A Long-Awaited Party
As is their custom, Iroh and Jiraiya settle in for a smoke before the party. They lounge in fraying lawn chairs and watch the rafter lights do a decent, if not gaudy, approximation of a sunset.
Iroh sips at his long clay pipe with the grace of a veteran. For Jiraiya, the puffs upon blown glass come harder and harsher, as if passing through a thick borderland that Iroh has long since mastered and made his personal domain. He coughs and grins and makes sweeping gestures.
They exchange idle talk. Plans, travels, distant memories. Jiraiya speaks through his mild buzz of times long past and times yet to come. His eyes fix on the steel horizon, or perhaps somewhere beyond it.
--
The set-up within Ben Tennyson Memorial Park ("True Hero and Martyr of the Revolution," reads the tastefully-placed plaque) is thus:
White-walled pavilions encircle the raised central bandstand, some big and some small. The tents are filled to capacity with long tables and folding chairs. Between the pavilions and the stage sits an empty space, dotted with a few lonely round tables. Space enough for mingling, eating, and perhaps a bit of dancing come the break of simulated stars. Streamers, banners, and foil balloons flap from every available pole and stable surface.
Aang and Dib watch the band set up from the deepening shade of one of the dining tents. After helping string blue and green lights along the edge of the bandstand, each feels that he has done his allotted duty for the time being. Aang perches like a fascinated cat; Dib slouches limp-legged in a chair with a cup of pirated punch in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Onstage, a man with hair dangling over his eyes plucks a few offhand chords on a stand-up bass. A moment later, feedback yowls through speakers as a technician fumbles with the microphones.
Caterers hurry back and forth between the rows of tables. Steam trays and serving dishes wrapped in plastic clatter against white tablecloths. Towers of paper plates. Monuments of napkins. Seas of cutlery. The smells of roast meat, vinegar-drenched salads, and spicy sauces begin to waft through the tent.
Dib points to the stage with his cigarette. "This is going to suck," he sighs.
"What?" Aang sputters. "I helped set this whole thing up! It's the biggest party to happen in the Shire in years! What's wrong with you?"
Blinking, Dib says, "Huh? Wait, wait. Not the party. I mean the band."
"I set that up too, you know. Had to find them, work out the contract . . ."
"Whatever. It's not an insult. It's just, uh, hardly ideal. The band, I mean. Oldschool, loud, folk-punk crap."
"It's my uncle's favorite pub band, Dib. He goes out of his way to see them."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it, right?"
Aang shakes his head in wonder. "Do you ever just lean back and enjoy yourself?"
"I am leaning back and enjoying myself."
"While criticizing the band I hired."
Dib shrugs. Ash crumbles off his cigarette and momentarily shimmers, suspended, in the duskglow. "Just sayin'."
Aang laughs the laugh of exasperated friendship. His fingers trace unseen patterns on the alabaster tablecloth. "How can such a hipster be such a dork at the same time?" Before Dib can whine a response, Aang springs from his feline crouch and starts off toward the tent's exit. "People are about to arrive. I'm gonna go help my uncle greet people as they come in. You want to come?"
Dib shakes his head.
"Suit yourself. Don't overexert yourself, huh?"
A foul look and an obscene gesture hurry Aang on his way.
--
As the suns fade out and the lights of the fourth level blink on one by one, the guests begin to arrive. They come at first in ones and twos, then in clumps of four or five, and then in their dozens. Most are from the Shire proper – old friends, neighbors, distant relatives with wide grins and dull eyes. Some wear the long coats and shaved heads currently in fashion in Brii. Aang sees a pair of pale, red-eyed Delver men among the arrivals, bowing to Jiraiya as if greeting a potentate.
Jiraiya stands at the entrance to the park, greeting each newcomer with handshakes and a slightly pained smile. A big, broad-shouldered man in a cream-colored suit and red tie. Below his dress clothes, black sandals of the sort one wears in high summer. A shock of hair so white it looks like a crystallized cloud formation.
