Tag: Books

The Leaving

FB_IMG_1590364184563She had waited for this day for twelve years. Every time an Underage met his or her Milestone, she had followed them up the tracks as far as she was allowed, dreaming of her own Milestone. This morning, her twelfth Day, Da had woken her before Lights, a ready bag in hand.

She had dressed carefully in her brand new Topside clothes, her hands trembling with excitement. She had to blend in, but the clothes felt so strange she couldn’t quite move correctly. The long skirt hung around her ankles, and she kept tripping. Da told her to take shorter steps and move more slowly until she adjusted, and she tried.

The long pack was heavy and hit her thighs just behind her knees with every step. She was relieved to climb on Da’s Motor and let it hang behind the seat. She had to hike the skirt up as well to straddle the Motor, and she relished the freedom of movement, the last she would experience for several… months? Yes, that was the word. She was going to have to remember to talk like a Topsider. Starting with not saying Topsider, she thought with a grimace. Surface dwellers called themselves Citizens.

The Motor made the trip up the tracks much shorter than she remembered. Da was a good driver, but the crossties still made for quite a few jolts. She kept her jaws clenched tightly to keep from biting her tongue, and when they finally stopped at the Door she ran her tongue over her teeth to make sure they were all still there.

She and Da stood together, his hand on the lever that opened the Door. “Are you ready?” he asked. She nodded. This was how it was. No ceremony. Only one witness to confirm the Leaving. He pulled the Lever, and the steel panels slowly rolled back into the walls.

She had seen charcoals of Topside, even a few oils, but she was not prepared. The city stretched vast before her, its towers reflecting in the river like bridges of glass. Gleaming silver transports mirrored the colors of the sky as the sun tipped the horizon. It was her first sunrise, and for a moment she thought the whole scene burned until she  remembered one particular oil.

Da pointed downriver. “There’s an old highway about a mile that way,” he told her. “Topsiders haven’t used it in decades, but it will get you across.” He squeezed her shoulder tightly, and she knew he was worried. Miners always worried about the Leaving. Sometimes they had reason.

“I’m ready, Da,” she assured him. “I can do it. I’ll be the perfect Citizen. You’ll see.”

He nodded, his eyes reddening. “Bring back everything you can,” he choked. “See you as a Miner.” He stepped away from her, ready to close the Door. She took a deep breath and stepped into the Topside.

The Flower Girl

FB_IMG_1590179770886She was my friend, but no one knew about her. She said no one would believe me anyway, so I never told anyone. Until now. Maybe you won’t think I’m crazy.

Her name was Daisy, but I called her my flower girl. She was so pretty in her white dress with a clover chain draped around her head. I thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world and my eight year old heart was smitten.

Daisy didn’t talk much. Mostly she smiled, giggled, ran away, and buried her face in every flower she found. She loved flowers and I could always find her hiding in the trailing roses at the edge of the cemetery.

I met her one day when I followed a lizard into the bushes. She had crouched behind them, watching the people pass by, she said. My lizard escaped while I stood and stared at her. She laughed at me and told me to chase her.

I had never been inside the cemetery before. It was an ordinary one, I suppose, but my child’s imagination had conjured all sorts of evil existing there. That day, with Daisy glancing over her shoulder at me as she ran, I forgot to be afraid. She led me a merry chase, up and down the rows of headstones, ducking behind trees and slipping away before I could catch up to giggle at me from behind another.

When the factory whistle reminded me of supper and my mother, she blew me a kiss and told me to come play again. So I did. Every afternoon, so long as it wasn’t raining, I ran to the cemetery to find her. She was always there, hiding under the trailing roses, and she always greeted me the same way. Every afternoon we played tag among the stones.

Some days, she would stop for a while at this grave marker or that, pointing at the words engraved there. I would stumble through the names and epitaphs, wondering what held her attention so long. Sometimes it would be a child’s grave, sometimes a soldier’s. Usually it named just an ordinary person. Some were new, some were so old the inscriptions were all but illegible. She never told me why they were important to her, and she never stayed long.

I never questioned that she was always there beneath the roses. I never asked why she never changed her dress. I never thought about the fact that her clover chain never faded or was lost, or her bare feet never dirty no matter how long we played. She was my best friend and the love of my young life.

Eventually other interests claimed me. The neighborhood boys recruited me for football practice with scraps from construction sites and dumpsters as goals, bicycle helmets and wadded newspapers in our shirts our only protection. My third grade teacher, a pleasant looking woman with a will like iron, believed in homework to keep idle hands from mischief, and thus stole many of the afternoons not devoted to “the game.”

