by Sara King
That had made Milar mad. He had wondered why their mother had sent Tormund a couple goats at butcher time, followed by most of their savings in silver nuggets a few weeks later, for no apparent reason. “So he threatened her.”
Patrick frowned. “No, he was just saying how he’s worried other people might—”
“He threatened her,” Milar’s younger self said. He put his pole down, full of rage. If someone had threatened him, he could have let it slide, but for someone to threaten Mom… “Come on, Pat. We’re gonna do something about this.”
“Want me to get Caroline?” Patrick asked, sounding excited.
“No,” Milar said, his younger face darkening, “Just you and me. We’re gonna make it so that Tormund Sellic never threatens anyone, ever again.”
And he never did, Milar’s father said. He was, once again, standing nearby. Together, they watched Young Milar stalk back towards the farmstead, followed by his loyal brother. He didn’t say much of anything after you and your brother broke his jaw and threatened his family.
Milar’s fists were clenched at his sides. “She’d been through enough.”
But it wasn’t Tormund you were angry with when you thrashed him in front of his kids, Milar’s father said. It was the Nephyr.
Milar remembered beating the man near-unconscious, savoring every blow, wishing it could have been the Nephyr that always found them despite whatever his mother did to try and hide. He remembered Patrick helping him hold Tormund down, remembered his fists growing red with his and Tormund’s blood. He remembered Patrick helping him drag Tormund into his front yard after they’d finished, remembered shoving his wife and kids outside, remembered setting Tormund’s house on fire.
Milar had almost killed him that night. He even pulled out a gun, his hands still bloody from delivering the beating, and was putting it to Tormund’s head, enjoying the screams of his wife and kids, when Patrick’s hand on his arm stopped him.
“Miles,” Pat whispered. “Come on.” He glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the village. “We should go.”
Milar’s younger self almost pulled the trigger anyway. Instead, he grabbed Tormund and yanked him from the ground, the man struggling with consciousness in his grip. Even back then, he’d been huge for his age. “Don’t ever talk to my mother again,” Milar said into his pulverized face. “You threaten her again, you steal from us again, your wife and kids die first.” He threw Tormund back down to the ground so hard he groaned. “But not you. You, I’ll break your legs and drop you in the jungle for the cats.”
He believed you, his father commented. They moved off Fortune.
“I know,” Milar whispered. He still felt bad. He had only meant to scare the guy, but as soon as he’d seen them preparing one of their goats for dinner that night—goat that Milar’s family wasn’t eating because Tormund had blackmailed his mother, Milar had lost all control. After he’d finished with Tormund, he’d dragged the goat carcass back home and dropped it on his mother’s kitchen table. She’d woken up the next morning to find him eating goat steaks, hands crackling with dried blood, scowling at nothing as his brother huddled in a corner, watching.
“She sent me away,” Milar said, remembering. “All three of us.”
She had to, his father said. It was safer that way. She knew you and Patrick wouldn’t stand by another year and let him hurt her, and David had promised to protect Caroline if she gave you to him to train…
Milar felt his fists tighten, remembering that. David had wanted him so badly he’d arranged a trade. Like Milar was a horse. A commodity.
“I hear your twin brother follows you everywhere.” It was David Landborn. Milar’s younger self sat hunched on the man’s chair, glaring at his kitchen table, pissed off that his mother had sent him and Patrick and Caroline to Deaddrunk for what he and Patty had done to Tormund.
After a couple minutes of watching him, David Landborn said, “Hear you’re a Yolk Baby, too. Ain’t seen much evidence of that, though.”
“Fuck you, old man,” Milar’s younger self said. He proceeded to pointedly yank his big hunting knife from its sheath and begin to carve on the man’s table.
Back then, Milar had expected a reaction of some sort, an outburst or, even better, an attempt to take the knife from him. Instead, David simply watched him carve his initials into the table.
When Landborn said nothing at all, Milar’s younger self scoffed at the man’s attempt to psyche him out and proceeded to carve a cock and balls in big, bold lines as his host watched.
