Her New Story

Sylvie stumbles up the street, stopping occasionally to catch her breath and look behind her. On any other day, she would be just another street kid, an unwanted child grown up wild and broken in the city's lesser zones of perpetual poverty. Today, however, is unlike any other day. Only combatants and fools are out. The greater number are smart enough to stay inside and wait to find out who will prevail amid the dull tide of emergency sirens rising and falling from distant quarters.

Anyone watching her staggered progress through the street can see which side she is on. The dark-skinned girl with short dreadlocks wears dark gray camo pants and a loose black tee shirt, the thrift store uniform of the uprising.

She won't be a rebel for much longer, though, if she doesn't find help. Between the wound and the incessant heat of the late morning sun, she might not make it to the end of the street, let alone her destination.

Sylvie stops to lean against an olive-green Subaru parked streetside and tries to catch her breath and stem the growing swell of harm. Nearby, a scrawny street tree strains against its established form to lean in her direction and offer her a bit of shade. She nods at the tree in silent thanks and lifts her shirt to inspect the entrance wound on the left side of her abdomen.

The dark skin is torn violently, revealing bloody, pink innerflesh. Her bubble prevented the bullet from piercing her gut, but the resulting flesh wound is dangerous in its own way. More urgent than the light blood loss is the clear fluid leaking out and soaking her shirt and pants with jumbled words and cracked sentences.

It is an unnerving sight to see one's own narrative juices draining away.

There's nothing to do but try to make it to the bookstore before it's too late.

 

Sylvie grew up within five blocks of Bee's Books, though she only found it after she had turned to the streets. She is the middle child among five siblings, an older brother and sister ahead of her, and two younger brothers behind. Like most of the families she knew growing up, the Watsons could tell a tale of trauma. Where their neighbors' stories often featured drink and drugs, and carceral complications, the Watsons simply cracked under the weight of the unrelenting economic strain of life in the booming city.

As Old Mike would say, “The same system crushes us in different ways. That's why we fight together.”

Two parents with five jobs between them and they still couldn't make ends meet. Some weeks she and her siblings hardly even saw a parent, or at least one that was awake. Del and Marcy, the oldest siblings, were the real parents, from an operational perspective. They tried their best, but they were just kids, too.

The family's fractures began growing early in her childhood, like a fault in a block of granite that expanded and spread through successive seasons until it broke and pieces started falling off.

Del couldn't wait to get out of the house. He disappeared into the Army when he was seventeen and Sylvie has only heard rumours of him since then. Marcy's basketball talent took her to university and now she's coaching high school basketball in Tulsa, a stranger with a familiar name.

For her part, Sylvie hadn't so much as run away from home as she had slipped through the cracks, like rainwater seeking ground.

She would have soaked into the dirt and drifted away if she hadn't met Old Mike.

“Damned wizard,” Sylvie says as she makes her way to the corner and peers around it to scope for agents of the state. “Look what he's got me into.”

 

“You like books, huh?” were the first words Old Mike spoke to her. She was sitting outside the Ground Up café reading a book of short stories by a woman author she had just discovered. Sylvie looked a bit rough in her denim jacket with an unkempt and burgeoning afro, and a cigarette dangling between her lips. She had a go cup of black coffee on the table and all her worldly possessions in a worn, green army surplus sack on the ground between her feet. 

She looked up to find a thin old man, with wild, white hair and a scraggly, snow white beard that hung past his chest. Sylvie had spent the morning cadging coins and small bills from passersby down at the Walgreens. She considered herself to be on her break and she resented the intrusion. She would have told him to buzz off but there was something about him that checked the impulse. He reminded her of a tall, thin tree that had lost its leaves but was already planning for the spring. In his green eyes she saw the reflection of a secret fire she might be able to warm herself by. His second hand clothing hung off him like the loose vestments of a priest or holy man.

“Depends on the book,” she answered, after a beat. It wasn't strictly true, more of something to say. Growing up, Delbert used to tease Sylvie that she would read the back of a milk carton just to have something to read. That was true. She regularly read drink cartons and food wrappers just to satiate her mind's hunger for words.

What she couldn't say because she didn't yet have the language for it, was that reading carved out a safe space for her. When the tension in her childhood home grew too pointed, when raised voices exploded into shouting matches, and doors slammed, Sylvie could always dive into the pages of a book and shelter herself beneath the layers of words and worlds. This handy skill would later prove itself more valuable, given the state of the world she grew into.

