Earth #5619
We are the boys who swallow their own tongues. We permeate on the brink of insomnia. An unknown amount of minutes after our birth, our mothers wanted to eat us raw.
At night, the artists gather in the woods, around the campfire. They make a big one, they say, for all the gods to hear that they've survived. It amazes Zoltan how little the circus people try to understand, how they have the ability to just be grateful for another day. They are certain that they live only as long as they're meant to, and today someone forgave them, but they were never in any real threat; they couldn't have died in the storm even if they'd tried.
Wild flowers have started to grow from the fissure down in the valley. They're stitching the wound.
Zoltan joins the bonfire. She hasn't seen Han since they killed the storm; Han retreated inside the train to tinker with her Cosmic particle.
Zoltan takes the jump all alone.
The circus artists are hallucinogenic creatures. They rise from the earth, step out of gaping tree trunks, crawl up from the roots of hydrangea and rhododendrons—migrating birds heading for the same place. Their cheeks are painted, their bodies are scarred with runes, their clothes are the skins of wilderbeasts. White, painted masks hang at the back of each of their necks. They have the shape and features of animal faces—wolves, or otters, or bears.
Zoltan hovers before the fire, hesitant. She looks at the empty spaces between all these strangers. She has no idea where she belongs here. What do any of these people mean to her?
The back rows are entirely disclosed by growing smoke.
"Where are you?"
Zoltan has recognized that voice a million times.
Aruman is sitting by the fire, and she looks like she's been waiting. Bold brush strokes of gold taint her cheeks: warpaint. Smeared with colors that have been drained by hand from blueberry, pomegranate and cherry, her exposed torso is a mesmerizing, spinning painting. She wears short, dark blue pants with sewn ornaments, rune daggers strapped to her waist and a crop top made of wolf's fur. Too little. Too much. The grey canine fur drapes over her back, but barely covers her breasts. A winking necklace of sharkfangs droops over her chest. She's lounging, legs spread—the image is delicately obscene and unbearably intimate.
"What...?" Zoltan asks, anemic.
"Just now. Your mind was somewhere else entirely. Where did you go?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"When have I ever doubted you?" That question from that mouth blows Zoltan's mind. "It's alright. I'm a nomad too. Don't be so far away." Fireside, she looks wide open.
Zoltan sits next to her. Birdy pinches her leg to break the ice. She doesn't know that she has just started a war. Zoltan pinches back.
Indigo plops on the ground between Zoltan's legs. Smiling, Zoltan lets her hands get lost in her hair. Even here, she diligently uses hair gel.
"Hmm... I'm in the mood to sing," Indigo smirks up at her.
"Noo, but you're awful at that." This is a new friend of theirs. Whoever he is, he can tease Indigo and get away with it. His viper teeth glint in the firelight.
"Sing 'For a fisherman's wife', it's my favorite!" The fundamental rule seems to apply even here: what Ari asks is obliged.
"For a fisherman's wife, the smell is no strife. So when she gets down—"
"They say she's the best in townnn!" Birdy steals her thunder, throwing her head back, shouting with her whole mouth. And Zoltan remembers that you're supposed to make a wish when you see a comet.
After all of his butterflies have rolled off his tongue and no longer bother his stomach, Frances proposes it. "Let's make an offering to Ixia!"
"An offering to Ixia! Woo!" someone hollers.
"Here's to another day of missing death by an inch."
"Ixia will love our goat."
Ari glares. "Guys, please take the Goddess of Thunder more seriously. She'll send another storm if you laugh at her goat."
"She won't," Zoltan smiles. They're all safe now.
Within moments, someone arrives with the livestock. White and scruffy-haired, the lamb sits like a dog, awaiting its fate. All languid movement and dazed eyes, Birdy slides off the log and drops to her knees; the flames lick at her skin, tickling a honeydew giggle from her lips. Zoltan sees now that her mask is foxlike.
Birdy never takes center stage in their group. She's usually satisfied with center stage in Zoltan's life, but tonight, for the first time, all eyes are on her. It's invigorating to watch. What gave her this freedom? Is she different, or did this crowd do something to make her so comfortable?
She wraps one hand around the lamb's muzzle and slices its neck. She looks so alive, fingers tightening over the wound, watching the blood trickle with ravenous rapture, with insatiable empathy.
She draws on Zoltan's cheeks with blood. She doesn't wash her hands. Indigo bends to take a bite out of the raw meat above the hooves, even as Birdy swats at her head.
Zoltan gets cold. She sneezes. Limbs flailing, she recoils so fast that she falls off the log, when a cloud of glitter blasts out of her mouth. She chokes and sneezes even harder. A cloud twice as big stings her eyes and fills her vision with light. Birdy doubles over from laughter.