The guests fan out into the park as the band finishes tuning its instruments. A hammerflute trills; the bass thrums a few deep chords; drums fall into a quick little rhythm; a guitar ripples notes like sad old memories; the lead singer approaches the microphone and growls out a quiet, contemplative take on "That Old Bright Bastard." The guests' tempo falls into step with the roll and fall of the music. Their thoughts are carried on the backs of the lyrics. Some begin to dance tentatively, awkward and brightly embarrassed, out on the open grass.
--
Spider and Sokka amble into the park, fashionably late. Both have changed clothes and cleaned up in the hours since their quest down-levels. A loose blue suit now hangs from Sokka's body, the coat sleeves turned up and the shirt left unbuttoned to his chest. His hair is combed and slicked back, dark and shining.
A tar-colored tie sits about Spider's throat like a noose. The collar of his shirt is starched hard as a castle battlement.
Both young men linger at the park gates, peering in as if into some bizarre limbo beyond their fathoming.
"Dude," Sokka whispers, "I'm not feeling anything. Do you think . . .?"
"That we got duped?" Spider hisses. "I'm in a foul-enough mood already. Don't plant dangerous ideas in my head."
Suddenly, a white and red wall looms above both of them. A huge arm detaches from it and something strong as old stone grasps Sokka's hand.
"Gentlemen!" Jiraiya purrs.
Neither Sokka nor Spider is at all short. All the same, both of them have to crane their necks slightly to look Jiraiya in his sharp eyes.
"It's great to see you here!" Jiraiya says. "Very fine indeed!"
Feeling all the more childlike, the two young men mumble, "Happy birthday, Master Monogatari. Thank you for inviting us."
"Pfft! None of that, now. You're not kids anymore, dropping by to ask if Aang can come out to play up-levels. No sir!" Jiraiya slaps Spider on the shoulder, and the blow threatens to bowl him over. "Call me 'Jiraiya.' That will do."
A distant look comes over the old man's features. "Yeah," he says. "That'll do just fine, for now. Aang's gone off to the buffet, I think."
"Thank you, sir," Sokka croaks.
"Jiraiya."
"Thank you, Jiraiya."
"Better. I'll train you yet."
Two pairs of bumbling legs shuffle their owners on their way. Jiraiya's arm shoots out again like a crossing barricade. Spider makes a sound like he's just found a large knife pointed at his face.
"As a note," Jiraiya says lowly, "even though I'm not running this little shindig, you have my permission to get wasted tonight. Just keep in mind that if you do anything to embarrass me or endanger my nephew, I will beat you both so hard that your ancestors will feel it." The big man grins. "Now run along, and have fun!"
They do run along, as if a pale devil is at their heels.
--
Cups fill; queues form and snake out of the dining tents. The multitudes laugh and chatter as they line up before the long tables of food and drink. They heap plates with hot grits and fried taro and savory goat so tender they can cut it with butter knives. Potato crisps dusted with ginger and dried chilies. Flatbread, garlicky poached eel, and onion salad. Thick slices of melon (in water, dire, and blue varieties). Pulled pork with mustard sauce. A half-dozen desserts ranging from spiced cake to shaved ice soaked in citrus syrup.
Two kegs of locally-brewed Fancy Dan Porter! Bottles and cans of lager! Barrels of cold, sour Shire wine! A glittering skyline of hard liquor bottles, their contents dark and tempting as the sea! Ice overflowing the edges of buckets! A hundred raised plastic cups!
Through it all, Jiraiya threads his way in and out of the bustling throng. In his hand is a glass of this or that, seemingly never empty. His eyes roam implike over the shapes of women and pause to brighten with each familiar face.
--
They are around the beer cooler, at the edge of the buffet tent, when the drugs begin to take hold.
It starts as a buzzing in the fingers and toes, grows in intensity, and shivers down the arms to hum in the shoulder blades. The face numbs; the movements stiffen; the pupils dilate. The night fills with a sort of misty twinkle.
"Hold on," Spider says. "I think I'm feeling it." He fumbles forward, grips the edge of a table, and then swoops a hand down to grab a can of beer. Each movement is momentous. Each touched object draws cool lightning across his skin. He yanks back the ring-pull on the can ("Ba Sing Se Bitter") and takes a slug of warmish lager. Amazing.
