Rainwillow Crossing (part 3 of 4)

A man came to the cottage the next morning. Shorgbran, he was called.

He adopted an aggressive stance as he waited for Yondel to answer his knocking.

“I've come to talk about the girl.”

“What's to say?”

“I don't think it’s safe to keep her here.”

“No doubt you don't.”

“You've been quick enough to kill them in the past.”

“Then I'm sure”--was she listening?--“that I'll handle this well enough now.”

“When she's done with you, she'll come back to the village. Changed. It's irresponsible keeping her here in your house.”

“Whose house?”

It was said and done then. He'd invoked the right of his hearth and border. Shorgbran and his friends would hesitate to break that, although he saw the way Shorgbran's eyes snarled. “You're a weak old man. Besla was right, too obsessed with your trinkets and nonsense to see what's in front of you. She'll gut you and eat you. Then where will all your digging have gotten you?”

#

The fields didn't call him today. Instead he went out to the back slopes with his shovel. Shorgbran's words rankled. What right did that man half his age, who'd never even known the before-times, have to judge him for what he did? He might be a foolish old man, maybe so, but he'd lived here all his life, his mother, grandmother, great grandmother had, and his improbably inherited memories told him that the soil had held no such curiosities before the Worldstorm.

Where would all his digging get him? Yondel admitted he had no idea. He'd no clue what caused him to come out here, digging up these odd treasures. Only the fact of their appearance, when they must have come, seeded in this ground--for something?

He dug around something he'd begun working on two nights ago. It was a metallic sphere, a kind of white-silver in colour, of a metal he hadn't the knowledge or memory to identify. It was covered in complex, moss-like designs, but they didn't feel as if they'd been made by an intelligent hand, it was much more as if they'd grown there, etched themselves onto the surface in the hours of their birth, some of them sunk deep, others kissing it so lightly that their presence was barely visible.

He dug until it was uncovered enough to be lifted from the earth--heavy, though not as heavy as it looked like it should be, light enough that he could pick it up and carry it down to the woodpile. It was a perfect globe, all the way around, covered all over in its markings--which were dark and fine, tending to swirl organically, grown not made, not unlike freckles on a human face. Despite its long burial in the dirt, it remained shiny, the metal almost giving off light.

“What is it?”

Eminlae had been watching him. Not surprising really; what else was she to do? She wouldn't yet dare to venture away from his hearth and border, she'd left the pot simmering, his clothes mended and drying, the floors swept. It reminded him poignantly of what it had been like to have a wife.

Too young, he reminded himself, and all too likely to turn into a monster.

Yondel lay the sphere down next to his other finds. “I have no idea,” he said frankly.

“Or what it does?”

“No. None.”

“Are there things like these under my mother's land?”

“Couldn't tell you, I've no right to dig there.”

“But do you think...?”

“I think they're everywhere.”

“But why?”

“That. That is entirely beyond me.”

She sat on the woodpile, chin in her palms. She was calmer than yesterday, though no less painted with the cruel fate that was coming to her. She said: “Folks don't like that you do this.”

“Oh, I know it.”

“Afraid, of what these might do.”

“I'll show you. When the sun sets.”

#

They sat together, watching it happen.

It seemed as if they were activated by darkness, or perhaps by moonlight.

By day there was just a collection of metallic objects, all of them different shapes and sizes, some perfectly round, others with edges as sharp as knives. Most of them were coloured in greys and whites, but some were deep black, and others bore traces of brighter colours.

“All from under your fields?”

“And a few from the woods.”

“All this, just lying under the village? All this time?”

He shook his head. “Our people have dug in these fields for three thousand years. Only since I was a child has anything like this come to the surface.”

“The Worldstorm.”

Cause or effect though? Yondel would have been guessing if he'd had to make an answer. And guessing he'd done in abundance over the years. Tonight, he just sat and watched them.

As the last blood-red turned purple then black, the objects started moving. At first it was only a little bit, a few of them vibrating, a few rolling slightly, just settling down for the night. But then angular statues lifted their heads, looking around with their sightless, carved eyes. Balls rolled slowly towards each other, huddling together in clumps--each day he separated them, and by each moonlight they found each other. Lumps of crooked metal got up and danced. Clumps of thick, tangled wire flowed like snakes, untangling for a while, shuddering, pointing towards the sky. A few seemed to dig themselves partially into the earth, hiding their faces.

