Teth of the City - Chapter One

Chapter One

What the Courier Said

Teth leaned as far over the balcony railing as he dared, feeling the press of the cold metal bar against his stomach, and thrust the hunting pole toward the clothesline. Made of hollow aluminum, the pole was dented in many places, scars from all the times he had banged it on the railing or on the wall. At the end of the pole, a little loop of nylon rope was threaded through a hole. With the pull of a crude trigger, he could contract the loop, but first he had to get it around the head of the line rat. The fat little animal had a long tapered nose, dusky fur, and loose folds of skin that drooped over the sides of the clothesline. But nimble forepaws and a prehensile tail kept it from falling into the hazy, red gloom below.

The vile creatures had terrible eyesight, scarcely able to see an inch in front of them, with tiny pink eyes buried deep in their faces. They relied more on an acute sense of smell, so Teth had smeared a bit of grease on the inside of the loop. As he lowered the pole toward the clothesline, the rat lifted its face and sniffed at the air, rocking its long nose from side to side.

“That’s it, you fat thing,” Teth whispered. Their sense of hearing wasn’t much better than their eyesight. “Get a good whiff.”

He started to slip the open loop around the rat’s head, but something moved out of the corner of his eye, some small object sailing out of the shadows of the balcony beneath his own. It hit one end of the clothesline near the hinged U-bolt that secured it to the handrail. The line bounced, and the rat, moving with surprising speed, dropped to the underside of the line, hanging by its tiny claws. Teth cursed and tried to move the hunting pole around to catch it, but the creature scurried away, moving toward the lower balcony. Then it dropped, grabbed an edge of one of the balusters, and slipped out of sight.

“Why did you do that?” Teth shouted, banging the metal pole against the handrail. “I almost had it!”

A hand, long-fingered and gaunt, reached out from the lower balcony and slapped his pole aside. The face followed soon after, a sunken-cheeked woman with sparse gray hair and rotten teeth. She twisted around onto her back to look up at him, shaking her fist.

“I don’t want you hunting off my line,” she said. “That rat’s on my property.”

Teth drew the pole back in before she could snag it with her long fingers. “You weren’t trying to catch it. You didn’t even know it was there. I saw it first.”

“Stay on your own balcony, you thief,” the woman said, spitting between the blackened stumps of her incisors. “You got no right to reach down into my property.”

Her right hand whipped out and flung something up at him. A long, bloody bone from a freshly killed animal, it spiraled up toward his handrail. He leaned to one side, but he needn’t have bothered. The spinning bone reached its apex beneath him and dropped away, leaving a single fleck of blood on his cheek as it went. The old woman made a grab for it in passing but missed, and Teth watched as it fell past the twenty or so balconies that were visible beneath his own before disappearing in the fog and murk.

“Stay on your own balcony,” the old woman shouted again. “Don’t hunt off my line.”

At this, someone above them called down. “Both of you shut up. Nobody wants to listen to your bickering.”

The old woman swiped her hand, snarled, and slipped back out of sight. Then, for good measure, she grabbed the crude stick that held the clothesline in place and folded it back inside her balcony. Teth shook a fist at her and turned away. Furious, he threw punches in the air, trying to picture that snarling face before him, but it didn’t make him feel any better. A line rat would’ve meant extra food, and the bones and skin might have come in handy. It was rare to see one so close, and he’d had that stupid hunting pole at the ready for months with no luck. Another second or two, and he would’ve had the thing by its neck.

Teth slumped down on the floor of his balcony and put his back against the balusters. His home wasn’t much, and on a day like this, a day when a desperate attempt for some small thing had failed, it felt like an absolute hovel. The living space sank back into the wall about four feet, three metal walls and a curved handrail enclosing his whole world. On the right, a thin mat and blanket served as his bed. A plastic barrel sat at the foot of the bed, dented and dirty and much used. In the far corner, he had a small stove set into a recessed hole halfway up the wall, with cabinets on either side, and a sink and toilet stuck out of the wall beneath a round mirror scarcely bigger than the palm of his hand.  

And that was it, his home, his whole world. Though it wasn’t much, he knew some people in the City had it worse. In fact, he’d had a few wretched years of his own after the factory fire, years of wandering down in the dark and damp, desperate and floundering, before the paperwork had cleared for the new job. He’d lucked out on the view. Since his balcony was halfway up the wall, he was high enough to see over the shorter buildings, and since he was positioned on a straight east-west thoroughfare, he had a clear view of the sun from morning to evening, which meant plenty of light at all times of the day. And even at night, though the sky haze blurred the stars, there were lit windows on the wall opposite his building.