Fewer and fewer days found me at the cemetery. When I did go, I found that playing chase and staring at headstones soon grew monotonous, and I would say goodbye to Daisy. She still blew me kisses and told me to come again, but she seemed different all the same.

One day, I followed her slowly into the graveyard instead of chasing her as usual. She stopped and turned to look at me, her smile gone. “Goodbye,” she said simply, then ran away. I went home to do my homework, and although I went to the cemetery for a few weeks afterwards, I never saw my flower girl again.

The Mirror World

FB_IMG_1590121467061All his life he had watched the world overhead. All his life he had wondered what it felt like to be surrounded by trees and green things. His own world was barren, a world of ice and rock. The two mirrored each other only in position.

There had been tales of adventurers who tried to climb the ice cliffs to cross the mirror. The few who returned had done so cruelly maimed or altered. None had reached the mirror and lived to tell the tale. None of the missing had ever been found.

Those attempts had been driven by curiosity, by restless individuals unsatisfied to observe from below. He identified with the feeling, but his uncle had kept him on a tight sinew. Adventuring didn’t pull fish from the ice or render whale blubber. So he had gazed at the green sky with its teeming life in longing.

Now the whales were growing scarce. Several years of bitter storms had thickened the ice and even the seals struggled to reach food through its layers. In recent cycles half of his village had sickened from starvation and exposure, and many had died. The Ice Elders had convened an emergency council and called for volunteers for an expedition to breach the mirror.

Not even his uncle could stop him this time. This attempt would be successful; he could feel it. He raised his hand as if to touch the trees. Soon enough, he thought, he would know. Soon enough he would have the answers he had always longed for.

His supplies lay at his feet, arranged carefully on a blanket of whale leather and tied with cords of sealskin through slits in the leather. He made a last check of picks, heavy leather ropes, leather repair kit, dried fish, and seal jerky. He lacked nothing, and rolled the blanket tightly before sealing the ends with more cord.

He looked around to find his uncle glaring at him from under the thick fur of his hood. The old man would never understand. He was angry with the Elders for their decision, refusing to believe the truth that the world was dying. Most of all he was angry with the boy. This was an act of defiance, an unforgivable offense. The boy could only hope that when he returned with wealth from a new world his uncle would see things differently.

He hefted his pack, fastening it securely to his shoulders. There would be no luxury of polar bear sleds on this journey. Most of it would be straight up where the bears could not follow. The Elders would be waiting at the village center. The time for goodbyes had passed. The new world called.

The Moth Princess

FB_IMG_1590103491783The day had come. The entire insect kingdom had gathered at The Willow for the official Emergence ceremony. The bees buzzed with excitement, their song rising harmoniously under the gently drooping limbs. Dragonflies swooped from branch to branch, their vibrant colors and crystal wings creating quite the show for the waiting audience. Beetles clicked and clacked around the roots, while ants scurried busily about carrying leafy trays full of good things to eat and drink.

Above all of them, the showy Atlas moth and his queen, the delicate Luna, flitted beneath the branches followed by the wise Polyphemus and the feathery Gypsy moth. They perched on the princess’s branch, two on each side of the cocoon, and waited while the undermoths quieted the crowd. When everyone was silent, King Atlas fluttered his crimson and orange wings, the carefully rehearsed pattern telling the story of the Princess’s time in the egg. When he had finished, Queen Luna danced the slow, beautiful story of the child’s days as a caterpillar, of how she had excelled in mulberry leaf eating, growing larger and more lovely than all the other caterpillars.

Prime Minister Gypsy fluffed his feathers to regale the audience with the presumed virtues of the soon to emerge Princess. Owl-marked Counselor Polyphemus waved his eyed wings in a stodgy explanation of the Princess’s royal duties. Finally, the preliminaries dispensed with, the cricket chorus tuned their legs and began the song to signal the Princess to awake.

With bated breath, the entire kingdom watched the strands of the cocoon began to snap. One by one they fell away until the Princess, wet and bedraggled, crawled out into the shaft of sunlight lying across the branch between the king and queen. For several long moments she rested, the circulation reaching every new vein and the bright sunlight drying her iridescent wings. Finally, when the watchers thought they could bear no more waiting, she spread her wings and looked down upon her kingdom.

