Stray (Touchstone)

by Höst, Andrea K.

  Festering Bag of Snot

  The day's gone very black and hot. I rescued my craft project, which fortunately was nearly dry and didn't immediately fall to pieces when I picked it up. It doesn't much look like felt – more like a bunch of wool pressed flat and only just clinging together – but it's still much better than a badly woven mat of leaves. A soft, clean (faintly greenish) piece of luxury.

  My blocked nose has turned into a chesty cough. By the time the storm started rolling in I felt absolutely rotten, but made myself go hunting in the nearest gardens, bringing up as much 'trusted' food as possible. I won't have to worry about water, since I still haven't managed to block the stair to the roof. I've set some bowls on the stair to catch water, and positioned my bed against the wall without a window. It hasn't quite started raining yet, but it looks like it will be bad. Like my cold.

  Friday, December 7

  Rain and Phlegm

  All day. So hard to breathe.

  Monday, December 10

  Not Drowning

  When I was in Year 10 I sat next to a guy named David in Science. We weren't friends, didn't socialise outside that class, but we got on well. He was funny and nice, acted the clown to hide he was shy. He moved schools the next year, and early this year I heard that he had died. He'd always had a weak heart, was occasionally sick because of it. I didn't know what to say, what to feel.

  Mum says there's three bad things about dying: pain and other unpleasantries, the way your friends and relatives feel after, and the fact that you don't get to find out what happens next. Mum's an atheist – she says she's never met a religion that didn't sound made up. I'm agnostic, because I like the idea of there being something more, but the possibility of it working like Mum thinks it does – that you just stop – doesn't particularly bother me.

  I don't remember very much about the past couple of days, but through it all was threaded this horror that no-one would know. That Mum would never know. And, yeah, that I wouldn't find out any of the explanations behind all this.

  My family's a healthy one. Colds occasionally, minor temperatures, chicken pox. I've never been to hospital. I needed one yesterday. I don't know the name for what I had. I thought you caught colds or flu from other people, not just abruptly developed them. Whatever it was, I couldn't breathe, could barely move. I don't know what my temperature was, since I felt hot and cold at random, but I'm pretty sure I spent half my time hallucinating (unless there really were dragons and sea monsters spiralling across the ceiling).

  Last night was another moonfall. The inside of the building glowed, and I could see the light misting past the windows. I couldn't tell if it was exactly the same, since I couldn't get up to go on the roof. I didn't feel drunk either – I was so out of it I'm hardly sure it happened – but I remember feeling warm and relaxed and not having to fight so much to breathe.

  Today I'm not exactly better, but most of the gunk clogging my lungs is gone, and the fever, and I've managed to get upstairs to the roof, and sit here and write this, even if it's taken me half the day. Abandoned as it is, I'm so glad to have found this town. I feel vulnerable enough here. I wouldn't have survived the last few days without solid shelter. I'm feeling very small at the moment, but so glad to be breathing.

  All the effort making my felt blanket, and now it really really needs a wash.

  Tuesday, December 11

  Not entertaining

  It doesn't get light till past 10am on my watch now. And dark around midnight. Now that I'm breathing better, it seems to take forever for the night to end. All I've done so far today is lie on the roof watching the birds on the lake. I'm worried that I've hurt my eyes somehow, since random parts of the world are blurry and not quite focused.

  I'm going to go down for a forage soon. If I feel stronger later, I might even try to clean my wool collection. Survivor Cass needs some time-consuming projects to keep her sane.

  Not that the prospect of trying to relight my fire is anything to look forward to. That's going to have to wait more than a few days – it just takes too much concerted energy to do, and I can't even climb a flight of stairs without having to sit down.

  Wednesday, December 12

  It's not paranoia if they really are watching you

  I'm stronger today – woke up incredibly hungry, which made me realise how little I ate while I was ill. I've been getting a lot done this morning, just by stopping and resting every few minutes.

