Chapter 9. Taziri
Curled up under the old tarp and her jacket, she was mostly warm enough sleeping on the hard metal floor of the Halcyon ’s cabin. Mostly.
It’s not fair. It’s going to be roasting tomorrow. Why does it have to be freezing tonight?
Taziri rolled over and had almost managed to get comfortable when she heard a soft scratching outside, and then the quiet clatter of a few small bits of gravel rolling over and tumbling down.
Was that a footstep?
She sat up and a moment later heard another soft clicking and clacking, so small and quiet that she could barely hear it and couldn’t tell at all where it was, or how far away. As silent as a shadow, she crept to the hatch and squinted through the small armored window. There was a dark rectangle that might have been the neighboring freight car, and a pale line that might have been a bit of a rail. Everything else was a dark gray muddle.
The agonizingly soft crunch of gravel continued, as though a long snake were crawling across the rail yard, sliding its belly over the loose stones in a constant but quiet landslide.
It’s getting closer.
Taziri swallowed as she drew her revolver. She scanned the dark tomb of the cabin around her. There was no other way in or out of the Halcyon. But the skin of the plane wasn’t strong enough to fend off anything meaner than sleet. A bullet would punch straight through, she was sure.
Unless I hide in the back where the wings are folded up around the cabin. The extra layers of the folded wings might protect me. For a minute or two.
Then she heard a mournful meow. Taziri pressed her face to the window and squinted down. The shadows on the ground were rippling around the Halcyon, rolling and hunching. A tail whisked by.
Cats? They’re cats. Taziri blinked. A lot of cats.
She holstered her gun and quietly unlocked the hatch and swung it open. Just below her feet she saw a river of furry bodies marching past, their tails raised and flicking, their ears pricked, and their eyes flashing left and right in the starlight. A few of them looked up at the woman in the open hatch, but most did not.
Taziri stood in silence, watching the cats parading past in a column four or five bodies wide. For three or four minutes, they sauntered by. And then the last one was gone and she listened to the cats calmly wandering across the gravel of the rail yard until she couldn’t hear them anymore.
She shut the hatch and locked it. As she lay down on her tarp and jacket, she found herself just a bit warmer than before, and it was easier to relax on the hard cabin floor.
Cats. A hundred homeless cats wandering through a rail yard. I didn’t expect that.
Day Three
Chapter 10. Taziri
Shit.
Taziri stared at the little girl and the little girl stared back at Taziri under the pale morning sky as a cool breeze whipped across the yard.
Two minutes. I just needed two minutes. Just two minutes!
Taziri half-crouched and half-leaned with her back against the side of the Halcyon and her feet spread out in front of her with her pants around her ankles. The early morning light filled the yard with a dusty yellow glare.
The one time in my entire life that I try to go to the bathroom outside…the one time!
The little girl must have been about eight or nine. She was short and thin, and her dark green dress hid her body in a flutter of loose cloth while a light green scarf clung to her black hair. She stood perfectly still except for her clothes, which flapped back and forth as the wind shifted around them. She had just run around the back of the Halcyon and froze there, staring.
Why? Why are you here? Taziri thought as she pulled up her pants and got her clothes properly arranged.
The back corner of the rail yard where she had hidden her machine and had tried to empty her bladder was a dead end, walled in on two sides by the crumbling window-less brick walls of two ancient storehouses. There was nowhere to go, no reason for anyone to be here. There were no flowers to pick, no lost toys to retrieve, no dog to chase. And yet the girl had come running into sight as though she was chasing something important enough.
Or being chased by something scary enough.
Taziri heard the light patter of running feet somewhere at the edge of the yard near the train station. The girl’s staring eyes grew wider and wilder. Her lip trembled.
Damn it.
Taziri lunged forward to grab the girl’s wrist and yanked her back to the open hatch. She lifted and shoved and threw the girl inside and leapt in behind her, and closed the hatch as quietly as she could. The girl lay on the floor, still staring. Taziri crouched by the hatch, her revolver in hand, waiting.
Five young boys about the same age as the girl ran into view, glanced around the corner of the rail yard, and ran off again. Taziri exhaled and holstered her gun.
She looked at the girl. “Bullies, huh?”
The girl said nothing.
“Do you speak Mazigh? Mah-zee?” She tried speaking slower. It didn’t seem to help. “No, I guess you wouldn’t.” She sat back and straightened out her legs.
The girl scrambled forward, babbling loudly, gesturing wildly, and then she reached for the gun. Taziri grabbed the revolver with one hand to pin it in place and shoved the girl away sharply with her other hand, her left hand. The brace on her left arm jarred against the girl’s chin, and the girl fell to the floor with a gasp and a sob.
Taziri stared. Her sudden terror at the thought of a child playing with a gun became the shock and self- loathing of a parent who had let a child come to harm. Who had harmed a child. It didn’t matter that the girl wasn’t hers. She was someone’s.
“I’m sorry.” Taziri shuffled over to her and touched her arm. “Sorry.”
The girl looked up, once again frozen and frightened.
“Here. Look.” Taziri shrugged off her faded orange flight jacket and rolled up her left sleeve to display the brace. She tapped it with her fingernail. “Metal. You see?”
The tube of the brace completely covered her forearm from elbow to wrist, and steel rods on the brace connected to the padded and fingerless glove on her left hand to help hold her hand in place, since her wrist could no longer do that for her. “I was hurt.” Taziri frowned as she tried to mime a chopping motion on her arm. “Hurt. Fire.” She wiggled her fingers for flames.
The girl tilted her head, more confused now than afraid.
“Fire?” Taziri wiggled her fingers again and pointed to the brace. “Fire on my arm.”
The girl said something, probably in Eranian. It was so quick that Taziri couldn’t tell how many words, or even how many syllables it had been. But then the girl leaned closer, gingerly touching and poking the brace.
“Here. Look.” Taziri laid her arm across her lap and released the little clasps on the side and the brace swung open on its tiny hinges. The top half swung up to reveal the hidden gun compartment and the bottom half swung down to reveal the hidden toolbox. And in between, they saw the shriveled and bandaged remains of Taziri’s arm.
The girl gasped and pulled back.
“Fire.” Taziri wiggled her fingers for flames. “Burn. Arm.”
The girl nodded.
Carefully, Taziri closed the brace and snapped the clasps shut.
