Fantastic Metropolis

They have a cream my father puts on my top-to-bottom burns. Down my neck and shoulder and ribs and hip bone, down my thigh, and even across my foot. My father puts it on as gently as Sunrise used to put the same kind of stuff on me after I got poled before, but I never got poled this hard. That would have killed my Little Master.

They let Little Master stay next to me. He licks my cheeks and pats me all through it. It’s a bother, but I don’t tell him.

Afterwards, our stomachs growl as if they were talking to each other.

“You’re hungry,” that Sue Tennessee says.

I never was this close to one. I never wanted to be and I still don’t, she’s so ugly—she’s got little spots all over her—but she’s trying to be nice.

Little Master says, “Yes,” but I say, “No.” And then Little Master says, “Yes, he’s hungry, too.”

 

Everybody sits down with the rocks for chairs and tables. My father sits on the ground at my feet. I hate him, but I can’t help thinking how he has a very good conformation. I can’t help thinking how I’ll grow up to be as strong as he is.

I never saw some of this food. I don’t know what it is, which I guess is a good thing. It doesn’t taste too bad, though, and they do have our kind of dry cakes. I’ll bet they stole them from the Hoots when they were down there stealing things. Little Master only eats the dry cakes. He knows those because he used to chew on mine even though they told him not to.

After we eat I learn how strong my father is. First he puts the Little Master on my shoulders. He makes him keep one leg off my poled shoulder, so he’s sideways. I’m thinking, even sideways, I hurt too much to carry him anywhere, especially not up. But then my father lifts me, easy as could be, and puts both of us on his own shoulders. I’m almost twelve and big for my age, even as a Seattle, but he starts out, straight up the mountain, as if we were nothing. It’s a hard climb, but my father hardly even breathes heavily and doesn’t stop to rest. I’ll be just as good someday. My Little Master, grownup by then, too. We’ll go everywhere together, just like we were born for.

We go up all morning, until we finally top a rise, and then start down again. We go around a rocky cliff and there’s suddenly a big view of a valley with streams that shine in the setting sun, and green squares and yellow squares and funny houses. Snowy mountains in the background.

Hard to tell from here, but there’s nothing there that looks like stalls or arenas, and not a single house looks like the round white lumps, all in a row, that are the Hoots’ houses. Not even one. And not a single flag. In fact, hardly any color at all, though when we get closer I can see flowers here and there next to the houses. And, closer, you can see there aren’t any white wires. I look hard, but they’re not anywhere.

My father points down there. “Margaret… your Sunrise,” he says. And the Tennessee says, talking for my father, “We rescued her, too. She’ll be glad we rescued you. She was worried.”

I’m thinking how it was Sunrise’s own fault. She shouldn’t have been whistling like she did that night, but I say, “Good,” anyway, to be polite. Then I ask my father the most important thing. “Are you going to kill him?”

“Not if…”

You can tell it hurts him to talk.

“...if you don’t want…” Big breath. “Want me to.”

I guess I don’t hate him quite completely, but pretty much.

---

Carol Emshwiller’s The Mount is published by Small Beer Press.