  The idea of lighting the fire is still in the way-too-much category, but I've managed to clean out my room again, and washed my wool mound and blanket. The blanket didn't like that, and has developed splits. Once it's dry I'm going to have to be careful taking it back up to my room, or I'll have felt strips instead.

  While it dries I'm searching the nearest buildings. I'm increasing my collection of metal and pottery objects, though, and even have a few knives. They're not very sharp, and the handles have all fallen to pieces, but I have a few ideas on how to fix that. In a few days I'll have a go at making covers for the windows. I also want to make another blanket: if it wasn't such a lot of work I'd make a mound of them. Though I suppose I'll have plenty of time to try.

  My eyes are still strained. Not everything is blurry, and not all the time, but I'm starting to wonder if I'll end up needing glasses. That's annoying, but I'm more bothered by a sense of being watched all the time. I'm forever feeling there's someone standing just behind me, or trying to catch movement out of the corner of my eye.

  It's not the cats, or not so far as I can tell. There's a few about, but they've never been very interested in me so long as I stay away from their amphitheatre. I've been taking a lot of interest in the birds, hoping they have some nests in convenient spots. After weeks living mainly on red pears and washews I'm really interested in the thought of eggs. I'm also going to experiment more with some of the other possible foods I've found – I've been a bit too scared after the vomiting day, but now I'm starting to wonder if missing out on some of the food groups was the reason I was so sick.

  Today's mantra

  There are no black things

  Creeping

  In the corner of my eye

  And

  There are no claws

  Glinting

  In the shadow of that door

  But

  There's nothing wrong with

  Me

  I'm just fine, I'm

  Sane

  Normal

  Not seeing things.

  Friday, December 14

  Laying their plans

  Mum has a CD of this old musical version of War of the Worlds. On that, the Martians make this incredible noise, this 'uulllllaaaaa' howl which is so totally unnatural, not a noise anything on Earth would make.

  I'm looking for tripods on the horizon.

  The noise isn't the one from the CD, of course, but it is super weird. A mournful wail so deep I feel it more in my bones than my ears. I'm sitting on the roof of my tower, listening, watching, but I can't see where it's coming from. It sounds like the hills are moaning.

  Whatever it is, it's big. Could even dinosaurs make a noise like this? After spending the last couple of days convinced that something's been watching me, I was creeped out enough already. I wish tonight was a moonfall, or that I'd at least figured out a way to make a light for overnight. I'm not up for fire-lighting. I'm lying here with my pippin statue, pretending it's company.

  At this point, I can't decide whether it would be better to be going nuts, or to really have things lurking around every corner, stalking me.

  Mouse-like

  Is there any difference between being eaten by a bear or a big cat and being eaten by a huge and spooky monster? The monster might even be quicker. You could say that the bear would be more 'natural' I suppose – but that's just familiarity. Bears and cats are the predators which are real to my world, but does it make a difference if the teeth belong to a dragon?

  There might be monsters that kill you slowly, though
. Or, if there is any kind of soul or afterlife, things which kill you 'wrong' so that your soul is damaged as well.

  So can you tell I spent the night obsessing over what was going to come galumphing up to kill me? For all that, it was a good night. The noise stopped when the sun went down, and everything felt lighter somehow. The feeling of being watched had gone, and then the animals came back. I hadn't realised, but the more I felt I was being watched, the fewer animals I saw. Like they were all hiding, while I wandered stupidly around.

  The town's main population is all on the smaller side. Sometimes the grey terriers show up and chase things, or the deer or mondo elk wander through, but I don't think they like staying here. It's very open compared to the forest. Birds dive-bomb the little animals and it's easy to see anything approaching if you're high up. What bushes and trees there are aren't so big and thick that anything large could go any distance without being spotted. If the Ming Cats hunt here, they do it at night.

  Today's project was to block the windows on the ground floor. Fort Cass is still far from impregnable, but every bit helps. I wish my eyes would stop blurring.

