Zara had chalked a set of wards in a circle around herself, Mira, and Sid. Another warded circle was drawn in front of this area for the shadow. Zara took off her jacket and wrapped it around Sid. The dress she wore underneath had hundreds of wards sewn into the fabric. At this hour, they glowed softly with an inner pulse of light.
A shadow drifted over and stood in front of Mira.
“Wait a moment,” said Zara. “Lift the candle to your height, and you’ll see him.”
Mira gasped. “Miguel, is that really you?” She began crying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t stop you.” Miguel wore the overalls and hardhat from the day he died. Mira wept and spoke gently to the night.
Zara looked away. These moments cut too close to her own life for comfort. Seeing them, Zara remembered Kirk and the day he had returned, turning on her and Sid. She didn’t want to offer this option to people, but it was the only way they could exorcise their past.
Mira screamed, breaking Zara from her thoughts. Miguel’s shadow had drawn Mira into an embrace, smothering her. She had stepped across the warded line, Zara’s candle at her feet and its flame put out. The shadow dragged her farther away from the wards. Miguel’s shadow laughed. It was a high and empty laugh that dragged across Zara’s heart.
Zara fumbled with her lighter, running after Mira. She clicked it but the flame didn’t catch.
As soon as she stepped out of the warded area, shadows surrounded her. Her dress glowed, weakening the shadows, but it wasn’t enough. They enveloped her, till she could only see the blackness. Her throat constricted, the pressure on her chest restricting all movement. It was like this the first time. The first time she had fought back. The shadows had taken away all of the light, but they couldn’t take everything. Not Sid. She clicked the lighter again. This time the light flared.
The shadows released their grip at the momentary flash and leapt back. Zara touched the lighter to the symbols on the pavement. The symbols ignited, flaring against the shadows that surrounded them. Zara’s dress glowed, drawing in the light from the fire. The flare subsided momentarily, and she stood.
Another shadow leapt at her and pushed her back onto the pavement. It opened its mouth, a black abyss drawing in her life. It bent down to Zara, to pull her life through its throat. She thrust the lighter in its face and tried to flick it on.
Sid stepped up to the warded circle, watching her struggle with the shadow.
“Stay inside,” she screamed. “Stay inside, Sid!” The lighter flashed again, and Zara stuck her hand down the shadow’s throat. The burst of light ignited inside the shadow, and the creature dissolved.
Another shadow flew at her, but before Zara could react, it disintegrated. Sid stood over her, holding one of the candles. He looked at her. “Go,” he said. “She needs you. I’ll be all right.”
Mira writhed on the pavement nearby, tendrils of shadows forcing themselves down her throat.
Zara ran to her, pushing through the shadows. The light on her dress faltered. She touched the lighter to the rags wrapped around her right hand, and the blue flame ignited them.
Zara touched her flaming hand to Mira’s chest. The shadow’s tendrils writhed and scattered, falling off Mira’s twitching body. Zara removed the lid of the jar and held it to Mira’s face. She moved her flaming hand over the body, causing Mira to convulse violently. Zara straddled Mira to keep her from shifting and waited for the shadow to leave her body. It dribbled out through her nose and mouth: a thick tarry mass that Zara collected in the jar.
Behind her, Sid set more of the symbols aflame, clearing the shadows. They scattered away, a few of them writhing in the remnants of flame.
Zara dragged Mira’s unconscious body back into the circle, and chalked new wards around them, smaller than the circle she had drawn before. Sid sat down, withdrawing into his thoughts again. Zara offered him some water, and she ate an apple while they waited for the first light of morning.
◄ ►
Mira spent the rest of the night in shock, looking out into the night for any sign of the shadows. But they didn’t come back, and, soon after, the fire on the pavement burned down.
At dawn, Zara wrapped up the bottle that contained Miguel’s shadow and handed it over to Mira. Mira’s hands trembled as she took it.
“The glass won’t break,” Zara said to her. “But you should keep the rag wrapped around the bottle, just in case. Your neighbours may be superstitious, and it’s better if you don’t give them a reason to suspect you.”
Mira nodded. “Thank you.”
