Of Metal and Wishes

  His fingers dance along my shoulder, and I freeze. They stroke at the boundary between the dress and my skin. His fingers smell of mushrooms and dark, damp places, and my stomach turns. “Oh, sir, I’m barely getting the hang of this typing. I’m not good at anything.”

  My voice sounds so small, almost a whisper, and it chokes off as he begins stroking up and down my neck in the way that makes me want to cry. I lean away slightly, but his fingers stick to my skin like they’re glued there. I want to run, but he would hunt me down, I’m sure. Like those big cats in the southern forest.

  He leans down and breathes his onion breath into my ear. “You’re such a little girl, Wen, aren’t you? Just a little girl.” His lips graze my hair, and I shudder.

  A thunderous crash from Mugo’s office shakes the floor.

  Mugo shouts a curse, and I turn to see him running back to his office. I rise from my seat and follow, wondering what on earth could have happened. I turn the corner to see him gaping at the wreckage. His enormous shelving system has collapsed, sending an entire wall of files and accounting books and knickknacks and papers crashing to the floor. It looks like a typhoon has swept through the place. The dusty air glitters with metal shavings as they flutter to the ground like the whirling seeds of elder trees.

  Mugo’s hands are in his thinning hair, and little growling noises are coming from his throat. “C-c-clean this up!” he shrieks at me.

  He vacates the office and leaves me alone for the rest of the day. I am so very thankful, because I have just been handed another day of reprieve from these things he wants to teach me that I don’t want to learn.

  I clean the mess with a song in my heart, and when it is the end of my workday, I escape as quickly as I can, leaving a note that I’ll be in early tomorrow to finish. Walking out of his office is like shedding a skin; I feel lighter and more powerful. I have a mission today, and I don’t have much time.

  I have to sell more dresses and make it to the apothecary before he closes for First Holiday. I need to get antibiotics for Melik. I have no idea what foulness was on the meat hook that speared him, but I’m quite sure it will make him very sick unless he has this precious medicine. My legs are like machine pistons as I climb the Hill, select two more of my finest dresses, sell them at cut rate to Khan the tailor, and jog to the apothecary’s shop.

  The sun is dipping low, a dim yellow ball in the haze of gray smoke on the horizon. The streets are beginning to fill with vendors from the countryside, ready to sell their wares to the people of the Ring. After I wheedle a large bottle of antibiotics from the apothecary, using nearly all my money and what little charm I have, I still have enough to purchase a meat bun from a hunched man with gnarled hands who seems to have the most popular cart on the street. Prizes in hand, I head back to the factory compound, my heart already starting to speed.

  I don’t recognize Jima at first. She steps out from one of the pink-light salons and pulls a hooded overcoat around her, but then raises her head and waves when she sees me. “Wen!”

  “Jima?” She’s so pale, and her cheeks are terribly sunken, although it’s been less than two weeks since I last saw her. “What are you doing here?”

  Her face twists a bit. “My family wouldn’t let me come home, so I live here now.” She looks up at the top floor of the salon, which leaves me with an uncomfortable twinge in my stomach.

  “Why wouldn’t your family let you come back?”

  Jima looks at me like I am a child. Then she rubs her stomach and looks down at it sadly. “Because they believe I’m an easy girl with loose morals who opens her legs for anyone.”

  Now I’m confused, because if she’s living above the salon, chances are that is exactly what Jima has become. My thoughts must be written all over my face, because Jima pinches my arm with a hard look on her face. “Onya told me you’re Mugo’s secretary now, so don’t look at me like that. If you’re not careful, you’ll be in my shoes soon enough.”

  She sniffs and brushes past me, sinking into the crowd before I can summon the words to call her back and apologize. With my thoughts in chaos, I trudge to the factory compound and wave to the guard, who wishes me a happy First Holiday and blows me a kiss. Everyone is a bit crazy on First Holiday.

