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The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allen Poe (1839)

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain — upon the bleak walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows — upon a few rank sedges — and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees — with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium — the bitter lapse into every-day life — the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart — an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it — I paused to think — what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down — but with a shudder even more thrilling than before — upon the re-modelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country — a letter from him — which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness — of a mental disorder which oppressed him — and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said — it was the apparent heart that went with his request — which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other — it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the “House of Usher” — an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment — that of looking down within the tarn — had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition — for why should I not so term it? — served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy — a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity — an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn — a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me — while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy — while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this — I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality — of the constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A glance, however, at His countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence — an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy — an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision — that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation — that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy — a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “I shall perish,” said he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect — in terror. In this unnerved — in this pitiable condition — I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth — in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated — an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit — an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin — to the severe and long-continued illness — indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution — of a tenderly beloved sister — his sole companion for long years — his last and only relative on earth. “Her decease,” he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, “would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread — and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother — but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain — that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.

For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why; — from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least — in the circumstances then surrounding me — there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvass, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted Palace,” ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

In the greenest of our valleys,

By good angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace —

Radiant palace — reared its head.

In the monarch Thought’s dominion —

It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair.

II.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow;

(This — all this — was in the olden

Time long ago)

And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odor went away.

III.

Wanderers in that happy valley

Through two luminous windows saw

Spirits moving musically

To a lute’s well-tunéd law,

Round about a throne, where sitting

(Porphyrogene!)

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch’s high estate;

(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)

And, round about his home, the glory

That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed.

VI.

And travellers now within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows, see

Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody;

While, like a rapid ghastly river,

Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh — but smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher’s which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones — in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around — above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence — the evidence of the sentience — was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him — what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

Our books — the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid — were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D’Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium , by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and œgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic — the manual of a forgotten church — the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead — for we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue — but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified — that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch — while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room — of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened — I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me — to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan — but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes — an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me — but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.

“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence — “you have not then seen it? — but, stay! you shall.” Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this — yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars — nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.

“You must not — you shall not behold this!” said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. “These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon — or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement; — the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite romances. I will read, and you shall listen; — and so we will pass away this terrible night together.”

The antique volume which I had taken up was the “Mad Trist” of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher’s more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he harkened, or apparently harkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:

“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest.”

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) — it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:

“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten —

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;

Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard.”

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement — for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound — the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon’s unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast — yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea — for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:

“And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound.”

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than — as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver — I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words.

“Not hear it? — yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long — long — long — many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it — yet I dared not — oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! — I dared not — I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them — many, many days ago — yet I dared not — I dared not speak! And now — to-night — Ethelred — ha! ha! — the breaking of the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield! — say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!” — here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul — “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!”

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell — the huge antique pannels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust — but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold — then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened — there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind — the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight — my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder — there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters — and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the “House of Usher.”

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writerofstorms · 3 years

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The Golden Death Mask

“Careful, Dr. Cyrus,” The director said as they lifted the lid. “Come now, don’t give me that look.”

Dr. Cyrus let out a puff of air to blow her bangs out of her eyes. Turning the inner lid on one side, they placed the lid on its feet beside the outer lid. Director Gavin Rhodes took a step towards it and let out a content sigh. “Beautiful,” he said, reaching up to run his gloved hand delicately along the lid’s carved face.

Dr. Cyrus turned her attention instead towards the contents inside. The smell of dust, old cloth, and the unmistakable smell of a mummified corpse. No, not the smell of decomposition, it was unexplainably… different. Her eyes immediately landed on the metal and she let out a gasp. “His death mask is made of gold.”

The group abandoned studying the coffin lids to instead gawk at the mask. Assistant Director Natalia Gutiérrez studied the coffin lids. “There’s no cartouche on the lids, in fact, there’s just a name no title at all.”

Dr. Cyrus pulled out a notebook and flipped through. Her hands skimmed down the lines until her eyes caught on what she needed. “Junior Assistant Arthur Minear noted that the wax seals were already broken before they took off the first lid.”

The director leaned over the sarcophagus to look at the wrappings on the mummy. Lo and behold there in the center of the decorative black linen wrapped around his chest, in gold was an oval shape with a flat line as the base. Inside the oval were hieroglyphs representing a sedge and a bee. Blindly, the director reached out to who was standing next to him not wanting to take his eyes off the cartouche before him. “A pharaoh.” He whispered.

Natalia spun around from the lid. “Are you losing your mind finally Gavin?” She asked, but nearly ran to lean over the mummy. The laugh she had let out caught in her throat as she saw it. After a moment of silence, while the group all looked at the body, she read out the cartouche. “Nswt-bjtj, Nfr.jt, Sa-Rê.”

“I’ve never seen this cartouche before,” Dr. Cyrus started, “have you?”

“Never,” Gavin said shaking his head slightly. “Nofre-it huh? That’s not the name on the lid, right? What’s a pharaoh doing in here?”

“My guess would be to prevent graverobbers.” One researcher suggested as he leaned his camera in close to get pictures of the details on the decorative black linen.

Natalia let out a happy laugh. “And it looks like it worked.” Her eyes shined brightly, as the discovery of a lifetime finally dawned on her.

“Well, safe from graverobbers until now.” Dr. Cyrus said drily. She grabbed a notebook to flip through lists of known pharaohs. “The only difference between graverobbing and archeology is time.”

Gavin gave her a look. “Always such an optimist.” He said. Turning his attention back to the body he examined the pattern of the wrappings. “I want to say 12th or 13th dynasty. Though it’ll be hard to say for sure without his real sarcophagus.”

Natalia reached in to gingerly life the pharaoh’s death mask. Placing it lightly onto the nearby table, the face was completely unwrapped. Once the golden mask was no longer holding it up, Nofre-it’s jaw fell open. Gavin warned her to be careful, earning him an eye-roll in response and Natalia arguing that the jaw was definitely already separated before she took the mask off.

The photographer zoomed in on the pharaoh’s face to take a picture but nearly dropped his camera. “L- look. His face, he-” His voice died in his throat, unable to even describe what he was seeing.

“Yeah, a shame. Luckily his jaw didn’t fall off. Odd that his face wasn’t wrapped, especially since he’s a pharaoh. Perhaps it happened when his body was moved to this coffin-”

The photographer practically shoved the camera in Gavin’s face. Gavin took a second to process what he was seeing. He tested it by moving the camera from the pharaoh’s face, to the various faces around the room, the pharaoh’s body, the sarcophagus lids, then back to the face. Dr. Cyrus crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “What? What is it?”

He took a picture of the face and rushed to see how it turned out. Gavin turned the camera around for them to see.

On the screen was the mummy lying in the coffin, wrapped up in linen tightly up to the neck. His face was still unwrapped, but it wasn’t blackened, sunken. It was a warm chestnut color, smooth and filled out with round cheeks. His hair was a deep brown near black, extremely short to keep him cool in the oppressive heat in Egypt.

Dr. Cyrus went to comment on how young he looks, but she was cut off by a scream of “his mouth!”

Out of the mummies mouth, slowly a thick black smoke poured out. The photographer snatched his camera back to document what was happening. With each click of his camera, the fog emerged faster and faster. The smoke completely covered the body, making it completely impossible to see Nofre-it inside of the coffin.

“Grab the lid and cover him!” Natalia yelled, grabbing one edge of the outer lid.

Gavin rushed over with the others and grabbed at the coffin’s feet. “No,” Dr. Cyrus shouted. “Not you Gavin!”

It was too late though, and as they were carrying over the lid, the director felt the lid slip out of his hands and it fell to the floor. The sound of the shattering terracotta lid echoed through the room.

“I thi-think,” Natalia said slowly as she saw a wrapped hand grab the edge of the coffin. “I think I finally believe in all those curses.”

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chimpanzeemusic · 6 years

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We wandered along the edge of the deepening canyon. With every step, the stream’s chill, clear waters cut ever more deeply into the volcanic basalt that formed the ground beneath our feet. Gusts of wind pulled on the storm-twisted shrubs and tawny shocks of long grasses, pausing to tug at our jackets before rushing down to join the water cascading steadily into a valley hazey with distance. We stopped and squinted again at the black and white map we’d printed off at a cafe and compared it with a picture we’d taken of a map on a sign the day before. Somewhere in Colombia’s Los Nevados National Park, we guessed we were in the Valle de los Perdidos. What we didn’t have to guess was that we were lost.

As a side note: thank you, America, for having drinking fountains. On another note: thank you, Colombia, for having syrup chicken.

Some days prior we’d arrived in Bogotá on a Sunday, and on a holiday, Dia de la Virgen. Consequently, the city of eight million souls had felt almost deserted. We’d known immediately what we wanted to do in Colombia: we sought the páramo, the high-altitude tropical grasslands so characteristic of the Andes. We managed to find the National Parks office downtown and discovered when they opened (a day later) and when we returned that their own maps and information on their parks, well, sucked. National parks in America arebasically chock-full of maps, info and trail routes you can grab from a visitors’ center with as easily as you’d find a drinking fountain. As a side note: thank you, America, for having drinking fountains.On another note: thank you, Colombia, for having syrup chicken.

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There was enough information to figure out which parks were closest to us and Bogotá, and with the help of some outdated guidebooks we’d sniffed out in a secondhand bookshop we’d ultimately selected the promising slopes of Los Nevados National Park. The bus ride to the town nearest its base was a thrilling introduction to one of South America’s most beautiful and often shunned countries possessed of all the amenities a world traveler could ever desire. “Hey, Shawn, look, they have food here! There’s bananas! Also, rice!”

They even have those beefed-up weasel things!

Indeed, the casual charm of nearby Ecuador and the ever-Instagrammable llamas of Macchu Picchu—paired with Colombia’s decades of rebel insurgencies and drug wars— seems to have dissuaded many travelers from visiting Colombia. Things have been on a slow chill-out since 2012, though, and a final peace accord was ratified on November 29, 2016, like, at least a week and a half before we bothered to show up. Correspondingly tourists are a flockin’. Flockin’ tourists. All up in Colombia’s bizness.

Passing through the larger city of Ibague, we finished our bus ride in Armenia. Armenia, Colombia, is incredibly like Cotopaxi, Colorado and Cuba, New Mexico (both of which I’d seen in the weeks prior) in that it scarcely resembles its foreign namesake. Fascinating, I know. Somewhat more interestingly, According to a Wikipedia article without any sourcing, “it is believed that the name [of the city] was changed to Armenia after the country of the same name, in memory of the Armenian people murdered by the Turkish Ottomans in the Hamidian Massacres of 1894–97 and later the Armenian Genocide of 1915–23.”

The tourist office informed us hikes into the páramo could only be done with a local guide, and so they’d gotten rid of all local maps that showed us the way to go.

We stopped at an hospedaje in Armenia and ferreted out some basic topographic maps of the national park with Google-fu. The next morning, we took a minivan uphill to the small town of Salento, which we walked around in search of additional information. The tourist office—according to old blogs, a good source of mountain intel—now informed us hikes into the páramo could only be done with a local guide, and so they’d gotten rid of all local maps that showed us the way to go. But if we wanted, they explained, they knew a guide who could take us where we wanted to go, for a reasonable price. We said thanks, said we’d keep them in mind, and marched off to the mercado, where we bought some bread and apples. Back in the main square of Salento we hopped aboard one of the many tourist jeeps that regularly ferried tourists uphill towards the famed Cocora Valley, an Instagram-famous land replete with wax palm trees whose lofty fronds once soared above the rainforest canopy and now stood vigil picturesquely above grassy, denuded slopes of grazing cattle.

We decided the Cocora Valley would best be enjoyed as the downhill section of a loop, and so we instead set off towards up the first bit of the loop, a side canyon leading to a placed boasting to be the Casa de los Colibris—the Hummingbird House.

As we advanced beneath lumbering packs, we attempted to avoid stepping in water and mud, which Shawn was able to do for a grand total of three seconds when a stream-embedded log capsized underfoot. We eventually made it to a hummingbird sanctuary which was full of, like, day-tripping Europeans drinking tea and stuff. As we sipped the warm, sweet cinnamon tea we’d purchased we happily discovered an old topographic map affixed to the wall. The caretakers told us the páramo was still several hours uphill. Unfamiliar with the path and just a couple hours from dusk, we decided to stay the night and resume our trek early in the morning. We paid them a couple of dollars and slept on the floor of a wooden building still under construction, doors left open to the mist that crept in as the sun set.

COATI TIME!!

Out on the trail the next morning, we passed two men folding a tarp in a trailside clearing in the early light. Dressed in knee-high rubber boots, shorts and t-shirts, one wore a white beanie, the other donned a bowler hat and carried juggling pins. Just then, a group of European trekkers descended in boots slathered with mud. Their Colombian guide seemed upset when he learned we were on our own. “You need a guide,” he said sternly, “the National Park guard at the park border won’t let you pass on your own. Also, not only could you get lost in the fog, you could die.” We shrugged at his empty warning—we’d died inside long ago. The group then continued onward, the guide apparently forgetting to ask our Colombian companions where their guide was.

Alone again with our new Colombian friends, we learned their names and talked a little bit more. Somewhat dismissively, I decided they seemed friendly, buena onda chaps but people I’d likely never see again, being the expert hiker and Fast-Walker-Up-Things I so obviously was. We bid them good-luck and good-bye, and good-walked all up the trail at a good pace.

Before long, we came across the National Park office, inhabited by a kind human being and a raucous, tethered dog. We didn’t ask this kind sir if two Americans needed a guide, and neither did he. Instead, he gestured for us to sign our names on the trail register and he told us about a time when he’d spied the elusive Andean sun bear, a shy species that eats a nutritious variety of bromeliads, grubs, and Michael Bolton fans. He told us one of the greatest difficulties in managing the park was the presence of families who had been settled on the high plain a generation or two ago, and now they had always lived there, darnit, depending on cattle to eke out an existence. The cows pooped everywhere, he complained, and their manure tainted many of the streams and rivers the cities below depended on for water, including the brook that ran nearby. Cows, I concluded, are terrible people.

We’d packed some snazzy Gatorade-brand protein bars, a strange colloid of high-tech Rice Krispies and caramel whey stuff generously lacquered in chocolate-flavored palm oil coating.

Wheezing, hungry and sun bear sighting-less, we busted out our grub for lunch, consisting of the last of our bread and apples from the Salento mercado and some snazzy Gatorade-brand protein bars, a strange colloid of high-tech Rice Krispies and caramel stuff generously lacquered in chocolate-flavored palm oil coating. “This is delicious,” remarked Shawn, and I agreed. We’d packed enough for the duration of our journey in the páramo, some three dozen 250-calorie packages of coagulated-whey America.

Whilst we feasted upon this chocolaty bounty, we were joined by Camilo and Andres, who apparently hadn’t been trailing too far behind us. After chatting for a bit. we started up the hill again, this time together. The trail was a downright slog, ofttimes covered wholesale by deep patches long blob areas of mud. Resistance was futile, and before long our shoes and legs had been assimilated by the mountain.

Weary hours passed as we made our way beneath the drab green cloud forest canopy, each tree trunk and branch covered in a profusion of feathered, silvery lichens, ruddy mosses, and bright fungi.

The 50% Great Worm

Abruptly, the thick forest gave way to amber sedges and tufted grass. Interspersed among the lower vegetation were curious plants, solitary stalks the width of a child’s wrist growing anywhere from several inches to several times the height of a deer in platform shoes. Topping these stalks were leaves covered in fuzz, a soft, green flannel. These curious plants, these frailejónes, indicated we had reached the páramo.

Camilo, Andres, Shawn and I rejoiced as we followed the trail up tawny ridges, marveling at the views and shivering as the alpine winds–no longer slowed by trees–tore at us and our belongings.

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At length, the trail led us to a farmhouse and hospedaje, the first of two in the area. But we had a tent we’d lugged up the mountain, darnit, so we advanced on to the second hospedaje, leaving Camilo and Andres behind.

begone, peasant…

A European sort excoriated us when we told him we’d flown to Colombia and would be flying out. We took no offense, knowing without having to ask he’d walked slowly across the entire Atlantic seafloor from Western Europe to arrive.

The hospedaje was a bit further than it’d been made out to be. Even if we’d wanted, they didn’t have any available rooms with beds—a European tour group presently infested these—but they did have a toilet, and this sneaky fancy-person house feature nabbed us right in the comfort organ, pzang! For a couple dollars we set up our tent in a room consisting of a concrete floor walled off from the wind. Our shoes were a mess from the day’s mud slog, so after a scrub in a tiny rivulet we hung them by their shoelaces on the eaves of the house, where they dripped and swung in the stiff nighttime wind. We talked a bit with the other guests; one guy who told us the national park was under threat of huge mining developments and another sort who excoriated us when we told him we’d flown to Colombia and would be flying out. We took no offense, knowing without having to ask he’d walked slowly across the entire Atlantic seafloor from Western Europe to arrive.

View from the hospedaje, and a distant valley to be explored some other day

We woke up before dawn and set out for some hot springs a number of miles away. The hike was visually nice and not too chilly. As we walked, we breakfasted on a protein bar each. We’d now eaten them for three straight meals, and they didn’t seem to be as good as we first remembered them.

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We dropped in elevation from our spot the night before, passing through frailejónes and emerging onto a flat, grassy plain. Uphill to our right, a 20 m waterfall slipped over orange-ish rocks, indicating geothermal activity. Ahead of us, the trail seemed to go through the center of the wide plain and through a herd of cows.