“You wanna kill Nephyrs, boy?” David finally said.
Slowly, carefully, Milar’s younger self looked up from detailing the nutsack with a frown. “Nephyrs can’t be killed,” he’d said. “Everyone knows that.”
David just snorted—a sound of total disdain—and it had been that single snort that changed Milar’s life.
The hunter discovers his prey, Milar’s father said. Good. We’re getting closer.
Milar tore his eyes away from his younger self. “Closer to what?”
His father looked sad. Closer to home.
“He’s coming next week,” Milar’s younger self said. “Mom hasn’t moved. He knows where she is. He’ll be there.”
Patrick, as usual, was behind him a hundred percent. “Okay, what do we do?”
“We’re gonna kill him,” Milar’s younger self said. “Slowly.”
“How?” Patrick demanded, obviously excited by the idea.
“Pit trap,” Milar’s younger self said.
Patrick’s face immediately went slack and he blinked. “Huh?”
Realizing his brother’s faith was wavering at the idea of taking on a Nephyr with a Neolithic arsenal, Milar’s younger self insisted, “Look, guys like that, they’re looking for high-tech stuff. They look for lazmores and phos-grenades and EMP. They’re gonna be looking for batteries, electricity, heat signatures. They’re not going to be looking for a pit, ’cause how can someone kill a Nephyr with a pit?”
Patrick squinted at him.
“With fire,” Milar’s younger self said. “Water and fire.”
“I dunno, Miles…” Patrick began.
“I’ve planned it!” Milar’s younger self snapped. “It’ll work.”
Which reinstated Patrick’s faith immediately. “Okay, but Mom’s not gonna let us,” Patrick said, wincing. “She told us to stay in Deaddrunk.”
“Mom,” Milar’s younger self said, “is going to be asleep.”
She always was such a deep sleeper, Joe said softly.
Milar nodded, tears in his eyes. He watched as Patrick and his younger self spent the night before the Nephyr’s arrival with a stolen hoverhoe digging a pit in the front yard five feet wide and ten feet deep, right in front of the porch. Every ounce of dirt that came out of the hole got put in the barn. To keep the cow from wandering into their trap and setting it off early, Milar took her a mile out into the forest and left her there, tied to a tree. The whole time, he and his brother kept glancing at their mother’s bedroom window to make sure the sound of hydraulics and moving earth didn’t wake her up. Somehow, despite Patrick twice bumping the house itself with an extra-wide swing of the hoe, she had remained in bed.
Milar swallowed, looking away, knowing what came next.
Milar’s father placed a hand on his shoulder. I should have been there, Joe told him. For all of you.
Milar just gave a shake of his head. He watched his younger self and his brother fill the pit halfway with water, then carefully weave small, brittle twigs over the entrance and stretch a sheet over them, spending hours on every detail. That, they covered in a thick layer of dirt and bedding straw, watered it down with the hose, then they took chickens and made them walk on it until it looked like the rest of the mucky, packed-down yard. Then, to keep the hens from scratching at it, they locked them in the hutch. Before dawn, Patrick hid the hoe in the forest with the cow, then both Milar and his brother buried themselves in the dirt in the barn to keep the
ir heat signatures from being detected by the onboard sensors David Landborn had taught them about. They pinned a note to the inside of their mother’s front door, telling her David and the other rebels were outside to ambush the Nephyr and to stay inside for her own safety, then left the tractor running with a sleigh-load of straw bales in the yard right beside the pit, blocking most of the path to the house, leaving only the pit as the clearest point of access.
The Nephyr arrived right on time and, as they watched from their hiding places through a crack in the door, he stooped and plucked a handful of daisies from Mom’s neglected flower bed, grinning to himself. Then, almost languidly, went for the house. Milar and Patrick heard him fall a moment later. They threw themselves from the dirt pile, and Milar had been the first one on the tractor. He slammed it into gear and drove it over the hole, sealing it with the heavy sledge.
Panting, Patrick was already grabbing the five-gallon buckets of emergency gasoline they had stacked beside the house.
