by Adam Vine
Our next stop was the station library, which had been repurposed as the infirmary. There was a small, white-haired woman sitting and reading a gigantic, leather-bound grimoire in an old wooden rocking chair by the door. She wore huge bifocal glasses and a knit rainbow shawl that she tugged at nervously as she read, muttering secret passages to herself through her thin, wrinkled lips and sipping from a mug of tea that rested on the doily-covered table beside her. She didn’t seem to hear us come in.
“That’s Bookmother,” Queen Rat told us at full volume. “I’d introduce you, but she couldn’t hear a Louse’s siren if it was in her bedroom. Part of me thinks it’s an act so she can read all she wants without being interrupted by the rest of us. Hello, auntie,” Queen Rat said, kissing the old woman on one pale, warty eyelid. The old woman looked up, smiled, and went back to reading and pulling her shawl.
Countless blankets were laid out on the floor between the dusty stacks of ancient books. The blankets were sporadically filled by the emaciated bodies of the sick and wounded, mostly children, all of them pale and motionless. Their gaunt, gasping faces held a queer, uncanny valley look.
It took me a moment to realize that they were sleeping despite their eyes being open. Each child’s eyes were mismatched, one pink and one pale blue. Their skin was similarly blighted, divided into thick, alternating stripes of eggshell white and cadaver gray.
Queen Rat knelt beside one of the sick children, gently stroking the single errant tuft of translucent white hair on the crown of his head. “Hello, Eamon,” Queen Rat said. She took the boy’s hand in her own and kissed it. The child’s wormy lips struggled to yield a smile.
“He can’t speak,” Zaea said.
“Nor can he hear. None of them can. But this lad isn’t fully awake. He’s in the place between the real world and dreams, where I hope he remains,” Queen Rat said.
“What’s wrong with him?” I said.
“The children in this sick ward are victims of the Blight. It affects one in four children born in the Burrow, and is usually fatal, disproportionately so in boys. We suspect the Amber City has similar numbers, but the difference is those children are all abandoned and left to die. We save the ones we can and bring them here, when we find them. It is… unusual for us to find them alive.”
Zaea fidgeted uncomfortably. The prospect gave me a chill, too.
“Sometimes they gain their speech and hearing back if they survive to adulthood. Those ones usually end up fighting for us, for obvious reasons. Barn Owl was that way, as was Mongoose,” Queen Rat said.
“Is the cause of the disease known? Is it bacterial, viral, genetic…?” Zaea said.
“Are you a doctor?” Queen Rat said.
“Actually yes, I was,” Zaea said.
“Of course you were, sweet thing.” Queen Rat sighed. “We don’t know what causes the Blight, except that it isn’t bacteria or a virus. The prevailing theory among our ancestors before the True Night seems to have been that it was genetic, and the symptoms only became active after prolonged exposure to darkness and cold. But, we have no way of knowing if that’s accurate.”
“When did the primary outbreak begin?” Zaea said.
“Our records indicate the epidemic started sometime during the Last Day of Sun,” Queen Rat said. “People grew desperate. Folks dying in the street, the hospitals overflowing, mass graves, religious fanaticism, riots, structure fires, that sort of thing. It’s one of the reasons we believe the current regime was able to rise to power.”
She stroked the boy’s hair again, kissed him on the forehead, and turned back to Zaea and me. “Any further questions?”
We both shook our heads no.
“In that case, we’d best be on our way. Visitors tend to excite them, and the best thing for these sweet, suffering babes is to get as much undisturbed rest as humanly possible. Sleep eases the indescribable pain that is their day-to-day lives, at least a little of it, though I’m told they cannot dream. I simply wanted to show you just who we’re up against. This is an enemy who does not give a thought to the destruction of human lives… even the lives of innocent children.”
THE BURROW
ZAEA’S GAZE lingered on the child as we followed the queen out of the infirmary and back into the tangle of brick tunnels outside. It was around that time that I noticed the torches on the walls weren’t real torches at all – they weren’t made of wood, for one thing, but iron – when the smell hit me.