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We walked for a while, the trail petering out. We continued gamely, figuring it would re-appear as is often the case with less-used trails. It didn’t, but we headed anyways in the general direction we thought we were supposed to be following and walked along an chill river which deepened into a gully, then a gulch, then grew into a canyon. We kept the canyon to our left side, still keeping a lookout for the trail. Ahead, the canyon could be seen descending far, far, below. It didn’t look impassable, but it also seemed… wrong.

The canyon begins to deepen

It was almost as if OKAY LOOK WE GOT LOST AND I THINK THIS HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED I HAVE RUN OUT OF FANCY FEAST DESCRIPTION POINTS FOR THIS OTTER MEMORY AND IF I KNEW HOW WE HAD GOTTEN LOST WE WOULDN’T HAVE DONE SO so anyways we finally halted when a steep ravine cut across our path from the right, and consulted what little information we had. A future version of ourselves would have a GPS-enabled smartphone with offline locating-powers to divine our location, but present-us had a small paper map, some grainy pictures and a desire to not lose any more of our hard-gained elevation. Maybe… eating would help us think. “Hey, do you want a protein bar?” I asked my brother, waggling one temptingly in front of his face. “Ugh,” he said in revilement, and rose to leave instead. “You might be lost,” he continued, “but I was just a little disoriented. The trail is up that way.” He pointed up the ravine towards Tolima above. “Good thing it’s not foggy.”

We climbed for a while, seeing nothing besides sweet fuzz-plants and weird moss.

Then, movement, up ahead. Two figures picked their way into the ravine—one with a beanie, the other with a bowler hat and juggling pins: Camilo and Andres.

Enthused but tired, we slithered up to meet them with the sudden enthusiasm of weasels that have just encountered a roadkilled ‘possum—astounded, thrilled.

Enthused but tired, we slithered up to meet them with the sudden enthusiasm of weasels that have just encountered a roadkilled ‘possum—astounded, thrilled. They seemed pleased, but not surprised to see us. They’d also lost the path for a bit, but had stayed closer to the mountain above and hadn’t gotten lost. As we chatted, I noticed what appeared to be a twisted piece of aluminum, two feet long, torn jaggedly at the edges and bearing many small rivets. Curious.

We left the ravine together, Shawn and I trudging from exhaustion. The trail would rise and fall several times and traverse some marshy, sulfurous areas before finally cresting a ridge somewhere around 13,500) feet elevation.

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We dropped and walked around a bend and beheld a green carpet of verdant grass far below us. A handful of small corrugated-roof buildings clustered alongside two small pools which steamed visibly. We had arrived at the hot springs. (12,795 ft elevation)

We sat in the warm waters of the pool and soaked as the the sun set. We’d hiked up the hill above the settlement fifty feet at a time before we’d collapse to the grass, breathing ragged with exhaustion. “Why… why are we so tired?” Shawn muttered querulously, “The elevation… maybe?” We were somewhere around 13,000 feet, so this was certainly part of it, but it didn’t seem complete. I was doing better, overall, and this gave me an idea. “Shawn, how many of those bars did you eat?” “Bars?” “The protein bars.” “Oh. Gross. Um, one in the morning, one later… two?” ‘You’ve eaten 500 calories today. I’ve eaten 750. We should be eating maybe… 3,000 calories each up here. That’s why we can hardly move.” Indeed, though our bodies desperately needed food, our minds had concluded nauseously we they wanted nothing to do with our Gatorade-endorsed mainstay. Unfortunately, it was also all we had left. We weren’t in danger of running out, but actually stomaching the things was becoming most unpleasant.

View above the hot springs, our green tent can be seen below. Note where grazing takes place.

The view from the top of the ridge had been tremendous, but the simmering waters of the springs were better. It was easy to forget we had been too weak to reach the very top of the hill, and more relaxing to consider the mysterious pictographs we’d seen on the rocks partway up the slope. The caretaker didn’t know how old they were, but by their faded condition it seemed people had been visiting this area for a very long time. What kind of world had it been, then? Did people live up here? How far had the cloud forests extended below? Had there been pizza? What about syrup chicken?

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The springs themselves had certainly been changed. The water was piped from slightly above the settlement to a series of two pools. The first was a sitting-depth pool the size of a large hot tub and very warm indeed, the water exited this pool and dropped about ten feet until it reached a larger, more tepid pool below, probably 20 feet/6 m across. The water here ranged from 3-6 ft deep, the floor a slick bedrock in places. The edges of the pool were made of long bands of riveted aluminum. Investigating further, we noted these same pieces of metal could be found supporting various parts of the spring pool complex and its surroundings, including the walkway between the pool and the mud-daubed structure above it. Two shedlike areas were full of scrap metal, all made of the same riveted aluminum.

They were pieces of a wrecked airplane.

As I’ve written this overly long, boring account I’ve wondered about the identity of this plane. When did it crash? Who did it carry? Where were they headed? I tried to suss out its identity online, and followed many wrong leads before learning there had been many, many crashes in Colombia. Eventually, I found a site that explained there were had been 55 crashes in Colombia from 2000-2015, and 414 total crashes since 1920. This site helpfully mapped out the more recent crashes, and of these just one was anywhere near the hot springs, near La Venecia on the map below.

The site of the crash is less than a day’s walk from the springs.

This particular plane crash was flight FAC-1659, a Vietnam-survivor Douglas C-47 Skytrain apparently used in anti-rebel fighting.

Military plane—->leisure pool?

Further e-search into its demise begins to reveal conflicting information—supposedly crashed on an 11,200 ft tall mountain called Cerro Montezuma: actually a mostly-flat area 4,400 f/1350 m in elevation, but actually it crashed on its return to the airbase, and actually it crashed in either the Serrania de la Tatama or the Nevado del Tolima mountain areas, which are in completely opposite directions a hundred miles apart. Was this our mystery plane, carefully packed mile by mile in manageable pieces by horseback to the springs, or was it the remnants of some other hapless flying machine?

I have no idea. When I would try to find the caretaker the next morning to ask him where he’d come across the metal, I’d learn he’d gone into the hills.

We spent the evening hanging out with Camilo and Andres and discussed plans for the morning. “You guys staying tomorrow?” I asked. “Well,” Camilo said, “We thought there’d be more people here. We thought maybe we’d do a little juggling for the crowd to offset the cost of coming here. But it’s just us. And we still have to earn enough for our bus fare back home somewhere.” Indeed, it was just the four of us, besides the quiet, but enigmatic caretaker, who had told us at times there were dozens of people camping at the springs. “We’re just going to go back the way we came,” said Andres, “make it home by the evening. What about you?” “Our flight leaves in two days, so we’re taking off tomorrow as well.”

We spent the rest of the evening companionably. I choked down a Gatorade bar. Shawn demurred. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said.

The next morning dawned cold, clear and beautiful, with few clouds, illuminating a mountainside frailejónes in rosy morning light. I returned to the tent to find Shawn awake, but reluctant to leave his sleeping bag cocoon. “Is my swimsuit out there?” he asked. “Here,” I said, and handed him frozen swim trunks. Shawn glared at the fabric Frisbee and considered for a moment. Looking outside and seeing the coast was clear, he ran across frosted grass a short distance to the pool and jumped in, swimsuit in hand. “Thawed at last,” he said as he pulled it on.

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After the tent had dried in the sun, we reluctantly left the spring behind for the last time. As we packed up our stuff, we came across our protein bars. They weren’t bad, per se, they just needed to be eaten in reasonable quantities. I had an idea. “Hey, guys, would you guys be interested in trading for any protein bars?” “Sure,” Camilo and Andres responded. They didn’t really need the food, but now they were headed back down to the city they had more than they wanted. Trying a bar might be alright, though. I returned with four of our eight remaining bars, trying to be generous. After a minute they emerged from their tent with a massive bag of roasted, shelled peanuts, a couple pounds, maybe, and handed them over with a smile. This bag of legume loot even had candied toffee peanuts mixed in. It was a treasure, a thing most crunchy and sweet. We’d just traded for peanuts, and it was glorious.

We’d just traded for peanuts, and it was glorious.

******

After we’d said our goodbyes to our friends—for real, this time—we’d taken off to the south, leaving the high mountain plains behind and entering the cloud forest. Energized and enthused by our peanut bounty, we walked for hours.

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We reached the small town of El Salto (elevation 3376 m/11076 ft), and waited by what seemed to be some kind of hospedaje. After an hour or so, a lady returned and informed us the beds were $3 dollars each, or we both could stay in another room sans beds for $2.

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An oddity of traveling in another country is that regardless of the coin you bring, you quickly acclimate to whatever the going rate is for things. Dollars stretched reasonably far in Colombia, and so Shawn and I began to debate whether or not we had the money to pay for such a luxury as a bed. By the time we concluded that yes, in fact, the two extra dollars would not ruin us, six Colombian teenagers on a hiking trip (an energetic teen guiding them) had nabbed the beds and guaranteed our spot in a room with bags of potatoes and wet saddles and bridles hung out to dry, eau de shoe complimentary. The landlady informed us that a meal was just a few thousand Colombian pesos, a couple of dollars. It seemed expensive, but anxious for variety we decided just to go for it. As we warmed alongside the teenagers sitting on kitchen benches raised by the wood-burning stove, we marveled at just how good rice, red beans and a fried egg could be (we’d later learn we were charged more than our Colombian friends… oh well).

We awoke the next morning just in time to see the dawn’s light warmly suffusing the southern slopes of Volcan Tolima. Returning to our humid mud room, we concluded our evil plan to pitch and dry our tent by sleeping in it inside had failed. As we aired it out in the sun that soon crested the valley ridge, the teenagers arose, chattering excitedly about a waterfall they planned to visit that day. Their leader was particularly enthusiastic. The hike would be quick, he claimed, not more than an hour. Skeptical, we concluded even if the expedition went overtime we’d probably still have plenty of time to make the descent to Ibagué, our bus back to Bogotá, and our flight to Peru in the wee hours of the morning.

The descriptively named waterfall of El Salto (you guessed it, “waterfall”) lay just downstream of the town that bore its name. The ringleader/tour guide of the boys had previously visited, but as his flitting attention span, tremendous amounts of energy and scant patience took us several times through thick forest to the cliff’s edge near the head of the waterfall our confidence in his abilities began to wane. Nonetheless, the path to the falls’ base was at length discovered, and after a steep descent using mossy trees and rocks as handholds we arrived.

The damp clay soil banking the trail had the precise color and texture—tragically, not the flavor—of a rich, fudgy dark chocolate ganache.

Over two hours had passed by the time we returned to El Salto. Shouldering our packs, we passed a farmer digging a field by hand as we began to slog up the mountainside. The damp clay soil banking the trail had the precise color and texture—tragically, not the flavor—of a rich, fudgy dark chocolate ganache. The trail snaked back and forth across the slope, but for the most part carved straight up the mountainside. Foot traffic, cattle and water running along its length had slowly transformed it into a deep gash into which frustrated, motivated people had occasionally wedged timber in an effort to reduce the number of times plunging a foot into deep mud was a requisite, but cows, remember, are terrible people and had jacked up a lot of it.

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Muddied feet at last gained the pass at the ridgetop. Far beneath us, clouds obscured the view of distant Ibagué like dirty clothes hiding a dorm room floor—we’d see it eventually, but not without a day’s determined effort.

The hike from Ibagué had gained a reputation among online forums and blogs as an arduous, ugly descent but instead was one of the most beautiful hikes through cloud forest I’ve ever had.

Mountain descent to the famed city of Alternate Istanbul

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The other Istanbul

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At the base of El Secreto Preserva Natural

As we entered Combeima Canyon, cloud forest occasionally gave way to steep slopes of coffee. Waterfalls slipped into the river far below and we saw fields and houses perched precariously on the few flat areas.

As we descended the slopes from Tolima a strange copper-colored stream crossed the trail from our left, eventually disappearing into the forest. Did it harbor some fascinating microbe from geothermal activity, or were these mine tailings from the illegal gold mine we’d heard hid somewhere in the hills above Ibagué ? Shawn thought geothermal. I wasn’t so sure.

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After some time, we reached the outskirts of a town. Seeing a child playing among the barbed-wire clotheslines of a yard, we asked if we were headed in the direction of Ibagué. He responded, but with a heavy speech impediment we found difficult to understand. We continued to speak with him until his mother called him sharply from somewhere inside the house. Not long after, we came across another two children playing. Oddly enough, one of them also seemed to have some sort of mental or communicative disability. Their mother called them inside when she spotted us. I have no experience whatsoever in identifying developmental issues in children, but it seemed odd that two of three children we’d met had various conditions. I was reminded uncomfortably of the copper stream and the gold mine somewhere far above.

We spotted a man on the slope above us, who gave us directions at last. We confirmed them with a father and son busy at work planting a field that sloped steeply into the ravine below.

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Several more hours yielded the end of the trail. We caught a jeep in Juntas, the small town above Ibagué, riding past outdoor restaurants that looked to be a popular weekend spot for locals. Fun fact: A city just like Juntas was destroyed almost completely in 1985 when the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz (a volcano within sight of Tolima) unleashed a lahar of mud, ash and melted glacier.

One of the lahars virtually erased Armero; three-quarters of its 28,700 inhabitants were killed. Proceeding in three major waves, this lahar was 30 meters (100 ft) deep, moved at 12 meters per second (39 ft/s), and lasted ten to twenty minutes. Traveling at about 6 meters (20 ft) per second, the second lahar lasted thirty minutes and was followed by smaller pulses.

Over 23,000 people were killed, making it the fourth-deadliest volcanic disaster in recorded history and rendering the town of Armero a ghost town. Juntas, at the base of Combeima Canyon and the active Tolima, is at high risk of destruction. from Tolima. But anyways, here’s some recycled plastic art.

On the way to Ibague, we spoke to our fellow passengers, Colombians who had been doing a small modeling shoot in some abandoned buildings in the town where we’d joined them. We chatted amicably as we approached Ibagué . When we arrived, they gave us a general outline of the town and gave us a few suggestions of places they recommended and a few better left alone. We ate delicious food—reveling again in how little it tasted like Gatorade bars—until we remembered we had to catch our flight out of Bogotá later that night.

After a few frantic minutes locating a bus and purchasing tickets, we took turns showering in the public bathing rooms (maybe about 30 cents) of the bus terminal in an attempt to smell less like the mud and sweat of three days, using the small bar of soap to scrub some of the mud out of our clothes. After boarding the half-empty bus we made a beeline for the back and cracked open the windows, trying to set up our clothes and shoes in such a way that they might ride.

Though I’d like to pretend it is better, my memory is actually pretty bad, but I do remember this about our evening journey:

As the bus returned to Bogotá, the feel of the warm, humid wind drifting through the bus window and the rhythmic sounds of spinning tires on the wet highway wove a tapestry of sensation, wrapped us gently into sleep. Right. That’s beautiful prose and whatnot, but like much of the crap you read in travel blogs (some unintentionally here, hopefully mostly elsewhere)–overly romanticized, flowery and at least partly untrue. Luckily, oddly and surprisingly for us all I have a journal entry penned on this very bus, which in distressed letters scrawled thusly:

“The bus from Ibagué to Bogotá is stupid, smelly and shaky.”

An entry several hours from the plane from Bogotá to Lima elucidated.

“Remember the stupid smelly bus from Ibagué ? I couldn’t really get to sleep. A maniacal child boarded the bus and began to entertain himself by opening and closing the window, grabbing my hat while I was wearing it, and singing. Perhaps believing himself to be the next Colombian pop star, this [nascent Shakira] kindly treated us to his own renditions of mutated songs. [Alas], this lad’s caterwauling left something to be desired. His voice was the musical equivalent of placing thirty-eight gerbils in a centrifuge: intermittent garbled shrieks and a decided disregard for social norms.”

Shakira, Shakira.

Will Trade for Peanuts: Three Days in Los Nevados NP We wandered along the edge of the deepening canyon. With every step, the stream's chill, clear waters cut ever more deeply into the volcanic basalt that formed the ground beneath our feet.

#adventure tourism #backpacking #colombia #Ibague #Los Nevados #national parks #paramo #rural tourism #Salento #trekking #Valle de Cocora #volcano #Volcano tourism

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jouissanccs · 4 years

Text

You probably were no different as a little boy—the kind of classmate everyone admires and envies but secretly hates. I can just see you leaving school, dutifully saying goodbye to your homeroom teacher, and heading home early every afternoon. You look happy. You don’t mind walking alone. You’re neither slack nor rushed as you think of what’s awaiting in the kitchen. Unlike others your age, you’re still wearing shorts and you don’t care what anyone says. Along the way home, you’re already planning how to tackle your homework, knowing that if you finish on time you might get to watch your favorite show and later, after supper, go back to the book you’ve been reading. I imagine you have two siblings; you’re the youngest. The one you’re closest to is already in college away from home. You miss him sometimes, especially since you like rowing out with him on Sunday afternoons to fish, the two of you watching the herons standing on the warm sedge, while he talks and tells you about things you know nothing about and you listen. Your parents won’t let you use the boat when he’s not there; you listen to them too, you always listen. There are no ruffles in your life, no fretting before exams, no threats of having your allowance withheld, you always know what to do, what to expect, what to avoid—poison ivy, ticks, brambles, and the bad boys who linger around but won’t cause trouble if you duck them in time. You’re seldom caught by surprise, and you always budget your time. You don’t call it budgeting your time yet, but I heard you use the expression once when a tennis player asked you what you did for work, and when you told him and he asked how you managed to divide your time between teaching high school during the day and special education in the evening, you smiled and said, “I guess I budget my time.” You were probably never late for school, never late handing in your homework, not late reaching puberty. Punctual in all things. And, yes, unremittingly dull.