Splashing emanated from the small hole under one side of the sledge, just wide enough for a single hand. “You little shits think this is funny?!” the Nephyr roared from within. “What do you think is gonna happen now?! You think you’re gonna live through this?!” More splashing.
A younger Milar and Patrick started emptying their buckets of gasoline into the hole with the Nephyr. Eight buckets. Forty gallons. The farmstead’s entire year’s supply.
The Nephyr stopped ranting and kicking at the walls. “What is that? Oh, fuck, what is that?”
Most coalers, Milar had known, were so removed from the actual basics of life that they had no idea what common, everyday fuels were. He’d counted on it.
Still, Bradon Garren must have realized the danger he was in, because he started to dig at the clay. Inhumanly strong, heavy thuds came from down below as he started to cave in the hole they’d spent all night carving.
“Keep pouring!” Milar’s younger self cried, as the first crumbles of dirt started to fall inward. He grabbed the wad of cloth they had soaked in kerosene for this very moment and lit it, then threw it into the hole.
The blast as the gasoline caught fire threw the sledge upward, and knocked Milar and Patrick aside. When the sledge came down again, it only partially blocked the hole. Worse, bales of straw had wedged themselves into the trap, some falling into the hole itself, giving the Nephyr a way out.
Milar, dazed, nonetheless recognized the danger of giving the Nephyr a means to climb the walls.
“Patrick!” Milar cried, crawling forward on his belly to look into the hole. There were burning dribbles of gasoline everywhere, and most of the straw bales had caught fire.
Through the superheated black smoke pouring from the pit, Milar saw the Nephyr inside, blindly groping at the walls, the water on fire all around him, obviously injured, but still alive.
“Patrick!” he cried. “He’s still alive! I need help!” He looked behind him. Patrick was unconscious on the ground, a small patch of his clothes still smoldering. Milar remembered his first instinct, upon seeing his brother burning, had been to go help his brother and pat out the fire. Instead, he’d turned to the last bucket of gasoline, pried the lid off, and shoved it into the pit with his foot.
The fuel caught fire and spread out on the water’s surface, as they’d planned for it to do, leaving the Nephyr trapped, breathing a pillar of flame and smoke into his lungs. Eventually, the Nephyr stumbled, then fell against the wall and slumped to a seated position, not under the water like they had planned.
The damage only shuts them down, Joe commented, watching. The nannites let them repair themselves over time.
Flames atop the roof caught Milar’s attention. A straw bale had landed near the front porch and the moga-leaf thatch was starting to catch fire.
“Patrick, he didn’t go under!” Milar’s younger self screamed. He’d hurt his wrist and a knee in his fall, but he was barely feeling it through the adrenaline. “He’s still sitting up and the roof’s catching fire!”
Patrick was still out cold.
Milar watched his younger self look up at the thatch, debating, then grab the hose and, hobbling, dragging one leg, pull it over to the pit. Heart pounding with urgency, he staggered to the generator shed and powered it on, giving electricity to the pump. Immediately, the hose began to spit water into the fiery tunnel.
It wasn’t fast enough. The water was rising, but slowly. The gasoline fire started to burn down, then out, leaving only billowing black smoke behind.
Desperate, now, Milar unhitched the tractor and used it to grab the rain barrels and the watering troughs, dumping those into the pit with the Nephyr, containers and all.
It was the trough that finally did it. The heavy galvanized steel hit the Nephyr in the head on its way down, and though it rang like it had hit a glass statue, it nonetheless nudged the Nephyr sideways, into the putrid, smoking soup that was the water of the pit. Milar immediately began filling the tractor’s loader with dirt from the barn and began dumping it into the hole with the Nephyr, covering his body with sludge that quickly soaked up the water. He added more on top of that, then more, then more, burying the Nephyr, the rain barrels, the buckets, and the trough. When he was finished, he parked the tractor with one wheel and the loader crushing the top of the mound and left it there.
