Boys of Blur

  “Smell of skunk,” Cotton said.

  “Can you kill him?” Charlie asked.

  “I have killed the Gren many times,” said Lio. “When he is weak and young. But when he is ancient and strong, he fells me.”

  “I don’t know what kind of roots you’ve been chewin’,” Cotton said, “but you should stop. You’re not even making half sense.”

  “I am only the Lio of now. Not the Lio of then. There have been many.”

  Cotton laughed. “And lots of Stanks, too?”

  Lio looked back over his shoulder and stopped. “The Gren is many, but all of one soul and one Mother. Many devils, but one hunger, one hate. One Gren.”

  The air had continued to cool and the breeze had become a wind. As the cane walls swayed and rattled around them, Lio dropped into a crouch and scooped up two handfuls of soft, silty black muck.

  “All places have lespir.” He pressed the two handfuls together and let the dark earth trickle slowly between his fingers. “Soul. Spirit. The words are well but not perfect truth. You see the darkness of this earth? It is rich, men say.”

  He focused on Charlie, deep eyes almost hidden in the shadow beneath his helmet. “Rich with death. With life made silent, pooled, sleeping, and waiting to rush into any vessel—green cane, the iron tree, two boys. A dead man made diab—a devil. So many lives, where the many waters brought them, laid them down, and made them black earth. Every creature now breathing beneath the sun could fly from flesh and sleep in these earth beds, and the muck would grow no darker.”

  He brushed off his hands and stood. “Trees feed on slaves and kings. Cane rises up from forests and flocks and peoples. Where so much death is, life waits, and there is much power.”

  Lio inhaled slowly and leaned his head back, eyes closed, feeling the wind. The panther had disappeared while he was talking.

  Charlie shivered. He wanted to laugh and pretend like none of this could be real. Dead men? Life from the muck? But he had smelled that awful taint, and the sick memory of it was even in his bones. He looked at his cousin. Cotton’s eyebrows were as high as he could make them, and he’d sucked his chin in toward his neck.

  “You’re fighting Stanks over the muck?” Cotton asked. His lip twitched up at the corner.

  Lio raised his hands above his head, growing taller as he did. “Long ago, when men believed such things, when they searched for powers to awaken and serve, they found this place. Beneath the stars, they built their mounds. Priests woke and named the rich death in the muck. They died and walked again. They laid down love and took up hate. They became Gren.”

  Not far away, hidden in the cane, the panther screamed.

  Charlie jumped and yelled before he even knew what he’d heard. Cotton spun around, knees bent, ready to run, but not sure in which direction. Lio drew his rusty sword and turned slowly, pointing the notched and bent blade at the cane on both sides. He glanced up at the sun—it was low enough to paint cloud crowns with flame, not low enough to reach their bellies.

  “Gren have left the trees,” Lio whispered. “Beneath the sun’s fire.”

  “I don’t smell anything,” Cotton said. “We’d smell him, right?”

  Lio turned his back to the breeze and pointed downwind. Cane swayed and rustled on both sides of them, bending in the same direction, pointing with their bent green blades.

  “Kouri,” Lio said. “Go. Run. Kraze dike e koule.”

  “What?” Charlie began to back away, trying to see in every direction at once. Something could be invisible in the cane just five feet from him.

  Cotton was cocked and waiting to spring, like a frightened bird ready to fly. “No Creole,” Cotton said. “No Creole, no Creole, no Creole!”

  “Over the dike,” Lio said. “Down the dike, feet on the chalk stone. Straight out to the great tree—straight out! Through swamp and water. The great tree and no other. Go now. Run!”

  Off to the left, the panther screamed and cane clattered. Lio turned toward the noise. Behind him, the cane exploded. A huge shape with long human arms slammed into Lio’s back and rolled him to the ground.

  Cotton grabbed Charlie’s sleeve, jerking him away from the two snarling bodies and the horrible smell, dragging him into a run.

  Charlie’s legs should have been tired. He’d run much and eaten little. Smoke still scratched the insides of his throat and lungs. But something deeper was moving his legs now, something ancient and simple and stronger than stars. He was quick, not dead. Time was irrelevant as his legs chewed up the muck, as they strained and bit and spat, as the wind split around his face. He felt as fast as falling rain, his steps a spatter of heavy drops hitting almost at once.

