I “see” the world as shadows. People are what I think of as light and colour. Each one is a unique shape, and in all, there are shadows within the light. In my sister, Eight, there is a shadow where her right leg should be, more shadows clustered within the cage of her ribs. In the seeing world, these shadows are a twisted leg and stunted lungs that make her wheeze when she walks.
If I could see myself, I know there would be shadows where my eyes should be. Perhaps there are more hidden inside where I cannot see, missing pieces that I do yet know.
We are all made of missing pieces, outside the Wall. None of us is whole.
* * *
All Sisters have a flat metal plate set flush against the skin between our breasts, anchored to the bone with screws. They are fixed there when we first bleed, our clockwork Hearts slotted onto the plate. From then on, the Heart will tick away every moment of our moon cycles.
Each morning, the Mothers make the rounds of the Dormitories, wind our Hearts with the heavy key they wear chained around their waist. There are ticking things beneath the Mothers’ robes; I do not know their name or function.
The Mothers remind us, as they wind our Hearts, that if the clockwork winds down, our flesh hearts will fail.
The ticking of my Heart is so loud sometimes in the darkness of the Dormitory that often I forget that those gears and cogs don’t actually drive the flow of blood around my body. That I have another heart at all.
* * *
I wore thirteen scars on my arm the first time the Fathers visited me.
Eight and I had begun our moon cycles at the same time, and we linked hands as we joined the Sisters moving towards the Moon House. She leaned heavily on me to compensate for her twisted leg, and by the time we entered the long hall, her breath came hard. We chose adjacent beds, lay down.
The only sounds I could hear were the ticking of our Hearts and the shuffling of the Mothers’ soft-soled boots as they moved down the rows of beds, checking Hearts, checking flesh.
Some Sisters were proclaimed ripe, and given a key from the pouch at the Mother’s waist. More were bade to leave the Moon House; some wept as they scuttled out, while others were silent.
I turned my head as a Mother reached Eight’s bed. I looked towards the City. The Angel and the Towers were denser shadows in my internal darkness. It was a comfort to me, even then, the fact that I could always “see” the Angel and the Towers, no matter how great the distance or how many physical walls stood between us.
The ticking from beneath the Mother’s robe grew louder as she finished with Eight, and moved to my bed. The sound grew louder again when she folded the skirt of my dress up to my waist. It was cold in the Moon House, and goose pimples rose in waves on my skin. The Mother’s hands were like ice as she parted my thighs, slid her fingers inside me.
She kept her hand there a moment, the ticking beneath her robe growing louder still. I kept my not-eyes on the Angel and the Towers. And, as I lay there, the Mother’s fingers pressing hard into me, I saw a light flaring high on one of the Towers, a light brighter than anything else I had ever seen in the darkness. I started, half sitting up. The Mother pushed me back down, muttering sounds that she probably thought were placating. She removed her fingers, folded my skirt back down.
I kept my eyes on that light, trying to assign a name to it, a colour. It flared brighter, and I felt something warm gathering deep inside of me.
The Mother pressed a key into my hand, and the light vanished; only the deep dark of the Tower there again.
I curled my fingers around the key. It was larger and heavier than the ones the Mothers used to wind our Hearts, the metal warming quickly against my skin.
Eight reached out to me, drawing my attention away from the Tower. She also had a key in her hand.
* * *
The Fathers came to us.
The one who was assigned to my bed was what I thought of as blue, shadows crowding deep in his belly. He was gentle enough, and there was little pain, a thing I was grateful for. Eight was not so lucky; her Father was rougher, and she made small, twisted sounds with every thrust.
After, we laid still until the Mothers bade us rise. We unhooked our Hearts from our chest plates, slotted them into the clocks on the wall. As one, we used the keys we had been given to wind the clocks. As one, we lay back down.
We Sisters spent three moon cycles in the Moon House, rising from our beds in the mornings only to use the latrines and wind our clocks. The Mothers brought us nutrient wafers. The bars had a strange, earthen taste that lingered in my mouth long after I had swallowed the last bite.
If, with three moon cycles, we did not bleed, we progressed to the Sun House.
As the clocks ticked, other Sisters bled, and left. Soon, only Eight and I remained.
The night before we were moved to the Sun House, Eight slipped out of her bed and into mine, pressed something flat into my hand.
“It’s a photograph,” she said. “I know you can’t see it, Nine, not the way you see everything else.” She took my fingers in hers, traced them on the cool, smooth paper. “There is a man here. He’s tall, with dark hair and eyes. Next to him is a woman. She’s sitting up in bed, and she’s dressed in white. Her hair is bright yellow, and she has something on her ears that glitters like water in the sun. She looks exhausted, but she’s smiling. I’ve never seen someone with teeth so white. She’s holding a baby in her arms, a beautiful, perfect thing wrapped up in a blue blanket. You can’t see if all three are whole, but I think they must be. The baby, at least. Otherwise, why would she be smiling? The man is holding a tiny white thing. I don’t know if it’s food or a decoration, but on top of it is a flame.”
“Flame? What is that?”