Something flutters in his peripheral vision.
"Coming on pretty strong here, Sokka ol' pal." Spider whistles. "Sokka?" He looks up. "Say something, you skunk-ape."
But Sokka has vanished. He's nowhere to be seen. He's gone.
"Oh gods," Spider murmurs. Another sip of strong lager, like liquid tin in the back of his throat.
A pair of porcelain-blue eyes opens on the side of the beer can. They blink sullenly, and then close. Spider blinks back.
Oh no.
--
"So."
"Yes?"
"What of it?"
"I can't even begin to know what you're getting at."
"Oh, come now. Come on, old boy. We know. At least we think we know. Best to just come out and say it. Why not? It can't hurt anything. It's your eighty-eighth birthday, for gods' sake!"
Jiraiya lets the question hang in the air. He sips his drink and enjoys the heady tingle it spills across his tongue. Finally, he says to the man before him: "I really have no idea what you're talking about." A glance outside. The siren-call of the dance space filling with revelers.
Exasperated: "Come off it! We know that – well – that it's you. You are the one getting some kind of royalty –"
A wave of the hand. "Now, now. Where I get my money from is nothing to be discussing at a time –"
"That's not the point!"
"Sure it is," Jiraiya lies. "Sure it is."
His finger slides down and caresses cool metal.
--
Coming on very strong. Very fast.
Glittering gold lettering floats above a black sea that spills from the tables. It dissolves the clothing of those it touches and renders their forms bright, blurry, and unpleasant to look at. He feels his legs go rubbery when they touch the dark liquid.
Toxic. Toxic water. Crap. Shit. This is serious.
Spider laughs. No, it's not serious. Not at all. It's a party. He's high and it's a party. He's hallucinating a bit and it's a party. He wipes a pall of sweat away from his face and wonders if he can navigate this godforsaken black water to one of the long tables with their desperately wonderful spreads of food. He wonders if –
Suddenly, he smells something burning. He sniffs. He smells someone burning. The certainty of this is so overpowering that it feels like a divine revelation. Crisping skin and bubbling fat. Like . . . like pork. Like the kind of hog roast he never had while growing up, catching and eating the geckos that swarmed about the Half-End Housing Projects.
People smell like that when they burn to death. They smell like holiday roasts, set out hot and dripping from the oven. They smell like curls of crispy, delicious skin and pools of liquid fat.
Spider Jerusalem looks about, panicked, and feels the sudden urge to vomit.
Someone is dying by fire and all around him are uncaring faces, smiling. He stumbles through them. The black water sucks at his ankles. It stinks of rot. It stinks of gecko droppings. It it it ohhh God it's coming on hard now. Harder than –
Across the park, blue lights dance and shiver like ghosts. He counts them: One, two, three . . . His hand shakes at his side. Breathing ragged as torn construction paper. Nine lights. Nine blue circles. Nine blue-white circles of construction paper. Nine blue-white rings of construction paper, their centers hollow and black as empty graves.
Have to get out. Have to get out. Sputtering numb lips. Dropped beer can – anemic, urine-yellow leaking out into the venomous swamp beneath his feet –
He runs, bumps, and jabbers an apology. Man in corpse's suit. Face like something found floating in a sewage drain. A moan of acknowledgement. It's all Spider can do to beat back the screams. He lopes through the white opening and out into the starry swimming evening.
Bass-beats like a tribal call-to-arms slam against his eardrums. They flow together in a single earthquake roar. He shuffles and stumbles over the rippling lawn. Falls down. Slumps against the warm grass. Groans as the sound of splintering earth drowns out every thought and feeling.
Claws. Claws thrust through the ground and grope at the sky. Something below them begins to speak in a dead language – a language like the awful clank of ten-million machines. Factory whispers – foundry laughter – oh – a slow piston song that gives way, it it it – oh!
Spider scrambles up onto his knees.
The machines scream now, and their dead gray and black arms tear free, rising like monuments to a brutal nightmare age. An ossuary of thought. A Golgotha of sensation. They chant like iron children, burning the last corpse-fuel of the world.