Eminlae stared, rapt. “I never knew,” she said.

“Huh, well I don't know how to account for it.”

“At least it's something.”

“A piece in a thousand-piece puzzle.” And you might be another piece, though I don't know how to account for you either.

The globe was not immune to the magic. The newcomer was glowing now, not merely shiny, but bright like the sun--the old golden sun, not this new, grubby one, white where that sun had been gold. It cast an eerie light over all the other treasures, bringing out extra movement in their shadows, making the shadows flicker, shorten and lengthen, as if in the presence of an unstable white fire. As he watched, he saw the markings get darker, a black that dwarfed the night sky, and he saw new cracks emerging, deepening.

Yondel and Eminlae approached it from each side, leaning over it as it broke open.

“Look...” Eminlae breathed.

The globe was full of tinier balls, not quite round, and looking a bit softer than their shell. They were a whitish colour too, but swirled and speckled in various colours, a soft glow coming from their elliptical interior.

“That's a new one,” Yondel said.

And he'd meant to warn, ‘be careful, don't touch,’ but it was too late for that: Eminlae had already reached in, scooping the little balls up in her hands, crushing them in her fist.

“They tingle,” she said.

“Take care... please...”

She tossed back a brittle laugh: “What do I have to lose? Anyway, it feels good, not bad.”

“Tingling?”

“Yes.”

Yondel held out his hand.

“You have more to lose.”

“I'm close to ninety.”

She tipped some of the balls into his palm. They were warm and soft to the touch, and they did tingle. They were silky smooth and flowed about each other with some degree of magnetism. So, figure this one out old man.

“Are they seeds?” Eminlae wondered.

“Perhaps.” As good a guess as any.

“So, what happens if we plant them?”

“Good question.”

“Let's see.”

She was going to do her own thing anyway, whatever he had to say. The cowering child he'd encountered yesterday was not the real her. She was brave and spontaneous. Squatting down on the slope and digging a few shallow beds to plant these seeds/eggs/fruit/something. She covered them with earth and hurried back down to Yondel to watch the rest of his collection. Fascinated, apparently.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“Of course.”

“Let me see your hands.”

She flipped them palm up. There seemed to be no damage, no cutting or burning, no sign of blisters. Only one bulbous patch of black skin marred their softness.

Poor girl, he thought, reminded again of what was happening to her. She seemed to be coping pretty well.

“Let's see if they grow,” she said of what she'd buried.

#

Sixty years ago, a woman had come to Rainwillow Crossing, a refugee from the outside world. She'd been amongst a small group of them--less small when they'd started out--and she'd reached the Crossing in tatters, half-starved and dirty, exhausted from a desperate flight. They'd all been like that, eight of them out of seventeen who'd set out.

She'd told Yondel something of what the world was like below. “We'd forgotten the sun,” she said, “until we came here. Down there it’s obscured by all those clouds and mist. The air's thick with it--you forget what real air is like; that murkiness, it becomes normal.

“But it is terrible. It's toxic. There's no old people amongst us and our children are born so weak that few live. There's hardly anywhere anyplace that crops still grow properly. You get almost nothing, and it's covered in a thick slime. There's predators out there too, things that never existed before then.

“The mountain's ruined as well, the rock's soft inside. We've passed villages that have fallen, caved in from beneath themselves. I think it must be worse in the lowlands, it must be terrible. There's bones... Look: we lost four to cave-ins on the way up here, two just to weakness and sickness--died in their blankets overnight. We had one who just couldn't take it anymore, madness got into him, he started trying to dig something out of his stomach with a knife. He fled from whatever it was, stumbling over a cliffside. Two more were pulled from around the campfire by predators.”

And that totalled nine.

“It's dead out there,” she told him. “It's so awful to think of it like that everywhere, but they all say it is. The old women spoke through the fires in the early days, back when old women still lived. They reached friends thousands of miles away, and all of them said the same thing.”