— André Aciman, Enigma Variations

#日常

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7r0773r · 4 years

Text

Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson

Their scolding was a summons to all small birds. Blackbirds flew in from the fields and let out shrill ringing cries which jerked their tails as they perched above the otters. Soon many small birds were gathered in the trees of the islet, and their mingled cries brought six larger birds, who sloped up one behind the other. They were among birds what the Irish are among men, always ready in a merry and audacious life to go where there is trouble and not infrequently to be the cause of it. Raising their crests and contracting their light blue eyes, the six jays screamed with the noises of tearing linen. (pp.84-85)

***

The trees of the riverside wept their last dry tears, and the mud in the tidehead pool made them heavy and black; and after a freshet, when salmon came over the bar, beginning their long journey to spawn in the gravel where the river ran young and bright, broken black fragments were strewn on the banks and ridges of the wide estuary. In November the poplars were like bedraggled gull-feathers stuck in the ground, except for one or two or three leaves which fluttered on their tops throughout the gales of November.

One evening, when the ebb-tide was leaning the channel buoys to the west, and the gulls were flying silent and low over the sea to the darkening cliffs of the headland, the otters set out on a journey. The bright eye of the lighthouse, a bleached bone at the edge of the sand-hills, blinked in the clear air. They were carried down amidst swirls and topplings of waves in the wake of a ketch, while the mumble of the bar grew in their ears. Beyond the ragged horizon of grey breakers the day had gone, clouded and dull, leaving a purplish pallor on the cold sea.

The waves slid and rose under the masted ship, pushing the white surge of the bar from her bows. A crest rolled under her keel and she pitched into the left a trough. On the left a mist arose off a bank of grey boulders, on which a destroyer lay broken and sea-scattered. It had lain there for years, in bits like beetle fragments in a gorse-spider's grey web-tunnel. One of the great seas that drive the flying spume over the pot-wallopers' grazing marsh had thrown it up on the Pebble Ridge. During the day Tarka and Greymuzzle had slept under the rusty plates, curled warm on the wave-worn boulders rolled there by the seas along Hercules Promontory.

Two hours after midnight the otters had swum five miles along the shallow coast and had reached the cave of the headland, which Greymuzzle had remembered when she had felt her young kick inside her. The tide left deep pools among the rocks, which the otters searched for blennies and gobies, and other little fish which lurked under the seaweed. They caught prawns, which were eaten tail first, but the heads were never swallowed. With their teeth they tore mussels off the rocks, and holding them in their paws, they cracked them and licked out the fish. While Greymuzzle was digging out a sand-eel, Tarka explored a deep pool where dwelt a one-clawed lobster. It was hiding two yards under a rock, at the end of a cleft too narrow to swim up. Four times he tried to hook it out with his forepad, the claws of which were worn down with sand-scratching, and in his eagerness to get at it he tore seaweed with his teeth. The lobster had been disturbed many times in its life, for nearly every man of the villages of Cryde and Ham had tried to dislodge it with long sticks to which they had lashed hooks. The lobster had lost so many claws that after nine had been wrenched off, its brain refused to grow any more. Its chief enemy was an old man named Muggy, who went to the pool every Sunday morning at low springtide with a rabbit skin and entrails, which he threw into the water to lure it forth from the cleft. The lobster was too cunning, and so it lived.

The otters rested by day on a ledge in the cave under the headland. Here dwelt Jarrk the seal, who climbed a slab below them by shuffles and flapping jumps. Sometimes Tarka swam in the pools of the cave, rolling on his back to bite the drops of ironwater which dripped from the rocky roof, but only when Jarrk was away in the sea, hunting the conger where the rocks of Bag Leap ripped foam out of the tide.

The greatest conger of Bag Leap, who was Garbargee, had never been caught, for whenever it saw Jarrk the seal, its enemy, it hid far down in the crab-green water, in a hole in the rocks of the deepest pool, where lay shell-crusted cannon and gear of H.M. sloop Weazel wrecked there a century before. When no seal was about, Garbargee hung out of the hole and stared, unblinkingly, for fish, which it pursued and swallowed. One morning as Tarka, hungry after a stormy night, was searching in the thong-weed five fathoms under the glimmering surface, something flashed above him, and looking up, he saw a narrow head with a long hooked preying beak two large webs ready to thrust in chase of fish. This was Oylegrin the shag, whose oily greenish-black feathers reflected light. The. smooth narrow head flickered as Oylegrin shifted his gaze, and a pollack below mistook the flicker for a smaller surface-swimming fish. The pollack turned to rise and take it, and the shag saw the gleam of its side at the same time as Tarka saw it. Oylegrin tipped up and kicked rapidly downwards, faster than an otter could swim. Its tight feathers glinted and gleamed as it pursued the pollack. Garbargee also saw the pollack and uncurled a muscular tail from its hold on a jut of rock. The conger was longer than a man is tall, and thicker through the body than Tarka. It weighed ninety pounds. It waved above the weedy timbers, and as it passed over, crabs hid in the mouths of cannon.

Bird, animal, and fish made a chasing arrowhead whose tip was the glinting pollack; conger the flexible shaft, otter and shag the barbs. Oylegrin swam with long neck stretched out, hooked beak ready to grip, while it thrust with webbed feet farther from the bubbles which ran out of its gullet. The pollack turned near Tarka, who swung up and followed it. Oylegrin braked and swerved with fourteen short stiff tail-feathers and one upturned web. The pollack turned down a sheer rock hung with thong-weed, but meeting Tarka, turned up again and was caught by Oylegrin.

The chasing arrowhead buckled against the rock, in a tangle of thongs and ribbons and bubbles shaking upwards. The giant conger had bitten the shag through the neck. Wings flapped, a grating, muffled cry broke out of a bottle of air. Tarka's mouth opened wide, but his teeth could not pierce the conger's skin. The gloom darkened, for an opaqueness was spreading where there had been movement.

Now Jarrk the seal, who had been searching round the base of the rock, saw an otter rising to the surface, and was swinging up towards him when he saw a conger eel wave out the opaqueness, which was Oylegrin's blood staining the green gloom. Garbargee held the shag in its jaws. The undersea cloud was scattered by the swirls of flippers as the seal chased the conger. Garbargee dropped the shag, and the cleft of rock received its grey tenant. Jarrk swung up with a bend of his smooth body, and lay under the surface with only his head out, drink-ing fresh air, and looking at Tarka six yards away. Wuff, wuff, said Jarrk, playfully. Iss, iss, cried Tarka, in alarm. The pollack escaped, and later on was feeding with other fish on the crab-nibbled corpse of the shag. (pp. 121-25)

***

The moor knew the sun before it was bright, when it rolled red and ragged through the vapours of creation, not blindingly rayed like one of its own dandelions. The soil of the moor is of its own dead, and scanty; the rains return to the lower ground, to the pasture and cornfields of the valleys, which are under the wind, and the haunts of men.

The moor knew the sun before it was bright, when it rolled the falcons, and the hawks, pitiless despoilers of rooted and blooded things which man has collected and set apart for himself; so they are killed. Olden War against greater despoilers began to end with the discoveries of iron and gunpowder; the sabre-toothed tigers, the bears, the wolves, all are gone, and the fragments of their bones lie on the rock of the original creation, under the lichens and grasses and mosses, or in the museums of towns. Once hunted himself, then hunting for necessity, man now hunts in the leisure of his time; but in nearly all those who through necessity of life till fields, herd beasts, and keep fowls, these remaining wildings of the moors have enemies who care nothing for their survival. The farmers would exterminate nearly every wild bird and animal of prey, were it not for the land-owners, among whom are some who care for the wildings because they are sprung from the same land of England, and who would be unhappy if they thought the country would know them no more. For the animal they hunt to kill in its season, or those other animals or birds they cause to be destroyed for the continuance of their pleasure in sport—which they believe to be natural—they have no pity; and since they lack this incipient human instinct, they misunderstand and deride it in others. Pity acts through the imagination, the higher light of the world, and imagination arises from the world of things, as a rainbow from the sun. A rainbow may be beautiful and heavenly, but it will not grow corn for bread.

Within the moor is the Forest, a region high and tree-less, where sedge grasses grow on the slopes to the sky. In early summer the wild spirit of the hills is heard in the voices of curlews. The birds fly up from solitary places, above their beloved and little ones, and float the wind in a sweet uprising music. Slowly on spread and hollow wings they sink, and their cries are trilling and cadent, until they touch earth and lift their wings above their heads, and poising, loose the last notes from their throats, like gold bubbles rising into the sky again. Tall and solemn, with long hooped beaks, they stalk to their nestlings standing in wonder beside the tussocks. The mother-bird feeds her singer, and his three children cry to him. There are usually but three, because the carrion crows rob the curlews of the first egg laid in each nest. Only when they find the broken empty shell do the curlews watch the crows, black and slinking, up the hillside.

Soon the curlew lifts his wings and runs from his young, trilling with open beak; his wings flap, and up he flies to fetch song from heaven to the wilderness again.

A tarn lies under two hills, draining water from a tussock-linked tract of bog called The Chains. The tarn is deep and brown and still, reflecting rushes and reeds at its sides, the sedges of the hills, and the sky over them. The northern end of the tarn is morass, trodden by deer and ponies. Water trickles away under its southern bank, and hurries in its narrow course by falls, runnels, pools, and cascades. One afternoon Tarka climbed out of the rillet's bed, scarcely wider than himself, and looked through green hart's-tongue ferns at the combe up which he had travelled. Nothing moved below him except water. He walked up the hill, and saw the tarn below him. He heard the dry croaking of frogs, and ran down the bank that dammed the dark peat-water. A yard down the slope he stopped.

A hen-raven, black from bristled beak to toes, hopped along the edge of the tarn when she saw him. Tarka heard small plopping sounds and saw ripples in the water, where bullfrogs had dived off the bank. The raven took three hops to a pile of dead frogs, then stopped, crouched down, poked out her head with flattened feathers, and gazed at Tarka. Her small eyes flickered with the whitish-grey membranes of the third eye-lids. The raven was not afraid of an otter.

She had been fishing for frogs by dapping the water with her beak. Hearing the noises, the bullfrogs swam to the surface and turned with bulging eyes towards the dapping. The raven made a dry and brittle croak. When the frogs heard it, the skin swelled under their necks, and they croaked a challenge, mistaking the noises for the struggle of a choking female. They swam within a few inches of the raven's beak. One, perhaps two, would leap out of the water, and then the raven opened her beak and caught one, perhaps two. She was very quick. She hopped with them to her pile, spiked them through the head, and walked quietly to another fishing place. She could carry eight or nine frogs in her craw at once to her nest of young in a rocky clitter near the head of the river Exe. When loaded, she flew with gaping beak.

Tarka lifted his head and worked his nostrils. The steadfast glance of the small eyes along the black beak pointed at him. He smelled the frogs, took three quaddling steps towards the raven, and stopped again. The raven did not move, and he did not like her eyes. He turned away. She hopped after him, and nipped the tip of his rudder as he slipped into the tarn.

Krok-krok-krok! said the raven, cocking an eye at the sky. Tarka lay in the water and watched her picking up frog after frog and pouching them, before she jumped off the bank and flew over the eastern hill.

When she returned, her mate was with her. They soared above the tarn. Sometimes the cock-raven shut his wings, rolled sideways, and twirled on open wings again. Krok-krok! he said to the hen, seeing below the form of the swimming otter, darker than the dark tarn. The raven opened his beak wide, set his wings for descent, and croaked kron-n-n-n-nk during the slow, dip-ping swoop, in the curve of a scythe, from one green-lined margin to the other. Then he tumbled and twirled, alighting on the slope of the hill, and walked down to the water to catch frogs.

Several times each day the two ravens flew to the tarn. The cockbird talked to Tarka whenever he saw him, and pestered him when he was sunning himself on the bank. He would hop to within a few feet of him with a frog in his beak, and drop it just to windward of Tarka's nose. Once, when Tarka was playing with a frog and had turned his back on it for a moment, the raven picked it up and threw it to one side. Bird and otter played together, but they never touched one another. The raven, who was one of the three hundred sons of Kronk, would drop a stick into the tarn and Tarka would swim after it, bringing it to the bank and rolling with it between his paws. Occasionally the raven slyly pinched his rudder, and Tarka would run at him, tissing through his teeth. With flaps and hops the raven dodged him, flying up out of his way only when driven to water.

Day after day Tarka slept in the rushes in the morass at the north end of the tarn. Unless he was tired after the nightly prowl, the kron-n-n-n-k of the zooming raven would always wake him, and he would either run along the bank or swim by the weeds to play with the bird. One morning five ravens flew over the tarn, the hen leading three smaller ravens in line and the father behind them—a black constellation of Orion. They lit on the turf of the dam. The youngsters sat on the bank and watched their mother dapping for frogs. Tarka ran along the bank, amid guttural squawks and cronks, to play with them, but the parents stabbed at him with their beaks, beating wings in his face, and hustling him back to water. They flew over him when he bobbed for breath, and worried him so persistently that he never again went near a raven. (pp. 210-15)

#henry williamson #book quotes

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cenniedolls · 6 years

Photo

Kyprian ventures into the forest surrounding the bog wearing Zetherain’s red cloak, and even though these woods and the wetlands beyond are familiar, they feel deep and strange today in the fading light. The cedars loom over him, thick trunks covered in rough bark and cool moss, and even though he knows the texture, there is something off about it now, with the last full moon of autumn waxing bright far above. Damp and uneven beneath his feet, the forest floor is no different than any other day, scattered with shallow pools of still water and jagged rocks, but Kyprian feels threatened by it in a way that goes deeper than the risk of twisting an ankle in the dark. The seasons turn sharply here, but it is more than the simple seasonal change making the air itself feel heavy against what little skin Kyprian has bared to it.

The bog belongs to the witch, after all. This first ring of cedar swamp less than the moose meadows beyond, and that less than the acidic sphagnum heart of the bog proper, but the people of Havenswood don’t come this far without good cause. Kyprian knows the witch just as well as he knows the forest, though, and she doesn’t scare him. Nerai is unpredictable, capricious; but she is no villain like the witches in the village stories. It’s her creatures he is wary of, both those created by Nerai that are familiar vegetation given unfamiliar sentience, and those that are themselves, first, and merely give allegiance to the witch. First among these is the wolf. This time of year, he is even less predictable than usual.

The moon is glowing silver over the whispering sedges of the moose meadow by the time Kyprian makes it through the cedars. He pauses at the edge of the trees, eyes adjusting to the new light; it is nowhere near the light of day, as some stories might suggest, but after the near complete black behind him, the moonlight is too much. There is a lantern hanging cold at his hip, but it had felt too invasive to bring lit, and Kyprian does not want to risk a feeling like that, not now. He is beginning to feel that even the deep red of his cloak is too strong, tonight, the velvet nearly as dangerous as firelight. There is no substance to the danger, though, no definition and no rationalization - Kyprian knows this place, knows its creatures and its people, but still he has to draw himself together to step out into the moonlight.

Both quieter and louder than the cedar swamp, the moose meadow is full of the whisper of grass and sedge, yet empty of the sudden animal noises of the forest. The ground here is uniformly damp, sinking slightly beneath Kyprian’s feet as he parts the grasses to pass through. There are paths through the meadow, but he cannot trust them. That’s one thing the village stories get right.

Even though the rustling he causes passing through sounds deafening in the night, Kyprian knows that he won’t hear the wolf coming if Sage decides to sneak up on him. The wolf has long since mastered moving soundlessly, even here in the stiff sedge and crisp grasses.

Farther in, and there are hummocks of brush rising from the bog; the uniform meadow gives way to deeper water, masked in places by thick sphagnum moss looking like an innocent forest floor over sucking mud. Solid ground is tricky to find, here. One way is to stay close to the brush, but some of the hillocks are tiny floating islands just waiting to tip the unwary into the murky water. Narrow, bristly spruce trees spear up in places, golden tamaracks in others, but even the ground around these trees may be too unstable for human feet.

Kyprian has walked through the bog many times before, and knows all of its tricks. As many as anyone can, at least. Without living here, he is sure it’s impossible to truly understand the place, but Kyprian doesn’t step into the smooth floating carpet of sphagnum moss, or try to use the drifting brush islands to hold his weight. He doesn’t investigate the sweet smell, something between apple cider and the chocolates Zetherain used to love, wafting from the unnaturally large pitcher plant out in the bog, or follow the fluttering lights between the trees at the corner of his vision, or let the sinuous movements just under the surface of the open patches of water unnerve him. The bog is full of Nerai’s creatures, and he has seen all these before. She likes things that push at boundaries - makes creatures larger, faster; gives them more agency, intelligence, strange new traits drawn from somewhere else. Bats that glow like lightning bugs and live off moonlight; lightning bugs the size of bats that dip and dive through the water eating fish. All these creatures follow only their own natures and the will of the witch herself, though. Thus, they’re predictable. Nerai’s tentacle monsters are the stuff of nightmares, but it just goes to show that you can get used to anything, because Kyprian knows them now, and can avoid them accordingly. Not so with the wolf.

It’s not as though Sage is the wolf from village stories, a poorly disguised metaphor for the consequences of discouraged actions. He’s not the danger of leaving home given physical form - or perhaps he is that - or the pitfalls of new adulthood - although there are moments Kyprian can see the parallel - or some mindless beast, ravening in the woods. In stories, the wolf is a convenient symbol or a simple danger, but in the witch’s bog, her wolf is altogether more complicated.

Be careful of the wolf, Zetherain had said, one of the last things he told Kyprian before leaving. It was a bit late for that. Be careful of what? Sage’s sharp claws and canine teeth? The smoky edge to his smirks, and the way he stands a bit too close? Or the way he rolls in the sweet-smelling sedges behind the witch’s house in the warm days of summer, full of simple joy, and the softness of his furry ears?

