Fingertips: Fingertips

Fingertips: A Flash Experiment, is a project where I’m writing a different flash story for each bit of the They Might Be Giants’ “Fingertips” songs from Apollo 18. See info here.

Fingertips

“They didn’t like the truth back then. No one did,” Oma says, twisting her white gloved hands in her soft shawl.

The Granny of our tribe, she sits on a comfortable throne with her warriors around her, always. Assassination attempts don’t come as frequently as in the earlier days, she tells us. But they still come. Other tribes, other Grannies, they send their warriors and assassins to take down our Granny. And we take down other Grannies.

She named me Jade. I am her scribe. Other tribes still hold the written word precious, but she forbade us literacy. The communication system she invented years ago is safer.

As she sits and tells her stories, I knit, needles as sharp as ice picks, following a coded pattern to indicate letters. I’m fast, but she still must tell her stories in a drawling, repetitive pattern so I can get it all down. It has a singsong quality that calms the children. She’ll go over the same point several times until I indicate I’ve gotten it all by switching yarn color. Then she continues.

“They didn’t like people writing the truth,” she continues. “Some were killed. Some were punished. The truth was an ugly boil that, once lanced, the world did not like what poured out.”

I knit furiously, knit, purl, knit for T, purl,purl for R, and so on. I’d written this story before, but redoing it made for good practice and she might reveal something she hadn’t before.

My daughter, Pearl, struggled with her own knitting needles, seated at my feet. She tried to match my speed, but failed, writing only TRUTH, HATE, and BOIL. She sighed and I smiled at her. She would get it. She had the dexterity we look for in young children, already outpacing her peers. Oma approved of her, and has told me in private that Pearl may be trained as an assassin soon. She’s small and good with her hands. I am so proud.

Shouts come from outside the fortress, our first warning system. The warriors snap to attention and bring out their knitting needles, filed to razor sharpness. Parson, my mate, reaches into his yarn bag and pulls out three small balls of heavy wire and hefts them, testing their weight. We don’t know who attacks now- it could be a rival Granny’s tribe. It could be someone from the Makers who would view such use of wire as blasphemy.

I begin to bind off Oma’s story. She won’t finish it tonight. My sister comes to usher the children out of the hall and out of harm’s way. Pearl looks at me with her deep brown eyes and I nod to her. She can’t stand with the warriors for many more years.

I go to stand by Oma, placing my story over her large span of lap to keep her warm. The attackers will likely leave the doors open.

Oma always faces her attackers, confident in her warriors’ abilities to keep her safe. She has never been injured. We had the strongest warriors in the country.

We hear a sharp bang in the hallway, and the warriors jump. Oma stands from her throne. “This is not from the other Grannies.”

“The Makers, then?” I ask.

“A faction of the Makers, yes. They kept the old weapons. They were the ones that hated the truth.” She balls her hands. “They were the ones who caused the war, who punished the writers. This is going to be a harder battle than you’re used to.”

She begins to strip off her gloves, and I realize with a shock I’ve never seen her hands. “If I don’t make it, Jade, you are my heir.” The warriors close by gasp. I don’t blame them – at 37 I am not nearly old enough to lead the tribe.

“If they kill me,” she continues. “Don’t let them leave here alive. If they capture you, make sure they kill you, or kill yourself. Never let them punish you for the truth.”

She removes the gloves and they fall to the floor, strangely weighted by items in the ends of each finger. She holds her hands to my face and I wince at the ugly scars on each finger where the tips had been removed at the first knuckle. So much about Oma is clear to me – why she refused us traditional writing, why she never knitted, and why she was adamant about the truth.

The men break into the room then, demand us to surrender and hand over Oma. They are collecting Grannies. They say something about treason, about rebuilding the country, removing rogue tribes. Their weapons are strange, but Oma whispers that they’re impotent without them.

It happens all at once. Parson throws his wire balls at the mens’ hands, causing them to drop weapons. Three are disarmed in quick succession. I step in front of Oma as the warriors leap forward. Two men are still armed; they use their weapons and it’s so very loud. One of our men falls and doesn’t move. Another falls, screaming and clutching his leg. I reach for my needles and feel something hot slam into my shoulder. But I keep moving. Pain doesn’t stop me, but I have lost the use of my left arm. I aim for one of the armed men and throw my knitting needle and it sinks into his eye, deep. He falls, twitching.

And then it’s over. The men are dead. Parson and Oma come to me, Parson calling for a healer. I allow him to support me and Oma puts me in her throne. My blood stains the white silk.

“My heir, my scribe, my assassin,” she says, as I drift off into unconsciousness. “If that Maker tribe has moved once, it will move again. I’ll have work for you when you heal. You don’t cross this Granny.”

I sleep, satisfied of my place.

This is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike license.

Fingertips 2 – Fingertips (LP Version)

Fingertips: A Flash Experiment by Mur Lafferty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.