Chapter 95

Take care, she whispered, hugging him tightly around the neck and burying her face in his black mane. The hair standing out around his neck was stiff at the tip, but it was soft farther down, and when she breathed in it smelled like animal and blood. “Kieli. Let him go.” At Harvey’s rather hesitant words, she forced herself to unwind her arms and lift her face, though not without hanging on a while longer first. Bringing her nose in almost close enough to bump against his slightly moist black muzzle, she gazed into his eyes, one amber, one crushed in. In giving Harvey an eye, Mane had lost one. “I’m sorry…” she murmured with a heavy heart. “Why are you apologizing?” Mane looked offended, and Kieli blinked. “…Thanks,” she amended. “There you go, that’s better,” Mane sniffed, and smiled a little. To Kieli, the smile looked embarrassed. She smiled back at him just a little, and took a step back as she stood up, returning to Harvey’s side. Looking up at her with his lone amber eye, Mane ducked his head a bit apologetically. Both bizarre wings were wrenched off by now. All that remained of them were the scars on his shoulder blades where they’d cracked open, and the faint remnants of the protrusions. Even though Kieli knew with her rational mind that she mustn’t say anything selfish to him, her heart still couldn’t accept this. She let her eyes fall to the ground, crestfallen. She’d just assumed that Mane would come with them, too… “Sorry, but I don’t feel like going all the way to the capital with you. I’m not counting myself a member of your group, and anyway, we mountain lions have to live footloose and fancy-free. It’s our nature, see?”—When he’d begun his goodbyes in his usual easy tone, Kieli had tried to stop him, shocked, but Harvey seemed to have some tacit understanding with him, and didn’t really say anything. He just nodded lightly, lowering the dark brown eye that had been a gift from Mane, and said, “Okay. Thanks for everything.” Once Harvey’d agreed, Kieli couldn’t very well insist any further. That said…apparently he had no intention of acknowledging he was a dog to the very end. “Okay then, I’m off. You hang in there.” And with those simple parting words, Mane turned around with a swish of his tail and began walking rhythmically away into the valley. The long tail like a mountain lion’s had lost its fur; bare like that, it looked like a thin, pathetic string. Evening-tinged sunshine filtered down from the narrow scrap of sky enclosed between the rock walls, faintly illuminating the outlines of the rock ledges that jutted out like shelves. Kieli couldn’t see all the way to the end of the valley, but she closed her eyes and pictured the sight of the single great, withered tree the radio station had become that must still be out there, deep in the gorge far, far along that path of ledges. The rust-red grave where the armored guardian, now done with his mission after protecting the tower for so long, slept, and Mane’s owner, too. Burnt tail swaying back and forth, the jet-black beast with remnant wings on his back ambled easily along the rock ledge, far less like a mountain lion than like an old cat setting off for its spot to die. As they stood seeing him off from the valley entrance, though, he did turn back to them one last time. “Listen, you! Smoked meat and chickpeas—” “Huh?!” Kieli answered, bewildered at the sudden angry-sounding shout. “That was my favorite meal back when I was alive!” And with that, he loped nimbly off. His gait was just the littlest bit lopsided as he alternated between three padded animal legs and one bird’s leg, but he vaulted lightly from one foothold to the next without seeming to mind at all. The hair around his neck caught a ray of sunset and gave off sparkles of golden light just like a real mountain lion’s mane. “Ah…!” Kieli’s eyes widened. For just a moment, it looked as if his ripped-off wings had grown back again. She blinked, and then bit her lip and swallowed back her tears. The sparkles faded into afterimages as Mane ran too fast for the light to catch up, trailing down his back and then his long tail before scattering with twinkles into the air. He looked just as majestic as if he’d been given new golden wings of light in place of the black ones and gone soaring into the sky. The wind from the gorge whipped Kieli and Harvey’s hair in all directions. She’d like to believe that when its howl sounded for an instant like the music from the radio tower that they’d never hear again, it wasn’t just a coincidence. Even now, that mobile radio station was parked in a quiet spot somewhere in this valley, and a large man in armor…no, a gentle elderly station assistant was wryly murmuring as a young station chief next to him happily picked out records, while a black dog with a strange ring of hair around its neck munched away at his meal of milky bread, smoked meat, and chickpeas. And surely the radio tower’s speakers were crooning soft, staticky rock music as it watched over them. The single tear that tracked down Kieli’s cheek was scattered by the wind into tiny droplets that mingled into the sparkles of twilight filling the valley. Kieli woke up at the sound of faint static from the radio. She slowly poked her head around the edge of the blanket she’d pulled up over her and blinked sleepily, looking around the room. The patch of blue-gray night sky in the shack’s tiny window was just starting to lighten. She could hear muffled noise and voices coming from the doorway. Harvey and the Corporal…apparently they were right outside. Kieli wriggled out from underneath the blanket and crawled over to the door. “Take me to my grave?! Don’t go off brooding on your own and deciding crap like that! I don’t intend to retire for a good while yet, you hear? I can’t leave you alone for two seconds. You always go and pull stupid stuff like that…” “Shut up, you piece of junk. You’re the one that told me to before you broke down. God, there you go, just happily laying into me the minute you start working again.” “If I don’t say anything, who’s going to fix that tiresome personality of yours, you moron?!” “Don’t call me a moron. Call me ‘Master.’” She thought