It was a rank, specious odor somewhere between a metric ton of wet feces and a pile of dead bodies spilling from one of the nearby passages like a foul mist. Queen Rat noticed Zaea and I both making faces at the stench, and stopped to explain.
“Ah, yes. Your noses have made first contact with our most prized possession here at the Last Station, our Gourmet Mushroom Farm. Gourmet is a joke. But it’s true, we eat and produce myriad kinds of mushrooms here: big ones, little ones, round ones, smooth ones, white ones, brown ones, frilly ones with brown edges that are white in the center, red and green ones that are poisonous… obviously those aren’t for eating.”
“There were mushrooms in the soup,” Zaea said through the top of her shirt.
“Oh, there are mushrooms in everything, my dear. Stick around long enough and you’ll see what I mean,” Queen Rat said. “There will be less when you visit Salt Town, though you should still expect to eat them twice a day. We grow them here so the Townies don’t have to deal with the stench. In exchange, they give us grain and livestock, which we don’t have room to raise here. Y’know, the usual things that crawl, eat, and shit: sheep, chickens, deer, rabbits, snakes, pigeons, dogs, a few cows, mostly for milking. We turn some of that grain into vodka and beer, and some of those animals into sausages – our specialty - that we sell back to Salt Town at a premium. I’m sure it’s no different than where you’re both from.”
We don’t eat snakes or dogs, I thought.
“We’re vegetarians in Neen,” Zaea said. “Animal protein can too easily upset your gut bacteria. Plus, it causes irreparable damage to the environment to raise enough livestock to feed a large population. All our protein is synthesized from plants or beans.”
The queen’s lips were the only part of her that smiled. “I imagine that must be a pleasant luxury.” She gestured down the tunnel where the smell was coming from. “Incidentally, the stables and vegetable gardens lie that way, too. Would you like a tour?”
Zaea and I both shook our heads no.
The queen frowned. “Hmm. Just as well. I suppose they’re not much to look at – just a few hovels and planter boxes tucked into the corner of a cave… though I’ve always found the light of the hydropons rather therapeutic. So rot me, I like machines. And, it is a very big cave.”
“Excuse me, Queen,” I said, once we’d walked a bit and it was safe to breathe again. “Not to interrupt, but I’m curious. How do you keep animals alive with no sun? Or plants? There’s no way you’re growing vegetables by torchlight.”
The queen made a tiny, almost undetectable swiping gesture with her fingers, and the torch on the wall nearest to us instantly brightened. She swept her fingers again and it brightened more, until the light was blinding, and the tunnel was washed in white. She swept the other way, and the light dimmed back to its normal luminosity. I’d already figured out that whatever the torches used for fuel wasn’t oil, but rather something renewable, that could be grown. I wasn’t expecting them to be motion-controlled.
“Indeed, we don’t,” Queen Rat said. She explained as we walked: “These torches contain a trace amount of the glowmoss we use to power the hydropons in our gardens and farms. Glowmoss was engineered by our ancestors to read human gestures. It still grows in the mines near Salt Town, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Incredible,” I said.
“We use it on my world, too,” Zaea said.
Queen Rat raised an eyebrow at that, but chose to ignore it. “The Ancients mastered the art of engineering life. They grew things to serve their every whim
and fancy. Unfortunately, that knowledge was lost on the Last Day of Sun. The patches of moss that still cling to the deepest reaches of our Salt Mines are all that remains of it, so we tend to use our glowmoss sparingly. Sad, because it is quite pleasant when turned up to full bloom. I remember I used to sneak into the gardens when I was a little girl and sit and read under the hydropons for hours, basking in their lovely, golden light. Alas, no more. A queen has no time for books.”
We arrived at the end of the tunnel. Letting out a grunt, Queen Rat gave the ornate wooden door in front of us a push.
The door swung open to reveal a small, candlelit chapel no larger than my apartment, all hand-carved from the rock of the cave. The pews, the prayer shrines, the ceiling dome, the life-sized statue of the faceless man levitating above the altar, every inch of it was drawn from the smooth stone of the cave walls and awash in the glow of a thousand candles like stars floating in a silver sea.