All of these things, maybe. The wolf is a complicated figure, and carries a variety of dangers. On a night like this, full of moonlight and sharp with the first edge of winter, that danger is perhaps at its most literal. On a night like this, Sage is a creature of the bog, first, and something human after.

Kyprian picks his way steadily closer to the stand of trees near the center of the bog, where the witch has built her house. There’s an expanse of open water beside it, not quite a lake and nothing like the Pool where the bog meets the mountains. Still, it is the most predictable area in this part of the bog, with a paradoxically solid shoreline between the floating mosses and the ring of cattails and rushes surrounding the water. Kyprian allows himself a short breath of relief when he reaches it, and of course that’s when the wolf strikes.

There’s a howl that contains at least some of the sounds of his name, and Sage pounces out of a stand of golden tamaracks teetering at the edge of the solid ground. Kyprian gets a glimpse of shining eyes and bright teeth, before Sage barrels into him and they crash into the shallow water and crisp cattails. Startled despite knowing that something of the sort must be coming, Kyprian shrieks, spluttering as some of the bog gets into his eyes and mouth.

Sage is laughing at him, but even as they fell the wolf turned to take most of their weight, so Kyprian is not nearly as bruised or muddy as he could be. He barely has time for the thought before Sage is up again, bounding around with his tail thrashing behind him. So it’s one of those nights, after all.

“Trick or treat,” Kyprian says, as dry as possible while he’s sitting waist-deep in water, picking duckweed off his face. Sage just howls with laughter, rolling to a stop at the edge of the shore. He’s a bit more wolfish than usual, tonight, hands more clawed and feet more like paws, fur all the way to his rolled-up pants, but even though his eyes are full of wild energy, it’s not the dark kind Kyprian sometimes finds there.

“Nerai’s got the treats,” Sage says. “C’mon, come inside.”

Kyprian accepts a hand up, and leans into Sage when the wolf slings an arm around his waist. A few more steps around the curve of the shore, and there’s the witch’s house, lights gleaming in the windows. Orange, purple, strangely black; still, the light is welcoming, and Kyprian likes the way it reflects off the water, swirling through the silver moonlight. The witch has a flair for the dramatic, but an eye for beauty too.

There are pumpkins carved with faces on the step, and cobwebs hanging from the eaves. One of the pumpkins cackles at them; another winks, leering far more effectively than a vegetable should. A massive spider swings out of the way as Kyprian raises his hand to knock on the door.

“Trick or treat,” he calls, put somewhat at ease by the fact that Sage is still at his side. Not that the witch would think twice before pranking the wolf along with him, but at least they’re in it together.

She just opens the door with a gleeful shriek and an armful of candy, though. Everyone else is already here - Zetherain is waiting by the window, projecting indifference; Finael is slouched at the table with Lilon next to her; Lilon is pouting, looking askance at the massive pair of costume rabbit ears on Finael’s head. Nerai herself is wearing a ridiculously oversized witch’s hat in the style of children’s stories, and Kyprian is sure she’s responsible for Finael’s rabbit ears as well.

“Finally!” the witch crows. She snaps her fingers, treats abandoned to float in the air beside her, and Kyprian’s wet cloak sweeps off his shoulders to hang next to the hearth. Sage drags him into the next room, bundling him into a dry sweater and pants, entirely more hindrance than help. Kyprian stumbles, giggles, gets a mouthful of Sage’s hair and a faceful of his ears. He can just make out Zetherain’s low voice through the half-closed door, and Nerai’s laugh clear as a bell. She sweeps him into a chair when they come back out, and suddenly the table is full of pie and candies, and a bowl of shining red apples.

“Lilon did the baking,” Sage says, with a sly glance at Nerai. “So it’s all safe.”

She kicks his feet out from under him as he moves toward his seat, and Sage topples into Finael, who just sighs. Even she is smiling, though; it’s faint, but some of the chill is missing from her eyes. Across the table, Zetherain rolls his eyes.

“You’d think he’d learn,” he says, gesturing at Sage, but looking just at Kyprian.

Kyprian can hardly contain the warmth rising in his chest, entirely separate from the flickering candles and the fire in the hearth. He hadn’t expected Zetherain to make it back tonight, all the way from Merstithe; it’s almost as rare to see Finael and Lilon in the same room, and neither of them fighting with Nerai. The sweater Sage gave him smells like dog and musty wool, the candles are sparking in unnatural colors and the flames move like snakes, Lilon looks ready to bolt and there’s a cluster of lightning bats hanging in the rafters, but this is perfect.

Lilon slides his chair closer, away from Finael and Sage on the window seat, and hands Kyprian a plate. “Pumpkin,” he says, pointing to one pie, then the others. “Apple. Cherry, peach, pecan.” His ears twitch, luminous green eyes careful on the last pie. “Nerai made that one. I don’t trust it.”

The witch just scoffs, leaning against the back of Kyprian’s chair, but she won’t get rough with the bunny the way she does with Sage. “It’s perfectly safe. Delicious, even. I’m certain of it.”

The surface of the pie bulges, the movement not unlike Nerai’s creatures in the swamp. Kyprian takes a slice of apple pie, and Lilon adds a large spoonful of whipped cream.

“You try it first,” Sage says, leaning back in his own chair. “Me, I’ll stick with the bunny’s baking.”

Finael takes a pointed bite of apple, the crisp fruit snapping under her teeth. Her plate contains a thin slice of every pie but Nerai’s. “A shame to let it go to waste,” she says, without inflection.

Finael, the witch has no compunctions about getting physical with; Nerai drops herself into the one-time assassin’s lap, pulling her pie closer. “I know you’re just trying to be polite, and let me have the best pie all to myself, but I’m willing to share with you, Fina dear.” Her tone is almost as distressingly off as the pie, sweet and cloying.

“Leave them to it,” Zetherain says, glancing away as Nerai cuts into her pie. Something flickers, like static in the dark, and Kyprian averts his eyes as well. Lilon scoots to the edge of his chair, as far as he can get without leaving the table.

“Here’s to us,” Sage says, blithely ignoring the pie situation as he reaches for the cider in the middle of the table, pouring everyone a glass. He gets right up in Zetherain’s space as he leans back, earning a dismissive look; under the table, he tangles his feet with Kyprian’s.

It’s hardly a toast. Sage is drinking before anyone has a chance to respond, but Zetherain still raises his glass beside the wolf, with a roll of his eyes and the shadow of a smile. Kyprian clinks his glass against Lilon’s, and the bunny solemnly repeats Sage’s words.

The moment is broken by a shriek as Finael shoves Nerai off her lap, diving to the floor after her with a growl. Sure enough, the witch’s pie is… blooming, or something - bubbles of chocolate are oozing from the cut slice, growing and spreading with, as usual, far too much agency for comfort.

“Great party,” Sage says, leaning back with a grin. Lilon tumbles out of his own chair, popping up on the other side of Kyprian with a distressed moan. Zetherain takes care of the pie, raising one hand, limed with dark energy, over it, and slowing pushing down as though through heavy snow. By the time he’s close enough to touch, the pie is just a sullen pile of glop. It surrenders one final bubble, bursting over Zetherain’s hand; he sighs, but licks his fingers clean anyway.

“The chocolate is good,” Zetherain says, eyeing the women on the floor. Nerai puts her head up, smirking. “Leave off the special effects next time.”

“Where’s the fun in that,” Nerai grins.

“I don’t know, maybe we could have a civil meal for once,” Finael mutters, settling back into her chair.

“Again, where’s the fun,” Sage says. Zetherain elbows him.

Kyprian pats Lilon’s ears, and the bunny sighs, casting a wary glare over Nerai and Finael before returning to his seat. “I would be even more nervous if nothing like that happened,” Kyprian says.

“And that’s why I like you,” Nerai says, passing him a slice of the defeated pie. “See, Zethie? Your little brother goes with the flow. Stay away too long, and you’ll forget all the important stuff.”

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” His voice is haughty, but there’s a flicker of apology in Zetherain’s eyes as he looks at Kyprian.

Kyprian supposes that’s what’s important. Zetherain is here, everyone is fighting in their comfortable ways, and Nerai’s chocolate pie really does taste good, now that it’s not moving. It’s enough; it’s perfect. Kyprian can only hope that they get more nights like this.

#self-indulgent present tense with an abrupt tone shift #my fiction #Cedar Gate

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dansnaturepictures · 4 years

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My 10 Wildlife/Photography 2019 highlight blogs: Opening blog about another brilliant year of birds for me

People who have known me for a while may recall that in 2016, 2017 and 2018 I had sensational birding years by my standards and with what I achieved with the bank of species seen, fast starts to year lists and year list totals with each of these years overtaking everything else and being my highest ever year list they got better and better and 2018 seemed an impossible act to follow. Here I examine how well I did follow it, and tomorrow the post at around the same time is solely about experiences with some of my 28 favourite birds that I saw this year.

My 2019 followed 2018 perfectly, I have seen 195 species currently making it my second highest year list ever. Many of the species I have seen have been phenomenal again. The start definitely was what I will call fast again in that I saw a lot of birds in January, it was my second highest amount seen on New Year’s Day after 2016 where two woodpeckers Great Spotted and Green, two thrushes Redwing and Fieldfare and Siskin starred across a few locations. In the early days it was behind where 2017 and 2016 had been on those dates with how many birds I had seen, then all of a sudden when I had a week off it was the highest a year list of mine had ever been on on given dates. In mid-January when a year before my Scotland trip had happened in 2018 and all those year ticks 2018 was the highest on the given dates, but 2019 stayed closely behind it as the second highest my year list had been on on these dates which I was thrilled with. This continued in February and in March it even overtook where 2018 had been on certain dates. The same happened in April as I reached the milestone 150 birds a day earlier than I had in 2018, and it was neck in neck between the two going into May. In June and into July it even overtook what I had seen on 2018 on the dates, it fell behind again over the summer but pulled back level and began to overtake what my 2018 had been on on certain dates again in September and these two year lists were way ahead of every other year for me on those dates going into October too. Of course last year in this post I remarked how I was on amounts of birds seen in 2018 that I only reached two months later in 2017 and other years. So I just thought it was going to be more normal this year and I would notice how far 2018 was ahead. I have appreciated my high numbers of birds seen last year but also been right there with it on the dates this year which I am thrilled with. In November and into December now it has stayed neck in neck again but actually for a good while now I have been in a position where I have seen seen more birds on these days than I had a year ago. No matter what, to even stay as close to the exceptional year that was 2018 for me as it did with more modest places visited really and species ranges available was something I was so proud of.

The week off in January I had from work spent birdwatching was crucial to my start and whole year. It took me on my first of four trips away of the year so I was lucky with that, two nights in Gloucestershire so I could visit WWT Slimbridge on my birthday. On that magical day reserve specialities Bewick’s Swan (shown there in the 1st picture in this photoset), Common Crane, White-fronted and Barnacle Geese were star birds seen, alongside Peregrine Falcon, Water Rail (shown in the 2nd picture in this photoset that I took that day), Golden Plover and Ruff. When back from that week off I remember saying one morning at work I could tell you the highlight birds from that week but I would be here until lunch time. But so many amazing birds seen in home areas and on the way to our trip away that week included; Waxwing (as shown that day in the 3rd picture in this photoset at Totton the first major quality bird I saw this year and one of the biggest highlights in 2019), Jack Snipe, Red Kite, Bearded Tit, Marsh Harrier, Ring-necked Duck, Cattle Egret, Purple Sandpiper, Greenshank, Common Gull, Shag, Black-necked Grebe, Gannet, Guillemot, Fulmar, Great White Egret, Yellow-browed Warbler, Yellow-legged Gull and Goldeneye.

The theme of seeing top birds continued throughout the year, some of my other greatest birds I saw in 2019 included; Spotted Redshank, Eider Duck, Goosander, Barn Owl, Sanderling, Crossbill, Hawfinch, Bar-tailed Godwit, Scaup, Mediterranean Gull, Corn Bunting (shown in the 4th picture in this photoset at Martin Down in May), Red-legged Partridge, Lesser Yellowlegs, Bittern (shown at Blashford Lakes in the 5th picture I took in this photoset), Lesser Redpoll, Brambling, Hooded Crow, Little Owl, Spoonbill, Little Ringed Plover, Redstart, Glossy Ibis, Razorbill, Yellowhammer, Little Tern (shown at Lymington in the 6th picture I took in this photoset), Common Sandpiper, Sand Martin, Dartford Warbler, Cuckoo, Sandwich Tern, Hobby, Sedge Warbler, Red-necked Phalarope, Lesser Whitethroat, Woodlark, Kittiwake, Puffin, Roseate Tern, Dipper, Spotted Flycatcher, Wood Sandpiper, Osprey, Black Tern, Whimbrel, Whinchat, Chough, Manx Shearwater, Common Scoter, Yellow Wagtail, Long-billed Dowitcher, Ring-necked Parakeet , Ring Ouzel, Garganey, Black Redstart, Long-tailed Duck, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Snow Bunting and three Short-eared Owls flying gloriously around us one of my standout moments this year on one of my standout birding days of 2019 with so much else seen at Portland Bill and isle that day. Twelve of the birds I saw this year I saw for only the second time in my life or it was only the second individual I’d seen of the species which really stood out as a unique point in my birding this year.

A big bird at Blashford Lakes in late April was the Bonaparte’s Gull and I was lucky enough to get a very distant view of it but watch it for quite a while. This was a fantastic species to see and made me so happy. It ended a longer wait compared to recent years as it was my first new bird of 2019. This took my life list to a bit of a milestone as it was bird 260 in my life.

My next life tick came in Northumberland in June with the Arctic Terns I saw on Coquet and Farne Islands, which l talk about more in my sixth of these posts about that holiday. During this week away we also dropped in on Druridge Pools and saw the very rare duck the Baikal Teal that was there my first ever, another beauty.

In July I saw a bird I hadn’t seen flying about in the wild before when I saw one of the White Storks on a day at Knepp. I got a beautiful view of this species and saw where they had attempted to nest so it felt very rewarding to see at this rewilding project at exciting times for these birds going forward now. Our timing was perfect in September when we had our holiday to Cornwall the first week and two of the first few Brown Boobies in the UK ever seen had turned up! On the second day of the holiday we went to Kynance Cove where one had been reported and saw it sitting on a rock. An honour to see this it was a mega and a Champions League standard bird for sure I was over the moon to see it. I talk about this more in my penultimate post of this thread on Christmas Eve about the Cornwall holiday.

The only way to follow the Brown Booby would be with another mega and that we did later in the month by seeing the Eastern Olivaceous Warbler that dropped into Farlington Marshes. It was a really beautiful bird to see and one that was so distinctive. I was lucky to get some really good views of it that day as it flew in and out of thick vegetation. This top bird sighting came at such a good point in my year that weekend too with so much else happening to make it one of my most memorable two days.

My next new bird came on 21st October as we finally managed to catch up with a Wryneck after so many times trying to see one. This was at Hill Head where we had a really good search for apparently two that had showed up. We and some other birdwatchers got some joy when we looked around the chalet area and were thrilled to spot one in someone’s garden. We enjoyed a glorious good few minutes with this beautiful and sensational species watching it fly west, giving some fantastic views in trees and on the ground. I took the 7th picture in this photoset of it. It was such a feel good twitch and really one of my main standout moments in my 2019 birdwatching a year that has been amazing for me. This was the fourth woodpecker species I’ve ever seen, my 266th bird in my life and a very important milestone 190th bird of 2019 for me which took it level with my 2017 as my joint second highest ever year list that day. I did go onto see more than 190 bird species this year of course.

Other bird pictures I took in 2019 I have included in this photoset are; Moorhen and chick along the river Itchen in June one of my favourite spring pictures this year, Pied Wagtail during winter’s Big Garden Birdwatch for the RSPB a standout moment I had a really good year for seeing a variety of garden birds generally and other wildlife around the garden and house like a Hedgehog, butterflies and moths and Avocet at Brownsea Island, Dorset in October. Going back to the garden birdwatch and I very much enjoyed doing a similar event yesterday Birdaware Solent’s Great Solent Birdwatch doing it at Weston Shore as I said in my post last night. These were just two of a whole host of citizen science surveys for various organisations I was proud to take part in this year for all wildlife. On another avian photography note in November I found out some of my bird photos from this year (Lesser Redpoll at Blashford Lakes, another Waxwing, Totton one and Blackbird out the back) I’d entered into the Blissful Birder calendar competition earlier in the year had made their ‘Birds of England’ calendar 2020. I was very proud of this. It was a real honour to see some of my pictures alongside some superb work which displays how proud we should be of English birds. It was fitting this happening as one of my earliest birdwatching memories was buying an RSPB calendar which led me to join their Wildlife Explorers with a link to it on the back a big early staging post in my interest after I had got the famous (for me) sticker book of birds which started my interest. So 10 years into me being into photography started by birds to get my own pictures on a commercial calendar felt amazing.

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kvotheunkvothe · 7 years

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A long while back, I wrote an AU to one of my books, with a kind of Pygmalion story of the main characters involving cyborgs. @stradivariholmes mentioned it might be interesting to have another, similar story, with the roles reversed. This AU assumed they weren’t Summoners and how their lives might have been if the central conflict of the book was instead based on this AU idea.

Below is the first part, working title of Glassworks.

It was a good day for travel.

It was still a few weeks before the spring planting season, and the ground was only just beginning to thaw as he made his way overland under the sun’s first rays. His breath was just visible on the morning air, and Bailey walked swiftly so as to generate a bit of heat as he made his way onto the path in the thick forests beyond the fields.

