James Gardner - The Last Day of the War, with Parrots

I jerked my head around. That last thought wasn’t mine.

There was no one in sight... but I stood on barren ground between two flat-topped hills. Someone could be on one of the hills, within range of the parrot’s hearing, whatever that range was. I took a few steps toward the hill on my left, then stopped and touched the parrot: nothing but my own thoughts, racing, trying to figure out whose voice it had been. Male. Alex? Roland? I hadn’t paid enough attention.

I wanted it to be Alex. The thought of eavesdropping on Alex was so tantalizing...

As quietly as I could, I moved back toward the other hill, stopped, and listened again. “Damned stone. Why are there so many damned stones?”

Alex.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled my hand from my pocket. I would resist. I would be good.

One last touch. The echoes of my thoughts told me I was only delaying the moment of eavesdropping on Alex. I was intent on doing it, and simply holding off a few seconds to excite myself more, the way you sometimes hold off on a kiss: you know it’s going to happen, but you wait an extra second to make it sweeter.

The hill was too steep to climb with my hand in my pocket.

Alex stood a short distance away, stabbing a shovel into the ground and wrestling up a load of dirt. His body was soft with starlight. He still wore the billowing white shirt and tight leather pants from the recording session, but his shirt was buttoned to the throat. With each thrust of the shovel, he grunted. At his feet lay a knapsack and a growing pile of dirt.

I walked quickly up to him before I could be tempted to reach for the parrot. When he heard my footsteps and turned around, I asked, “Digging a grave? Or just robbing one?”

Alex laughed. “I’m excavating an archaeological site,” he said. “We’re an archaeological expedition, you know.”

“And this excavation couldn’t wait till morning?”

“I’m not in Jerith’s good books right now,” Alex said. “I broke something — something glass, I don’t know what it was. It could have happened to anyone, but Jerith told me I wasn’t careful enough to be an archaeologist.” Alex plunged the shovel into the hole with all his strength. “So I decided to head out when no one was looking and find something so important Jerith would have to let me help again.”

“Why here?” I asked, looking around. The top of the hill showed almost no signs of the war, except for a rain-filled bomb crater twenty meters away. The area had none of the markers Jerith usually set up at sites he planned to excavate. “Is there some reason to dig here, or did you just pick a place at random?”

Alex looked sly. “Can you keep a secret?” He picked up the knapsack that lay on the ground beside him. When he lifted the flap, I saw some kind of electronic apparatus topped by a cylindrical holo-tank. “Metal detector,” Alex said in a stage whisper. “Absolute state of the art. I can afford it, Jerith can’t.” Immediately, he looked guilty. “I’m going to give it to Jerith before we go. As a token of appreciation for how he’s helped us. But first, I’m going to find something important.”

“Down this hole?”

“If I’m lucky. There’s something big down here; and deep enough that Jerith’s cheap detectors don’t pick it up.”

“Do you want help digging?” I asked.

“I only have the one shovel. But if you stick around, I may need a hand lifting out whatever I find.”

I stuck around — found a stone that wasn’t quite as damp as the ground and sat on it. Now and then, I offered to dig for a while to let Alex rest. He turned me down each time, and speared his shovel in harder to prove he wasn’t tired. I just sat there and inhaled the damp smell of freshly turned soil.

Rather than mope in silence we told each other stories, the kind of stories that people in the industry share when they get together: disastrous concerts, botched bookings, fans from hell. Many, many stories. We laughed, we talked, I put my hand in my pocket.

“I wish she were wearing a tighter shirt,” he said in his thoughts. “She’s got such a body... Helena’s crazy to say she’s fat.”

I didn’t react. Well, yes, of course I reacted and the noise of my thoughts screaming, “I’ll kill her!” drowned whatever Alex thought next. But outwardly I didn’t move. I tried to force myself to calm down, but that just turned out to be my brain shrieking at my body, “Get calm! Relax! Loosen up, loosen up!”

Too bad I’d never studied meditation.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to relax for real instead of just going through the motions. It would have been easier if I could take my hand out of my pocket and shake myself loose; but that hand was staying put.

By the time my thoughts stilled enough to hear Alex again, he was fantasizing about kissing me. No technical details, not even a feeling of passion, just lips touching. In his mind my lips were very soft. And I responded, in my own imagination and in the dream Alex dreamed. My arousal doubled itself in a feedback loop, as I felt the desire, responded to the desire, felt my response echoing back and succumbed more deeply, desire feeding on its own echoes...

“What’s this?” a voice whispered. A chill voice with a sharp edge that stabbed through all the fantasies.

Alex was still digging, glancing over at me from time to time. No one else was in sight.

“Have we got a visitor then?” the thready voice went on. “Someone peeking through the basement window?”

My own thoughts asked who is it, who? I could hear the chatter of my questions, even though other voices in my brain pleaded for silence, not to draw attention to myself.

“Ah, one of Alex’s friends come to call,” the voice whispered. “But he hasn’t thought your name yet....”

Reflexively, I thought “Lyra.” Horrified copies of my voice screamed, “No!”

“Lyra,” whispered the voice. “I saw you this afternoon, milady. We sang together. Yes. Your beauty entices me. You have entered my heart, milady. Now I have entered your mind.”

That’s just a song, I thought wildly.

“There’s no such thing as ’just a song,’ milady. Song is a realm unto itself, separated from your world by the tiny thickness of an eighth note. Strange things live in this realm, milady. Wraiths. Ghosts with tattered hearts.” The voice laughed, a laugh with claws of ice. “It’s dangerous to enter this realm, milady. Once a song gets into your head, sometimes it’s impossible to get out.”

The thing’s laugh gushed over me like glacier spill water. Blackness pooled in front of my eyes; the real world began to dissolve. Beneath the laughter, I could just make out a tiny voice, my own voice, murmuring, “Let go of the parrot, let go, let go.” But my body was freezing up, heavy with ice. I couldn’t remember what it felt like to move. Try to move, think of moving, focus on motion, any motion, the spasming dance I did for that cut on Trash and Thrash, sing the song: “Damn it, slam it, break it; don’t give me your repercussions...”

Forcing myself against the stony cold, I moved my hand a hairsbreadth. I let go of the parrot.

My eyes snapped into focus: the hilltop, the stars, the silence. Shivering, shuddering, the memory of ice.

Then Alex touched my shoulder and pointed to the hole. “I’ve found something,” he said.

I could barely keep my teeth from chattering. I wanted to scramble away screaming but could barely move — I felt divorced from my body, like waking up from a nightmare. Alex’s grin melted to a frown. “Are you all right?”

“Uhh. Hmm.” My mouth wouldn’t work. “I just, uhh... I must have drifted off. Weird dream.” I eyed Alex closely, searching for any sign of the Singer; but this was good old amiable Alex, sweet, even innocent. Maybe I had just been dreaming.