by Andy Giesler
I waited some more.
“Does the girl know what a bow is?”
I’ll tell you, it was all I could do not to cry out from the shock of it. Because back then, using a bow was about like…I don’t know. About like dancing with Gebohra Muerta.
As I’ve said, back in those days we were terrified of blood. We believed that trading blood with a chimera, even the tiniest drop, might turn you into a chimera too. And that was pure true. We believed that trading blood with anything else might make you sick, or kill you, or even turn you chimera. And while the sickness part was a little bit true, the rest was pure nonsense. But we didn’t know that.
Clubs and slings and staffs, those were awful enough. They might draw some blood along the way, but it wasn’t their purpose. But to use a knife as a weapon, or even a bow? Something whose whole purpose was to make blood, and lots of it? That was just pure madness. It was something from your nightmares.
“Good. The girl knows what a bow is,” he said. “The Outcast sees it from the way she jumps. Would the girl like the Outcast’s bow to poke a nasty hole in her guts?”
And finally I decided it might not be such a bad idea to hold up my end of the conversation. So I gave my head a little shake.
“Good then. It seems like the girl and the Outcast both wants the same. Now. The Outcast wants her to drop her stick.”
“I need it to get around.”
“She’s not getting around just now. Not for a little while she’s not. She’ll drop her stick.”
“No, I won’t.”
“She shouldn’t be this way,” he growled. “Something might happen to her. If she wants to keep all her insides inside of her, she’ll drop her stick. She’ll do it. Now.”
I dropped my staff.
“And the sack.”
I dropped my sack.
“The girl’s made me angry.”
There was a thump, and the sound of leaves shaking above, and the jostling of dry leaves below. He’d been up in a tree, then. He stood there quiet a moment, like he was thinking of what was next. I didn’t care to think of what was next.
“Bony she is, like she been out in the woods too long,” he said. “Where’s she going?”
I didn’t answer.
“The Outcast asked where she’s going,” he said. “It’s not polite, being so quiet. She’ll answer the Outcast.”
I didn’t answer.
“All right then,” he said, pretending sadness. “Such a waste it is. It seems the Outcast needs to make some holes in her guts after all.”
“Market,” I lied.
“Is that so? She’s visiting the Pile? Hunh.” Then he was quiet a moment before he said, “Hunh. See now, that makes the Outcast wonder. The girl’s going to the Pile? In the dark? To make such a trip alonesome, a little girl with no sight? And while it’s still night yet, no less? Uh, uh, uh. That makes the Outcast wonder. What a strange thing to do. What a very strange thing to do.” He was quiet another moment. “What a very, very dangerous thing to do. The Outcast wonders other things, too. He wonders her name.”
I didn’t answer.
“Tell the Outcast your name,” he said.
“Mine.”
He hesitated, and I could almost hear his frown. “What sort of name is that?”
“My name is mine, and not for you to share.”
“Your name is Mine? The Outcast has never heard such a name. Mine. Such a strange name it is.” But now he was playing with me. “So then, Mine”—he took a couple of steps toward me—“you’ll tell your name, or the Outcast will leak the life from you. Tell it.” One step closer. “Now.”
“Leeleh,” I said.
“That’s part of her name. Her name is what-Leeleh?”
“Honeydipper Leeleh,” I said, feeling grief and comfort in the shelter I took from my friend’s name.
“That’s not her name, the Outcast thinks. But he thinks it’ll do.”
That’s when I heard the most interesting thing.
I heard that same sound again. The sound I’d never heard before. That creak and groan. That sound of the bow.
Since I couldn’t imagine why he’d need to pull it even farther than he had, I guessed he’d let it loose. Like maybe he wanted his hands free for something else.
He snorted and stepped close. If I’d been downwind of him, he never would have surprised me. He smelled worse than Market. Smelled of a lonely man too long from water. Of filthy clothes and old meat. Of…of something. Of a smell that was so familiar.
Then I recalled it. He smelled of the Strong Drink. Whatever he planned to do, I hoped the Strong Drink might make him unsteady doing it.
“The girl shouldn’t be out here all alonesome. Guess she don’t know it ain’t safe out here.” Maybe I just imagined it, but it seemed I could hear him turning his head back and forth, as though to be sure I was alone.
I was alone.
Then he leaned in closer and grabbed my arm.
I suppose the direction of his voice would have been enough. His hand on my arm, that probably would have been enough, too. But his hot, wet, rank breath on my cheek? Why, that didn’t leave no question at all about where his walnuts were hanging.
As he dropped to the ground puking, I was about to grab my staff and run. But then a terrible noise from behind the tree startled me. An awful sound it was, like some poor animal gasping and wheezing about to die. But then I realized what it was.
It was somebody laughing.
5
My Family
Somebody was laughing so hard she sounded ready to split herself right open. An older woman, she sounded to be, maybe my ma’s age. She slapped something again and again, her leg or the tree trunk maybe, as she laughed and gasped and choked.
Then she sighed. A long, low, happy sigh over the soft whimpering moans down in the leaves.
“Ahhhhh, some little wisp of a sightless girl makes jam of Eulee’s plums? Ain’t this a little party?”
