Of Metal and Wishes

  “I just wanted to talk to you,” I say, taking another step. My foot catches on something and there’s a noise like a thread’s been snapped.

  A weighted net drops onto me, tangling around my body and pulling me to the floor. With a startled cry, I try to rip it off, but it’s made of some kind of slick material that slides through my fingers like water. From behind me there’s a metallic scrape and a scuttling sound, like a crab on a stone.

  I manage to turn my head enough to see what’s making the noise, and I scream.

  There, coming from under the stairs, creeping slowly into a pool of light, is the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. Its body is the size of a tomcat. It moves stiffly but surely, every step stabbing the ground with a sharp click. Its black legs arch around a low, fat body that almost drags on the ground. From behind a coil of pipes beneath the light switches comes another, and yet another emerges from one of the lit hallways. They each have two black, bulbous eyes and a row of six smaller eyes above those. And when they step directly under the light, their abdomens gleam metal-smooth. They’re not animals—they’re machines. Bloodless and soulless and way too close. I whimper, struggling in my net. Almost in unison, the things slash their curved silver fangs down twice before raising them again—and walking straight toward me.

  I crawl with spastic, scrabbling movements into the dark, away from the spiders, which are now lined up in a row and marching down the hallway. Beneath the weight and tangle of this net, I can’t get to my feet, let alone jump over them to get back to the stairs. The only way to escape is by going forward, but I only succeed in trapping myself further in the net. It’s suffocating me. I am choking on my fear.

  Footsteps come toward me through the darkness. “Get up,” whispers the hoarse voice.

  “Help me,” I plead, fighting to free my hands. The net is wrapped around my head. I can’t see anything now. But I can hear. The metallic spiders are closer. I kick my legs, the panic making my muscles twitch. I don’t want those silver fangs embedded in my skin.

  There’s a tug on the net, and I’m pulled upright. “This way,” the owner of the voice says.

  The spiders’ footfalls are right behind us. The man pushes me ahead of him, and then he wraps an arm around my waist and he’s almost carrying me. My toes are sliding along the ground. “In here.”

  As I continue to fight hopelessly with the net, my companion shoves me into what appears to be a little nook, possibly used for electrical or emergency access. He presses in behind me, filling my ears with the scraping sound of metal against cement. Is he holding some sort of weapon? “We have to keep out of their way,” he says.

  “What are those things?” My voice is high and tremulous. I’m about to start screaming and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.

  “Security precaution.” He smells of green tea, mint, and . . . plum cakes? His body is warm against mine. We’re both breathing hard. The scuttling spiders come closer, closer, and I flatten myself against the wall of our cinder-block hiding place. Cold pipes against my chest. Moist stone beneath my hands. The net almost strangling me.

  Better than silver fangs buried in the flesh of my calves. I shudder. My companion presses even closer. He’s muttering to himself and picking at the net like he’s looking for something. Then, as the spiders’ clicking footsteps pull up parallel to our hiding spot, he stops moving entirely. We stand silently, waiting, and after a second of pause during which my heart ceases to beat, the spiders continue to walk down the hall, their scuttling reduced to a mere whisper in the dark.

  The man’s body relaxes and he returns to pulling at the net. “Shouldn’t have made it so hard,” he mumbles. “They weren’t meant for you. Not for you.”

  A second later he seems to find what he’s looking for. He pulls at just the right spot, and the net simply falls away from me. He guides me into the darkened corridor.

  “Time for you to go back,” he says, dragging me toward the light. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Wait.” I try to pull my arm loose from his extremely strong grasp. “Who are you?”

  He laughs, a quick, impatient sound. “I think you know the answer to that, Wen.”

  “You know my name.”

  “Of course I do.” He says it like it would be ridiculous of me to expect anything else. His strides are long, but there’s a hitch in each step, along with a faint clanking every time he swings his arm. He must be carrying something.

  “Are you a thief? Have you stolen something from upstairs?”

