CHAPTER VIII

Djoss… Well, he’s the only family I’ve ever had. Can we talk about something else? A door opened and closed. Rachel didn’t sit up in the hammock. She knew it was Djoss. She didn’t want to look at him.

“Hey, Rachel,” he said.

He sounded tired. He’d been gone for two days.

“Hey.”

“Been good?”

“No,” she said. “Where were you?”

“Don’t be angry,” he said. “We need the money.”

“Just tell me where you were.”

“I had work. Then, Turco wanted some help with something. When I got done, I had to go back to work. You could have come down and seen me bouncing.”

“Djoss…” She sat up. She forgot what she was going to say when she saw the blood. His lip was cut. He had been sliced along his arm.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Rowdy work. Bouncing.”

“Let me see.”

“No, it’s fine. Barely bled.”

“Did you rinse it in wine?”

“Of course not. That hurts!”

“To heal the blood of men we must use the blood of earth.”

“No.”

“You were gone for two days and you come back bleeding. Let me pour wine on you, for luck, like in the koan.”

“No.”

“Please, Djoss? I want to do something. I’ve been here waiting forever. There isn’t anything for me to do here.”

“Then go out,” he said. “Get a job. We need the money.”Djoss threw a bag of coins on the ground. “That’s all we got in the whole world unless you got something.”

She leaned back in the hammock. “You’re sleeping on the floor.”

He sat down on the floor. “You’ve been sweating on the hammock too long,” he said. “I couldn’t use it, anyway. Tear right through to the floor if I got on it.”

***

I got really bored.

The baker above them shared a cot with his wife next to the yeast buckets on the main floor. At night, he dreamt of growing larger and larger like a loaf of bread until he pressed against the doors and rolled down the road. Rachel dreamcast in the koans, of her face before she was born. Inside her meditations, she watched the baker’s bread rising and rising until it sunk down into the basement and crushed them with all the cockroaches and that sickly growing smell of yeast. It was easier to focus in a quiet room, alone. It was boring, though. It was lonely.

Rachel snagged all the old bread from the stairwell. Djoss was asleep in a corner away from the oven’s lingering heat from above. He snored lightly. She set the bread on the floor inside the doorway and closed the door quietly.

She walked up the stairs again, and looked into the baker’s shop. It was empty. All the bread had been baked and bought. All the money had been moved into the back rooms. She could walk around, if she wanted, and lean on the counter as if she were a customer, or a baker, or anyone else in the world. If she had the courage for it, she could step outside the shop.

She went back down the stairs. She opened the door, and slammed it behind her.

Djoss woke up with a start and shook the sleep from his head. “Hey,” he said, fighting a yawn, “can I get some of that bread?”

“Yeah. Sleep well?”

“Oh,” he waved her off with his hands, “I was just resting my eyes a minute.”

“You were snoring.”

“That was my stomach,” he said, reaching for the bread.

***

Tell me something about yourself, Jona. I’m tired of talking about me. Tell me about you.

At night, I’m lonely a lot. I don’t like the nights when I have nothing to do.

Lonely… Yeah, I can understand that.

Djoss finished most of the bread, even as stale as it was, saying he said he had to go to work.

“Where do you work that they make you work like this?”

“Turco’s got me on a thing.”

“Where?”

“I’ll be back,” he said. “Just stay here. You’ll be fine.” He stepped out the door, and closed it behind him. She was alone again, with nothing to do but hide and wait in the dark, living off whatever Djoss brought to the room and their landlord’s cast-off loaves.

Three cities ago, she and Djoss had jumped out a window to escape. Soldiers kicked at their door. The soldiers heard Djoss and Rachel jump with a feather mattress clutched below them to break the fall. They landed hard in the street. Djoss had to splint his wrists for a long while after they got out.

Rachel thought a lot about how to escape. The basement below the bakery had six tiny windows, too dirty for anyone to see through. A little sunlight pushed through the filthy glass and it was day. The sunlight sank into the shadows, into nightfall.

Rachel paced the basement a bit to walk off her worry. If that got old, she sat on the hammock and used a kitchen knife to carve the leftover stale bread into little shapes, dogs and swords and children carrying flowers all crude enough to be indistinguishable from each other. They just looked like oversized crumbs. She tossed them into her chamber pot.

