Stuart Lishan

She’s curious. That’s good. I bet she thinks I look like her Nanna Tata, who lives in that heaven of her memory called Ohio. Or like Mrs. Rumbo, her first teacher here on Shrahoont. Or like the witch from that fairy tale her kind loves. What’s its name? Haddie told me. Hansel and Gretel. Yes, the witch from Hansel and Gretel.

The old woman looked around the remnant of the building where they stood, at piles of stucco, wood, drywall, metal, glass, wire, plastic, paper, cloth, rubber, window frames, doors, furniture, toys, clothes, appliances, pictures, bristly things like toothbrushes and smooth things like dolls’ cheeks, art, vases, food, feathers in pillows and silverware in drawers, photos, books, business reports, school bags, brief cases, computers, car keys, candles, beds, soap, towels, wash rags, linens, games, tools, and more, much more, all now reduced to rubble.

The woman sighed and flitted her tongue in and out of her mouth like a snake. From her coat pocket she took out a quarter-moon shaped leaf. She put it into her mouth, munched it, and then took out another, as she eyed the thin, tangle-haired adolescent girl standing in front of her holding her fists against her sides, watching.

Act like I have all the time in the world.

“Oh, the leaf? Gurn. You wouldn’t like it. Moltavan thing. But here.”

The old woman reached into a knapsack and brought out a bag. Placing it between them, she pushed it toward the girl with her foot. The girl, who hadn’t taken her eyes off the old woman the whole time, didn’t move.

“Okay, kid. Okay.”

The girl tensed, turning slightly to her right, toward an opening in the inner wall, as the woman fished again in her knapsack.

“It’s only a comb. To brush out those knots of yours. Okay?”

The old woman turned her head to her right, toward the wall that separated them from the outside, and flitted her tongue in and out of her mouth again, as though she were trying to sense something from the very molecules of air around them.

They’re close now, she thought, very close.

“Mind if I smoke?”

The old woman brought out a corncob pipe and a pouch of hide. She fingered out a pinch or two of something dry and greenish, loaded the pipe, and drew a match across her neck.

“Little trick I learned. Old lizard neck, Haddie calls me. Folks back on Lemulas, I mean.”

The space in which they stood, the entryway to an apartment building, despite gaping holes in the walls and roof, soon filled with the scent of mint and eucalyptus. The girl’s fists loosened.

“You have three colors in your aura,” the girl said at last.

The old woman sat down on a pile of stonework and took a puff on her pipe.

“Pink. Blue.Yellow.”

“And you’re chartreuse.”

The girl stood her ground as the woman flitted out her tongue between every few pipe puffs. In the distance, beyond the building, deeper in the settlement town, they heard shouting, and the crack of a balong in the distance.

Yes, very close.

“So, this is where you lived, sweetheart? We’re in what, a courtyard?”

The girl nodded.

“So tell me, sweetheart, who lived where?” The old woman slowly rose as if to stretch.

The girl looked out over the rubble. When she answered, her voice sounded far away.

“Joel and his brother Steven lived across from us. They were red. They had a sister, Sassy. She was purple. Their father was plum. He came to Schrahoont for the fur trade. Their mother stayed home. She was green. Blair and his sister Brooke lived over there. They were yellow. Their mother was sick. She had black at the edges of her redness. One night she banged the outside gate open and shut for a long time, hours it seemed, until their father came and stopped her. He was green and had a face that drooped like a basset hound.”

The girl pointed to what looked like a large twisted sewer grate lying beside the old woman’s feet.

“David was light blue. He lived above us. He had big eyes and went to a special school. He had a black cat that was turquoise.”

The girl pointed to a corner near the inside wall where rubble, mostly wood and stucco, was piled into a squat shape with a peaked roof in its center, an igloo yearning to be a teepee. Her fists clenched again.

“Are those remnants of a swimming pool?” The old woman began to thread her way among piles of plaster, a twisted bed frame, and a strangely intact overturned sofa.

Seeing where she was going, the girl leaped over the bed frame and squared herself in front of the old woman.

“You can’t take them!”

The girl’s fists flew up from her sides. But the old woman was quicker than she seemed. She caught the girl’s fists in her hands and held them fast. They stood that way for some minutes, neither of them moving.

“It’d be best if you let me see.”

The eucalyptus-like scent wafted about them. Slowly, the girl relaxed.

“Don’t worry, honey.”