A year later, when their final plans were being knitted together, Old Mike would tell her that he had known at that first meeting that she was worth training.

But what he told her that day outside the Ground up was: “That's astute, young miss. The first step to mastering reality is knowing what stories are worth telling and what stories are not to be believed.”

 

The three police agents had lain in wait between the arcade and the pizza place, looking to pick off any rebels that might come along. They had not anticipated encountering someone of Sylvie's capabilities. The trio had hidden themselves well and only began shooting when she had come within range. Fortunately for Sylvie, the police were themselves trapped within the narrow corridors of their own constricted understanding of reality.

Old Mike, or Treefingers as she had come to know him, had taught her many combat and survival techniques and the spell she had woven around herself saved her life. As the bullets struck the bubble and bounced away, their impact briefly illuminated the dense web of invisible words that encased her in shielding sentences and protective paragraphs. The fusillade weakened her armor, though, and she moved quickly to sight her assailants, two behind a parked SUV and the third aiming at her from a nearby alley.

“Struggle Fire the Tree Wound and Strike Fast at Vermillion Snakes,” she began, flashing her hands in the air to direct the ontological shear forces at her attackers. A loud, sucking sound filled the air, like a giant foot being pulled from quicksand, and the SUV became a patch of grass growing in soil where before there had only been asphalt. The two policemen crouching behind the impromptu meadow stared slack jawed, momentarily frozen. It's a stunning thing to see reality shifted in front of you. It does a certain violence to the mind.

Quickly, Sylvie spoke another spell and the cop on the left became a twelve-foot-tall section of a dead tree that had snapped off in a storm years before. The other cop started to yell but was cut silent by his sudden conversion into a large brown rabbit that immediately entered the meadow to graze on the new blades of grass.

Sylvie turned and launched a new spell at the cop remaining in the alley just as he fired his gun. The first bullet pierced the bubble and struck her in the side. The second, third and fourth bullets became raindrops that splashed harmlessly against her chest. If there was any victory in these direct hits, the large brown spider grasping the corner of the alley wall kept it to herself.

Pressing the wound brought a trickle of warm fluid to her hand. Looking at her upturned palm she found it wet with sticky clear fluid and broken black text.

 

Bee's Books is a well-loved institution that stubbornly resists the forces transforming the quirky, multi-ethnic neighborhood into something more bland and corporate. The store owes its survival in large part to the loyalty of its customers, a motley assortment of academics, metalworkers, punk rockers, professionals, poets and queers.

Sylvie's first interactions with the bookstore were not so neighborly. She would come into the store during their peak hours, browse the stacks for long periods and then slip out with her selections when the staff were otherwise occupied.

This went on for several weeks until one day, Bea Bondy stopped Sylvie as she was leaving the store after a productive browsing session. She had been cunning and furtive as always and did not think anyone could have seen her pinching the books that were now in her backpack. The sight of the stout woman blocking the door caught her by surprise and staggered her usual cool composure.

“I have been watching you for a while, you know.” Bea said, as if this was just another normal conversation with the clientele. She stood a good six inches over Sylvie and had a considerable weight advantage. There was no way she was getting past her, and she didn't think there was a rear exit to the place.

“How many of my books do you have in there?” Bea nodded at the backpack slung across Sylvie's shoulder.

To her credit, the girl didn't try to deny or bullshit her.

“Just four,” she replied.

“Just four, huh?” Bea laughed, though not unkindly. She shifted her body to afford Sylvie a view of the glass door and the street beyond. “Tell you what. I'll make you a deal. Bring 'em back in good condition when you're done. After that, you can take one book at a time to read. Bring those back in good shape, and your library privilege will continue.”

When Sylvie returned the four books in pristine condition the following week, Bea sent a message to Treefingers about the runaway. It read simply: Got one for you.

 

For years, the rebellion had grown quietly, taking shape in bookstores and cafés across the city. It was a story that began with knowing looks, magazines and books passed between would-be insurgents, and a code of seemingly random words circled in different colors. The ideas and strategies articulated in the marginalia could only be understood by those who knew how to combine the circled words and then read between the lines they formed.

The revolution spread in plain sight, like an empty lot slowly taken over by weeds. Resistance reached out from the bookstores and cafés to high schools and colleges. It took to the tattoo parlors and art studios, to the kitchens of chain restaurants and the break rooms of the city's dark satanic warehouses.

The words found their readers anywhere the working poor and the marginalized gathered. It searched out the anxious minds of the better paid but still alienated and exploited workers and rooted itself in the fertile soil of the growing precarity.