When Djoss finally came back with a cot so he wouldn’t have to sleep in the mud, she set it up for him in a corner. It wasn’t bought new. She put the four legs of the cot inside dented pans filled halfway with water. Bugs couldn’t climb up the sides of the bed if they couldn’t swim.

She fished the larger silverfish and roaches out of the cans every couple days and burned them in a pile in the middle of the mud floor. It took a long time to burn them because they were so wet, but she kept snapping her fingers at them, pulling the koans out of the air, and snapping at them more.

There was nothing to do but study the koans she had memorized. She reached into her quiet self for the core of the Senta. She searched for the gaps in the walls where insects moved. She asked herself the first question of the dreamcasters.

What was my hand before I was born, for my hand is how I change this world?

Where would the creature’s spirits fall onto the floor, and when?

Rachel’s inner eye reached out and dissipated against the walls. She leaned back in the cot and closed her eyes. She couldn’t see the future. She couldn’t see anything.

***

Our ways are probably not for you, Jona. I did the best I could studying all the koans my mother made me memorize. Telling fortunes is good money if you can see into the visions. Easier than cleaning.

Rachel saw nothing for a long time. When something came to her it took a long time to become recognizable, and it felt like a dream. Swirling images pooled together into her father standing over her in a dark room. The demon inside of him was smiling at her.

Rachel woke up from her meditative trance alone. Sweat covered her, slowly devouring at the canvas she wore, nibbling at the leather.

Outside, she heard the rain falling. Rachel lay back in the cot and stared at the floorboards above her. She watched a single black spot crawl out from the cracks in the boards. The black spot walked along a crack, furiously traveling cross the wide expanse of wood.

Rachel imagined what it would be to be an insect on a vast open plain of wood. She trapped the creature in Senta ice when it finally reached the edge.

She tried to find dreamcasting again for a while, but then she was hungry. She stretched.

Djoss would come home later, and everything would be fine because he’d bring something new and then the baker would give them new leftover bread.

***

I’m always afraid, Jona. I want to be somewhere where there aren’t people, and they never come, and I can live in peace.

Djoss came home late, exhausted. He said hello when he came in, tossed a bag of dried fruit in Rachel’s direction, and then collapsed onto his cot to sleep.

Rachel waited until he was snoring. She wanted to know where he was when she went out. If anything happened, they could run together as long as she knew where he was.

She opened the door. She stepped into the hall, and left the door open behind her. She climbed up the stairs to the main store. She smiled at the baker.

He nodded at her. “Thought the big fellow might’ve eaten you.”

“I don’t go out much.”

“Rent’s due next week,” he said, “You can pay now if you want.”

She didn’t have enough money for that.

“Djoss’ll take care of that later. I just wanted something fresh for a change. Do you have anything fresh?”

Back downstairs, she watched Djoss’ chest rising and falling. If she could concentrate she might be able to see into his dreams. But she didn’t want to know his dreams. She wanted to know his life.

She thought about waking him up just to talk to him. He rolled over in his sleep. He had a bite mark on his neck.

She cocked her head, and leaned closer. She sniffed his clothes for perfume. Prostitutes wore perfume. He smelled like rotting meat, not flowers. It could have been from a fight. It didn’t look like it came from a fight.

She decided to say nothing.

Another night alone and the next night and the next night and her life was a lump of pain in her gut. She started to buy bread everyday because she liked to pretend she was friends with the landlord, but she didn’t have friends.

Djoss had friends. He came home after long time spent with friends, and she was his secret ghost.

***

It felt like forever. I don’t really know how long it was. I was too afraid on the streets, even when I knew no one was looking for me here.

When did you finally go outside?

I did when I was ready. Djoss didn’t push me. He did, in his own way, but not really. He never brought me anything to read, or anything to do. He wouldn’t even bring me cards to shuffle and practice divination. But he didn’t push me, either. He just didn’t help me. I couldn’t live like that forever without help, you know. One day, I went upstairs and bought bread and I walked out into the street. I walked around the block. It rained. I didn’t have an umbrella. The bread got soaked. So did I. Then, I came back. Djoss didn’t even notice.

The next day I did the same thing. Then the next. Then I went to the tavern and danced with a stranger. Then, I got a job.

I always wondered what it was like for other people like us. I spent so long never talking to anyone about it.

It’s nice just to talk, I think.