Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

Then I remembered the letter tucked into my coat. It wasn’t that this was the last memento I had of my mother. I had the silver bracelet, and a butterfly hairpin she had liked. But there’s always something personal about letters, about the vagaries of an individual’s handwriting, the way they write in neat or drifting columns.

I didn’t know how long I stood there, hesitating. But eventually I drew the letter out. The folded sheet was crinkled from the journey it had made with me. I smoothed the paper as best I could, then unfolded it.

It was difficult to read the letter by the scarce moonlight. Still, I knew its contents by heart. A few barren lines: The date and address. Trivialities about the weather, the price of barley, a quick sketch of a cat. Then, the unexpected stab of the pen’s nib into the paper, the splayed streak of ink. I could feel the hole in the paper with my fingertips.

What sudden emotion had overtaken my mother? Had she drafted a new letter and sent that instead? Or had she set this one aside to complete later, pretending the hole didn’t exist?

I punched through the hole with my index finger, enlarging it. I almost expected to feel something as I did so, as though paper had an anatomy of blood and muscle and skin. But no, it was only paper.

Long practice made it easy for me to fold the glider after that. I devised a design that placed the hole at the glider’s “eye,” although I had to jab again so it went all the way through. Silently, I asked my mother’s forgiveness.

It’s only paper, I told myself. It’s only paper.

That was little consolation as I made my way to the shrine and, with trembling hands, knotted a cord through the glider’s eye: my offering.

After that, I returned to the guesthouse. I thought someone might stop me — but no one did.

There’s a game played in Kheneira, the game of falcon-and-sparrows. The Ulowen call it tag . The Kheneiran version involves the following chant (loosely translated):

In Falcons Crossing, the falcon is blindfolded; and yet the children run fast, run faster, as if the blindfolded child’s outflung arms are tipped with talons.

In ordinary games of falcon-and-sparrows, the children being chased sometimes dart close to the falcon, shouting taunts.

Children in Falcons Crossing learn from the time they can stand that they must run from the falcon, even if the falcon is nowhere near them, even if the falcon shows no interest in them.

I woke early the next day, nerves thrumming. The first thing I did was go to the window and peer outside. The sky had cleared, and the faintest of gray light pearled the horizon.

After folding up the sleeping mat and blankets, and putting them away, I took my bath. No one else occupied the bathhouse, to my relief. Then I ventured to the common room, wondering if anyone would be up yet. There was one other guest, an older woman, who pointedly ignored me, so I sat away from her.

The guesthouse keeper served me rice porridge with chicken and vegetables. I gulped it down without even seasoning it with soy sauce, and only realized it when I caught the guesthouse keeper studying me with pursed lips.

There was no reason to linger, so I ventured into town. Its people paid little heed to me. Others looked like they, too, must be in Falcons Crossing for the migration, wearing clothes with elaborate knotwork embellishments or embroidered patches, fashions from other parts of the country. A few times I asked about the migrations, but answers were curt, factual. No one took the pride in the event that I had expected. The other outsiders, listening in, seemed just as puzzled, but as a half-Kheneiran I was wary of approaching them for further information. I doubted they knew more than I did, anyway.

I wound up, where else, at the shrine. Even from some distance it dominated the square. Even sitting in a noodle shop several streets away eating lunch, I couldn’t help thinking of its silhouette, the swaying ropes, the punctured eyes. I don’t think I finished the bowl before I stumbled out, drawn to the shrine in spite of myself.

Three of the four scribe booths were occupied, with lines at each. The expressions of the people in line, from a woman with two children pulling at her coat to a stooped older man, bothered me. They didn’t want to be here. I couldn’t identify the emotion I saw on their faces. Fear? Resignation? Stupor? Even the children, while not precisely well behaved, scuffled quietly, without looking directly at the shrine.

The shrine’s beams were already festooned with prayer offerings. I spotted mine with its ragged hole. I selected the least hostile-looking scribe, a tidy woman wearing a shawl of magenta and lilac, and got in line.

By listening in on the scribe’s transactions, I learned what she charged for her services. My mother had left me everything and money wasn’t a concern, but I wondered about the people in front of me.

I noticed something more curious when I peered at the booth: the paper. There was a whole stack of it, weighted with a carnelian seal stone in the shape of a plunging falcon pierced through where its eyes should have been. It wasn’t the quality of the paper that bothered me. Rather, it was that the top sheet appeared as though it had been trimmed out of a book. I wasn’t great at reading upside-down text, but it seemed to describe a stillbirth. (The relevant word vanished beneath the falcon seal.) The upper part of the pile seemed to be the same. Below that the pile became ragged, sheets of different proportions and sizes, not even neatly aligned.

I had expected the scribe to go through the pile in order, but she liked to flick through it and pull out a sheet at random. Each piece of paper had something on it. I caught sight of a poster with a lopsided representation of the East Kheneiran seal, and a doodle of a train in the margin; a letter in hasty script; a shopping list. And more pages out of books.

A horrible suspicion rooted in my mind, and would not be dislodged.

Soon enough my turn came. The scribe’s ledger caught my attention. I knew something of accounting and was surprised that she used the simplest of tally marks. I told myself not to be narrow-minded. If the tally marks worked for her, what was wrong with that?

I had been hoping to glean some clue from the scribe’s handwriting. But as far as I could tell, she didn’t write anything on the paper at all, even though she had an inkstone and water and a brush. The brush’s bristles were unstained, as though they had never seen use. Were they merely for show?

I opened my mouth to ask about the procedure.

The scribe frowned quellingly. She set her brush aside — I approved of the gesture’s fussiness — and lifted her arm to point unerringly at my glider where it dangled from the shrine. “Sunset,” she said. That was all.

I reached for my purse anyway, intending next to ask her about the bird banners, but she was already gesturing toward the next person in line, a man with a broken nose. She caught my eye and said, more emphatically, “Sunset.”

Despite the lack of animus in her voice, I flushed. Still, I couldn’t help asking, “What happens next?”

“The migration,” the man said with distinct impatience. Then he began telling the scribe about his sick younger sister.

I took the hint. I walked a little way from the line and squinted up at the shrine. A child of indeterminate sex was being held up by a broadbacked man so it could tie up a prayer. The knot looked like it wouldn’t last long against a wind of any strength. The man lowered the child but didn’t do anything to secure the knot. The two of them walked away side by side but not hand in hand. Before they turned away, I saw their faces: each held the deadened resignation I was becoming familiar with.