Dead Americans by Ben Peek Page B

since it was difficult to do either without help; but she did not ask because she was afraid of upsetting someone, which would result in aid not being sent. In her own mind, Eliana had decided that a Botanist had let her through, and the resulting theories of murder and mystery flowered in her mind. Who knew if they were true?
    Once she had finished the letter, she placed the note in a small brass case and walked over to the cage. The crow slipped out and perched on her arm with cold claws. It waited patiently as she attached the case to its leg. Once that was done, she climbed up a floor, and released it into the dark of the Shaft.
    When Eliana could no longer see the crow, she turned and regarded the girl who lay on her bed, slowly staining her sheets. A smell had begun to emerge: an oil machine mix of urine and shit and something as equally unpleasant. The girl’s body was still moaning, though it reminded her of growling, now, as if it was fighting for life while the rest of it lay dying.
    When the girl made from bronze awoke that night, she did not scream.
    Eliana had expected her to. She spent the evening in her narrow kitchen, expecting the cry at any moment. Returned or not, the Botanist believed that the sight of shattered limbs and torn skin would be reason enough for horror. At the very least, she had expected tears. But the girl gave neither. Instead, she pushed herself into a sitting position and waited, quietly, until Eliana descended from the kitchen. Having placed her flowing, luminous Botanist uniform in the closet, she now wore a blue shirt and a pair of comfortable, faded black pants. Her tattoos, words and patterns made from red and black ink, twisted along her thick left arm, and around the exposed left-hand side of her neck and foot. It was not until that foot, with its slightly crooked toes, and the nail missing from the smallest, touched the cool bronze floor of the unit, that the girl spoke:
    “I appear to be broken.”
    Her voice was faint, but purposefully so, rendering it a pampered girl’s voice, the quality of which instantly annoyed the other woman. “Yes,” Eliana replied, curt where she had not planned to be. “You fell.”
    “This—this is the—”
    “Shaft, yes.”
    The girl spoke slowly, each word a chore, the stuttering moan in her chest causing her to pause after every short sentence. “Yes, I fell.”
    “You remember falling?”
    “Yes.”
    “Landing?”
    “No.”
    Eliana approached the bed. The noxious odour grew, and she struggled to keep it from showing on her face. Folding her thick arms in front of her, Eliana gazed down at the girl, but the latter did not return her gaze. Finally, she said, “I have sent a bird to my department, telling them of you—”
    “What?
No!
”
    It was her turn to be cut off now, her turn to pause. Her thick eyebrows rose in her only hint of surprise. Before her, the girl, the fragile, lost girl who had fallen, and who had sat before Eliana in a confused haze, disappeared. Evaporated like water beneath the hot red sun. In response, the pity that Eliana had meant to be feeling, but which she could not for reasons she had not been given time to explore, was no longer required, and her dislike, her hostility, which she had been ashamed of, had sudden reason for purchase inside her.
    The girl spat out, “Why did you do that?”
    “Who are you?”
    “
Why?
”
    “You’re dying.”
    “Ha!”
    “You are.”
    “Of course I am!”
    Eliana had no reply, had not expected that.
    The girl made from bronze gave a coughing splutter of a laugh. It was caught between self-pity, self-hate, and desperation, and it ended raggedly as the struggling moan in her chest choked it off. Finally, pushing her single good hand through the tattered remains of her hair, she said, “I won’t be thanking you for this.”
    “I think,” Eliana said slowly, out of her depth, trying to find a way to understand the situation. “I think you best explain to me what