“It was unfortunate that your meeting had to end as it did,” said Zara.
“But it didn’t,” said Mira. “I’ve lived for too long with the guilt, and whatever that was, it wasn’t Miguel.”
“Bury the bottle in your yard at the full moon,” said Zara.
Mira hugged her. “I don’t know where you’re going,” she said, “but be safe.”
Sid stirred in his sleep, leaning against the backpack.
Mira looked at him. “They grow up too soon,” she said
“Sometimes they never grow up at all,” Zara replied.
◄ ►
Zara walked north, away from Edmonton, to the place where the light was scarce, where unnameable shadows haunted the night roads.
As Zara walked, waiting for the sun to set, she felt that the shadows had already won. They had grown till they swallowed the whole world. There were too many of them. More than she could ever protect Sid from. Every day the sun delayed its arrival, and the shadows inevitably gained another hour of their lives.
Sid stood on the shoulder of the highway, watching the sun set. She sat down near him.
The blindness was coming to her, had been coming since she had received the gift, and the dying light that reached her reminded her that it would soon be eternal night.
“I’ve got some dinner,” she said. He sat and opened his mouth while she fed him the cold soup and bread. He finished and lay his head down on her lap. She held her lighter in one hand and with the other gently stroked his head.
In a few hours they would walk north again, to find and face the nameless demon that had spread shadows throughout the world. For now she sat with her son.
@SHALESTATE
David Huebert
Warm, very warm. And wet, very wet. The Great Unpredictable Nonwinter left us very warm and very wet. But we survived. The forests flourished, and we survived. The redwoods grew tall in the North, and we survived. The bears died off – first white, then gold, then black – and we survived. The bats bred and bred and bred, darkening the skies and filling every night with their abominable wailing. The enemies of @shalestate came and went. They built great #Econations and shunned oil and electricity and worshipped the ancient texts of the heretic Kyoto, but they perished in the end. And we survived.
It rained for 100,000 years, and we survived.
We survived because of the Great Technological Know-How, and the ComfyBunker. But now there is no more Technology. No more Know-How. There is no more Bottled Sunlight. There are few acceptable pairings left. The Endless Bacteriafree Fountain has dried up. The Mentholsuits have all but lost their soothing chill. The water is stagnant and full of diseased bat blood and we have no way to filter it. The mushrooms are tainted, due to lack of clean water. They weaken the stomach, and not everyone can digest them. Three Followers died last year, two the year before that. None of them older than 50. Soon there will be no more surviving, not in this place.
Yesterday the Programmer received a long-awaited message from the Server. DataHQ has ordered the 54 remaining Followers of @shalestate to leave the ComfyBunker and head north, across the Plains of Benevolence. Some people grumble and complain, saying John is too young. But JohnJaneHalMother insists that he is strong enough for the journey. He will have to be; there is no arguing with Data-HQ.
Our task is to find new Technology, and we are eager to go. The Followers have been preparing for the Magnificent Ambulat
ion for decades now. The Grandmother often reads us the story while we huddle, huddle around the coolness of the Mentholpit at night. It was prophesied in the Wayback by the First Programmer, the soothsayer Suckleborg. He had two brains and could breathe underwater. It is all written on the Walls of the Faithbook. We will crawl out of the Comfy-Bunker, emerging in the ruins of the ancient metropolis, Vanity City. We will travel past the Neverending N-Bridge Pipeline and onwards, into the Enormous Aquaforests of the North. There will be no more CritterFarm, no more Endless Bacteriafree Fountain, no more sleeping beside the Menthol-cove with Rose, nestling and covering her ears against the screams and flaps of the bats.
The night before we leave, the Programmer gives a speech. He reminds us that there are only 10 Gestating Followers remaining, only 10 of us offering the Window of Conception. He looks at me as he says this, prodding with his beady pink eyes. I shiver and squeeze Rose’s soft little hand. The Programmer tells us, though of course we already know, that there are 19 Germinating Followers who must share the Gestating Followers. We must maximize Population Yield. The Glorious Rotating Monogamy Programme is more vital, now, than ever.
