The Minority Council (44 page)

Authors: Kate Griffin

Tags: #Fantasy, #General, #FIC009000, #Contemporary, #Fiction

BOOK: The Minority Council

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“Your quarrel is with the fairy godmother, not with me!” he babbles, but the gun is still in his hand. “Let me help you.”

So close now we can reach out and touch him.
	I hurt .
The electricity crackles back to our fingertips.
	Listen!
We reach out for the back of his neck.
	Listen to me!
“If you must kill me,” he breathes, “I would politely ask you to make it brief. I hate waiting.”	Listen to me please listen to me listen you have to run please listen you have to run right now listen to me LISTEN
So be it.
	Stop it!
His petty wards snap apart around us and our left hand closes around his face, we feel the contours of his nose, the softness of his lips beneath our splayed-out fingers and our right hand grabs the wrist that holds the gun and we let it burn! Electricity blazes from every part of us, the black dark of the room split in two by the sapphire glory that dances off our skin, electric strobing flashing sparking brilliant fire it burns, and burns and he’s screaming though his lips are starting to dissolve and his face is spilling blood, the gun rattles in his hand as the trigger finger convulses, bullets bouncing along the floor and still he’s screaming and screaming and we laugh	Stop it! STOP! No, please, please don’t do this, please, please, don’t have to, there’s other ways, there’s walking away, there’s running away, there’s not please no please don’t Please!!
	I beg I beg I beg please please don’t please!
his body goes limp, the bullets spent from the gun. We toss it aside, watch it fold in on itself like wet paper.
He’s still alive. A creature without a face, a face become a red map of unknown territories, but he’s still breathing, still alive. If he had hair, it would probably be smoking with the rest of him. Little dances of beautiful electric snakes ripple and earth off the remnants of his flesh. His eyes are open, reflecting our blue fire and perhaps, with what little of his senses remains, he sees us. He tries to speak, but his throat is a blistered tube. We kneel down beside him to better study the quality of his death, and his body is too weak to flinch away.	IT’S NOT HUMAN!! Enough he’s broken he’s beaten he never stood a chance please enough please

He wheezes, “I… I… I…” Tries to blink blood out of his eyes, but it is as washing away the ocean while swimming. “I… I… didn’t…” [I’m sorry.] “They’re… I did not…” [I’m so sorry.] “I did… did not…” [I couldn’t make it stop.] “She isn’t…” [She isn’t?]

We wonder what it would look like to burn out the nerves behind his eyes.

No, no! Listen, please, listen, if there is anything left worth the name of
thought, then just here, just now, please, be still.

“She isn’t…”

We force ourself to be still, to listen to his rattling dying breaths. [Please.] It comes slow and hard, blood and air mixing even as he says it. [Please.] “Kill me… quick?” he begs.

“Why should we? What is there in your soul that merits mercy? What is there in your life that was not coming to an ending in death? What is there in your departure that is not insignificant? Not means, nor fate, nor deeds done and gone before, make you worth our pity.”

Our hand twitches though we did not bid it move. We clench our fingers tight, press them to our side. A flicker of pain inside us, curse flesh and all its failings. Then he says,	Don’t be stupid listen! Listen to him, listen oh God I want to…
“Penny.”
	Penny
We grab him by the throat
	I lean in close
shake him like the paper thing he is.
	pull him up.
“Penny!” My words are nearly a scream, nearly impossible. “Tell me!” “She… she…”
Electricity flickers between our fingers	blood on my hands
“She… she… mercy?” “Tell me now!” “Templeman took her!”
	Templeman took her.
Templeman took her.
	I press my hand into his throat, feel the pulse beneath my fingers
see the horror in his eyes
	what must I look like to him?
squeeze a little tighter
	“What do you mean… Templeman took her?”
Just enough air to confess and die

“We never had her,” he says. “We never had your Penny. We never took her. Templeman has her. Templeman had her all along.”

