Withered World

by Sara Kincaid

  Is this ability worth the price? I say ability because I’m not sure what else to call it. Is it magic? As a scientist, I shudder to use such a term.

  When I’m satisfied with my studies, what should I do then? Who will believe me? Will they be afraid? You know I couldn’t hurt anyone.

  Aster, I wish you were here. Please don’t abandon me, though I have drifted away from you.

  Bram

  Chapter 4

  From the earth, of the earth, and back to the earth once more. Even in Bram’s time, they no longer used manufactured products to build homes. Instead, dwellings were made of mud bricks and needed to be repaired regularly or they would be lost to the heat and the rain. Floorboards were made of the wood from fallen trees, but nothing fresh was cut and nothing artificial was manufactured that would put poisons back into the earth and the air. But entering East Farm was like stepping into one of the books I’d read on South Farm with strange materials like steel and brick and complexly shaped homes, relics of the past.

  We walked right through the center of the abandoned farm community and were surprised to see, in addition to the green foliage, ancient buildings, most on their last legs, still standing. Ceilings lay crumpled on the floors of many of the homes and we could see the dusting of color on the fallen rubble. The ones that still stood were decorated with grand archways and pointed rooftops. There was a love and a beauty there that didn’t exist in the world in which Leo and I lived.

  Overwhelmed by the colors, I ran up to the first building I saw and slid my hand along its speckled blue surface. The last scraps of paint were peeling away from the frame and the wood was rough beneath my fingers. I looked over at Leo, filled with joy and wonder. “Can you believe it? I can’t believe this is what the world was like. All the color!” I gushed, speaking so quickly there was no time for Leo to interject. He joined me by the building and ran his hand tentatively over its rough surface. He didn’t speak but his eyes, too, were filled with awe. I looked at our hands splayed out side by side and I was suddenly glad that I wasn’t here alone. I was even happy that it was Leo who was beside me.

  We spent a better part of the afternoon wandering through the old town admiring the decrepit buildings and other relics. We followed the dirt road out of the center of the community and wound to the houses and former farms. In this color-filled world, we forgot about our worries and the need for stealth. We felt we were the only two people on all the earth. It seemed like the beginning.

  “We should probably think about where we’re going to set up camp. Once it gets dark, we won’t be able to see a thing.”

  “Can we stay in one of the old houses?”

  He frowned regretfully. “I’m not sure any of them will be safe enough for that. We don’t want the roof caving in on us.”

  My face fell. “You’re right.”

  “But maybe we can find one that isn’t too dilapidated and fix it enough so it’s safe,” he offered hopefully.

  The landscape around us was quite different from the hills and valleys of South Farm. This land was flat and filled with a mixture of prairie gold and knotted green clumps of plants. There were significant bare spots, too, and if I reached out to them, I could feel the destruction that had turned them into a desert.

  As we walked, I heard the hiss of flowing water and followed the sound to a line of bright green trees. Their leaves rolled gently in the breeze and I stopped to admire the scene.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Leo asked.

  “Yes,” I breathed. Beneath the tender shoots and thick roots, the earth sang. Her voice was rich and pure, seemingly untouched. I smiled to myself, quickly lost in the song.

  “What is it?”

  “I…” I shrugged, unsure how to explain. How do you share the earth with someone who has no connection to it? In spite of all of the struggles that come with being Curare, that connection was our gift. “Better than the City, right?” I asked instead.

  Although he could not hear the song, somehow the green earth seemed to lighten Leo, too. Gone were the shadows from his chiseled face and the tension from his broad shoulders, the storm from his eyes. “Sure is,” he agreed. We smiled at each other and I felt my heart flutter like wings. Perhaps this could work. East Farm, my new home. Our new home?