She started laughing again.
Well. I had no idea what to do. I waited a moment for her to settle, and when she didn’t, I figured I should be moving on before Eulee felt well enough to give me something back for his trouble. I bent down to pick up my staff.
I heard two things right quick. One was that she stopped laughing as though she’d never been. And the other was that sound. The creak and the groan.
The sound of a bow.
Then she clucked her tongue and said, “Uh-uh.”
So I stood back up straight.
“Think I like you, girl,” she said, stepping nearer, but not near enough. “That’s about how I would do, was I in your place. But we need to get clear on something. Poor Eulee here ain’t got no more sense than a cooper’s whiskers. But I have.”
“Woman,” Eulee managed to groan. “I’ll…uhn…”
“Now here’s how we’ll do,” the woman went on. “First, can you tell where I’m standing?”
I nodded.
“Good. You’ll toss that sack as near me as you’re able.”
This one seemed a different kind of critter than Eulee. If I didn’t cross her, I thought I might wake up tomorrow. And if I did cross her, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t. I tossed the sack.
“There now. Good girl. We’re getting on grand. Here’s what’s next. I’ll set down my bow and take out my knife. It’s a metal knife. You try something with me like what you done with Eulee, maybe that’ll work. But more likely I’ll open you side to side like a melon and you’ll die crawling in your own guts. From what I’ve been able to tell, that is one of the less joyous ways to die. So my advice is: don’t.”
She set something down in the leaves, then took a big step nearer.
“Kill her, woman,” Eulee whimpered.
She picked up my sack and backed away. I heard her rummage through my things. Then she gasped. “Eulee. We got metal. That should do us for now, along with the other gifts we’ve gathered.”
Now Eulee was moving. He didn’
t seem real limber yet, but it sounded as if he was trying to get up. I took a small step back.
“Grandmother’s withered cunt, woman. Kill her!”
The woman sounded to be fussing around with a sack, whether mine or another. “Oh hush, you puckered sow’s ass,” she said. “I kind of like this one. She behaves herself, we’ll leave her be.”
Eulee tried to stand but dropped to the ground again. “Oh, Grandmother,” he said. “Woman, if you won’t kill her, Eulee will.”
“Eulee.” Just that one word. But the way she said it? Almost made me want to apologize.
Eulee didn’t say nothing else. He just stumbled closer to her and collapsed again in the leaves, moaning.
I didn’t figure I’d get real far running, so I just stood there and waited for whatever came next. Once she finished arranging what she was arranging, I heard her voice real soft and low to the ground, down by where Eulee was. He answered back too quiet to hear over the blowing leaves. They went back and forth like that a bit. All I could make out was at the end when Eulee hissed, “We’ll not!”
The woman said something firm and low. Eulee didn’t answer. “Girl,” she said to me. “You want, you can come with us. Our ma could use the help. You have my word, Eulee won’t touch you. And my word’s as good as anybody else’s, when I give it. Unless I guess wrong, you’re new to the Outcast life and have no better place to go. So anyway. I’m offering.”
It surprised me real sharp that she was asking me. There was no way I’d go with them, but I didn’t want to anger her neither. So I said, gentle as I could, “Thank you for your kind offer, ma’am. I sure do appreciate it. But I need to get to Market. Folks’ll wonder what became of me.”
She chuckled again. “Well. Seemed polite to ask. You’ll come anyhow. Once Eulee’s hisself again, you’ll put out your hands for tying. It’s a long walk without your staff to guide you, but you’ll make it with maybe a few falls along the way. Then we’ll give your staff back to you. Once we get home, you’ll be lost for sure and true. You’ll stay with us, and you’ll help as you can. If you try hurting any of us, we’ll kill you. If you run off, you’ll die lost and alone in the woods.”
She moved a little closer to me. “Anyhow. That’s Eulee. I’m Aylee. We’re your family now.”
Words from the Reckoning, So Very Long Ago: Ruth Troyer’s Journal
1
February 7, 2164
It seems almost unnecessary, with all that’s gone wrong, to say things aren’t going well. But things aren’t going well.
After harvest, I dared feel a little optimism that we’d get through this winter. We’d brought in much less than we ordinarily would, but it seemed enough to get us and the livestock through. And it was. But that was before we started our Common meetings, and before I understood the state of our community.
I thought we were just getting by, but we did much better than most households. Some, where the strays were especially feral, or their prisoners especially hopeless, planted almost nothing at all.
Part of me wants to say, “How did the strays think they’d make it through the winter?” But that’s clear enough. They didn’t. Some of them have probably never thought that far ahead in their lives. Although Teddy’s a bastard, and Quint’s worse, and Marsh is hardly human, in some awful way I should count my blessings that two of them are educated enough to hear reason.
So, as I said we would, we’re sharing. We would have shared with the others anyway, even if it weren’t our excuse to hold meetings.
Looking at it clearly, I just don’t see how we’ll make it. If it comes to it, I suppose we’ll have to eat all the animals. But I’m standing firm about that as long as I can. If we can squeak through this winter, we’ll regret their loss more than we’ll regret our loose belts.