Yes, his situation could’ve been much worse, and there were times when he was grateful. But not on a day like this. Oh, he had enough food to survive, but just barely. An extra mouthful was a big deal. Teth sighed and crawled over to his bed. He didn’t bother pulling back the blanket but flopped onto his back, tucking his hands behind his head and kicking off his shoes.

Old hag, I hope you choke on rat bones, he thought.

Teth closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but it was hopeless. His guts felt all knotted up. He rolled onto his side, facing the wall, but that didn’t help either. He would have worked, but he’d already finished his assignment for the day. Still restless, he sat up, grabbed the top edge of the plastic barrel, and tipped it over so he could reach inside. His work consisted of putting together small circuit boards, sliding the little pieces into place. It didn’t require much skill, just the ability to follow diagrams on the instruction sheets. It also didn’t pay much, but it provided daily provisions.

He picked through the stack of green circuit boards, dug out the instruction sheet and studied the diagrams. All pointless but it passed the time. Soon enough, as the setting sun turned the sky haze a bright, bloody red, and the rush and growl of the city shifted into a lower register, he heard the rumble of gears above his balcony. He rose, wrapped his arms around the barrel, and dragged it toward the handrail.

The bottom of the lift reached the balcony just above his, and he heard the courier chatting with his neighbor. A moment later, the gears creaked again, and the lift lowered to his level. The lift was little more than a plastic bench set inside a metal framework, raised and lowered by sturdy ropes wound through a large box on top. The courier sat in the middle of the bench, blue barrels on either side of her—one to collect the work, the other to dole out the daily provisions for those who had finished their assignment.

“Is your assignment complete?” the courier said. She didn’t bother to look up, her gaze fixed on a small plastic device in her right hand. Green letters flashed on the screen, though Teth couldn’t read them upside down.

He didn’t recognize her. She had a weary face, tired eyes, her limp, brown hair pulled back into a lazy ponytail. Despite this, Teth found her a more pleasant sight than the crusty old man that had served before her. When he failed to answer her question, she frowned and glanced up.

“Assignment complete?” she said tightly, tapping a finger on the flashing screen in her hand.

They locked eyes for a second, and he felt a strange flutter of fear. He had no idea why. Something in her gaze, some sudden glimmer of emotion. He quickly bowed his head, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. Finally, for lack of anything better to do, Teth reached down into his barrel and dug out the stack of completed circuit boards, piling them up neatly between his hands. Then he thrust them at her. But she didn’t take them, and he dared to meet her gaze again. What was the emotion there? Distrust? Fear? For some reason, it made him feel guilty. Had he done something to her? But, no, of course not. He had never seen this woman before.

“I finished them all,” he said. “If you’ll take these, I can get the instruction sheet to prove it.”

She set her handheld device on the bench and took the boards from him, but she moved slowly, as if reluctant. One at a time, she dropped the completed boards into the barrel on her right. Then she picked up the handheld device and turned back to him.

“Do you have my provisions?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he grabbed the small paper instruction sheet from the bottom of his barrel and showed it to her. “They are all done correctly, if you want to double check.”

She took the sheet of paper from his hand and tossed it into the barrel with the circuit boards. The whole barrel was already halfway full from all of the collections she’d done on balconies above him. Teth wondered briefly how his work compared to those of his neighbors. He’d heard rumors that those who did particularly good work got better provisions. But the courier handed him nothing. For a few more tense seconds, she merely stared at him.

“My provisions?” Teth asked.

She reached into the barrel on her left, grabbing blindly, and pulled out a small, wrapped package, thrusting it at him. As he reached out to take it, she drew back.

“It really is you, after all,” she said. The bland, emotionless drone of a courier gave way to something raw and real. “I was afraid to look, afraid to find out I was wrong. But now that I’ve seen your face, I’m sure of it.”

“Sure of what?” Teth replied. He tried to grab the provision pack again, but she twisted to one side to keep it out of reach.

“That I know you,” she said.

This struck Teth as so absurd that he laughed. When his laughter made the courier glare at him, he turned it into a cough.