  Wanting a closer look at the river, I walked along the tree line until I found a small animal trail. It was overrun with weeds and other nettling plants that I pushed aside as I sought entrance. When my fingers touched the delicate leaves, I could feel their life energy pulsing and I sensed the noticeable absence in those that had succumbed. “Don’t rip it apart,” Leo said quickly and winced. He didn’t want to tear the uneasy peace between us, either. “We don’t want anyone to know we’re here.”

  I stopped and looked all around us. The hair on the back of my neck came up and the desire to fight and to flee sprang like lightning down my limbs. “You think there’s someone here?”

  “Maybe not. We should be careful, though.”

  I delicately pushed my way through the tangled foliage, both living and dead, trying to touch it with as little skin as possible so I didn’t suck it dry. Leave no trace. I whispered those words to myself and all at once I was seven years old again, walking through the fields with my mother, her careful hand at my back, learning to control what I didn’t understand.

  Beyond the curtain of plants, the small dirt path continued, though it widened considerably. I looked around in amazement at the clusters of trees and thick grasses. Inviting fruits enticed us off the path.

  I traced my fingers along the red, smooth skin of the apple, a form I recognized from a historical farming class I took in school. Immediately the fruit began to shrivel beneath my touch, the color draining from it in the same swirling pattern I traced on its skin. Sorrow constricted my throat even as my body fed. “Don’t worry. If you hadn’t eaten it, I would have.” Leo elbowed me gently, emphasizing his joke. Our eyes met and again my heart flipped breathlessly in my chest. And then, “How is this possible?” he asked, echoing my thoughts before tentatively plucking another fruit from the tree and taking a hesitant bite. The flesh crunched between his teeth and juice dribbled on his lip.

  I dug my toes into the earth and shifted my consciousness to the flow of energy beneath my feet. Immediately, my body dug into the power of the land below. The energy hummed and pulsed, a symphony of life beneath the surface. “It’s clean. All of it. How?”

  “The chemical spill didn’t cover the whole of East Farm.” He took another bite and spit a seed onto the ground.

  “But the chemicals that would have been used pre-spill. Those were used on all of the land weren’t they? They aren’t here anymore.” I paused then, dropping my hand from the tree. “Do you think someone has been here?”

  Leo knew what I meant by someone. Curare under the thumbs of the CPA or soldiers of the CPA themselves. His brow creased with concern. “It’s possible. But it doesn’t look like it. It’s too wild for them. This place would be crawling with officers if they had any sort of presence here. Or they would have destroyed it if they’d discovered that it thrived.”

  The sunlight began to fade and we were left in the darkening in between of dusk where shadows grew. We decided to make camp beneath the apple trees since Leo was unwilling to risk sleeping under the unsteady roof of the small farmhouse at the end of the road. I was nervous despite the connection I maintained with the earth. Leo promised to stay awake while I rested. I lay down spouting protests, but soon the constant rush of the river lulled me into a dreamless slumber.

  After a week or more, we grew used to our new spot and I began to itch to explore the crumbling house nearby. One morning, I sat up on watch while Leo slept and the sun rose into the smoggy sky. As the sun climbed, I left my post to explore the house. It had been days since we entered East Farm and we had seen no one. I believed that Leo was safe.

 
The door handle was metallic and cool in my hand and it turned easily after some initial jostling. The scent of musk and age greeted me in a puff of dust when I finally got the door open. The hinges creaked eerily and sunlight streamed into the room through the windows.

  I wandered through the house admiring the colorful, though faded and rotting, furniture. Dust was thick on every surface and I resisted the urge to run my finger through it lest I leave fingerprints and alert someone that I had been there, though my footprints had already disturbed the heavy blanket of dirt on the floor. No one had been here in a long time. Thick paper curled out from the walls in giant rolls, the pattern once bright with flowers before water damaged it and washed away the glue. To have lived with such bright things. Clothes, furniture, and even the walls. I tried to imagine my home with walls papered with flowers or even furniture that wasn’t stripped bare.

