For The Sallows

15 December 2018 | R-16 | 4,326 words Zachary has a difficult day and enjoys the freedom of Nine Columbines at night. Set a few years before his pilgrimage, he's maybe ~15 here.

Zachary patted fresh, rich soil over the roots of the lifeweed. A supernatural herb cultivated here in the greenhouses of Nine Columbines Sanatorium, and a tightly regulated one at that, a single sprig could make enough medicine to heal many bays of patients, make enough gold to buy aviaries of showbirds when sold brightly to clerics, and make enough rubies to buy a roc when sold darkly to apostates and heretics.

Zachary thought of threshing the stem between the nails of his thumb and forefinger. Of all the hundreds of tiny leaves shedding onto the floor. Of thick green mush congesting under his nails, skinning it smooth and clean. Of pressing deep notches into the stalk so it crunched how celeries did. He patted soil over the roots.

“Very good, Zachary!” said his minder from over his shoulder.

Zachary smiled and nodded back at her. “Very good,” he agreed. He'd been repotting these plants for years. Restraining himself for less.

She gestured to a nearby pot, empty now that Zachary had transferred the lifeweed. “What will we do with this?”

“Clean. Cycle.” He took the pot and began running the washtub. The dirt needed to be scrubbed out of the pot with a washbrush, but he'd prepare the water first. He reached high on the shelf for a canister of vinegar, and – a volcano erupted.

Pain like lava burst down his side down his back fast as his brain blazed white and he was hissing through his teeth hunching over the tub his minder beside him babbling mush syllables pummelling his skull.

Water gushingushingushingushing into the tub. His hand trembled towards the tap. 

Then he was seated on a chair across the room, doubled over, biting his cheeks and squinting through tears, at the sight of his minder wrenching the tap closed. It shrieked. Every joint and muscle in him screamed.

Ah. One of these. Awful. Awful, episodes.

He knew that (it hurt) it helped to get his (it hurt) mind off the pain by focusing (it hurt) on something else, some simple (it hurt) task, like scrubbing (it hurt) the pot or walking around the gardens. So it would (it hurt) pay to soldier through until (it hurt) it ended, which it (it hurt) would, but it hurt when he heaved against it hurt the chair to try and stand IT HURT, he found it hurt he could not. His head throbbed and side burned and his minder reminded him, she could take him to the clinic, but to what purpose, they already told him, no more meds, so what, was he to lie IT HURT in a bed, which he could very well do, in the privacy of his lodgings at the parish, without doctors and nurses hovering around, to say, Zachary, dear, lie down.

He failed again to stand from the chair. Prospects for scrubbing the pot were plummeting. So he gripped his minder's arm and let her pull him up, then mumbled something about wanting to rest in his room. The trip took ages and he felt groggy for it and she got a bag of ice from the freezer when he asked and he put it on his side but it STILL HURT so he said leave and she left and she was gone so he whined into his bedsheets because why couldn't it just STOP ALREADY? He'd been feeling good about doing things today. Well you have to pace yourself Zach there'll be another day Zach take it easy Zach lie down Zach relax a while Zach well God willing he was. A relaxing quiet calm little gardening day. That left him snivelling in his house on his sheets in agony so if even that was too much what was he meant to do huh, lie down in bed until he was relaxed enough to get up again so he could get sick again and go back to bed until he was well again to be sick again to go to bed to be well again and sick again because that stupid jug of vinegar was too much for him so he was sick again and he'd be well again but he'd be sick again so what was he meant to do, just die? No.

He was being pissy and angry and moping because that was just how he got. It all made him think incorrectly. So he imagined good things he enjoyed like walks, and gardens, and clouds trawling across the sky, and how the pain would pass and he could go back to his life, but how long would that take, and God it still hurt, and God, and God, and God, and ah, screw it.

Zachary clasped his trembling hands on the bed, closed his eyes, and thought of Camille.

Camille. Bright and shiny and beautiful Camille. Patient and kind and generous Camille. Wise and intelligent, insightful and eloquent, melodic, strong, and soothing. With a funny lip and hair spun like gold, Camille, who lived in his Arboretum on high with many other great things.

Like stepping out the door. The pain stayed anchored to his unfortunate carcass, while some other, undefined part of him found itself instantly beneath the sun and stars in the warm, glass-domed, mirror-lined penthouse of the Arboretum.

