by Andy Giesler
Still weaving late at night. I value the time to think. I’ve told the strays we can use my woven goods for trade. That might even be true.
Crops are getting along, more or less. Weather’s continued wet and gray. The wheat and timothy grass are doing poorly. Given the cold, wet weather, we didn’t even want to try planting the wheat, but we had to. We need to grow everything on our own this year. Corn is growing slowly with yellow leaves. Soybeans and alfalfa are all right. Eli put in a small plot of birdsfoot trefoil before he died. It’s doing very well, good forage for the small livestock and our one remaining cow. Our vegetable garden is coming along tolerably, though some plants like potatoes seem likely to rot.
I do wish Dr. Habib were here to check on Martha. I wish he were here for so many other reasons too, of course. Martha seems to be doing well despite her Down syndrome, but I worry about her. I’ll pray on it. God will take it from me. And in the meantime, we’ll keep up with the exercises and activities Dr. Habib gave us. Lord willing, she’ll be fine.
3
July 21, 2163
I finally spoke with someone else tonight. I was so relieved to do it, even if the news is bad.
Quint and Marsh are away doing whatever they do. Teddy stayed in the house this evening and sent me out before dusk to start rounding with the Remy. I saw Emma Miller at the edge of our back lot in the woods. One of her rams had run off, and her strays sent her to find it. She said she dared not go back home without it.
Her husband Aaron is dead, and also her eldest son Amos, who was nineteen. She was given no stories about wild animals or whatnot. Her two strays pulled Aaron and Amos out into the drive and shot them both through the head, in front of Emma and her other children. That was around the same time Eli went missing. They would give her no reason for it.
She’s heard nothing from other families. She’s hardly allowed out of the house except for chores. When they sent her for the ram, they said if she ran away they’d kill Abbie, Mel, and Peanut.
She wept for some time. I wept with her, and we prayed. Then, since it was getting dark, I said we should get to it. We found her ram wandering down by the creek.
She didn’t want to go home, but she went.
4
August 12, 2163
Protectors.
That’s what they call themselves. They’re our Protectors. I can hear the capital “P”.
Seeing how the world has gotten so dangerous, and seeing how they’re most fit to defend us, and seeing how they know so much more about the evils of the world than we plain people do, in their kindness they’ve assigned a few Protectors to each woman in our community, to watch over her and her family.
Quint and Marsh make no mention of Protectors to watch over the men. I suspect there are no more men.
Near as I can tell, Quint and Marsh lead the Protectors. They’re often gone on errands. They told Teddy, right in front of me, that I belong to him now. I can tell they think this is funny, what with him being a meek little fellow, and me being scrawny, and somewhat homely, and nearly old enough to be his mother.
Even so, I catch him glancing at me.
Quint and Marsh want nothing to do with me, but I do not like they way they look at Hannah. She’s only 14, for heaven’s sake. But she takes after Eli, and is pleasant to look on. If they touch her, I don’t know what I’ll do.
If Teddy touches me, I don’t know what I’ll do, either.
Feels like I ought to miss Eli about now. I don’t.
5
September 6, 2163
Teddy hit me today. In front of Waneta and the baby. I deserved it for calling him a fool in front of the children.
No.
I spoke unkindly, but he’d no right to hit me. If there’s a price for me to pay, God will collect it in the end, not Teddy.
Quint and Marsh are gone today, so Teddy’s lord of the house. Had too much to drink. He was going on about his high place in the new order, seeing how he came here with Quint and Marsh, and they’re at the center of it.
I chuckled and said if he expected sweet gifts from that gathering of stray dogs, he was a fool. I didn’t say “dogs” in English, but he could tell “hunde” meant nothing kind. Speaking Deitsch at him, that was disrespectful too.
Still, he is a fool. He’s a kitten in deep water, and it won’t end well for him. Nor for any of us, maybe.
God, forgive me for judging others. But it’s getting hard not to.
Teddy looked ashamed after he hit me, but truth be told, he didn’t hit hard. There was no real hate behind it, and no more beef in his arms than he could build up from gesturing at his bio display all day long. He actually looked a little scared as he did it. Like maybe he hadn’t hit anyone before. I almost felt sorry for him. Had half a mind to give him pointers.
Eli, now, Eli could hit. Not only did it hurt more than Teddy, it felt more wrong. Eli vowed to care for me as was fitting a Christian husband. He vowed love. Forbearance. Patience. Every time he struck me, it broke a promise.
It’s different with Teddy. He’s a thief and a coward and he consorts with murderers, and we both know it. He came into our lives that way with no promise of being anything different. So if he swings his dishrag bioengineer arms and slaps me no harder than a little girl would, not only does it not really hurt, but it breaks no promise. In fact, it keeps one. He’s doing no more or less than either of us expect.
I’m not sure why, but there’s a curious comfort in that. Knowing where I stand. Knowing there’s nothing between us but what each of us can get away with.
6
September 23, 2163
The crops will be no great thunder. Half what we’d expect in a good year, I think. The wheat’s a total loss. Still, half will be better than nothing.
We need to put up food while we still can. The strays are letting me hunt with the Remy. They’re not afraid to give me a gun. They explained what’ll happen to the children if I do something unwelcome.