  I am crossing through the compound’s square when I see Vie coming toward me, wearing her best purple dress, which hugs her plump, curvy figure. She’s flanked by Iyzu and Lati. My date. I duck my head and scoot across the square, but Vie is already calling my name. She catches hold of the back of my overcoat a second later.

  “Wen! What’s wrong with you? We went down to the clinic, but you weren’t there. Are you ready to go?”

  I bite my lip and look up at Lati, who is eyeing me like I’m a meat bun he’s just purchased off a cart. “I can’t go tonight. My father’s out of town and I have to tend to his patients.”

  Lati frowns. “His patients? But the men are all over the flu. Jipu was telling me everyone was back at work today except for that Noor . . .” His expression changes from puzzlement to anger.

  Vie looks up the path toward the old, ramshackle Noor dorms. “You cannot be serious, Wen.”

  “You can’t go in there,” Iyzu says. “They’ll rip your dress off and use you up while you scream.” He sounds almost eager, like he wishes he could watch.

  I stare at him. “No, they won’t. I’ve been there many times, and all they care about is taking care of one another and doing their work.”

  Lati and Iyzu look at me like I’ve announced that I work at a pink-light salon. I can only imagine what they’re thinking. I’m betting I’ll hear about it in the cafeteria tomorrow.

  Vie puts her hands on her hips. “Yes, they are such gentlemen. Like the one who tripped you and raised your skirts. Like that rust-haired one who dared to speak to you in front of the whole cafeteria. Why would you help him?”

  I cannot seem to hide my thoughts today; they are on my face for all to see. Vie’s eyes go wide. “Oh, no. No. You’re coming with me.” She reaches for my arm.

  I back away. “No, I’m not. He needs me, and I’m going.”

  Lati snatches my bag from my shoulder. “With this? What’s in here, anyway?” His thick fingers plunge into my satchel and come out holding the glass bottle of antibiotics.

  Everything in me goes still and hard. Melik’s life is in that bottle. I cannot allow this stupid boy to take it. “Give that back,” I say quietly.

  “So you can give it to the Noor? They’re pigs, and this is meant for people.” He has a weird, cruel smile on his face as he shakes the bottle a bit. I realize his good-natured face hides an ugly, twisted boy underneath.

  “They’re not pigs, and that is my property. Give it back.” My face is hot with anger. I wish I were eight feet tall and just as wide. I want to crush this boy.

  He tosses the bottle to Iyzu, who bobbles it in his hands playfully. When I lunge for it, he holds it up over my head.

  “Guys,” Vie says, and I can tell she feels uncomfortable, but she doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t tell them to give it back.

  “Oh, man, this is good,” Lati says. I whirl around to see him eating the meat bun he’s pulled from my bag. “Was this for him too?”

  “I’ll tell,” I say through gritted teeth. “Give it back or I’ll tell.”

  Iyzu leans forward, and I do not miss the menace in his posture. “And who, exactly, would you tell? Your father is just the doctor. He has no authority.”

  “Mugo.” I’m shaking now, my arms, legs, fists. I know what this means, this threat of telling Mugo. It means I would owe him, and that I would have to let him do things to me to make up for his troubles. So I’m hoping this threat doesn’t get back to him, and that these idiots are scared of him.

  Lati stops midchew, the bun gripped in his meaty fist. The juice is dripping between his fingers. I think he is scared of Mugo. But Iyzu i
sn’t intimidated. Not at all. He laughs. “Underboss Mugo hates the Noor as much as we do.”

  He tosses the bottle up, high enough for it to disappear into the night sky, and then laughs as I weave back and forth, trying to spot it. He shoves me lightly out of the way and raises his hands to catch it, but grasps empty air as another hand snatches the bottle from space.

  “This is hers,” Sinan says, tilting his head in my direction. He hands the bottle to me.

  For a moment I am terribly afraid for him, this skinny young boy who seems to have no fear except when it comes to his brother’s safety. The only thing he has on Lati and Iyzu is height—but they are both twice as wide as he is. They could kill him, and he doesn’t even look scared.

  Then I see why. We are surrounded.

