"Will, Will, Will,” he says. “What am I gonna do?"
A little ways farther on, past the Long White Wall, the trail bends and ahead on the left is a jumble of the red, rectangular rocks that gramper had called brick. It is overgrown and a sugar maple has taken possession of the site, undermining everything with her roots. Nob steps closer and peers into the rubble, but Jace, when he finally catches up, stops at the edge, where the brush tears up the asphalt.
It is as he had feared. The shelfs are gone. And the cash register.
"What you looking for?” asks Jace with a quaver in his voice.
"Nothing.” Nob remembers how gramper and he used to play store, a long time ago. But it was all coming apart even then, the old man had said. Dad told me the shelfs were fuller once.
The past is always more golden, Nob thinks. We remember our youth, not the world.
Nob clambers up on the unsteady pile and grips hold of a steel post that had once held the wall in place. From here, the ruins in the Great Valley can be seen, peeking through the forest.
Directly below, two broad pathways run in parallel from horizon to horizon, each wide enough for a dozen people to walk abreast. Grass and brush shroud them and the forest crowds close enough that, in places, roots have broken and lifted the stone beneath the sod. The High Way, gramper had called it. And, indeed, parts of it ran on bridges high above gullies and rivers.
Beyond, the skeletons of buildings lurk among maples and beeches and pines: huts of brick and stone and wood, some of them two or three levels high, sagging roofs of shingle or slate. All broken up now; all tumbling down, seized by vines and uprooted by trees, rusted by rain, flexed by wind. In the middle distance stands a great stone building, and beyond it, the edge of the cliffs that drop down to the Eastbound River. Lesser pathways cut the woodland into unnatural rectangles and triangles enclosing weedfields where the white of Queen Anne's Lace quivers amidst the timothy and the wild lawn-grasses. To the northeast, a thin pall of smoke rises above the cliffs where the Eastbound tumbles into the Southbound River.
He hears a clack and, turning, sees that Jace has found a thighbone protruding from the dirt and, having pulled it free, is using it to bat stones about. “Goal!” the boy cries.
Nob climbs down gingerly from the rubble. “Jace, put that down,” he says when he reaches him. “We best be getting back while the rain holds off."
Jace yields the bone with ill grace. The boys of Moren's Run will be playing stick-and-ball against the fisher boys of Glennen come midspring day, and every bit of practice helps.
Gramper used to pry skulls from the soil and pretend that he had known them in the Old Days. Alas, poor York, he would say. I knew him. And then the old man would laugh. Nob thought now that his grandfather had been more than a little touched in the head.
It's remembering will do it, Nobby. If you don't remember, you'll never miss it.
Jace has climbed atop a rusted and broken gaspum. “Is that the Old Day village?” he gasps. “It's so huge! It goes on forever!"
"At least two days’ brisk walking, gramper told me, from east to west."
"That's inner proprit. No wonder their huts all fell down and Mama Earth ate their bones."
"Likely so. But gramper said . . .” Nob snaps his mouth shut. It would not do to repeat such stories to a chatterbox like Jace. His grandfather had been stoned for telling them. And, later, his mother. Sometimes he imagines what it must have felt like when the rocks struck.
"What did your gramper say, Uncle?"
Nob crouches and shakes Jace by the shoulders. “Listen to me, boy. They were all lies. Gramper was a crazy old coot. What he said about the Fall of the Cities, it weren't true. He was just a boy your age when it happened. How would he have known?"
"Maybe his mama told him? Then he told your mama, and your mama told . . ."
"Stop right there. Yes, mama told me, but I don't believe ‘em, and neither should you. Flying through the air? Talking through the air? Boxes that think? An’ no one dying of the red measles or the hacking cough? Fables outta books! I think half his stories, they never happened to him. He read them outta books until he thought they did, and how can you trust what's written in a book? How you know a story's true if'n you can't look a man in the eye when he tells it?"
Jace frowns with almost comical concern. “Your mama had books."