“I don’t think it’s possible,” he said. “I’ve been in this balcony for three years, and you’ve never worked the lift before, not that I recall. Unless maybe you came by one night while I was sleeping, though I don’t know why you’d do that.”

She shook her head. “No, not from here. Not from the balconies. From the factory.”

The possibility of it dredged up such dark memories that he gasped and stepped back from the handrail.

“I’m sure of it,” she said again.

He studied her face as long as he dared. Nothing about it seemed familiar, but he saw the recognition in her gaze now. “No, we…” But would he have remembered her anyway? There had been so many faces in the factory, so many bodies huddled in the dark. “We shouldn’t speak of such things,” he said, finally. “We don’t talk about the factory. That was a long time ago. And anyway, I didn’t work down on the factory floor. I stayed mostly on the platform with the viewscreens.”

“We never interacted on the floor, true, but I met you,” she said. “See, that’s the thing. This is why your face is so clear in my memories. We spoke on the stairs in the back hallway when you broke open the window, and—”

“You must be mistaken,” he said, cutting her off. His whole body tingled with a sudden desperate need to get away from the courier, the balcony, the deep and dark things in his mind.

“During the fire,” she continued. “You broke the window with a rusty gear from a tool closet, and some of us were able to climb out before the smoke overwhelmed us. You probably saved twenty, thirty people. I could never forget your face.”

“We don’t speak of such things,” he said again, swiping both of his hands at her. “The factory was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”

“But you don’t deny it was you,” she said. “And even if you did, it wouldn’t matter. I remember. I will remember you for the rest of my life.”

And with that, she finally thrust the provision pack at him. He took it in trembling hands and pulled it close against his body.

“I don’t want to talk about the factory anymore,” he said. “Please don’t talk about it ever again. It’s late now, and I need to sleep.”

She tapped the screen on her handheld device and said, “Well, I am behind schedule anyway. I mustn’t linger.”

“Will there be more work?” Teth asked.

“Tomorrow morning, as usual,” she replied. She set the device down beside her on the bench and reached for a small control panel in the framework of the lift.

Her finger poised above a lever, but she didn’t move it, not yet. Teth took another step back, hoping she would take it as her cue to leave. She didn’t. She hesitated a few more seconds, not looking at him, biting her lip. “There are things you do not know.”

“Of course.  Nobody can know everything.”

She spoke right over him. “Things you do not know about the fire. About the factory. About the city. Terrible things.”

“I can’t think of any reason to discuss it,” he said. “The factory was many years ago. I am doing much better now. It’s all behind me.”

She seemed to accept this, nodding, and moved the lever. The lift began to descend. As she sank beneath the handrail, she glanced at him one last time, eyes wide, lips drawn back.

“Teth, your name is Teth,” she said. “My name is Cera.”

“See-ruh,” he replied. “Never heard it before.”

“There are things you should know,” she said. “Things I need to tell you.”

And then she was beneath his level and moving down to the balcony below. Teth was tempted to rush over to the handrail to get another look at her. He fought the urge, turned, and flung himself onto his mat, burying the small provision pack under his arms. He heard the quiet voices of the courier and the old woman beneath him. The old woman sounded annoyed. Maybe she had failed to complete her assignment. Teth didn’t know. He didn’t care.

The factory, the fire, his family, all of these things had seemed so distant, buried deep in the shadows of his mind, but Cera had dredged it all up, as if stirring up the muck from the bottom of a pool. What had already been a frustrating day now felt like the end of the world, a precipitous slide into a bottomless pit. Teth didn’t bother to unwrap his provision pack. Finally, he worked his way under his blanket and pulled it up over his head, so he wouldn’t see anything. But he still heard the rumble of the lift gears, and it kept the memories fresh for a while. When the lift reached the bottom of the row and started back up to the top of the wall, he listened to the growing sound with mounting panic. The courier would pass by again. Would she say something? He couldn’t bear to hear it, so he pressed his hands against his ears and shut his eyes tightly.

If she said anything, he didn’t catch it. When finally, after long minutes, he moved his hands away from his ears, the sounds of the lift were long gone, and the evening hum of the city had taken over. Teth pushed the blanket down to his stomach and worked the provision pack out from under his body. Absently, he fiddled with the edges of the paper wrapping.

“I don’t want to remember,” he said. “I don’t ever want to remember. Not ever.”

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