"Fuck!" Spider rasps.
--
Meanwhile, Sokka has a rather pleasant conversation with a light pole.
--
Aang cannot even begin to understand his earlier melancholy. He stuffed himself full of salad and melons and a monstrous helping of red bean custard, and even allowed himself a bit of the fried taro. Probably cooked in hog fat, yes, but the world is a cruel, strange place and such things are far from his mind tonight. He drank cup after cup of punch until Jiraiya spiked it with a bottle of something with Delver writing on the label. A liquid red and redolent of anise. Aang took a cup of the concoction to Jiraiya's chortling approval, only to dump it into the grass after the first throat-burning gulp.
And now, Aang darts bloat-bellied through the loosening crowd. The park lights cast a thin yellow glow over the partiers' wan faces. Crooked teeth flash at his passing. Raised cups and words of praise follow in his wake. "Good work tonight, Aang!" "Hell of a party!" "Oh, come and dance, Aang my boy!"
He heard that Sokka and Spider arrived some time ago, but he's yet to find either of them. Probably off in some secret corner of the park, a hoard of purloined beer at their feet, that familiar triumphant laughter on their lips. No matter: He'll run into them eventually.
Aang smiles, pauses in his headlong run through the masses, and looks up to the bright lights of the bandstand. The hammerflute player – a wiry blonde youth who looks to have a bit of Delver in him – kicks across the stage like a maniac. The band pounds out a frenetic drinking ballad. Around Aang, the crowd swings hips and throws elbows in time to the lunatic beat. His calves twitch in desperate anticipation.
A flash of red among the dancers; wide green eyes; a black dress of the sort one knows all too well. She spins to Aang's side and spreads a smile like something out of a poster selling jewelry or mouthwash. "Hey!" she shouts. "Want to?" She tosses a hand at the crowd.
"Mary-Jane?"
"Glad you remembered, tiger." She tilts her head, scans him up and down. "Where are those friends of yours? Spider Jerusalem and that kid with the black hair?"
"Dib?"
She shrugs. "I guess."
"They're, um, around. Not sure where."
"Good! Come on!"
Mary-Jane, the girl Aang met but once at a pub called The Starry Deeps, grabs his wrist and yanks him into the rush and cacophony of the crowd. He has one thought before the adrenaline-elixir of the dance overtakes him: Dib is going to murder me.
--
Do you want to know the secret of the VALAR, child?
Spider Jerusalem sits cross-legged in the grass. A lit cigarette in need of ashing dangles from his lips. "Oh. Sure," he says.
The cave cricket fixes its blind white eyes on him and whispers, The VALAR is actually the Great Author, who writes the world. He is a terrible thief and a cosmic fraud. He gathered Meridian from the disparate parts of many universes. It rubs its shining legs together and produces a half-hearted chirp. From atop its grass pulpit, the cricket continues, Meridian and the universe about it is a lie. A collection of refugee faces from other places and times. History is a joke. Nothing here existed before yesterday. The Great Author kidnapped you from across existences and convinced you that you belong here, in this awful farce of a world. Even now, He writes you and the fate of your world like a sadistic puppet master. Free will is an illusion. Everything you know and love is false.
The cricket seems rather pleased with itself.
"That," Spider coughs, "is bullshit."
What?
"What you said. It's bullshit. Pure, simple bullshit. You have no idea what the hell you're talking about."
Well, I never! the cricket chirps. It hops, offended, from its perch and is enveloped by the shadowy lawn.
Spider leans back and savors the momentary quiet. Behind him, the band continues to drive out song after song. The partygoers whoop and yell like rioters. But here, all is suddenly silent. Overhead, lights glitter among the level's rafters. Vulgar simulacra of stars. He looks up into the twinkling dark and breathes deep the scents of Shire summer (grass, mildew, hot wet concrete) on a high tide of cigarette smoke.
And that's when the bats descend.
--
A call from the stage!
"C'mon an' stomp your feet, ya' bastids!"
The music swells! The drums thunder! One hundred people step and swoop and howl! A tsunami of limbs! A stink of sweat and beer and merriment! A thousand cheers and unheard oaths! Sway! Sway and fall and dance to sung tales of rare, ancient glories!
