by Jacob Hebda

It was dawn when the two detectives reached the village. The sunlight cut through the ancient, leafless trees, illuminating the pair, one tall and thin, the other broad and stout. They stood amid the mottled snow along the dirt road, framed by the smoldering clouds and the fire of sunrise.

Kystra, the tall one, was a gaunt young woman, her head jutting forward on a slanted stick of a neck, the product of years spent looking down over her work, and looking down upon others. Her fingers were long, so that each hand and its fingers resembled a spider’s body and its legs. Her face was long and square as a brick. Searching eyes lurked behind spectacles with glinting silver rims.

Her partner, Tyton, possessed firm muscle beneath his bulk. His eyes were perpetually wide as those of a raptor, and his broad, round face was like that of an owl. Yet his province was not wisdom, but knowledge, and though he appeared to be a muscle head, his mind was brimming with carefully observed and curated facts, information used to ferret out anything, or anyone, that would rather remain in the shadows.

They both wore long coats that once were brilliant orange but had browned from age and use. Dark, nameless stains speckled the hems and cuffs of their coats, which they saw as badges of their previous, successful enterprises, and they wore these spotted coats proudly, refusing to wash or replace them.

The only other decorations they boasted were the designs on their high collars. Undulating vines with trumpet blossoms and hummingbirds, their wings outstretched in flight, bills poised above the waiting flowers. Or perhaps the birds had already consumed their fill of nectar, and now they hovered in fierce, endless guard above the sweet treasure they claimed. These images of leaf and vine, hummingbird and flower, were woven in blood orange thread upon a field of emerald green so dark it was nearly black.

It was rumored by some that these two were lovers, but those who gossip were ignorant of the true passion they shared. The detectives were not especially fond of each other, nor of those they pursued, both human and object, nor for their superiors and their fixation with the myths of the desert plain. Instead, they lusted ever for mystery and the thrill of the hunt. They remained loyal to whoever would enable this common need.

Officially, they were agents of FISO, the Federal Internal Security Office. But they were also called the vultures of the state because they hunted those persons the state had declared dead, as well as their incriminating possessions, and their sense of smell was impeccable.

—

Mylovia woke before dawn to the shrill whine of Helda, the old woman who shared the cottage with her. Helda was too cold again. No one expected such a bitter and lasting winter, and the firewood they had gathered in the autumn was not enough. Mylovia placed her frayed blanket upon Helda, nurtured the fire back to life, and wrapped her cloak around her shoulders, as well as the sling with an empty sack attached for holding firewood. All of the nearby forests had been picked over by the other villagers already, so she would have to leave early to find more fuel.

It was well after sunrise when she reached the woods beyond the furthest cultivated field. Snow-dusted hemlock trees extended ahead of her, assembled around a cleft gashed by a frozen stream. Breath smoked from her dry, splintered lips. Mylovia was taller than most men, and her life of hardship lent her a lean, bony figure. She was also no longer young. Her face was fissured from age and strain, but she was not so old that she had lost all the hard-won abilities of her youth. Her strength persisted, both of limb and intellect.

She entered the shadows of the forest. Falling into her task, Mylovia bent to pry fallen branches from the snow and dropped them into the sack she wore slung over her cloak. Near the forest’s edge, she gripped a forked black stick piercing a barrel-sized snowdrift and lifted it. The triangular head of a highland nightprong emerged, his dark eyes staring at her. She dropped the stick, which was actually one of the animal’s spiky horns, and sprang back in shock. His mouth was agape, and his rigid, lifeless tongue hung unmoving from its frozen black lips. He was related to the great forest steeds of distant lands and named for the gleaming polish of his horns, which were the color of the midnight sky, but this smaller variety, native to the mountains beyond these scattered village settlements, did not live in herds and would not be tamed. He must have come down from the mountains seeking the shelter of the forest because of the unusual cold.