It’s been so many years, but it all comes back. I hope to harvest deer soon, and put some aside for winter smoked or as jerky. But for now, rabbit and squirrel are a good addition to our table. I even got a big papa coon last week. A little greasy, but not a bad meal. Thank you, Grandpa Solomon.
And thank you too, Grandma Anna. She disapproved of Grandpa Solomon teaching me “the way of the gun,” so she took me in the woods year-round to balance it out. She said any granddaughter of hers should be able to make do for herself, and she shouldn’t need a gun to do it. I’m not the herbalist she was, but I guess I know angelica from water hemlock.
Besides the food plants I bring back, we’ve little medicine left, so I gather whatever medicinals I find in the woods and fallow fields. Willow bark, dandelion, black haw, creeping charlie, wild geranium, red clover, witch hazel, dewberry. Grandma said stepping outside was walking into God’s medicine chest. “And the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.”
There are unkind roots and herbs out there, too. I know which ones they are. I know where they grow.
I don’t remember my parents, not clearly. I don’t know how they would have raised me. But things being as they are, I count it a blessing that Grandma Anna and Grandpa Solomon raised me as they did and taught me how to get by for myself.
7
October 16, 2163
I could have let Marsh die. Easy as anything.
Bleeding from his leg and belly, his face and scalp half burned away. It’s a wonder he didn’t die all on his own.
Molotov cocktail, they said. That and a small-caliber rifle, judging from the holes in him. I don’t know who they were raiding, but I hope it was good people, and I hope they survived it. Marsh deserves what he gets.
Forgive me for that. Not my place. He does terrible things, but I can’t know God’s plan for him, nor what good might come from his life in the end. If God wants him, God will take him.
It took a couple weeks to get him out of the valley. More than o
nce I doubted he’d make it. I’m not fit to sew up wounds, but I did my best. And burns are bad business. I gave him what medicine I could for his fever and pain, kept his dressings clean, made ointments as best I could with the aloe I grow in pots. I didn’t think I could cut away dead, burned flesh, but it needed doing. Plenty of fluids, comfrey and honey poultices, and vinegar-water baths, the children fetching water from the well while Quint and Teddy smoked and drank and gave me advice from the doorway.
It would have been so easy. I kept him drinking white willow tea with yarrow and meadowsweet from my garden. He was so near dead. Just imagine if a little poison parsley had gotten in there on accident. Or jessamine, maybe.
No. Fairy bells. That would be the thing. Low dose over a couple days. I could have used fairy bells.
If his life were mine to take. If it were my place to judge. If I weren’t raised better than that. Might have, could have. I must set such pondering aside. I’ve done what’s right.
I will not take a life and face judgment for it later.
So Marsh is weak and badly scarred, but alive. I imagine he’ll be back to his cruel self in a week or two.
I doubt he’ll thank me, but I’ll know. I’ll know I’m to thank for that scoundrel still being alive.
Shepherd Gabriel
1
Shepherd Gabriel and the Unwelcome News
Shepherd Michael grimaced at Shepherd Gabriel. “Somebody’s making chimeras?”
“Or trapping. I’m not sure. What matters is—”
“Making them how? Out of chamomile and mud?”
Shepherd Amit snorted. Shepherd Rachel shook her head.
“Look,” Gabriel said, “you’ve got a better explanation, give it. However they’re managing to get chimeras, what matters is that somebody’s dissecting them. It’s like they’re trying to understand how chimeras work.”
“So,” Michael said, “you’re saying the People—who, by the way, will shit themselves at an unkind word—have started breeding or trapping chimeras and cutting them up. I have that right?”
“Not all the People. There are throwbacks who aren’t so timid, you know that. And I don’t know how they’re getting the chimeras. But this is clearly purposeful.”
Shepherd Livv ran her fingers through her long, black hair and leaned forward, staring at Haven’s stone floor. “This is the second one?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Maybe the third. This one was three weeks ago west of Underhivvel. One ten years ago outside of Nyehoff. And eighteen years ago, the one northwest of Overlook.”
Michael grimaced. “That wasn’t dissected. We only ever found a fucking head.”
“Livv, you saw it, too,” Gabriel said.
“I don’t know, Gabriel,” Livv replied.
“The decapitation was razor-clean, remember? It bothered us both.”
She thought a moment. “Okay, maybe. Maybe three. And that’s disturbing, but why panic? It’s not like they can use stone knives and incantations to figure out how chimeras work.”
“Metal knives,” he said.
“Whatever. Comes down to it, that’s three fewer chimeras for us to deal with.”
“Come on, Livv. Think longer. We expected chimeras to dwindle over time as the last Wicc devices stopped generating. The line was trending to zero. And now this outbreak. We have to tell the People. And you have to stop culling them.”
Michael growled. “Shit, Gabriel. If you’re right, this is exactly what the cull is meant to prevent. Now you actually want to encourage them to—” He stopped when Livv held up her hand.
“Let him talk, Michael,” She said.
“And now,” Gabriel continued, “it starts looking as though somebody has a downright scientific interest in how chimeras work. We can’t be sure they’re connected, but it’s a good bet.”
