The Painted Ones

The land of Granby is seared. Scars of blood and ash paint its skin with the pain of forgotten offenses. Burn marks carve the landscape into a demented chessboard of oblong red and black rectangles so misshapen and haphazard that in one place they dissect a river on a jagged diagonal, like a ripped sheet of paper. And those old battle scars have ripped Yudi’s life apart too, disconnecting her from her old reality, just as suddenly, and just as violently.

All Yudi had wanted was to win the science fair for the sprouting orchid she’d developed with her favorite science teacher, Mr. Tawny—and to shut Betty up about wasting her time with biology experiments. That and to save up for a new mountain bike so she could get back-and-forth to work and exercise her wild side without being run down by drunk motorists. Yudi figured that wasn’t too much to ask.

For as long as she could remember she had collected insects in little plastic boxes, observing them closely. She had even built a full-scale insectarium, complete with predatory ants, mantises, and some obligatory sun skinks to hunt their prey—roaches, beetles, and other insect-cattle. But her favorite was her prize hog-nose bumblebee bat, Chill Will, who loved to feast on beetles for the couple of hours he was active each night. Yudi had wanted to modify some species of plants, and the orchid in particular, in such a way that they would prevent predation from running rampant, and Mr. Tawny had been helping her. She was so close to completing her work and potentially winning the end-of-year science fair. Instead, she had become embroiled in a rivalry among secret societies that she wanted no part of. And Yudi was now left to rescue Mr. Tawny before old rivalries spilled new blood. And no one knew where he was.

Yudi used to imagine God as a toddler who had gotten into the red and black crayons and used Granby as a canvas for his doodles—rather than the truth—that these chars and scorches were the sole testimony available to tell of a civilization ending war. What was even more of a mystery was why their skin was painted like the land. For as long as anyone could remember they were known as the Painted Ones. The only rule in Granby was that lines are not crossed. Ashers live in the Ashlands. Dirt live in the Ironlands.

But this year, for the first time, one of the Painted Ones crossed the line, blurring borders that had stood for centuries. It was bad enough that Mr. Tawny had gone missing in a suspected cracker jackal attack, but things got even weirder after that. Yudi had gone looking for him in the outskirts and gotten hopelessly lost. She nearly got taken by a group of cracker jackals herself, their jagged coats and green eyes lurking just within sight as they stalked her from across the borders of lava and sulfur rain. When Yudi ran back to the school for shelter that Sunday, she accidentally stumbled into a clandestine meeting.

Geo and Roman were there in the lecture hall, by candlelight, writing a symbol of a Spirit Moose on the whiteboard, and chanting incantations to an enormous set of antlers. If Yudi hadn’t begun asking questions, nothing would have changed. Life would have gone on as normal with her mother Betty hovering over her every move like a security drone and obsessing about every minor health affliction anyone encountered as if it were a plague that marked them for death. “This is a bad strain, a bad, bad strain—I know it—I feel it in my bones,” she would say. Betty felt it in her bones every stinking time. The latest was a whooping cough that she was convinced would bring back measles, or worse.

That was all in the past now. Geo and Roman had written the words “Spirit Warning” below the Moose symbol, whatever that meant. It was just too tempting of a mystery. Yudi was compelled to stick her nose in it.

In Granby, the Moose only appears when someone’s about to vanish. That’s what they say. Maybe it is an old wives’ tale. Maybe more. But this seemed to be some kind of… club… a cult… something more than a study on urban myths. And this was after Mr. Tawny had gone missing. Not two days after that, she saw Roman’s cousin Teddy, who was the bouncer, came to work at the Club wearing an identical necklace.

With all the weirdness of life in Granby, and the strange goings on, there was one thing that was true everywhere. Even in Granby the strippers didn’t work on Father’s Day. There had only been a single girl working, and she had cleaned house.

***

The zigzagging roads around the checkered landscape were a real pain when Yudi was cut from her secret bartending job at the seedy topless bar, “Bad Intensions,” in the Fusion District after midnight on school nights—like this past Monday. She always feared getting mowed down by one of her own customers who was bitching so much she went more than a little heavy on the pour—like she’d just done with Fred. Yudi could see Betty reading the headline, “Underage Teenager Dies on Way Home from Gentlemen’s Club.” The shame alone would kill her—but that would serve her right for putting the fear of God into everyone else with one overreaction after the next. Yudi had to go to great lengths to find a place to change out of her negligee and sneak into the house. She prayed Timmy, their little black terrier, wouldn’t bark and wake the whole block.

The Painted Ones could comingle in a few places in Granby, Bad Intentions, Granby Mountain High, the Board of Education, the Granby Gun Club, and the Court of Common Pleas. Rumor has it that a few of Betty’s old Ash classmates and Rose were involved in a secret gardening club that doubled as a gossip circle, but despite best efforts Yudi had not confirmed this salacious rumor. Otherwise, Granby was wholly segregated. The neighborhoods—like the land itself—were divided. No one knew exactly when it began. Who started it. The beginnings of the fiery wars. And no one alive could remember the first of the Painted Ones. It was as if it had just always been this way.