It took some time for the shock to subside, but she completed her work and departed from the forest with her mixed load of thick boughs, branches, and twigs. When she returned to the cottage, it was midday. The clouds of morning retreated to leave a bright, empty dome of blue overhead. Boot prints cluttered the path to the cottage. The front door was open like a yawning mouth.

She thought of Helda, and her heart constricted.

And something, perhaps her heart, told her now to flee. To drop her burden of wood and run. She feared what she would find inside, and she quailed, taking a step back and shedding the sack of wood with what felt like a deafening crackle and a thud before slowly, quietly approaching the cottage.

Her eyes adjusted to the windowless dark inside. The fire was dead. The chair in the corner was upside-down, and the woven bark strap baskets were lidless and overturned. The last of their bloodseed stores was scattered across the packed earth floor like a thousand red pebbles.

She rushed to the dark lump in the back of the room and threw off the ragged blankets. Helda’s eyes were closed, and her jaw hung loose like a cadaver’s. But Mylovia could feel the breath emanating from the old woman, who snapped her mouth closed and threw open her mischievous eyes.

“They thought I slept through everything,” Helda said, grinning with her toothless gums. “But I was only pretending. So much for the fine noses of the vultures!” She chuckled, but then turned serious. “They found them, Fia. They took your father’s papers.”

The broken chair beside them resolved itself in the dark. The secret compartment built into the seat of the chair was empty, a slot of shadow within the dim cottage.

So it has come to this, Mylovia thought. I should have left this country long ago, but my heart prevented me. What a fool I was to have followed my heart.

“Well?” Helda studied Fia’s indistinct silhouette in the brilliant door frame. She could see the rainbow blur from the light passing through her remaining crystal earring. “What’s on those pages? Why do they want them so badly? You never did tell me.”

Mylovia sighed. “It was the last of my father’s folklore collections. He used to interview people from the Thunder Territories and write down their stories. Those pages contain every version he could find of the legend about the first city ever built by humankind, the lost origin city of the Thunder Nation. It is called Harkal Ekel, the place where the rainbow bends. He even went so far as to compare their stories with the ones on ancient tablets from archaeological sites. He wanted to know how far back the stories went and if this City of the Rainbow was something more than myth. The Young Hummingbirds know what these old tales mean to their regime and to those who would break away from their fragile federation. They want to appropriate and suppress anything that could make the Thunder Nation proud of their heritage. Proud enough to die for.”

There was a pause. Helda said, “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

Mylovia did not answer. She cursed herself for not burning that manuscript along with the rest of her father’s work, but she could not bring herself then to render the fruit of decades into cold ash.

“It’s all you have left of him. Will you just let them have it? The investigators left not long ago. If you leave now, you can still catch them.”

Mylovia remembered what FISO did after the partition of the Thunder Territories. She remembered the little girl, limp and twisting from the rope, before the mudbrick stairs of the ruined temple. She remembered the husbands, fathers, and sons taken in the night, never to return. She remembered the roar of their muskets, the screams, and the blood on the sand.

“What can I do?”

“Find a way…”

“But I can’t leave you…”

“The villagers will not forget me.”

“The villagers! Where were the villagers when FISO got here? They said they’d hide us; they said they’d keep us safe, but they forget about us both as soon as real danger appears. Where are they now?”

I know your fear of death, Helda thought. Then she said, “You’re one to speak. You’ve spent your life running. Running from the wars. Running from the government. Where can you run now? Few survive beyond the mountains, where the earth does not thaw. And you told me you long since lost your chance to find asylum abroad. What choice do you have now but to face them or to let them rob you of your father’s last words? The first words of a whole nation. The longer we sit here talking, the more likely you will lose those precious words forever. Go, Fia.”

—

It was sunset when Mylovia reached the little wooden bridge over the brook. She remembered how the brook would gurgle and swirl in spring as it slid down the broken stones into the gully beneath the bridge. The dying light slashed across the bridge and revealed two figures in long, faded orange coats against the checkered pattern of farmland beyond, like rusted pillars upholding nothing. They had just stepped past the threshold of the bridge and onto the road.

