Twig

by wildbow

  “What if I said I didn’t discard it?”

  “The instant you took it, I realized I knew. I knew you couldn’t submit yourself to that. It runs against everything you’re warring against. I’d call you a liar, and I’d tell the others you were a liar.”

  We fell silent, turning our attention to Jessie again.

  “Helen grasps, Ashton gets distracted by watching grass growing. Abby has her fits. You flinch away from any smiling Doctor giving you your medicine in the same way even a snail that’s struck ten times with a stick will wince in anticipation of the next blow. It’s reality,” Duncan said. “It was an unfair test.”

  “But it still affects your final judgment.”

  “You asked the others if they thought you were honest. Yes. You’re honest. You’re honest on turf you’ve chosen to allow honesty on. What did I say? It was the context or the big picture that concerned me.”

  We took that in.

  “I’m going to address you as if you were Sy. Because I’m worried it might be the last time it happens,” Duncan said. “Lillian fell in love with you for a reason. It wasn’t that you’re a scoundrel. It wasn’t that you were cruel to her and then you were kind. Mary was swayed to join the Lambs because you gave her something she couldn’t get elsewhere. Gordon considered you a true friend, by all accounts. Jamie and Jessie independently fell in love with you, and it wasn’t because of a genetic predisposition on their part for short, scrawny kids with naturally messy hair.”

  “We note you’re leaving Ashton and Helen out.”

  “Ashton and Helen are Ashton and Helen. Ashton can be fascinated by an unusually shaped bit of glass from outside a factory in Luxham and he’ll carry it with him for two years. Helen falls in love with dead birds she finds by the side of the road, so long as she can step on them. They don’t challenge you so much as they accept you and ask for a peculiar kind of acceptance in turn. They do challenge you, but they don’t ask for you to dig particularly deep into your being to offer something up. The others challenged, they demanded something, and you answered and gave.”

  “We wouldn’t discount the value of acceptance, given or taken. When you’re a lost little experiment, that acceptance and that smile count for a lot. The reliable, insistent little voice counts for a lot.”

  “I’ll cede that one to you, then,” Duncan said. “But I worry. You’re changing, nobody’s denying that, and bigger changes are coming. But what happens if you lose touch with all those things that drew the others to you in the first place? Worse, what if you lose all of those things, but you find other ways to set your hooks in?”

  Other ways.

  We’d already started. It was part of the negotiation, the exploration, and the transformation that came with the next big steps.

  “You’re right, Doctor Foster,” we replied.

  “What does it say about me,” he asked. “That I actually wondered if you’d kill me, for testing you in the here and now?”

  “That you’re smart,” we answered.

  He didn’t tense. Neither did we.

  “We’ll muse on what you said,” we responded. “Thank you.”

  So much to think about. So many others who had to consider where they’d stand. We were on the brink of a revolution, a change to how a continent and its government functioned.

  We gave Jessie a fond touch on the cheek, and then we left our good Doctor Foster to his work.

  We made our way out of the lab and out the door, to the Academy grounds. We were brisk as we walked, eyeing the damage here and there, the ongoing work to clear rubble, where it would be cast off the side of Radham, to land far below.

  We checked the time on our way, and we were content that we’d arrived fifteen minutes early. We’d planned for the chat with Duncan to be shorter, but we’d left ourselves an abundance of time.

  It would be such a shame to miss this.

  The rain poured, and the clouds rolled. It was windy, and the light of the sky was peeking between the thinnest parts of the clouds.

  We passed through the gate, and the military forces there were ours, allowing us through without complaint.

  We were greeted by a view. Such a beautiful world.

  The war had stopped, the guns were put away, and the people of Radham were out of their homes and shelters, starting to find their routine. Radham was permanently raised up, the walls cracked, the Harvesters’ work on the architecture and landscape still visible in places, and yet children ran in groups down the street far below. They ran through fields that had had bodies on them just days before, now rinsed and drained, bodies collected and waste consumed by organisms.

  Horses trotted down the streets, but it was far less than there had been once upon a time. Warbeasts were repurposed to work, and they hauled creations that would serve as winch-operated platforms, lowering people and things to the ground. Something would be worked out later. At least two hundred men were working on and around the hulk of the Infante’s ship, which remained where it had been, crashed into the walls of Radham.

  There were still areas that were grisly. We didn’t miss the carts and wagons that were shipping bodies up to the Academy proper.

  This city would be our fortress for some time, damaged as it was.

  The rain shifted in direction and strength. A patter now.

  Lambsbridge had been hit by a shell. Most of the damage had been relegated to the stable where Mrs. Earles kept her horses, but I wasn’t sure of particulars. It had come after we’d left. It had rolled through into the building, collapsing the dining room and sitting room, and it might have damaged the staircase.

  The only thing that assured us there hadn’t been any major casualties was that children played around the building. We only recognized a small few, and they didn’t, at a glance, seem to recognize me in turn. Too many years, too many changes here and there.

