The House of Discarded Dreams

The man-fish seemed taken aback—he deflated somewhat, shrank away from Vimbai and looked smaller than he ever had. “And you think you can command me: why?”

Vimbai thrust her carved-up forearms that glowed brighter and spilled their pale yellow light in narrow beams, like the weak spring sun, into the man-fish’s face.

He backed off a bit. “Where did you get this magic?” he asked, with curiosity rather than fear.

“I made it myself,” Vimbai answered, deciding that going into great detail would be counterproductive.

The man-fish nodded with respect. “Very nice,” he said. “With magic like this . . . it’s very impressive, really. If one had such magic, one wouldn’t need to beg for soul scraps from others.”

“You mean—” Vimbai started.

The man-fish nodded again. “I mean that with such magic, I wouldn’t have to go to wazimamoto or even help them drain your blood and your soul—and I could, I’ll have you know, I totally could. Child’s play. I’ll even strike a bargain with you—you carve me a spell like this, you muroyi, you. You little witch. You carve me a spell and I tell you how you can get the psychic tongue back.”

“So you lied to us the first time,” Vimbai said. “It wasn’t in the hospital.”

“Oh, it was. Only not where you’d think. The wazimamoto, see, they are just nightmares, blind and dumb. They are nothing—they need psychic energy to even exist, let alone talk. The tongue you’re looking for was there with them the whole time.”

Maya gasped. “So Peb’s tongue is what’s keeping them talking.”

“It’s what keeping them existing,” the man-fish said. “Which is a good thing for me, because this place is not exactly rich in life, and therefore in souls. They had drained what they could off your friend, and then off that funny head on a single leg. They give me what they don’t use. But if you offer me something better . . . ”

“I’m not going to let you steal more souls,” Vimbai said. “Or help you to do so.”

“You don’t have to,” the man-fish said. “If you make me a spell that would let me live without souls, that would let me collect the energy I need from the air and the water around me, then I would be content.”

Maya nudged Vimbai. “You sure he’s not lying?”

Vimbai shook her head. “Of course not. I mean, he probably is. About some of these things, at least.”

“Can you put a spell on him?”

“Yes.” Vimbai’s fingertips stroked the scars on the insides of her arms, left hand to the right arm and the other way around, crossed, entwined. “I’m not sure I understand how it works or why I even can do that, but I think I could. But only after we get back Peb’s tongue.”

“That’s rather inconvenient,” the man-fish said. “If you banish the creatures that sustain me and then your spell fails, what will happen to me then?”

“We’ll release you into the wild,” Vimbai promised. “There are plenty of lakes in New Jersey, and there are dead people’s souls you can swallow to your heart’s content—if the spell fails, that is. As soon as the crabs get us there.”

The man-fish appeared to scowl, even though Vimbai was not quite sure how he managed that without any eyebrows. “And I should trust you: why?”

“Because we cannot trust you,” Vimbai said. “You tricked us twice already—it would be stupid to believe you again, you have to agree.”

The man-fish muttered but conceded the point.

“So you see, you’ll have to trust us, or we’ll be at an impasse,” Maya said. And added, in a flash of brilliance, “Besides, how long do you think before they decide to drain your blood?”

“That’s a very good point,” Vimbai said. “Can you really trust any creatures who do nothing but rob everything alive of its blood?”

The man-fish considered, his small eyes slowly moving from one girl to the other. “You won’t trick me?” he finally asked.

Vimbai rounded her eyes at him. “How could we? You are quite smart, we wouldn’t dare to.”

“Yeah,” Maya said. “And we give you our word—it actually is worth something.”

The man-fish sighed, his gill covers fluttering. “All right,” he said. “Now, get closer.”

Vimbai and Maya approached the man-fish on their hands and knees, cautiously, as Maya’s dogs hung back, whimpering with their fluffy tails lodged between their hind legs.

