Where All Rivers Run (1)

Gouache on paper.

⁣Story below ⁣
Part 78. With an explosive awakening, Dew and Lirita learn about the characters in their new home.⁣

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I awoke to the sound of an explosion rattling through the building. ‘What was that?’ I cried to Lirita, who also gasped awake with a start. Once the fog of sleep parted I slid down the sides of the ladder and flew down the stairs.

Smoke filled the lower level, billowing in thick black clumps out from an open door in the corridor. I barely missed colliding with Zaeema, who bounded as a murky silhouette through each room, rushing to open the windows and trying her best to waft the smoke away with a fan. I heard footsteps, and from the smoke-filled doorway appeared a small person with a colourful, feathered face and a streak of bright green hair poking from beneath a cap covered in shards of metal. So many oily stains and tears covered her overalls that I couldn’t decipher what its original colour would have been. She lifted a pair of oversized goggles from her eyes and stared with wonder at a small glow she held in her thickly gloved hands.

‘Ennika, one day you’re going to burn us to the ground,’ said Zaeema, coughing and wafting away the smoke.

‘But look at it! I’ve managed to increase Hoa’s glow by five-hundred percent. Who knows in what ways this extra light can help people?’

That was when I noticed the light move. Sitting on her finger was a firefly with a set of wires attached to it. It seemed delighted with its new, near-blinding glow and waggled its abdomen around in an appreciative way.

Zaeema eyed Ennika critically. ‘It won’t help us when we’re staring at our charred house, will it? This sounds suspiciously like the time you grew a moth weevil to the size of a cat and it escaped and ate the buttons off the entire street’s clothing.’

Ennika seemed not to hear her. ‘Or, or, what about this?’ She rummaged about in her pockets until she retrieved what looked like a small electrical component. ‘I have successfully made a capacitor that can increase power output using repressed emotional rage.’

Zaeema put her hands on her hips and inspected it with narrowed eyes. ‘How is that possible?’

‘It’s an untapped, infinite energy source!’ Ennika looked at her component closely and rattled it. ‘Huh. Either this doesn’t work, or there is an incredibly potent source close by…’

She then looked up and saw Lirita scowling at her, then across at me. A kind of shock came over her. Her eyes widened and her body shook. ‘Uhhhh, new people,’ she said in a fretful way and hid behind Zaeema, clutching at her clothes. Then, without saying anything more, she awkwardly rushed back into the basement, slamming the door behind her.

‘What was that all about?’ I asked, waving the curls of smoke away that had gathered around me.

Zaeema sighed. ‘Ennika is our resident inventor and likes to live in the basement. Usually quiet as a mouse, but you will hear the occasional explosion from time to time, from her… experiments. Don’t get me started on the escalator shoes that wouldn’t stop escalating and her self-cooling hat that almost drowned someone. Pharmae knows what else she’s working on down there.’

She led us through to the dining room and pushed open the windows. ‘She does make useful things much of the time, though she does often end up on… flights of fancy, let’s say. I blame the lack of sunlight; it can’t be good for anyone,’ she said, eying Lirita. ‘But she won’t leave that basement and talking to her is impossible.’

I looked over to the door and knew I wanted to see what took place down there. A jarring, clattering sound in another room made me wince.

Zaeema’s fists clenched. ‘Speaking of which…’ She pushed open a door into a kitchen area, where a contraption stood surrounded by open jars spilling their gloopy contents onto the floor, much of which dripped off its bronze-coloured metal frame and large goggle eyes. Its body rattled with twitches and small spurts of steam escaped with every movement. Its voice had a wheezing quality.

It held a spoon in one hand and a jar of what appeared to be custard in the other. It tried to insert the spoon into its mouth and the custard dripped over it. ‘Why,’ it said with a sad, wheezing, robotic voice, ‘why is this denied to me, a superior being with not one single squishy part?’

Zaeema groaned and took the spoon from the construct. ‘For the last time, stop that! It will get clogged in your cogs.’ Titus ran over and began to lick the custard from it.

‘Nice laparan has said one-hundred and three times that this will be the last.’

