This piece is from our just-launched Perth-themed issue. To get your hands on a copy, which has just so many great pieces of writing and artwork inside it, go here.
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Pikkoro and the
Multipurpose Octopus
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by Elizabeth Tan
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And here’s Pikkoro, in the sudden quiet, on this hot afternoon – sighing over the asphalt, school hat low on her brow. Textbooks add five kilos to her back and ten years to her face; hunched by rote wisdom, she awaits the green man and labours through the crosswalk. She is surrounded by cicadas and bicyclists and blurry-faced commuters. On days like this, Pikkoro’s eyes can withdraw so deeply into her head – can resort to oversimplification, express themselves with single lines.
—Hm?
Her eyes become round to the sight of a truck cutting the corner, tipping slightly on one wheel. Overloaded with crates, the truck punts one fruit from the pile – which bounces brightly, then makes a getaway roll for Pikkoro’s foot. She stoops for a closer look: a hard yellow mango, see-sawing to a stop, sticker-side-up. It’s HarvestTime™. The silhouette of a tree growing lovehearts instead of foliage.
Pikkoro scoops up the mango. She decides to take it home.
Pikkoro lives on the second floor of a grey apartment building. It has palm trees at the front gate and a communal pool with uncleared leaves floating on the surface. Her young ankles swell with each grey step. She passes the other homes piping with afternoon television programs and microwave bells. She stops at her welcome mat to peel off her shoes.
—Aaah it’s so hot.
Pikkoro slumps inside the apartment, drops her schoolbag on the tatami and throws herself into the sofa.
Tako, in the kitchen, suctions ice-cubes from a plastic mould. He pops the ice into two glasses.
—Sorry. I should have come to pick you up.
Pikkoro mumbles into the cushion. Her after-school bowl of ramen is steaming on the table. On the mantelpiece there is a row of framed photographs of Pikkoro and her parents, ageing slowly from right to left. In the final photograph there is a snapshot of Pikkoro and Tako. One of Tako’s tentacles is outstretched, off-frame, as he is holding the camera.
Tako shuffles to the sofa with two glasses of iced tea, offering one to Pikkoro. She groans, rolling onto her back, accepting the glass with both hands. Tako sees the mango peeking out of her knapsack.
—What’s this?
—It fell on the road.
Tako picks up the mango. Pikkoro wriggles off the sofa and slips into her chair. A novel, Seeds of Time, is splayed face-down on the table, alongside a pile of unfinished knitting. Pikkoro sets her glass on the placemat and blows weakly on her ramen.
—Har-ve-s-t T-i-me.
Tako puts the mango on the kitchen counter.
* * *
The afternoon changes colour. Pikkoro is stretched out on the tatami, her mathematics textbook spread inside the glowing square of television light. She frowns at her spidery calculations and rubs out her latest answer. Tako is sitting on the sofa, knitting with four arms and holding his novel open with two. Although Pikkoro’s head is drooping into her homework, although her sighs grow heavier, Tako clicks through his knitting and there is contentment here, discernible in their soft faces. There’s a game show on television that neither of them is completely watching: warbling with uncertainty, pinging with success, buzzing with failure.
—We’re going to take a short break, folks; don’t go away!
The theme song booms, and Pikkoro finally lays her head down on her exercise book and shuts her eyes.
But she is compelled to open them again when the television falls silent. She raises her head to a commercial unfolding in the hypnotic quiet. The fattest apples, pears, oranges – and mangoes, just like the one Pikkoro plucked from the road – spinning against a backdrop of idyllic orchards, giant and seductive as planets. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to – Pikkoro sits up and lets the fruit spin inside her irises. Her pencil escapes the fold of her exercise book and rolls away. Even the clicking of Tako’s knitting needles has ceased.
Then, fading in – the loveheart tree. It’s HarvestTime™.
—Pikkoro-chan.
—Hm?
—Your costume is finished. Come try it on.
Tako unfurls what he’s been knitting: a woollen octopus poncho, coral red, the eyes and mantle forming a hood. Six stuffed limbs hang off the sides, and Tako helps Pikkoro slip her arms between two extra sleeves that make the seventh and eighth limbs. She wobbles to her bedroom so she can look in the mirror. Tako joins her.
—What do you think?
Pikkoro sways appreciatively.
—It’s perfect.