"Priceless. Every time. You get as scared as you did when you were twelve."
Zoltan buries her face in her palms. "What the fuck... out of everything, I get glitter."
The night deepens, becoming immortal.
The viper boy rests his head against Zoltan's thigh. "It's insane how we found this, isn't it? Just a bunch of lowlives in a smallfry circus, but we must've done something right." He laughs. "Not anytime recently, though."
Then he strikes at his guitar.
Zoltan could read it in the lines of their faces. Nobody had taken them in, so they took each other. Orphans of a world that moved too fast for their liking. Their intimacy, their codependent interconnection makes her flustered to watch. She wishes she was her other self, so that she would fit with them.
Hands in hands in hands, they all rise. First, fingers twitch. A boy pushes a girl's hair behind her ear. An ankle shifts half-way, a hesitant motion. Smooth calves follow through, too shy to bite into the movement with pathos. The artists are men rising from the dead.
The viper child's strumming intensifies.
"Dance with us," Birdy tosses her head back to look at Zoltan, eyes turning red.
"I'll just watch. Take it away, Superstar." The nickname escapes her lips. This Birdy doesn't seethe at it; she just smiles.
One guitar has never been so spellbinding. The melody descends into chaos, into a brute, ancestral thrill. When they howl, they have the voice of wolves, and trees ruffle their feathers in fear of the sound, and the fire grows twice as big. They dance with their shoes off, like their parents did. The women spin like faeries, fangs bared, they link their arms and form a summoning circle. Hips rock into each other; feet dent the ground, slamming to the rhythm.
They pull their masks on. The masks cover only the upper half of their faces, so their bloodied grins are still visible. Their motions grow visceral, staccato, they climb and crawl to each other, fingers leaving carnal dimples into skin. Then they leave claw marks. Strands of fur arise on their arms, hair flares into beastly mane, mouths fill with fangs. Birdy has grown a vulpine tail and it whips like a flame. Their growing shadows swallow the sky. In Zoltan's orbits, the bonfire extends, becomes a forest fire who swallows the horizon. It devours everything, it takes the forest in its arms with the love of a mother, with the vigor of a lover. Through flame they are sanctified.
Zoltan blinks awake, and they're sitting around the fire again. Nothing in the world has shifted.
They laugh and lick burnt sugar. Birdy catches her eye and winks.
Zoltan cannot pay attention to a single conversation. She yearns too hard to just lay open mouthed under the night sky, and dream until the constellations fall into her mouth. It is revealed that Aruman's nickname is Birdy because of her exquisite talents at trapeze. Zoltan wants to laugh. The story behind her nickname in the homeworld is much funnier.
The lines of her face are sweeter here. They curve like the edge of the world. She has a peppered, Mediterranean undertone, much closer to everyone Zoltan has seen in her childhood. For that reason, because this Birdy is the rare thing she misses, because she is the projection of her mother and her mother's mother, Zoltan is easily lured in.
Birdy leaves the log once again to crouch by the flames. She extends an arm into the fire; with ease it climbs the line of her arm. It chars the hairs on her skin. Her eyes become golden slits.
"Birdy, not now," Frances warns quietly.
"It's irresponsible. The Ringleader will come for you if you burn anything here."
"I don't care." She runs the fire over her arms, to her shoulders, juggling it between her elbows.
"You can't control yourself. We only just survived a—"
"I don't care! Ari, I don't care!" she shouts, a feral look in her eyes. The fire is making her neck red. She looks like she found a treasure. She has never used this tone with Ari. It reminds Zoltan of something she wishes to never see again. "You act like people who are stuck. Scared out of their goddamn mind." She's almost roaring, voice rasping with passion. "I'm the only one who's not scared. The only one in the whole world."
And, if her own Birdy was here, Zoltan would say, look at yourself. How fabulously terrifying you are.
Indigo grabs Ari to distract her, saying, "C'mere, why don't you read my palm?"
Setting herself on fire, Birdy circles the clearing to scare them, a creature of folklore. No one can stand close to her. She at least has maintained the habit of showing her superiority.
Listening to the fortune reading, Zoltan finds peace in herself. She falls asleep to the crackling fire. "I can't wait to grow old," Indigo laughs nearby. All of her friends are so much happier here. Maybe it's in the lights—maybe there's something in the artificial lights back home that makes them miserable. The circus artists don't listen to people on screens—only to each other. Here, the only people you trust are your friends, and they are often wrong, but it doesn't matter.
The sunset falls behind, it's a bleeding death, it's barely breathing anymore.
She awakes to restless poking on her arm.
"Hey. Hey. Chase me."
