Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill Page B

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    Siri and the king sat cross-legged beneath a mulberry fig tree, watching the extravaganza around them. Banyan tree angels stood guard behind them. His Majesty was in full white ceremonial garb, and medals glittered like treasure on his chest. A footman with a straggly gray beard dangling from the point of his chin stood a pace back from him.
    Cicadas sang in tune like a choir. Color-coordinated butterflies circled in swarms so dense, they changed the hue of the sky at will. The footman announced the arrival of guests, and the king looked to Siri to see if he approved. The doctor raised an eyebrow and waved his hand. It was a gesture he remembered from the bald king in the Hollywood film that had insulted Siam and thus delighted the Pathet Lao.
    “Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,” he said, for no other reason than it was the only line he remembered from that picture show.
    The footman returned with two handsomely hobbling pilots who, due to the absence of feet, carried their expensive leather boots under their arms. They were Lao and they greeted their king in royal language.
    “Sire, we shall try once more.”
    “We were betrayed, Lord. They were expecting us. There is a traitor in your camp.”
    With that, the footman exploded horribly, bits of him flying in all directions. Siri looked around to see whether there were accusing eyes pointed at him. But suddenly there were no eyes to point. When he looked back, the king was gone. All that remained was a plate of crispy fried crickets and a side dip.
    The pilots were standing back to back as if primed for an attack. The cowardly spirits were retreating to their trees, blending into the bark, merging with the branches, sinking into the roots. A wind rose, rustling the leaves. It grew until it began to shake the succulent fruits from the trees.
    Left were Siri and the two pilots in a storm-darkened vignette. One pilot turned to him and nodded. “We are grateful.”
    And with that, the two men burst into flames, burned to ash, and were blown away by the frantic wind. The tree leaves all around flapped in panic, as if in the grip of a monsoon. Alone, Siri listened to a roar of distant thunder, a roar of a beast, the gnar of terror. Toward the south, the trees were bending as if to clear the path of the creature that owned the terrible roar. The sky was black now, and Siri tensed for the storm.
    He was learning to be an observer in his own dreams. Years before, he had felt obliged to be a participant; he’d played the roles and assumed the appropriate emotions. But now he watched them like a man in the front row of an empty cinema. He convinced himself that he wouldn’t be killed by the villain or truly loved by the heroines.
    But something about the sound of the creature there that crashed through the jungle was a warning to him. This was beyond a dream, too real. It was a sign that he should expect to hear this sound in his waking hours and that it would be a critical moment. He knew somehow that he had to be aware of this sound because it had connections to the killings in Vientiane and could signal the end of him.
     
    And he awoke, or perhaps he didn’t, and he was in a box. It was black and musty and he could see nothing, but he knew he was in a box. Logically he assumed it was that final box, that he had succumbed to that incontrovertible last argument with nature. But no.
    He smelled the smoke of a cheap cigarette. He felt the warm spray of something mildly caustic against his face. It smelled of liquor. There was a creak, and the lid of the box opened and light rushed in on him. Faces looked down at him: blanched, unemotional faces. Some had lips the color of a new wound; some wore jewels that neither glittered nor suggested wealth; all had empty black two-dimensional eyes that tapered to lizard tails.
    Siri was small and shrunken, as if he were their toy. He looked up. They looked down. There were no sounds. For the longest time they stared up and down at