* * *
_
The next day, Pikkoro’s costume is wrapped in a brown paper parcel and secured to the top of her school bag. It’s set to be another hot day – the sky is white with humidity, and those clouds just seem too close to Pikkoro who, accompanied by Tako, trudges on humpbacked through the heat. Even with Tako carrying the heaviest of her textbooks, she still feels as if she’s bent double. The gradient of the slope to school seems more aggressive than yesterday.
A discerning viewer could perhaps believe that Pikkoro is accustomed to sadness, a kind of non-specific melancholy that infuses her eyes and slides down to her bones, pooling in the young creases of her skin. Sadness that not even her bright hair can obscure; so pedestrian that it could resemble neutrality or fatigue.
Pikkoro arrives at school, reddened by thirst. She stops at the water fountain, then shows Tako to her cubby hole. When all her heavy things are stored, Tako says goodbye.
—Take care today, Pikkoro-chan. I’ll see you after school.
Tako is wearing a mint-striped ice-cream parlour hat. Pikkoro watches him slide-walk through the corridor, against the flow of students, and it seems that her day might become a little duller now. But she looks back into her cubby hole, revived by the brown paper parcel, which turns see-through for a moment to reveal the red costume inside. A piccolo trills.
* * *
Pikkoro’s teacher is a drowsy but kindly man, young but worn, talking the class through a long mathematical equation from last night’s homework. Pikkoro stares at it, compares it to her paper, and marks her answer incorrect. The teacher puts down his chalk and Pikkoro’s gaze now expands to take in her entire paper, the red strokes written over last night’s grey pencil, like a village ambushed by assassins.
—Those participating in this semester’s play may attend their rehearsal session now. The rest of you have a reading period.
The teacher has scarcely finished his sentence when a third of the students scrape out of their seats and race to their cubby holes. Over the morning the children’s costumes have accumulated here – cardboard snouts, triangular ears stapled to headbands, mosquito-net wings. Pikkoro unwraps her brown parcel and wriggles into her octopus poncho: though it is woollen it is not tight or uncomfortable enough to make her warm. Pikkoro runs out of the classroom with the other costumed students, her extra limbs bouncing, down the stairs and across the corridor to the auditorium.
On the stage, a cluster of senior students are ruffling scripts and reciting their lines, while others are assembling a giant backdrop made from flattened cardboard boxes.
—Ah, the extras from Class 3B are here! Eh? Those costumes are pretty neat! Come on, Kyo-senpai will show you where to stand.
—Everyone get ready for Act II, Scene 4!
The senior boy called Kyo leads Pikkoro and her classmates up the stairs to the wings of the stage.
—Remember to remain quiet while the lights are off. The actors will have a few lines. Then when your lights come on, jump up and make your best animal sounds! Be as loud as you want! You can move across the stage but don’t get in the way of the actors. Okay?
Away from the tedium of silent reading, the students from Class 3B are thrilled into obedience.
—Places, everyone! Alright, from the top!
The lights dim abruptly. A boy and a girl hobble in from stage left, clutching each other.
—Where are we, Cumbersnatch?
—I don’t know, Honey, but something fishy is going on here.
—Where has the doctor gone? Where are all the other passengers?
—I’m telling you, when we get back to Hawaii…
—Eep! Did you hear that?
—Hear what?
The lights boom on, and the animal students break out across the stage, screeching and hooting and snarling, beating their arms, stomping their feet, charging towards the protagonists.
—Eeeargh! Savage beasts!
—Cumbersnatch, quick! We have to do something!
Pikkoro isn’t sure what sound octopuses are meant to make in the wild, so she spins around the stage, her extra arms flailing, making a kind of bubbling, warbling noise. There is no scalar consistency across the animals that the children have chosen, so a duck cavorts alongside a cardboard-finned shark, a rabbit lunges after a rhinoceros, and the effect of it all is somewhere between endearing and disastrous.
The door to the auditorium snaps open. The drama teacher walks in, flanked by two men in brown suits, and all the students quickly contain themselves. Pikkoro’s mouth twitches into an o when she notices the HarvestTime™ loveheart tree stitched into the smart leather briefcases of the brown-suited men.
Kyo steps in front of the group and bows slightly.
—Excuse us, sensei. I hope you don’t mind that we began rehearsal while you were in your meeting. Since the extras from Class 3B are here, we are practising Act II, Scene 4.
The drama teacher dabs at his mouth with a white handkerchief. He glances at the brown-suited men. They both nod.