The woman flitted out her tongue in the direction of the outside wall, then stepped toward the igloo of rubble. She knelt and went inside. It was indeed a sort of cave. Inside, the bodies of a man and a woman lay together, holding each other’s hands. Their black auras had grown dull.

I’m surprised they have auras at all, poor things.

Slowly unbending, the old woman came out. She looked at the girl, who stared back hard.

“Don’t you think we should bury them, honey?”

Closer this time, outside the building, just up the block, there was another voice, like a lion growling under water. Through a gap in the outside wall, where the second story would be, seven winged shapes hopped by like locusts, but they were men, lightless, those who had done this, soldiers in the army of aura eaters who had cannibalized the people of Schrahoont. In their rush to the growling voice, none of them stopped to look into the building where the old woman and the girl stood.

The old woman, even after all the years she had spent fighting them, on Svavos, on Lastulo, and, in the bitterest fighting of all, on Thrana, still couldn’t help but cringe as they passed.

The growling lion voice seemed farther away now.

Haddie, good old Haddie leading them away.

The old woman smiled.

Finally the girl took a step closer. Then another. She reached out to touch the old woman’s aura. The yellow part that glowed around her neck felt soft, like silk. The pinkish part around her arms glittered and felt as rough as sandpaper. The navy blue part just beyond her shoulder blades shone hardly at all. It felt stringy, unwoven.

“Gently, dear, it’s still healing.”

“I like the yellow best,” the girl whispered. “It’s the softest.”

The old woman heard the recoil of a balong, a whip cracking amidst thunder. Another. Cold rain fell against her heart.

Oh Haddie, my dear Haddie!

“I like the yellow best, too.”

The old woman flitted her tongue in the direction from which she heard the balong. All was quiet now.

“Please, I know you have them.”

“Have what?”

“Gifts. Back home it’d be Christmas today, and on Christmas we always gave gifts.”

The old woman seemed still not to understand.

“They used to be yellow and blue,” the girl said.

The old woman nodded. She hadn’t expected the girl to know so much yet.

Yes, this one is very special.

“And this is what you want?”

The girl nodded.

The old woman shook out her pipe and put it away. Then she reached into her inside pocket and pulled out what looked like a scissors handle with blades of faint greenish-yellow light. Slowly, with great care, she cut out a thumbnail slice from the yellow part of her aura, feeling the sudden, stinging pain deep in her core. She took a deep breath and did the same with the blue part of herself. She had to close her eyes to stop the tears.

When she opened them again, the girl stood in front of her, palm held outward.

The old woman pulled out knitting needles made from the same material as the scissor blades. One pass, two, and the chartreuse aura around the girl’s palm now shone with yellow light. Two more passes and the blue was included.

“Pink as well?”

Each cut, each stitching, hurt worse than the last.

“I have to make a big cut here. You understand that, right, sweetheart?”

The girl nodded.

The old woman cut a palm-sized piece of the girl’s aura, the part that was now blue, pink, yellow, and chartreuse. She knitted it into the auras of the man and woman where their hands met. The grafted colors covered up most of the blackness there.

Never having winced for all the pain, the girl knelt down and sealed the grafts with a kiss.

Yes, this one will be very special, given time.

Given time.

She turned toward the outside wall. Still silence. Even the birds were quiet. She flitted out her tongue uneasily.

Rising, the girl led the old woman to a place beyond the remnant of the inside wall where the jumble of concrete ended.

“This was a garden,” she said. “Roses grew here.”

“It’s perfect.”

Together the girl and the woman pulled and pushed the bodies from their cave of rubble. They had only their hands for the digging, the interring. When they were finished, knees, hands, arms and clothes, even faces, were filthy, but the girl’s aura shone ever more brightly.

Suddenly there were the sounds of wings beating, like flags flapping in the wind. From the direction of the outer wall the woman and the girl heard footsteps running, heard the underwater lion’s growl shouting orders, then the crack of balongs as splinters sparked above the inside wall.

The old woman and the girl turned, ready to flee, but just as suddenly the shouts faded away down the block.

They hadn’t gotten Haddie yet. Not yet.

Gently, because they were both still sore from the aura grafts, the girl took the old woman’s hand in hers. Together they made their way. After a time, when they could no longer hear the growling voices, Haddie joined them.

Are we glowing? Yes, I can feel our faces glowing. Glowing.

In Posse: Potentially, might be ...