--
Dib sits and smokes and drinks the altered punch until he is moderately drunk. He feels his body go numb and his thoughts go slow and elastic. His eyelids droop.
Suddenly, Aang stands before him panting and grinning.
"You coming?"
"Hnruh?" Dib manages.
"Dancing? Everybody's having a great time!" Aang leans close. "Mary-Jane Watson's out there, man. She asked about you."
A shear stab of panic pierces the punch-drunk fog surrounding Dib's mind. He sits up and lets the cigarette butt drop from his fingers. "She did?" he asks.
"Yeah! She totally did. You should get out there." Aang's eyes roll in the direction of the stage. "Go for it."
Dib stares out of the dining tent and into the mass of bodies beyond. His limbs feel very heavy. A lead ingot seems to have found its way into his stomach.
"No. No, I don't think so," Dib croaks. "Too drunk."
"You're not!" Aang playfully grabs Dib's sleeve and attempts to haul him up out of the chair.
"Goddamnit, Aang!" Dib snarls. He pulls away.
"What?"
"I just – I mean. Shit. Please just go. I'm not in . . ." Trailing off, biting his lower lip, Dib sits back down.
Aang takes a few steps backward, looking hurt. "This is your chance, Dib. She's waiting for you. This is your big opening."
"Did she really ask about me?"
"Yeah."
"For me?"
Aang hesitates. Too late, he realizes his mistake. His face collapses. "No."
"There you go, then." Misery coats Dib's voice like an oil slick.
"It doesn't matter!" Aang cajoles. "Just, just . . . just do it, Dib! You don't even have to run game on her tonight. Just loosen up, have some fun, and get to know her."
"Pass."
Angrily, "Fine! You want to be miserable, that's your call. I refuse to let you drag me down, too. Me? I'm gonna go back out there and dance with that hot redhead that you've been mooning over for the past three months."
"Have fun with that!" Dib snaps.
The words fall into empty air. Aang is already gone.
--
Meanwhile, Sokka has a rather pleasant conversation with a young woman. She blushes and laughs at his jokes. Apparently, her name is Gwen and her father is a constable who knows Aang's uncle. Sokka leans against his friend The Light Pole and tells her that her hair is beautiful. She blushes and laughs. When Gwen goes to get the two of them drinks, Sokka flashes his new friend a triumphant thumbs up.
--
At one point, Aang thinks he sees Spider running through the crowd, hands clutching his head. A look of flopsweat terror swims in his eyes.
But that can't be right. Spider's never lost his cool as long as Aang has known him. Aang shrugs and peels drenched hair from under his headband.
The thought disappears entirely as Iroh comes spinning out of the pulsating wall of revelers. He trails a pair of plump, giggling women in bright summer dresses. The old wizard flashes Aang a wink and melts back into the mass of dancers.
--
"So, there I was," Jiraiya takes a gulp of beer, "alone, and deep in the belly of the Sea of Corruption. I had no idea of where I was. The fall had knocked me out, you see. I was lucky that my mask hadn't come off."
Two-dozen wide eyes stare up at him. Still got it, he thinks. A pleased smirk.
"I barely knew which way was up. I could see the ground beneath me and a few feet ahead, and that was it. I could hear more of the ferrospiders moving in the branches above. Probably looking for me. The spores were so thick it was like a fog. If I had taken a single breath without my mask on, I'm sure I would have died instantaneously."
"But you didn't!" one of his listeners chimes.
"No sir, I did not," Jiraiya says. "I remembered what Iroh had told me and put it to good use. Also, I got lucky."
"How?" A girl, dark-eyed and long-haired. She sits in the front row cross-legged.
"Well, I started walking. Then I ran. Behind me, I heard something crash down in the underbrush . . . and then a terrible call, like a chorus of horns in the deep forest!"
The children gathered at Jiraiya's feet gasp. He chuckles, pauses for dramatic effect, and then continues.
--
Meanwhile, the light pole stands silent and alone. A pair of dust moths flutters playfully through its friendly glow.