Yet remnants and artifacts of old pre-war photographs showed a yellow people, neither red nor black, but more of a muted light canvas of pinks and yellows and orange, a perfect base for harder colors not yet imagined. Yet, even then, with such small differences, it was enough cause to spark war and annihilation.

The “Dirt” like Yudi had a fierce red pigmentation to their skin. Whereas the “Ashers,” like Roman, were black as coal with grey speckling. Yudi was different though, in that she had a deep gash of black across the center of her chest, just below her breasts, in a place that no one would notice. She told herself no one could see it. But sometimes, when she lay in bed, she swore it pulsed. A shimmering green light like that of an aurora. And sometimes she could swear she could see sounds, making the same green trails. The clicking of the beetles. The chirps of the ants. Especially, the shriek of Chill Will. It even made her think that if this toddler deity ruling over Granby from another realm was this careless, what other secrets might there be?

***

Geo was Yudi’s lab partner at Granby Mountain High. Like a real scientist, he was forever testing theories. Geo was a Dirt, but he believed the red pigment of his skin was caused by minerals in the soil that made their way through the digestive track by way of the produce cultivated in the different neighborhoods. Everything came down to the soil, the dirt, the bugs, the lifecycles of things unseen and unseeable, dancing secretly, mischievously, in a land just beneath the surface.

“Yudi, think about it, we are a product of the soil,” Geo said.

“Now you are talking nonsense,” Yudi said. Even though she generally agreed, she had to stick to a strict policy of non-encouragement with Geo, lest he go off the deep end.

“No Yudi. What is in the soil is in us.”

“Then wouldn’t the war be in us too?”

“Maybe it is.” Then an idea struck him. “If I live with the Ashers, my skin will darken to look like theirs.”

“Geo, you can’t live across the line. It’s strictly forbidden.”

“It would be in the name of science Yudi. No one can argue with that.”

The evidence of the political fissure was lost in the rubble, and the best scholars in Granby could only speculate what could have precipitated such violence. What brought on this curse? It was all anyone could talk about. It was hard to accept they would never know. The students of Granby listened to the teachers talk about plans for unification – grand proposals to restore the lands. But looking across the room at the Ashers on the other side of the screen, Yudi knew this was more natural. They wanted it this way. Separation. Blame. Conflict. It was in their blood. It was even painted on their skin. Predators. Prey. A life and death battle for who would be the king of the heap.

Yudi plopped down in her seat by the window, noticing some stripper glitter on her right arm she had neglected when she cleaned up the night before. Geo startled her by tapping her left shoulder.

“Take a look at this,” he said.

He dropped a yellowing photograph from the archives on her desk, like a grenade. It was a picture of men in Moose caps and men in cracker jackal caps facing each other with guns drawn. And two men in hooded cloaks pointed at each other with different shades of fire emanating from their fingertips. Yudi threw a sweater down over the image.

“Are you nuts? This is stolen property.”

“Don’t be so uptight. You are giving Betty vibes right now.”

“How dare you. I’m nothing like my mother.”

“You want to see something that will really blow your mind?” Geo said.

Yudi nodded.

“Grab that bunsen burner and keep it on your desk so this doesn’t look weird.”

“Huh,” Yudi said. Then Geo reached out his hand, his fingers trembling, and pointed his index finger toward the old photo and a spark emanated from the edge of his finger incinerating the photo in a flash.

While Yudi looked down, slack jawed, a puff of smoke diffused around her face, Geo said, “Stolen property? Where?”

“Poof,” Yudi said, quizzically.

“Poof.”

“Okay, I’m gonna need to know how you did that. Stat.”

“Let’s go to the auditorium after PE. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

***

Yudi never made it to gym class. She wandered the halls thinking about Geo’s spark, the smell of burnt paper still in her hair. And that’s when she saw Roman—clipboard in hand. His arms were wide and open. But his grin spoke insults.

Roman was manning a Spirit Week table in the corridor by the auditorium. His blue eyes shone like lasers erupting from a sea of frothy black magma as it cooled and serrated into solid rock. His skin was smooth, but the blotchy black coloring and grey highlights made it look like it was moving, flowing, like the seas of starry space.

“Yudi, where are your pajamas?” Roman asked.

“I completely forgot,” Yudi said.

“It’s not too late to sign up for the Pep Rally,” Roman said handing forward a clipboard.

“Any dirt on that list,” Yudi said, scrunching her cheeks.

“Plenty.”

“Any Moose mascots?” Yudi asked, hands on hips.

Roman rose to his feet suddenly, quickly looking to see if anyone heard and grabbed Yudi’s left arm—hard—pulling her around to a side hallway.

“Where did you hear about that?”

“I saw you trying to enlist Geo into whatever Asher insanity you are involved in."