  The stairs looked ominous and unstable, so I avoided exploring the second floor. Instead, I went through the kitchen into another room. The door had been left slightly ajar here and I pushed it open slowly. It was a bedroom with a large floral bedspread in all levels of decomposition. The room was thick with the scent of rot and I covered my nose before entering. On the top of a wooden dresser sat a tiny figurine that gazed at me with large black eyes. She wore strange ribbons wrapped around her calves which reminded me of the ribbons I wore over my own feet. The ribbons on the figurine connected to tiny shoes. I reached out to touch the figurine, whose light brown hair was pulled up tightly in a bun. Then my eyes were drawn to a drawer left slightly open. I weighed my options, but was overwhelmed by the temptation of the drawers because a bright strip of fabric had caught my eye.

  After a moment, my immediate desires won out over my instinct and I pulled the drawer open and reached inside. Some of the garments were wet and melted away in my fingers. I withdrew my hand and opened one of the closed drawers and was rewarded with a beautiful floral pattern. It was locked inside a clear box. I lifted the lid with some effort and then my fingers caressed the fabric and I marveled at the dark pinks and greens and the subtle blues. I could have wept at the beauty of it.

  “Hey, what are you doing, Vea?”

  I jumped in surprise as Leo entered the room and then wordlessly held out the fabric for him to see. He walked quickly over and took the garment from me, shock clear on his face. He allowed it to fall from its careful folds and revealed the shape of a dress. “This is amazing. A fully intact piece of clothing? Full of color? This thing is worth thousands.” He handed the dress back to me. “You should put it on.”

  “What?” What use did I have for a dress? I had grown up in pants and shirts woven of thick hemp threads and was accustomed to the colorless fabric. No dyes or colors, for the earth that yielded plants must be reserved for food.

  “I’m serious. Come on. You’ll be the first person in over a century to wear a fully colored outfit, an original. We can make history.”

  My eyes swept hungrily over the strange garment. The fabric was thin, perhaps cotton? We stopped growing cotton decades ago because the plants required too much water. “Do you think it’d fit?”

  “No idea. But you should at least try. Go on,” he waved me out of the room.

  I admired the swirling blooms of color, the deep pinks, hues nearly purple, that would stand out against my olive skin and my dark hair. Finally, I was curious. “Okay.” I went into the hall and closed the door. After sitting down on a footstool, I unwound the frayed and dirty ribbons from my feet and draped them on a nearby table. Beneath the ribbons, my feet were thick with calluses from the many miles we had walked. Lines of dirt covered them in stripes where dust had worked its way between the ribbons. I slid out of my pants and shirt and left them in a pile on the floor. Every inch of my skin felt crusted with dust and I thought longingly of the river where I could wash away No Man’s Land and everything else, too. I wrestled with the tiny buttons and stepped into the dress. The fabric slid like a whisper against my skin and though I was clothed, I felt light. Thin and airy in comparison to the hemp I usually wore, it was like wearing a cloud. I ran my fingers along my thigh, admiring the texture. Unable to reach behind me to redo the buttons, I pinched the back of it between my fingers.

  The dress was a little big, but I like how it swirled around my knees and as I admired myself, I noticed the curves of my waist and my strong arms. “Are you done yet?” Leo called through the door. I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Coming!” Skirt rustling, I all but danced back into the room and turned in a circle. “What do you think? History worthy?”

  Leo laughed and spun me around, doing up the buttons for me in a flourish. I shivered at his breath on my neck. I caught my lip between my teeth, fighting the urge to look over my shoulder. This was not the Leo I knew. I’d never seen him behave this way and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. But his smile was infectious and I allowed him to swing me around once more. “There,” he said, satisfied. “Now you’re ready.”

  Absently, my fingers went to the soft, comforting fabric of the dress. “For what?”

  Leo shrugged but didn’t answer my question. “I wonder who they were.”

  “You mean before the spill?”

  “Yeah.”