Dire wolves have taken more livestock. They’ve attacked at least five farms in the last few weeks. I don’t believe there’s a horse or a head of cattle left alive in our entire community. Not as many sheep or pigs as we’d like, either.
They’ve also taken three people. They killed Rachel Stuckey, who was out to water the animals. They dragged her off into the woods. She was elderly and probably a pleasing target to the wolves because of that. We weren’t especially close with the Stuckeys, but I knew Rachel well enough, and I’m grieving her loss.
The wolves also killed two strays. I didn’t know either of them and now, blessedly, I never will.
While the proper-thinking part of me regrets those three deaths, a practical part thinks: three less mouths to feed.
More mouths are on the way to replace them. I know of at least four women who are carrying the strays’ babies. It’s not the sort of thing women are strutting proud about, so there might be more of them that I don’t know about.
Somehow, we’ll make do.
2
February 27, 2164
Our food is too near gone.
This month I’ve been teaching the other women to forage, though winter’s an awful time for it. Thankfully this winter’s uncommonly mild, so digging’s easier than it would have been last year.
At Common, I show them what I’ve gathered, and I tell them how to find it for themselves. Then a couple of days a week, I visit with women from three or four households at once, and we go out together so I can teach them in the wild. Rose hips and pine needles, cattails, wild onion, burdock root, acorns and nuts, crabapples. I just want to note here for future generations, if anybody’s left to read it, that even though they’ll fill your belly, lichen and bark flour pancakes are not nearly as delicious as they sound.
Pickings are slim, but slim is better than dead.
A pack of strays went out to explore the world that’s left to us. A “scouting party” they called it. Raiding party, more like. Still, they came back with news. The stories of a new canyon are true. They said it was tremendously wide and deep. They didn’t follow it far, but it looked to them like a smooth, perfect circle ringing in tremendous area, maybe most of northern Ohio, dividing us from the rest of the world.
Quint went with the raiding party, and he said it looked to him like the work of nanofactories, more than he could imagine gathered in one place. Teddy says if there was any doubt before, it’s pretty clear that whatever the Reckoning was, somebody planned it. They also planned for after it. No way to know who that was, but if they’re still alive, I’ve got a few questions for them.
The pack returned with some tools and weapons, and three women. Beautiful women, but seeming no less wretched for it. They’re slaves now, like the rest of us.
They brought back some food, too. Looks to me like they found some grocery store that hadn’t been entirely plundered yet. They filled one of the carts they brought along on their raid. There didn’t seem to be any reason to what they gathered. It was more like they swept armloads of stuff from shelves without even looking at it. They brought it here for me to inventory and distribute. There were some useful things, but a lot of foolish ones. Cough drops. Cannabis chews. Paper towels. Coffee—and no better than synthetic-instant, at that.
As though we could survive on this nonsense.
We’ll make use of everything somehow. But all told, there’s not enough real food in there to make much difference. Maybe not even enough to feed those three beautiful mouths for the winter. Only a matter of time before the strays start turning on one another, I imagine. One farm against another. We’ll be caught in the middle of that, but we’ll prepare for it as best we can at Common.
3
March 14, 2164
Oh, Lord. What they’ve done. I can’t write it, Lord. I won’t write it. But You know, Lord. You know.
Don’t You?
When I Was Twenty-Three: Outcast
1
A Good-old Story
Rover Jon and the Chamomile Tea
One day not so very long ago, so I’m told, Rover Jon’s grandma was feeling poorly.
Now, Rover Jon was a good grandson, and it pained him to see hi
s grandma ill. He recalled that when he was a little boy and feeling ill, his grandma gave him chamomile tea to calm his belly. He had no idea where he might find chamomile nor, truth be told, just quite what it looked like. But he was willing to try, and he had a mind to wander. So he gathered his pack and his walking stick, and he left the safe and quiet village of Where.
Three days later, he wandered still.
By that time he’d found a great many things: grass, acorns, slugs and dandelions, several piles of rabbit turds, stones, and a most disagreeable pricker bush. But if he’d laid eyes on chamomile along his path, which he very well might have, he didn’t know it.
As he wandered farther, he began to notice that the trees seemed most especially broad, and the brush seemed most especially dense, and the vines seemed most especially strangling. But there up ahead, partly hid behind a most remarkably ancient oak, he could just make something out. It might have been chamomile, or it might have not, but as he didn’t know the difference, he figured he’d better wander there to find out.
When he reached the tree and stepped around it, he found a great patch of moss. Or maybe it was a great patch of fuzz. Or maybe, he realized as he grabbed a handful to lift it, it was a great patch of thick, brown fur.
Below the great patch of thick, brown fur was a pair of eyes. Eyes with pupils sideways like a goat’s. And the eyes were staring at him.
Below those sideways goat eyes was a mouth. A mouth full of teeth, long and sharp like a wolf’s. And the mouth was smiling at him.
And down below that, where it had lain sleeping gently until Rover Jon gave its fur a yank, was a body. A great, broad body that might have been a person once, but that had now become a chimera. And the body was reaching for him.