Dark Dreams, Pale Horses

by Rio Youers

His heart felt as heavy as the mountain on which he sat. Every day was hard, but today…it was too much; he had no more prayers. The pathway to the Cold Valley was a river of the dead, washed along in the arms of loved ones. Even now, if he turned around, he would see them, a long, mourning snake of people, lining up to throw their deceased into the mass grave. Angelo felt that—whatever God’s design—it was happening. The world would remain; maybe an uninhabitable globe of ice spinning between Venus and Mars, but it would remain. The time of man was passing, however, and the mountain cried in agreement.

  There were empty cots in the Passage. Angelo had never known a cot be empty for more than a few moments; there was always another sick child waiting to be brought in. But today had been particularly hard. Three children had been brought to him. Beautiful, but pale, breathing their last. Only three…yet he had carried thirty-six to the Light. So many empty cots. It was happening.

  “… Ma liberaci dal male …”

  Worst of all, Farfalla was fading.

  “Amen.”

  Angelo stood. The tears were frozen to his face, giving them a permanence that seemed appropriate. He breathed precious air and looked at all he had known, this drab landscape, without a bird in the sky, where smiles were as seldom as colour. He often imagined that some rare inch of the earth had remained unspoiled. A place of unspeakable beauty—beyond pain and war—where the trees grew tall and bloomed in a thousand shades of green; where gardens reached to sun-kissed horizons in fabulous blankets; where the sounds were not sonorous and mournful, but high-pitched and delightful. Sounds of life and happiness. Such fantasy did not seem so far-fetched; he was breathing, after all. Was it really so difficult to believe that there were trees in some proud corner of the earth?

  I’m thinking of Heaven, Angelo thought. He looked at the sky: endless acres of cloud from which the rain kept falling. He threw out his arms—a gesture of surrender, or sacrifice—and cried out. Everything stopped, for one heartbeat, no sound or movement. Angelo sensed Il Margine della Salvezza regard him with aching eyes. Even the rain stopped falling.

  And in that moment his eye was drawn to the miracle: a splash of colour that ripped the air from his lungs. Angelo’s soul reached for it, leaving him shell-like, standing at the edge of the mountain, as hollow and fragile as a vase. The sound and movement returned to the world. The icy rain splashed into his face. The mountain mourned. It was all the same, except for the miracle.

  A butterfly, carried on the winds, unaffected by the rain, painted in colours he had never seen before, and had no name for. It fluttered toward him, its movement like a trick of the eye. He inhaled a broken breath. His heart fractured. The tears in his eyes turned the butterfly into a prism. It moved like a candle’s flame.

  It’s happening, was all he could think, except it was a feeling. Like fear or excitement, or the sense that someone is watching you. He extended his hand and the butterfly alighted on his forefinger. The breath rushed from him again. His soul flickered in fabulous colour: a mimic. It’s happening. Like a wave breaking, or sunlight bursting through cloud.

  Angelo looked at the tiny creature on his finger, blinking tears from his eyes. He could feel the vibration of its abdomen, and its wings—folded, infinitesimal scales bleeding brightness he didn’t think existed. It was real. He could feel it. Not a hallucination or some residue of his prayer. It was real. The world was turning.

  “Why are you here?” Angelo said, and the butterfly was gone, fluttering from his finger, trailing its brilliance into the wind and rain until it was out of sight. Angelo fell to his knees. His soul drew into his body, as small as a fist. He lowered his head, about to pray, to ask God why He had sent this sign, when suddenly he knew. Any trace of elation was stripped from him. He staggered to his feet and looked at the Passage.

  The memory of the butterfly whispered in his mind.

  “Farfalla,” he said.

  TRE

  She was pale, even in the candlelight. Her small body trembled, pressed into the sheet, frail and fading. Angelo rushed to her side and took her hand. She looked at him and tried to smile.

  “Oh, Cugino…you’re here.”

  “Of course.” The tears were already spilling from his eyes. Too many to hide. “I’m here, Farfalla. By your side.”

