by Daniel David
“It’s beautiful,” Zoe whispered, not wanting to disturb the perfect stillness that rested there.
“Swim?”
Max didn’t wait for an answer before he dropped his pack and stripped off his vest and trousers, kicking off his boots in a knot of trouser fabric. He strode a few paces into the water, sending ripples out across the pool and making little waves that broke on Zoe’s feet, before diving head first into the water and coming up gasping a few seconds later in the very middle.
“Come on!” he called out to them.
“You go,” said Jennifer, “I’m going to scout around to see what’s about. I might join you in a while.”
She unclipped her bow and quiver from her pack and slung them both loosely on her shoulder.
“I’ll see if I can spot any deer before Max’s yelling frightens them off!”
She winked at Zoe and ducked back into the trees. It was kind of her to mention the deer, but Zoe knew that wasn’t all she was scouting for. She’d forgotten all about her encounter with the Hunters when she arrived, and she glanced around the treeline for a moment, her eyes delving into the shadows, before putting the memory out of her mind, stripping off her utility suit and diving into the breathtaking water to join Max.
They played together in the pool until they both began to shiver and Zoe’s lips turned a damson blue. They dived to the bottom to look for fish and finds in the weeds and dead branches on the riverbed. They floated on their backs under the overhanging branches by the two tributaries that gurgled in upstream, where water boatmen darted out of their way and butterflies and wasps passed by overhead. In the middle of the pool, Zoe made hopeless attempts to dive from Max’s shoulders, and they both laughed uncontrollably as he yelped in mock pain and they both inevitably collapsed spluttering into the water.
As they began to talk of getting out, Max called Zoe over to the far edge of the pool, where the water poured out in a silken curve into the river that carried it away downhill, back into the forest. He pulled himself up onto a rock the sat warming in the sunshine and reached out a hand to lift her up beside him.
“Here,” he said, making a circle with his hand above the water, “is the best place to catch perch. Watch.”
He slid back into the water and propped himself between the rock and the narrow channel of water.
“Just lay your hand flat on the lip here and wait. They come by all the time and you’ll see them clear as day.”
They both sat in silence for a few seconds, staring intently at Max’s submerged palm. For a moment the stillness returned to the pool and the sounds of treetop birds and buzzing flies amplified and then – just as promised – Zoe spotted the faint outline of a small fish pass over his hand. He raised his arm swiftly but steadily, and when it came clear of the water the little fish, just bigger than his hand, was trapped firmly in his fist.
He turned to her with a big grin on his face.
“Easy,” his sense of triumph showing plainly in his eyes, “I need to get my bag. You try,” he called, as he bounced off through the shallows towards their discarded clothes and kit, clutching his prize.
Zoe jumped back into the water, the cold biting once more at her groin and tummy and making her gasp a little. She lay back against the rock as Max had done, and uncurled her fingers above the smooth rock at the border of the pool, to lie in wait for the next fish. She only had to wait a few seconds before one came along, but she snatched at it with such panic that it darted away and back into the cover of deeper water. She made the same mistake with the next, and the next, but managed to get the fourth fish a few inches out of the water before its wriggling made her relax her grip and it fell away again. Max was by her side now, watching her silently after placing a small canvas bag on top of the sun rock. She relaxed her shoulders and let out a slow breath as she waited for the next fish. This time she waited until it was almost clear past her hand before bringing her fingers around it and raising her arm in one gentle, determined movement. Clear of the water, she gripped it tightly and turned to Max.
“I got it!” she yelled at him, beaming with excitement and dropping it into the sack he had grabbed hurriedly.
“Well done!” he said, inspecting the fish in the sack. “It's a good one. I'm impressed, I didn't actually think you'd get one. It took me weeks to get the knack.”
They carried on fishing together, Max on one side of the funnel and Zoe by the rock, their legs motionless in the water and eyes fixed unblinking on the shadows under the surface, until they'd caught six more. Jennifer was back at the bank by the time Zoe landed the sixth and called over to them.