  Bo Peep, Quinton, and Abby were playing in one corner with the smallest children, Bo Peep holding the oversize umbrella with the butt-end on the ground. Nora and Lara sat with their backs to the stone wall that framed the orphanage’s yard.

  Emmett was in the tree, and being there, he seemed more like the boy he was.

  It was only when we drew close that we saw the Lambs, sitting on the back porch. Ashton, Helen, Lillian, Mary.

  It seemed like a dream, a flight of fancy.

  They didn’t question where we’d been. They waved. There were some smiles, and there were far more complicated looks. Lillian wore one.

  We stopped short of stepping onto the grounds of the orphanage.

  We’d given an order hours ago. The timing around it had been a big motivating factor in us finally talking to Duncan, hashing things out. Now we waited, hands in our pockets, hood down, letting the drizzle patter against our head and shirt.

  The Lambs stood, one by one, and they made their way around the back of the orphanage. There wasn’t a gate at the side, but a stone wall a couple of feet high was hardly an obstacle.

  There was an expression on several faces, as they crossed the wall.

  It had never been home for Lillian, but she surely had some good memories there.

  For Mary it had been home for a while. The crossing of that wall was one more string or ribbon cut, that otherwise tied her to something.

  For Ashton, it had been a place, and he’d always put some importance on places, on landscapes and on familiar things. He’d moved past that in a lot of ways, based on my observations, but he was still who he was.

  For Helen, it had been one of two homes. Her home for now was being embraced wherever she went, firmly in the warm arms of Ashton or whoever had custody of her.

  The drizzle stopped. The rain ceased falling on Radham for the first time in our lifetime.

  “This is going to wreak havoc on the ecosystem,” Ashton observed.

  “Shh,” Lillian said.

  All around the city, people and vehicles stopped. There was almost a sense of alarm among the locals, that we hadn’t
seen much evidence of when the war had been ongoing, what with them huddled and hidden away. The mischievous child in us liked that alarm.

  “Did you have your talk with Duncan?” Lillian asked.

  “Was everyone waiting for me to do that?” we asked.

  “In a way.”

  “Food for thought,” we said.

  “In a way that’s going to delay us?” Mary asked. “Or are you reconsidering?”

  “No, Mary dear,” we replied, “No on both counts.”

  We hadn’t stepped onto the orphanage grounds because of what they represented, and what we represented.

  Lamb to Lord.

  There was reason to suspect the others, Ashton possibly excepted, had made it their last visit too. Even though we would remain in this city for some time to come.

  The wind pushed the cloud cover across the sky with startling speed. The nature of the new landscape might have played its part, Radham jutting skyward. The lack of smoke from Radham’s smokestacks and buildings would be another part of it. The sky looked alive, while the city was still.

  Over five, ten minutes, people started resuming movement again. The Lambs chattered. We watched the sky.

  The carts of bodies and slain soldiers were an obstruction for our visitor. Duncan made his belated appearance at the head of one wagon. Swaddled in a blanket, sitting on the bench next to him, was Jessie.

  We’d asked without asking. We’d made mention of it, made no secret that we’d hoped for it, as Duncan had suspected. We’d get mad at him, in our selfish way.

  We hurried to catch up with them. We were halfway up the side of the wagon when we saw.

  She slept, still.

  Bittersweet. It hadn’t been possible to wake her up for this.

  It hadn’t made sense. It hadn’t been right.

  It would have made such a difference, all the same.

  “Gentle, gentle,” Duncan said. “Some of the test work we’ve been doing isn’t housed firmly.”

  We were gentle, working with Duncan, getting into position to lower Jessie down.

  “There’s so much to ask, to fill you in on,” we murmured.

  As the rain had given way, so did the opaque cloud cover that cast Radham in its perpetual gloom. Sun began to shine through, and then swelled as it found more open sky to peer through. With all of the moisture in the air, light colored the sky. We held Jessie.

  Duncan’s advice hadn’t been enough. We worried. It made too much sense to destroy our enemy, to secure this.

  Lillian’s key was only part of it. There were other evils. Other questions. We would turn from Lambs to Lords and Ladies. Duncan’s concern weighed on us. What would we become in the end? Would the divides widen? Would Duncan name us for the liar we were, citing his pill?

  As the others chattered around us, we felt warmth swell in our breast and we felt fear in equal measure. Jessie rested her head on our shoulder. Lillian held one of our hands. Ashton was constantly moving, going back and forth between Helen and the younger Lambs.

  The only Lambs, really.

  “Who’ll be first?” Lillian asked.

  “Me,” we said.

  Previous Next

  Forest for the Trees—e.1

  Her footsteps made no sound as she climbed to the top of a hill. The woods around her were noiseless, without bird, without buzz, without the sound of branch rustling against branch. There was little movement, for most of the particles that could be blown away had already found their way free, and the remainder formed only dark clouds that swirled through the trees at knee or waist height. Weather and the slow, steady pressure of time had seen most of it compressed and condensed down, like snow without the crunch of a layer of ice on top.