  She nodded. Her precious mouth was a brave shape, turned up at the edges, while her eyes—the deepest brown he had ever known—fell onto his soul like stones. He brushed the hair from her brow. She clutched his finger. He could feel her fingernails impressing on his skin, and remembered the crescents she had made on the backs of her own hands while praying. A tear rolled from his cheek and splashed on her pillow, shaped like a hand, or a star.

  “I’m with you,” he said.

  “It’s happening,” she said, and he thought of the butterfly, its scales touched with flashes of colour that were foreign to him, and that feeling—sun bursting through cloud. Angelo shook his head and lifted her into his arms, as if refusing God’s Hand. He could feel her heartbeat in her legs…her arms. He didn’t want to let go.

  Don’t leave me, he thought, except he whispered it, and she heard.

  “Oh, Cugino,” she said.

  He staggered into the middle of the Passage. The other children were kneeling at the ends of their cots, all praying, their heads low. The sound was like the wind when it finds some crevasse in the ice, and sings. Not words, but a susurration, indistinguishable, yet meaningful. Angelo stroked Farfalla’s hair. She shuddered in his arms, still clutching his finger.

  His tears fell, catching candlelight. The only brightness in the room. Farfalla opened her mouth and the slightest sound came out. She was trying to speak. Angelo leaned closer. She let go of his finger and touched his face.

  “Cugino …” She faded. Her eyes closed and Angelo’s heart dropped in his chest, like a weak man falling to his knees.

  “No …” He rocked her in his arms. “Stay with me, Farfalla.”

  Her fingers trailed down his cheek. “Take me …” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Take me outside, Cugino. Let me see the mountain.”

  “It’s so cold outside.”

  She smiled. Always beautiful. It was no small wonder that God was reaching for her. “Please,” she said.

  Angelo nodded. He would give her anything. He started down the Passage, a walk he had made a thousand times. “My Farfalla,” he kept whispering, over and over, stroking her hair. Her hand, on his face, felt as light as the butterfly on his finger. The children’s prayers followed him. He could already hear the mountain crying.

  DUE

  Blistering wind and rain. Angelo fell to his knees with the child in his arms. Her eyes were still bright and her blouse was wet with his tears.

  It’s happening.

  Farfalla leaned close to him. She kissed his damp face.

  “Don’t cry, Cugino,” she said.

  UNO

  My name is Angelo di Serafino. If your heart is not ready, I will tell you that Farfalla died in my arms, a wilted mountain flower, and that I cast her small body to the Light. I will tell you that I dried my eyes and prayed. Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem. Amen.

  But if your heart is ready …

  FARFALLA

  I set her down and she stood for a moment, looking from the mountain to the valley, and then to the clouds. Her beauty was underscored by this beaten backdrop. Her hair blew about her face, heavy with rain. I could see her skin pressing through the wet blouse in shiny patches. She must have been so cold, but did not show it. She showed no emotion, in fact. I wanted to reach for her, but held back. She was not mine to keep.

  Grow your wings, Farfalla, I thought, and let her go. My heart twisted. It writhed. I halved as a man, but doubled in soul. I have never seen the sun, but know how it would feel.

  Farfalla looked at me for the last time. Her smile was that place I have always imagined—that untouched chip of the world, splendid with trees, sprayed with flowers. She lowered her head and fell b
ackward, into the winds and off the mountain.

  Oh, Cugino, I feel so sad for that boy.

  I watched her fall.

  But, Farfalla, he is with God now. He is playing in the sun.

  I watched her fall.

  No, I saw him in your arms. He hadn’t grown his wings.

  I watched her fall.

  Where is your heart now? Press your hand to your breast and feel the life pound through your body. A thousand miracles in every beat. Feel it, and believe that I saw one more miracle: the wings unfold from Farfalla’s body. They ripped through her blouse and opened in broad, swaying curtains. She was held aloft, and then rolled her shoulders. Her wings—they were silver and gold, the colour of light—moved with immeasurable grace, lifting her into the ruined sky. Within a moment she was level with the mountain, and then she was above me, looking at the heavens with her ebony hair streaming and her wings turning the air.