Camille was lying supine on the floor, reading the stars, probably. Zachary knelt beside him and softly closed his hands over Camille's neck.

Camille's eyes, green and shiny as beetle-shells, flickered to Zachary in calm acknowledgement. He said as per routine, “Greetings as well, Zachary,” with a voice chiming of radiant bells. The tough part of his throat bobbed amusingly against Zachary's thumb.

“The Adam's apple,” Camille explained. He grimaced as if remembering an untoward joke. “You wouldn't know Adam.”

<No. Who is he?> thought Zachary prominently, so Camille would hear.

“A piece of old mythology. What blasphemy would your knowing be.”

<But not your speaking – never. I am simply unclean.>

“Uninitiated, we shall say.”

<You won't tell me now then. When?>

“Someday.”

Oh, someday.

Camille loved someday. Sometimes someday would come, and Zachary would learn secrets, like how Camille spoke in a language called Birds, or how void created form, and nobody else except him knew these things. But more often someday seemed more distant than the stars so many miles and miles and miles above them that they looked like little pinpricks, when they were really bigger than the world, and Zachary suspected this of Adam.

Though, Camille never teased without purpose. The knowledge of this Adam was in itself a great secret, the truth to which he may discover someday, and until then may keep as their injoke. So Camille had only mentioned it to inspire him into supposition.

<I'll be patient,> he decided, thumbing little circles on Camille's throat. But he just didn't care to consider it then. He hated Camille's somedays and so his stupid spiteful brain lost interest automatically. Camille knew that, of course, and he'd wait for Zachary to care, because he was actually patient. So instead Zachary wondered how Camille's neck got so thin in his hands. 

He thought of the story of the Cuckoo and the Wren. Where the big fat Cuckoo ate all Wren's food and killed her children, but Wren saw him twice her size and thought, “My boy has grown so strong! No other wren could raise a child so grand.” But it was just a normal, nasty cuckoo.

“By my perspective, you aren't nearly so overbearing. That is an odd discrepancy between my vision and yours, though I am happy for it.”

Zachary squeezed. <And between us your vision is correct?>

“Often,” Camille sighed a lilting sigh. His gaze wandered to the mirrors along the walls. Zachary stared too, but he wasn't reflected in them, of course. “But, as noted, you may disprove me. Again, as noted, I welcome this.”

<How could my perspective be preferable to yours?>

“I cannot advocate that you stay a child forever.”

Camille's forevers were detestable too. But more frustrating was that he was right. Not that Camille was ever wrong. Because he was right even when he was wrong. Because if Zachary chose between himself now and himself five years ago, he'd rather be himself now. So why wouldn't it work the same way in five more years? But all that might mean was, becoming accustomed to being a cuckoo.

Zachary released his grip, folded his hands behind him, and shifted back. Camille sat up and said, “You've the makings of a perfectly fine young man.”

<I didn't come because I wanted to see you. I was weak and I was running from pain.>

“Precisely. You can confess that.”

<Only because I'm contradicting you until I win.>

“And that,” Camille laughed. “Exquisitely intimate sentiments, these. Are you angry?”

No. Actually.

If anything, he felt calm. Something deeper than the soporific warmth, or even Camille's bright presence, filled this room with tranquillity.

Are you okay Zach? Do you need to lie down Zach? You're not weak Zach. It's difficult for anyone Zach. Don't touch that, Zach. Come see this, Zach. You're great Zach! Very good Zach! So clever Zach! So talented Zach!

None of that here. Just Camille, his patience, and respect. To the idea that Zachary understood even a modicum of a fuck of who he was and what he was doing. Or that, even if he didn't, it would take only loose guidance for him to ask the questions to figure it out on his own.

And somehow, just by that alone, it seemed far more possible that, the next time it happened, the next time hatred and rage and whatever the fuck else seething in his stupid broken-ass brain showed up to say, hey, go strangle Camille, kick your minder, throw a brick at the Father, cut her, overdose, steal drugs, switch the bottles, tell them you hate them, scream, whatever this evil fucking thing in him was, somehow, he could beat it just a smidge more easily.

<Adam's neck was an apple?> asked Zachary.

Camille smiled, and the discussion continued.

When Zachary returned, he was tucked in bed and moonlight shone in through the window. The fire assaulting his nerves had not abated, but as it always did after seeing Camille, dulled. Rather than outright napalm, his skin seared with the kiss of hot metal. Zachary smushed his pillow to his face and groaned.