  WHILE WE’VE BEEN BICKERING, the Noor have emerged from their dorms for their shift, and now there are several dozen of them staring at Lati and Iyzu with set jaws and fire in their eyes. Vie tugs my arm, insistent and desperate. But she’s not scared of Lati and Iyzu and their heartlessness—she’s scared of the Noor. “Let’s go,” she hisses.

  I rip my arm away from her, wondering why I ever called her a friend. I’m so mad at Vie that I want to slap her. “I’m not going anywhere. I have work to do.”

  Lati is looking at me so fiercely that I bet he is going to ask the Ghost to give me a terrible disease or make something heavy fall on my head. I’m not afraid of that, though, because I suspect I know the Ghost better than he does. The Noor are watching me with serious faces and chins held high, waiting for my response. I turn my back on Vie and the two cruel, idiot boys, and the Noor step off the path to allow me through. I look over my shoulder to see them closing ranks, blocking me from the view of my supposed friends. They are a solid wall of protection, and the only one who is looking at me is Sinan. Before I turn away, he places his hand on his heart and turns his palm to me.

  I lift my skirt and run for the dorms like someone’s chasing me, and I don’t slow down until I am in Melik’s room, because oddly enough, it feels like the safest place in the world right now—which isn’t saying very much.

  He is propped up against the wall, a sleeping pallet rolled behind him. In his hands is a book, but he closes it quickly and slips it under his pallet as I barge in. It’s cool in here tonight, dank. He has a work shirt draped over his shoulders, but beneath it I see the thick bandage dotted with blood. He gives me a questioning look as I step into the room, panting. I must look like a hunted rabbit, and suddenly I’m ashamed for bringing this to his doorstep. I take a deep breath. “Happy First Holiday,” I say in a cheerful voice that wavers on the last word. “Do the Noor . . . celebrate it?”

  “Happy First Holiday,” he murmurs. “And no, we don’t. Shouldn’t you be out enjoying the festivities?”

  I can’t stop the crazy laugh that bursts from my throat. “I tried to bring you a meat bun.”

  He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t ask me what happened to it. “My brother brought me some rolls from the cafeteria,” he says, holding them up. “They won’t let me starve.”

  Of course they won’t. The Noor take care of one another, and they seem to treasure Melik. “I’m glad,” I say. “I brought you medicine, and it shouldn’t be taken on an empty stomach.”

  “Wen always has medicine.” His smile is wry and has the pull of the moon. Like the tides, I flow straight toward him.

  He tries to drag a pallet over for me to sit on, but I bat his hand away. “You’ll pull your stitches. I do beautiful work. Don’t ruin it.” I glare at the spots of blood on his bandage.

  He looks down at himself. “I’ve tried to be careful. When will I be able to go back to work?”

  “Well, you have tomorrow off for the holiday, and then we’ll see. Can I look?”

  He nods and then watches my fingers as they peel back the bandage from his chest. My breath becomes faster as I realize how intimate this is, how close I am to him, how my hands are touching his naked chest. Last night he was half crazed with opium and pain, but right now he’s all here, and his skin is radiating warmth. I focus on the stitches, on the injured parts of him rather than the smooth cream-white flesh stretched over hard muscles. Those are none of my business.

  “It looks all right,” I say, sounding like I’ve just run the length of the compound.

  “You must be an amazing seamstress,” he says quietly.

  I secure the bandage again and sit back. “How would you know that?”

  He shrugs, wincing as it pulls his stitches. “Your dresses. They are so fancy. Like the daughter of a factory boss.”

  “And not the company doctor.”

  His eyes linger on the silky roses embroidered into the collar of my overcoat. “Did you make them yourself?”

  “My mother did.” I slip the coat off to reveal my brown work dress. This is the real me, the Wen-without-her-mother. “She taught me the stitches, but I am not an artist like she was.”

  His somber expression tells me he understands that she is dead. “That’s why you live here with your father.”