‘Please don’t call me nice. Look, Bibblebob, you cannot eat this stuff. It is not how you’re designed.’ She looked at us. ‘I honestly want to dismantle the thing, but…’ She sighed. ‘Another one of Ennika’s experiments.’

‘Is that why it’s got a racquet attached to its head?’ I asked.

‘I think Ennika wanted someone to play with down there, but the ball hit its head too many times. Why she tried to give it emotions, I will never know. I gave her a stern telling off that day.’

Bibblebob dropped the jar and hugged Zaeema’s waist. ‘Why?’ it cried. The robot’s eyes turned a shade of green. ‘Only you understand me.’

Zaeema put a hand to her face. ‘Please stop saying that. It’s embarrassing.’

It looked towards Lirita and I and its eyes turned blue. ‘More squishy things that can eat when I cannot. This is an injustice, an example of fate’s unerring senseless cruelty. Pundersquiffers.’ It made a crying noise and shakily walked out the room, arms flailing, until it disappeared down into Ennika’s den.

Lirita shook my shoulder. ‘Dew, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

When the smell of smoke began to clear, a hint of freshly baked bread began to creep through. Zaeema caught me sniffing the air hungrily. ‘There’s plenty to clean up, but I suppose you’ll want to see the bakery next,’ she said.

‘Bakery?’

She led us down to the other end of the corridor and opened the door. An eyeful of golden sunlight greeted us, shining in thick rays through the windows of what was a spacious bakery storefront. A long glass counter filled with pastries and cakes of many kinds gleamed with sparkling glass, dividing a small kitchen where an oven blazed with heat and a sitting area for customers.

‘This was my darling partner’s idea. It’s a bit frivolous if you ask me, but it keeps him busy.’

Chay stood with a tray of unbaked choissaos and placed them with a long-handled peel into the oven. Our stomachs growled loudly. On hearing this, he reached for one of the shelves, handed us each a freshly baked bun, and gave a closed-eyed look to Zaeema. ‘What? I’m not used to having guests,’ she said. ‘My band of meos help themselves.’ I could only imagine what that meant.

Just then the door clicked open and the bell above it rang. Y’oona ran in with exhausted breaths, her face covered in sweat.

‘Y’oona! Late again I see,’ said Zaeema. ‘What will your mother think, and after your time off too?’

‘Please don’t fire me! I promise I won’t do it again,’ she said between breaths.

‘Another promise to add to the pile. My, it’s practically toppling over. Chay here has too soft a heart, as much as I love him, and I owe your mother too much when there are so many others who need help. How do you manage this every day?’

‘Um, time is an invented concept relative to many undefined distant dimensions in reality?’ she ventured.

From the other room came the sounds of ringing. ‘All my clocks say otherwise,’ said Zaeema. ‘Get to work.’

Chay seemed not to notice the conversation and gave one blank look to Y’oona before carefully placing his choissaos behind the counter. Without answering, Y’oona shuffled across the room and snapped out of her daze when she saw Lirita and me in the corner. Her face turned a bright crimson and she averted her eyes. Lirita narrowed hers in return and I elbowed her sharply in the ribs. Y’oona squeezed past to a wardrobe where she grabbed an apron and tied it around her waist. She then stood behind the counter and started to check the cash register with astonishing intensity.

‘Y’oona kindly does many things for me, but Chay appreciates the help most of all.’ Zaeema turned to us. ‘Now, I haven’t had time to decide what I want to do with you two, so spend the morning doing what you like until I find some horrible tasks. You’re new here, so was there anything you wanted to see?’

‘We were told a museum is near here. I’d like to go,’ I said.

Zaeema smiled and looked curiously at Lirita. ‘That’s a great idea. Willing to learn and a budding thief! Y’oona, you can take them there.’

Y’oona’s eyes widened and she looked pleadingly for help. ‘I-’

But Zaeema gave her a look that slammed her mouth shut. Y’oona deflated. ‘Yes ma’am.’

‘Make sure this one enters through the front door,’ Zaeema said, nudging me. She wrinkled her nose. ‘And make sure to wash. I thought it was the smoke, but there’s something else that smells funny in here. This place is starting to look like a menagerie. We can discuss what you learnt there when you get back.’