She Walks in Shadows(74)
“She did take the pamphlet, at least.”
“Indeed. Let us continue our ministry until she joins us or goes mad.”
The sun disappeared behind a wall of dark-gray clouds, bringing with them a storm that quickly soaked through our skirts. We trailed Yourladies to her place of employment, an old movie theater in a shopping center, with a bright, neon-lit lobby jangling with gaming machines.
The projection booth inside was deliciously dark compared to the sunny streets. After a delightful few hours of terrorizing her — making bloodcurdling noises, casting eldritch shadows into empty theater houses, revealing to her the true forms of the Twin Blasphemies and the untranslatable Sign — we finally wore her down and she brutally murdered her supervisor with a conveniently placed umbrella.
“You had to, of course,” I assured her as we led her out to the woods. “Your tender sensibilities can only withstand so much stress under the weight of the vast, ineffable horrors of reality.”
“Pero, like, what do I do now?” she asked, examining her bloody nametag, which read, “YOUR NITE.”
“The only solution is to give yourself to the will of the All-Mother,” Sister Honoria said.
We soon reached the trees, whose branches tore off our clothes so we could cavort naked with our sisters in the glorious darkness between tongues of lightning. Yourladies was hesitant at first, but she did love to dance. Soon, she was twirling and stomping with the best of us. We even let her keep the umbrella.
PROVENANCE
Benjanun Sriduangkaew
THEY SAY SHE has always been there, as old as the station’s rust: its progenitor, birthing a series of bio-systems, auxiliary supports, rooms and ventilation, and plumbing. The incredible labor, the vast contractions, the ichor on the thighs. The lack of a midwife. Upon the completion of decks slotting into place and parks fertilized to prosperity, she became part of the station itself. There was no umbilicus, or else the umbilicus was never cut — she feeds the engines still or they feed her, reverse-birth where offspring repays the womb.
In this version, she is the mother and ancestor of us all.
We come to adolescence, then adulthood, in her shadow. At its blue-black edge, we decant new infants; within the netting made by her tendril hair, we wed; and in corners formed between her limbs, we hold funerals. From first breath to last, we inhale her salt.
I see her as oil on wood, two-dimensional. The artist was imprecise with her skin color, or perhaps meant to blend her complexion into the fluids of her sustenance. Her head is an impression, hairless, her features smudged on purpose. Shadow of fins and scales undulate about her flanks, and her nictitating membranes are lit by anemone blooms. She’s something between nak and nguek, we say, though she’s neither serpentine nor piscine — and in any case, lacks the beauty of either. If she has been dreamed up, it was by a strange, afflicted imagination.
I’ve seen her name spelled out, but nobody can pronounce it. We say Prathayayi — close enough — and so, our version of her name overwrites her the way our languages have been overwritten in different times, our history overwritten in different places.
Others define her by comparison to fable; I define her by what she is not. My negatives are empirical and exact — a crèche evaluator has plenty of time to squander on observation. These are some of the things she is not: a robot, a fish, a crossroad. She is not a story, a prop, a mannequin — something animates her after all this time, moves breath through her lungs and turns the valves of her aortae. Every day, we monitor her vitals, just to be sure.
This is what we must never try: to speak to her, to wake her up, to remove her from her tank.
To listen to her will, even for a moment.
There is a trick of optics and lighting that makes the hothouse foliage appear to stretch without limit, the fruits fatter and brighter than they are, facsimile of the humid forests that our ancestors knew in that country shaped like an axe. In their days, they filled those forests and public parks with dolls animated to an appearance of sweet intelligence, shaped like kinnaree and upsorn-sriha. They would enchant visitors, sing, dance. They would pour roselle drinks in celadon cups while musicians dressed like khrut plucked the jakhe and played the khim.
In our day, we hold the blueprints of those dolls and dream of a future when we will have the time and resources to devote to their making. For now, every breath and circuit — every fistful of raw substance — is strenuously accounted for. No waste. No frivolity.
It is this thought that preoccupies my client when I find him. He is standing straight, back to me, in a circle of pebbles and murmuring plants. Glossy coveralls, young, dreadlocked: From his application, I have learned that he’s a botanist and a mechanic, and that he wishes for a child of his own. “Khun Kittisak,” I say, barely audible above the foliage.
Even then, he jumps as though my voice had carried a killing charge, frying synapses and cleaving nerves. “Doctor Sutharee.” His breath is short, the rhythm of guilt. “Thank you for coming to see me.”
He wears an optical implant in the left eye. In its indigo lens, the color of Prathayayi’s tank, I catch a concave glimpse of myself, interpreted as a black skull with an insect’s gaze. “It was no trouble. I was glad for an excuse to get out of my office. Shall we get started? I see you entered the most recent lottery, but withdrew. May I ask why? There won’t be another one for 37 months.”