Snow Over Utopia

by Rudolfo A. Serna

  “Do you know of Utopia?” Eden asked.

  “Just a little.”

  Delilah’s yellow eyes had already closed. Clenching her fists under the blanket, she tried to keep herself from crying.

  “Eden—tell me what you know about Utopia.”

  “There is snow.”

  “What?”

  “In the dreams, there is snow.”

  The single bearing of the rotor continued its orbit in space above them, the bearing circling while waiting for Delilah’s father and the other components of the trinity to reunite.

  Another season, the planet completing its rotation, powering the dimensional clock in the chamber beneath the Juggernaut tree, tuned by Witch Mother’s hand. It had been several seasons since escaping from the walls of the camp, in the gold of the falling leaves, the last image she could see. Growing older on the planet, her body had been damaged, and the pain was always with her. The cut of the deputy’s blade could still be felt, the pain of the fall, her bones breaking. She still walked with a limp, her arm remaining weak and sore, despite the time that had passed, feeling the frost off the peaks, blowing through the brittle grass, numbing her cheeks and ears. The snow approaching from the northern mountains, sweeping over the plains at the edge of the valley of fallen cities. Delilah saw the trail gouged out by the ancient titan, slithering over the earth on its way north to the ice and snow. The great procession that tore a trail over the planet, carrying the entombed body of the Robot Queen on the backs of her creations, gathering the raw materials needed to build the capitol, collecting the last of humanity spread out on the plains, taking the metal and glass from whatever ruins they could find. Armies of slaves that carried what remained of the fallen cities. The bio-matter that she would mix together, collected in the ark of her tomb, creating new breeds to survive the falling snow. It was magic, it was light. Salvation to all those left in the wild, their freedom had been their deaths, sacrificing their freedom to the queen, joining the march north over the snow.

  Eden heard the rumbling of distant thunder.

  “You hear that?” Eden said.

  “Yes,” Delilah said.

  There were birds gathering in the dead trees of the mountain top.

  “What does it look like around us?” Eden said.

  “In the distance, peaks covered with snow. Blackbirds in a dead tree. Dark clouds rolling toward us, but the sun still shines where we stand.”

  Eden could smell the rain in the air, and she thought she felt a single drop freezing on her cheek. She could feel the air cool and warm as clouds covered and uncovered the shafts of light that fell across the desolate prairie called Hell. The ends of Eden’s bandage floated across her face, holding the scars and the horror of what happened to her. She had spent the warm months in the old woman’s shack. Where did she go? she thought. Is she Witch Mother?

  “Stand here like this,” Delilah said.

  Delilah stood behind her, holding the bow up to her, taking it in her hands, she slid her hand along the curve.

  “What is this?” Eden said. She felt Delilah’s hand.

  “I am good at using this,” Delilah said.

  “What’s it used for?” Eden said.

  “Hunting.”

  “Killing?” Eden said.

  “Yes,” Delilah said.

  .Feeling its weight and shape, she tried to imagine what the bow looked like.

  “Hold it tight,” Delilah said.

  Eden’s hand gripped the weapon, pointing it out towards the edge of the cliff.

  “Take your other hand and grab the string like this.” Delilah took her hand, wrapping her fingers around the thin bowstring, then placed her other hand on Eden’s hip to position her.

  “Put your fingers this way,” Delilah said, correcting her grip, “and pull.”

  Eden pulled the string. “It is hard,” Eden said.

  “You must practice.”

  “Prac-tice?” Another word that Eden had never heard. Delilah thought of how to explain the meaning to her.

  “It means you must do it more.”

  “Is that why you are so good?” Eden asked after a short pause, lowering the bow.

  “At this? Yes,” Delilah said.

  “At killing.”

  “Yes … I …”

  Delilah had killed deer and disciples in the forests and fields, stalking them through ruined streets and rotted alleys from the days of green rains, when titans raged.

  “Should they all be killed?” Eden quietly said.

  Delilah remained silent.

  “I kill when I must,” Delilah finally answered.

  “Must?” Eden asked.

  “No choice.”

  “I know,” Eden said. “None of us have choice.”

  “No, I suppose we don’t,” Delilah said, thinking about her question, should they all be killed? The disciples in the hills of the fallen city.

  Yes, yes, they should all be killed.

  Eden did not want to imagine anymore the pain and suffering caused by the weapon she held.

  Yes, they should all be killed, Delilah thought. The beasts that killed her mother. It was not long ago, a couple of years. Delilah thought that her and Eden must have been close in age.

  “I should have died a long time ago,” Eden said, releasing the bow.

  “Don’t say that.”

  Delilah was unable to let go of Eden’s hand, the bow slipped to the ground. Delilah wanted to pick it up and protect it, the most precious thing in the world, but instead she left it there, unwilling to let go of Eden.

  “I was screaming when my eyes were cut out.”

