The Other Normals (17 page)

I THINK IT’S WHAT YOU CALL A DIVE BAR. The windows have cracked shutters that support sedimentary deposits of dirt. The sunlight that gets in illuminates dancing filth that circulates up from the floor, which is covered with sawdust. The tables and chairs are mismatched and of widely disparate size. The clientele is a sparse and depressed-looking collection of other normals. At some tables, ferrous ones who look like Mortin sit next to okapicentaurs who lie on the ground like horses, sipping from giant beer steins. At others, attenuates who look like Ada huddle over glasses. The space is huge; the bar that runs across the front is as long as the ticket counters in airports. There’s only one person behind it: an other normal like Mortin, with long yellow hair and red skin, chatting with a faun.

“Who’s that?”

“Human in the bar!”

“What are you doing here?”

I stammer and gesticulate. This doesn’t look good.

“Ah … Ada Ember?” I manage, and then the front door slams open and Gamary rushes in.

He has Ada on his back. He has
Mortin
on his back! I’m so happy to see them that I forget everything and run to them. I fling my arms first around Gamary’s hairy torso; then Ada and Mortin hop off and I hug them, too, tight, clapping their backs, crying a little because they are real and they are friends.

“Whoa,
whoa
!” Mortin says. “How’d you get here, buddy?”

“Who is he?” a faun at the bar calls out.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s with me, okay? He’s part of a correspondence experiment fully approved by the Appointees; he has just as much right to be here as you.”

“Mortin! I thought you were in jail! Where are we?”

“
Shhh.
You’re in a bar called the Monard. Keep quiet.” He has sweat and dirt on his face. A black eye, too, just like the one I would have gotten from Ryu if I hadn’t been given an ice pack. I remember how when I came over before, I caught him putting on what I thought was sunscreen under his eye.

“Did you just
break out of prison
?”

“Yes, and if you don’t keep quiet, I’m going right back in. Let’s get a drink.”

“Why are we getting a drink if you just—”

“Haven’t you ever heard of hiding in plain sight?”

I put on a straight face. We approach the bar. The bartender with the long hair cleans out a glass with a rag and eyes us suspiciously.

“Leidan!” Mortin says. “How’s it going? Can you do a round on the house for your brother?”

AS SOON AS HE SAYS IT, I SEE THE resemblance. The bartender, Leidan, has the same small ears and Hollywood button nose as Mortin. His eyes sparkle with similar grievances, but Leidan’s are hidden behind a glassy film. He moves slowly, like he knows it’s his bar and couldn’t care less. “I hear you’re in trouble again,” he says, wiping his mouth.

“Everything’s fine.”

“You mean that door
isn’t
gonna fling open with officers looking for you?”

Mortin shrugs. “That’s always a possibility.”

“You got a reward on you?”

“Hey, Bro.” Mortin grabs Leidan’s hair. “I’ve just been in Granger and I come to the
one
place I think might be safe, and you’re already trying to turn me in?”

“Off the hair, please.” Leidan steps back. The drinkers watch us. One spits on the floor, and the sawdust soaks it up. I wonder if all bars are this tense and depressing and, if so, why anybody goes.

“Why haven’t you tried to see me?” Mortin asks.

“Been working.”

“Been drinking, more like.”

“Least I haven’t been smoking earthpebbles like you. You gonna introduce me to your new friend, or does he just like to hang back and spy on conversations?”

“Sorry, I’m … ah …”

“Don’t worry. I know. You’re a traveler.”

I nod.

“Leidan Enaw,” the bartender says. As we shake, he smiles. It’s the kind of natural smile that glossy magazines like. He nods to Ada. “And who’s this, your girlfriend?”

“No!” I say, like it’s an accusation.

“Why not?” He leans in. I smell liquor on his breath. “Ada’s a real catch. Not that I think that way.”

“Of course you think that way, Leidan,” she says. “You have more girlfriends than customers.”

“I don’t like to think in terms of numbers. Gamary, how you holding up?”