“Let’s accept for a minute that some of our sheep have turned wolf on us,” Livv said. “What do you want to do about it?”
“Whatever’s happening, it happens more often in the Divide. I think it’s centered up there. If this gets past us, we’re finished. So we explain it to the People. The truth, all of it, so they can help us protect them. Then we evacuate the Divide, we dig a firebreak around it, and we burn it to the ground.”
After a moment Rachel broke the scowling silence. “Shit.”
“Evacuate?” Livv asked. “I won’t even touch the ass-cockery of explaining everything to them. But you want to burn down a fifth of the World That Is? Where the hell do we put them all?”
“I don’t know where we put them. But there are only nine of us left. With chimeras on the rise, we’re not up to it. And as we die off one by one, the water in the Void’s still rising. We have…what? A couple hundred years before the water overtops the Edge? If anything’s out there across the Void, and if it can swim, then we’ll be part of the World That Was all over again. So, yeah. We won’t be here to watch over the People forever. We involve them, then we evacuate the Divide and burn it.”
Michael grimaced. “You sound more like Lee every day.”
Gabriel closed his eyes and looked away. Looked back. “Aura Lee was right, Michael. She saw this coming. I was a shit-licking idiot not to listen. And you still are.”
Almost casually, Michael hit Gabriel so hard it snapped his neck.
“Damn it, Michael,” Livv said.
Gabriel toppled from his chair and lay on the ground twitching, his head listing oddly, his eyes not leaving Michael’s. He choked and wheezed for a moment, trying to speak as his naughtwork rebuilt the severed connections. Finally, he asked Michael, “Am…I…wrong?”
“Surecreek!” Shepherd Asra called, charging into the room, gasping.
“Surecreek? You were supposed to be covering Market,” said Livv.
Asra shook her head, panting. “Runners came from…Surecreek,” she managed. “Need to get there.”
The shepherds stood and walked to her. “Chimera?” Shepherd Sumiko asked.
“Don’t think so. Something different. I never know how much to believe them, but they say Surecreek’s weaver put their apprentice woodsmith in the Pit, then the apprentice got out of the Pit and ran off.”
“Didn’t they drug her?”
“They drugged her and burned her, but after the fire had gone for a while, she shrieked and jumped out of the Pit, then she jumped over their wall. Tore off a sheep’s head and ran into the woods with the body.”
“Goddamn it. Jumped?” Livv asked, scowling.
“So they said,” Asra replied.
With difficulty, Gabriel got to his knees then stood gingerly, bracing his head in his hands, and looked at Surecreek’s shepherds. “Rachel, Lydia, you know the apprentice woodsmith?”
Shepherd Lydia nodded. “Deborah. Most woodsmiths wouldn’t take a girl to apprentice, but their woodsmith’s an outlier. That Alter. Abel?” She looked at Rachel.
“Abram,” Rachel said.
Lydia nodded. “Abram. Deborah started as Young Root, but she left the weaver’s path. Troublemaker her whole life. She was blind, and ass-deep in attitude to make up for it.”
Gabriel frowned. “Shit. Blind Root. I remember.”
“Was blind,” said Rachel. “Word is, her vision came back a couple years ago. It’s probably been ten years since we saw her last. Ever since we caught her in the forest after hours, she seems to make herself scarce when we visit.”
Gabriel tentatively released his head. He looked at Livv. “Before you mobilize some kind of inquisition, let me talk to their weaver first.”
“We can’t afford to wait for you. Get there when you can, help us find her daughter. We’ll talk to the weaver.”
“No you won’t. You’ll kill her. Maybe you won’t mean to, but Surecreek’s weaver is stubborn as stone. She won’t tell you what you want, and you’ll kill her trying to get it. We have to learn everything we can about her daughter. C’mon, Livv. You’re no good with the subtle stuff. Let me talk to her first.”
Livv scowled.
“Fuck you. Fine. We’ll lock down Surecreek and wait for you. Get there as fast as you can.”
With a rush of wind and a receding rumble, he was alone.
Then, still bracing his head with one hand, Gabriel ran after them.
When I Was Twenty: Beyond the Pit
1
A Good-old Story
Watcher Witless and The Unfamiliar Caller
The fire is down, the stars are up,
So sit and listen for a spell,
And count your blessings, this dark night,
That your wise watchers watch you well.
One night not so very long ago, so I’m told, Watcher Witless was on the wall, nigh on midnight, protecting the goodly folks of the village of Where. Because no watcher should ever stand watch alone, his companion Watcher Weary was with him, curled against the balustrade and gently sleeping.
It was a dark night with a new moon, and clouds shrouded the stars. And it was a quiet night, until a voice rose up from the darkness below:
“Darling! Open the gate and let me in!”
Now, Watcher Witless very nearly went right down to the gate and opened it. But then, wise watcher that he was, it struck him that no person he knew would be outside the wall on a dark, quiet night calling him darling. So after a moment of pondering, he called back down, “Say there! Who’s that in the darkness calling me their darling?”
To which the voice said warmly, “It’s me, my darling! It’s me, your precious wife!”