  Eden did not remember the face of the deputy, she had barely seen his scowl, his grin at holding her under the water, brandishing the skinning knife. She remembered the dawn light and yellow leaves reflecting on the surface of a stream and the burning of the blade. Whatever magic the old woman had used to block the memories had started to fade. The scars and darkness could not be banished. Could never be totally wiped away. The pain was too great, the fear unrelenting.

  The heat of the sun left them, and the clouds grew thicker. Delilah knew that, soon enough, the snow would begin falling, and the frost would cover them. And there would be another winter. Relentless weather that would bury them in snow.

  “I should have died.”

  “Then you wouldn’t be here with us.”

  “Where is here? Just darkness,” Eden said.

  “You are with us—with me.”

  “I can’t find my way to Utopia."

  Eden held tight to Delilah’s hand to keep from falling.

  “You are with me,” Delilah said, holding her tighter, the bow still at their feet.

  “In real time?” Eden said.

  “In real time,” Delilah said.

  Eden held on.

  Behind them, the blackbirds fluttered in a dead tree, leaping and flying over the edge of the cliff.

  Pulled from a stream and sent out blind into the forest, Delilah thought.

  Eden struggled against the furs, waking from the same dream of a dome city lost in blowing snow. She felt the weight of Delilah beside her.

  “Delilah,” Eden called out into the dark and silence.

  Delilah reached out and pulled the girl closer to her chest.

  “I saw it again,” Eden said.

  “In the snow?” Delilah’s voice spoke from the darkness.

  “Yes.”

  “Witch Mother?” Delilah asked.

  “Yes—there are many faces, the old woman, a child …”

  “Does she still tell you to go to Utopia?”

  “Yes.”

  “The snow will be melting soon,” Delilah said.

  Delilah could feel Eden’s hand reaching for her arm, pulling it closer to her breast, begging for her strength.

  “When the snows melt, we will go,” Delilah said.

  “Thank you,” Eden said, repeating the words she had learned. “Thank you. Thank you.” Del
ilah could feel the tears falling on her arm. It is almost time, Delilah thought. She, too, felt her own tears dropping with the thought of what was to come.

  The disciples’ war parties came out of the valley, marching steadily toward the foot of the cliffs, gathering around their fires, replicating the cries of their forefathers, the old chant: “SATAN DISCIPLES FOREVER!” The sounds emitted from their twisted vocal cords, from their throats, self-perforated with metal ornaments, the sounds only the psychotic humanoids could understand after their full bowls of Liquid Meth. The disciples grunted indecipherable chants and danced wildly, choreo-maniacs pulling meat from the bones of the screaming humans they’d captured on the fringes of Hell.

  In the spring, the disciples gathered in the canyons with their gnashing teeth sharpened, their green skin gleaming. Returning from warmer lands where they had pillaged and battled with the villages of free humans. Placing the skulls high up in the trees, they took their pierced cocks and thrust the shafts into discarded heaps of skin and gelatinous flesh, shredded from the carcasses in a satanic fury.

  A giant pit discharged a fiery glow.

  War parties surged through the canyon, carrying grappling hooks of metal and bone, climbing the canyon walls, seeking entrance into the mountain stronghold, hoping to dislodge the cat-eyed race from their sanctuary.

  The tolling bells signaled the attack coming from below, alerting the hunters to prepare to defend the mountain top. They’d assembled themselves to repel the attackers, poised at the cliff’s height, pointing their arrows down at the horned disciples scrambling up the canyon walls, bellowing monstrous war cries.

  The cat-eyed descendants of the experimental race left behind, running into the wilderness to escape the queen’s march to establish her capital. The old hate welled up in the hunters’ battle cries; they were determined to slaughter the disciples, to put an end to the gang—the offending race—no matter that they shared common human traits. The differences were far too great between the disciples and the cosmic race that escaped to the mountains of the wastelands at the edge of Hell, and the valley of fallen cities.

  Eight

  Eden was kept away from the battle. Delilah held her and told her to stay still and safe in the compound, to wait for her till she returned, but Eden heard the whispers of the rotor calling out to her from the sanctuary of the caves that hid the library. She felt helpless, following the whispers of the rotor, the sound of the Juggernaut, calling to her like an infection, the whispers growing stronger until she could no longer ignore them.

  She had found her way. She knew that Witch Mother waited for her somewhere there. She had walked in the darkness, cradling the jar, protecting it from bumping against anything that could break the glass and spill the contents, feeling her way along the stonewalls, and the smooth chiseled surface of the floors under her feet, recognizing the warm air around her, the smells of incense and candles. She knew she when entered the chamber where she had awakened a season ago, where the Librarian meditated and communed with Witch Mother. The sounds of battle could not be heard through the thick walls of the sanctuary, and all was silent except for the whispering of the rotor.

  She sat on the cool stone floor and waited, pulling her knees to her chest, cradling the jar in her lap.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Eden.”

  She recognized the voice of the Librarian.

  “I have my eyes,” Eden said, holding the jar close to her, the jar that had been given to her when she asked the Librarian if they had survived the fall.

  “You heard it?” He said.

  “It told me to come here.”