  Cotton was beside and behind him—Charlie could hear his breathing, he could see the blur of his knees and feet. Together, they were flying between walls of swaying cane. They were alive.

  And then Charlie looked back. And in that moment, he didn’t feel fast at all.

  The dark shape racing behind them was faster. It wore a slashed panther’s head like a hood, and bloody panther skin flapped and snapped behind it like a cape as it ran.

  Charlie yelled. There were no words, but Cotton understood and surged forward. They reached an intersection between fields and Cotton turned hard. Charlie slipped, grabbed at the ground with both hands, and just barely kept his feet. Yelling, he put his head down and sprang forward, digging with frantic feet like he was trying to turn the whole world beneath him.

  Ahead, Cotton’s strides were short but furious.

  Charlie heard chuffing behind him. Heavy feet were punching the earth. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cover his head, fall to the ground, and vanish. His heart was beating against spikes of terror. He was the rabbit. And he knew he was caught.

  Pain.

  Something hard and sharp swiped Charlie’s right ankle. He felt his right leg swing behind his left. Shin slammed into calf. Charlie rose, floating, his legs spinning to the side, his head and shoulders dropping to the other. He threw up his arms and felt his elbows drag through the muck. His head was where his feet should have been. And he wasn’t done spinning.

  Muck flew. The ground folded and flipped him—knee to jaw, knee to cheek, teeth to tongue. As Charlie tumbled to a stop, his nose filled with stench, and anger erupted through the pain. He hated the world. He wanted it smashed. Every sunny day. Every laugh. Every father. Shatter it all even if he was shattered with it.

  And then he saw Molly in his mind. The stench would take even her.

  “No.” Charlie spat the word into the dirt. He saw Mack and his mother. “No,” he said again.

  Two hot hands grabbed the sides of his face from above. They twisted hard, rolling him onto his back.

  Charlie kicked against bony legs. He grabbed at the hands on his face and felt his nails break. He gagged on mud and blood draining into his throat, all while staring into hard blue eyes and a young man’s face painted with cracking mud, looking down at him from beneath a bloody rotting hood of panther skin.

  “Stank!”

  A rock hit the man in the shoulder and bounced away.

  “Leave my cousin alone! Let him go!”

  The Stank looked up. Another rock floated past, but this time too high.

  The Stank opened his mouth and his upper lip curled, baring overly large, overly white teeth. Charlie thought he was snarling, but the lip curled too far, too high. The man was actually smiling.

  “Cotton, go!” Charlie shouted. He twisted and kicked, but the Stank didn’t even glance down.

  “Shut up, coz!” Cotton said. “I’m not going anywhere till this freak is gone.”

  The Stank ducked as the next rock caught him in the side of the head. When he looked back up, his eyes were angry. They looked into Charlie’s. One large hand moved to Charlie’s throat. The other picked up the rock Cotton had thrown. It raised the rock high.

  Charlie’s head felt like a blood balloon ready to burst. His blurring eyes focused on the gray stone instead of on t
he man holding it. Cotton was shouting.

  The big arm dropped.

  A sleek panther caught the mud-caked wrist in her teeth. Her body slammed into the Stank’s, and the two tumbled off of Charlie.

  Cotton was still shouting, but now he was also dragging Charlie through deep, soft soil. He was pulling Charlie to his feet. He was pushing Charlie, shoving Charlie, trying to make Charlie run down the narrow lane between the fields.

  Charlie’s ears were ringing. His eyes wouldn’t focus.

  His right ankle was all fire.

  “Ow,” Charlie said. He couldn’t even hear himself.

  Cotton was tugging at his wrists. Cotton was trying to run.

  “Ow!” Charlie yelled. Still nothing.

  The fire in his ankle was spreading up his calf toward his knee. Somehow, he was jogging. And then running—but not straight. He veered toward one wall of tall green sticks and then back toward another. There were many green sticks on both sides, and he didn’t know why, and he didn’t have time to stop and find out, because he was running. And the more he ran, the more the flames inside his leg spread through the rest of him, and the more the stench faded behind him.