The old man nods absently. “Yes. That's why they stoned her. They belonged to gramper's parents and they brought ‘em along when they came out to the countryside. The village burned them, of course, in the fighting right after the Fall; but gramper—or maybe his mama—hid some. And later . . . And later . . . They caught my mama with ‘em."
The rain begins again. No thunder this time, only a steady shower. Nob releases Jace, stands and looks around the little clearing, back toward Moren's Run, eastward toward Seederville. No one is abroad in such weather. Only little Jace and himself—and Will and his two friends. That fool boy! What is he to do about him? That Jace will keep silent is beyond credit. It will be the stoning ground for all three.
No, maybe not for Kenn and Shairn, he thinks. Not for a first offense, and not if they turn witness against Will. But Will has been chastised with the rods twice already, and this offense will violate the ancient tradition of Three Strikes.
"Let's get outta the rain,” he says, and leads Jace to the shelter formed by two corners and fragment of roof of the old brick building. They huddle there while the water pours around them, while it drums the roof and drips through the cracks and splits.
There is less of the building now than there had been when gramper had showed it to him . . . When? The year the wolves came? The year the river froze? How many summers have passed since he was Jace's age? No one remains alive now that he knew back then. Nob studies the great stone building off to the north and, through the curtain of rain, realizes that one of its two towers has fallen since he last saw it. A building so solid looking should last forever. Perhaps it is only a trick of the rain.
Nob sighs. How much of this will remain should Jace live to be an old man? Will he remember what it was like today? He glances at the boy, who gives him a grin of shared secrets, but shows no interest in the ruins on the valley floor below them. Something gramper once said comes back to him. It ain't when we forget how we done something, Nobby, the old man had said, wagging a blunt forefinger in his face, it's when we forget we ever done it.
Nob hurls the thighbone from him and it spins away into the brush. Not for many years has he come back to this place; and he has never dared to venture into the Big Village down in the broad river valley. The spirits of the elder folk haunted the ruins.
I ain't a-feared of no old huts, he remembers Will saying many years later—when the roles had shifted and Nob had played gramper to Will's Little Nobby. When he had told Will the stories his mama had entrusted to him.
"I made a terrible mistake,” he whispers.
"What's that?” asks Jace. “What mistake?"
Nob shakes his head. When he closes his eyes, he sees his mama tied to the stake in the stoning yard; hears the thud of the rocks as they strike her; hears his mama's curses turn to screams, then to sobs, then to silence. She has come to him since then in the night, in his dreams. Keep the faith, Nobby, her spook whispers. Never forget.
But he does forget. He drinks so that he can. He wishes he had his jug with him now. It would warm him nicely and take the chill off his bones.
Gramper maintained a grim defiance, crying out only once to say, “I seen it myself. Which of you can say that?” Now, when Nob spies his reflection in the pool where Moren's Run settles before her final rush to the river, it is gramper he sees staring back. And the villagers keep an eye on him, lest he fall into his mama's ways. There has not been a stoning in many years, but the stake is still in place.
And so he has kept the faith, but what has it gained him but that Will now faces stoning in his turn? It was a mistake ever to pass the stories on, whatev
er his mama's spook might say, whatever gramper might think. But Will had been so eager. . . . And few enough were the children of Moren's Run who showed eagerness for anything at all.
"The storm's a-breaking up, Uncle . . .” Little Jace has stepped out from their little shelter and is searching the western skies. Patches of blue have appeared among the wrack of clouds. Golden rays streak through them, caressing the hills and the ruins and—for just a moment—it seems to Nob that the ruins live, that the walls and houses are whole and the roofs unbroken. But it is only an illusion of sun and shadow.
He pushes himself to his feet. “Come on, Jace. Time to be a-getting back."
"What will happen to Will?” Jace asks. “Will they cane him again?"
Nob closes his eyes. “No, Jace. Not this time. Not the third time."
Jace says very quietly, “We gotta tell, don't we?"
Nob sees that the boy has begun to realize how serious things are. Impulsively, he throws his arm around the boy's shoulders and hugs him to himself. “That's the Law,” he says. “'He who knows of heresy but speaks not up is as guilty as the heretic.’ But it don't bind children your age."