Near dawn, he’d climbed his way up the winding way of the tree’s limbs to the home’s farther reaches, where his sister was already at work. This portion of the old home had been mostly empty for some years—“dormant” Pin liked to say, like it was something that need only be awoken. When the head of their House had died, her first heir already taken by the Wilderness, most of the bustling business had died away with it. Between the loss of basically all leadership and the harsh crop failures in those lean years that followed, nearly a decade later they were still only just clawing their way back. It warmed his heart to see Pin had taken this project on, though, slowly converting unused portions of the rambling home into indoor greenhouses. As long as Talus Mos was wintering with them and available to provide his glasswork expertise, it seemed a worthy endeavor.

Bailey had scrambled up the last wobbly ladder to enter the converted space at floor-level, looking up into the crisscrossing ropes and scaffolds. The two of them were in harness gear, their long blond hair pinned back from their faces. Talus Mos’s hair was braided somewhat sloppily with various violet beads, while Pin’s flowed relatively freely down her back. She’d grown in more recent years, nearly to Airiadnee’s height. And although she was not Violet, Pin acted as Talus Mos’s assistant, now, as he measured and planned how best to construct the necessary racks and shelves for optimal lighting. He’d almost grudgingly warmed to Pin over the years, as she’d grown more into her own person and stopped only being a reminder of his grief.

“Pin!” Bailey called up, and the girl left off to rappel down and dangle upside-down over his head, one hand collecting the pool of her blonde hair to keep it from her face. “How’s it coming along?”

“Par’quick’em,” she said, reflexively putting the hand that was still holding her hair over her cleft lip as she grinned down at him. “Should be’em done before our Sister-Houses visit. ‘S where get’ee, Bailey?” she added, looking to his ear. Unlike the two of them, Bailey kept his hair cropped short, leaving his ears visible. There were two blue rings there, today, the top one showing their House sigil.

“The House of Rush,” he confirmed. “I’ve got to recite the last part of the Dark Epochs, today, first, but afterward I’ll invite them.”

“Don’t forget to bring the House a gift,” Talus Mos called from overhead, still at work. Somewhat unsolicited. It was a hard habit to break; when Bailey had taken over the House at a young age, even his father’s somewhat clumsy advice had been appreciated. But it had been some years since that was really appropriate. Perhaps he read the silence well enough to recognize the gaff, because Talus Mos paused momentarily in what he was doing to add, “Although I’m sure you don’t need reminders, Warden Reed.”

“Of course,” Bailey answered, his tone neutral, recognizing the formal use of title as a form of apology and choosing to be mollified. And seeing that Pin had grown uncomfortable, he managed to dredge up a smile for her. “I should be back sometime tonight, after nightfall. I’ll check the traps on the way home.”

Here she shook her head, though, righting herself so she was no longer upside-down where she hung. “Not in’ee fancy clothes—don’t wan’ee bloody. I’ll check’em.”

He ran a hand over his clothing, and had to admit to the wisdom in that. The rich cloth was intricately embroidered, the colors vibrant, and even on his tall, skinny frame everything fit well. They’d had to carefully save over the past winter to each afford a set of clothing that wouldn’t embarrass them when they went to call on their cousins.

Still, he didn’t much like the idea of her out in the forest alone. Before the Wilderness took her, even Airiadne—who had been strong Yellow and hunting most of her life—often enough took a companion with her, to watch her back and help her take down anything too big. “Have Lee Parable go with you,” he conceded. “He’s wanted something to do while he waited for planting season.”

“Can’em look after myself,” she grumbled, but accepted the order before climbing back up into the higher reaches of the room, and Bailey set off soon after.

Bailey made good time, arriving close to noon at the House of Rush. Unlike his home, which was built in several parts into old, living trees, this Sister-House sprawled over a tributary from the river, their family’s generator mostly fed by its current. The House was alive with humming activity, both from the family and the many hired hands at work to keep the place functioning, much as Bailey remembered his House being when he was a child.

He eventually found a cousin high enough up the House’s ranking to honor their deal, and a short time later Bailey had an audience of some forty-odd to sit and listen to the last of the history lesson. The Dark Epochs of the days immediately following the Ancients’ downfall tended to garner better attendance than other stories, not only from the children first learning their histories, but also from adults who felt it was an important, cautionary tale. It was, by necessity, a long and complicated story to tell, and sometimes a Blue might spend half a season living in a House, further elaborating on minutiae from this tale alone. From the final days of the Ancients’ sprawling empire, to the madness that led them to containing the Word in print, to their deadly machine that captured the sun, and the monsters they left in their wake. In the dark years without sunlight, creatures from beneath the mountains, under the seas, and beyond the stars spread their blighted tendrils onto the sun-forsaken lands. When the sun escaped its prison, its first blast made wastes of the East and decimated what was once fertile land in the South, leaving only deserts. So powerful was the blast that what men it touched, their shadows were sheared away, leaving only these half-men creatures to crawl the earth, and even generations later the blight was on at least half of every one born. Their fleeing shadows eventually shaped the non-men, who it was said still crept these forests on moonless nights. And there were, of course, the clockwork men that still littered the countryside: these made-things that mostly had lost their purpose, who sometimes still awoke to do their long-gone masters’ deeds as servants or, often enough, as war-machines that slaughtered everything in their paths.

He was aware, near the end of his retelling, that the head of the House of Rush had taken time from his schedule to come and listen to the tale. Bailey had been told he looked quite like his mother’s brother, Rush Arlen, and although he’d had little to do with the man directly for a number of years, he could see at a glance it had been an apt comparison. His Blue training served him well in that he did not miss a beat, his recitation remaining precise, his gestures practiced. It was with some relief he finally concluded, but the feeling of being judged didn’t really abate as Warden Rush invited him back to speak more privately in his office. Once there, after he was paid for his performance, Bailey presented him with the twin vials of spices he’d carried from his home, trying not to think of just how dear an expense it had been. If this paid off, it would be worth it.

Warden Rush accepted them with some puzzlement, saying, “Your spice debt has long been paid, Reed Carson.”

“They’re a gift, as part of an invitation from the House of Reed for a gathering, a week from now.”

Honestly, Bailey wouldn’t be surprised if the Houses of Sedge, Fennel, and Runnel hadn’t gossiped to Rush about their own invitations, already, and Warden Rush was just giving himself more time to consider his answer.

He finally mused, “Your House has gone through hard times, since the Lady Reed Beatrice died. It’s been a lot of work for you, I know, but you seem to have grown into your own as a Blue. I’m glad to see you’ve managed to pull through so well.” He saved Bailey the embarrassment of glancing to his ear, many-times pierced to fulfill contracts outside his House. “And your House—it’s still just you and Reed Adelaide, isn’t it?”

Bailey fought the prickle of shame at the admission, “Yes,” their numbers were still pitifully small, with only he and little Pin left. The question also revealed Rush Arlen knew the purpose of this show of wealth and the invitation to the House, a point further clarified as he went on:

“The House of Reed was dwindling even when your mother, my sister, was born into it. Some forty years ago, these Sister-Houses gathered to judge its viability, and even though it was the weaker House in the union, it was hoped new blood would be enough to sustain it. At the time, the ancestral lands were still rich, even if the numbers had dwindled. A child born into that House would still thrive, so concessions were made to honor an old House that seeded so many others.” He set the vials of spice on his desk, and then bowed his head. “Well, I digress on this old history. Your extension of hospitality is well-received, Warden Reed, and I am honored to accept your invitation.”

Bailey bowed his head in kind, and after a few more pleasantries were exchanged, he graciously declined the invitation to stay the night and set off back for his own home. It had gone about as well as could be expected, he consoled himself, and had been a bit warmer reception than he’d had at the other Sister-Houses. Being reminded of one’s House’s poor resources was never a pleasant experience, but it was something that needed to be addressed in these kinds of delicate negotiations. If everything went well, his House only stood to gain, but he still had the long walk home to worry over how he’d handled things. Perhaps he shouldn’t have made the invitation when he was already there on business, somewhat undercutting his show of resources. He had never been very good with people as a whole, and even less so when he was feeling the sting of humiliation. But spending another entire day to deliver the message had seemed wasteful.

While Bailey was thus occupied, he was surprised to look up at one point further along and realize he’d left the path quite far behind. The woods around him were completely unfamiliar, this far from home, and even with many leaves gone from the winter-stripped trees, it was still rather dark under the shelter of their boughs. A cold wave of fear rushed over him, making him momentarily giddy as he tried to calmly reorient himself by the faint shimmers of sunlight and day-stars overhead. He struck out again, listening for the flow of water and alert for any recognizable landmarks. When he spotted a break in the trees up ahead, his long stride quickened a bit until he came abruptly into a clearing.

Or, well, not properly just a clearing. He shivered as he recognized the dark Ancient metal underfoot, that even these millennia later resisted even a weed’s growth. The space was nearly perfectly circular, and at its center was a cube of white stone, nearly as half as tall as he stood. Its sides were unnaturally straight, precise, crisp, not weathered in the slightest. Along the top, a few inches down, was a groove where the top of the cube would presumably slide aside. And he knew he should leave it alone—he’d just finished telling a long story of the folly of the Ancients and their ways, and there were hundreds of other tales of people foolish enough to meddle with whatever they’d left behind. But the pristine nature of the site made Bailey hesitate. Because yes, what the Ancients left behind was often terrible and destructive, but sometimes there were tools, machinery, weapons that were incredibly useful. They all denied it, but every House jealously guarded some piece of Ancient tech they would never admit to having. And if there was something in there that could help his House…

He put his hands on the top of the cube, bracing his legs as he pushed at it. He was not particularly strong, and he imagined he probably would have looked fairly ridiculous to anyone who happened along, trying to shift this enormous slab of stone all by himself. But in a moment, there was a curious kind of release as some internal mechanism reacted and the stone slid aside in one smooth motion, toppling over the other side.

Words. There were words everywhere, he could see now, written all within the cube’s interior. Like the old mantras against evil, the spells that had been meant to hold devastation back when the Ancients still thought themselves invincible. With creeping horror, he realized that whatever they had meant to contain, he’d released it now. And whatever ruin it visited on the land, that was on his head. He should run, if he wanted to have any hope of surviving this. He might even plausibly deny any involvement. But he forced himself to step forward and face this instead, and his knife—for all the good it would do him—was in his hand as he peered inside to where faint sunlight still only just reached.

There was a woman inside. Or the image of a woman, at least. The features so finely and delicately wrought as to be beyond the imagination of even the most skilled glassworker. Her skin was transparent, as was her arteries, veins, muscles, and bones, down into the center of her. Her hair was the most exquisite work he’d ever seen, so light and true-to-life he almost felt he could reach out and brush a strand away from her face. There were bits of cloth on the figure, apparently added after it was created, but time had rendered them little more than dust. Every line of her was true, every inch precise, perfectly formed. She was curled in the fetal position to fit into the box, one arm cushioning her head while the other wrapped around herself, in a posture at once guarded and yet oddly exposed. As if she only slept. The creation was not without its flaws, however. Thin scars marred the cheeks, too straight and purposeful to be made by time or accident. By now he had quite forgotten to feel frightened, and had nearly forgotten how to breathe. But seeing its damage struck something in him, so he almost felt he resonated in sympathy for the imagined pain. The ache just to smooth away the damage was almost overpowering, and he was already trying to imagine how he would get it home, as ungainly as that might be.

The sun had been shining on it for nearly a full minute when his avid gaze caught the first hint of movement. Within the center of her, the tiniest tick. And then another. Gears within her chest beginning to move, processes restarting. There was a spark, somewhere in its center. Not a sculpture, he realized, far too late—a clockwork. Not art, but a tool of the Ancient’s. A wretched shadow of their own minds, and capable of just as much destruction. While it lay there, still and unaware, he knew he should finish the job. Destroy this thing as well as he could. Or at the very least try to shut it away again. But he felt rooted to the spot as the internal mechanism took up a rhythm, and the outer glass surface began to change, clouding over to a skin tone, the hair shifting slightly even in the slight breeze as it darkened to brown. He’d thought it finely made, before, with only the liking of life to it, but that had been nothing to seeing it actually animated. He could see a faint pulse in the neck of what now appeared to only be a young woman, her chest stirring with long, slow breaths. The long dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks. Oh he should smash it to pieces. Stab it with his knife. Shatter it with a rock. Anything. Anything that would stop this tool of the Ancients from fulfilling whatever its awful purpose must be. He knew he should. He almost could.

She opened her eyes. And he knew he was lost.

Oh such eyes of liquid gold, of living flame—he was caught, mesmerized, at once drowning and burning in their depths. He’d half-climbed onto the lip of the cube, almost without his noticing, as he was enticed closer to their warmth. At some point he’d dropped his knife, his hands apparently having little idea what to do with themselves. The tiniest crease was forming between her brows as she looked up at him. A bemused smile tugged at her full lips as she blinked up at the strange man perched at the edge of her tomb, a slender shadow silhouetted against the still-dazzling light. Her limbs were fluid grace as she stretched, minutely, and made to sit up. But the cascades of hair falling all down her back made her startle slightly, drawing her gaze down. She took sudden stock of herself, grasping at the last remains of her clothes and pulling her waist-length hair about herself like a curtain as her face heated to a bright brand of red, the thin scars standing out white against her cheeks.

Strange to say, he hadn’t especially noticed until that moment that she was naked. Oh he had seen that the clothes had long ago deteriorated and her figure was visible underneath the remains. But in the way a sculpture may be unclothed, or a painting may display a form. As a thing that was meant to be viewed and appreciated. It was only when she reacted—not a mere subject, but a full actor in her own right—that she seemed to transform into being actually naked.

He might have made some small sound. His breath catching, or perhaps his throat working. A very minor reaction, all things considered. But apparently it was a step too far. Abruptly she was surging up, all the liquid power of her molten body coming to a point as her hands slammed into him, sending him flying onto his back nearly at the edge of the clearing. He had a moment to wonder if his spine had broken as all the wind was knocked out of him. But his digits all wiggled at his command, and in a moment he was able to dizzily lift his head in time to see the glassworks figure scramble her way out of the cube. Such a funny little thing, really. Her long hair catching on the wind, she cast him one last blushing look before her dainty glass feet hit the ground and she slipped away into the trees.

He let out what little breath he had, and let his head fall back against the ground. Feeling more dazed than actually injured. But somehow still loathe to move, trying to sort out the flood of emotions he seemed to be lazily floating through.

By the time Bailey had regained his feet, she was long gone, and the light with her. He had expected to make the last leg of his journey home in the dark, only that had been with the expectation of the familiar path. Even so, he knew his stars well enough he might have only been minorly inconvenienced. But a late winter squall had blown over the forest, stirring up a flurry, so that he had both the unfamiliar woods, the night, and the transfiguring power of the storm to contend with. The brittle bones of the trees rattled around him, every step just a little bit slower as the accumulating snow dragged at his feet. He put his head down and walked into the wind, squinting ahead for a familiar landmark. A few times he thought he might have regained the path, only to find he instead walked an animal trail. Even realizing his mistakes, he continued to follow them in the hopes they would eventually lead to at least a water source he might recognize.

Many hours later, when he saw the light up ahead, he thought at first they were stars dancing in front of his eyes. His feet were cold lumps in his boots, the wind seeming to pass right through his skinny frame every time it gusted. He forced himself to pick up the pace, teeth chattering too much to even call a greeting as he recognized a familiar face, but raising his hand as he came within the cast of the torch light.

Lee Parable startled as Bailey nearly careened into him on the proper path, almost dropping the torch as his hands naturally formed signed exclamations of silent surprise. Seeing the state he was in, however, Lee Parable quickly recovered and shrugged out of his own overcoat to sling over Bailey’s shuddering shoulders. Never one to waste words, he didn’t ask why Bailey had been so late, nor what had made him leave the path as he led the way back.

The only time he spoke, it was to say, “Something follows us.”

“Yes.”

Lee glanced back at him; seeing no alarm, his pace didn’t quicken. But there was something in the faraway look in Bailey’s eye he didn’t entirely trust, either, so that his guard stayed up. Bailey still felt somewhat dazzled by the light as he followed its bobbing head back to his door. His thoughts felt rather far away even when Pin descended on them both at the door, fluttering about them as they shook off snow and stomped their boots clear. He missed the anxious look exchanged between them as they got Bailey up to the kitchen, seated near the fireplace. Even in its warmth, back in his own kitchen, still he didn’t seem present until Pin stuck an iron needle in his finger to check whether he still bled.

“Ow,” he muttered, brows drawing down as he brought his bleeding thumb to his mouth.

“Apolo’em,” she said, looking less repentant than relieved. “Look’ee so distant and alien. Wasn’t sure Lee Parable hadn’t brought’em some seemling.”

Bailey glanced over to where Lee Parable was holding the fire poker, giving a somewhat more apologetic shrug than Pin had managed as he set the makeshift weapon aside. The Joplin provided quietly, “You left the path.”

“Yes, well. I’d hope if I were actually a creature wearing your brother’s face, you might have noticed before I was brought into the household,” Bailey grumbled at Pin as she pressed a hot mug of something that smelled medicinal into his hands. “Or leant it your coat. Thank’ee, for that,” he added, returning the heavy garment to its rightful owner. As Lee Parable was hanging it up to dry over the fire, Bailey caught Pin still giving him a narrow look. “What, a drop of blood wasn’t enough for you, you terribly suspicious child?”

“What happened out there?” she asked, quietly. “Look’ee… different. Like’ee not all here, still.”

“I’m a bit rattled. I got lost hours ago,” he side-stepped, drinking from his mug to buy time. Nose wrinkling as he gagged it down. “’Sblood, Pin, this is terrible.”

“That’s how’ee know’s medicine,” she answered, primly.

