The interior
of the building was an ecology of trash. Blanket trees dropped leaves of
tattered quilts while bleached ribcages lay half-revealed in the dirt, like
rocks uncovered beneath a mundane footpath. Blades of rusted scythes emerged
from the ground like the fronds of a fern, and I recognized them as the
toenails of the scarecrow from the alley. At the end of the hallway, the wall
was made of up reeds growing up from the ground and down from the ceiling that
intertwined into a broken web of a basket that never was.
The
scarecrows we encountered were either incapable of speech or unhelpfully
talkative, taking up issues with me far outside the jurisdiction of a Boxes
detective in their rattling voices, mostly complaining about the colorless
company they were forced to keep. After the third time, I limited my
interactions to the piles of ambulatory junk that seemed capable of flight.
We reached
the roof without finding one. From the edge of the roof was a wide view of The
Gilded Rows. Even through the haze of Scarecrow Alley, the gleaming areas of
copper and silver made a dazzling, metallic blanket from wall to wall. The
default half-night of the The Boxes made this the brightest of my home’s rows. The
rest of the roof was comprised of stick trees, growing dry twigs and broken
branches from its own strong limbs.
Looked at
the myr again, not expecting anything new and not being disappointed at being
right. It waved its arms and limped aimlessly through the hanging ‘fruits’ of
the trees, brushing aside the bones of whatever creature he was looking for.
Then, he started circling one of the hanging twigs.
Winds are
common across the Boxes when things are dramatic enough, and they picked up
now. While they failed to disperse the mists that clung to everything around
us, the haze retreated, allowing reflected light onto the roof. I glanced at
the horizon line of lid and wall before turning back to examine the myr’s
stick. The sticks swung back with each gust, then pendulously forward again,
repeating the process until they hung motionless again, or another wind came
through. The Myr’s stick didn’t though; the vine it hung from wasn’t a
withered, brittle string like the others, but a flexible stem. When the trees
shuddered, a clatter of crossing, clashing, dead wood rose up, then tapered off
as they stampeded back, then forth again. This one swung easily enough in the
winds, but once they subsided, it didn’t fall back as much as it…unswung as the myr dance-limped
excitedly around it.
“Pili-Pala.”
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