--
WhowhatwhereohGodohGodohwait.
Sweat-slick hand on a broad forehead. The bristle-bits of a hairline meet his fingertips.
Waitwaitwait. Shit's for real. No it's not. Can't be. Pull it together. You're hardcore; you're used to this; you should know; you should oh God what is –
Blubbering children rise from the false earth – bleeding eyes – terrible fury on their tongues and something dripping venomous from their bloated lips like worms, worms of the false earth –
Not real. Shut up. Not real. You're better than this. You should be used to this. You should know. You should feel it now.
Godamnit, you're going to be a journalist. You are going to be a monster of a journalist. You are you are you are –
Now come the ghosts, or something like them. Wavering eggshell forms that flicker and jump like something out of a broken filmstrip. Each stutters past him, wordless. They trail the scent of static and the sound of ozone.
Spider grunts, "Damn you people. Can't you see I have a crisis on my hands, here? Come back when I'm not figuring out how to save the world."
--
Meanwhile, Sokka struts from the edge of the park toward the mass of tents at its center. His hair hangs over his eyes. His grin is decidedly goofy. He swings his arms in wide, tingly arcs.
A hideous scarecrow form careens out of the dark and tackles into Sokka's side. The world upends. Before he even figure out that something has changed, Sokka lays with his cheek crushed up against the grass.
"Ow?"
"Bastard!"
Spider's red, glistening face appears from above. He grimaces, chewing on the end of an unlit cigarette with feral grinding teeth.
"Spider, man. Wassup?" Sokka croons.
"Where in rip-snorting hell have you been, you idiot? You left me behind hours ago! Days!"
Sokka scratches at his scalp and smacks his lips. "Really? It's been that long?"
"You're goddamned right it's been that long! You can't even begin to comprehend the horrors I've had to endure in the interlude."
"Huh?"
"I've learned things, you nincompoop. Important things. Things that will make your hair turn white, if I thought you could understand even a fraction of them!"
Head cocked, Sokka asks, "You sure you're okay, man? You don't look too good."
"Screw that! Screw you!" Spider shouts. "Do you have any idea of the danger we're in? LOOK!" He grasps Sokka's face by the temples and jerks it around, toward the party still in full-swing.
"Dude, Spider," Sokka says, eyes flitting back and forth, "I'm really hungry and thirsty all of a sudden, and kinda sleepy too, and really I've been having a pretty good time here, so I don't really get why –"
"You don't see them?! What's wrong with you, you flop-haired imbecile?"
Sokka squints at the pulsing, milling expanse of the park. "See who, now?"
"Them! THE SHAPES!"
Suddenly, Sokka can see them. At first they're just weird flashes of light, off in the dark corners where the lamps (such awesome guys, those lamps) don't reach. And then . . . and then it becomes something else entirely. Something strange and vaguely geometric. A pattern beneath patterns. Labyrinthine designs that pulse silver and bronze. Bodies like forgotten architecture. A fine, unnerving susurrus as they move from the dark places and slide through the crowd.
"Gods," Sokka whispers. "What are they?"
Spider nods decisively. "The poor fools out there have no idea. No idea at all. It's up to us. We're going to have to take these bastards on. Make them understand that they can't get away with this."
Quietly, painfully: "How?"
"By fighting them, you fool! Fighting them with every last ounce of blood and bile in our bodies! We're going to take this struggle right to their weird little chins. Those little curly-cue things, too. Disgusting."
"Those . . . what?"
"God damn you, Sokka. You incorrigible mongoloid. Man your goddamn station! If we're going to survive this," he wipes runny sweat from his chin with his suit sleeve, "we're going to have to start thinking like damn-hell-ass soldiers!"
Sokka looks to Spider. Then he looks out into the park. To his friends and the strange beings that seem to move between them, staring at them with eyes like bitter diamonds. "Okay," he breathes. "Okay. Just lead the way, man. Lead the way."
"Outstanding!"
The two take off at a trot, pumping their arms and legs like rabid gazelles. They approach the party proper as if nearing the temple of a blind, heretic god.
Completely oblivious, the party continues.