She still didn’t seem wholly satisfied with his explanation, but she stopped pressing while Lee Parable drew up a chair to sit with them and share their company for a while. They kept the conversation fairly light, for as long as he was there. He was very nearly family—he’d helplessly adored Bailey’s older sister, Airiadnee, before the Wilderness has claimed her, and he’d been a fairly dependable friend in all the intervening years since—but there were some things that really should only be discussed within the House. So they spoke in broad terms of their day. Lee mentioned that, for all that this was a late storm, most other signs pointed towards an early spring and an early planting. Pin shared that they’d had a minor setback that afternoon in construction when one of the giant birds that populated the region had tried to poke its enormous beak in through the open glass panel where Talus Mos had been working, and that it hadn’t gone away until Pin had shot at it—and missed—with three arrows.

After Lee Parable eventually left to get some rest, Bailey poked up the fire. Distracted by the dancing light, he found his thoughts wandering, yet again, to the glasswork woman. Wondering how it was her eyes had seemed to contain this same flame. Whether it had been caught at the time of her forming, or whether she generated it anew under those fleeting rays of sunlight.

“Was’t that bad?” Pin asked, stirring him from these musings. “The meeting with Rush?”

“Hmm? Oh,” he set the poker aside, coming to sit back down. “No. No, it was fine. They accepted our invitation. Warden Rush was a bit blunter than the other Houses have been: that they’re going to be judging us pretty harshly, to see if it’s even worth it to help us out. But if he’s not entirely sympathetic, I also don’t think he’s adverse to our position.”

“But might be all’s for nothing,” Pin said, hand creeping to her mouth in an unconscious comfort gesture.

“It might be,” he agreed, wishing he could spare her this frank discussion. It still seemed too heavy a thing to put on her shoulders, even recognizing he’d been even younger than she was now when he’d had to take over as head of the House. He knew she wasn’t a baby anymore, but over the years he’d tried to shield her at least a little from how dire their situation had become. “If they don’t think our House has a future, there’d be no point in naming one more Reed.”

She sighed, but nodded, the atmosphere primarily somber. Houses died, sometimes, when resources or members dwindled too low. They both knew that, intellectually, but it was another thing entirely to live it. On the whole, when a child was going to be born, the two Houses involved would negotiate to provide the new baby with the most resources—deciding which House was stronger and naming the child there. If the Houses were on approximately equal footing, sometimes the child was given to one family in concession for some other trade or promise. But if your House sank low enough, there was little negotiating power, and very few offers would tempt even the greediest House to allow a child to be born into an impoverished name. Occasionally a stronger Sister-House might step in on your behalf to help with negotiations, or they might offer up a fosterling of their own just to keep the House alive. An extreme measure, but sometimes a necessary one.

“Well,” Pin shook these heavy thoughts off, sighing as she stood. “Have’em impress, then, so’s favor’em.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Bailey said, feigning more confidence than he felt, toying with the end of one of his sleeves.

“Go to bed, gloomy,” she said on her way out, not fooled. “It’ll look brighter, tomorrow.”

He nodded, absently, but stayed where he was seated for some time longer, his eyes trailing to the gusts of snow blowing past the enormous windows. Telling himself that he’d primarily imagined he’d heard another set of footsteps trudging through the snow during the long trek home. That Lee Parable’s flame was the first and only light he’d seen in the dark. And that a glass creation couldn’t feel the cold.

The intent still hadn’t entirely formed in his mind when he made his way to the sewing bin. There were a few articles still set to be mended, and others that just hadn’t been put away. This simple old dress of Pin’s, for instance, had been in here for half a year by now. He’d put off repairing it for so long that by the time he’d mended the hem, the child had far outgrown it, shooting up like a weed last summer. So it wasn’t like she would even miss it, really. Wherever it ended up. He told himself he was only going outside to check when he dug out his coat and refastened his boots to his feet. What he was going to check he didn’t quite confront, nor the purpose behind bringing this old dress with him. He stepped into the yard, and from there back beneath the trees. Hearing nothing but the wind winding its way overhead and his own footsteps crunching a new path. When he came to a stump some little ways in, he casually lay the dress there. Pausing for only a moment to feel rather foolish before retreating to the house again. He kept his eyes on the welcoming kitchen lights, moving steadily onward and not looking back. Even when he heard the soft, distinct sounds of fabric rustling behind him.

***

The snow had stopped by early morning. Within hours of dawn, the sun had melted off most of the accumulation. As if to rewrite the prior day and erase all trace of its passing.

Bailey rather wished such a thing were possible. His first thought on waking had been a kind of wordless panic that sent him catapulting from his hammock to the window, his hands dragging distracted through the ends of his hair as he thought back on the day before, as one might recall a particularly bewildering dream. Had he taken complete leave of his senses? Bad enough that he’d awoken some Ancient evil and let it follow him home. Had he actually gone out into the storm last night and given it a Wind-bitten dress?

No, he couldn’t have been that thoughtless. Or self-destructive. Or selfish. Foolish. Irresponsible. Short-sighted. Reckless.

He was on around his third iteration for insults directed at himself when he firmly decided to just push it from his mind. He would just go on as if it had never happened. And hopefully that would be the end of it.

And it wasn’t as if there weren’t a host of issues to otherwise occupy his thoughts. He had a week to prepare for his cousins’ arrival and show off just how well they were doing. And then there was the seasonal hiring coming around again, the work orders to sort, a few more inquiries into whether a good herbalist wouldn’t be willing to apprentice Pin, do another check for any broken windows before the next windy season, and he still needed to go back through and catalogue what they might need from the next passing tinker or whether an actual trip to town would be necessary. Not to mention the seventh-year tithe would be due, and he’d sooner trust his own sums than accept the calculated tax on good faith.

When Pin finally tracked him down late that afternoon, he had therefore had a very busy day with legitimate House business to keep him entirely preoccupied. His long pipe was clamped between his teeth, the thick, colored smoke pooling around the ankles of the stool he was perched on as he distractedly puffed away. The little workroom he’d claimed was covered in little tapestry notations and glass panels of receipts and tallies. In his lap, he had a complicated tangle of strings and beads he was busy braiding together as he muttered under his breath and occasionally jabbed at a little button-covered machine at his side that gave very unhelpful dings at certain intervals. This only seemed to make him type in his sums in an angrier fashion, soliciting ever-shriller dings.

“Oughta just hire’ee Red,” Pin opined.

“Nearly finished,” he said around his pipe, not looking up. “What ‘s it, Pin, busy’em.”

“Found’em this outside, this morning. Know’ee where it came from?” Pin asked, setting something down on a small empty corner of the table.

Still trying to keep a running count going in his head, Bailey was leaning over to grab a red bead from the farther edge of the table when he glanced at it. And then promptly fell off his stool.

It was her. The glasswork woman he’d freed the day before. The creature of living light, of fluid art, of a solid fucking punch, and he was already quite winded again as he scrambled to his feet, choking on a breath of smoke and ignoring Pin’s surprised exclamation. Because of course it wasn’t actually her. It was only a figurine, barely the size of his ring finger. And yet so clearly it was her features: the little slope of her somewhat bulbous nose, the twin scars on her cheeks, the long hair, the rather bottom-heavy shape. As small as it was, every bit of it was still finely, carefully formed—if he squinted hard enough, he thought he could see little fingernails shaped in the clear glass.

“Where’d’ee get’s?” he demanded, eyes watering as he continued to cough up a lung.

“It was on the stoop, this morning. Bailey, what ‘s it? ‘S wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s… nothing to worry about,” he said, picking up the stool and avoiding eye contact. Busying himself with tapping out his pipe, pounding his fist on his chest to get the last of his coughs out. “Apolo’em, Pin, I just took a bad breath, there. I think I’ve been doing these sums for too long. Well, it’s a cute figure. Are you sure Talus Mos didn’t make it?”

“He’s good,” she conceded. “But don’t think’em ever done anything quite this close to life. Almost looks to breathe, doesn’t it?”

“Mm,” he had to agree, and though he had just finished telling himself he should feign indifference, his eye was dragged back to studying the figurine. Almost, yes, he could imagine its tiny breast stirred with breath. He remembered how the actual glasswork had begun with a small ticking of her internal mechanism to signal her return to life and motion.

“’S odd, it turning up on our door. ‘N it almost seems trying to say something, doesn’t it?”

This, too, he had to acknowledge. The figure was curtsying, wearing the dress he’d left outside. She was peeking from behind the curtain of her hair, but even if the little figurine hadn’t been designed with its face visible at all, the posture was obviously one of embarrassed gratitude.

“Strange subject, too. Not a classic beauty. But ‘s something charming about it.”

Something warm and brilliant, captivating and achingly alive. The way a trampled little flower with half its petals missing was still just as lovely, almost improved for its idiosyncrasies. Such a funny little thing, looking just rather unfairly adorable in that hand-me-down dress. Yes, he supposed it was possible someone might get that impression.

And maybe he should be more cautious. Maybe this figurine carried some bit of that Ancient thing’s consciousness and it was only here to spy on them, and he would do better to smash it. Or destroy it anyway, just because of where it came from. But even such thoughts were fleeting—he could no more seriously consider shattering this than he could the actual glasswork.

He glanced over to find Pin not trying especially hard to hide her grin. “What?” he demanded.

“Are’ee blushing, Bailey?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered, which only seemed to be making the heat in his face worse. “Don’t you have work to do?”

Pin gave a delighted laugh. “Oh, are’ee awful’some liar, Bailey. Should’ee just told me had’ee sweetheart, dolty-face. La, now it all makes sense! This’s why’ee’ve suddenly pushed so hard for our Sister-Houses to step in on your behalf, isn’t it? To help negotiate with her House? Oh, sneak’ee, should’ve just told me!”

“Pin, you know that’s absurd. This deal with our Sister-Houses has taken years of careful planning—“

“Is this where’ee were yesterday, when’ee got lost?”

“I don’t know where you get the basis for this fantasy you’ve concocted—“ he started, rather uncomfortable with just how close she was guessing.

“Know’em family? Wait, let me see,” she said, picking the figurine up and skipping back out of Bailey’s reach as she squinted at its features. “Her hair’s even longer’n straighter’n mine. But got’em almost a bit of a Mountain’some look about’em, doesn’t she? Ah, ah!” she cautioned, darting around the side of the table as Bailey tried to snatch the glass figure from her hands. “Let me guess the House. ‘S it Vale? Ponderosa? Luna? But no, stick’em close to home. Almost Aster, and get’em strong Violet. ‘S not Mountain garb, though—almost looks like one of my old dresses.”

“Well if you’re quite finished, I’m going for a walk,” Bailey announced, trying to salvage what was left of his dignity.

“Are’ee going to see her, again? Can I meet’em?” she asked, nearly hopping with excitement.

“No, no, you seem to be doing quite well enough playing make-believe over there.”

“I’ll quit teasing,” Pin pledged. “I know it can be delicate, these negotiations, early on, ‘n I won’t go blabbering to everyone.”

“That’s very fortunate, as there’s no one to meet, you silly thing. There isn’t,” he insisted at her disbelieving pout. “I just need to get some air and check on the traps.”

“All right, keep’ee secrets.” Pin huffed, taking his vacated seat. “But tell’em I said ‘hi!’” she called after him, so that he flinched and glanced around lest anyone else had heard her. At this point not really sure whether he should be more hopeful or horrified at the idea running into the glasswork girl again.

***

Under the cover of the trees, the sun had not yet completely melted away the new snowfall by the time Bailey made his way outside. He was better dressed for the weather, this time around. His fancy clothing he’d packed away again, but his homespun and thick jacket served him in good stead. He readjusted the quiver on his back and held his bow at the ready as he followed a different path from the one he’d tread the day before, walking south to check the traps and see if he could scare up some larger game.

A scant ten minutes had passed when he first spotted the footprints off the path. Relatively small tracks compared to his, carrying the imprint of a bare foot. Another hour’s melt might have obliterated their mark entirely, but he could clearly see which direction they headed: away from the house and towards where he knew there were some old ruins. And maybe he should leave it at that. Let this thing pass out of his life and just be grateful that it hadn’t brought ruin on them all.

His gut told him he’d only narrowly dodged tragedy. His head accepted this notion as sound. And yet he found his feet turned off the path as his heart beat rather too quickly in his chest.

These ruins had been picked apart, over the many years. Only a few sophisticated Red Houses knew how to rework some of the most durable of the Ancient metal like the site where the glasswork had been entombed. But the Ancients had also made their buildings of stone and glass parts that were more easily scavenged. What was left at these ruins was therefore little more than a skeleton of some of the crumbled buildings, not worth dismantling, overgrown with vegetation. It had been built on the edge of a steep drop-off, beyond which the Kin River could be seen still winding its way east before it flowed northward.

It was on the ledge of a dilapidated wall that he spotted her again. She was sitting with her skirts bunched up around her knees, bare feet swinging freely as she looked out over the ledge into the forest. She’d retained her color, but looking up at her profile, he could see that where, before, her expression had been lively and animated, she appeared more withdrawn, now. A cold wind blew, pulling her hair out like a long banner. And while she didn’t shiver, her posture was stiff, and she carried herself rather carefully, as if holding together all the cracks in her glass skin.

“This used to all be city,” she finally spoke. She had an accent he couldn’t quite place, reflective of a place and a time that no longer existed. Her voice a bit deeper than he might have imagined, for her little frame. Perhaps it was only a component of the glass, though, because the chiming resonance of the sound seemed to be finding a place somewhere in his sternum. “So much of what I remember before my long dreaming passes through me, like the sun through my palm,” she said, considering her hand as its color faded to clear and then returned. “But I do know this: the forests had only been lonely oases between the roads. And a city had thrived here, from one end of the horizon to the next.”

His eyes were still captivated by the hand she’d held aloft, and he spoke unthinkingly. “Why didn’t the Ancients make you in their image, with six fingers?”

“Make me?” She seemed to genuinely consider the question as she turned over her hand. “No,” she spoke slowly, her voice rather distant. “No, I made this. I remember shaping every finger to replace the ones I’d have to leave behind. Six was common, but, no, not everyone had that many. And when they said the end was coming, that what would be left of our bodies would be less than human anyway…”

She trailed off and then stopped studying her hands, instead using them to collect her hair and twist it aside. This done, she finally looked down to fully acknowledge Bailey’s presence. He was gazing up in some wonder, still reeling from this information, in many ways worse than he’d suspected: to be not only a tool of the Ancients, but one of them herself. Or what was left of one, under all that vagueness and formed glass. Created to escape the calamity of their world ending. She said she remembered little, but how much of it was forbidden and dangerous? She said she’d made this only to survive, but who knew what terrible purpose might be buried deep in her programming?

She seemed to become more self-aware under his eye, now fidgeting where she sat. The little movements betraying some inner drive, a richer sense of self than any created thing could boast. Not a creature, not a tool, not an emissary of the Ancient’s evils. Just a young woman whose world had ended and who had survived it as best she could.

“I’m sorry I pushed you. It… I was disoriented, and you were perched there a strange man all bird bone and sunshine, and y-you had such a light in your eye it’s a wonder I could keep my glass innards from melting, but that’s… that’s no excuse, and I’m sorry. And thank you, for the dress, too I… I d-didn’t know if…”

Maybe there was something a little off in her wind-up. She was turning rather red again, and took the opportunity of hopping down from her high spot on the old wall to try to collect herself. She noted how he flinched when her feet touched down on the hard stone, and she offered a small smile that made the cracks in her cheeks shift in a strange way that ultimately was rather charming. She smoothed down her skirts, her hair spilling free around her shoulders and down her back. Such a comical little contradiction she made as she reassured, “I’m more durable than I look.”

Is that why he felt like he was the one who had been shattered? “Yes,” he managed, “I can see that, now.”

He hadn’t really been aware he’d taken a step closer to her until he saw the way she tensed. Not a strict fear response, perhaps, but a kind of wariness that made him immediately halt, to let the tension drain away again. Strange to think she would have anything to fear from him, but it didn’t seem a wise thing to confront just then.

“The cities aren’t all gone,” he offered, pointing over the drop off. “Another half-day’s walk brings you to a little town. And far beyond that, in the desert, is the empire’s hub.”

“Empire?” she murmured, mostly to herself. “No, that… doesn’t sound familiar. At all. How… how long have I been…?” She seemed to catch herself, though, focusing on him again. “Sorry, I guess you wouldn’t know, I was just thinking out loud and…”

“Oh. I might know,” Bailey said, tone casual, suddenly becoming preoccupied with his sleeve cuffs. He felt the burning light of her interested gaze on him and tried very hard to keep his voice lofty and academic. “If I had a few more details I could be more exact. But judging by the technology that went into forming your body, from your tomb, and from your memory of there being a city here—you were right on the cusp of the last of the Ancient Era, before we entered the sunless times of the Dark Epochs. I just finished reciting those histories to my cousins, as it happens, so I know the stories well. But even that tale is days in telling and, really, that’s only the beginning of it from your time. We’ve passed through many eras since then, just to get where we are now.”

“I suppose… I’ll pick it up as I go,” she began dubiously, looking off the way he’d pointed. “Because so much of my memory is a smudge on my mind’s eye, I could just try to make the best of what I have? Start fresh in that town down there?”

Her mouth was setting with determination as the thought seemed to take hold, her resolve firming. But was that really such a good idea? Walking in blind, without a House to speak for her, without a clue as to custom? Amongst strangers who could, at any time, divine her origin? He told himself that it was only the thought that this could somehow be traced back to him that made him feel a lurch of panic, his words a little rushed as he offered, “I could fill you in, on what you’ve missed. Not all of it. But enough to get by. If you like.”