Gamary indicates the bandages around his midsection. “I’ve been better.”

“Hey!” a centaur yells. He’s sitting down the bar with a red-skinned female other normal. “Some service here?”

“Hold your horse.”

Leidan slowly pours beers for Mortin and Gamary. He gives me and Ada water. After he takes the centaur’s order, he concocts an alchemical mix of liquids from five bottles and tops it off with a dash of clumped white dairy product. He serves the drink in a bowl; the centaur and his date take turns lapping it up like dogs.

“So what are you doing
back
?” Ada whispers. “Did you kiss Anna?”

“He didn’t kiss Anna,” Mortin says. “If he kissed Anna, the princess would be free, everyone here would be celebrating, and we’d have our much-promised return to normalcy. He didn’t kiss anybody.”

“I tried, okay? The plan kind of backfired.”

“What did you do?”

“I had a momentary lapse in judgment. I didn’t have anywhere to go but here. How’d you get rescued?”

“With great difficulty. They were ready to string me up in a public hanging. Ada and Gamary created a disturbance and freed me.”

“When? Just now? While I was at the dance?”

“Time gets fuzzy between our worlds. It depends on the observer. For us, it’s been three days since we sent you back to camp. How long has it been for you?”

“Maybe eight hours?”

“Then you didn’t do the right thing. When you act out of fear, you get left behind.”

“I think it might be better if I
stayed
behind here, with you guys. I’m better suited to it.”

“That’s not possible, Peregrine,” Ada cuts in.

“Ada, you realize you talk to me more than anybody at camp?”

Leidan comes back. “Another round?” He pours a shot for himself and slams it before I can tell what color it is. Mortin and
Gamary are still working on their beers. I haven’t touched my water.

“My brother,” Mortin says as Leidan shuffles away. “So much potential, wasted.” He takes a swig of beer. I wonder whose potential he really thinks is wasted. I look through his upturned drink at the walls and ceiling. Things look sadder when glimpsed through alcohol.

As Mortin chugs, the centaur and his date down the bar finish their bowl, get up, and walk past us. The centaur bumps into Mortin, pitching him forward so he spills all over himself.

“Hey! What’s your problem?”

The centaur stops. His lady friend eyes us from atop his back. “I do not have a problem,” he says. “Do
you
have a problem?”

“Yeah, I guess I shouldn’t go to mixed bars anymore. It’s better to just drink with men.”

“Be quiet, Mortin!” Gamary says. “It was a mistake—”

“He spilled my drink. He owes me an apology.”

“
Mortin
,” Ada hisses.
“Hiding in plain sight.”

“It’s hopeless! Wherever I go, the world is full of idiots trying to impress their whores.” Mortin spits in the sawdust. It’s an ugly word, in any world. The woman on the centaur gasps. Ada smacks Mortin’s arm. The centaur pulls out a studded stone club.

“Now I will ask you to apologize to my lady friend.”

“Gentlemen, please, we can’t have fighting in here,” Leidan says. “If you can—”

But Mortin stands and faces the centaur, just as the front door opens.

“MORTIN ENAW!” A VOICE CALLS. I KNOW its self-satisfaction and cruelty before I even see Officer Tendrile. He’s a little dirty, but his blade and mustache are intact. “Freshly escaped, with all of your compatriots, in one convenient location! Sir with the club, you’ll have to back away. Mortin is my quarry.”

Behind him, fish-creature guards and octopus-man officers march into the bar. “I don’t want anyone to move, and I don’t want anyone to
speak.
You’re all coming with me—”

Ada jumps up. Mortin darts under the centaur, who swings down at him. The club misses Mortin but catches a batracian guard who got too close. The guard lets out a horrible gurgle as he crumples to the floor. “Murderer!” Officer Tendrile yells, and the other guards start attacking everyone around them, beating the bar’s patrons with spear butts. “You’re all under arrest for collusion with Ophisa!” Gamary kicks a guard away—Ada grabs Leidan—docile alcoholics who were sitting at tables snarl at the police, defending themselves—a chair flies across the room—I duck—to be honest, once I see the chair, a check mark goes off in my head next to
barroom
brawl
, and I know the best thing to do is get out.

