Shards and Ashes

by Margaret Stohl

  1. R A M A

  Everything is loud in the air.

  Partly it is the wind. Partly it is the machine, the blades slicing the blue-black above him. Zhishengji are loud, even for sky choppers.

  Partly it is his heart, pounding itself into a broken arrhythmia. Beating itself literally to death.

  His breath in his ears.

  The boy, Rama, sits on his scuffed boot heels, staring out into the dying day and the growing night. Beneath him, the faded sprinkling of lights that was the Southlands, that is what remains of the Southlands, spreads like the scattered beads of a snapped necklace.

  Behind it, in the distant black, is the ocean. Haiyang, as they call it. There are no lights there at all. It looks like death.

  Siwang. The great darkness.

  How Rama imagines it.

  Vivid. Lightless. Gone.

  Rama steadies himself, catching his breath as the chopper twists and the metal floor panel slides backward, swinging his legs out from under him. They dangle through the open shaft, and he grips the open metal edge that much more tightly.

  The lights below him blur. He rubs his eyes.

  Don’t be afraid.

  It’s too late to be afraid.

  Everything seems important in the air.

  No. It’s not that.

  It’s me.

  I am important in the air.

  Being above something, becoming larger, makes everything smaller. But it’s an illusion; Rama knows this. It’s optics. Perspective.

  I am as small as that, he thinks. I am a scattered light on the ground. I am one of many.

  Why should this one drop mean more than any other? Why should one life be different?

  Why should mine?

  “Ready?”

  The pilot shouts back to him. Rama only nods. He’s ready to jump. He’s been planning this jump for months. Nothing about this night is a surprise. But that’s not the question.

  Is he ready?

  Is it worth it?

  To live, and to die?

  This jump is expensive. They don’t call it getting high for no reason, and he’s at least a thousand feet higher than he planned.

  The chopper lunges in the opposite direction.

  “Goupi!” the pilot curses. “No offense, kid. If you’re gonna jump, you gotta go now.”

  Rama reaches into the pocket of his orange jumpsuit, pulling out an envelope. Paper, like in the old days. The time before now, when there were things like minutes and hours and days and weeks and years.

  The luxurious, indifferent time of time. The era of eras. The epoch of epochs. When life was quantitative, not qualitative. Something to be measured, not judged.

  Not dropped.

  Not bartered.

  Not sold.

  Back then, Rama thinks, I would still have my whole life ahead of me. How old would I be? Seventeen? Eighteen? In man years?

  Rama sighs and turns back to the pilot. “Can you give this to—my xinfeng—to whoever? Whoever comes for me?” Rama stumbles over the words, because he isn’t sure.

  Who will be left? Who will come?

  Who will care enough to waste a precious tear, a millimeter of water in an economy of small waters, on him?

  Probably Jai. Jai will come.

  He hopes she will, for her as much as him.

  The pilot nods, without even turning back to look. “Stick it in the box with the others.”

  Rama looks behind him, where a metal postbox sits welded to the chopper floor. He flips open the lid marked XINFENG to see a hundred letters, no different from his own.

  Nothing is different for anyone, not anymore. Not now.

  I am different, thinks Rama.

  I am ready.

  It is finished.

  I was here, and I will be here no longer. But as I drop, I will have that. I will have the rush, and the pounding, and the burst of adrenaline in my blood. And I will know that before I died, I was really alive.

  I lived.

  Even I could afford that.

  Then, as deliberate as a last gesture can be, he folds a photograph of a girl into the paper, and drops it into the box.

  “You want a parachute? I know it’s kind of pointless, but it makes some people feel better. On the way down.”

  The pilot turns to look at Rama, but he isn’t there.

  He’s slipping through the darkness, searching for the end of his story, feetfirst and falling.

  He’s a hundred yards down before the pilot can even turn the chopper around, back toward the base.

  Wondering, as he does every night, how long it will be until he’ll be making that last drop for himself.

  The pilot shivers and heads for home. He has a wife and a child and a love for meat and beer.

  It is nearly enough, while he has it.

  To keep the drops and his thoughts away.

  2. J A I

  There it is.

  I hold Rama’s letter in my hand.

  The cat looks up at me expectantly. Purring. Perhaps she has missed him, too.

  Mao is a stupid cat.

  I have been waiting, watching for it, ever since he left for the Mojave Desert last week. I could see it in his eyes. He hadn’t told me his count, but I wasn’t a fool. I knew how he’d been living. I’d added up the late nights, the motorcycle trips, the sudden interest in mountain climbing. The thick rolls of tobacco leaves, bound in rice paper. The cheap Mexicali beer.

  Rama was burning through beads like nobody’s business. Like he wanted it that way. Like he wanted to go.

  It was my business, though. I have learned this through experience. It is always our business, the ones left behind. The business of the dead belongs to the living.

  I slice open the folded paper, smiling to myself. Paper. Of course, paper. Old paper, from trees, not rice. Rama would have liked that. He would have combed the off-market shops and dealers until he found some.

  Our mother was like that as well. Before she dropped. There was something about dropping that made everyone anachronistic. We looked for what was old about our lives, what came before. What things endured.