—Students, I am pleased to make an announcement. It has come to my attention that our play is terrible. That is why we will be rewriting the play.
A gasp rises from the senior students. The drama teacher casts a critical eye over the ensemble. He gestures a stern hand at the children in their homemade animal costumes.
—We cannot use any of these. These costumes are no good. No, the extras from Class 3B will be supplied with new costumes. They will be dressed as fruit – as pineapples and grapes and watermelons and figs. Then the play will be excellent. I am confident of this new direction.
Pikkoro and the other children look shell-shocked. The senior students are so speechless that they must collaborate on their response.
—Sensei…you want Honey and Cumbersnatch…
—to stumble upon…
—an island of giant fruit?
A girl in a penguin jumpsuit begins to cry.
* * *
Pikkoro and Tako walk home from school. The brown paper package, laid across Pikkoro’s arms like a dead pet, is lumpy and folded wrong. Pikkoro and Tako stop at the pedestrian crossing.
—Must I make you a new costume?
—No. Sensei said they’d give us new costumes.
The green man turns on, and they cross the road. They round a familiar corner, but as Pikkoro looks right and left, she does not see the HarvestTime™ truck from yesterday.
In the apartment, Pikkoro watches her ramen grow fat in the steaming soup. Tako unwraps the paper parcel, folds the octopus poncho neatly, rewraps, and walks to Pikkoro’s bedroom. He slides open the wardrobe. Places the parcel on the top shelf.
* * *
_
Was it only yesterday that Pikkoro saw the truck on the way home from school, the mango on the road? Has her life always been this charged with moments of significance, relentless as an assembly line? Pivotal moments advancing from a conveyor belt, delivered with suspicious regularity – some dire newspaper from the cosmos headlining the same cryptic warnings in large black typeface? Pikkoro can’t quite discern the lettering, much less read between the lines – can only understand that there is some threat hovering, spreading a shadow over her tiny life, as she lets herself sink like a waterlogged noodle to the murky bottom.
* * *
—Where are we, Cumbersnatch?
—I don’t know, Honey, but something fishy is going on here.
—Where has the doctor gone? Where are all the other passengers?
—I’m telling you, when we get back to Hawaii…
—Eep! Did you hear that?
—Hear what?
The lights boom on and a boy dressed as a raspberry overbalances and – whump! The other fruits totter uncertainly across the stage. The effort of negotiating the costumes’ awkward angles neuters the children’s ferocity, and the actors stutter through their lines, surrounded by the thump of falling fruit students –
—Oh look, Cumbersnatch! There’s every kind of fruit here!
—We’re saved!
—Cut! Cut! Hang on a second, wasn’t there a mango before?
The piccolo – trill! A part of the stage becomes translucent – and there’s Pikkoro, curled up in a mango suit. She sighs, and rolls onto her rotund stomach. The fruit costumes even come with enlarged oval HarvestTime™ stickers. Pikkoro scratches at the edges of hers, but it’s stitched into the fabric.
That senior boy Kyo’s voice is strained.
—Sensei…are you sure about this plot direction?
For the thousandth time Pikkoro is poring over her little collection of facts – such as the truck that swerved around the corner near her home, the mango gleaming on the asphalt, the loveheart tree, those two silent men with their briefcases…and that infuriating slogan, It’s HarvestTime™. And for the thousandth time, Pikkoro thinks: Honey, something fishy is going on here.
—Once again! From the top!
Pikkoro scratches at the fake sticker on her side and puck! One of the stitches snaps. Pikkoro wriggles her finger under the hole and keeps on ripping – puck-puck-puck like subatomic fireworks – until the fake sticker peels off. It curls away like the lid of a sardine tin.
There, exposed to the grimy light of her hidey-hole, is a tiny black mystery nestled in the fabric, shaped like a jellybean. Pikkoro struggles to sit up, craning her neck. Yes, there it is – tight as a parasite, inseparable from the costume. It will not be prised away, not like the fake sticker.
Pikkoro decides that now’s the time for action. She wriggles like a caterpillar shedding old skin, kicks free of her costume, and crawls away.
* * *
Later at home Tako and Pikkoro investigate the HarvestTime™ mango on the kitchen counter – large, innocuous, so deeply yellow that its fragrance is very nearly visible. Pikkoro itches off the It’s HarvestTime™ sticker. Denied sunlight, this part of the mango’s skin retains an oval lighter than the rest. Tako takes their sharpest knife to pare back the skin, opening a window to the mango’s flesh. It’s difficult to see but Pikkoro knows it’s there – she slides a square magnifying glass over the wound – a black spot, so small as to be mistaken for a fragment of seed. A flaw in the mango’s perfect design.