  Who were any of them before the spill? Did they love the land like we did? Did they know what destruction they caused as they sprayed for bugs and weeds? As they killed the earth? “Maybe they were like Bram,” I offered.

  Leo scowled. “Maybe.”

  Together, Leo and I picked through more drawers, marveling at the strange textures of fabric and other trinkets forgotten long ago. Leo pocketed an old knife, even though it was rusted, while I studied a photograph. Water-damaged and faded, it memorialized the family who had lived here. A woman, three children and a man. Who knew what happened to them after the spill?

  Later that evening, I lay on my side on a bedroll thinking of my parents and turning the charm they had given me for my birthday over in the firelight as flames licked the approaching darkness. There were no photographs of us. I had no images to carry with me. Their smiles, my mother’s long nose, my father’s thick shoulders, all of it would only ever exist in my mind, until I myself was no more. Leo lay nearby on his own bedroll, cleaning the pocketknife he had found earlier. Was Leo right? Was Bram really to blame for our fate? Or would it have happened anyway? “Why do you hate Bram?” I whispered.

  He folded the knife and returned it to his pocket. “I don’t hate Bram.”

  I let the charm drop and sat up. “Really? You’re so angry when I talk about him.”

  Leo moved closer and sat on a rock, slapping the dust from his pant leg. “I don’t hate Bram. I do think things would’ve been different, though, if he hadn’t done the things he did. Not just for Curare. But, everyone.” He paused and caught my eye. “I know how much you admire him.”

  I bowed my head. “You’re right. I do.”

  “You should know, Vea, that you’re not alone. There are others out there fighting for Curare.”

  “There are?”

  “Of course. That little charm you wear.” He gestured to the necklace I wore. “It’s a phoenix, our symbol.”

  Leo reached for my hand and I let him take it. His hands were rough, sharp with callused skin and covered in cracks and crevices from his years of hard work. My body hummed at his touch, but his words cut through me like a knife. I frowned. What was he saying? Did my parents know about these people? They knew about Leo? I clenched my free hand into a tight fist. “But I got this from my parents. It was a gift.” My voice wavered with betrayal. I grew hard, defensive.

  “I know. Your parents...they knew.” He tread carefully, choosing his words like you would choose where to step on rocky ground. “I know you’ve never trusted me. But they knew why I came from the City. I was looking for you.”

  He tried to catch my eye, but I didn’t want to see his
soul laid bare or to believe in the truth of what he spoke. I yanked my hand from his grasp and he recoiled as if I’d burned him. “You kept this from me,” I whispered. No. They had kept this from me.

  Leo reached for my hand again, but I shrunk away from him. His eyes filled with unspoken sorrows. The divide rose between us once more. “I didn’t want to. They...your parents didn’t want me to tell you. I argued against it. But they forced me to agree so I could stay on your farm. Stay with you.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  “You’ve dealt with so much already. They wanted to protect you as long as possible. And your mother...she’d already lost her sister. I think she didn’t want to lose you, too.” I stood up to leave, unable to bear any more. My parents had lied to me, had kept things from me. Leo had kept things from me. Their gift was not what I thought and the weight of it burned against my skin just like the flames that licked at the bird’s feet. “Vea,” Leo called as I stood to escape. “Please. That bird. That phoenix. It’s important. A phoenix burns after it dies and then is reborn. It’s a symbol of renewal. It’s a sign of life, of overcoming. Of strength. It wasn’t a real bird, of course. They only existed in stories. But that little bird means the world to Curare. And to the Undergrounds.”

  I paused. “And you?”

  He nodded. “Yes, to me, too.” Did I believe him?

  “Where did they get it?” I asked, knowing the answer already but forcing him to say it anyway.

  Leo hesitated. “I brought it with me from the City. It was mine.”

  With a gasp of rage, I turned and fled into the night, my eyes hot with tears. The only reminder of my family was nothing more than a symbol of their betrayal, of their willingness to keep secrets from me, to make deals behind my back. How many more secrets did they keep?