  Because we could not.

  Words, the few we could remember.

  Bread, when we had it.

  Babies, when they surprised us, finding their way to life in spite of every modern manner of escaping them.

  The sun and the dirt and the sky, though the thick brown layer of toxins in the air made it difficult to see, sometimes. The Yanwu never clears over the Southlands, that’s what they say. It only turns our brown skin browner, our lungs blacker.

  The old things matter more, when you’re dropping.

  That’s what I’ve been told. That’s what it seems like, to me. I have no one to ask, now that Rama’s gone.

  He was the last of my family to go. His necklace used to be as long as mine, as full of teardrops. We wept for our parents together. There was him, before, and now there is only me.

  I shiver, looking at the paper without seeing it. I knew what it was. Dropletters were a painful burden. Everyone wrote them, everyone left them. It was a commonly held custom to burn them. That I could do.

  I don’t know if that means I have to read it.

  I don’t know if I want to.

  Instead, I push my way into the smallest of the quiet, empty rooms in my quiet, empty quarters.

  “Come on,” I say to myself, and the cat. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Inside the tiny room, the room where my family’s secrets had always been hidden, there is only one object. An enormous cabinet.

  That’s where I keep it.

  That’s where we’d always kept them.

  Hidden inside the top drawer of the big blue cabinet, in a box lined with velvet, in a pouch lined with satin.

  I ignore the empty pouches next to it, crumpled inside empty boxes. The ones left holding nothing but empty strings.

  Not now, I think.

  Never.

  I turn
my attention back to the only true thing left in the cabinet.

  “It’s beautiful,” I breathe, opening the drawer and taking the pouch with both hands. I’m talking to myself, just as I always do. Every time I come to see my necklace.

  I would never let anyone else see it.

  My secret.

  I smooth it in my lap, crouching in the heap of clothes piled on the bed. I immediately forget everything but the pouch, as soft as water in my hands. Perfect. Cool. I wish I was the pouch. Or the box. Or even the big blue drawer.

  I wish I was the thing that held my necklace of raindrops safe, never spending it, never losing it. I wish I’d keep it inside me always, the way the pouch does, never threatened in any way at all.

  Never threatening.

  Never anything.

  How do I feel? Scared. Small. Like there is nothing I can do that will ever be worthy of the treasure inside that satin purse.

  I can’t let myself think how much treasure is inside it.

  And I can’t let anyone else know.

  I slide to my heels next to the dresser and close my eyes, crumpling the letter in my hand.

  Damn him. Damn him for leaving. Damn him for wanting to leave.

  It is left to me. Time to mourn, again. Like before. Like always.

  As I did for my parents.

  As I did for Hana and Issa.

  And now Rama.

  The tears slide down my cheeks, surprising me.

  I did not know tears could be so cold. The coldness of my tears frightens me. I stop crying.

  Instead, I open my letter and begin to read it to the cat. Just as I did the four that came before.

  Rama is waiting for me.

  3. R A M A

  My sister.

  I know. I understand.

  You are angry. You think I am weak.

  I am.

  I am unmoored, as lost as the little boats in the harbor after the floods.

  Ropeless. Rudderless. Anchorless.

  I can’t live my life like you, if you can call what you do living. I can’t hide away in our chambers, wasting my days and nights.

  I know life has a cost. I know adventures are expensive.

  You can get hurt, you can die, you can drop.

  I know.

  I know everything you want to scream at me right now.

  I don’t care.

  I had to see for myself.

  I had to go.

  In the last year, I saw every phase of the moon, from every continent on the planet. I shivered on the frozen ground in the middle of a wolf pack before the dawn, listening to them howl and scream at each other. I followed the curve of a river down falls and through gorges. I stood in the path of a mother bear. I painted chalk circles on a sacred elephant. I ran with the bulls down the streets of a crowded village. I watched the sunrise with a beautiful woman.

  It was worth it.

  All of it.

  Once I determined to blow through my life, drop by drop, I knew I could not look back. I could not stop.

  Every day of the last year was a transaction. I knew, every time I handed another precious drop into a Counter, that I was going to leave you, and soon.

  The thing I realized was, it didn’t matter when I left. Not to us, our story. The bond, my heart, yours—everything between us had already happened.

  Has happened.

  You’re big sister; I’m little brother.

  You will always be my sister. In death and in life. That was never going to change. It hasn’t now. But the rest of my life needed to. It had to begin.

  I know I was your younger brother. I know you were supposed to drop first. But Jai, you’re not going to. You’re too afraid.

  Let me give you this one gift. Let me tell you what I have learned.

  Don’t be afraid to live.

  Your life will be long, but it won’t be life.

  I have loved someone. I have been loved. I have been here, everywhere.

  I haven’t left a mark on the world, but is that so bad? Considering how deeply the world has marked me?

  Know this.

  When I drop tonight, I will be thinking of you.

  I’m not scared.

  I’m ready.

  And I hope you will find your way to your own last drop, before your beads leave you to drop in your bed alone, a thousand years from now.