She was as lovely as Gypsy had foretold. Enormous black eyes slanted upward into points above a pure white face, impossibly long black and white antenna waving gently above them. The tops of her wings gleamed like silver dust, while the bottoms sported delicate black pinpoints on a breathtaking greenish-white. The insect kingdom let out a collective gasp and bowed in awe.

The Princess was just beginning her welcome dance with the king and queen when a commotion on the ground interrupted the ceremony. Around the base of The Willow marched a great army of spiders, their long legs tossing any hapless insect in their path. Above them flew a silent horde of wasps and hornets, stingers at the ready. Horrified insects scrambled aeay from the invaders as ants deposited their refreshment trays and formed ranks against the spiders. Honeybees, bumblebees, and even the slowmoving carpenter bees joined forces against the flying army.

The battle raged fierce on both fronts. The spiders were larger and much better equipped, but the ants had strategy in their side. One after another the eight-eyed monsters fell before the organized defenders. The bees sacrificed themselves with admirable devotion, though only their numbers gave them victory in the end. When it was over, the victors surveyed great carnage, enemies and defenders lying dead alike between the roots.

The beetles rallied themselves and set about removing the bodies of the dead, while the crickets struck up a doleful lament for those who had paid the ultimate price for their sweet Princess. She peered down at them all from the safety of her branch, nodding her head in approval and thanks. When all evidence of the battle had been removed, she fluttered close to the ground, her wings glimmering in the fading light, including every insect in her welcome dance. Then her moth retinue surrounded her and bore her away to the treetops, her Emergence complete.

The Elevator

FB_IMG_1589902792589I stood on the boardwalk, gazing out at the elevator glowing faintly in the reflected light of the moon. The water was eerily still, barely a whisper in my consciousness. Pap, Mam, and I had been in line on the boardwalk since a week gone, since the day we were granted our tickets at the shore office. We’d been given a week’s rations in a wheeled cooler, issued uniforms in various shades of blue according to the strict set of guidelines posted on the wall of the office waiting hall. Mine was an ugly flat royal shade with large pockets and no distinguishing marks, the uniform of a pre-productive student. I hated it.

Pap and Mam sat on the the single duffel bag we had been given, that held the change of uniform provided, our passports and tickets, and the few personal items we had been allowed to bring. Their backs against the opposite rail, they huddled together, Mam’s head on his shoulder. She beckoned for me to join them, but I wasn’t ready for sleep yet. The elevator stood visible at the end of the boardwalk, just waiting, motionless for the first time since we had first seen it early that morning. Over and over I had watched it spin its way under the waves, carrying family after family to their new future.

I folded my arms on the railing and set my chin on them. Pap had talked for weeks and weeks about fair work, and new opportunities. Mam had been dreaming about a new house and neighbors. They hadn’t asked me what I thought. I remembered Ellie’s face when I told her we were leaving. And Boris, who had scowled and stomped away never to speak to me again. They were my best friends. We had done everything together since we were tots. Ellie and I had made pinkie promises just last year in third form to grow up and take care of each other. Boris and I had planned to join the Fieldball team together next year. Now I would never see them again. No one who went below ever came back.

That was the deal. Start over, that’s what they said. No ties to above. Personal items were heavily restricted, only useful items allowed. I was just glad that my fieldball was considered a useful item for a pre-productive. Mam had her art supplies; they barely qualified, and she had cried over leaving the portrait she had painted of Granda and Grana. No ties, not even to memories. Pap had a handful of books; they wouldn’t let him keep his Pap’s tools.

In the morning the elevator would descend empty and bring the welcomers up from below. Their white uniforms and slicked-back hair would shine in the early sunlight, like the surface of the waves. Only welcomers wore white; only welcomers ever returned to above. They would walk down the final stretch of boardwalk to unlock the gate, where they would stand and count the people jostling through. When the day’s limit was reached, they would close the gate, and those behind it would watch the space gradually widen behind the lucky ones who made it to the elevator.

In the morning we would be the first. In the morning we would see the sun, the surface of the ocean, the above, for the very last time. We would step onto the elevator with the shining welcomer and spin into the depths forever. So tonight, I stood at the railing and watched the moon. Tonight I said goodbye.

The Crater

FB_IMG_1589859101791“There it is!” Quinn whooped, making Michaela jump and clap her hands over her ears. “I told you! We’ve got it made now!”

“Good grief, how many times did Mom tell you to use your inside voice?” Michaela grumbled. She pressed her palm against the window glass in several places. “One of these days you’re gonna break the sound barrier.”

