Light Bearing

by Ben Woollard

  ***

  I woke up to Theo shaking my arm. I rolled over and saw that the stars were out, the woods drenched with shadow.

  “Yeah, what?” I asked him, wanting to sleep more despite being laid bare on the forest floor.

  “There’s a building over there, looks like there might be people living in it,” Theo said. I sat up and saw Shiloh washing his face in the streams of water. “What do you say we check it out? Could be whoever lives there knows how to find a road.” I nodded, it wasn’t as if we had much of a choice. All three of us were weak from not heaving eaten anything in days besides the harsh tubers Theo’d dug up. I went to the water and drank, washing my face with the cold until I felt slightly more awake. As we were leaving I could’ve sworn I heard a faint sound of laughing coming from the waters gliding smooth over the pebbles on the creek bottom. It was a happy noise, like some celebration was going on in a place we couldn’t see, but were so close to we could hear the sounds of that came from it.

  We followed Theo up a hill and looked down to a clearing in the trees. In the center of the field, a few hundred yards from us, stood a tower stretching upwards above the canopy and constructed from interlacing metal lattices. At the very top was a series of what looked like metallic dishes just like the ones the Gov used for radio transmissions. A red light blinked from it rhythmically, sending scarlet shadow mixtures over the strange shape of the building. The tower extended from a home, although it was more of a shed, and I could see light shining out through the windows. We approached slow, afraid that it might be some sort of Gov outpost. We came to the front door and stood there for a moment, all of us looking at each other, at a loss for what to do.

  “Do we just knock? Kind of a weird place to show up in the middle of the night, isn’t it?” Shiloh said, but he laughed as soon as he said it. Despite how hungry, dirty, and completely desperate the three of us were, here we were worrying about etiquette. The sound of Shiloh’s laugh was loud enough that those inside must’ve heard, and the door opened, revealing a short woman dressed in hand-sown clothes, with thick dreaded hair and circular glasses. She looked at us with fear at first, but her expression changed when she saw how gaunt and dirty we were.

  “Can we help you?” she asked, and we saw that behind her stood a man in clothes similarly stitched together and with a bald head.

  “Please, Ma’am,” Theo said, “we’ve been lost in these woods for days, nothing to eat but roots and vines.” His voice trailed off, at a loss. What could we say in that moment? That we had fallen into the clutches of a deranged cult and narrowly escaped? That even now the Gov was hunting for people dressed like Shiloh and Theo, and that if they found us we would be dragged to death behind a horse? We couldn’t say all that, so we just stood there, looking pale and tired and like we would collapse at any moment.

  “Come in, come in,” the woman said, and I could’ve cried from gratitude for just those words, just the availability of walls to keep the wind out and a roof to block the rain. Coming into the house I saw it was divided into two sections. The one that we now stood in contained a bed and a small table where a toddler of two or three sat chewing on a pile of green beans. In the corner stood a cooking stove and hearth. The second section we separated by an open entranceway that led down into the room, slightly descending into the ground. I peered into this other section and saw a room full of electronic equipment, with stacks of what looked like books, but thinner. On a table full of switches and knobs there was a black disk that spun around with a thin stick that seemed to hover over it. From this other room came the sounds of Circle In The Round by Miles Davis. I recognized it from nights spent huddled over mine and Shiloh’s radio, and it dawned on me where we were.

  “This is the music station!” I said, almost yelling the words at the startled couple, and making the kid at the table stop his chewing and stare at me. They all looked surprised

  “You’ve heard our station?” the man asked.

  “Of course!” Shiloh said excited as I was by the revelation, “we listen to it, or we used to at least, almost every night, on a little hand crank radio we found in the Columbia ruble!”

  “Incredible,” the man said, “I had never really allowed myself to hope there was really anyone out there listening. I’m Mikelo. This is my wife, Angela, and our son, Simon.” We all shook hands, and I offered a finger to Simon, who gave me a pouting look and reoccupied himself with his green beans. The couple offered us chairs and we sat. I was in a trance, transported to some other place, not the world I’d known but somewhere different. They gave us bread and tea and even beer they’d brewed themselves. For a while none of us said anything, our mouths being too full of food and liquid. After we had eaten they asked us how we’d gotten lost. I looked at Shiloh and Theo; none of us knew how to start.

  “It’s a long story,” I said, “but I’m happy to tell you if you have the time.”

  “Of course,” Angela said, “it’s not often, or ever, really, that we get guests, being as isolated as we are.” So I told them everything that had happened, from the first rumors of the Singulars at Portlock’s shop, to the meetings, to the bloody boy I forced to tell me how to find Alexei’s Grove. Shiloh watched me as I spoke, and I remembered this was the first time he’d heard this part of the story, too. I told them about Tilda, and about being taken prisoner at Alexei’s Grove, about what I saw there, and how we escaped, and, fleeing from Gov soldiers, stumbled on their home.

  When I finished the air hung still around us, and time felt frozen. I hadn’t thought of what had happened in its entirety until then, and the weight of it crashed down over me, making my eyes tear and my throat choke up as I tried unsuccessfully to keep a placid face.