  Saturday, December 15

  Buttered scones would hit the spot

  After winding wool into a rough handle for the longest of my salvaged knives, and 'sharpening' it by scraping it against rocks, I walked back along the lake to chop long poles of bamboo from a stand I'd passed. It was surprisingly easy, but I'm so tired now and it's barely lunchtime. I'm the kind of lumberjack who needs nanna naps.

  Sunday, December 16

  OMGWTF!

  There were two people in my room when I woke up.

  They were standing at the top of the stair, talking to each other. Opening my eyes in the grey of just-dawn and seeing these hazy black figures, my heart gave such a thump. And I squeaked and scurried backward and then felt like a complete dick as they just looked down at me and turned out not to be monsters after all.

  A guy and a girl, dressed in tight-fitting black stuff, some kind of uniform. They looked to be Asian (black hair and eyes and a creamy-gold skin, though the girl's eyes didn't have that fold). I couldn't understand what they said to me, didn't even recognise the sound of the language, but the tone wasn't threatening. Annoyed or irritated, perhaps, but I didn't get 'prepare to die' vibes off them.

  They were surveying my room but not touching anything, and didn't seem too keen on getting close to me, either. I was foolishly glad I'd only just cleaned up, and all my food was neatly separated in bowls with no rubbish lying about. That I was wearing my underpants. One, the girl, started talking to me, asking questions, and I tried talking back, and was trying not to cry because they were people and even though they understood me as little as I understood them, THEY WERE PEOPLE!! It was all I could do not to scream and throw myself at them.

  They had a little talk, then the guy went up to the roof and the girl gestured at me to follow her. I put on my shoes first, and packed my backpack since she didn't seem to mind waiting around, though she kept her distance from me and kept scanning the room as if she suspected I had someone hidden behind a jar. I immediately started thinking about plagues, and wondered if that was why the town was abandoned.

  She led me down to the lakeshore and stopped at a rock and pointed to me and then to the rock, and when I sat down she walked off. But that was okay because I was busy looking at the ship on the lake.

  Not a boat. A narrow metal arrowhead shaped thing, creamy-grey with dark blue side sections. It's big enough to be carrying dozens of people, and is definitely not primitive. Whoever these people are, they're more advanced than Earth.

  The two in black weren't overwhelmingly surprised to see me here, or very interested. They acted as if they hadn't expected to see me, and put me aside while they went on with whatever it is they're really here for.

  I saw another pair of them, also black-clad, standing up at the central bluff, but then something came out of the ship. A flat platform which floated above the water, and stopped right next to the bank where I was sitting, delivering two women, older than the pair from Fort Cass, and wearing a mix of dark green and darker green, not quite so tight-fitting as the black outfit. Again they were all business, pointing at me and then one particular corner of their platform and very stern about it.

  It's not like I was going to say 'no', hopping on very meek, and standing exactly where I was put. The platform began moving straight away, though I couldn't for the life of me figure out what they were doing to control it. Maybe someone back at the ship was steering.

  They talked to each other as they went back, and watched me as if they thought I was going to take a knife to them. I saw no more than a corridor of the ship before they ushered into this little box of a room, and shut the door on me. So small it's practically a cupboard, but every few minutes it grows warmer or colder or hums. Maybe they're irradiating me for bugs.

  I've been here over half an hour. I wish I'd had a chance to pee before being rescued.

  Monday, December 17

  The excitement of butterfly grapes

  It seems an age since I could write in this book, though my watch says it's only been a day or so. Where to start?

  On the ship I was finally let out of my cupboard by a woman in yet another uniform – grey and darker grey with a long pale grey shirt over the top. Just like a doctor's coat, so no surprise that she was some kind of doctor and gave me a medical exam and a bunch of injections. Most of the injections didn't involve needles, but something like a compressed air cylinder. The worst was directly to my left temple, which ached, and then ached worse, and now is a dull persistent pain.