“Leidan! Back door!” Mortin yells, clutching my neck as he scrambles past flying bottles and mugs and clumps of sawdust. His brother runs ahead of him and kicks open a second entrance to the Monard. Light streaks in. Outside is an alley and another building; we’re in a city, aboveground.

“Stop them!” Officer Tendrile yells. Someone shoots an arrow; it lands just above the door as Gamary and Ada run out. Mortin tosses me into the alley. I squeeze my eyes in the sun. I’m between two wooden buildings with clotheslines holding laundry ruffling in the wind.

“C’mon!” Ada says, already on Gamary’s back.

“Where’re we going?”

Gamary leans back so I can get on. Mortin says something to Leidan in the doorway before running out in front of a volley of arrows that tear the laundry and thud into the building opposite. He jumps onto Gamary behind me; Gamary takes off down the alley.

I peek back: Leidan is climbing a pipe against the bar’s exterior wall. Two tentacled officers bust out of the doorway; one tosses a spear at Leidan while the other looses an arrow at us. We speed around a corner. The arrow hisses past Mortin. I grip Gamary’s rough hair, screaming in joy and terror.

“Where are we?” I yell.

“Surface Subbenia!” Ada says. “Above the market chambers where you were before!”

It’s a run-down, dirty city, with wagons drawn by centaurs
and okapicentaurs with sores on their legs, beggars in the streets, fortune-tellers in ramshackle booths, and homes that look like the ones I saw when Dad dragged us to Colonial Williamsburg, but not as preserved. I look up. Cloudless—a perfect day. There isn’t an extra sun or anything. I’m glad. I can only deal with so much.

“I’m sorry I did that, guys! It was like I couldn’t control myself!” Mortin yells.

“Did what?” Ada asks.

“Said that to that woman!”

“It’s too late now!”

The wind whistles in our ears. Gamary runs faster than I think he knew he could. People point and call for the police and yell, “Isn’t that the escaped prisoner?”

“How did Tendrile know where to find us?” Mortin asks.

“I can’t—
huff
—hold you three—
huff
—any longer,” Gamary says. He stumbles past a well and a broken cart propped against an abandoned building. Elsewhere I see piles of burning trash and celate officers knocking on people’s doors, demanding answers.
The dark shroud of violence that you’ve seen will continue to befall us
, Ada warned. The city has no sidewalks—Gamary gallops on swaths of dying grass. The wind kicks up the smell of waste. Gamary hightails it away from the chaotic citizenry, cresting a hill, and I look down for the first time at the spreading, peaceful countryside of

GAMARY COLLAPSES OUTSIDE THE CITY limits. We tumble off him onto a road. I keep running.

“Stop!” Mortin calls.

“There are people after us!”

“Nobody’s coming out of Subbenia to get you! Come back here!”

I walk back. Gamary catches his breath, and we all walk next to him. It seems strange to move at a leisurely pace after being in such a death-defying chase, but Mortin explains, “The law here is very provincial. Celates in the city worry about their territory; once you leave it, they couldn’t care less.”

“Even Officer Tendrile?”

“Officer Tendrile would be terrified out here,” Gamary says.

“Of what?”

“Nothing; don’t listen to him,” Mortin says. “What’s there to be terrified of?”

He gestures toward the big deep sky and layered hills in front of us. The countryside surrounding Subbenia requires a word I’ve never used before, but I know from C&C:
heath.
Like the moors of England, it’s an open landscape of low-growing shrubs,
with wind-polished, grassy slopes as far as the eye can see. The road we’re on dips out of sight and pops up again over and over as it stretches toward the horizon. Among the shrubs I see big stones and small huts. There are no trees, no animals, and no farms. A cart approaches in the distance, but other than that, the only movement is the grass bending and swishing in the breeze, throwing up mirages of reflected sheen.