“Very impressive newbie! It took Max weeks!”
He glanced towards Zoe with a look of unbothered agreement.
“You need to get your traps set Max if you want to catch anything at dusk,” Jennifer called again after a slight pause.
“OK!” he called back, before bouncing around Zoe to grab the canvas sack from the rock. He waded back to the shore holding the sack at shoulder height, whilst Zoe swam slowly behind him, rolling once or twice to let the cold water fan out her hair.
On the bank, they dried off and got dressed again, whilst Jennifer sorted through her bag of berries and branches, tossing out the occasional twig and bug.
“Right,” said Max, picking up the bag of fish and handing it to Zoe. “Whilst I’m setting the traps, you can gut these.”
“Err… I have no idea how to do that.” Zoe peered into the sack, which smelt earthy and damp, studying the glistening mass of scales at the bottom.
“No problem,” Max reached roughly into the sack and swiftly pulled out one fish, “prepare to learn.”
Zoe laughed a little. Max looked like some kind of fucked up magician, or perhaps a tragic schoolteacher freaking out the kids. He took the hunting knife from his pocket, before sloshing the fish in the shallow water for a couple of seconds.
“Blade into the arse,” he turned the fish belly up and stuck the point of the knife through its skin, just before the tail. “Then cut gently up to the gills. Fingers in, and scoop.”
With that he tipped out a small cluster of red and brown entrails and organs that plopped into the water below.
“Then rinse.”
He sloshed the fish in the water again for a few seconds, fingering its now hollow body as he did.
“Easy. Do you have a knife?”
Zoe took the small folded blade from her pocket and opened it out for him to see.
“That’ll do. All good?”
“Yes, all good.”
“Great.” Max ruffled her hair again and gave her a wink, before grabbing his pack and disappearing into the forest. He left so quickly her smile and thank you ended up being delivered to an empty space. As she went to straighten her fringe, she remembered where his fingers had been, so instead dropped her head between her legs and shook it out, before tossing her head back to throw her hair over her shoulders. She pulled one piece towards her nose and smelt it. It smelt of the river.
Jennifer, who was sat at the treeline sorting her haul, laughed at her
“I’m sure it’s great for your hair,” she laughed again as Zoe laughed with her. “I’m going to make one more trip. There’s a tree a little further down that is full of nuts. You OK here?”
“Yeah, no problem. I’ll get going with these.”
Zoe put the bag down and took out the first fish.
“Great. See you in a bit.”
And with that Jennifer was gone, and Zoe was on her own in the forest again. It felt different now, though. Last time she was stood alone like this she was full of uncertainty. Now she felt like she knew exactly where she was. Where she belonged. She had only to call out and her two companions would be there for her. She looked down at the tiny fish in her hand and turned it over with her fingers. It was a beautiful thing. Every bit of it sparkled like a jewel. Even it’s lifeless eyes gleamed with a brilliant shimmer and as she turned it, a whole spectrum of colours from e
merald to lilac, electric to grey, rippled and pulsed over its skin. She stopped turning and carefully pierced the point of her knife into its soft belly, before sawing carefully up to the fleshy dimple under its jaw. She felt the tiny bones grate against the smooth blade as it travelled. When she had tipped out the guts, she washed it as Max had shown her and inspected its insides. Thin white bones tracked in elegant arcs through the deep maroons and blacks of its flesh. She admired the neatness of her surgery before placing the fish carefully back in the sack and choosing the next.
When Max and Jennifer returned, they spent the rest of the afternoon talking, swimming and sorting through the results of Jennifer’s foraging. They swapped stories from their pasts, Max with tales of Drone raids and his escape, Jennifer of her run-ins with Hunters and Zoe talked about Sarah and her Dad.