  “Why would I need to steal anything? People give me their best treasures.” He pulls up short before we enter the part of the corridor where a hint of light could reach us. I step forward, but he doesn’t follow. “You wanted something from the Ghost tonight,” he says from the shadows. “What was it?”

  “It’s none of your business,” I snap, but my voice breaks in the middle as I recall the terrible loneliness and dread that drove me to the Ghost’s altar.

  “Are you sure?” And then, in the dark, I hear the pings. Two metallic taps against the pipes. Coming from a few feet behind me.

  I gasp. “A joke. You played a trick on me. I thought—I thought the Ghost was—”

  “Real?”

  I nod.

  “I’m real,” he says quietly.

  “But are you the Ghost?”

  “It depends on your definition.”

  The sadness and solitude in his voice is a language of its own, one I speak fluently. “Are you the boy who died on the killing floor?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” he whispers.

  “But you’re alive.” I dive back into the dark, and my hands land on his chest. His warm, breathing chest. I can feel the heat and the rapid rise and fall, even through his shirt.

  He jerks away from my grasping fingers, sinking farther into the murk with a soft clanking noise. “Not really. I’m not . . .” He curses. “Why did you follow me down here?” he roars. “No one comes down here!”

  I stumble backward, away from his anger. “I’m sorry. I wanted to—I don’t know. I just . . . needed the Ghost.”

  The harsh rasp of his breath echoes down the hallway. “You can’t come down here again. It’s very dangerous. Promise me!”

  “I promise!” I blurt out, eager to calm him down. He sounds like a wounded animal there in the dark, and I can’t reach him. Can’t help him. I know I should run, but I don’t want to. The Ghost is alive, has been alive all this time. And he’s been alone down here for the past seven years.

  “Please,” he says. “Don’t tell anyone you came down here. Don’t tell them you saw me.”

  “I won’t. I swear I won’t.” I mean it too. I don’t want him to be hurt.

  “All right,” he says, the sawing of his breath quieting a bit. “You can go. Just. Go!”

  I bolt for the stairs, almost thinking I can hear those scuttling spiders behind me. I hit the steps and pull my skirt out of the way of my shoes as I go up two at a time. I nearly miss the landing for the main floor and keep going, but manage to slow myself down long enough to wrench open the metal door and stagger into the hallway. With my skirt flying out behind me, I keep sprinting until I burst through the doorway of my father’s darkened clinic, dash up the stairs, and dive onto my sleeping pallet, still wearing my shoes and dressing gown.

  Then the shaking begins, the trembling that comes from the center of me, which has been tilted from its axis tonight. My Ghost . . . is alive. He’s in this factory. He knows its secrets, and some of them are apparently very dangerous. And I . . . I’m afraid I’ll never talk to him again.

  In chasing him down tonight, I think I’ve chased him away, right when I wanted to talk to him most. As bizarre as it sounds, I feel like I’ve lost a friend. In ripping off his disguise of death, I’ve made him dead to me.

  Or possibly very angry at me. This t
hought sends a chill right through me. I don’t know how he did it, but if he was able to crush Tercan’s foot on the killing floor, if he’s able to do all the things people give him credit for, then he is not someone I want as an enemy.

  MY FATHER OPENS the curtain and emerges into the parlor that doubles as my bedroom. He watches as I lie flat on my back, limp as an overcooked noodle, not even flinching at the piercing sound of the shift whistle. His own expression is pinched; the lines on his face seem to have deepened overnight. He looks old. Like something vital has been sucked out of him.

  It scatters all my plans, the ones I carefully built while I lay awake last night. If the Ghost is actually a live person, then my father must know something about it. Onya told me that my father was the one who pronounced the boy dead. Has Father lied to everyone? Why would he do that? But when I look up at him, I can’t ask. He looks so frail to me, and I don’t want to see him crumble.

  “I’ll get our breakfast together,” I say, hopping up from my pallet.

  As soon as he realizes I’m not utterly broken, his tight expression loosens a bit.