We hurt. Penny?	I’m so sorry.
	“Please,” he says, “please…”
Penny?	How long will it take him to die?
	Minutes?
Let his body burst from the inside out, let him scream and scream and scream until there is no breath to scream with and then let him scream still in his dreams until there are no dreams left to dream with	Hours? Days?
	The end of the road.
“Please,” he says, as if we should care.
	I close my fingers around his throat, reach my mind down through the ravaged remnants of his nervous system.
Let him rot, let his body be eaten by the maggots and the worms, the fungus and the sickly green creatures that wriggle up from the earth with mandibles chittering, let his eyes be the last to go, let them stare and stare at the needle of the fly as it penetrates into the soft black ink of the socket	His heart is burnt, barely beating, “Please,” he says.
	I close my fingers. Feel his heartbeat in the palm of my hand.
Why should gods be shaped by men?
	Snuff it out.
His eyes close.
	There.
He breathes his last.
	Done.
What now?
	Time to go.
That’s all?
	That’s all. I pick myself up.
We stagger up and feel…
No thoughts. Move.

[… feet heavy, shoulders stooped, arms dangling, belly sickly, ribs burning, breath aching… ]

Feet shuffling through a tomb made of boxed-up dust. Breath through lungs that shudder when they shrink, burn when they grow. [Hate this hate this hate this!] Do not stop and do not think and do not stand and do not breathe. Corridor four floors beneath the ground where the ceiling has ruptured and the earth has cracked. [Make them pay we’ll make them pay all of them we’ll make them pay pay all of them pay for it for this for her for them for everything!]

Dead. [We can finish it just because you are afraid doesn’t mean we cannot finish it we can end it all right now burn it all burn them burn the fairy godmother tiny tiny man go upwards and kill him we can we can we will we can.]

All dead.

Do not think.

Do not look.

God but do not look.

These are the stairs that lead to the open air.

Up a floor.

And another.

A sign says “fire exit” in big green writing, but someone has raised wards across the hall in front of us. Thick red wards sculpted from flecks of paint scratched from the stop sign, the air thickens as I approach, trying to keep us in, pin us down. On the other side of that door there are

[little human minds they are so afraid we press our ear to the door and we can hear them even through their feeble wards, hear them breathing, men with guns and men with spells as if either can hold us back now]

Unnecessary opposition.

[wards break easily beneath our hands, we slice them through and the blood on our fingers only makes it easier]

I stand back from the door and call out, “Hello you there!”

Silence on the other side [but we hear their fears]

“I’m leaving this place now!” I say. “Please don’t get in my way.”

We can destroy them!
	Too much death.
“Okay then!” I say. “Coming now!”

This is me letting

us step back a pace and smile, raise our hands and feel the power, the pressure of the air, the weight of it

[only for a moment]

as we spread our fingers wide and let our arms open and the air runs by us smelling of old cooking fats and the hot blast of the dirty air-conditioning unit pumping out at full volume. It slams into the door and blasts the frame straight from the wall, a flying piece of metal that picks two of the little men off their feet and sends them spinning legs dancing in the air, arms flapping like clowns.

[Kill the lights.]

Snuff out the light on the other side of the door and it was a foyer to this place, all potted plant and paper lampshades, and now it is a killing field, a death trap and there are five of them still standing, the fairy godmother’s men, armed with spells and guns and we laugh and say,

“Is this the best you can do? | I told you to run!”

And we raise our hands and there is the fire

Which I snuff out

Burning?

Darkness.

Burn them all.

Absolute darkness filled with the rising smell of smog.

Simpler if they die.
	No more death.
They would not spare us, if they had the choice.
	No more death.
We have the power, we have the means, we have the will…
	My choice.
We could be magnificent!
	Not me. Not today.

This is my spell, this is the stench of London smog, of dust mixed with river vapour rising from the floor. This is the cloud that infects the mind, this is the addled brain drunk on river-stench, this is the stink of the East End, the slime beneath the silver steel sheets, this is the enchantment that infects your brains.

They stand like puppets, limp, caught in the tangle of our magic. Their minds are open easy things, made limper by the terror that has loosened their muscles and made their knees bend. Their fingers open, their jaws hang like gargoyles’, their eyes frosted with the glaze of our spell-throwing. Not one, but not one among them had the strength to resist for more than a moment. We walk between them and they do not raise their heads as we pass.

	This is nothing.
Is this not better?
	Is this not human?

Well then, there is the door to the outside world and here is the glass beneath fingers and there, high overhead, a party is still raging and I –

we could kill the fairy god-mother now and no one could stop us
	but plenty would try
and fail
	and die

– step outside to this open world and here the smell of the river, cold air on our skin, in our eyes, in our throat, our lungs, snap-drying the blood between our fingertips and

What had Meera said?

Sometimes people come here to get clean

Washing away our sins