  Along the walls were the rows of manuscripts with the lost science, which the Librarian and his students tried to decipher. Among stacks and rows of ancient books, rewritten over the centuries, with symbols created to represent the archaic knowledge and narratives of history in the rotation of the planet.

  The Librarian’s eyes were covered with a thick, black glass that reflected the light of the rotor. The green orbs of the rotor spun faster and its light grew brighter with anticipation, waiting for Eden. The Librarian stood over her, his eyes always covered with the thick, black glass fashioned to hide his blindness.

  He gently pulled at the jar; Eden, refused to surrender it.

  “You will not need this,” the Librarian said.

  “My eyes!” Eden said.

  “You will not need these eyes. You will have new ones.”

  “New ones. How? I don’t.”

  “These …” He said, gently pulling the jar, “these are mine, child.”

  “How?”

  “Come with me, and I will tell you.”

  Eden still held the jar that she did not want to give up. “I thought—I thought, she had helped me. She said—she said she helped us.”

  “She did. She brought you to us,” he said, still gently holding his eyes in his hands. “Eden, let go of the jar. It’s okay.”

  Eden finally let go. She felt the Librarian’s hand.

  “Are you ready?”

  “I don’t know.”

  One of the bearings of the rotor floated over her, as if waiting for her to rise from where she sat. Taking her arm, he helped her to her feet and led her across the dark hall lit only by the rotors and their green light, leading her further into the library, towards the gurney that had received her when she first came to the Librarian and his daughter.

  The trinity of circling green orbs waiting for her, a machine in the ether, existing without a frame or lever, existing outside of time, a culmination of all that had passed and all that would come, until there was nothing left but spirit running off the power extracted by the coven from the body of the god underground, with monstrous limbs, a twisted torso, and the limbs that swayed on their own, the coven had carried the derivative of the great tree across the ice.

  The Librarian carefully placed the glass container with his yellow caracal eyes back on the shelf from where he had taken them when she first woke, frantically searching for her eyes, her only hope of seeing again, but he had given her his own eyes instead to comfort her. Leaving her still sitting against the wall in the chamber.

  The rotor following him, floating on a power that could not be perceived or read by any monitor. Lighter than air, gas converted, they transmit and think, talking to Earth Machine, created by the wondering technicians of the coven.

  “New eyes?” Eden said. Reaching the edge of the gurney with two of the orbs following her, while the Librarian helped her up onto a thinly stuffed mattress held by an old metal frame.

  “Yes,” he said, “these are my eyes.”

  “Your eyes?”

  “I had lost them also.”

  Eden was silent.

  “How did you lose your eyes?” She said.

  “I plucked them out.”

  “Why?” Eden gasping, pulling her hand away from the fingers that held her.

  “It was the only way.”

  “The only way?”

  Eden held on to the edge of the gurney.

  “Do you see me?” she said.

  “I can see with the rotor, through Witch Mother.”

  “Witch Mother,” Eden said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But, why? Why would you take out your own eyes?”

  “I lost my lover.”

  “A lover?”

  “Like you and my daughter.”

  “A lover. Yes. You lost your lover.”

  “Delilah’s mother,” she said.

  “Yes. I wanted to die.”

  “Die?”

  “Inside, I wanted to die; I couldn’t live, and the Librarian before me was old and sick. He, too, was dying inside … It had to be me. The rotor told me so.”

  “And you took out your eyes?”

  “I took them out. The grief was too great, the only way to kill the pain.”

  “It talked to you?” she said, sitting on the edge of the gurney, feeling for a blanke
t.

  “Yes, can’t you hear it?”

  “Yes. It tells me that it’s the only way.”

  “To Utopia?” The Librarian said.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, it is. You will never make it otherwise,” he said.

  The orbs floated over Eden on the gurney, while the third orb remained rotating over the Librarian’s head.

  She leaned back.

  “I know. I can hear them.”

  “Telling you to go?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  On the steel gurney, orbiting above her, moving in a perfect circle, the light scanning her face.

  “The rotor lets you see?” Eden said.

  “Yes,” the Librarian said. “I got something for you.”

  She felt a vial put in her hands.

  “It will be like a dream,” he said.

  “I will have to leave her.”

  “I am sorry, but you will be with her again.”

  “She is a killer,” she said.

  “Yes. She always will be.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you ready?”

  I am ready,”

  She drank the vial given to her.

  “I will see her again,” she said.

  “You will see her again. And so much more.”

  She felt a heat passing over her.

  The green spheres rotating in soft whispers, bathing her in a green light that felt like mountain runoff being poured over her head, rolling down her shoulders, returning to the stream to be carried away.

  Soon, there was no cold or heat. All feeling faded until there was nothing at all.

  The orbs kept singing, sounding to Eden like the trees.

  What is it that you want to see? Eden could hear the rotor asking her. The voice coming in from somewhere underground, somewhere infinite.

  Delilah, she thought she heard herself saying.

  The vision came through on streams of static and light. The transmissions changed as images assaulted her, torturing her, forcing her to relive the memory of what happened at the stream, the blade that cut her, left her drifting in the water.