“You dirt weed. You better talk to your boy before you get on the wrong side of this thing. You think Mr. Tawny went on vacation? We are all in danger. Dirt and Ash. Now get going.”

Yudi stumbled down the hallway.

Roman stuck his tongue out of his mouth, and Yudi could swear it was forked like a snake and that the sides of his neck expanded like a cobra’s hood. Like a black cobra.

“Make sure you keep this to yourself sweetheart, or I’ll shut that pretty little mouth of yours for good.”

***

“Nothing can take down a Moose, except a pack of cracker jackals.”

“So, what does this have to do with the cloaks, with the spark, with Mr. Tawny?”

“What do you think Mr. Tawny is doing right now?”

“I have no idea! He’s supposed to be helping me get ready for the science fair!”

“He’s pursing the Spirit Moose.”

“The what?”

“Mr. Tawny is an owl.”

“What are you talking about? He’s a biology teacher.”

“Roman is a snake. I’m a horse. You are a bat. Mr. Tawny is an owl. We all have animal fylgja that shine through. And we all have magic in us too. Which is how I was able to summon fire.”

“You want to back that up there a bit, bub?”

“The wars weren’t because of technology. The wars were because the Spirit Moose appeared. Which has just happened again. When that happens, the things locked within come to the surface—the mystical, the magical, and the evil alike. The ancients called it ‘the Awakening.’ It is happening right now.”

“Are you on acid?”

“I want to show you something.”

***

At the edge of the Asher encampment, on a ridge over a mountain, with flowing rivulets of lava pooling in a lake below, was a tent. Geo’s tent. Where he was camping in the Asher outskirts, with a telescope propped by the campsite. Scorched twigs and branches and kindling everywhere – he was clearly practicing. Yudi could see now that he had a little garden of vegetables, with cucumbers, carrots, radishes, snow peas, and vine after vine of beans, and I couldn’t be sure, but his arms did seem to starting to darken and flake a bit.

“This was where Mr. Tawny spotted the Spirit Moose. It was bright white like the midday sun. Fifteen feet tall, 2,500 pounds, antlers 12 feet across, and 22 points per side.”

“And what does this ghost moose do?”

“What doesn’t it do? It is a harbinger. It can vanish in an instant. Can’t be harmed by human weapons. Bullets bounce off it. In the darkness of night, it glows even brighter than the moon.”

At that moment an apparition moved across the landscape at the foot of the mountain. Like a flash of light, moving so fast it could only be a drone or some other flying vehicle. But then it stopped, feet perched up on an embankment, turning its enormous head, and the antlers were unmistakable in the half-light of sunset. It went up on its hind legs, displaying its full size, before bolting up the mountain like a discharge of snaked lightning in reverse.

“All I wanted was a stupid orchid and a science-fair ribbon. Now I’m dodging snake cultists, chasing ghost moose, and apparently, I’m a bat. What am I supposed to do with that?”

At that moment, a single cracker jackal appeared at the far side of camp. Yudi could see the green trails of whimpering snarls and knew that the others were scaling the cliff below. Geo stepped back and started doing some kind of meditative chant, as if channeling something. Then he guffawed like a horse and made a threatening motion with his arms.

The cracker jackal bared its teeth and snarled. And Geo clawed his back foot like a horse, before pointing his finger and sending a flame of fire hurtling toward the cracker jackal.

The fire missed him and hit a tree in the distance.

Three more cracker jackals ascended the cliff face, splaying out around the campsite and forming a predatory circle.

Yudi felt a pulsing in her midsection and saw the green light.

“That’s it Yudi,” Geo said. “You can call on your fylgja. Let it out.”

Yudi opened her mouth, and a series of round green circles split from her lips, emitting a high-pitched pulse of energy. When it hit the cracker jackals, they leaped backward, clawing to hold onto the cliff face, and began descending with whimpers and snarls as they went.

“See, you aren’t just some science nerd, who tends bar for pervy old men after all,” Geo said.

“Hey! How’d you know about that?”

“Teddy and Roman are in the Order of the Moose with me kiddo—and all Teddy can talk about is how you look in your—ahem—uniform.”

“I am going to kill that bastard,” Yudi said, punching Geo in the arm.

And at that moment, Mr. Tawny arrived, donning a hooded cape, with the hood fashioned from an owl’s head.

“Sorry to break this up,” Mr. Tawny said, “but seeing as Yudi is up to speed on everything…”

“You’re alive,” Yudi said, smiling.

“For the time being.”

“So, what now?”

“You are probably going to miss this year’s science fair—but maybe you can help save Granby from annihilation.”

“The fires are starting,” Mr. Tawny said. “And Roman is behind them.”

Geo looked up in shock.

“You see that mountain over there? We need to track down the Moose. It holds the key to preventing another war.”

As Yudi looked back over her shoulder, she could see Granby. As she looked forward, she saw a pack of Ashers.

“I’m in,” she said.