  He didn’t know how they made it to the hill. It was a big hill, almost a wall. The other boy was trying to make him climb it.

  “No,” Charlie said, and he knew the other boy heard him, because he stopped and looked angry and afraid. He couldn’t remember the other boy’s name. Charlie shut his eyes and went looking for thoughts in the darkness inside his skull. He found one and opened his eyes.

  “René,” Charlie said.

  The boy stopped yelling. Shiny tear stripes lined his dark cheeks.

  “René,” Charlie said again. “Don’t cry. It’s French for girl.” He’d heard that somewhere. He smiled and blinked slowly.

  The boy punched Charlie in the face. Charlie staggered backward and fell down. The boy stood over him, but he was looking around, not down at Charlie.

  “René,” Charlie said. “French for stupid. Fact.”

  Cotton looked down at his stupid white step–second cousin. Charlie was a mess. His right leg was swelling up nice and fat beneath the knee. His tongue was bleeding, his leg was bleeding, and now his nose was bleeding.

  They were halfway up the dike. The sun was almost beneath the clouds and dropping fast. Friendly panther or not, Cotton was not going back into those fields in the dark. Not with that … Gren anywhere near.

  Charlie smiled. “René,” Charlie said. “French for stupid. Fact.”

  Cotton punched his cousin again. Hard enough to hurt his own hand. He shook it loose while Charlie fell back in the grass, unconscious and gargling. He might feel bad later, but this was easier right now.

  Plus, people who called him that got punched. Minimum.

  Cotton grabbed Charlie by the ankles and backed his way up the dike as quickly as his cousin’s weight would let him. At the top, he dropped into the grass beside Charlie, breathing harder than he had when running from the Gren.

  Flat on his back, arms thrown wide, Charlie opened his eyes. Above him, the falling sun was burning its own fields. Dark clouds sailed over the dike on fiery bellies.

  Charlie’s leg felt as heavy and thick as a log. He could smell traces of the Gren’s rot still on him. He could smell fermenting flowers somewhere nearby. The breeze traced cool trails across his face and arms, carrying hints of salt, which could only mean sea.

  Staring at the sky, Charlie felt like he was still floating, like he still hadn’t landed since his legs had been swept out from under him. Above the clouds, where the sky was marching from blue to night, he could see pricks of light—whispers that marked worlds, suns, and galaxies. As he stared, they grew brighter and bigger. They filled the blue and burned through the clouds and scattered sparks when they collided with sunlight at the bottom.

  Charlie’s stomach turned and he shut his eyes hard. Something inside him knew he couldn’t trust what he was seeing. He was sick. Or hurt. Or both.

  “Charlie,” Cotton whispered. “Charlie, you have to get up. I can’t drag you anymore.”

  Charlie squinted. Cotton was on his belly beside him. He looked frightened.

  “We have to go, coz. Can’t stay here.”

  Charlie nodded. He held his breath and rolled onto his side. His leg screamed, but he fought his way up onto his hands and knees.

  “Good,” Cotton said. “Stay low, and follow me.”

  Charlie looked back over his shoulder at the cane fields that stretched away from the base of the dike. A dark shape in a panther cape stood motionless at the edge of a field.

  “Cotton …,” Charlie said.

  Cotton swore. Charlie threw his arm around Cotton’s shoulders, and together they limped across the top of the dike. Charlie saw no lake. He saw veins of dark water—tangled pools reflecting sky that disappeared beneath shaggy trees, and a canal like a moat that lined the base of the dike. The lake trees stretched away as far as Charlie could see.

  Staggering down the inside of the dike, Charlie slipped in yellow flowers. He tumbled and rolled, pulling Cotton after him. He didn’t remember standing back up, but he must have, because he was limping again, leaning on Cotton. They crossed an overgrown path. They slid over a thick rusty pipe. They reached the canal bank of jagged gray boulders packed with white shells.

  “There!” Cotton said, and he pointed across the canal. “The great tree. That cypress.”

  Charlie could see its scraggly head rising up above the others from somewhere back in the lake swamp, but he couldn’t remember why that mattered.

  Cotton was dragging him along the bank, staring at the ground as they went.