  The sky was brilliant with blue, but it was the only color she could see. The landscape had been painted with the black of a charcoal without any shine to it. That which could not be made black had been powdered or outright caked with the stuff. If any of the large boulders she saw had any color to them at all, her mind convinced her eyes it was a trick of perception. Soil had been thoroughly mixed with the stuff, sterilized in the process, and the color had bled out from it. Gray at best, but most often black.

  She raised a gloved hand, and the caked-on powder cracked and fell away as she reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew a brush. She swept it over the glass eyes of her mask, then dusted off the filters of the breathing apparatus. She’d alternately been glad at the silence of the apparatus and wished that the apparatus made sound, so there could be something.

  The forest here was past the point of creaking. That which would change had changed, and it had died. The wind and movement would break it down, it would crumble, the wind would do away with the fine dust, the rain and snow would compress the larger granules, and all of this would disappear.

  The branches that remained were skeletal, condensed in their way, much as the ground underfoot was. They had drawn in the moisture, compressed with the weather, drawing in more moisture, and what hadn’t fallen away had become like needles, too thin, twisted, criss crossing one another.

  The sun shone, and the blackened landscape ate that sunlight.

  She stretched, shook herself as a dog might, to shake off the weight of the dust that had managed to accumulate on her, and then she sprinted down the hill, faster than any human could move. The dust that was kicked up behind her formed clouds taller than she was.

  She avoided the path, moving through the trees. There was always the danger of something falling, but the density of the ground was better, where there were or had been tree roots, and where the ground hadn’t been cleared of stones and rocks for the road. There were other hazards too, rare, but it really took only one unlucky step.

  She was strong. She had been made strong, because that was a prerequisite for being made fast, for being acrobatic. She had been made to put up a fight, to lose that fight. She had been made to be fucked, should anyone want it of her. She’d been made to die, if anyone wanted to see it from her, and she’d been made to even like or want that death, if given the appropriate instruction. The reaction she would have to the death or the fucking was up to others, not her, decided by a key phrase. Her wishes had never factored in, not for her, not for any or all of the others, be they boy, girl, or other; nearly normal or strange; big or small.

  It was the strength, however, that let her move through the sometimes knee-deep debris. If she found that one step carried her forward into a ditch, her entire body plunging into black powder so deep that she could stand on her toes and reach skyward and her fingertips wouldn’t stick out of the powder, that strength let her gather herself together and then bound up and forward, free.

  Spotting a sturdy tree through the film of black on the glass eyes of her mask, she leaped up, onto the thickest, lowest branch. It didn’t break under her, and it didn’t bring the tree down, but smaller branches and finer structures all shattered at the impact. Branch and twig fell to the cover below. Much of what hit her broke and snapped without sound on impact, so light it could barely be felt.

  She shook off her glove, then reached for the brush. She dusted off her eyes and filters again. She glanced at the filters, then pressed the back of her hand to her mask, mouth pressed against the breathing hole, and blew with as much force as she could muster. Fine dust geysered out of the filters.

  Tilting her head to the right, she reached up, and she brushed off her antlers, the top of her head, and her shoulders. It was idle movement, vanity. But the antlers were vanity. So was the mask she wore. Preening let her avoid kinks, cramps, or getting into too routine a set of movements. It made her aware that a tougher branch had fallen amid the antlers, tangled up in the tines.

  She would need to stop soon. She was hungry, she needed to hydrate, to relieve herself. The filters needed changing, and she needed to be somewhere reasonably clean and safe to do that.

  Taking stock of the landscape, she searched for the telltale hints in the forest of black on black. S
he saw a particularly flat expanse.

  More twigs and branches fell in a shower around the tree as she jumped down. The landing was an awkward one, but she caught herself. The biology she had been given spared her a twisted ankle in the middle of a barren black wasteland.

  The flat expanse took her a minute to reach. There were more dips and rises here, more ditches to swallow her up. She started bounding more than running, moving horizontally, either hand and both feet ready to catch the first solid earth they came in contact with, finding secure footing, then moving into the next bound.

  She slowed as she approached it. Spots like this were especially treacherous, and bad things happened if she had a misstep. The ground was soft, swallowing and sucking instead of absorbing and giving way. Her hands found the equipment, the flask, the filter and crank for the flask, and the hose.

  She had to dive into the powder to reach what lay beneath. She fed the hose into the black liquid, then cranked the contents into the flask. The crank was necessary, given the work needed to pull the fluid through the filters.

  The flask started ticking with each crank, and she detached the apparatus, coiled up the hose, stowed it in the jacket pocket, buttoned that pocket to secure it, and then closed up the flask, the filter within. She walked with care while continuing to work the crank, finding her way to the point where the powder wasn’t nearly up to her shoulders.

  The filter would get the water mostly clear of the dust that choked it to the point it was sludge. It was a problem that water and dust both tended to collect at low ground, that she had to dive into the powder to get at the pond, that she could fall in and find herself in something much like quicksand, her outfit and pack soaking through and becoming many times heavier in an instant.

  Still cranking, working the filter through the sealed flask, she searched out high ground, and paused in the cranking to stretch and dusted herself, her eyes, and her filters off.