more, he sees us like a broken sculpture, or like a…like a painting maybe…like….”
She seemed to be struggling to find something in her mind. Maybe, she didn’t even understand the nonsense she believed.
Whack!
“It’s like a man who throws away a stone,” Her fist clenched in front of her. These were the words she wanted. “And then someone else comes and finds that stone and polishes it, and realizes it’s gold and is valuable. The Highest dumped us here and doesn’t take care of us, and doesn’t love us, and doesn’t have any compassion on us.”
Whack!
“But Trochaya’s purifying the world. Each person who dies, each person who passes away from disease, is one more chip, one more piece of filth taken away. When it’s all done, we’ll see the Undying Ones, the Waiting Ones, who will be born, and they’ll be perfect and they’ll never get diseases, and they’ll never die, and we won’t ever get hungry anymore, and we won’t thirst, and Trochaya will have all his followers, and they’ll be the only ones alive anymore, and the world will be purified.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t realize what’s going on, Jallin. Counselor Dursus has papers on you. He owns you. If he wanted, he could sell you into slavery at any moment. Did you know that?”
A cold silence.
The words seemed to hang in the air like drifting silk threads of a cobweb knocked loose from a long neglected corner.
“You didn’t know that, I’d bet. But he does. He’s got them for Eja, too. When you die in the church, the Counselors get your legacy, poor and pathetic as it is. It’s so the Counselors can make sure it all comes back to the people who die and go to the Waiting Lands.”
“That’s a lie. You’re lying. He doesn’t have papers. He couldn’t. My mother couldn’t even read and write.”
Aunty Hurga shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, now, does it?” Aunty Hurga’s voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. Jallin heard something like a chirp outside, but then Aunty Hurga said: “Counselor Dursus has you in my care. I’m supposed to be keeping you out of trouble. I’m not doing a very good job, I guess, but who knew you’d turn into such a little bastard. If you don’t stop this nonsense you’re doing, and if you don’t stop putting your idiotic ideas in Eja’s head, I’ll have Counselor Dursus sell you so far away, you won’t remember you’re in the same world as us.”
The beating was over.
How was Kir-Tuko? He heard another squeak or chirp from outside, then he heard some horrid groan. Master Noshó talked in his high-pitched voice, but the words were too cowardly to step into the greenhouse past Aunty Hurga where Jallin could understand them.
And Hurga gave no indication she would ever again move out of Jallin’s way.
Now she hefted the barrel, which was about the size of her head and offered the thing to Jallin.
“What is this thing?” he asked, taking the heavy, sloshing thing.
“It’s for the trackstain you so elegantly spread all over.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out several strips of ripped cloth and tossed them at Jallin. “You are a fool, Jallin. But, by the holy sneeze of Trochaya, you will be a clean fool for now. Get busy.”
“What do you mean? What do I have to do? I don’t understand.”
“Get that barrel open and wipe that stuff over every single dab of trackstain in this room. It will kill the stuff. Don’t you dare leave this place until every single blot of its dead.”
“How will I know it’s dead?” Jallin asked.
“You’ll know.”
Jallin worked at it for a while, but finally got the barrel open, and released into the air a strong, heady smell, like very old blue wine. He took up one of the rags he’d been given and dipped it into the barrel. When he took it out again, the trackstain on his hands was bubbling and turning a rusty-red color. It sloughed away from him like unneeded scab and fell to the surface of the table. The trackstain there also began to bubble. Wherever the barrel’s contents were made to go, there the black trackstain died with a rust-colored whisper.
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