◄ ►
We climb and climb and climb. It is tiresome, tiresome. The Apprentices lead the way, followed by the Apothecary, the Grandmother, and then the rest of us. The Apprentices carry the largest packs, bearing most of the weight of the Followers. The Father Fathers carry smaller packs, because they must carry the Mother Mother. The rest of the Followers take what they can. Gestating Followers with small children carry no extra weight. Our task is to look after our children, ensure they make the journey. I am worried for Rose.
Sometimes the Apothecary and the Grandmother walk arm in arm, and I know he is helping her along and she is telling him stories. He loves her stories. It is nice to watch them together. Sometimes the Grandmother makes me think of my own mother. Maybe she too would have had grey hair and lined cheeks if she’d made it to that age. I wonder if my mother would have liked the Apothecary, would have walked with him and told him stories.
The body feels heavy, heavy. Rose is panting, panting, and coughing, coughing. The higher we climb, the warmer and wetter it gets. So warm and so wet. The air is heavy, heavy, and thick, thick. The Programmer tells us it will be at least three days before we get out of the ComfyBunker and arrive on the Plains of Benevolence. And once we are there, he does not know what to expect.
None of us know. But the Apothecary has faith. He is hopeful. I see him watching Rose and me. Watching, watching. But he watches in a good way, a warm way. Not the way the Programmer watches. The Programmer only watches Rose, watches her and watches her, never speaking. When he sees her looking back, he smiles and nods slowly, bringing his chin to his neck. What a strange way to treat a child.
The Programmer has translucent skin. It glows softly in the dark, revealing a mesh of sinew and vein. In the Wayback several Followers had this happen; it is chronicled on the Walls of the Faithbook. When it first happened, it was decreed that no Follower should glow like the cave insect, and that if anyone was found to shine in the night they should have to suffer Reintegration. But no one threatens the Programmer. There are others like him, after all. I have seen the Apothecary’s toes glowing in the middle of the night. I have seen a neon, yellowish shadow behind Rose’s kidney flesh. I have seen the Mother Mother’s sunken eyes, shimmering red behind her eyelids as she sleeps.
I would like to make the Programmer stop watching Rose, but I fear him. When it is my turn to lie with him, he is cold and faraway. He does not look into my face or touch me gently like the other Germinating Followers. At times he seems very frustrated, and at other times he stares at a wall and moves fast, fast inside me. I have the feeling that he is trying to imagine that I am not me. That I am Rose.
We eat a lunch of dried mushrooms and smoked bat. The mushrooms are delicious and the bat is chewy. The meat hurts the jaw, but it nourishes us. We could never have survived without the bats. In the Wayback, when the bats first began to darken the skies, they caused great fear. After the Mass Extinction Event, at the beginning of the Great Unpredictable Nonwinter, the bats began to breed and breed. The Faithbook says that the Ancients had predicted a different kind of Mass Extinction Event. They were not ready for the wet and the warmth and the flooding. But the bats were ready. They learned to swim and they multiplied, and at times they seemed to be speaking to each other. And the Faithbook decreed that we should eat the bats, that they would carry us through the Great Unpredictable Nonwinter. They are plentiful, and the weak ones are easy to hunt.
After lunch the thighs are burning, burning as we resume the climb. The Father Fathers are carrying the Mother Mother just ahead of us on her makeshift stretcher. There are four Father Fathers – one red-haired, three brown-haired. All of them waddle strangely, as if they were trying to imagine that they still had their seedbags between their legs. Rose used to make fun of their walk, but I warned her that the Father Fathers oversee the birthing process and are the most revered members of our community. They were very kind to me when Rose was born. Once in a while the Mother Mother releases some gas. The gas is pungent, like the smell of a stagnant pool. I feel revulsion until I recall the smells from when I was the Mother Mother, carrying Rose. I smile and pat Rose’s head.