“Everywhere?”

“Over the Gallamic Sea. The coastlines--there's nobody to reach...” She'd started sobbing at that point and he'd had no idea what to do. Holding her hand had been warm and intimate, but it was nothing near what her heart must need.

Her name had been Marlietta, and it had been decided that Yondel should marry her. He thought that he had never been happier.

#

Until three years later, when she'd lain tired in her blankets, holding a tiny, squalling bundle. A red, light haired bundle, with oversized eyes and spindly, soft limbs. A baby born small--as most were by then--but with a fierceness about her, and the hunger for life that a child would need to get by in this reworked world. She'd sucked quickly on Marlietta's nipple, drinking keenly and clutching with her delicate fingers at her mother's liquid-honey hair.

“Our baby,” Marlietta had whispered softly, not knowing that she wouldn't live to see the girl grown, “Our little baby.”

“That she is. What does Gosha say?” The midwife.

“We're both well, she should live.”

“That's all I care for.”

“You will name her.”

“You will. For all the people you've lost.”

“Mogdayne then. For my sister who died early on.”

#

And now. The fire swirled. Yondel looked up from the scrap of unearthed metal he was cleaning and polishing. In the flames he saw the beginnings of a face take form. His Mogdayne--not a child anymore, not even exactly a woman, her time out in the darkness had left changes in her. Her face seemed very pale in the fire, her hair profoundly dark in contrast. She was thin and her eyes were sunken, having taken on a crystalline quality, and a disturbing, emerald green colour. Her hair was pulled back in a knot, and a rag of some sort tied around her neck. On her left cheek a deep scar still took to bleeding at times.

On seeing her, Yondel scrambled to the fireside.

“Father,” her voice reached him crackling, spitting tiny orange sparks.

“I'm here, daughter. Are you safe and well?”

“Enough.”

“Where are you?”

“Grinterland. There are survivors here.”

“Many?”

Her face shadowed. Of course not. She said “A few.” But she'd passed whole cities out there and seen no sign of life, just charred and acid-worn ruins, black and tacky with slime. His heart cried for her, having to see these things. He'd stopped, long ago, asking her when she'd come home.

Yondel glanced behind him at Eminlae. “The cursing is here again.”

“In the village?”

“Yes. Just one at this stage.”

“Be careful then.”

“She's with me.”

“Father...”

“Just a girl. I'm too old for harsh measures.”

Mogdayne was no child either, not even a young woman. If lines didn't show on her face, then other things did: her skin had a hardness, like a shell, a brightness, her cheekbones had become distorted, pushed up towards her temples, while her forehead had sunken backwards, shiny, with dull, scaly patches. The fire-vision probably shielded him from the full, alien effect. She said, “There are others here.”

“Bandits?”

“No. They're good people.”

“They might seem it. People hide their true nature, and life warps even a good man over time, especially these times.”

“I'm no innocent, Father.”

“And if some of them are men...”

“No innocent. I told you. And no sweet-faced little maid to fire men's hearts either. You haven't seen me age or you’d know that.”

Haven't seen you at all. These so many years. His only child. Proud of her and still sick at heart for her choices.

She said: “I'll be fine.”

“You know that I fear for you.”

“I know. Father, we've decided to attempt the crossing.”

“How many of you?”

“There are six of us.”

“It isn't many.”

“It's time all the same.”

“I'll lose you.”

“I think so. But you see how we must.”

“I don't see why it has to be you.”

“How many are left? It has to be those of us who live and still remember.”

“This: you mean goodbye by this.” Her face flickering in front of him.

“I don't know that. I hope not”

“I wish you'd come home.”

“One day, if I can.”

I'll be dead by then. They both knew it. He reached his hand into the flame, ignoring a hiss of shock from Eminlae, he fastened his hand around his daughter's fading image, thinking to keep it somehow in his mind, to hold some piece of her, to keep her from going. She was smiling as her image became enveloped in the fire. “Thank you, Father, for every year.” It was a whisper, drowned by the crackling of flames. Then it was nothing, and he withdrew his hand, opening it to see that it contained nothing.

 

Picture credit/discredit/ author's own work