I heard her wave a hand through the air, as though searching for a description. “When you burn something, like in the recycling centre, you can feel the heat?”
I nodded.
“There’s light that goes with that. Bright, gold and red, with blue at the very bottom. Sometimes it burns your eyes, too, so you keep seeing the flame, even after you’ve looked away.” Eight turned the paper over, guided my hands over the rougher side. I could feel lines and swirls impressed there. “One of the workers told me what it was called, said that there were names written on the back.”
“Names?”
“He said it’s what people had, before the numbers.” Eight traced her hand over the numbers embedded in the soft skin inside my left forearm. Mine are 120509, hers 120508, our nicknames arising from the last numbers. We are as close as Sisters can be. “He also said that there was another word he recognised. ‘Family’.”
“Family?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not certain. When I went back to ask him, he was gone. Recycled, I suppose. He was old. Maybe family means happiness.”
She let me hold the photograph a while longer before she fell asleep in my arms. She moved in her sleep, dreaming of the baby she would bear. I stared up at the shadow of the ceiling and thought of the strange words. Of family, of flame.
Of the light I had seen in the Tower. The brightest thing I had ever “seen”.
From that moment on, I thought of it as the flame.
* * *
Our pains began on the same day, a fact that surprised neither Eight nor I.
The Mother who was tending us in the Sun House scuttled from bed to bed, bringing the scent of Eight’s blood to me. We made no sound. This was not true pain; this was duty. This was how we served the City.
My child was born first. A daughter: her wailing loud in the Sun House. In my mind she was what I thought of as green, her colouring bright apart from slim shadows on the sides of her hands. When she curled her fingers around my thumb, I could feel the extra digit there, slender and wiry. I felt something warm spread behind my Heart. My daughter was as close to whole as anyone I had known. She would certainly be Chosen.
As Sisters, we were allowed only one chance to hold any viable children, to fee
d them with the rich birth milk. I held my daughter close, luxuriating in her warmth as she fed easily. I thought of the photograph that Eight had described, thought of that strange word, family.
I was so focused on my daughter that it took me long moments to realise that silence had fallen over the Sun House. I turned my head, saw the bundle of shadows that the Mother held. Eight’s child was born twisted, dead.
That night, Eight burned the photograph. She never spoke of it again.
* * *
This is the world:
In the centre of everything, the Angel.
She stands in the centre of the inner City, watching over us all. Surrounding the Angel are the four Towers, the homes of the Chosen. They are the ones born whole and pure, the ones the outer City serves.
Around the inner City is the Wall. It is tall, broken only by four gates, one at each point of the compass. Outside the Wall, the outer City. Our buildings crowd close to the Wall. Many, I do not know the function of. I do not need to know. A Sister’s life revolves around three only: the Dormitory, the Moon and Sun Houses.
Around the outer City, there is no wall. There is no need for one. Beyond us, there is only emptiness.
The Mothers describe the City as a machine, a great conglomeration of gears and cogs that circle around and around, everything centred on the Angel.
She watches over us, and she waits for the day when all of our sons and daughters will be born pure and whole, will be Chosen.
* * *
Eight told me once, before the first time we were visited by the Fathers, that the Angel was gold, the tall column she stands on black. In the morning light, Eight had said, the Angel gleams brighter than the sun. It was the only time that I had envied Eight’s true sight.
The morning after my daughter’s birth, I was roused early by a Mother. The Mother led me to the Wall, where together we waited for the gate to open. The baby mewled, pawed at my aching breasts. I wrapped her tighter, knowing that her hunger would not last long. In the Towers, she would be given food far superior to my thin milk.
The sound of grinding gears and cogs came from inside the Wall, and the gate rolled open. The air that moved over us was warm and scented with metal and oil, smothering the flesh and earth scent of the outer City. The Mother bent to bless the child, a ritual murmur, and then stood back to let me enter the inner City.
The tall shadows of the Towers rose before me as I approached the centre of the inner City. There were other buildings between them, low and long. I had never heard them spoken of. Knowing the Mother was watching me, I dared only a few quick glances at the buildings. No lights to be seen. No flame.
Then, as now, there is only a short span of time in which the gates were allowed to open, a cool sliver in between night and day. I hurried, knowing that I had to be back outside the Wall before the gate closed again. To be caught within was forbidden. The inner City was no place for the likes of me.
It was a place for my daughter. I approached the Angel, stepping around so I was on the opposite side to the gate I had entered. My daughter writhed, her arms working free again and reaching for my breasts.
“Reach out to the Angel,” I whispered to her. “Not to me.”
I looked up at the Angel. To my not-eyes she was a shadow, a suggestion of outstretched wings. Something twisted behind my Heart, and I realised that I had been hoping for some miracle, that I would be able to truly see the Angel.
My daughter’s wailing increased in volume when I laid her down at the base of the column. I held out my hand, and she grasped at my finger, drew it into her mouth and sucked. In my darkness, her fingers were pale green, but for the shadow of the extra sixth.
“They’ll fix your hands,” I said. “The Mothers said it would be simple in the Towers. You will be Chosen.”