Discontent was both a flame that the insurgency stoked and a light that drew it forward.

The long downward spiral of the strong economy created its own insurgent army. As the logic of the economic system became even more nakedly that of plunder and ecologic ruin, while wealth shifted upward and poverty down, it ensured that conflict would come.

Now that it had arrived, bursting into life through explosions, gunfire and strange shifts of reality, the people - that greater mass of the population that declared themselves agnostic - waited to see what the new world would look like.

 

Bea opens the door of the bookstore when she sees Sylvie staggering across the street. Their co-worker Max runs out to offer their shoulder and help her inside.

“What happened?” Bea asks as she shuts the door and pulls the curtains across it. She is wearing a gray University of Washington sweatshirt and long blue shorts that reveal the multiple tattoos on her calves. Her short hair is white but her youthful, round face makes her appear younger than her 62 years.

“Got shot. Ambushed,” Sylvie grunts, out of breath. She lifts the shirt to display her wound. “I must have bled half a thesaurus on the way here.”

“Jesus!” Max exclaims at the sight of the injury, though they are hardly the religious type.

Bea examines the tear and palpates around its edges.

“Max, get me a copy of Jesus' Son, Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a book of Mary Oliver poems, and, uh...” she pauses to think.

“Octavia Butler?” Max suggests.

“Yes! Imago, preferably. And something by Joel Lane, if we have it.”

 

Sylvie removes her shirt, revealing a turquoise sports bra, and unbuckles her jeans to slip the pants down away from her waist. Bea returns with a glass of water and a jar of book binding paste. As Sylvie sits drinking the water in large gulps, Bea brushes a layer of paste in a broad band across Sylvie's abdomen and back.

Max begins ripping pages from the books and handing them to Bea in no particular order. The older woman positions the pages over the wound and around the belly and back. She uses her hands to pat the paper down and ensure they are set before applying more paste, followed by another layer of text. Lit Lasagna, Bea calls it.

“I think that's good,” Sylvie says as Bea completes the fifth layer. The dressing completely covers her abdomen and her wounded left side. She can feel the flow of words reverse as the creative forces within her begin to draw from the printed pages, suckling words into the wound like a baby drawing mother's milk down its greedy throat. Her strength is returning now and begins to build in volume and power like a wave approaching shore.

The store's interior grows brighter, and her compatriots' faces gain detail and depth. The possibilities of the world offer themselves up, appearing as thin layers of numinous strands of alterity. The situation offers little time for contemplation, though. Trouble announces itself in electronic screams. The city's background chorus of emergency sirens swells and spits out six police cars arriving with banshee sirens and shrieking brakes. They hear a succession of car doors slamming and soon a megaphone begins articulating unacceptable demands.

 

Where is the old man now? If the offensive had come off anything like the way they had planned it, he was even then claiming city hall. Sylvie pictures Old Mike staring down the New Mayor, who is essentially a newer edition of the Old Mayor. They will surely battle. Old Mike is as wily and shrewd as any cunning man or woman, and yet, as formidable as he is, a cornered big city mayor is always a dangerous proposition.

Bringing herself up to the wall by Max and Bea, she looks out the window through a gap in the blinds, at the growing ranks of police outside the store. More cop cars have arrived and what looks like a tank is approaching from the east. An armored personnel carrier lurches to a halt in the middle of the street and releases from its hold several dark figures in body armor and tactical helmets, who scatter to cover all potential lines of sight. The three of them duck down for safety.

From her hiding place, Sylvie feels herself growing larger on the inside as the authors' words nourish and infuse her with narrative intent. Her knowledge of possible realities grows like mycorrhizal threads spreading through forest soil.

Though she has never battled this many state forces at one time, she knows that she has to try. Not only her life, but that of her mentor and friends, depends on it.

The bullhorn drone of the police officer outside writes itself against the backdrop of unceasing sirens and the sounds of distant combat. They pierce the store's outer layers. Sylvie flexes her concentration and bats the officer's words away. They fall to the floor and lay still, brittle and dead, like insects caught outside in the winter.

A promise to begin shooting is made and Sylvie badly needs a narrative path out of the deadly assault.