“Now,” the man-fish said. “The tongue you’re looking for is shared between all of them, split into many fine energy strands, psychic energy fibers, if you will. And to draw it out of them, you will need something inert, something that would accept this energy and hold it. It’s like osmosis, see? Spirits would move into a greater spiritual vacuum—so you just need to find something that is a greater spirit vacuum than the wazimamoto.”

“Is there such a thing?” Vimbai asked. “Is there anything more devoid of soul than colonial vampires?”

“Undead crabs?” Maya suggested.

“Their souls are too close,” the man-fish argued. “But something close, something dead . . . ”

“Oh no,” Maya interrupted. “You’re not touching my grandma.”

The man-fish chuckled softly. “Even if it’s just a memory of her death? Even though it would let you fix your little psychic energy friend?” His flat head and beady eyes thrust forth, his slimy skin almost touching Maya’s face, his wet cold lips almost on hers. “Even though you could make her alive again, even for just a little while?”

The wazimamoto’s truck had fallen silent and the man-fish crawled away, muttering dark obscenities and vague promises; he begged them to come and visit him at the lake as soon as Maya made up her mind. Her dogs had grown bored and dispersed, hunting crickets and whatever other small and timid life crawled between the great concrete imitations of real boulders—real somewhere in the outside world, the world beyond these walls, the world that seemed a dream sometimes.

Vimbai had run out of comforting words, and could only sit next to Maya, her legs folded under her cold and numb, with only occasional prickling of phantom pins and needles suggesting that they were still alive; Vimbai’s arms, goosebumped and heavy with fatigue, wrapped around Maya’s unresponsive shoulders. How long had they been sitting like this?

Forever, Vimbai thought. Her head grew heavy with thwarted sleep, leaning against her will on Maya’s indifferent shoulder, merciless gravity pulling her eyelids close. Galaxies were born and fell to dust, constellations swirled and traversed the skies millions of times, changing their position slowly, imperceptibly—and still, the two girls sat in the ruins of a great civilization, quiet and uncertain about the fate of a dead grandmother.

“Come on,” Vimbai coaxed gently. “Let’s go home—you don’t have to decide anything here.”

Maya shook her head, and Vimbai was unsure what she was objecting to. Finally, Maya shook her head one last time and stretched, breaking open the protective ring of Vimbai’s arms. “I don’t suppose I have a choice now, do I? Let it be, then. How do we get her to the wazimamoto?”

“We can wait here,” Vimbai said. “We can wait for them to show up. I will ask the horseshoe crabs to bring her to us—on their little backs, on their slender legs. They have no souls that would leak into her.”

Maya nodded. “Ask your crabs to bring her then, I don’t mind.” She heaved a shuddering sigh. “I wish my grandmother was more like yours.”

Vimbai understood what she meant—a bare spirit was better than a lifeless body. The separation of flesh from soul was a terrible thing—all death was terrible. But the ghosts, the vadzimu and other spirits, were pure and comforting, offering protection and advice, telling stories and doing dishes, really alive rather than dead. After separation of flesh and spirit, it were the spirits that remained alive. Vimbai shuddered at the memory of Maya’s grandmother—nothing but a flesh suit, grotesque and unwieldy in its white gloves and floral hat, especially meaningless because the corpse did not need protection from the cold or embarrassment. It was inert and still, its trappings betraying the anxieties of the living.

And this is how she was when the horseshoe crabs, summoned by Vimbai’s insistent call, aided by the vadzimu (who Vimbai could not see but easily imagined as she stood on the porch, peering into the water and gathering the undead arthropods for their mission), marched to the concrete tower somewhere on the edges of the house, as far as Maya’s consciousness could reach, and picked her up on their backs. They moved like a lumpy river of olive-slick carapaces and gray infested meat and pale broken legs, dragging through the dust and the linoleum of the house, a small dead woman on their backs—her face peaceful, as if she were lying in state with her hands crossed on her chest and her starched white slip barely peeking from under the edge of her black skirt. Dead—certainly dead enough to suck away whatever psychic energy the wazimamoto had squirreled away, inside of their faceless, soulless bodies—if the man-fish was to be believed, at least.