—Tako-sama.
—Yes?
—Was it bad of me to sneak away from the play like that?
Tako doesn’t reply right away. He floats to the sink and rinses the knife.
—You felt unsafe somehow, following the other children.
—I don’t like what’s happened to the drama teacher. It’s like he’s been brainwashed.
—Did the men try to brainwash anyone else?
—No. Well, I’m not sure.
Pikkoro sees the drama teacher again, dabbing his mouth with a white handkerchief.
—The fruit is poisoned.
—Poisoned?
—Or bugged.
—Bugged?
—Well, something isn’t right about it.
—Something isn’t right about the convenience of your discoveries.
—Hm?
—You found a mango on the road, and you were cast as the mango in the play. Isn’t that too much of a coincidence?
Pikkoro slumps down into the kitchen counter, pushes her face in her arms.
—I don’t know about that.
Tako extends a brown tentacle over Pikkoro’s shoulder and picks up the mango. He brings it closer to his small eyes, inspecting it like a jeweller.
—Tako-sama.
She reaches out, takes one of Tako’s spare arms in her hand.
—You have to help me.
* * *
The next day, Pikkoro sets off to school alone. She has packed light. All this business with HarvestTime™ has meant that she has not completed one stroke of her homework, but she is ready to take the penalty. She takes a moment to gaze at the slope leading to her school. Her eyebrows tip towards her nose in determination. She’s tight-fisted with it. She struggles up the hill.
She endures the roulette of the morning period, in which her teacher calls on a random student for the answer to each question of their night’s homework. One by one all the students around her are called upon, but somehow not her. It’s not even lunchtime and the day is already ringing with portent for young Pikkoro.
At eleven o’clock, after recess, the teacher says:
—Those participating in this semester’s play may attend their rehearsal session now. The rest of you have a reading period.
Pikkoro remains in her seat a little longer than the other students. She has come too far to falter now, but there’s no hint of fear in her eyes. She pushes back her seat.
In the auditorium, the older students help the younger ones put on their fruit costumes over their school uniforms. The drama teacher and the HarvestTime™ men oversee with grim faces.
—The mango girl.
—What about her?
—She isn’t here.
The drama teacher shrugs.
—They are third grade students. I am not responsible for their whereabouts.
The drama teacher is paring the skin from an orange with a small knife. The HarvestTime™ men watch him. Those thick curls falling. One of the men turns to the other:
—The girl will come.
Kyo stoops on one knee and picks up the unclaimed mango costume. The sticker must have been resewn overnight, for the costume is bright and unbroken. Kyo holds the costume as his eyes trawl the room in the manner of a cop late to the crime scene, clutching a thief’s calling card. The boy dressed as the raspberry practises walking. He takes bow-legged sumo steps.
One of the senior girls approaches the drama teacher.
—Sensei…would you like us to begin rehearsal now?
The drama teacher peels the final strip of skin from his orange.
—Please hold on for one minute. Not everyone is here.
One of the HarvestTime™ men flicks back his suit sleeve and consults his watch.
—Where is the mango girl?
Kyo frowns at the HarvestTime™ men and back at the mango costume. The drama teacher licks juice from his knuckles. He lifts the orange to his mouth. The raspberry boy has found a walking rhythm that his legs can tolerate – ichi, ni, ichi, ni, he chants – but then as he wobbles, throws out his arms for balance, he catches something in his unsteady gaze. He points:
—Octopus!
SHHIIIING! Pikkoro stands at the auditorium’s back entrance, hands on her hips. The octopus poncho seems to flare with borrowed light, and she raises a hand:
—Sensei! Don’t eat the fruit!
The drama teacher looks up. A bead of juice slides over his fist. All of a sudden Pikkoro’s right there next to him; she snatches the orange out of his hand. The students gasp. Pikkoro lifts the orange high and flings it hard onto the auditorium floor. Her foot comes down a second later.
SPLAT!
Pikkoro lifts her foot. The orange is a wet, juicy mess. The acid sizzles.
Everyone is silent. A girl in a banana suit begins to cry. The HarvestTime™ men fiddle with their neckties, push their glasses more firmly on their noses. The drama teacher clenches his teeth. He is shaking a little, trying to form syllables: k…k…k…
—What is the meaning of this?!