  I held my heart. I dropped to my knees. Her light blinded me.

  The wind howled and the mountain creaked. Farfalla worked her wings and ascended, from my arms to the heavens, I am the Shepherd of Souls. The clouds appeared to rift as she got higher, and before long she was obscured. I called her name, both arms held out, a desperate servant at the edge of a collapsed world. I could still feel her touch on my face. I looked at my finger—the one on which the butterfly had alighted—and could see the tiny arcs made by her fingernails. One last look at the sky: the ghost of Farfalla, her wings moving like dance.

  I watched her fall, and I watched her rise.

  One more miracle.

  This is God’s Design, His twist of evolution. Some would call me a dreamer (those whose hearts have long stopped beating), but I tell you now that our world is given to wonder. We exist in order to move on. This is the pupa of catastrophe.

  Farfalla…her smile like a garden.

  My name is Angelo di Serafino, and I have seen the New World. I have seen God’s Wings.

  ALICE BLEEDING

  Crimson desert, the sunburned skin of the world. Gasping fissures had opened the land, rippling to the horizon in crude designs, like a child’s drawing of lightning. Remnants of the machine were scattered in the dust—debris from a world that was made; man’s invention shattered in the blink of an eye.

  A shadow, shaped like open arms. The wedge-tailed eagle swooped and cried. Its heavy wings made a sound like wind catching a sail. It dropped into a fissure and ascended moments later, carrying in its talons the eviscerated husk of something once-human. Burned naked. Arms and legs hanging. A sexless thing. The raptor powered its wings and carried its prize with ease. Its shadow was shaped differently now.

  His skin was as dark as the great rends in the land. His place here, on this burned island, was as deep. He was walking stratum. His body was new but his blood was old, like an ocean. His people stood behind him. Some carried weapons. Others carried rocks. Their palms were as yellow as their teeth. They cast their own shadows: faceless images of themselves. Their bodies were coloured with earth pigments and dust from the crater.

  He made a series of soft sounds in his throat. Laterals and codas and back vowels. They translated as: “The land becomes ours.”

  The man beside him had an older body and a wiser brain. His eyes flashed like the ruins on the desert floor.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “Insurrection,” the young man replied. “The rising.”

  “Through violence?”

  “Through necessity.”

  “You were always a reckless child.”

  “Is the sky reckless? She pounded her fist. She began this.” The young man held out his arms. “We will finish it.”

  “We are not a violent people. Only the foolish will follow you.”

  “But we are proud. Only the spiritless will stay behind.”

  Yulara was crippled. Four hundred kilometres southwest of the impact zone, but the shock had rippled through the streets, twisting structures on their foundations as if they had been built on swivels. Aftershocks had advanced the damage, uprooting trees and toppling buildings. The Lasseter Highway jerked a broken route through the red earth. The Ayer’s Rock Resort—buildings as identical as teeth—had been reduced to rubble. Glaring yellow fascias were stained by the dust.

  In the semi-desert west of Yulara, across the ruptured highway, the letters SOS had been spelled with the detritus of aftermath: furniture and timbers, siding and appliances, carpets and vehicles, towels and bedding, tiles and panels. The letters were forty feet long—the industry of the remaining townspeople, those too foolhardy or stubborn to evacuate. They pillaged the ruin for any morsel of hope. They dragged their findings across the highway and anchored them to saviour. SOS. A shimmering hand reaching for help. A huge fire burned day and night some distance from the letters, fuelled by broken trees and skeletal, ragged puffs of spinifex. Smoke spiralled into a blank sky. At night, the fire raged in the vast nothingness like an infant’s heart.

  Thirty-three remained. Their hope was as fractured as their town. Eighteen men. Twelve women. Three children, including a four-month-old baby. They staggered through handicapped streets. They had no system. No government. They ravaged and they huddled. They prayed to survive.

