August Ansel - The Attic

“Handy,” Arie said, groping in his direction.

“Here,” he said. He took her hand and gripped it tightly. A tiny raindrop splashed her face, then another. A few more pattered around them on the dirty, cracked asphalt. The acrid smell of fire was briefly eclipsed by the smell of new rain. Petrichor, Pop had called it, the fragrant chemical signal of the earth opening itself to water.

“Russell?”

“Ran into the woods. Looked like Talus took half his face off.”

Curran reappeared, smeared with soot, jogging to them with an armful of cans and bottles, sloshing water. Talus barked once and trotted alongside. He knelt and set the containers on the ground between them, handed a bottle to Renna, who drank greedily. She gagged, spat, drank some more. Curran cupped his big hand under Arie’s head and lifted her gently. He put a bottle to her lips. The water was slightly gritty and tasted of ash, but it was wet and wonderful. She took some more then motioned to her back. “Wet it.” She rolled partway forward, and Curran poured water over the burn. The relief was sweet but brief. “How bad?” she wheezed.

“Blisters,” said Curran. She could hear in his voice that it was worse than that.

Handy stripped out of his shirt. He folded it and wet it through with one of the cans of water. “Pour some more there,” he told Curran, and as Curran rinsed the burned place again, Handy pulled Arie’s torn shirt loose and laid his own wet one over the wound. It was heavy and cool. “It needs to stay covered,” he said.

The freshening rain had turned into a fine drizzle. Curran took off his coat and gave it to Handy. “You’re going to take a chill,” he said.

Handy slipped it on. “We all are,” he said. “We have to find shelter.” He struggled to his feet. “They could be back.”

“I know a place,” Curran said. “Just for the night.”

There was a tremendous crash inside the house, and the front bedroom window, Granny’s bedroom, exploded outward. They all recoiled, and Renna covered her face with one arm. Glass and burning boards showered down on the yard, revealing a wall of flames in the bedroom.

Arie smiled. “Just so, Granny,” she said, her voice nothing but a raspy croak.

Handy lifted her into a sitting position. He plucked his jacket up from the street, gave it a hard shake, and draped it gently over her shoulders. The weight on her livid skin, even with the makeshift bandage, was like being burned again, and she moaned.

Curran slid his arms beneath her, doing his best not to touch the bad shoulder, and stood, cradling her to him. The last thing she saw before slipping into a deep and blessed darkness was Talus. The dog was three paces ahead, leading the way between houses, back into the woods, back to Curran’s house in the trees.

HE SAT IN HIS LAVISH receiving room, the entire space lit only by the faint gray pall of an overcast dusk. Lavish? Yes, by current standards. Tasteful. Appointed to suit his station in life: Chief of the Konungar.

Russell no longer made use of mirrors.

All of them he’d collected to decorate his rooms—and there were a great many—had either been quietly relegated to the barracks, strategically replaced by artwork, or smashed to fragments in the first early days of his recovery. Great care had been taken since then to shield him from his own ruin: lavatory mirrors painted over, blinds and curtains opened in the daytime, closed after dark.

He could see it now, though. His face.

Positioned in the chair directly opposite the uncovered window, even twelve feet away in the indistinct light, the damage was plain.

They could see it, too. It lurked, their seeing, behind every smile and pleasant nod that came a fraction of a second too slowly. The seeing flitted over their heads like a drunken bat each time a conversation fell to silence when he happened by unexpectedly. The Posies were the worst. None of them could adequately dissemble, none of them could offer him comfort—the comfort of their own feigned blindness. No matter how placid their expressions, their eyes were little mirrors, weren’t they? He had to take them from behind, if he could bear to get even that close. Which was rare now.

Plain as the nose on your face , his mother had often said. Dead as a doornail , she said, too. Which she was.

Not much nose left anymore, Mom.

He stared as long as he could bear it, a fine sheen of sweat breaking out across his scalp and above the ragged remnant of his upper lip. With a plosive groan, he twisted away, nauseated. The dog. The teeth. He saw them in his fretful sleep, those many teeth, felt the dog’s breath on his skin, on the surface of his eyeball, how wet and loud that snarl was with her muzzle at his ear.

Russell walked backward to the window and shut the drapes with his eyes closed.

A little better. He’d lasted at least a minute longer than he had the previous night. To see that ghost of a reflection and stay with it was his aim. No sweat. No desire to puke. It was good to have a goal.

A length of cloth, deep indigo shot through with delicate metallic threads, lay puddled where he’d dropped it at the foot of his bed. He twined it twice around his lower face, then up at an angle and over the crown of his head (folded just so—better to cover the dead eye). Tuck the end, and voilà. He didn’t need a mirror for this. The soft weight of it was a comfort; a steadying measure of confidence fell into place when he was back under wraps.

It was full dark now. Time to sit at table with his council, most newly chosen, what with the recent deaths at the old woman’s hovel. Streeter was gone, too, that fat man with his fat pipe, who ran when the shit hit the fan. The first day Russell was able to sit up and give orders, he’d made a summary judgment of treason—always a capital crime. For bolting in the face of danger. For cowardice, retreat. Desertion. Streeter was hanged.

He locked his rooms and strolled down the polished linoleum corridors, empty and echoing, to council chambers—the big conference room with its long oval table.

All seven of them were there, seated, quiet and expectant. His men. The Council of Konungar. Each one now wore a mask like Russell’s, with the exception of that last piratical turn to cover the eye. When they turned to mark his entrance, the effect was an odd mashup: Wild West meets Timbuktu. They were allowed to choose the color, whatever they wanted as long as it was not garish, nothing that would draw particular attention. Most had chosen dark shades of green, black, brown, difficult to spot out in the woods. Russell’s cloth alone had the sheen of silver running in its weft.

He stood at the head of the table for a moment, allowing them to absorb his relative position. Then he lifted a hand, pointed at the tactical map pinned to the wall and snapped his fingers. Two men (he wasn’t sure who—since they’d adopted the head coverings it could be hard to tell at first glance) jumped immediately and spread the oversized plat on the table. Russell took his seat and nodded at the big man on his right. The man stood, causing everyone to crane their heads back, so tall was he. This was Doyle: mountainous, impassive, voice like stones grinding along a river bottom. An ideal proxy.

“No more supply patrols,” Doyle said. “We’re suspending broadcast scavenging runs. We have enough in storage now to see us through for months, if we ration it. We’ll keep a skeleton crew here to mind the warm bodies and keep wheels turning,” he said, “but most of us are going out.” He tapped two huge fingertips on the upper right quadrant of the map. “We’re certain they’re traveling north,” he said. “This is where we’re going to find them.”