Quinn ignored her and swung the jeep door wide open, feet sinking into the shifting sand as he barreled out of the vehicle. Michaela followed more slowly, leaving the headlights on to supplement the unusually bright moon. Deep tracks trailed into the crater ahead of the jeep, signs of the daytime activity that had drawn them into this nocturnal investigation.

“Not much there,” Michaela sniffed. “Just some junk half buried.”

“Don’t be such a wet blanket, Sis,” Quinn snapped. “Something made this crater long enough ago for the sand to have filled in most of it and blown into drifts. We’re gonna find out what, and we’re gonna do it right now!”

He plunged down into the crater, sliding rather than walking in the loose sand. Michaela followed gingerly, grimacing at the sand that promptly poured into her hiking boot. They headed for the nearest “junk” protruding from the surface, a jagged edge of metal scored and dented beyond recognition. She sighed. Why she had let Quinn talk her into this hare brained scheme…

Well, there was no point in that. Here they were. Maybe they could at least get some scrap metal out of it. Although, she doubted anything worth money would fit in the carrier he had insisted on strapping to the roof of the jeep.

Quinn happily yanked pieces of wreckage out of the sand, examining them haphazardly before tossing them aside. Suddenly, he stood unusually still (especially for him), staring into the small pit his rummaging had created. He was still for long enough that Michaela became curious in spite of herself and slid closer to investigate.

“Quinn?” He didn’t look at her, and she noticed a glazed expression in his eyes. His back was to the moon, and his face should have been in shadow, but it was lit by a faint glow that originated in the sandy pit. “Quinn, talk to me!” She grabbed his arm and shook him violently, and least as roughly as she could manage while trying to get around the pile of junk he had thrown to the side.

When she finally made it to his side, she glanced toward the pit looking for the source of the faint glow. She had assumed it was moonlight reflecting from some smooth surface, but the object glowed on its own with a faintly blue light. As she watched the color shifted to orange and intensified, and she couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to look away.

Something whispered, words she couldn’t make out. Something brushed her hair, then caught in her shirt, but she still couldn’t look away. The whispers swelled, and shadows on the surface of the orange light coalesced into a familiar face. Quinn’s face was ghostly, set in an expression of horror. “Help me!” His lips shouted soundlessly, but she could no longer respond. The whispers became gleeful as Michaela saw her own body standing motionless above her.

The Fisher

FB_IMG_1589749643815She was a tiny boat, one of many lined up on the beach with the tide gently kissing their weathered boards. His first, purchased with the blood and sweat of grueling hours spent under the eye of his uncle. She wasn’t much to look at, peeling paint barely visible at the gunwale and salt soaked boards scoured by the sea. Even the rope tying her to the meager mooring hung heavy with the living debris of the waves. But she was sound, and she was his. He swelled with pride looking at her.

A couple of stray gulls lingered nearby, probably in hopes of finding a meal in the carnage left by the fishermen. They wouldn’t hover long, he thought with a smile. His wrists and elbows still ached from the scrubbing he had given her. Don’t give the hunters of the sea a reason to hunt you, his uncle always said. Or the hunted a reason to run.

He glanced toward the whitewashed guildhouses standing above the reach of the tide. One day, he was sure, he would stand alongside his uncle under those wide doors, bargaining for the best prices for his catch. Only the best of the best were allowed membership; only the highest quality fish passed through guild hands to the Noblesse’s tables.

He had to prove himself. A boy of sixteen, the guildfishers scoffed. Even the other lonefishers raised skeptical eyebrows at the idea of a boy in their midst. Especially a boy with only one hand. Only his uncle thought he stood any chance, had agreed to trade work for this aging slip, had given his missing limb no quarter in order to be sure he learned. The ocean was unforgiving; it would not hold back, therefore he could not.

With the dawn would come his maiden voyage. There would be no easy trips to the reefs for him. Let the lonefishers make short work of those; they would only torment him anyway. He had his secret coves, his hidden markers where the guildfleets feared to go. Long years of boyhood spent alone had ensured that advantage, and he would never tell.

He grinned to himself. The Outliers would taste the wealth of a Noblesse for once. The Towners would never buy from him, not now. Let the rumors spread. Let them wonder. They would seek him out from jealousy alone, and he would laugh and charge them double to make them feel important. It would be the first step.

The Worldkeeper

FB_IMG_1589547926891She was so small, a child really. The oversized case she lugged in her thin hand looked as if it could have pulled her to the ground  like an anchor. Her hair draggled down her back, unbrushed dirty blonde, the remains of braids tangled at the base of her skull. Unlike other children, she stared at me rather than my balloons. “I am Lila,” she said, owl eyes boring into me,  searching my depths for who knew what.