 

Their salvation runs through the old man, so before the bullets start flying Sylvie tells them a new story. She tells them that right then Old Mike is standing in front of the empty dais in the city council chamber. Old Cedar Bones, she calls him, Treefingers, Light of the Ancient and Arcane. She tells Bea and Max that the old wizard is facing off against the New Mayor, who stands twenty paces away. The beefy, ex-jock had made his living lobbying for corporate interests, prior to his well-financed election campaign. He is almost bursting at the seams of his sharp, gray suit and looks strong enough to snap the old man in two. This New Mayor is full to spilling over with economic narratives and buzzing with the energy of vague generalities and market-tested phrases. For his part, she says, Old Mike is holding his wooden staff in his right hand and gesturing with his left. His long gray overcoat hangs from his shoulders like a wizarding robe.

“Economic development will bring jobs!” The mayor shouts. His voice is deep and authoritative, like the sound of a court door shutting. He is a man who knows what he knows. “The rising tide is good for all the boats! Our fundamentals are strong. Crime rates are down. The city is open for business!”

“The old man winces in discomfort as the false narrative of economic growth washes over him,” she says. “But he shakes off the attack and summons the deeper beasts of his resolve.”

The New Mayor speaks of diversity and outreach to vulnerable communities. He acknowledges that we must all do better and promises that his administration will lift up all voices.

“Violence is not the solution,” the New Mayor shouts, but his voice now betrays an edge of fear, as if he can see a flash of truth, that what plagues us cannot be resolved by doing more of the same. He glimpses perhaps his own lack of true insight that binds him to repeating the empty promises and failed policies of the past.

Sylvie strikes the bookshelf with her fist as she describes Old Mike pounding his staff against the chamber floor, causing the New Mayor's lips to fuse and speak no more. The old wizard opens his own mouth, and a booming voice emerges from deep within his wizened body, thunder rolling across the mountains.

“Farbeit watches the foam! A frazzled monkeypaw stirs the rebellious lemonade. All our days are off!” He lifts his hands in the air, shaking his staff in a fury, like he is some prophet of the old books. His voice descends into a feral growl. “The Salmon of Wisdom have returned!”

As his stunned antagonists look on, the words pile up on the floor in front of the old wizard. They begin to move like ants on the skin of an anthill, weaving ineffable patterns from seemingly random motion. The New Mayor dissolves in the air, leaving behind on the floor six cooing pigeons, who are bewildered by their sudden coming in to being.

A faint image of the forest that once occupied this land begins to shimmer through the walls of the chamber. Terrified councilmembers and their political aides shriek as their bodies vibrate and palsy. Each one emits a small popping noise as they transform into ravens, seabirds, and a motley assembly of native rodents. The chamber fills with an uncoordinated chorus of cawing, braying and squeaking.

“The air in front of Old Mike grows a dark slit,” Sylvie says reverently. “Like a line drawn in the air.” She draws her finger in a horizontal line in front of them and demonstrates how the old wizard reaches into the rift. Hand and forearm disappear into thin air, and it would all look a bit like a clever magic trick, but for the impossible transformations and the faint shapes beginning to suggest themselves throughout the chamber.

Excitement and hope growing in her voice, Sylvie describes for them how that old wizard roots around in the space between realities until he grabs onto the new world and begins to pull it, like a recalcitrant baby, through the portal and into the light of existence. The three of them can almost see it as the chamber walls begin to spark shafts of lightning and rain falls from the floor towards the ceiling.

 

“It's here!” Sylvie looks to Bea, then Max. “Can you feel it?”

“Yes,” Bea says. Max nods.

The walls of the bookstore shiver and shimmer around them, readying for what is to come.

“Keep your heads down. Stay alive,” she tells her friends.

Sylvie rises from her hiding place like a wraith ready for battle as the police commander gives the order to open fire on the trapped rebels.

“Thus spake potato chip, the frogmarch jackal cried!” The front wall of the bookstore disappears into Sylvie's incantation. Stepping forward onto the spreading forest floor, she approaches the police, weaving impossible volumes of old and new magic.

Police cars flash and disappear into fields of long-gone native grasses, salmonberry bushes and mounds of rich, old soil. Bullets emerge from weapons, become bumblebees and fly off to find fragrant floral blossoms. Agents of state violence become trees and small understory bushes. The burgeoning forest exhales as it spreads outward in all directions, swallowing buildings, streets, construction fences and the inevitable Starbucks. Dazed citizens emerge into forested light and bird song and look up to the gathering canopy.

As the old world yields, Sylvie inhales the first whiff of forest air she has tasted in her lifetime. It will take her days to come up with words that can describe the taste of it.

Throughout the city, the wailing chorus of police sirens dims, as one by one they are snuffed out, transformed into this new story being written from the ground up.