Little Jace could no more keep quiet than a magpie. The village would hear. And they would know if Nob had kept quiet. As guilty as the heretic. As bad as his mother, they would say. And the old man before that. Bad blood in the whole family. And it would be “a time to gather stones together."
He studies the old time village—the city—conscious now that he is seeing it for the last time. He will never dare come here again.
Was it really that they ran out of cargo, the way the village often ran out of stored food during Great Hunger Month in the early spring? Or was it like gramper said: that they wouldn't let themselves go out and look for cargo, that they wouldn't let themselves dig or drill or build those big workshops anymore? And after a while no one could keep things running or even knew how to do it. That's what Mom always said . . . gramper would tell him.
No one would ever know if the stories had been true. What did it matter anymore?
"They're all gone now?” Jace asks. “The books?"
Nob says nothing for a while. He studies the faint pall of smoke rising above the edge of the cliffs. Someone has built a fire, he decides, down on the flats where the rivers join. In the still air, he hears distant whinnies and a faint irregular hammering. “Yes,” he says. “The books are gone.” Then, more brusquely, he shakes out his clothing as if to air it, and says, “On your way, Jace. Mind the mud. See if you can find any foxglove on the way back."
Nob walks slowly and Jace, with a little boy's energy, races ahead. The old man does not quicken his pace, nor does he call on the boy to wait. Instead, he walks alone; or as nearly alone as a man can who is haunted by spooks.
* * * *
Ma Teffny comes to him as the gloaming changes the greens to black and the forest seems to hunch closer around Moren's Run. It is the hour when children shriek to bedtime stories. And the hour when Nob seeks the solace of his jug and the potato liquor. It is called ‘moonshine’ for this very reason.
He has put himself outside of half the jug when she pushes aside the curtain to his hut and steps inside. There is a wooden bucket that Nob uses to bring water from the creek, and Ma Teffny upends it and sits herself upon it. Her face is haggard and Nob can see lines in it that he does not remember from earlier visits.
"Berto and Charz found the dell,” she says. “You was right. Will and them set up a store. No doubt about it. Oh, Earth! What am I going to tell their mothers?"
Nob takes a drink from the jug. He thinks he hears his mother's voice and does not turn round lest he see her. “That's where we men are lucky,” he says. “We never know which kids are ours."
Teffny studies him a moment. “Sometimes, you can guess. Hand me the jug, Nob."
Nob hesitates, then extends it to her. The priestess puts it to her lips and her throat works. “Oh, that's sweet!” she says, lowering it. “That's a knife in the brain."
"I drink to forget,” Nob tells her.
She considers that. “Yes. You got more to forget than most. Nob, you can't think I want to stone Will. My own sister's son? But how can I make an exception? First there was that dam . . ."
"He thought he was doing us all a favor, that it would irrigate the fields."
"A dam! On a stream! You may as well put chains on your mother's hands. What kind of favor is that? I thought the caning would teach him something."
Yes, thinks Nob. It taught him to hide. But he keeps this in his heart. Oh, Will! What have I done to you? He takes the jug back from the priestess and takes a long hard drink, willing the oblivion that he seeks nearly every night; willing dreamless sleep, now that there is one more spook to haunt it. “Telling you about that store," he says, “was the hardest thing I ever done."
Teffny puts a hand on his knee. “You did the right thing, Uncle."
He shakes his head. “No, I didn't. There wasn't no right thing to do."
She takes the jug away and sets it on the dirt floor beside her. “Must you drink every night?"
"Oh, yes.” And he lays his long face into his hands and weeps. “I'll never see him no more!"
"Nob! No, Nob, listen to me. He's better off."
"It's my fault."
"Well, yes, Nob. What'd you expect? You bent him with those demon-stories you used to tell. All that magic . . . It makes folk unhappy."
Nob gathers himself. “Magic? Haven't you seen the Great Pylon just outside the village, with the wires still dangling from it? What of the towering O'erpass that carries the old highway over the river? Men once built those."
"It gotta be magic,” she answers. “It gotta be. Because we'll always live in their shadows. Better they be magicians than men. Better that their magic went wrong and destroyed them. Or else we'll always yearn for something we can never ever have."