Halfway through the afternoon, Rose gets very tired. I have to pick her up and carry her for a stretch because I cannot stand to listen to her panting anymore. Her eyelids flick shut and her head jerks and I see that she is trying not to fall asleep in my arms.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and hope it is the Apothecary. But I turn around and look into the horrible, pink eyes of the Programmer. “RoseMother,” he says, “you are not strong enough. I will take the child.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Perhaps I can manage a little longer.” I turn away and march forward, holding Rose close. Up ahead, I see that the Apothecary has turned back to watch. Beside him, the Grandmother marches along. She carries over 60 years, more than any other Follower. And yet she is so strong, never fading from the climb. The Grandmother gives me hope.
◄ ►
For dinner we have my favourite, boiled salamander. The meat is fleshy and the taste is not too bad. Rose loves watching the salamanders in the CritterFarm, loves feeding them their daily guano. So she does not enjoy this meal. She cries and I have to go get her some more smoked bat. After eating the bat, she cries again. She drinks all of her water and most of mine and I want to ask for more but we can’t appear weak. Rose has not urinated all day.
The Apothecary starts a small fire. There are some matches and SustainaLogs left over from the Technological Know-How, but not many. We sit around the fire and the Grandmother reads to us from the Faithbook. She tells us about the Plains of Benevolence, how they were flooded when we descended into the ComfyBunker but now they will be full of surface life. There will be fruit and meat and drinkable water everywhere we turn. It will be like the Aquaforests of the North, without the gigantic carnivorous moose.
The entire time the Grandmother speaks, she is stroking the Mother Mother’s bulbous belly. She strokes calmly, calmly, and I feel the warmth of the future in the gesture. The Mother Mother sucks on a sweet stick, part of the hoard left over from the Technological Know-How. I watch her sucking on the sweet stick and I remember the flavour of it from when I was the Mother Mother. It was a strange flavour, a sweetness that burned. I did not particularly like it and yet I always wanted more. I also remember how the Grandmother used to stroke my belly when Rose was growing inside me. Her touch was sweet and warm, like a dose of Bottled Sunlight. Even as the Grandmother strokes the Mother Mother, the Programmer watches Rose. Watching, watching, a nasty twitch in his nose. Rose keeps her eyes on the ground, drawing shapes in the earth with a stick.
We fall asleep, as always, to the sound of the bats. They are nattering, nattering, and flapping all around us. We sleep in the open air because there is nowhere good to set up the tents. In the middle of the nig
ht there is a loud shriek, followed by a hushed voice. I know it is the Mother Mother and the Father Fathers. She is worried about the Future, about what might become of a helpless child on the Plains of Benevolence. We are all worried.
For breakfast we have blindfish and dried mushrooms. The Apothecary eats with Rose and me. He impersonates the Programmer’s voice and Rose laughs and laughs. But then the Programmer looks over and she seems afraid. Before he leaves, the Apothecary slips me his water ration. I give Rose the extra water and she drinks it all in a gulp. Right away she needs to pee, and I know that some of the water was wasted.
We climb and climb and climb, thighs burning, burning. We pass several stagnant pools. They are stinky, and full of guano. We also pass two large ponds and we can see some blindfish swimming through them. The Apothecary suggests that we stop here and catch more fish for our journey. The Programmer says no, but the Apothecary insists and the rest of the Followers agree.
The Programmer walks over to the Mother Mother, whispers in her ear. She whispers back, and the Programmer announces that we will stop and rest while the Apothecary catches more fish for the journey. The Mother Mother is pale, pale. Her belly is large, perhaps too large. We are all wondering what she might be carrying in there. I am sorry for her. It would have been better to wait until the child came, but we could not wait any longer.
Up here, it is very warm and very wet. Almost unbearable. I am desperately thirsty. The Apothecary rolls up the legs of his Mentholsuit and wades into the pool. He sets his net and waits for the blindfish to swim between his legs. I rest with my back against the cave wall, watching the Apothecary. The top of his Mentholsuit is pulled down, giving him greater flexibility. His torso is bare, except for the string of the sacred First Aid Kit he keeps around his neck. He stands still, arms poised, eyes flickering as he watches the swirling fish. I feel the moisture of the earth through the thin fabric of the Mentholsuit. Rose sits between my legs, resting her head on my chest. “Mother,” she says, “what is it like, to be dry?”
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