His eyes adjusted once he ditched the pillow. Shapes rose out of the darkness, cast in bleach-white and robin-blue so brightly that daylight may as well have flooded the room. Zachary smiled at the plate of dried apricots on his bedside table, plus the pills and glass of water beside it. Shortly after guzzling everything, the burning dimmed into a repugnant itch, as though his body were submerged in maggots. ...Workable!

Zachary found the dinner he missed in the fridge. That was the thing about the Arboretum. He could never feel time passing accurately there. Which usually didn't matter, since everyone was accustomed to Zachary being randomly unresponsive. Except when it lasted too long. Then everyone was scared and he couldn't explain it right and they kept him in the ward, so, that was something.

After heating and eating his dinner, Zachary found himself restless. Waste his health tossing in bed despite feeling rested, or find something pleasant to do?

So the quiet, chilly gloom of night-time Nine Columbines welcomed him outside. The people were missing, in their beds so devoutly, and in that isolation, he felt unstoppable.

From his feet to the walls, lawns stretched into gardens into cultivated forest. He passed beds of tulips and zinnias, their petals tucked shut and shy, to reach a small bridge spanning a shallow stream. Seated, he splashed his feet in the cool water and let the crisp air purge grime from his chest. For several minutes he focused on breathing, long and slow, under the starlight and over the stream.

In the bushes by the riverbank there slept a pair of ducks. Zachary smiled and inspected from afar the flecked patterns on their soft necks and bellies. Halfway through approaching them he realised waking them would be inconsiderate, shrugged, and redirected his path to a grand crabapple tree.

Fruits like baubles decorated the branches high overhead, bobbing enticingly against the soft breeze. From a hollow under a tangle of roots, Zachary withdrew a knife.

He tossed the knife skyward. Her name was Cathy, for catechism. She twirled on the air like a svelte bitty gymnast and pierced a fat fruit on her blade – plunged so deep that her tip penetrated out the apple's rear, and severed the twig supporting. Gravity returned her to Zachary leaden with a bushel of crabapples.

Knife still in, he mouthed the skewered crabapple until its stem lodged between his teeth. Bit, crushed, sucked. Two hot bloody pinpricks speckled Cathy's blade. Cheeky girl.

Zachary licked juices and blood from his lips, but as he ate fruits pleasantly boredom seeped in, and with boredom came the cognizance of maggots profaning his body.

Postpone it! His hand jolted to the tree-trunk where he desperately fondled the bark. Rough. Bumpy. Even with sweat lubricating his hands, little wooden ridges caught on the dips of his fingerprints. Chunks protruding like scabs. All stuck like leeches. His nails closed around the bark.

Pick it off. Pick it off. Pick it off pick it off pick it off pick it off pick it off pick it off pick it off rub it in. Rub it in rub it back in rub it in rub it in rub it back in rub hard make it bleed chunks bleed chunks bleed chunks bleed chunks so its own bark its own body hurts it, crazy, hilarious. Cunt. Cunt. Sick little cunt.

Zachary set Cathy's blade over his fingers, vicegripped as they were on the bark. Though the painkillers fogged her kiss, the visual of blood cascading down his knuckles drew a smooth exhale from him regardless. The only thing stronger than his urge to continue was his shame in what he'd just done.

He needed to be stronger than this.

Needed to be.

But that'd be someday.

For now, he'd be patient. 

He lapped the blood from his knuckles and praised himself for stopping at this. As entertainment, he smeared Cathy with the drippings. Moonlight danced over her body and blood intermittently, kaleidoscopic, as he tilted her about.

What to do next, he wondered as he dumped Cathy back hidden under the roots.

Garden, maybe. He'd been interrupted, after all. But why indulge in something he could do anytime, when he could be doing something restricted to night? When darkness rendered everyone but him blind, and himself invisible?

Across the fields in the distance, a hospital building spread its wings. Zachary's friends slept in those wards. His closest, after Camille.

Why not visit?

Why not indeed. He was already partaking in weaknesses tonight.

He left the apples by the ducks, aware of how waking to apricots gladdened him, before leaving.

The ensuing trek found Zachary staring at the automated doors to the hospital, their glass so clear as to seem more feasibly absent than present. Zachary stepped through to a dim linoleum hallway choked with stale air and the reek of disinfectant. The hall terminated at Zachary's destination – a door, locked.