Aruman's words have her speeding through the forest, hunting her shadow, hunting her mother's outline. They're twelve again, running under the stars, world unraveling under their feet; only, this time, Birdy is not pushing her to the ground, but pulling her forward, by the hand. When she lets go to speed up forward, it's like she's ripped from between Zoltan's ribs. Zoltan is trying to catch Birdy and Birdy is catching, who knows, eternity. Zoltan pretends, she pretends she is this free, she pretends her life has as little stress as this one. Voyaging means lying and she is happy to lie for this.
Is her Final Voyage really supposed to be more perfect than this? Everyone must be lying.
By mere accident, they stumble upon a beach. Shouting, Birdy runs into the sea. She screams when the cold water hits her skin, then changes her mind, and climbs the dock. Zoltan follows her, and then she regrets it like she's never regretted anything in her life, because Birdy strips her clothes.
"Put that back," Zoltan barks, turning around. "You'll catch a cold!" She's achingly desperate to forget how the moonlight enfolded her, from the soft, curling toes to the sweep of her eyelashes. She needs to put distance between them. Words are building on her tongue and they sound like the end of this world and all the others.
"I can't get my clothes wet. Not my most important pockets." Birdy bends down and pats her shorts with the confidence of a woman who has all she will ever need. She tossed her woolen cape without a care, but her shorts—she folded them carefully on the dock.
Stars spinning above, falling over her eyes like a crown, Birdy cannonballs into the water, free and newborn, proud and fearsome. She swims into the strongest tide, the currents change to fit her whim. Colors drip off her back, tattoos unfurl, paint falls like rivers of blood.
When she returns to the dock, Birdy pulls Zoltan in the water. Zoltan falls without grace. Birdy grabs her by the throat, hands cold and slippery on Zoltan's pulsing arteries. "Can you hold your breath for me?" Her eyes glitter with excitement. She looks like a child. Zoltan's heart hammers.
Zoltan doesn't get to reply. She is engulfed by the waves, her eyes are wide open, the moonlight palpitates above, melting into liquid starlight, she sees her barren body, it's the only guiding warmth, she sins and sins and sins every day until the world ends. When Zoltan's lungs empty, she grabs at Birdy's wrists. Birdy pushes her lower, her arm strength growing tenfold. Zoltan chokes. She kicks and screams under the hellish pressure. Her vision blackens. Each strike goes right through Birdy, she's untouchable, she's as big as the sky and she's killing Zoltan. She's so great that she's killing the woman who wants to live the most in the entire universe.
When Birdy pulls her up, Zoltan is crying. Birdy laughs in her face and hugs her endlessly.
"Were you scared?"
"Of what?" Zoltan glares. She would rather die than admit it.
"I'm sorry. It's hard to control my impulses. I can't help wanting to kill you sometimes. That's how crazy you make me, Zoltan."
For several long moments, Zoltan doesn't process it. She can't; she stares into the crashing black sea; the fact refuses to register in her brain. The Voyager paralyzes, blood freezing in her veins, hair standing on end.
Birdy used her full name. She said it just now. She used her full name. She has never, in her life, not once, not ever, used Zoltan's full name. Zoltan flinches and gets so fucking terrified that you'd say she saw a ghost. Her body curls with tension. Zoltan has never heard Zoltan from the lips of Aruman before. She's not sure she wants to. Her heart beats faster than it would if they were fighting. God, what in the world, what could possibly be the reason, what maker could be so cruel as to allow this?
Most importantly, what had this rope-walking Zoltan done so differently? The hurtful aspect of voyaging is seeing what other versions of herself have accomplished. Who she could've been if she'd just made a few different choices. She can't help but compare herself. It's a suicidal competition.
"Do you ever wonder about who you would've been, had you been born under different circumstances?"
Birdy stares at her blankly. "Why?"
"What do you mean, why?"
"Only a person with many regrets would think about that. I don't regret. Never." Aruman looks to the stars. A wave crashes. "I forgot how."
"There must be something that you wanted and never got." Would the answer break Zoltan's heart, or hint that this version of herself has her beat in every way?
"I don't want. I have no cravings, you know. Only the dance. When you never stop moving, you never need anything. I don't remember the last time I ate. Our friends say they sleep, but I think they're lying. Don't you? People can never really be at peace—they need a little help to reach that."
Crickets sing from the blooming forest.
Zoltan is terrified. She doesn't know, she reminds herself. She doesn't know what's going on in this world, what kind of circus it is, what kind of food they have. Maybe it's really bad. Maybe their duvets are full of leeches.
Zoltan pulls her knees to her chest. "You were right about something. I have regrets. I don't regret my past actions, because I always do anything and everything humanly doable to get my way. I just regret how I was born. I don't have enough to give. I can reach into my pocket or flip my childhood bedroom upside down, but I'll never find anything to exchange for love. There's just dust."
