Tamaruq by E. J. Swift Page B

skin of an orange to reveal clear skies and drenched, sparkling fields. The late spring sun burns the water from his clothes within minutes. Mig is suspicious of these abrupt transitions. It isn’t right. It wouldn’t happen in the city.
    The Osirian, by contrast, seems unfazed, sitting with all the serenity of an acolyte of the Houses of the Nazca, watching the skies as though he was born to do nothing but sit beneath storms and observe their passing. Sometimes, when Mig is pretending to sleep, the Osirian opens his pack and takes out a mysterious object – a shiny black stone, about the size of Mig’s clenched fist, but it has no purpose that Mig can see – and sits there, puzzling over it. Mig wonders if having such a close encounter with death has scrambled the man’s brain.
    Mig has never been outside of the city before. Without buildings, the world seems vast and achingly empty. He misses the narrow streets of Cataveiro, the way the city is always colliding with itself, the noise and the raw stink of it. He can’t feel at ease out here. The country is too exposed and there’s nowhere to hide, not from the elements, and not from whoever they are running from. Because however calm he might look on the outside, the Osirian – Vikram, as he says Mig should call him – is clearly on the run from someone.
    It doesn’t matter to Mig who the hunters are. Nothing much matters now, only the terrible crater ripped into his chest by Pilar’s death. He could throw himself into the river and all of its stinking water wouldn’t be enough to fill that hole. He still has the green feather she gave him the first time they talked, a ragged bit of crap now, its fibres all stuck together with sweat and lint, but he could never get rid of it. In the day he walks with his hand in his pocket gripping the feather, and at night he holds it against his lips, as if there might be something left of Pilar in it, something to soothe the inescapable despair of knowing she is no more in the world.
    With each step further south, Mig berates himself. He should have looked for her sooner, that day. No – before that – from the second they heard the broadcast about the outbreak, he shouldn’t have let Pilar out of his sight. He should have told the Alaskan to go fuck herself. All those years in her service, running her errands, feeding her and cleaning her, and for what? While Mig and his gang of street kids put themselves at risk, the Alaskan lay on her back like a beetle, antennae twitching, stirring up shit from the safety of her attic. If it weren’t for that nirvana freak and her manipulative schemes…
    He can’t suppress a shudder at the memory of their last conversation. A nirvana.
What she is
. Yes, it explains things – like her seeming omniscience, that almost abnormal intelligence that she loves to parade – and it’s not like Mig hadn’t suspected, but it’s different having it confirmed from the source. You can no longer pretend it doesn’t exist.
    He nurtures his hatred carefully. It gives him something to focus on. Something that belongs to him and him alone. He doesn’t know if the Alaskan managed to avoid the epidemic but he would bet on it, he’d bet the last of his stash, the stash that was meant for him and Pilar, the two of them, their future – he’d bet every last peso of it that she’s still out there, alive and plotting. The freak is indestructible.
    Well, if she is, she won’t remain so forever. He, Mig, will find a way to change that. The Alaskan isn’t the only one who can cook up a plan.
    For now, he’s here with the Osirian. Vikram. It’s strange that the man behind the door has a name, after all this time. In his head, Mig still thinks of him as the Osirian. Sometimes he wonders what he’s doing with the man, feels even a little afraid of him – he is, after all, a man who
should not exist
– but it isn’t fear that keeps him at Vikram’s side, not that. He couldn’t say what it is,