about going out to join the conversation, then suddenly changed her mind and squatted in front of the doorway instead, hugging her knees. Propping her chin on them, she closed her eyes softly and let the sounds of their usual belligerent but strangely comfortable exchanges wash over her. The Corporal had asked to listen to some rock before bed, so they’d fiddled with the radio’s tuner and antenna for a long time, but no matter what they did, they never picked up the frequency of a guerrilla radio station. All they heard was static. When she realized the only guerrilla station playing music in this area had been that radio tower, Kieli’s heart ached. The radio tower’s music would never ride the waves to them again. After a little while of brooding, she realized the bickering outside had stopped. She waited for them to start up again, but the silence continued for a while. Maybe they’d run out of things to talk about. Just when Kieli thought she’d take advantage of the good timing to go outside too, she heard a soft voice murmur, “Sorry, Corporal…” She stopped the hand she’d been reaching toward the door. “Mm? For what?” the radio’s voice asked suspiciously. The next reply didn’t come right away; after another silence, a scratchy, slightly uncertain voice went on. “…I…haven’t kept my promise yet. I’m the one who convinced Kieli, but in the end I still…I still thought, ‘Don’t go. I don’t want you to go yet.’” “There you go talking like a damn kid again…For God’s sake, I keep telling you, I’m not going anywhere. I’m guardian to you both, aren’t I?” The radio’s voice was far more static-filled and scratchy than it had ever been before, getting awfully distorted each time it rose and fell. Kieli’s heart thumped hard. She realized that while she’d only been casually eavesdropping on them, she’d been listening to a conversation she never should have heard. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s fine; I’ll stick with you to the end, okay? Don’t just take everyone on yourself. So…don’t you go up and dying either. You got that?” “Yeah…I can still keep going.” Something made a noise on the other side of the door at his back. The moment he looked over his shoulder, he heard softly pattering footsteps retreating. When Harvey gently pulled on the knob and peeked inside, in the still-dim dawn a small body was lying in one corner of the shack, facing the wall with her blanket pulled all the way up over her head. So she heard that… He wavered about whether to call out to her, but he couldn’t really think of anything he could say, so he ultimately decided against it. He walked over on silent feet and bent over a little to put the radio by her pillow. Kieli kept facing the wall and pretending to sleep, but after he drew away, he could hear her feel out blindly for the radio with one hand and yank it under the covers with her. Harvey went back outside by himself. Early morning midway up the rocky tract. The chill, cloudy air felt just right against his skin. When he lowered his gaze to the foothills below, he could vaguely make out a quiet mining town and a single railroad track, hazy in the morning mist. The thin sea of clouds that blanketed the slate sky as far as his eyes could see were gradually taking on a sandy color. He intended to set out today. Kieli’s parents, and the lab where Jude was, and Beatrix— if all the issues he had to take care of were gathered together in the capital now, that suited him well enough. Now he didn’t need any more hesitation or any more waiting. He could just go. …Not that he knew whether he’d be able to come back. He felt a dull throb behind his left eye. Before his right eye had quite recovered it had been like a thin, milky-white film hung over the right half of his vision, but now it was the opposite: the left half of his vision looked a tiny bit darker. —You should be able to use it for a while, anyway. He turned over Mane’s words in his mind. But the nerves will probably be infested little by little no matter what, so I think you’ll end up blind eventually. You’re getting off easy if you only lose the eye, though…But since you’ve chosen to fight it as long as you can anyway for that girl’s sake, here’s a parting gift from me. Harvey took a walk down the train track. There were weirdly flurried movements in the surveillance truck on standby. Apparently they were on alert, wondering what he’d come down here for so early in the morning. He’d come on a whim, but their random fear was too comical; he couldn’t help laughing a little. The he felt his shoulders relax at the unprompted laugh. Yeah, that’s right… He stood on the ballast of the tracks and squinted along the tracks into the misty distance ahead. He couldn’t see all the way to their final destination, naturally. But when he dropped his gaze from there to the ground, the twin rails stretched forward from the tips of his shoes through the whole range of vision, their crossties planted into the ground at regularly spaced intervals. He couldn’t see where he was going, but he could still more or less see where he was standing. Yeah, let’s be a little more carefree about this. He had the feeling he’d been in an uncharacteristic hurry for some reason lately. Maybe it was because he was starting to understand that there was an end to his journey? But thinking about it now, he guessed that finding out it had an end was probably exactly the reason he didn’t want to let it end. Looking at it that way, it might be a little fun to do his best for once. I’ll take a shot at doing everything I can. And then after I’ve taken care of everything, yeah, that’s when I’ll go back to Easterbury to see off the Corporal. I’d like to be able to make that my last trip. Until then…I really don’t want to let it end, if I can help it. Harvey sighed out loud. His white breath melted into the morning mist and was gone right away. He stuck his hand in his pocket and walked for a while, hopping along the regularly spaced railroad ties. Come to think of it, train tracks are made on the same standard all over this planet, aren’t they? He’d never really registered that fact before. For some reason the thought came as kind of a relief.