There was only one other person in the church besides us, a hooded man kneeling in the rearmost pew whose head was lowered in prayer.
I ran my fingers along the wall. The stone was soft and spongy. The queen gestured for me to lick my fingers, and I hesitantly tried a taste.
Salt. The entire church is made of salt.
“Salt veins are common in this area,” Queen Rat said. “The chapel in Salt Town is even grander. This one’s rather small by comparison. I’ve prayed here since I was a little girl. The pews have been rather empty of late.”
The queen shut the doors behind us and we moved to the altar, where the queen raised her hand, palm out, to mimic the gesture of the statue there. “Has anyone told you why we live down here rather than up there?” She said. Zaea and I both shook our heads. “Because we did not accept that the Crippled King was the Wanderer Returned.”
“Who?” I said.
Queen Rat slowly began circumnavigating the etched shrines that ringed the chapel, stopping at each station as she spoke. “The Wanderer was a man whose light was so brilliant that he brought balance back to the Spiral after a period of great darkness. In case you couldn’t guess, we are in such a period again, although ours is more literal than theirs was.”
The images at the center of each shrine told a sequential story. The first picture was of a group of people happily basking in the sun, on a beach near a beautiful, prosperous city. Even in replica, the water looked clear and inviting. “We believe this is what our world looked like before the Last Day of Sun,” Queen Rat said.
She moved on to the second picture, which showed that same seaside city, now hovering over the water instead of beside it. The city looked far more advanced than in the first picture, but the people looked sad and unhealthy.
“The People of the Sun had grown so rich and comfortable that they spent their lives pursuing hedonistic distractions rather than anything meaningful. They became decadent, arrogant, and spoiled. They neglected the sweet, sacred light of the sun. They even stopped having children, until eventually they no longer could. They began stealing their children from other, more vigorous worlds.”
Queen Rat moved onto the third shrine. The image depicted a civil war, citizen soldiers fighting through head-high piles of bodies that stretched for miles. “They knew their civilization was in decline, but could only watch as it collapsed. They turned to war to supply them with purpose. In their desperation, our ancestors became genocidal. There came a war so bloody the darkness spread across the stars, threatening to annihilate the Spiral itself. Until…”
Queen Rat moved to the fourth shrine, an image of a group of survivors kneeling at the feet of a figure clothed in light who greeted them with one palm outraised. Like every other depiction of the Wanderer I’d seen, his face was blank.
“A Wanderer came to them from an unknown world who taught that in every person there is a fire and a shadow. The fire gives us peace; it is fed when we follow our purpose, and our light radiates happiness to others. The shadow feeds off of our hatred, sapping the light of everyone else around us.
“Fire and shadow are compliments. One cannot eradicate the other. But lights go out, and darkness spreads with time. Only by becoming the fire can we keep the Spiral in balance. It must start in the smallest among us, the weakest. That is how justice spreads, always outward, from the bottom up; never the other way around. Yet from a single flame can grow a blazing inferno that reforges the world. That is what the Wanderer taught.
“The suffering, the downcast, the strong, the broken, the victims, the survivors began to follow him, until his army was so great they numbered in the billions, countless peacemakers who gave their lives to end the decades of senseless bloodshed. At last, the war ended, and the people slowly began to rebuild.”
The fifth and sixth shrines showed images of the war-torn city in various stages of renewal. In the fifth, the Wanderer floated above the clouds, overseeing the reconstruction. In the sixth, the clouds were empty.
“When his own purpose was at last fulfilled, the Wanderer left this world, and was neither seen nor heard from again,” Queen Rat said.
The seventh shrine showed a group of people standing with their palms outraised toward the sky, which was full of birds and brilliant sunlight. “But the Spiral turns whether we like it or not. Before he went, the Wanderer foretold that a new age of darkness would come even greater than the first. On that day, the Wanderer promised he would return.”