  My smile is small. “Only for the past several weeks. I used to live in the Ring, up on the Hill.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” he says. “That’s where Jipu and Mugo live. Where all the factory bosses live. It’s a fine place.”

  I have no idea why he knows where the bosses live. “They do. I went to school with Jipu’s daughter. Our house was never as fine as theirs. It’s the smallest cottage, actually, right on the edge of the Western Hills. I used to look up at them and dream of what was on the other side.”

  Melik touches the bottle of antibiotics. “I wonder how closely your dreams compare to reality.”

  I watch his hands, callused and hard, and know my dreams were those of a silly little girl. What was on the other side of the Western Hills was him, and his people, and whatever they have been through. “Would you like to tell me?”

  “Only if you want to know,” he says. His hand slowly travels over to mine, which are curled in my lap. They unfurl for him, and I watch our fingers tangle together, trying to translate the shapes they make. But they speak a language I do not understand, and I’m not sure Melik does either, because he’s watching them too, like they are outside of us, not connected to us.

  “I want to know you.” It is the most real thing I’ve said all day.

  “We are permitted to work the land, but we can never call it ours. Did you know that?”

  “I know many of the Noor are farmers and sheepherders.” I have heard many a joke about how they breed with the animals, in fact, but now I realize how pathetic and degrading that is.

  “That is the work we are allowed to do, but always for others, never for ourselves.” His fingers tighten around mine. “And that won’t change, because we do not make the rules.”

  We lock eyes. “I was a little girl when the Noor rebelled. My mother told me they wanted to rule. That they wanted to take over, first the western province, then the entire country.”

  He chuckles. “I was eight. And we wanted to rule ourselves, Wen. Is that wrong, to want that? You see how we’re treated here. It’s no different on the other side of the hills, no matter that there are more Noor there than Itanyai. We wanted a place in the government.” He bows his head. “My father went with elders from other villages to negotiate in the capital city. He kissed me good-bye and told me to take care of my mother. He told me he was going to make sure Sinan and I had a future, that he was going to make sure we could look any man in the eye and know we were worth just as much.”

  Melik’s hand trembles in mine, but not with weakness. It is a raw, hard unsteadiness, like I am holding his rage between my fingers. I am afraid to speak, so when he whispers, “Would you like to know what happened next?” I can only nod.

  “It was a ruse. They had no intention of giving us a seat at the table. When my father and
the other Noor elders arrived in the capital, they were greeted with nooses. Hanged in the public square. No discussion. No negotiation. No warning, no trial. That was the beginning of the uprising.”

  My stomach aches. This is not the story I was told. Our newspapers spun tales of Noor greediness, unreasonable demands, threats, and unjustified attacks. “The government sent war machines.”

  He nods. He is staring at our hands, mine toasted almond and his ruddy tan, a few shades that make all the difference. “My mother fled with us into the high passes of the Western Hills, and if she hadn’t, we would have died like so many in our village did. The machines crushed everything in their paths. Sinan grew up playing in the muddy trenches they made as they destroyed the fields and our village. I’m glad he doesn’t remember much about it.” He raises his head. “But I do.”

  “I’m sorry.” It is such a stupid thing to say. But I have no other words.

  His gaze drifts over my shoulder. “Things were not always like this. A thousand years ago the Noor held the west. It was an empire,” he says, staring at the wall like he can see his people’s great history. “But that was before the Itanyai decided they wanted it for themselves. They took it from us, so long ago that most have forgotten it was ever ours to begin with.” He smiles sadly. “And when we rose up and tried to take it back, we had a few guns, a few bombs supplied by sympathizers. But for the most part our only weapons were sickles and threshers.”

  And the Itanyai had metal monsters that crush and kill. I pull my fingers from his. It seems wrong to be touching him, this boy who survived so much evil brought down on him and his family by my people.

  “Are you remembering the headlines and horror stories about the barbaric Noor?” he asks me. “At least a few of them are true, I’m sure.”

  “No, I feel awful about all of it. And I don’t understand why you . . .” I don’t understand why you look at me—an Itanyai—the way you do.