When the sun had faded, Max went to check his traps in the half-light and returned with five rabbits, two of which he skinned and gutted to show Zoe, before Jennifer stuffed their body cavities with nettles and herbs. They lit a small fire on the edge of the pool, and once the embers were wide enough, Max placed a flat rock on top. They stretched out the rabbits and all of the fish onto this, and every once in a while Jennifer would turn them, tipping a little of the juice from the rabbits over the fish.
When they were cooked, Max pushed the rock from the fire with a heavy branch and cut up the meat with his knife. They ate straight from the stone as the fire grew tall again with fresh wood. Max was right, it was the most delicious food Zoe had ever eaten and she washed it down with a little spirit that Jennifer had magicked up from somewhere in her kit bag.
After they had eaten, Max rolled the rock into the pool and strung up a thin tarpaulin between the low branches on the tree line. They stamped down the ground, removing any rocks and built up a layer of ferns, before tossing a couple of blankets down as bedding and a hide each for covers. They lay down together – Max, then Jennifer, then Zoe, each backing into each other for warmth, adjusting the covers over each of them. Jennifer’s bow and quiver were placed just above her head, Max’s hunting knife was tucked in his belt and Zoe clutched her folded blade in her hand like a child’s comforter. They were all asleep before long, and slept deeply in the quiet and still by the pool.
In the morning they woke early, roused by the noise of the forest at dawn and the cold mist that drifted in silver threads before first light. They packed their gear in virtual silence, folding blankets and stringing rabbits together, submerged in the renewed tranquillity of the pool. Once Max had cleared his night traps they set off home and were back at the clearing long before the sun had brought the colour back to the forest.
Jennifer
After they had dropped their haul and emptied their packs, Zoe disappeared to take her shower and Max went to grab an hour’s sleep. Jennifer could never sleep again once she was awake, so she went to get some tea and stopped by at her bunk to change her clothes, which were muddy and thorned from yesterday's foraging.
As she shuffled out of the cave with a thermal blanket tossed around her shoulders, she was surprised to see Matthew already up. He was the only other figure moving about in the oyster shell dawn light, pacing about agitatedly along the treeline at the edge of the clearing. She had seen him like this before, often when food stocks were running low or another Lifer had been taken by the hunters. She knew better than to interrupt him. He was always friendly and courteous, but not when he needed to work things out. He wouldn't shout, but would freeze you out with the shortest of sentences and a dead calm face, making the moment as uncomfortable as possible until you backed away voluntarily.
Jennifer busied herself tidying up cups and discarded clothes from the night before. She straightened the tables and rolled away the stray logs that had clustered in small circles, the place markers of conversations and relationships that had bloomed and dispersed during the course of the long night.
They still had yesterday's haul to finish processing and packing, so she would need to get all of these cleared and straightened before they brought the containers back out. It was always amazing how much random stuff disappeared, inadvertently stored away for months at a time if it just happened to be too close to a pile of waiting winter supplies in the busy few weeks when summer drifted away into the autumn mists.
As she tidied, she glanced regularly in the direction of Matthew's lonely, back and forth thinking. She couldn't help it, her physical body reached out towards him before her will had any chance to block it. It caught her by surprise every time and on each occasion she would admonish herself for her stupid gazing. Folding blankets, piling cups near the kitchen store, kicking ashes back into the epicentre of last night’s fire, she would glance over after every task, making a metronome of moments that counted up the growing buffer of time between the potential life they had together and the lonely reality of her inaction.
She hadn't felt like this when they had first met. She had arrived with her boyfriend Richard and had treated Matthew the same as every other member of the group. She admired him, she recognised his achievements and was perhaps even a little in awe of him, but that was as far as it went. Slowly though, after she and Richard separated and Matthew began to include her more and more in the affairs of the group, something had changed. Perhaps it was because he trusted her, the first person in power to ever give her that, perhaps it was because she had been invited to delve the tiniest fraction deeper into his confidence than the rest of the group, perhaps it was simply that here, deep in these woods, she had changed in every way and had shared that journey with him. It didn't really matter, she knew she loved him deeply and spent every moment either bathing contentedly in his company or agonising in the too shallow moments he offered back.