  We don’t have much of a kitchen, and food is so expensive in the Ring that it’s actually cheaper to buy from the cafeteria even though that’s not exactly cheap either. But my father keeps a few stashes of grains and dried fruit because he leaves his clinic only when he has to, for fear he won’t be here if someone needs him. I heat water in the pot and use some of it to make tea and some to make porridge. It’s bland as can be, so I sweeten it with a few drops of honey in each bowl. We eat in silence, and then I go to the washroom and splash cold water on my face.

  I have five days until I am offered up to Mugo as a sacrifice.

  I plan to keep very busy until then, because otherwise I will run away.

  The bell on the clinic door jangles, and I hear my father’s footsteps as he descends the rickety stairs. I remove the clasp from the bottom of my braid and brush my hair, then rebraid it neatly and fasten all the stray locks in place with little hairpins. I pull on my brown work dress, which is in dire need of a wash. Its hem is muddy and gray black after my trip through the Ring yesterday. I put on my thick apron over it and tie it tight around my waist.

  The sound of the wet, whooping cough reaches me as I walk down the stairs. And then it becomes a duet. No, a trio. I enter the clinic to see three Noor, pale and shivering, sitting side by side on my father’s table. My father turns to me and pulls his cloth mask away from his mouth. “It’s the flu. Get your mask.”

  I walk straight across the room and pull my cloth mask out of the drawer, then slip it over my nose and mouth and fasten it behind my ears. “Did they bring it with them from the west?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Some of them would have been sick on the train. But I checked all of them personally. All were healthy. I’ve treated a few locals with the flu this week, very mild cases. The Noor might have picked it up here, but these three are much sicker than any I’ve seen so far this season.”

  Our eyes lock as we realize how bad this could be. The Noor are crammed into those horrible, tiny, dank rooms with almost no ventilation. “We have to go to the dorms,” I say.

  My father nods. Every year the flu sweeps through the Ring and the Gochan factories. Most people recover, but we always have our share of deaths, usually the very old and the very young. But if the Noor have no resistance, if their bodies can’t fight it . . .

  While my father treats the three sick men, I gather supplies. With sign language and a few simple words, the men have managed to convey that they are not the only ones sick. I fill a crate with germ-killing soap, cloth masks, a big sack of cough drops, and our only bottles of eucalyptus and clove oil. Then I run up the stairs and pull out our biggest iron pot. Over the next hour I make an enormous batch of willow bark tea and siphon it into three water jugs.

  By the time I get back downstairs, the Noor are gone, and my father is waiting. “You don’t have to come with me, Wen,” he says. “The dorms where the Noor are staying are—”

  “I was there yesterday to take Tercan his antibiotics,” I blurt out, then meet my father’s questioning gaze. “I wanted to make sure he had it as soon as possible,” I add quietly.

  My father stares at me for a moment, but then nods, giving me courage. “You can’t carry everything by yourself,” I say, hoping he doesn’t argue. I need to make sure Melik is all right.

  “I’d appreciate the help, then,” Father replies, filling me with relief. Together we load the crate and the jugs of tea, along with a few ladles, onto a wooden cart. Father puts a sign on the clinic door indicating that he’ll be back in an hour, and then we take the long walk across the compound to the Noor dorms.

  As soon as we open the front door, I sense the sickness on the air. Vomit and sweat, the smell of suffering. I position my mask over my nose and mouth, and my father does the same. We carefully lift the heavy cart over the threshold.

  “Melik?” my father calls. He’s looking for a translator.

  Sinan runs down the hall. “Melik is sick. You’ve come to help him?”

  “Yes,” I say in a choked whisper at the same time my father briskly says, “Of course. We’ve come to help all of you. You’re not ill?”

  Sinan shakes his head.

  “How many are?”

  Sinan frowns. “Maybe twenty? Twenty very sick. And many more a little sick.” He looks at me, and his fear is easy to read. “Melik is very sick.”

  “Then you can help us,” my father says. “Please spread the word that we’re here, and that we’re bringing medicine to reduce fever and make the pain in their muscles go away. And when you’re done with that, go fetch buckets of water and some rags. Ask the central office for some and say Dr. Guiren sent you.”