Pikkoro rests her foot back on the ground. It is unclear who precisely the drama teacher is addressing – Pikkoro, with her loose posture, seemingly satisfied that some great threat has been squashed into the auditorium floor, or the HarvestTime™ men, who are as rigid and inexpressive as the students’ cardboard stage scenery.
There’s a sound coming from outside – like bells, far off, growing louder and closer. The adults and senior students shift nervously, but the children, swiftly availing their memories of the current peculiar situation, light up. Wild understanding dawns in their eyes. The bells reach peak volume, echoing closer and closer, and then, visible through the window, Tako’s ice-cream truck pulls up at the auditorium’s outdoor entrance. The children lose themselves – they gallop to the doors, cheering, straining their arms through their fruit costumes as Tako announces through the loudspeaker of the ice-cream truck:
—Hello! Hello! Students of East Elementary School! Principal Matsumoto rewards you for your hard work today!
One of the children manages to wrestle open the doors and they all pour out, swarming Tako’s ice-cream truck.
—A free ice-cream for each student! A gift from Principal Matsumoto for your hard work today!
The senior students hardly know what to do, but the children aren’t questioning this ridiculous twist, grabbing ice-cream cones with eager hands. One of the senior girls exits the auditorium to find another teacher. Meanwhile, understanding is dawning for the drama teacher too, as he gazes tight-lipped at the pandemonium, at the squashed orange. At the HarvestTime™ men clutching their briefcases.
—W-What’s happening here? What happened to my students’ play? Why are all the children dressed as fruit?
And finally, darkly:
—Who authorised you to come to this school?
The HarvestTime™ men do not reply. One of them readjusts his necktie. They turn to Pikkoro, who is so small in this chaos, peeking out from her clever coral red octopus hood. One of the men twitches his lip – in disgust perhaps, or with smug inside knowledge. He steadies his glasses with two firm fingers. And then, the HarvestTime™ man intones:
—Pikkoro Sugimura.
For the first time, fear colours Pikkoro’s face – gentle as the broad, omniscient stroke of a paintbrush, darkening at the edges, expanding like water. Pikkoro asks:
—How did you know my name?
Tako senses trouble and climbs out of the ice-cream truck, while the drama teacher stands up. The teacher is smaller and older than the HarvestTime™ men but he looks incensed enough to take them both on. The senior students are still frozen in wide-eyed trauma. Everywhere, children are licking ice-cream.
THWACK!
One of the HarvestTime™ men swings his briefcase into the drama teacher’s stomach. Pikkoro cries out. The drama teacher stumbles. The HarvestTime™ men bolt for the exit. Their sensible shoes skid through orange pulp. They knock aside stray kids like a couple of harried fathers struggling to get out the door for work, dodge Tako and scramble into the ice-cream truck. They even snap on their seatbelts. The engine stutters into life and the truck speeds off, kids sprawling in its wake – and a bewildered Tako, his mint-striped ice-cream parlour hat askew.
Pikkoro screams:
—TAKO!!!
Transformation! Tako takes to the air with a powerful whoosh!, arms flaring, sinuously electric. They lock into place – two for the handle bars, two for each wheel – as his suckers shine like polished military brass, his eyes protract into headlights, and then everything’s on this relentless crescendo, crackling with guitars and snares and fluttering woodwinds and blinding triangles of light as Pikkoro jumps onto the seat formed by Tako’s webbing, grabs the handle bars, revs hard and speeds the hell out of the auditorium.
The ice-cream truck bumbles down the hill and Pikkoro and Tako hurtle after it; animated by momentum, the limp arms of Pikkoro’s poncho fly backwards like kite tails. It’s the kind of chase scene that has everything that could possibly be crammed into a chase scene – tight corners, screeching brakes, near-misses, ruffled civilians, blasted horns, dogs springing free of their leashes and barking ecstatically into the street. The vehicles successfully clear, in white-knuckled sequence, a pedestrian crossing, two red lights, a speeding train, a clamouring boomgate, and, for the climax, a rising toll bridge. The ice-cream truck makes the leap – the giant novelty cone cracks away from the roof and plummets into the river. SPLASH! Trumpets groan. The drums fumble while the truck crunches onto the road and skids back into action. Tako leaps after the truck, and for a moment, Pikkoro, hanging only by the handle bars, feels her poncho parachuting open, the arms streamlined perfectly for flight. Red-cheeked, lightning-eyed; so far away from school, home, the ground – Pikkoro has never been so precariously alive.