In the five years that she had been with the group, Jennifer had given over every bit of herself to its demands. She had given up her relationships, her time, her independence, every bit of herself she had willingly subjugated for the good of the group. She had even killed for the group, just like yesterday. When the hunters came to take them, to take him, she never hesitated with her bow and her blade. The Lifers had made her a willing killer and her first victim was the girl she used to be.
Not that she missed her old self for one second. The Jennifer she knew before she had made her run to the Lifers was a lonely, tragic girl. Hopelessly underwhelmed with the choices she was offered, dreading the purgatory of migration and exhausted by her own lack of authenticity. She endured ordinary and undemanding apprenticeships, smiled absently through mundane friendships and wandered despairingly around the plastic streets of the Metropolis, all the while daydreaming along the pathways and escape routes of her own internal fantasies. That the girl would die by her own actions was inevitable, turning to the Lifers just gave her a more social and heroic way to do it.
Richard was the only glimmer of hope she had found in all of her twenty years before coming to the forests. They were about as different as they could be, he was a top-tier coder for AarBee, groomed to step into the role of some of the great code shapers, evangelical when talking about the future of the system and ready, so ready, to take his place in the digital world. But somehow, after they had met on a few socials in the apartment block where they both lived, after they had arranged to meet on the Boulevards to share street food and cruise around the tech stores, after they had had sex in the vast emptiness of the savannahs one summer night, he had fallen in love with her. After that, her emptiness had sucked him slowly away from AarBee, warping his trajectory with a prism of young and breathless emotion, until they eventually disappeared together, no doubt to the confusion and horror of all his friends and family.
He hadn't stayed with her for long. She had known it wouldn't last, even though she'd enjoyed the momentary illusion that it might do. When the day to day reality of life outside of AarBee became clear, when the early showings of her newborn self began to emerge, when the first winter had bitten down unforgivingly on their new existence, he had left. Jenni
fer had woken up one morning and Richard was gone, slipping quietly away as she slept, vanishing into the forest from which they'd emerged. She had cried, perhaps more for the pathetic inevitability of his leaving than for any real sense of loss. When her crying was done the old Jennifer was too weak and exhausted to resist and the new She emerged complete, without a struggle.
When the rest of the group rose from their beds, Jennifer was ready for them with task lists and orders of work ready to go. Zoe bounded over to her, full of enthusiasm for her second day and her first opportunity to show her worth. Jennifer liked her, she could see all the same scars in Zoe that she had carried, but somehow Zoe managed to bear them without the weight that had crippled, and still shadowed her. She envied her lightness of being, her contagious enthusiasm and the rich, warm humanity that seemed to puff effortlessly from her in pollinating clouds. She watched her as she worked, laughing with the others and found herself smiling whenever Zoe smiled, little darts of energy that pierced her without effort and burst in tiny explosions in her spirit.
They worked all through the morning, splitting, cleaning, freeze-drying, vacu-packing and synthesising where they could. Nuts and hard fruits synthesised really well, whereas berries and meat were always a disaster. They didn't have the environment free labs you needed for that level of farming, not out here in the wilds.
Later on in the afternoon, as the evening chill just started to tap on their cheeks and fingers, a lone figure appeared at the very edge of the clearing. Zoe had spotted him first, lurking in the cover of the low branches and rocks that furred the divide between bright open space and dark forest. As more and more of the group looked towards him he moved slowly from the shadows with his arms raised at right angles to his body, perhaps fearing he would be shot if he didn't show himself unarmed. He was wearing a migration farm utility suit and Jennifer's first thought was that they were about to be attacked. Nobody ever turned up in uniform, that was always the first thing to get ditched.