Nine Columbines belonged to him. To him nothing here was barred. Shadow was his veil. Veiled, he was untraceable.

The door opened under his fingers, and the alarms kept mute.

Sterile moonlight, steel gurneys, square cupboard upon square cupboard inset in a grid along the wall. Zachary's heart thrummed. The cupboard he slid open sighed frigid air upon his front, a greeting from the occupant, a plastic-sheeted lady cadaver. Instantly endeared, Zachary wrested away her coverings and straddled her waist zealously.

His thumbs rubbed circles over her gaunt cheeks, until the oils on her skin clung to his fingertips. When he squeezed her jaw, her tongue lolled out strangely. He slipped two fingers into her mouth, exploring, over the ridges of her teeth, along the fleshy bumps of her palate. The way her cheeks bulged as he poked around her cold, dry hole captivated him more than any ducks or apples or stream could.

Zachary popped his fingers out and fingered the sutures along her collarbone, then dipped his hand into his shirt to trace the gashes marring his own chest. He didn't constrain his smile. Meeting someone with the same ideas, same interests, same fashion. A cohort. A tribesman. A canvas to fill with himself. The rush of glee to his fetid heart was intoxicating.

He gripped her shoulders, laid his ear to her chest. 

Nothing.

She was freezing.

His bloodstream thundered in his ears, against the silence.

Temptation bid him to stay like this. But she wouldn't cool him; he would warm her. Then he would hate her, and hit her, and curse her for not doing what he wanted, but then she was already dead so he couldn't strongarm her and that would just piss him off more.

He didn't understand his stupid fixation with this. Why he would get so angry if that happened. God knew he'd done similar before, to the living. Back in pediatrics. The monitors shrilling, beeping. And his head on some little kid's chest. Just listening. Until the doctors came. Then they fixed him. Those boys were warm the whole time.

So what the fuck was his problem.

It was probably just him being evil.

After all, he was a monster. Bitten by a vampire and rotten from the core up. Was he such an idiot as to fear becoming what he already was? No. He just liked pretending otherwise so he didn't have to skulk in darkness forever. Where he belonged. It was all profanely vile of him.

And within a day, within an hour, he could wholeheartedly denounce this confession, forget he even made it, and say with the exact same tongue, “I've made great progress and there's hope for me yet.” The entire world would cheer and agree and whoever didn't would earn his contempt. Because Zachary was not a good or sane person and one day he would definitively betray Camille.

Water was wet, grass was green, and in a single moment of weakness, Zachary would undermine all the love and compassion that had ever made him resemble a human being.

The first sob vomited itself up; he then shut the cupboard, and wept.

A black door loomed in the morgue, opposite the one from which he entered.

Pitch darkness gaped behind it. Not even Zachary, who thrived at night, could tell what it concealed.

He knew, of course, that this was a tunnel to the crematorium. They built it far away so the wind would blow the smoke west, into the desert, and not over Columbines or into the city. That's why they called the desert Dahjimet, Dark Sands in the old tongue, Valley of Ashes in Birds, and why the dunes were black.

His eyes still stung. Blood crusted his hands. Standing at the threshold between the morgue and the tunnel, it felt that, should he step forward, then glance back, hell would close its mouth behind him and he would never return.

Fear had always curbed his curiosity. Shaky breaths and wobbly knees foretold of another breakdown. Exactly. Exactly. The darkness in his gut, or the darkness of a tunnel. He could dread both, but conquer one.

A roller conveyer ran from the morgue down the left side of the tunnel, into the blackness. Zachary took a breath and set his hand on its metal rim. His lifeline. And though he tried to convince himself to trust it, he couldn't move his feet, couldn't still his heart, and couldn't dare look away from his hand.

What little light did reach the room glittered between Zachary's fingers, on the steel. Small flecks glistened brighter and dimmer when Zachary tilted his head, the way stars twinkled against the night sky.

Yes. Exactly like that, Zachary thought.

And light began radiating from the steel down the conveyer, dim to most, but bright to Zachary. Whatever abyss had scared him vanished as the interior of a long and windowless, but otherwise ordinary sandstone tunnel resolved itself before him.

Zachary gazed on.

On.

Short relief for long disappointment. Resigned, he released his hand.

His footsteps echoed brilliantly, to the end.

The exit he found, another set of doors, juddered rather than opened for him. Confusion thankfully eclipsed any irritation he might have felt, but just as he lacked anger, he also lacked curiosity. 