Nob rubs a sleeve across his nose. “That why Will gotta be stoned? For our peace of mind?"
Teffny stands. “Worse than that. When Berto and Charz finally found the dell, they were gone, all three of them. Charz tracked them as far as Seederville, but they didn't go there. They went down into the Old City.” She shivers and hugs herself. “'S death to go there. All those spooks . . . The Seedervillers told Charz they been hearing sounds from below the cliffs. Trees cut down! And they heard some sort of awful chuffing, and they glimpsed a demon swimming up the Southbound River belching fire and black smoke from its rear. Stoning would be kinder than to fall into the hands of demons."
"They ran . . . “ says Nob.
"Yes, and that is your fault, you drunken old fool. The directions you give us were off. Charz and Berto went the wrong way and they got all tangled up in the stickerbushes. All that thrashing around musta warned Will and them, and they panicked."
The old man nods slowly. “Ah."
Ma Teffny studies him for a moment. “Just how drunk are you, Nob?"
"Very."
The priestess grunts. “I won't press it. Lend me a torch. It's getting dark and the wolves will be a-coming down."
Nob lights a torch from the hearth and hands it to Teffny. He stands in the doorway in the cool of the spring evening and watches until she has reached her own hut. Then under the meager light of the fingernail moon he slips around back to his potato patch, where he drops to hands and knees.
Finding the flagstone by touch, he grunts it aside and claws away the dirt until he has opened the clay-lined storage pit it covers. His hand gropes within . . . and it is empty. The books are gone, both of them.
Old Nob rocks back on his heels. “Ah, Will,” he whispers yet again. He never will see the boy again. There is no assurance that whatever folk have come upriver and settled at the Forks will treat Will and Kenn and Shairn with any kindness. But there is a chance, and that is more than Moren's Run would have given him. The old man brushes a tear with his sleeve and he turns his face to the pockmarked sky. No one sees his tears except the fing
ernail moon, half hidden by scraps of clouds.
Night has fallen and the darkness is almost complete.
But not quite.
Copyright © 2010 Michael F. Flynn
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Novelette: CONNECTIONS by Kyle Kirkland
It's not always clear who's really in charge—or how.
Half the crystals of my projector needed replacing and my eyes were gummed with sleep, but I managed to recognize the grainy 3-D image that had appeared in my room. There was a dead man staring at me.
The image spoke softly in that familiar gravelly voice. “I hope I didn't wake you, El. I know you keep odd hours."
"Arden,” I said, trying to work some saliva back into my mouth. Arden Kirst, my old mentor. Last Friday his car disconnected from the power rail and plunged two hundred feet into a utility substation.
Slowly my brain got into gear. Things like this used to happen often back when I was growing up—people forgetting to make preparations beforehand to switch off their artificial-intelligence systems. I remembered getting a birthday greeting every year from a great-aunt who'd died in 2015. But it didn't happen so much with the newer models.
The AI stood in my room, where the projectors were aimed, looking very much like Arden—piercing gray eyes and jutting chin—and squinted at me. The AI's sensors were probably having trouble seeing me—the image transmission of my home communicator wasn't in any better shape than the projector—and the system represented this fact in the AI's image.
"Did you attend my services?” asked the simulacrum.
I coughed. “Well, I . . ."
"Yes, yes, of course. I know how it is. Busy and all that."
Actually, Nadia nixed the funeral service because she said those things were mostly pomp and pretence. But we'd gathered last night for a farewell dinner. Some of us had drowned our sorrow in too much alcohol. I had a distinct and unpleasant memory that one of us greatly exceeded the bounds of good taste and manners. That someone, I believe, was me.
But I wasn't going to try to explain our grief to an AI with the emotional capacity of a child. I sat up on my bed and put my feet on the floor. One foot touched cold concrete and the other landed on a crumpled suit. Three walls and a high-resolution screen enclosed me. The sound muffler failed to prevent my hearing a neighbor practicing for a rock-and-roll gig.
Analog SFF, June 2010 Page 17