“And that’s why the sun doesn’t rise? Because we’re in some kind of age of revelation?” I said.
The queen moved to the eighth and final shrine, the dark crescent of an eclipse halfway covering the sun. The sun in this motif wasn’t a complete sphere, but a broken spiral.
Queen Rat ran her fingers over the tiny crests and troughs, giving Zaea and me a rueful smile. “Depends on who you ask. According to those living on the Echelon, that age is over. They, the elect were saved by the True Night and the Crippled King’s ascension. They believe he is the Wanderer Returned, and that we, the little Vermin who chose not to follow him, must suffer our heresy down here in the cold darkness of oblivion. As you probably have gleaned, we here in the Burrow reject his claim of divinity. We believe he is a false prophet.”
Zaea, who had remained flippantly disengaged so far, finally took a grim interest in the conversation. The subject seemed to be making her uncomfortable. “If the world of your ancestors was so peaceful, utopian, and, as I imagine, democratic, how was someone like the Crippled King able to rise to power?” she said.
“We don’t know,” Queen Rat said. “Most of our records were destroyed or lost on the Last Day of Sun. The Blight, perhaps. Fear about the future. We know he was a skilled rhetorician, a hero of the people, despite his disability.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I said.
“He was born with a lame arm,” Queen Rat said. “Rumor is, he still has it. His right one, if that matters to you. I believe his frailty actually helped him win his throne. He was the underdog, a victim of circumstance who was able to rise above… what my dear friend Gator would call a game-changer.
“But enough about politics. You want to know how we got where we are,” Queen Rat said. “We don’t know what caused the world to grow dark. We know the government had some knowledge it would happen. The people were warned the sun would cease to rise as it always had. Few believed it, at first. But as the world grew colder, the crops failed, and snows started falling in mid-summer, more and more began to believe. Many chose to follow the Crippled King, who promised them salvation.”
“So he took advantage of a crisis, and that’s how he seized power?” I said.
“Took advantage... or caused it,” Zaea said.
“Only he knows for certain,” Queen Rat said. “We do know that the Echelon was built before the True Night fell. We know that only the uppermost crust of society was given a place in the Amber City: scientists, doctors, and celebrities, not to mention his own party members. The engines of the Echelon were fired, and their promised land asce
nded to the heavens.
“Millions of refugees clogged the highways and roads. The camps ran for miles. Those who rejected his doctrine, like my forebears, were labeled heretics and hunted down. They were forced to flee underground, into the bowels of the undercity where it was still warm. The Crippled King blamed us for the catastrophe, said that terrorists operating on our side had somehow engineered the planet to go dark. The surface became a bitter wasteland, uninhabitable by anything but snow bats, fang rabbits, and the gruesome abominations we call the Snowmen.”
“They made the people of the Burrow scapegoats?” I said.
“The Amber City needed an enemy to keep its citizens preoccupied, so they wouldn’t question the regime. Who better than us sinners left to die down on the Surface? It was the Crippled King who gave us that name, but it didn’t take long for us to adopt it for ourselves. A slur can’t hurt you if you own it,” Queen Rat said.
“What about the Lice?” I said.
“The Lice have a deep-rooted fear of being underground. They won’t come down here. They’re the Crippled King’s greatest weapon on the Surface, but beyond that, our information isn’t good. All I can say for certain is that if you see one, you should run,” Queen Rat said.
“With all due respect, your highness, what exactly do you want us to do about any of this?” I said.
“I like someone who gets straight to the point. Our weapons and numbers are no match for the Amber City. We wouldn’t stand a chance if they ever found this base and staged a full-scale invasion,” Queen Rat said. “Even in the best-case scenario, Salt Town would fall in less than a day. These tunnels, which span the entire width and breadth of the Night City and several miles beyond it, have been fortified enough to serve as our smokescreen, and our shield. The spies of the Amber City have yet to learn our exact location. But if they ever did...”
Zaea hung her head. Was she embarrassed? She’s a princess, after all, I reminded myself. Or, says she is. Maybe her father did similar things to the religious minorities on her own world.