  She talked a lot while she peered and prodded, and we did a little pantomime of her pointing to herself and saying "Ista Tremmar" and me going "Cassandra". Then the best part of the day beyond being rescued: a shower and a toilet (hilarious pantomime explanations). The toilet was weird – it was a form-fitted bench with a hole, which doesn't flush or have any water in it – you close the lid after you use it and if you open it again it doesn't smell like it's been used. I couldn't properly see the bottom, but it looked like an empty box. The toilet paper is thickish, pre-moistened squares like baby wipes. And the shower – warm water and soap!

  I wanted to stay in there forever, but after Ista had gone through this pantomime of pointing to it and making totally incomprehensible gestures, I'd decided I was supposed to be quick. No towel: the ceiling blew a gale of hot air at me when I turned the water off.

  There was a white shift to wear, and I had to put all my clothes in a plastic bag. I couldn't find a comb or toothbrush, so finger-combed my hair into some sort of order before Ista led me off to a room full of chairs. In the medical room, everything was designed to be tucked away neatly and take up no more space than it had to, so I was almost expecting some kind of cattle class cramped airplane seating, but instead there were these long, padded and reclined chairs, like a cross between a dentist's chair and a bed. There were three rows of four, each set up on its own platform. When I lay down the cushions squished themselves in around me like they were trying to hold on – the weirdest sensation ever – but it was absolutely comfortable.

  Once I was settled in, Ista gave me another injection, a sedative this time. I was awake long enough to see a plastic/glass bubble thing come up around my seat, and then I was out until waking up where I am now, not on the ship, but on a bed-shelf made of whitestone with a mattress on top, in a small but not cramped room. There's a window, plastic, unopenable and very thick, which looks out over the roof of what seems to be one huge mound of connected building: blockish and white and eerily reminiscent of the town I was in but all joined together and with only occasional windows and doors. The only other thing to be seen is clouds and a black and choppy ocean.

  The door is locked, but I found a cupboard which had clean clothes in it (underpants, grey tights/pants and a loose white smock). Other than that, there was only a whitestone shelf before the window and a chair before it whi
ch makes me think it's meant to be a narrow table. I tried knocking on the door, but not in a frantic I'm-panicky-and-bothersome way, and searched about, but there was nothing to do except stare out the window. At least my eyes have decided to stop being blurry.

  No greenery visible. I can't guess why these people all live mounded up here when there's acre upon acre of lake and forest left to some cats. I keep trying to spot anything which will show me that it's definitely the same planet. But there's nothing but whitestone buildings and water, and it's too cloudy to see sun or moon. Quite a lot of futuristic air traffic. I bounced up and down for a while, thinking that maybe the gravity was a fraction less, but if there's a difference it's subtle enough to be dismissed as imagination.

  None of my belongings were with me, not even my watch, so I don't know how long I sat around, but finally a man showed up with a tray of food. He was wearing the same sort of uniform as the rest, but in shades of purple and violet, and was the first person who acted like I was interesting rather than a little problem which had to be tidied away. He gawked at me, in other words, and asked a bunch of questions I had no way of understanding or answering, all in the time it took him to cross and put the tray on the table. One of the greensuits was waiting outside, or I expect he would have stayed and gawked some more. I felt like I was one of those kids found raised by wolves or something.

  I dove on the food as soon as the door closed. There were two slices of warm yellow cakey stuff. Not sweet. Some kind of heavy bread? Fruit in jelly where all of the fruit pieces were like butterfly-shaped grapes. A stack of vegetables in sticks – green and white and yellow sticks, all apparently growing naturally to the thickness and length of my little finger. The yellow ones tasted like carrot trying to be celery, the white was zingy and the green very salty. I spent ages on the last of the grapes, trying to work out if grapes would really naturally grow to look so much like butterflies. They tasted like vanilla apples with grape texture.