He'd traversed the tunnel to kill time, to be doing something. Obstacles were less impediments than indications that he ought to change course.

But, failing to think of anything more immediately doable, Zachary soon boarded the conveyer and winched himself through a small hole in the wall, presumably the entrance for corpses. He emerged into a silver room, dominated by six monolithic structures spanning the ceiling to floor that he quickly inferred were the furnaces.

Zachary hopped off the conveyer to survey this new territory. White coats and rubber gloves hung on hooks aside many mechanical panels and buttons he considered fiddling with. One adjacent room was lined with shelves packed full of labelled boxes and bottles, another seemed an office, and the third was clearly a chapel.

Outside the windows at the end of the aisle, aside the grand double-doors, bushes and trees thrashed in the wind. Zachary stared dumbly. Which chapel was this to have these bushes in its garden?

A whole new piece of the grounds, thought his brain.

No, it's not, thought his gut.

Realisation, to stupefaction, to disbelief – to racing heart and surging lungs and veins blazing like incandescent wires. His sweaty hands scrabbled with the doorlock as uselessly as an animal's paws, until something clicked and the doors burst out and the wind raked over his hair.

The air stank of sand.

Momentum pitched Zachary forward and poor footing toppled him down. Pavement thunked against his chest but the fall killed none of his energy, so mindlessly he crawled with fingers splayed. Sandstone below him turned to lawn turned to sand – turned to nothing, as he peered over the cliffside.

Far below, there sprawled a city.

Between gustfuls of hair, landmarks flashed in and out of view. His heart named them quicker than his brain saw them: a grand river dotted with docked sailboats, cradling the city like a shepherd's crook – Katani. Across the valley upon the hills, a line of domed towers bearing red banners of the Czjeir Shadar – Clearwater University. A massive square of steepled buildings glittering with gemmed mosaics and crystalline waterworks – God's Court. And a tower shooting beyond the clouds into the invisible heavens – Arboretum.

Yes. He knew this city.

Its name was Amsherrat.

Zachary whipped his head south.

The distant steeples of Nine Columbines' clinical ward peeked imperiously over the walls.

Over the walls.

Zachary, after years of training, considered himself skilled at recognizing his feelings. Once he could name them, he could kill them, bind them, control them like the simpering demons they were. But the bomb in his chest burst through its bridle, demanding he grope the ground for some rock or stone to throw – it ended up being a fistful of sand. He spluttered when the wind promptly huffed it back in his face.

It existed.

Of course. It existed. He'd always known it existed. The same way he knew oceans and planes and lions and zebras existed.

Things that ran parallel to his life. He'd never experience them. 

He was just too sick.

Except that, now, here, with Amsherrat so small beneath him, he could take the whole city in the palm of his hand.

The laughter that shredded the night was vulgar, demented, and his. Even as he caged his mouth behind his fingers, he let the giggles bubble until they sounded properly mirthful. He needed to tell Camille. Go down there, partake in a thousand new things, and return with an excellent story for Camille.

His foot was halfway to probing the cliffside for a foothold, when he thought, wait.

Stop. What was he feeling?

Curious. Excited. Powerful. Impatient.

Very impatient. Every second of reflection exacerbated the itch to swandive off the cliff straight into the Katani.

Failures of discipline, unstable outbursts, childish escapes from anything hard or scary. With no eyes to supervise him, how many had he had in the past 24 hours? More than he could count, actually.

Some of those things he couldn't help. But others he could have, were he, as Camille termed it, initiated.

He fell into sober silence. Without his heart blazing like a kiln, the wind's chill finally slapped him.

He wasn't ready. It was that simple. Just like how he'd learned to walk, or say thank you, or pot a plant, there were skills he needed to develop and lessons he needed to learn before he would truly gain anything from Amsherrat. Because even if he did go now, his only takeaway would be pride for having done something he shouldn't. Shallow feelings. Demons.

In fact, if he did study enough, if he did grow healthy enough, that the doctors would willingly let him see the city, they would probably be elated.

And, well, he wasn't sure how much he cared, but it was nice to think that such a thing could make him happy.

Zachary stepped back from the edge of the cliff. The first purples of dawn tinged the horizon.

He was back on the grounds before daybreak. With the first rays of the morning sun dancing through the water, he washed his hands in the stream.

Now he truly had something worth discussing with Camille.