* * *
They chase the truck through the countryside until they arrive at the HarvestTime™ headquarters, monolithic as the orbiting fruit in their TV commercials. A part-silo, part-Ministry of Dystopic Fiction type of deal. The ice-cream truck zips through an entrance which appears like a glitch in the building’s armoured exterior. Pikkoro and Tako plunge into the darkness after it. The ice-cream truck brakes, squeals in a circle; Tako whiplashes out of his motorcycle form and Pikkoro jumps off. She lands on her feet.
The two HarvestTime™ men slither out of the truck and slam the doors. It is so dark in here: the light at Pikkoro’s back fails to clarify the dimensions of the room. A flourescent lamp snaps on overhead; then another, and another, springing like hunting snares. Exposing in their painful light: smooth sloping walls. Inert conveyor belts. Pronged beams. Vertical labyrinths of ladders.
Pikkoro steps backwards into Tako’s arms.
A regal woman with silver hair is poised on a gangplank that overlooks the room. Her fringe obscures her eyes. Her voice is soft but paradoxically resonant.
—Pikkoro Sugimura. What a surprise to see you.
Pikkoro withholds a gasp. Her eyes are shining, lacquered with tears, but it is critical that she does not cry. Tako is perfectly still. The two HarvestTime™ men are so unnoticeable that they may as well disappear between frames.
The silver-haired lady spreads her hand.
—Or maybe it is not such a surprise. You are, after all, highly talented.
Pikkoro allows herself only a few seconds to shiver.
—What do you mean?
The lady’s lips curl into a smile.
—You are special, Pikkoro Sugimura. The other children are not like you. They will never be like you. Not one of them would pick the mango from the road, would question the play, would peel back the sticker. Even for a puzzle of such low difficulty, of such relative transparency to the outside observer – the other children would struggle to perceive even half of what you perceived instantly.
Pikkoro tightens her face. She tries to keep it in, but a tear finally escapes her eye. She bunches her fists.
—No! No, I don’t understand! Why did they come to my school? Why did they change the play? Why did they make us wear those stupid costumes?!
For a moment the lady stops smiling, and Pikkoro shrinks like a child denied a reward. The same fallen face that Pikkoro holds as she marks her mathematics homework with a red cross. That old, large sadness. She lowers her eyes.
The lady, as if with some renewed awareness of Pikkoro – so small, earnest, her octopus poncho hanging so dearly to her little shoulders – offers a different sort of smile.
—Sweet child.
And then:
—You will grow old so beautifully.
Tako shifts his weight. He remains silent, as if speaking would be a trespass. Pikkoro, with her clenched fists, tremoring with indignity and anger and foreboding which exceeds anything she has felt before, must proceed alone.
—Explain it to me!
—Explain what to you, Pikkoro Sugimura?
—Just…explain everything! I don’t get it. What’s the point of all this? I…I don’t even know what questions to ask! I need you to explain what’s going on! And why. Why does it have to be?
The lady laughs. A feathery sound, motherly and infinitely patient.
—How apt, Pikkoro Sugimura. You astutely describe the central problem of existence. What is going on? Why does it have to be? What questions am I supposed to ask? What am I trying to understand? What does it even mean, to understand? Explain everything. Explain, explain.
Pikkoro becomes aware of the giant, open crates that surround them, piled high with silent fruit. Apples. Mangoes. Peaches. Each marked with the HarvestTime™ sticker, like white glossy eyes. The silver-haired lady continues:
—I think you will find, dear Pikkoro, that much of adulthood is dedicated to erasing the why of everything. It is the act – a game, we should say – of adhering to the rules without actually knowing them. Any question that the uninitiated might ask is, inevitably, the wrong question.
The silver-haired lady holds out her hand and unfurls it softly. A dull plum sits on her palm, one which also bears the HarvestTime™ sticker.
—Isn’t it strange, Pikkoro Sugimura? The complexity of these imaginary rules? Even this fruit, which pre-exists humanity, is the follower of rules. Its ancestors have been bred selectively, the pollen scraped from their bodies, the natural logic of their seed corrupted. This fruit does not know that its special genetic code is the intellectual property of this company. A receptacle for crucial data. It does not know that we have intervened. It simply adheres to the rules. As we all must.