“What is in your case, Lila?” It was a strange question to ask a stray child, but she was strange. There was no air of the waif about her, despite the ancient undersized sundress that barely hid her frail body. And yet she didn’t seem to belong to any of the families playing on the sand below.

She blinked at me, head cocked to one side. “Oh, that’s my treasure,” she said, not a trace of a smile on her ghost of a face. “I carry them with me to keep them safe.”

My forehead creased between my eyes. “Them?” I asked. “What exactly do you have in there? Will you show me?” She seemed so innocent, but so disproportionately old. Prickles rose under my hairline when I looked at her, but I could not call my unease fear.

Lila laughed and shook her head, more strands of hair stringing from the leftover braids. “You wouldn’t be able to see anything!” she exclaimed, as if that should have been obvious. “Only I can see, because I am the keeper.”

“Does that mean someone gave you something to take care of?” I wondered. This unearthly girl was hardly a likely candidate for that, I thought. “Your mom or dad? Or maybe a grandparent?”

“Oh no,” she answered, her tone matter of fact. “I collected them.”

“From where?” I was beginning to feel suspicious, but I could not drag myself away. Her eyes, still fixed on me, held a fascination that I could neither explain or resist.

“Oh, wherever I find them,” she said thoughtfully. “I found one in a dandelion once.” She continued to stare at me.

“What exactly do you look for?” I stammered, fidgeting. I clenched and unclenched my empty hand behind my back, the other clutching sweat-slippery balloon strings.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just know when I see them that I have to keep them.” Her gaze finally shifted to the balloons, but unlike other children, she kept her solemn expression.

“Would you like a balloon?” I asked, feeling like it was my day for lame questions. Without hesitation she pointed to an entwined bunch of yellow, blue, and striped spheres. “Yes, I need those three,” she announced.

I carefully extricated them from my hand and gave them to her. Without a word she hefted her case and set off down the road away from the beach. “Wait!” I called after her. “What treasures do you keep? I have to know!”

She turned and smiled for the first time and glanced up at her bunch of balloons, then back at me. “Why, worlds, of course!” And as she walked away, the balloons aloft over her head, for a moment I actually saw them.

The Ghost

FB_IMG_1589074214619The monk stood beneath the arch, staring down the endless corridor of archways. Once echoing with the sounds of prayers and sandals, once filled with the bounty of the fields waiting to be distributed where needed, the archways stood empty and silent. He was alone.

No one had foreseen the disaster. The unholy thing had slipped in so easily, feasting on the contentment of the people. There had seemed no need for guard; the peace of the community had been unbroken for centuries. The stranger was welcomed with open arms and generous kindness.

The monk barely remembered the first disappearance. An old man, he thought; or perhaps it was an old woman. The forgotten went first. The children were next, and with the first of those losses came the fear. By then it was too late.

One by one they were taken. One by one the community dwindled. When it came for the monks they were powerless. Their own fear and grief was their undoing. They fell to the unholy stranger like the last in a chain of dominoes.

The monk stood under the arch, staring down the endless corridor of archways. Here he would stand forever, the ghost of all those he had taken. With their deaths he had died, trapped forever in this empty hall of his own making.

The Road

FB_IMG_1582732885221She had lived in the shadow of the mountain all her life. No matter the season, it’s snowy crags had punctuated her world, piercing the sunrise and reflecting the fire of sunset. Now, standing here on the old Roman road, it stood as the final bastion of my old life.

The road itself seemed as timeless as the mountain. From the first time I saw it as a child running wild on the moor, it had fascinated me with its ancient mystery. When I asked my father about it, he would only say that it was the old Roman road. My mother gasped over her loom and dropped her shuttle, something her expert hands never did. In twenty years I had never asked again, but its stones had called to me in my dreams, and often I had searched for its path among the heather and gorse.

Now my parents were dead, my mother to a fever my fifteenth winter, my father to old age only a month gone. Nothing held me to the village; marriage would soon no longer be a possibility even were I drawn to any of the young men. Already glances slid over me as if I were no more than scenery.

I walked the moor for the last time, and for the first time placed my feet upon the ancient Roman stones. My breath caught in my chest. Soon the mountain would be behind me, only the road stretching before me stone after stone. I hefted my bundle and with a deep breath set one foot before me, then another.