Page 3 of Fable for the End of the World

They want stag heads for their “dining rooms” and “dens,” places I’ve only seen on TV. The stuffed rabbits decorate their kids’ bedrooms. The birds, which I mount to look as if they’re midflight, wings fully spread, breasts puffed out proudly, are gifts for their wives.

It’s the Outlier customers I feel sorry for, the ones who come from other towns in Catskill County or even as far as Adirondack County, the ones who can only afford the scrawniest, scruffiest rabbits or the tiny field mice we sell for twenty credits apiece. Taxidermies are a luxury, plain and simple. No oneneedsthem. But there’s a logic to buying them that City folk would never understand. Because when you’re tabulating the entire worth of your life, a cheery decoration or an expensive bauble is more valuable than a bushel of half-rotted black-market apples.

At least, that’s the logic that runsMom’slife. I can hear her shifting in her room now, her bedsprings creaking.

“Good,” Luka says slowly. “So... how much did you make?”

He leans into the question carefully, like someone peering through the crack in a door to make sure the person on the other side is decent. I draw a breath. The down payment on the stagswas nice, but losing the desiccant ate up almost half of that, and besides—the whole situation is humiliating to recount.

I tell Luka about Floris with as much dignity as I can manage, but my brother’s face darkens and darkens. By the time I’ve finished, he’s risen from the table and his jaw is clenched so tightly I can see the muscle feathering in his throat.

“Inesa,” he says, “you can’t keep pulling this shit.”

Luka only curses when he’s really angry, and when he’s really angry, sometimes I forget he’s my little brother. I was the one who made up stories to soothe him to sleep if the storms were too loud and the rainwater dripped relentlessly through the roof.

Now he easily clears six feet and is a deadly shot with a hunting rifle. I look up at him through my wet hair.

“I’ll make it up,” I say. “I can do the rabbits in two hours. And Floris was so happy he’s going to be singing our praises to everyone in Upper Esopus—”

Luka scoffs. “You can’t possibly be that naive.”

“It’s naive not to automatically assume the worst of people?”

“No,” he says in a low voice. “It’s naive to assume that anyone is ever going to look Floris in the eye again. Anyone butyou, apparently.”

I flinch, and my blood turns to ice. I saw Sanne, laid out on the counter, only two, three days dead. Dead to pay off her father’s debts. What right did Floris even have to mourn her? And what business was it of mine, to help alleviate his guilt? Thinking back, what I considered inept kindness now feels like a cruel sort of apathy. Floris is a pariah now, marked forever by what we in theoutlying Counties see as the most abhorrent and unforgivable crime. By doing so much as speaking to him, I’ve marked myself, too. I haven’t helped our reputation—I’ve hurt it.

We really, really can’t afford that.

“I’m sorry,” I say. Useless, inane words.

Luka looks at me for a long moment. His eyes—the same brown-green color as mine—are hard and unrelenting.

“Maybe you should watch them,” he says at last. “Maybe then you’d understand.”

I kind of hate myself for it, but I can’t help the angry bite of my next words. “Don’t you think Mom watches them enough for the three of us?”

Mom is still in her bedroom, too far away to hear, or I never would’ve risked saying it. Luka inhales sharply. There’s an unspoken rule between us not to bring up what Mom does, or doesn’t do, and I’ve just broken it. And then, seeing the brief spasm of pain flit across Luka’s face before he schools his expression into impassiveness again, I remember that the rule doesn’t exist just for Mom’s sake. The rule is like the house’s shaky foundation—prod at it too much, and all three of us will fall through. Neither of us wants to be put in the position of defending Mom. And neither of us wants to hear the other defending her, either.

Luka is silent for so long, I wonder if he’s going to pretend that I never spoke.

Finally, he says, “Whatever, Inesa. Everyone watches them. I don’t know what point you’re trying to make by tuning out.”

I don’t have an answer for him. It’s almost a relief when thecurtain covering the doorway jerks open, and Mom steps over the threshold.

I hear her before I see her: she’s doing her quiet, dainty coughs today, the kind that are meant to emphasize how unobtrusive they are. She’s wrapped in the musty knitted blanket we’ve had since Luka and I were babies, but her hair is, as always, impeccable—sleek and black as the reservoir at night. Any fledgling strand of silver has been smothered by noxious (and expensive) dye.

“Can you two lower your voices, please?” she says. “I’ve had a pounding headache all day. A migraine. It’s been terrible.”

“Sorry,” Luka says.

“Sorry,” I echo.

Mom puts a hand to her temple and closes her eyes. “Inesa, you didn’t patch the roof like I asked. The dripping water—I think that’s what gave me the migraine. Or it could even be an ice pick headache.”

It only just started raining, so I know the roof wasn’t dripping all day, but there’s no use pointing that out. There’s also no use pointing out that I can’t reach the hole in the roof to patch it, not without balancing precariously on one of our tottery kitchen chairs. Luka can. But she’d never ask him.

“I can do it tonight,” I say. “Just rest on the couch for now.”

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