The hand that holds the plum remains there, as if the lady is a statue at a shrine. The sticker gleams. Pikkoro seems to swell with something unspeakable; she can hardly breathe, can hardly stop her eyes from trembling with tears. But she must be brave. She must. She must take a new breath. She must ask the next question.
—What has all of this got to do with me?
The silver-haired lady lifts her lips.
A smile like a trapdoor.
—It’s harvest time.
And then Pikkoro is falling, a clean, slow movement – propelled by another’s momentum, unforgiving as gravity. Her eyelids fold, and the limbs of her poncho, so utterly unrelated to her whole, descend separately, splaying like outstretched fingers, scattering from her perfect fall.
Tako catches her before she can hit the ground. He enfolds Pikkoro in his many arms. And then, Tako turns into a helicopter, bursts out of the HarvestTime™ headquarters, away from the invisible gaze of the silver-haired lady – flies Pikkoro over the countryside and across the river, four blades perforating the baffled sky. Humming like a heartbeat.
* * *
What does Pikkoro see during her moment of unconsciousness? Does she tumble like Alice through red crosses, eraser shavings, corrective ink? Does her unfinished homework loom around her, large as blimps, fattening with importance? Sly pterodactyls of long division? Gap-toothed comprehension tests? Perhaps she sees newspaper headlines, or white oval stickers, a tree of lovehearts. Perhaps fruit orbits her body, rotating on their secret axes, their unfathomable formulae. Perhaps she sees, again, the silver-haired lady’s smile, disembodied, a terrifying omniscience.
Perhaps she understands that this is merely the first episode of many to come. That she has embarked on a steep trajectory of self-discovery, and her progress is witnessed by more worlds than one.
Or perhaps, with rare benevolence, the universe grants young Pikkoro a moment of respite, sparing her the burden of thought – and she sees nothing at all.
And so, after receiving whatever insights darkness might offer, Pikkoro reawakens at nighttime, in her home, in her soft and colourless bedroom. Tako is sitting next to her bed, reading Seeds of Time beneath a dim lamp. Pikkoro’s octopus poncho hangs over the back of her chair like a sleeping child slung over her father’s shoulder.
Pikkoro sighs – a sigh of safety – and Tako lifts his eyes from his novel. When their eyes meet, they feel keenly the insufficiency of words, so they resist the blunt intrusion of language. Pikkoro rolls over, holds Tako’s closest arm, and together, they fall asleep.
* * *
When the morning comes, Pikkoro is dressed for school. Her bag is gridlocked with books, and there are clean white socks on her feet. Tako and Pikkoro stand at the entrance to their home, contemplating a sky which holds no clues.
—Are you sure you want to go to school today?
—Yes. I need to see if things are back to normal.
Pikkoro’s eyes are cleaner and sharper than the sky. She says:
—I’m not scared.
Tako gazes out over the town, at the trim rows of apartments and traffic lights and dotted white lines. In the far distance is the bridge they flew over yesterday – and further out, invisible, the HarvestTime™ headquarters, the silver-haired lady.
Pikkoro says:
—I’m so sorry about your ice-cream truck.
—It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you are safe, Pikkoro-chan.
—What are you going to do now?
—I’m sure I will find something else to do. It doesn’t worry me at all.
Pikkoro looks up at Tako. She encircles him, the best she can, with her small arms. Tako leans close to her.
—Take care, Pikkoro.
With that, Pikkoro sets off to school. She hoists her schoolbag high onto her back and walks down the grey staircase, slips through the apartment gate, patters across the sidewalk. She waits for the green man and crosses the road under his bright approval. She stops at the bottom of the hill, clutching the straps of her bag. She looks up at her school. A flock of birds trawls the sky like a fishing net.
At home, Tako carries a cup of tea from the kitchen and takes his seat at the table. With his peaceful arms, moving in elegant concurrence, Tako rests his cup on the placemat, stirs the water with a spoon, and leafs through the employment section of the newspaper. His sapient eyes study the entries. Outside, early-morning sounds float on the air – drowsy, inseparable, overlapping like tongue-twisters. Bicyclist. Cicada. Bicyclist. Cicada.
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Elizabeth Tan is undertaking a Creative Writing PhD at Curtin. Her work has appeared in Voiceworks, dotdotdash, Epilogue, Verge and The Sleepers Almanac No. 8. Her webcomic can be found at et-maispourquoi.blogspot.com
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