Mylovia’s heart thundered against her ribs. She had caught up with them. But what now?

A shout escaped her lips. The detectives spun about in unison. Shadows sprang from their features and knifed the clutter of dry weeds and scrub at the road’s edge. The detectives stood together, half draped in shadow, half in light. A cold gust rushed over the bridge, and the dead leaves shivered and whispered in the brush.

“Excuse me,” Mylovia called out in a trembling voice nearly extinguished by the wind. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

The detectives were silent for a moment. Then Tyton spoke, “No. We have something that belongs to everyone.”

Kystra narrowed her eyes behind her shining spectacles.

“So you’ve come to see me, Mother. I thought you abandoned the old bone bag back in your hut like you abandoned me.”

A blast of frigid wind sent the coats of the detectives snapping like flags in a gale. Mylovia’s eyes widened, and a terrible recognition seized her. She saw anew those sharp feature and the skeletal build of the detective and saw the specter of the daughter she lost when the girl’s father, a man of the Thunder Nation, joined the rebels in their war of independence. All those years searching orphanages and refugee camps without finding even a hint of her, and now here she is, unmistakably. Her unusual height, her blazing hair, and the slender, bony frame all confirmed it. How could I have possibly missed her? Strands of Mylovia’s burnt orange hair escaped from her hood like tiny pennants in the chill wind.

“You may have brought me into this world, but I’m a true daughter of the motherland now.”

“Kystra,” Tyton said, turning to his partner. “You know what the chief said after the incident at the Ziggurat of a Thousand Gilded Bulls. We can’t keep taking things into our own hands. The fighting is over now. The people are tired of our, ah, excesses. We can’t use the war to explain ourselves anymore.”

Kystra glared at him. “I saw people kill each other over the stories on those pages. As long as people think those myths only belong to one nation, we put at risk everything that we’ve ever done. All that our soldiers died for in the Thunder Wars. The peace that came at last with the Partition. Those myths are part of our civilization too, and they’re part of the heritage of all humanity, so they need to be kept somewhere safe, in the federal archives, so that people can remember them and understand the suffering they contributed to.”

All you want to do is deny a still-living people their voice and their freedom. That was what Mylovia wanted to say, but her tongue froze in fear.

“We have orders to get those papers to headquarters immediately,” Tyton said, taking a step away from the bridge. “We don’t have time for this.”

Kystra unbuttoned her coat and lifted a revolver from the holster slung at her waist, pulling back the hammer with her gloved thumb. It made a menacing metallic click. She cradled the butt of the revolver with one hand while the other threaded a long finger into the trigger guard. She leveled the weapon at her mother.

“I almost wish she stayed hidden,” she said, revealing teeth bright as ice. “It would’ve been much more fun to hunt you down.”

“Kystra!”

At that moment, Mylovia and Tyton sprang forward. Mylovia, despite her paralyzing fear, found her feet carrying her across the bridge toward the detectives. Simultaneously, Tyton reached for the revolver in Kystra’s hands. As the detectives grappled, a page slipped free from a sheaf bursting out of Kystra’s inner coat pocket and was torn away in the violent wind. Then her coat flew open, ripped aside by a vicious gust. More pages took flight, and, amidst the dove-colored vortex of papers, the detectives disappeared.

Mylovia sprinted forward, her hood thrown back and her hair like rising flames from her scalp. Her arms plunged desperately into the swirling text, and she clutched a bunch of crumpled pages. They were broken wings in her grip. The words of some nameless, ancient scribe, written in sable ink with her father’s swift and practiced hand, swirled around her, and from a flying page she caught a single line:

—hostility and division in the land. Mayflies on the brown waters of the river in flood, their wings—

When the bullet hit her, it felt like spring.