She hesitated, and he tried to keep his face neutral, eyes directed to the side as she considered this alternative. “I don’t want to impose,” she began.

“You made that little figurine, didn’t you?”

“Y-es?” she said, stretching the word out. “Sorry, I didn’t know if you’d… want to actually see me again after…”

“How did you make it, out here? I didn’t see any tools.”

“Well, um, yeah, but there’s old glass all over the ground, here.”

He glanced to her and she colored a bit as if embarrassed, again. But she bent to the ground to demonstrate, shifting the old rubble between her fingers. As he watched, the glass bits—smoothed almost into pebbles by time—began to glow a hot red, growing malleable and stretching as she teased it into a little flower shape. And then, just as quickly, formed it back into a ball and dropped the red-hot glass back to the ground.

“That’s very useful,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “Can you also use tools, if someone were watching you?” At her hesitant nod, he said, “Well. If you’re that good at glasswork, you’ll have a steady career. There’s always more work to be done, even if it’s in construction and repair and not fine art. There are some projects around my home—you can help, there, while I tell you a shortened version of the histories. As kind of an informal contract.”

“That… actually sounds perfect. Okay, it’s a deal!” she agreed, moving forward and snatching up his hand in sudden enthusiasm.

He’d just watched her melt glass with those fingers. He wondered at himself, that his first instinct had still been to clasp her hand in return. Frankly, under the circumstances, he probably deserved to have his whole limb charred off for that. But her hand was only warm to the touch, as any person’s would be. Her beaming expression somehow making him feel a little brighter, a little lighter. How could someone have created glass eyes with so much depth to them—even if she had been some master worker in her prior life, how had she captured that nuance? Even from only a step away, her façade was flawless, every glass hair of her eyelashes perfectly formed.

To the eye. His hand knew better. She was warm, yes, but the texture of her skin was still smooth, hard, unyielding glass. It was worth remembering, he told himself sternly, even as she released him and danced back a few steps again, looking a bit flustered.

“Sorry, I… Yes, that sounds like a good plan. And thank you. Um. So what should I…? I actually forgot to ask your name.”

“It’s Carson, of the House of Reed,” he replied, somewhat relieved to have a protocol to fall back on. “And if your memory is still a smudge—I suppose you don’t remember what you were called.”

“Actually, there’s something engraved on my sole, so I think that must be right,” she said, balancing on one foot as she looked at the bottom. “See, it says ‘Catherine Derringer,’ so either that’s me, or someone was having a real laugh with me while I was—“ She looked up, startled at his sudden movement. He’d stepped away from her, and she was surprised by how bloodless he’d gone. “What’s wrong?”

His eyes were riveted on the words. “Can you get rid of that?” he asked, hoarsely. “The way you made your skin color, or even if burn’ee out’s—can’ee remove that?” She put her foot back down, and he was finally able to meet her eye, seeing how tense she was again. “The written Word can’t be suffered,” he started, but even trying to explain it seemed too much to bear just then.

Ultimately, he shook his head, the long gap of history between them. Taking his kerchief from his pocket, he knelt in front of her. And, although she was still quite confused, she permitted him to tie the fabric over her foot like he was wrapping a wound, hiding it from view.

He straightened, already visibly calmer. “Perhaps that’s where we’ll begin, then.”

***

They had a somewhat circuitous path back to the house as Bailey took the opportunity to first check his hunting traps and try to lay some groundwork for telling the histories. Although she was full grown and seemed to have some fuzzy memory of her life during the Ancient times, it seemed best not to rely on that recollection and just try to start from scratch. He therefore approached this latter task as he would for any very young student, which meant essentially going all the way back. The glasswork woman, he found, made for a fairly receptive audience, and once she’d forgotten a bit of her nervousness, she had copious questions about nearly everything: What was this Word? How does a Word speak itself? Why did the Wind have a will but most other things in the cosmos didn’t? How do you eat a Word? Was this supposed to be allegorical? And so on and so forth, but she had to outright stop him when he got around to talking about writing being part of what caused the Ancient’s end.

“That can’t be right,” she insisted, pushing her hair out of her face again.

The forest path here was a bit narrow, but she turned sideways and trotted to keep up just so she could confront Bailey on this.

“Writing is—it’s how you learn! There’s just no way to communicate aloud all that information. And if you had specialized knowledge, it would get lost if you didn’t tell enough people before you died.”

“We get by.”

“But how is this any worse than just speaking? Isn’t that also messing with the Word, or whatever?”

“Some think so,” he conceded. “North of here, the Joplins only allow the children to speak, and adults are expected to know better. So they sign—“ “See, that’s also language!”

“—as people were intended to, without treading into the specific domain reserved to the Word. But for most people, just speaking isn’t profane in the way trapping the Word in immutable forms would be.” He glanced to her, and seeing her somewhat mutinous expression, said, “This isn’t debatable.”

“It just seems so… backwards. And inefficient.”

“It’s the way of the world, Derringer Cater—Catherine,” he said, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar word.

“Cat’s fine,” she brushed it off, missing his look of quickly-controlled surprise.

“I can say it properly, Derringer Catherine,” he said, somewhat stiffly, as if to prove that he could.

“Hmm, well. So, wait, you don’t keep any records?”

“Oh. No, we do. In beadwork, or made in glass sheet grooves. As approximations of the ideas, and mostly to keep track of House business.”

“Seems like cheating,” she muttered as they stepped from the path to visit the third trap. She absentmindedly gathered up the hem of her skirt to lift it away from the melting snow, otherwise seeming oblivious to the cold conditions. “And it also just seems like the wrong lesson to learn, here. I know we must have done a lot wrong, but for you guys all to take from that that illiteracy was preferable to—good God!” she broke off as she spotted something caught in the trap, her feet scrambling backwards so that she nearly fell right on the slushy earth. “What the hell is that?”

Bailey wasn’t entirely certain, himself. Creatures could look so different, when they were as sick as this one was. He couldn’t tell if it had initially had that rat tail, or if that was another product of the mange that left clumps of matted, bloody hair scattered about the trap from the creature’s thrashing. The trap itself wasn’t designed to permanently injure, but it’s skin was so delicate even its attempts to free itself had resulted in most of the flesh sloughing off. It had what looked like six functional limbs, and one boneless one growing from about midway up its hind-quarters. Its milky eye told him it had likely been blind from birth. Its open sores wiggled with parasites that seemed to have come from within.

“Not fit to eat,” he sighed, drawing his knife to put it out of its misery. He avoided the snap of its spindly teeth to slit its throat. The blood that wept from the wound was sluggish and thick, and he quickly wiped his blade clean in some of the melting snow. He’d need to find another place to reset the trap, let the forest reclaim this patch while the carcass rotted.

Derringer had been quiet while he did this, her face a mixture of disgust and pity. “Are there… a lot of things out here, like that?”

“Not as many as there used to be. They’re born sick, so most don’t live long enough to reproduce. And we’ve done a pretty thorough job of killing the ones that do manage to survive. It’s been a slow process, but now it’s fairly few and far between you find one as bad off as this.”

She was more reticent, again, as she followed him back to the path. Her colors seemed a bit muted, the bright gold of her eye dimmed as she watched the ground. Eventually, she offered softly, “We really screwed up, didn’t we.”

He didn’t dispute it. “There’s more. And there aren’t enough steps between here and the house to tell it all. It’s more than just the writing on your foot: you’re going to need to be on your guard against anyone discovering your origins. The Ancients were powerful and fearless, but their ingenuity was often tainted with their own self-destructive tendencies. What we have from the Ancients, their machines or their medicines, we have slowly tested over the course of generations. Anything new—anything unexpected or potentially dangerous—we generally destroy. Clockworks are a mixed bag, sometimes still useful and able to repeat the functions for which they were made. I’ve never heard of one quite like you,” he admitted, “but as I say, that doesn’t help you much, because that means you’re wholly new.”

“You destroy things just because you don’t understand them?” she asked, and as shaken as she still was, she couldn’t quite hide the contempt in her voice. “Seems a bit barbarous.”

“You think so? Ah, well. Perhaps we are a barbarous people.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—“

“In the Era of Coldstill, five generations from the Sun’s release,” he cut her off, making a sign of the era to signal the start of the lesson, “was the township of Casing, named for the Ancient tech casing in the town’s center. Near the base of the Mountains was it founded, during the times when the kingdoms were still forming and the fertile plains were yet unruled. Being so near the Mountains, they carried on the city-state form of government, where no family has any kind of direct political voice as our Houses give us. Casing was a bustling town that made use of the rich farmland, timber, natural ores from the mountainside, and, most importantly, the Ancient’s treasures they mined with impunity. They knew the dangers, but laughed at them as old superstitions from the ignorant and cowardly. And for a time, they seemed justified. The township of Casing grew and thrived, utilizing Ancient technology to tend their crops, to gather resources more easily, to subdue their enemies. It was a beautiful town, by all accounts. If you have the stomach for it, you can still go see it. The city is there, as it likely will be until the sun finally winks out: every inch of it, every paving stone, every child, every blade of grass, perfectly preserved from where they were covered in the Ancient dark metal that does not corrode. No one is sure exactly how it happened. Some think the Ancient artifact at the town center used to be some sort of city-maker, meant to create buildings in an instant, as some of the stories say, and that it was only that the controls had some internal miscalculation. Others think it might have been sabotage, from ones trying to punish them for their hubris. Whatever it was, it must have happened in an instant, to capture them like that, totally encased in metal, without a hint of fear or knowledge of their impending end. And so it remains, as a reminder to those who would needlessly meddle with the Ancient’s things.”

The forest path was a bit narrower, here, requiring that they go one-by-one. At his back, Derringer seemed to be absorbing the story, too engrossed in its implications to even interrupt with a question. Her steps were slowing, and when she stopped entirely, he turned back. She stood on the path, her hands twisting the fabric of her skirt in a nervous gesture. Her head was bent slightly, the long sweep of her hair partially obscuring her face. The angle of light through the trees showed her skin had become somewhat translucent again, casting refracted light onto the earth around her. At the neckline of her dress, Bailey could just make out a shadow of her inner workings as they hummed away inside of her, a perfect mechanism of engineering and art that still somehow didn’t account for the spark of living light in her eyes as her gaze darted up to meet his.

“If that’s all true,” she said, “if Ancient things are so terrible—why are you taking me back with you? Why did you wake me up at all?”

“Ah, well. It figures. All this knowledge of history, and apparently I’m still not very wise.” He could see she wasn’t satisfied with that answer, her silence prompting further response. “The histories are reminders. They help guide us. But we can still reason for ourselves. As I say, I don’t know that there’s ever been another like you. We’re warned from unintentionally injuring ourselves from technology left behind by the Ancients. But you aren’t a thing that was left behind you’re… a person. Misplaced in time. If you hurt me, it will be by your own volition. Is that your intention?”

“No. Not intentionally,” she said, and he rather wished she hadn’t sounded so solemn about it. She was looking at her hands, again, something pained flickering over her features. “I remember making this form. So there must have been something, before. But… I can’t really tell you I was that same person, for sure. Maybe this is only a… casing, for a very sophisticated machine with a facsimile of life.”

“Well,” he said. “If you are just clockwork—at that level of sophistication, is there really any difference?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She let her hand drop, her opacity returning as she straightened her back and gestured him on ahead of her towards the house. “But I can see why you might caution against putting that question to the public at large. It seems more something I’d rather work out for myself, rather than risk just having any old person decide it’d be a good idea to try and smash me.”

From behind, she saw a shudder run over his skinny frame. He tried to shake it off as owing to the weather as he readjusted his coat, but she could see his ears had reddened a bit with the emotion he’d suppressed. A curiously visceral response as he only gave a brief nod of agreement and swiftly changed the subject.

When they finally reached the house, the day was deepening towards twilight, again. The faint speckles of the stars that had persisted through midday now reclaimed the sky in earnest as the heavy red sun gave way for another night. One day closer to when the Sister-Houses would be arriving to judge their progress and determine their viability.

That seemed like something to worry about tomorrow, though. For now, Bailey was trying to figure out how to get the glasswork woman into the house without exciting unnecessary attention. It was inevitable that Pin would discover their visitor, of course. But he could only hope she would keep true to her promise of discretion, even if this wasn’t exactly what Pin had had in mind. Better to have everything sorted and above board even before he saw anyone else. So he avoided the front and the kitchen entrance. From a distance he had spotted Lee Parable heading in from the fields—his sensitive skin heavily veiled even against the weak winter sun, carrying a soil-testing apparatus slung over his shoulders—but Bailey had only given a wave of acknowledgement. He then hustled Derringer Catherine around the side at the base of one of the trees that made up a farther wing. The bark was worn smooth where generations had placed their hands, so that even if she weren’t following right behind, Derringer probably could have made her way up to his bedroom window. It was a rather charming little room, she reflected, shimmying down from the wide sill. A bit cluttered, perhaps. A hammock was strung up near the window they’d entered, with the thick coverlets on it rucked a bit. Elsewhere were incidentals people tended to collect wherever they might stay for long, the way dust gathers in the corners of a room: a half-finished tapestry, some baskets of yarn, a few little machines, clothing stored more or less in bins, a few glass figurines that caught the light. A kind of litter of life. She wondered, suddenly, what her room had looked like. It made her feel a little less real, to not even have such a banal way to mark her history.

Bailey had been checking the hallway. It hadn’t really occurred to him until they’d arrived, but he was not unaware of just how much of his private life he’d unwittingly exposed to her. Seeing the hall was empty, he hastened her out of the room with no small amount of relief.

They were curiously twisty hallways, rather narrow and tall for the most part, with sunroofs high above and more rooms and alcoves speckled down their path. Eventually they came back to the accounting room where Bailey had passed most of the day, and he was chagrinned to find that Pin had left the glass figure of Derringer right in the middle of his workspace. Determined not to let it rattle him, he merely cleared a space to quickly draw up a simple contract that would pass inspection. He also took the opportunity to supply her with an old satchel and directed her to make a bowl and utensils for herself from some of the glass—the bare minimum anyone would leave home with—so she at least had the appearance of having traveled there. He then dug out a violet earring for her. Trying heartily to ignore the little thrill that swept over him when her fingers brushed over his.

“This looks like your ring,” she said, turning over the earring to look at the tree design as she nodded to the ring on his hand.

“Well I should hope so; it’s my House’s sigil.”

“It’s pretty. Although some might say a symbol that means a specific thing is a kind of word,” she said, a smile breaking out across her face at his disgruntled frown. She pushed her hair back a bit from her face as she considered, “I don’t even know if my ears are pierced, come to think of it. Can you see if…?”

He kept his expression still as he managed a mute nod and got up to go to her side of the worktable. She was perched on another stool, there, her feet nowhere near the ground. She kept her gaze fixed ahead, cheeks only slightly pink, head cocking to give him better access. He was trying to still the trembling in his fingers as he finally was given permission to touch—and yet reigned in the temptation, so that he only lightly brushed her hair to the side. Still marveling in the warm flow of her locks over his fingers. Her eyes were lowered, eyelashes skimming the top of her scarred cheeks. He saw her shiver slightly as he uncovered the shell of her ear and found they were indeed pierced. Wordlessly, he took the glass earring from her and fastened it in place.

He stepped back, quickly, as she reached up to feel the earring, spilling her hair over her other shoulder. She seemed oblivious to the effect she had on him as she mused, “I suppose it must seem a strange thing not to know about yourself. To exist in a body you don’t seem to properly own. But every time I try to recall, it’s as if I’m looking back through fogged glass. I can make out… fragments. Sometimes the shape of it more than anything. But few details. I wonder if it was because of what I did to myself, to make me like this—or if in the long centuries of my sleep, it all simply faded out of me. Like an old book left out in the elements, the sun leeching all my colors and words away.” She stirred herself, glancing to him and saying, “Um. Or I guess not a book. Since you don’t… Sorry. So, what now?”

What indeed. He had been puzzling over it while he’d been drawing up the contract, until then mostly acting on instinct. He’d considered just trying to hide her in various projects about the rambling house and just make time to give her history lessons as well he could. But that ultimately seemed a recipe for disaster if Pin stumbled upon her and launched an interrogation. Better to act as if there were nothing to hide and keep this within his control. So he said, “I can show you to where they’re working on the new greenhouse. It’s glasswork, but less technical skill involved than your talents actually warrant—mostly grunt work—so it won’t take much of your concentration while I fill you in on more of the histories.”

“Who’s working on it now?” she asked, following where he led back out into the hall.

“Oh. Well. My fauder, Talus Mos, mostly, but my little sister has been assisting him.”

He spoke casually, but he was toying with the cuff of his sleeve and walking a bit quicker to try to cut off conversation. Eventually their windy path took them out on a farther limb and up through the floor of a rounded room perched on a higher bough. She squinted up through where the fading daylight was being caught by the clever play of glass panels. Grunt work, indeed!

Up along one of the high, sloping walls, she could see two people in harness at work: an older man and a teenage girl, carefully fitting one of the glass panels into the wall. The girl held it in place while the man made a few minor adjustments and then carefully ran a glowing-hot tool along the joining seam, to do a first seal. He nodded his approval, and the girl let go, glancing down for the first time.

“Oh!” she said, her eye immediately falling on Derringer Catherine. Her hand leap to her mouth, even as it split in a wide grin and she began to giggle uproariously.

“What’s funny?” the man demanded, also looking down but seeing little amusing about the situation.

Pin was already rappelling down almost faster than she could dole out the slack. “And who’s’ee, stranger?” she asked, in mock-shock.

“This is my sister, Reed Adelaide. And she’s Derringer Catherine. She’s been hired on to help out a bit.”

“Has’em, Bailey?”