Birdy smiles with heartbreaking gentleness. It leaves her lips as light as a feather: "Dust is fine to me. But it doesn't matter. I can't imagine one thing you wouldn't be good enough for in the world."
It hurts.
How can Birdy be so kind while her teeth are stained with blood? Zoltan does not deserve this victory. It sickens her to the core to know she is reaping the benefits of someone else's work. She's not selfish enough for that.
"What made you like this?" Zoltan whispers.
"What?"
"Why are you like this? Who do you think you are to talk to me like this?" Her voice grows, and then it breaks. "Why are you kind?"
"You deserve nothing other than kindness. You know that, right, Zoltan?"
"Stop saying that. Stop saying my name." Too personal. It doesn't feel safe. All of this feels wrong, there is an electric charge in the air, something in the woods waiting to ambush them, a tinge of a secret that makes chills crawl up her spine.
"Are you okay? Zol—"
"Shut up. Don't touch me. Don't fucking touch me."
The Birdy she knows would fight her to hell and back for pushing her away so brashly. What the hell is it about this one? Why is she so dormant?
This Birdy is bold and strong and everything Zoltan knows her to be, but she also smiles at her like no one ever has. She's an oxymoron—if she's good to Zoltan, really, truly good, then she's not Birdy anymore. Zoltan doesn't understand the subtleties between people. She only knows that, in life, you get what you work for; she understands this from her mother and her mother's mother. For people like them, there is nothing in the world but work. And Zoltan is a road horse when it comes to that, but what has this foreign version of herself done so right? What is it about her that finally made her enough?
Zoltan knows what love looks like. She learned that, too, from her parents and sisters—and this isn't love. This is bewitchment. It's the same thing Zoltan feels for Birdy, that she has never received in return. It's a terrible look on Birdy, too impure and unedited for her.
No, Birdy is a creature of black-and-whites. She does not get stuck in limbo. She loves or she hates. She does not have the precision to be fickle.
Birdy says, "I forgive you. For whatever it is that you're doing to yourself right now, I forgive you. Everyone forgives you. But—shit, will you forgive yourself already?" Birdy rummages through her pockets. She takes out a bundle and unfolds it.
Her most important pockets.
Zoltan's stomach turns upside down. Her mouth feels sour. The piece of wood is thick enough for Birdy's hand to wrap expertly around it. The edges are charred.
Birdy snaps her fingers to start a tiny flame, lights the tip and brings it to her mouth, sucking in the smoke. The drug looks different here, but the girl's blissed-out face is the same monster that's been haunting Zoltan's nightmares. Birdy's head falls back all the way into the sand. Her lip hangs open in a wet, lascivious arch. Her tongue washes over the roof of her mouth, to pick up the last embers of delirious ash. The burn makes her taste buds prickle, her eyeballs roll back; her spine arches too. She laughs into the fumes, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
It all makes sense now. Foolishly, Zoltan has blamed herself for victory, but she never wins against this. Birdy doesn't need Zoltan to do anything special in order to deserve her grace—she just needs to be intoxicated enough to give it. When she is high, Birdy will give anything. She is a fragile creature, she breaks at the softest of noises, she feels erotic rapture from every touch.
Zoltan could stay and nurse her back to her senses. Could stay and make sure she doesn't get lost in the forest, or devoured by one of the artists at the bonfire. Could stay, stay, stay. She's done it countless times. But this time, she won't.
Maybe it's revenge. Maybe part of her wants it to happen—wants Birdy to suffer at least once at the hand of her own choices. The substance makes Birdy so happy that Zoltan's sadistic yearning kicks in: she wants her to be torn to shreds by the most savage of monsters, to drown in pleasure as she is drained of blood, to be too fucked up to fight back. Zoltan wants to be the sole survivor, the lonely relic of the infatuation of Perdita Aruman.
Hanilea awaits her with an exalted expression and twitching, ravenous hands. Zoltan's obsessive grit startles her. In the middle of the night, the portal steals them into a whirlwind of searing-hot sensation.
They return to see Junji Sidra, asleep next to the laboratory doors.
Zoltan shouldn't have forgotten what things are like with Aruman. A rule of Voyagers is to never believe the fantasy. She's traveled so many times to escape from Birdy's addiction, to prevent her life from being fully contaminated, only to watch her self-destruct in new and genius ways. God damn it if they don't get more original by the day. God damn it if the drugs don't give her better and harder superpowers each time.
Currently, it's rare that Zoltan gets to witness it, but when she does—she can barely get up from her bed in the following days. The Voyages return to haunt her.
Birdy will never admit to traumatizing her, and she never should. The truth would obliterate her.