  If nothing changes, and you keep going like this, you will. Live forever.

  But eternity at what price, big sister?

  I crumple the letter in my hand and hold it toward the candle.

  The edge of the envelope catches on fire, and I drop it into the brass bowl in the center of the room.

  The cat and I watch as my brother explodes into a final flame.

  I try to think of something to say, something important, something befitting a life and a death like my baby brother’s.

  My mind is completely blank, and all I can do is cry. I can’t bring myself to burn the rest of the paper, his paper, and I fold it into my pocket.

  Good-bye, Rama.

  Zaijian, little brother.

  And peace.

  4. J A I

  I lock the door behind me, sliding my c-card through the slit above the handle one last time. I straighten my ancient army jacket, buttoning it over my clothes. It warms me, even if the edges are frayed. It used to belong to my father.

  Then Rama.

  Now everything belongs to me. I don’t want it, any of it.

  Everything is heavy, a lot to bear. Too much to carry, or even remember.

  I look both ways before I cross the busy center street of Pinminku, my ghetto. Scooters and cars and cats scatter like noisy cockroaches as I step into the street. The Southlands, where I live, are full of ghettos like mine. And Pinminku is even more full of zuifan, neighborhood criminals who will steal your drops as easily as your coins. Not the greatest people to run into.

  I reach with my hand into my left pocket, fingering the bare length of broken knife blade I hide in the cloth, sewn into my jacket.

  I have to protect myself now.

  I am all I have.

  I stay in the shadows at the side of the long, straight roads of the city. Over in the fringe, the fruit and vegetable sellers shout as I pass.

  I don’t even look at them. I can’t afford it.

  There is a market for drops like mine. Long life for the wealthy and the ruthless.

  I have to be careful.

  I have a necklace. My Xianglian. That’s not a secret.

  We all have one, everyone does, in Pinminku and all the ghettos of the Southlands. A necklace of raindrops, that’s how I think of them. Standard issue, my Xianglian, right at birth. They’re not made of raindrops, not really, though I couldn’t tell you what they are made of. Not even my father knew that, and I used to think he knew everything. But I have always thought of it as my necklace of raindrops, ever since my mother read me a bedtime story about an actual necklace of raindrops.

  As I duck around the corner, I try to remember.

  I can’t recall the story, not exactly, but the way she told it went something like this: There was a girl who had a necklace of raindrops. Each drop was powerful. Each drop had a different power.

  One by one, the girl used the drops, and the drops dissolved or disappeared. I can’t recall.

  When the story ended, the girl had what she wanted, but the necklace was gone. At least that’s how I remember it.

  This is like that. Only not quite so happy. More like the reverse:

  When the necklace is gone, the story ends. At least, my story ends.

  This is how my necklace story goes:

  I have a necklace of raindrops, only it’s not made of raindrops, and the raindrops don’t have powers. All they have is time. And I can spend them as I choose, but when they’re gone, my life is over, and I will die.

  I find I am standing in front of the building where I work. It is still early, but I am even earlier. I have little else to do.
br />   I swipe my card, this time my e-card, through the doorway. I wait as the door recites my numerical code, swinging open without another greeting.

  One Nine Six Seven.

  Rama used to tease the door, calling it different names every time we passed through.

  I try not to think about Rama.

  Rama is gone, I tell myself. There are things I need to do now. Because Rama is gone.

  I slip into the elevator and stand staring at the back of the faceless man in front of me.

  Here, on the South Coast, we have something called death. It means you have to leave when you run dropless. When your life thread—the thin, twisted chain that holds your drops together—is bare.

  You do not want that to happen, not anytime soon.

  But it does. It happens to all of us.

  Not all drops are the same. That would be ridiculous. But everything has a price, and everyone is expected to pay it.

  The elevator opens and I move toward my cubicle.

  I don’t nod at the people I pass.

  I don’t say hello.

  I am thinking of Hana.

  Hana is crazy, I mean, was crazy. She spent her drops like nobody’s business. My parents, of course, tried everything they could to get her to stop. They dropped her out of school, kept her in her room, told her to eat her vegetables. But nothing worked. Hana, she was what some people called a Lifer. A Shenghuo girl. They just go for it.

  Not me.

  I’m what you’d call a Keeper. A Baocun baby, a Saver. I’m the best at keeping my drops hidden away. You won’t ever see me doing anything that costs more than a drop at the most.

  I’ll be around forever.

  I’m the opposite of a Lifer.

  Even if what I’m leading is the opposite of a life.

  I slide into my cubicle at the Shenzen Life Insurance Company, a Fanzui Five Hundred Corporation. Regulated by the FEIC, the Federal Expiration Insurance Charter.

  There are no photographs, no plants. Nothing that reveals anything about me, Expiration Claims Processor #25883704222. A medium-level employee. With a medium complexion, medium-length hair, a medium build. Only notable for not graduating fifth form, not sitting for my upper-level exams, and not taking a single vacation day.

  Why should I? Where do I have to go? And who would notice if I was gone?

  Who would care?

  I wonder.

  I flip on my vid screen.

  As I wait, the screen is blank, black.