  He’s going to help Sinan stay busy, and Sinan is more than willing to accept the distraction. He walks up and down the hall, shouting in the Noor language. My father starts at the first room we come to, but my eyes keep straying down the hall to the last room on the left.

  Sinan and my father enlist several of the healthy Noor to dole out tea, cough drops, and chest rub to their sick friends. I watch them, cradling the others’ heads, dabbing oil on the chests of the severely congested. I am mesmerized by their care of their brethren. The Itanyai people—my people—are not like that. We keep our sentiments and our hands to ourselves. Anyone too touchy is considered off somehow. Weak. Especially men. But the Noor, they are not afraid to touch one another, to comfort one another, to stroke hair and to grasp the hand of a sick friend. Their brotherhood shows in their faces, in the hushed words they murmur as they coax tea past the lips of the fevered and aching.

  With their help we move down the hallway quickly, but not quickly enough for me. When we are halfway through the long corridor, I give my father a pleading look. “I want to check on Tercan,” I say, because that’s true, and it’s also more acceptable than wanting to check on Melik, whom I have no particular reason to worry about.

  My father nods solemnly. “Go ahead. I’m worried about him too.”

  When I turn the corner into that last room on the left, despite all the kindness I have witnessed this morning, I am still stunned by what I see. Tercan’s face is as pale as it was last night. The circles beneath his eyes are just as dark. But he has scooted himself across the small space and is sitting against the wall. It must have been agony for him to move, but I know why he did it.

  He wanted to get to Melik.

  Melik’s head is in his lap. His skin is leached of its tan, but his cheeks are red with the fever. He is breathing very quickly. But he looks asleep. Tercan is singing to him, quiet and broken notes of the most mournful song I’ve ever heard. A few other Noor boys are gathered around him, listening. One of them is holding Melik’s hand. Another is touching Melik’s leg. A few of them join their voices with Tercan’s, some off key, but the beauty of the melody is not
lost.

  I don’t want to break the moment, to wake Melik from his rest, so I turn my attention to the rest of the room.

  Two boys are on their pallets, clearly fevered, each attended by another, healthy boy. It’s only a matter of time before the others come down with it. As quietly as I can, I kneel by the sick boys’ pallets, touching their burning brows to gauge the severity of their fevers and rubbing a few drops of the pungent oil onto the bony space where their neck meets their chest. I carefully ladle tea into their mouths, and when the other boys see what I’m doing, they want to help, offering me wooden cups to fill so they can take care of their friends. I let them take over and finally make my way to Melik.

  “How long has he been like this?” I ask Tercan before I remember we don’t speak the same language.

  Tercan places his hand across Melik’s forehead. “Hot,” he says. He holds up the half-empty bottle of antibiotics and looks at me hopefully.

  I am filled with both frustration and awe. Tercan has obviously tried to give Melik his medicine. I take the bottle and point at Tercan’s foot, and then nod. I point at Melik and shake my head. Antibiotics won’t work for this kind of sickness. We’ve seen that over and over in the last few years. But the way Tercan’s looking at me, I don’t think he understands, and I decide to leave it for later. I squat next to them and lay my hand against Melik’s cheek. He gasps; my skin must feel like ice against his. His eyes fly open. They are glittering with fever.

  “Wen?” The weakness in his voice makes me want to cry.

  “How are you?”

  His eyes fall shut. “Everything hurts. Am I going to die?”

  He sounds so resigned. But I am not. “You’re going to be fine. I have medicine for you.”

  His lips curl upward at one corner. “Wen always has medicine.” I’m not sure whom he’s talking to.

  I fill a wooden cup with the tea and gesture to Tercan so he will help me raise Melik’s head. Tercan loops his arm below Melik’s shoulders and lifts him. I start to give Tercan the cup, but then I realize he is shaking with pain. Caring for his friend is taking an enormous toll on him, right when he needs all of his energy to heal. After a few minutes I manage to get him to move over and let me take his place. I point firmly at his sleeping pallet, and he gets the message. He calls to one of the other boys, who comes over and helps him get back without too much jostling of his broken foot.