  “Chalk stone,” Cotton muttered. “Chalk stone, chalk stone, chalk stone.”

  Charlie looked back at the dike as a black shape rose above it. And then a second shape appeared beside it. Charlie blinked. Two of them. Like tombstones in the sky.

  “Stanks,” Charlie said.

  “Get on!” Cotton slid in front of Charlie, bent his knees, and looped Charlie’s arms around his shoulders. He levered Charlie up onto his back, and then he tried to run. Charlie’s feet dragged and bounced through grass and over rocks as Cotton grunted and groaned beneath him.

  Above them, the two tombstones dropped out of the sky and broke into a run. Their legs were long.

  “No!” Cotton shouted. “No, no, no!”

  Bones crunched beneath Cotton’s feet. Bones were everywhere, small and bleached and broken, spread in a wide halo around a smooth chalky stone in the grass.

  “Hey,” Charlie said.

  Cotton slid on the death stone, nearly dropped Charlie, and then faced the water. He stepped out onto the boulders on the bank, wobbling, rocking. Charlie saw a snake dart away.

  He heard snarling behind him.

  “Swim, coz!” Cotton screamed, and then jumped into the brown water. Charlie slid away from his cousin. Kicking one leg and dragging the burning one behind him, he flailed both arms, pulling himself through liquid.

  Hands were sure to close on his ankles. Heavy bodies were going to crush him from above.

  Charlie pulled harder, and the water cooled around him. It was getting deeper. He let himself drift on the surface. He filled his lungs and looked back at the bank. Cotton was doing the same. They were almost across the canal.

  Both Stanks stood on the grass just shy of the death stone. One was much taller and broader than the other. While Charlie watched, the tall one bent down and snatched a fat snake from the rocks. He raised a long arm, bare of everything but caked mud, and held the snake up in the air. Over and over, the snake struck his arm, but he didn’t so much as flinch. Finally, he closed his fist around the biting snake’s head and squeezed. Then the big Gren laid the dead but still writhing snake on the white stone.

  Cotton spat out a mouthful of water. “It was them,” he said. “On the stone. All those animals, all these months.”

  On the bank, the smaller Gren pulled a
long bone knife out of his belt and raised his arm to throw.

  The blade flew.

  Charlie dreamed.

  In his dream, an alligator ate his leg.

  In his dream, Molly wore a rotting panther skin and chased him around, laughing.

  In his dream, an old woman kissed him on the head and sang to him. She sang about love. She sang about running. About wind. About heroes and beauties and spicy rice. She sang about chains breaking and seas rising up to kiss the sun. But mostly, she sang about sleep. And when she did, he slept. And when he slept in his dream, he dreamed a new dream.

  In his new dream, he ran barefoot on a dirt path between fields of cane. The dirt was a strange powder of forests, of fish, of birds, of men and women and children and wolves, of huge reptiles, and of mushrooms. It swirled beneath him as he ran, and every grain sparked into white flame when he touched it, and the flames swirled up in a cloud behind him, and he laughed, because he knew Molly would laugh and because he felt like a comet. His flaming tail was made of life, and every spark told a story about every living thing that had ever been and every living thing that would ever be.

  Charlie laughed from the sheer joy of it, and he ran faster. His tail of sparks grew into a tornado, a hurricane, a galaxy of living dust, and still he ran.

  He looked back at the cloud of life behind him and saw it rising up from the cane higher and brighter than any field fire and its smoke. But also in the cloud, there was a writhing shape. It had many limbs and wings and heads and hates. It was as black as nowhere and as empty as never, and it was swallowing the cloud of sparks. A long arm of dark emptiness lashed out and whipped itself around Charlie’s ankle.

  Pain. Terror.

  In his dream, Charlie would scream.

  In his dream, the old woman would kiss him on the head and sing a different song, not about sleep. She would sing her song about spicy rice. Or the moon. Or a river. Or a tree with roots so deep that they grew straight through the whole world and became a forest on the other side.

  Charlie yawned. He could hear the rain. It sounded like there was a big puddle just outside his window. Molly would be happy. She would jump in the puddle in her bare feet because feet were meant to be in puddles and toes had been invented so that mud could squirt between them.