He was sitting on the front porch, the hose still in his hand from watering down the roof, watching the wheel of the tractor and shaking all over when Patrick woke up, groaning.
“We get him?” his brother managed, walking over, hand clasped over one of the burns in his side.
Milar’s younger self swallowed hard, but nodded.
“Yeah!” Patrick screamed, pumping a fist. “How’s Mom?” He glanced at the house.
Milar had been so terrified of the Nephyr crawling up out of the hole to kill them all that he hadn’t thought of his mother at all throughout the entire ordeal. His younger self blinked and glanced over his shoulder. Why hadn’t his mother come to congratulate him?
“Come on!” Patrick cried, grinning. “We got him! We gotta tell her!”
But Milar’s younger self was frowning, looking at the house. “Pat, we made enough noise out here they probably heard us in the Orbital. Where’s Mom?”
Patrick’s excitement faded slightly. “Still sleeping?” They both glanced at the sun, which was now nearing midday.
Milar’s younger self dropped the hose and got to his feet. Without another word, he headed for the house, Patrick following close on his heels.
Milar didn’t follow them, already knowing what they would find.
Patrick’s shriek of loss came first, followed by his agonized sobs. Milar remembered his own response to entering the bedroom that morning—he hadn’t said anything, just stared at his mother’s body where it lay in her bed, her gun in her mouth.
She hadn’t tried to stop them the night before because she had been dead.
“Mom sent the three of us to David’s so she could kill herself,” Milar managed, swallowing hard. “We were a day late to save her.” His fist tightened and he felt tears burning his eyes. “A day.”
Inside, he and his brother were folding their mother’s arms over her abdomen and tucking her into bed.
Milar’s father, who had been standing there beside him, watching the scene with a face streaked with sorrow, just nodded.
“Whatcha got there, son?” It was a man in dirty homespun, though his skin was clean. “Is that a chess board?”
Immediately upon seeing the man’s clean-shaven, dangerously shrewd face, Milar stiffened. “Don’t play with him,” he told the kid on the bench.
Milar’s younger self continued as if he hadn’t heard him. Giving the man a bored, sigh, he said, “Yeah, I’m waiting on a friend to get here.” He checked his communicator again for the time. “He’s late.”
“Really? I enjoy the game now and then. Maybe you could play with me while you wait?”
“No, goddamn it!” Milar snapped,
getting closer to the two of them. “Don’t play with him!”
Milar’s younger self gave the older man a curious look. David had told him to keep his head down, not to talk to anyone he didn’t already know, but Milar clearly remembered being tired of doing what David told him to do. Finishing his casual perusal, he asked the stranger, “How much time you got?”
The older man grinned amicably. “All the time in the world.”
“Yeah, well.” Milar’s younger self shrugged. “I’m just here waiting for my friend. We play twice a week.”
“There’s a table over here,” the too-clean man said. “You wanna pass the time with a game or two?”
“No!” Milar shouted, but his younger self just shrugged again. “Sure. But just until he gets here.” His younger self set the well-used chessboard down on the table and unfolded it. He set up the pieces, then, once the man had moved four pieces, he moved his queen and said, “Checkmate in seven.”
“No!” Milar screamed.
“In seven?” the man asked, almost patronizingly. “That’s quite a ways out.”
Pride had taken hold of him, then. So many adults dismissed him, or, like with David, only saw him as an automaton they could tell what to do. To get some recognition, finally, was too much for him to pass up. “It’s pretty obvious,” Milar’s younger self said, of course knowing that the guy didn’t see it.
“Maybe you could show it to me?” the man offered.
“No, goddamn it, no!” Milar screamed. He tried to shove the board away, to interrupt himself before he could make the biggest mistake of his life, but his younger self continued to play as if he couldn’t even hear him. He showed the man in dirty homespun his checkmate, then they reset the board and he proceeded to trap him again, this time calling a checkmate in ten moves.
“You’re really good at this,” the man offered.
“I practice a lot,” Milar said. “My friend’s actually better than me. My…dad…thought playing him would teach me strategy.”