  “That’s quite the story you’ve got,” Mikelo said at last. “You’re all welcome here as long as you need. In the meantime, the three of you look like you could use some sleep.” He and Angela took blankets down from a shelf and laid them out in the adjoining room.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Angela said. “Two of you can sleep in here, another on the floor by the entranceway. Unfortunately we don’t have much extra space. Just be careful not to break anything while you’re in here. I’ll turn the music down.” I looked at the black spinning circle. The machine had somehow changed from one disk to another on its own, and I saw there was a pile of the discs next to it. We said of course we didn’t mind, and Shiloh asked if she could leave the music on just a little bit and she said that was fine. Me and Shiloh laid down on the rug that covered the floor while Theo made his bed by the table of the main room. We listened to the strings of Maurice Ravel, and within minutes I fell deep into the waters of a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 10

  When we were all up the next morning we sat and drank tea with the small family that had taken us in. I was eager to know about the transmissions that came from them. Mikelo and Angela told us how they’d found the building one day out camping, something they did regularly, preferring the calm and quiet of nature to the settlements with all their stress and politicking.

  “Out here we could really be self-sufficient, y’know?” Angela said, her son bouncing on her knee. “Things are better, even if they’re a bit isolated. People forget about how the world really is, without all our human ideas about what it should be. Of course that doesn’t mean we live like savages, but out here you really feel like you’re a part of something. Like the whole planet is one big thing, and it’s inside, and outside, of you. We grow our own food and sell what extra we have in the nearby settlement in order to buy the supplies we need, which aren’t much.”

  “But you have electricity!” Shiloh said. “Even in Columbia that’s rare.”

  “We got lucky there, really.” Said Mikelo. “When we found this place everything was here, more or less like it is now. Vines and shrubs had taken over, of course, although I still think it’s a miracle that no one found it before us. There’s some kind of old technology here, I don’t know how it works exactly, but
there’re panels on the roof that make electricity from the sunlight. I’ve figured out enough of the wiring to keep it running, and hopefully we can keep it going indefinitely.”

  “Panels that make electricity from the sun,” Theo mused, sipping his tea. “It’s amazing what the world before the collapse could do. Electricity from the sun!”

  “And the music was here too?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Angela said. “I’m sure you saw all the stacks of disks in there. They’re called records, more old world stuff. Somehow the music is built into them, and you put it onto the machine that has a little needle, and it reads the disks and turns the music on them into sound. All the other equipment just sends it out. It took us a long time to figure out how to use it, but it’s really not so complicated once you get the idea. They don’t have anything like that in Columbia?”

  “Not that I’ve ever heard of,” I told her. “The Gov hordes all the tech stuff, and is mainly interested in weapons, so they collect everything they can find, buying it up from scavengers like me and Shiloh, and melting it down to make gun parts or bombs. They have radios, but they only use them for propaganda. The only time I’ve heard music from the old world is when a musician who’s had some knowledge of it passed down to him comes through town, and on your station, of course.”

  “That’s a shame,” she said. “If more people could listen to music there would be a whole lot less suffering in the world. I know how it is for most people these days. Everyone worries that what little they’ve build up out of the ashes that were left after collapse will disappear in the same way, and everything will fall apart. People are scared, paranoid and isolated. Music can change that, though, open them up and bring them together like nothing else.”

  Mikelo nodded, “that’s why we keep broadcasting, in the hopes that somebody, anybody, will hear it and feel that way. And it looks like those hopes weren’t totally in vain.”

  After breakfast Mikelo and Angela showed us around the clearing they’d made into their home. There was a big garden behind the building we hadn’t seen when we came up the night before, and they showed us all the different fruits and vegetables they grew. Simon tagged along and babbled, rolling around in the vines and grass glowing in the morning sun. The smell of soil and compost was thick everywhere, and made me feel a way I never had before, like I was missing something familiar my whole life up until that moment. We all climbed up on the roof with Mikelo to see the panels that made power from the sun; they looked like they were built from dark glass with tiny bits of geometric shapes just beneath the surface.

  We spent the better part of the day helping in the garden, going to the stream to collect water, and doing bits of maintenance on the building. When we came in to have lunch we all sat around and listened to an old Sydney Bechet record, then some I’d never heard before, by a group called The Beatles. I was amazed by the images that populated the disk sleeves, each one a creation in itself, in some ways standing separate from the music, in others wholly a part of it. We decided, at Angela and Mikelo’s insistence, that we stay at least until they could make us some new clothes, since the Gov would be looking for the Singular’s robes that Theo and Shiloh still both wore.

  As the sun began to set I went with Mikelo to collect water from the creek while the others stayed behind to dig a pit. They said they were going to use it to cook dinner, but I had no idea how they hoped to make it work. It was just getting dark and we were almost to the spot where we could draw the water when we heard a noise like someone scratching in the dirt. Looking around we couldn’t see anything, but when we turned back the scratching started up again, this time with an accompanying groan. It came from behind a grove of trees and sounded human.