  “He’s taking,” she said, and managed a smile. Her name was Sally Ellis, although she had come to believe that names were as unimportant as everything else in this new world. Even survival seemed like vapour, most of the time. In her previous life (before the asteroid) she had been Sally Ellis, but with a smile that could shame rainbows, and a soul that orbited the lives of others, throwing light like the moon. She used to paint portraits and write poetry. She used to play the violin and teach contemporary dance. She used to be a sister and a daughter…and a mother, which was the one thing the asteroid could not change. It had destroyed her home and subdued her soul, but she was a mother, and always would be.

  His name was Caleb Miles Ellis. Four months old. His father’s eyes and his mother’s lips. Beautiful, to the point of awe. Beautiful, like the sky after rain.

  “He’s a fighter,” Sally said, watching her son draw from her breast. His pale cheeks pulsed. His pure-crystal mind knew nothing of pain, and nothing of the asteroid. He didn’t know the world…didn’t know it was broken.

  Luke came to her, crouched by her side, and pressed his blistered hand to her face. He was Caleb’s father, and her husband, even though she had slipped the wedding band from her finger and tossed it into one of the yawning fissures in the desert. Divorce for the modern world, she had called it.

  Sally had wanted to evacuate. Luke had insisted they stay.

  Do you trust me? The universe had been locked in his eyes. His body had been strong and his mind endless. Yes, she had trusted him, and they had watched together as the plane had taken off, flying the last of the evacuees to Perth—two thousand kilometres from the calculated point of impact, and considered one of the country’s safe zones.

  Her trust in Luke had been crippled with the town. They had wept in the streets as the walls were twisted. They had hastened to the open flats of the Tanami and huddled, Caleb between them, a shared heartbeat, as the ground roared. One thousand sounds of chaos. Images of loss. She held her son and prayed through the dust and tears, and as her town was sent to ruin, her heart drifted from the man who had determined they would stay. She felt his tears on her face. His voice was ragged with apology. Sally held him and hated him. The continent shuddered. The desert was eggshell.

  In the distance…the Rock held steady. Ayer’s Rock. Those who knew it called it Uluru, a chip of sandstone formed when the earth was a baby, like Caleb, unknowing and unhurt. The ground bellowed under the force of impact. The trees whipped their furious arms and the town cowered. But Uluru held. It was like a single giant rivet keeping the world intact, and Sally looked at it through the swirling flowers of dust, trying to take inspiration from it, like the Aboriginal peoples to whom the Rock was sacred. We are the Rock, she thought as she held her
family. It shimmered: a brilliant, orange blister seen through the dust. It seemed as large as the sky. It was powerful and unbreakable. It was her. A part of her.

  We are the Rock.

  Luke’s hand fell from her face. He tried to kiss her.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  He sighed, and then touched Caleb’s ear. “We’ll get out of here. I promise.”

  “When?”

  His lips moved slowly, forming the edges of a lie or a wish. It was hard to tell. He couldn’t look at her. In the end he shook his head, got to his feet, and resumed chopping wood for the fire. His upper body was tattooed by the sun. Strips of grime were clustered in the seams between his muscles.

  “Your promises are worthless,” Sally said. “I don’t trust you anymore.”

  Luke said nothing. He worked the axe with angry power. Splinters sprayed the front of his jeans. Before long he had stripped the fallen tree to manageable lengths and dragged them to the fire. March flies crawled through the sweat on his back. He used the brim of his hat to flap them away, and then started to toss the wood into the flames. Sparks danced, and then died: minuscule models of the world. Signals of grey smoke spiralled into the sky.

  Caleb stopped feeding. Sally tucked away her breast and wiped his mouth with the side of her thumb. She got to her feet and started to rub his back. It was no wider than her palm.

  Luke threw the last length of wood into the fire. He wiped his face with his bare forearm and started on the next fallen tree. His muscles pounced with every stroke of the axe, and the March flies lifted from his back in a haze.

  “Owen Tully says we’re running short on food,” Sally said. “He reckons we might have enough for two weeks, but we’ll have to shorten our rations.”

  “They’ll come for us before then,” Luke said. He stopped working and turned to her. His eyes were hidden in the shadow cast by the brim of his hat. “They’ll take us away while they rebuild, then we’ll be back and things will be just like they used to be.”