The baby sucked harder, pulling half of my finger into her warm mouth. Around me, the inner City was silent and still.
I knelt down, pulled back a fold of the swaddling, laid my ear on my daughter’s chest, listened the beating of her flesh heart.
A moment only I allowed myself, and then I left her there beneath the Angel. As I walked back to the gate I was aware of the ticking of my Heart beginning to slow, its winding overdue.
I left her behind, but ever after, I held the memory of her heart close. Regular and strong was its beat, a clock that would never need to be wound.
* * *
Twelve sun cycles passed.
When ripe, I would go to the Moon House and lie beneath a Father.
Most cycles, I conceived. But after that first time, I never progressed to the Sun House. Always, before three moon cycles, I bled.
In this time, Eight bore a half dozen babies. All were born early. All were born dead.
After the first time, we never held hands on the way to the Moon House again.
* * *
The Father shuddered as he spilled his seed in me. He kept his face turned away from my not-eyes as he lifted away.
When all of the Fathers had left, we lay still. Our Hearts fell into synchronisation with each other, then out again. There were only six of us this time, the smallest group of Sisters I had ever entered the Moon House with.
When the Mothers bade us, we rose, unhooked our Hearts and placed them in the clocks, wound them up. Mechanisms groaned as Hearts and clocks meshed and began to tick as one.
I pressed my fingers against the clock, feeling the vibrations of the mechanism moving through my skin. I had grown familiar with the Moon House clocks over the sun cycles. As my Heart ticks off my moon cycle, the larger clock ticks off a cycle of weeks. With each revolution of the clock’s hands, one week passes, and one crescent-shaped marker emerges from the edge of the clock.
As always, without my Heart, I felt strange. Unanchored, unreal. The Mothers assure us that the Moon and Sun Houses can sustain us without our Hearts. So long as we stay within their walls, we are safe, and our flesh hearts will continue to beat.
* * *
The weeks passed. Each morning, we wound our clocks, used the latrines, consumed our nutrient wafers.
One by one, the other Sisters began to bleed. I smelled the copper of their blood, listened to them remove their Hearts from the clocks. The clocks, unwound, slowed and slowed, and finally stopped.
Finally, only I remained.
For the first time since my daughter, I progressed to the Sun House.
* * *
Only one bed in the Sun House creaked beneath the weight of a Sister. I chose the neighbouring bed, pressed my Heart into the clock above. The clocks were larger here, with two dials. The smaller one ticks away the weeks, the larger moves with the moon cycles. The crescents around the edge mark off the latter. As I wound the clock, a crescent clicked out, some arcane machinery inside recognising the revolutions made in the Moon House.
I lay back down, aware of the Sister in the other bed watching me.
“Nine,” she said, her voice breathless from the baby crowding her lungs.
“Eight?”
She nodded, the shadows coiling in her skull shifting with the movement. It had been over a sun cycle since I had seen her up close, our cycles out of sync. In that time, shadow had eaten at the long bones of her arms and legs, curved like a cupped hand beneath her left breast.
I pulled my blanket over my legs, forced a smile. “How long do you have?”
She touched the sheet stretched taut over her belly, skin moving against cotton with a ragged whisper. “Only one moon cycle. The Mothers think that he could be whole. The first whole child born outside the City since the War.” The shadows in her face twisted as she smiled. “I think it’s happening. We’re all becoming Chosen.”
“He? You think it’s a boy?”
“A feeling. A mother’s knowledge.”
I thought of my own daughter, given to the Angel. She would be almost a woman now. If mothers had some esoteric sense of their children, then I should know where she was, what she was doing. When I searched
my world for her, I saw nothing but darkness.
Turning over, I curled my legs up. I could see nothing within myself. I pressed my fingers to my stomach, the flesh softening now from the rich nutrient bars, and wondered what was growing there.
* * *
The day the second crescent appeared at the edge of my clock, Eight’s pains began.
Mothers came and went. Day turned to night, and then day again. The black, clotted stench of old blood filled the room.
After the second night, they brought the knife.
There was no light, no colour to the thing sliced from Eight’s womb. Just dense, fisted shadow.
The Mother who came the next morning told me that Eight had volunteered for recycling. The nutrient wafers she brought me tasted like blood, like bone.
* * *
A moon cycle later, I woke in the dead of night to find my sheets heavy with blood.
I stood, wrapped my blanket around me. I did not bother to staunch the flow of blood. The floor of the Sun House had seen enough blood in its time, what would a few more drops matter?
On the threshold, I paused. Behind me, I heard a click as another crescent emerged from the clock above my bed. My Heart was still connected to the clock, the plate on my chest empty.
And then I saw it: the flame. High on the same Tower again, burning more brightly than I had remembered.
I stepped outside without conscious thought, focused only on the flame. My flesh heartbeat was erratic, but my heart was still beating. Without my clockwork Heart, I was still alive.
I watched the flame until a Mother found me kneeling on blood-soaked earth. She led me into the chapel, sponged the blood from my thighs. Sliced with her crescent knife, rubbed ash into the wound. Watched as I removed my Heart from the clock, returned it to my chest.
The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5) Page 34