Paolo Bacigalupi - The Drowned Cities

Mahlia hid under her bed and bit herself for her stupidity. “ Mei wenhua ,” she said. “No culture.” She bit herself again and again, driving the lesson home. But when she showed her father her bleeding hand, proving that she’d punished herself, he’d only looked at her with more disappointment.

Now, as Mahlia and Mouse padded through the swamps, Mahlia wondered what her father would think of her. A girl with one hand? A muddy war maggot who stole eggs from bird nests to survive? What would he think of her now? She already knew the answer. She might have been half Chinese, but she was pure Drowned Cities. Just another one of the animals he’d found ungovernable.

Mahlia smiled bitterly at that. He could go grind. Her father had run away with his tail between his legs because he’d been too damn civilized for the Drowned Cities. He might have called the warlords paper tigers, but in the end, he’d been the one made of paper. Sure, the Chinese peacekeepers had looked dangerous with their guns and their skin armor, but in the end, they’d blown away like leaves.

If Mahlia had been as civilized as the peacekeepers, she would have been dead ten times over, just getting out of the Drowned Cities. As it was, it had only been luck that had saved her, the Fates putting their touch on her, in the form of a crazy redheaded war maggot who had intruded at the right time and made a distraction.

“Hey, Mouse?”

“Hm?” Mouse was taking his turn with the machete, chopping aside new vines that had filled the trail, not really paying attention.

“How come you saved me?” Mahlia asked. “When the Army of God…” She hesitated, remembering her hand lying on the ground, blood muddy. She swallowed. “When the soldier boys… cut me… how come you made a noise?”

Mouse straightened from his chopping and glanced back, pale brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t have to. It would have been safer for you to just steer clear.”

“Just stupid, I guess.” He mopped at the sweat coursing down his freckled neck and face and turned back to the vines. “I don’t remember this trail having so much tangle on it,” he said.

“Here. I got it.” Mahlia took the machete and started chopping. Tough weedy vines parted under the sharp blade. When she’d first fled to the jungle from the Drowned Cities, she’d been soft. Now, she swung the machete with expert strength. City girl learning country living.

“So?” she pressed. “How come?”

Mouse grimaced. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I was crazy. I still get nightmares about that. I’m running through the jungle, but the soldier boys turn out to be better shots, and they light me up.” He paused. “I don’t think it even was me. Didn’t feel like me when I stood up. I just did it.”

“But why? I was just a castoff. Peacekeepers were gone. No one was going to give you a reward or nothing. You weren’t going to get anything out of it.”

“Wasn’t about that,” Mouse said.

Another nonanswer.

Mahlia slashed through more vines, and the trail opened before her. Instinctively, she paused, examining it for signs of danger.

Sometimes trails went wrong. Auntie Selima’s daughter had blown off her legs that way. She’d followed a little-used trail and ended up in a minefield that dated back to the very beginning of the fighting in the Drowned Cities. The explosion had been loud enough that people heard it in town, but by the time Mahlia and Doctor Mahfouz picked their own way through the mines, the girl had bled out.

Mouse peered over Mahlia’s shoulder, examining the trail with her. “Look good?”

The dirt was hard-packed. Lots of people and pigs and coywolv had wandered this way before. “Yeah. Looks safe.”

Mahlia handed over the machete and wiped her sweaty face as the redheaded boy took up the blade and the lead.

“So?” Mahlia pressed again.

“So, what?”

He was being deliberately dense. “So, it was stupid,” she said. “You just stood up and started throwing rocks at a whole platoon of soldier boys with guns. It didn’t make any sense. You could have just snuck away, and you threw rocks ?”

Mouse laughed. “Yeah. You’re right. That was stupid.”

“So why?”

Mouse took an idle whack at some kudzu as he passed, but his face was serious. “Hell, I don’t know. Why do you care? That was right after our farm burned. They got everyone. Mom and Dad. Simon. Shane got recruited. I saw that. They shot Simon because he was too little, but they took Shane.” He knocked aside more kudzu. “Maybe I was hoping they’d just shoot me and get it over with. I was so sick of hiding and scavenging. I think I wanted the bullet.”

He shrugged. “And then it turned out that they missed. All those bullets they shot at me, and I didn’t take a single one, like the Fates put a hand down between me and them. And then it turned out that you got away, too… Well, you were bleeding out, so there was something to do. And you were hungry, and I knew how to get food. So then I had something to think about, other than… you know.” He shrugged again. “Maybe you saved me, right?”

“Yeah,” Mahlia joked. “You owe me, big time.” She let the subject drop because she could tell Mouse wasn’t going to give her any more, but as they continued down the trail, she still wasn’t satisfied.

She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.

All the other castoffs like her were dead and gone. The kids who went to the peacekeeper schools, all those almond-eyed kids… Amy Ma and Louis Hsu and Ping Li and all those others… They’d been too civilized to know what to do when the hammer came down. Mahlia had survived because she’d been nothing like Mouse. And then she’d survived again because Mouse was nothing like her.

Mahlia was pretty sure Doctor Mahfouz would have said that Mouse was right to stand up and she was wrong to duck down, but Mahlia was certain that if she’d been like Mouse, she would have had her head on a stick.

There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it. No balancing of the scales. No reward, unless it was in some afterlife like the Deepwater Christians talked about.

Ahead, Mouse lifted a hand in warning.

Mahlia froze, then crouched. “What we got?” she whispered.

“Dunno.”

Ahead, the swamps opened into a clearing, and then into more swamp, waters covered with cattails and lily pads. Mahlia listened, trying to discern what triggered Mouse’s concern. The buzz of insects. Nothing seemed wrong. Mouse pointed. Mahlia craned her neck, trying to see—

There.

In the swamp, amongst the cattails, something floated. It didn’t move.

After waiting awhile longer, Mouse finally said, “It’s clear.”

As one, they slipped forward, then separated, scanning the rest of the jungle and swamp, but keeping their eyes on the mass of fur and leathery skin that lay in the water.

The land around the edge of the pool was disturbed, muddy banks torn, grasses trampled. Blood spattered the dirt, blackened with age. Many tracks clawed the ground.

“Coywolv?” Mouse whispered.

Mahlia shook her head. “Too small, right?”

“Yeah.” He squatted. “But they’re doggy, for sure, not cat. You can see the scrapes where their nails dug in.”

He sucked his teeth, thoughtful. Stood up and circled the muddy ground. “Uh-huh.” Nodding. “Doggy. Right.” He looked up. “War dogs. Hunters, for sure.”

“How the hell would you know?”