The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [29]
Two miles along the road Mick and Judd smelt petrol in the air, and a little further along they came upon the VW. It had overturned in the reed-clogged drainage ditch at the side of the road. It had not caught fire.
The driver's door was open, and the body of Vaslav Jelovsek had tumbled out. His face was calm in unconsciousness. There seemed to be no sign of injury, except for a small cut or two on his sober face. They gently pulled the thief out of the wreckage and up out of the filth of the ditch on to the road. He moaned a little as they fussed about him, rolling Mick's sweater up to pillow his head and removing the man's jacket and tie.
Quite suddenly, he opened his eyes.
He stared at them both.
"Are you all right?" Mick asked.
The man said nothing for a moment. He seemed not to understand.
Then:
"English?" he said. His accent was thick, but the question was quite clear.
"Yes."
"I heard your voices. English."
He frowned and winced.
"Are you in pain?" said Judd.
The man seemed to find this amusing.
"Am I in pain?" he repeated, his face screwed up in a mixture of agony and delight.
"I shall die," he said, through gritted teeth.
"No," said Mick. "You're all right ― "
The man shook his head, his authority absolute.
"I shall die," he said again, the voice full of determination, "I want to die."
Judd crouched closer to him. His voice was weaker by the moment.
"Tell us what to do," he said. The man had closed his eyes. Judd shook him awake, roughly.
"Tell us," he said again, his show of compassion rapidly disappearing. "Tell us what this is all about."
"About?" said the man, his eyes still closed. "It was a fall, that's all. Just a fall."
"What fell?"
"The city. Podujevo. My city."
"What did it fall from?"
"Itself, of course."
The man was explaining nothing; just answering one riddle with another.
"Where were you going?" Mick inquired, trying to sound as unag-gressive as possible.
"After Popolac," said the man.
"Popolac?" said Judd.
Mick began to see some sense in the story.
"Popolac is another city. Like Podujevo. Twin cities. They're on the map ― "
"Where's the city now?" said Judd.
Vaslav Jelovsek seemed to choose to tell the truth. There was a moment when he hovered between dying with a riddle on his lips, and living long enough to unburden his story. What did it matter if the tale was told now? There could never be another contest: all that was over.
"They came to fight," he said, his voice now very soft, "Popolac and Podujevo. They come every ten years ― "
"Fight?" said Judd. "You mean all those people were slaughtered?"
Vaslav shook his head.
"No, no. They fell. I told you."
"Well how do they fight?" Mick said.
"Go into the hills," was the only reply.
Vaslav opened his eyes a little. The faces that loomed over him were exhausted and sick. They had suffered, these innocents. They deserved some explanation.
"As giants," he said. "They fought as giants. They made a body out of their bodies, do you understand? The frame, the muscles, the bone, the eyes, nose, teeth all made of men and women."
"He's delirious," said Judd.
"You go into the hills," the man repeated. "See for yourselves how true it is."
"Even supposing ― " Mick began.
Vaslav interrupted him, eager to be finished. "They were good at the game of giants. It took many centuries of practice: every ten years making the figure larger and larger. One always ambitious to be larger than the other. Ropes to tie them all together, flawlessly. Sinews.liga-ments... There was food in its belly...there were pipes from the loins, to take away the waste. The best-sighted sat in the eye-sockets, the best voiced in the mouth and throat. You wouldn't believe the engineering of it."
"I don't," said Judd, and stood up.
"It is the body of the state," said Vaslav, so softly his voice was barely above a whisper, "it is the shape of our lives."
There was a silence. Small clouds passed over the road, soundlessly shedding their mass to the air.
"It was a miracle," he said. It was as if he realized the true enormity