  “Wait here,” Mikelo said, and went to look, carrying the hammer he kept on his belt. He went into the grove and there was silence, followed by scuffling, and I saw a male figure, covered head to toe in mud, crawl out cowering from the grove. Mikelo followed the strange form out, putting his hammer back on his belt. “Don’t worry I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said, but the mud-caked creature kept his hands up in reverential terror. “How’d you get out here?” Mikelo asked, but the figure only shook. Mikelo asked again, louder, and the cowering man spoke babbled nonsense in return.

  “The is is the ain’t and ain’t it grand?” he said, teeth flashing from the mud covering his face, which contorted in a nervous smile. “Whole dirt green, not black, no putrids here.”

  “Hey,” I said, “those look like robes. You a Singular?” The figure just looked at me and smiled.

  “Ain’t the green grass grand? Been all the way down to the fire where it started, oh my deep down those depths.”

  “Must be one of the initiates,” I told Mikelo. “Looks like they’ve completely broken down if this is how they’re acting.”

  “Well, let’s get you cleaned up,” Mikelo told the figure, and lead him over to the creek where he helped the man wash as much of the mud off his face and clothes as he could. He didn’t protest, just stood there smiling in that same stupid way while Mikelo scrubbed his head. Then Mikelo helped him take the robes off and handed them to me. I did my best trying to wash off all the mud in the stream but when I was done the tarnished blue that was barely peaking out from underneath a thick layer of dirt. When it was over the man stood shivering, completely naked, but more or less clean. We gave him his robes but he wouldn’t put them on, so I carried them along with the bucket of water we’d brought, and the man walked naked alongside us all the way back to Mikelo’s.

  When we came in the front door of the house everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at the naked man we’d brought back with us.

  “Who’s this?” asked Angela.

  “Good question,” said Mikelo, “whoever he is, he doesn’t seem to have much of a brain left. Found him wondering around by the creek.”

  “I think he’s a Singular initiate,” I said, “seems like whatever happened to them at Alexei’s Grove progressed into this.” The man looked around at everyone and grinned at each in turn.

  “Grows tall the tree and birds, feels like misty mornings and the sound of dawn,” he offered, as if this explained everything.

  “Well, the more the merrier I guess, let’s get him into some clothes, though, he can wrap himself in a blanket until we find something better,” said Angela, and handed the man a thick wool blanket. He was confused as to what to do with the fabric, and Mikelo helped him wrap himself with it.

  “Here, like this. See?” he said, but the man only smiled again, still looking confused.

  “Wrap up with vines and silverstars,” he said. Angela came back with some of Mikelo’s spare clothes and gave them to the man. We helped him put them on, which made him even more confused than the blanket had.

  We made a fire outside and all helped dig up the food from the earth oven Angela and the others had made. I was impressed by the idea of it, and Angela told me it was an old tool, something her family had taught her when she was little. The food was delicious, and carried the flavors of the ground it had cooked in. Using the very earth as a vessel to cook, amazing, I thought. The Singular, who Simon had decided to call Guthrie, after a lion in a story Angela liked to tell him when he wouldn’t go to sleep, sat with us, still smiling at everyone, and happily eating the food he was offered. After dinner Guthrie started cleaning everyone’s plates, washing them with sand that lay up against the foundations of the house, then rinsing the plates with small downpours of water from his cup.

  “He really is an interesting case,” Theo said, “doesn’t seem to be a malicious bone in his body. I wonder if all the initiates ended up like him.”

  “Who knows,” Mikelo said, “looks like he’s been turned back into innocence, or something like that. He’s pretty handy, too, maybe we’ll let him stick around, could use a willing pair of hands and I don’t see that one surviving much on his own out there.”

  “Be careful,” I said, “you never know, he cou
ld go back to raving like before. If he’s still a part of Proélefsi he could be dangerous.” But even as I said this, watching Guthrie, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he rubbed the plates with sand, I couldn’t see anything in him like that madness I had witnessed at Alexei’s Grove.

  “Well the same could be said for any of us, in a way,” Angela replied. “I for one like him. The things he says are poetic.”

  “A regular Walt Whitman,” Theo said.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “A poet from before the collapse. My Mom had a book of his that’d been handed down to her. Song of Myself it was called. She would read me poems from it every night before bed. ‘I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, if you want me again look for me under the boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean.’ Damn, that’s all I can remember. Sad how even the things we care about the most get lost and tangled in the end.”

  “That was beautiful,” I said, “I wish I could read it. Does your Mom still have it?”

  “I don’t think so,” Theo said, “She died a long time ago when her house burned down. I’d guess the flames took old Whitman with ‘em too. Too bad.” I agreed, and we all sat and watched the final light of day fade from the orange sky, replaced by the deepening azure of night slowly peopling with stars. We listened to the flickering of the fire eating wood, and Angela went inside, opened the window attached to the music room and put on a record. Outpoured the sounds of Louis Armstrong playing West End Blues, swagger and rhythms swinging out of trumpet horns that matched the fire’s dance. The music walked low and leaned, calling with the flare of the old world, the times that’re long gone, but still, from way back, murmur to us the sounds that seem the most familiar. I felt as if everything was spinning round the center of me in one big motion, sliding back and forth with styled grace to the sounds of Satch’s blues, whirling light and feeling, the whole thing an extension of something, everything!