Pin was grinning fit to burst while her brother pretended not to know what she was on about. Derringer wasn’t feigning being in the dark, at least, and could only try to return a somewhat confused smile of her own as the girl transferred her attention to the newcomer. Derringer could see the family resemblance between the two of them—both being rather tall and willowy blonds—and even with Pin’s cleft lip, the facial structure was fairly similar. She was also a bit annoyed that even with this sapling she had to look up to see Pin’s smile turn conspiratorial.

“So’ee came after all?” she stage-whispered. “La, but aren’t’ee na’much bigger’n your figurine’n all.”

“She’s here to help put up the greenhouse,” Bailey said, firmly.

“Don’t’ee worry. I won’t tell,” Pin assured her, ignoring him.

“Oh, uh, o-okay,” Derringer said, a bit dazed.

“And get’em lots’some time to talk, while we work!”

“You brought on new help?” Talus Mos was making his way down quite a bit slower. “I told you we’d finish before your Sister-Houses arrived. I keep my word,” he said, a bit stiffly.

“I know you do. But I need Pin elsewhere.”

Pin, seeing her chance to interrogate the newcomer slipping away, set up an exuberant protest that she was learning a useful skill and they’d already had setbacks, so they needed all hands on this to finish in time. At the same time, Talus Mos was arguing this wasn’t what they’d agreed to, they were all going to be in the way of one another, and that he still needed Pin to keep on-schedule. Bailey was trying to address both of their complaints at the same time, which just ended up with them all talking over one another, trying to get a word in edgewise. They certainly were a rowdy bunch, Derringer reflected, their words ringing off the greenhouse surfaces and right through her glass bones, until she finally interrupted, “I won’t be in the way!” which at least got their attention.

“I like odd hours,” she said. “I can work at night, and we’ll get it done twice as fast without getting in one another’s way.” She didn’t really seem to need sleep, as far as she could tell, so this seemed a good compromise.

“I’m amenable to that,” Talus Mos immediately agreed.

Pin was the only one whose aim was thwarted, now. But she ultimately had to content herself to that, telling herself she would still find a way to slake her curiosity. As Derringer Catherine claimed this a good a time as any to begin work, crying off that she had already eaten, Pin had to instead grill Bailey in undertones all the way back to the kitchen as they went to prepare the evening meal.

“Thought’ee say didn’t know’ee’em?” she sing-songed.

“Did I.”

“Is she staying long? Have’ee talked to her family? Where’s Derringer House? How’d’ee meet her out here?”

Pin didn’t seem to mind very much that he ignored her and just busied himself at making the meal, mostly just delighted to have something to tease him about. It had been a long, dreary winter of years for their House. She knew how he’d struggled to keep them afloat, always worrying about the family, putting it before all of his own needs. It relieved her that he finally wanted something for himself, which seemed to be making him happy in an embarrassed kind of way. So she didn’t push him too hard, mostly content to pester as she only hoped Derringer Catherine would stay with them for a long, long time.

***

Dinner was a busy affair. Beyond trying to tiptoe around Pin’s questions, an influx of House business snared Bailey’s attention.

First came agents from Harrington and Raise—Sister-Houses to one another who held longstanding contracts with the House of Reed for harvesting and land development. It still galled Bailey that in those early, lean years, he’d been forced to sell a long-coveted plot of his family’s land to the House of Raise. It had been necessary, and he had been sure the price was dear, but he couldn’t help the little twist of bitterness whenever he thought of it. His opinion of their Houses was not particularly high in any case. Their labor was steady, they fulfilled their contracts, and he envied them their numbers; but he’d yet to meet one of them who particularly interested him as people. True to form, these two were rather bland bead-counters who primarily seemed to enjoy one another’s company. They stayed for the meal after they had given confirmation of when and how many laborers would be supplied, but they declined to stay the night.

While they were cleaning up afterwards, the cook Bailey had hired weeks before arrived with his two assistants. This of course required some delicate maneuvering as contracts were affirmed, control of the kitchen was ceded, and proper housing was arranged. By the time Bailey was finished with that and left for them to start on tomorrow’s bread, he found Talus Mos waiting to ambush him, dancing around the insecurities that had seized him, given time to think it over. And so he had to be reassured that no, he was not being replaced, everything was fine, there was still a place for him here. And just when Bailey thought his working day might be over, Lee Parable had to politely request his attention yet again as regarded the soil sampling results, to work out which crops to plant where and how much seed and fertilizer they might need. This took some calculation, and they had each smoked approximately three pipes before they felt satisfied with their plan and left it for the day.

Bailey’s bones ached. Had been aching since his first growth spurt, although he hoped, by now, that he was nearing his full height. He decided to seek some relief in the steam room, down in the lower level. It was a large room, and he was grateful to sit alone in it, unbothered, and let the heat seep in. By the time he went to laboriously pump the shower cistern full, most of the aches had dissipated, and he was able to tolerate the cold shock of the drawn well-water. He looked forward to spring, when the river was not so frozen as to be dangerous and he wouldn’t have to do all this work just to get clean.

By the time he emerged, feeling marginally more human, it returned to him in a rush that he should really go check on Derringer, to see how she was settling into the work. He had meant to go back as soon as they had finished eating, but in the middle of everything else, he’d fallen back on his old routines and completely forgotten. A dread foreboding crept over him, his stride growing increasingly longer, as he only then realized that he hadn’t seen Pin since dinner.

Coming up through the floor, a glance skyward gave total vindication for his fears. For there was Pin, in harness again with a stack of glass plates, beside Derringer Catherine. They had paused in their work and—Bailey’s heart gave a lurch—Pin was holding onto the glasswork’s arm, tilting it as though to inspect it. Those dangerous glass fingers were held loose, the Ancient thing appearing calm and tolerant. When Bailey stumbled over the last ladder rung and clattered his way up with a hoarse shout, they both glanced down in some surprise, but still quite at their ease.

“Pin, let go!” he snapped, his fear putting an edge of anger into his voice.

“Derringer said’em I could look’see,” Pin answered stubbornly. As he was getting his own harness on, below, she continued talking to her companion. “And made’ee them, your own self? I’ve a cousin,” she continued, “lost a leg. Bone rot brought a fever that nearly took’em with the leg. When he’d recovered, get’em a mechanical in town, and barely slowed’em down. But’s just a machine—nothing like get’ee, here. ‘S like art. You’re wasted on the greenhouse. But how’d’ee lose both arms?”

“Not… all at once. I had time to prepare,” she put off actually answering, and was somewhat grateful for the interruption as Bailey made his way up to them.

The climb had given him a chance to cool the immediate spark of fear he’d felt, but Pin still felt it prudent to let go of Derringer’s arm and interject before she could be scolded: “I wasn’t snooping; get’em assist, and accidently brushed her arm, and ‘s only curious’some, anyway, and said’em fine, right, Derringer Casser—Catr…” Realizing she didn’t have much chance of pronouncing the name properly, she somewhat lamely repeated, “Derringer?”

“Um. Yes? She was helping,” she agreed, more firmly.

“I can take that over,” Bailey said. He was pleased that his hands were steady again when he gestured for the glass plates Pin was holding. “You should get some rest.”

Pin clutched them to herself instead, brows drawing down. “Why’s’ee not get’ee the same?”

“I have histories to recite. It’s part of the exchange for her work. You can stay if you like,” he shrugged, tone implying he didn’t care one way or the other. “But it’s all things you’ve heard before. And you’ll still need to be up with the dawn to help Talus Mos.”

“Thank you, for all your help,” Derringer Catherine put in at this point, so Pin’s expression was slightly less sour as she handed the glass plates over to her brother.

Even so, she lingered for a while longer, rather unsatisfied that they seemed to actually just be sticking to business. His recitation of the histories was such a basic primer, she wondered if he was deliberately doing it to bore her. But Derringer seemed to be listening attentively as she worked, asking appropriate questions. It was really quite dull. They worked easily, smoothly together, anticipating one another in their work and moving preemptively to meet the other’s needs. But Pin didn’t see any sign of the wistful looks or longing sighs she felt would have been more appropriate to two secret lovers. Finally, admitting defeat, she rappelled back down to the ground, sparing a last glance at them. Still working together in attentive synchronicity. Derringer’s skirt was bunched up almost scandalously over her knee, nearly bumping into his from time to time as they seemed drawn together, like two flames joining over the breath of oxygen between them.

When she was gone, Derringer set aside the tool she had been borrowing to switch over to just using her glass-molding hands, the work progressing at a much faster pace. Apparently preoccupied, she found the courage to broach the subject, “Sorry. I r-really didn’t plan that. It just kind of… I didn’t know what to say or… And it just seemed easy enough to let her think it was just my arms, and… I’m sorry, anyway, if I scared you, or…”

“It’s better than I could have come up with, on short notice,” he admitted. “And it was probably bound to come up.” There was a long pause. She had just about given up hope that he was actually going to address the real issue when he said, quietly, “It’s not you. Not entirely, anyway. If I really had doubts, I wouldn’t have let you in. I wouldn’t have let you anywhere near her. But…”

His hands were shaking. His lips twisted, holding back something vicious. A kind of fear lurked in the hollow spaces of his face. But when his averted eyes finally returned her gaze, she was the one who had to look away—the way one hides from the intense glare of the sun on a snowbank. She felt, again, a kind of aching emptiness in the heart of her. She found herself wondering if she had ever known someone who had cared for her the way he clearly cared for his family. Someone she must have entirely forgotten, somewhere in these many years. Strange to think even such passion could simply be lost.

When he began, again, to recite the histories, they both seemed only too eager to let the matter drop.

Even with a world of words to channel, the human body can only act as a conduit for so long. Bailey kept up for as long as he could, eventually settling in one place on a ledge to keep talking. Derringer set up a platform to take the glass panels from more swiftly, and she went ranging along the forming walls. The breaks between his stories began to stretch; his words began to soften and slur. Watching her work was hypnotizing. Her fearlessness when she’d slipped the harness and tied her skirts to one side, making new toeholds for herself as needed and smoothing the glass away as she finished. The little artistry she started to add to the panels, making landscapes and figures appear with a brush of her fingers. The steady sureness that entered her posture when she let herself get lost in her work. The distracted way she’d tucked her long hair away. The strength in her legs glimpsed when she would tense and shift from one part of her project to the next. Her body was fire licking the insides of this lantern room.

She could see the sun threatening the horizon when she finally sat back from her work, lest the rest of the family catch her at it. Only when she heard the first birdsong did it occur to her that the room was otherwise quiet. Had been quiet for some time.

At some point Bailey had dozed off. Perched on the ledge, still sitting in the safety harness, his cheek rested against the rope. It would be quite the rude awakening, should he fall. As she climbed up, level with him, she was struck by just how sleep changed him. The worry and caution eased away; his lips, slightly parted, lacking the somewhat mocking smile. Thin bones and gentle lines under threadbare clothing; almost breakable. It was only in motion, with the full force of his will and passions, that he seemed so formidable. Taking a seat beside him on the ledge, her hand hesitated before she tried to gently brush some of the hair off his brow—wild-growing wheat, it resisted the furrows her fingers attempted to make to tame it into line, springing right back. Under what sun did he fully ripen? He stirred at her touch, eyes opening blearily in some quiet confusion for the curious expression on her face.

Oh God. What had she been thinking? Her hand withdrew, swiftly. Apologies already bubbling out of her as she shifted over the ledge.

“Wait—“

The sound was tremendous in the quiet room. She had landed solidly, but steadily, uninjured. Only thrown off-center when Talus Mos poked his head up from the ladder she was approaching. He gained the room and looked around in some alarm.

“What was that? It sounded like a hammer falling!”

“It’s nothing to worry about. Derringer Catherine, wait, I—“ he let out a wordless gasp of discomfort upon moving his legs, the pins and needles spiking through him with a vengeance.

“Did you sleep in the harness?” Talus Mos demanded, disapproving, watching him fumble slack out of his line as he scrambled to get to the ground.

“If I could… if I could j-just get out of your way,” Derringer muttered, actually rather wishing Talus Mos would move aside and let her escape.

But now he was looking around, his face transforming with astonishment. “Eaten Word. What did you do? This is nearly three days’ work you finished. In a night!”

“Oh? I’m? Sure it wasn’t that much?” she tried to brush past, her heart sinking as Bailey made it to the ground.

“Maybe not. If you didn’t do it correctly,” he said, clearly dubious. “If they weren’t properly set—“

“Feel free to check,” Bailey said, still wincing as sensation returned to his legs and he limped over. Talus Mos didn’t go quite so far as to say that he intended to do so, but it was clear from the way he was setting up his own equipment that he was going to look back over her section of the wall.

Even with the way clear, now, she didn’t flee, waiting for Bailey to approach. But her face was rose as the dawn overhead, not daring to look at him. He missed the easy confidence she’d shown the night before; wondered, wildly, if there was some magical combination of things he could say that would restore her to how she had been. He felt at a rare loss for the right words.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, clearly mortified.

“No, you don’t have to—“

“I shouldn’t have—“

“You didn’t—“

Up the ladder, Pin finally made her way. She was still idly chewing on some of the breakfast she’d brought with her and wishing she’d heeded the advice to get to sleep earlier. But as she emerged up the ladder it all seemed rather worth it: Because there they were and she had just known it. There was little mistaking their postures. Her skirts were all tied to the side, exposing one leg almost to the hip. They were both a bit red. The edges of his fingers had found their way to her wrist. The gesture somewhat arresting, but less a demand, more a question. Gentle. Something she could have easily pulled away from, had she wanted to.

He only looked guiltier by immediately pulling away when he saw Pin. “Well. You’re up early. How did you sleep?”

“Better’n’ee, if’n had to guess,” she said, ever-so smug and wise.

He chose to ignore her tone. “I’m going after that egg today. Derringer Catherine,” he said formally, “if you would care to accompany me, we can continue from where we left off yesterday. On the histories,” he added, belatedly.

“Hasn’t’em working all night?” Pin asked, seeing all that had been accomplished and showing a touch of concern. “’S dangerous. If’n you’re caught…”

“No, I… I can go. I’m not tired,” Derringer said, willing to take just about any excuse to get past this awkwardness at this point.

It was only after she’d followed him through a brief trek to the kitchen to grab some breakfast and back outside that she thought to ask: “Um. Sorry. What egg?”

***

Things of that size really didn’t belong in the air.

That was Derringer’s first thought upon spying the enormous bird-creature up the tree. Even from this far away, it was impressive. It was the size of an ambitious sapling itself, nearly four times her own height. With leathery, triangular wings, and a beak large enough to swallow her without use of the sharp, black teeth within. It made strange crooning bugles from time to time that echoed through the trees, its long neck swaying as it made minute adjustments to its nest as it became more agitated, its bugling becoming more frequent.

Behind the house, Bailey had made a stop over to grab some equipment from a shed on the perimeter, including some climbing gear, two large satchels, and a strange kind of horn. The horn was clearly made of some kind of bone, but it was shaped less as a tube, more of a kind of thin, sloping wave. While they had walked along into the forest, he’d blown into it from time to time, reproducing a sound much like the one Derringer was hearing now. On closer examination, she realized now that the “horn” had actually been a bony kind of crest, like a miniature the one she could see on the bird—although how the animal was producing any sound from that, she wasn’t sure.

“There are eggs up there?” she whispered, dubiously, when he’d reached a temporary break in his recitation.

“Oh yes. I’ve been keeping an eye on them,” he assured, matching her low tones.

“It’s winter.”

“Quetzes’s eggs take three years to hatch.”

Well, when you’re the size of a flying behemoth, apparently you can stand to take your time. Still, it seemed rather a shame, given that, and she shifted, uncomfortably. “What’re you going to do with them?”

“I have cousins who train them. They can carry a rider well enough, although they’re a bit expensive in upkeep. They don’t breed in captivity, and you can’t train the adults. So there’s always a dearth. It’ll hopefully sufficiently endear me to them when they arrive next week.” He said the last somewhat dryly. His fingers drummed against his knees, straightened cuffs that needed no straightening, brushed flecks of mud away from his shoes.

“Your sister mentioned you have, um, cousins coming to visit. Is it a big deal?”

“Oh. I’m sure we’ll manage,” he didn’t really answer her, but just then he stiffened, murmuring, “There it goes!”

Sure enough, apparently fed up waiting for an answer that would never come, the bird was shaking its wings out, waddling in place, shifting from side to side. And then it launched from the nest. It was like a boulder, at first, falling from a mountainside in an inevitable battle with gravity—until, miraculously, those enormous wings opened with a percussive sound like a drum being struck, and away it swooped off into the trees.

They wasted no time in scurrying to the tree holding the nest. The borrowed shoes had spikes in the front of them, their hands holding hooks to drive into the bark. She wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do if that great thing came winging back early. She could perhaps act as moral support when it snipped Bailey’s head off. But even such dreary thoughts couldn’t sustain her for long. There was a kind of thrill in it, now, a bubbling mix of fear and excitement in her glass innards that almost felt to sting. The sentiment echoed on Bailey’s face as they scurried up the tree, his teeth flashing in a biting laugh.

His shirt was soaked through with sweat before long, despite the cold in the air. His limbs were quaking as the ground fell away, muscles protesting the unusual activity. She was keeping pace beside him, tireless and cool, as she had been for sunsets of generations—that inner ticking would run longer than the sun. As they neared the nest’s branch, she outpaced him a bit in her eagerness, face alight with expectation. He wondered if she would hunt like this: powerful and lithe, single-minded in her purpose. He was very much tempted to take her. Although before then, he told himself, averting his eyes, he should really probably see about getting her some trousers…

This was certainly a third-year nest. It reeked, that lizard, fetid stench of moulting. The heat was sunk deep into the twigs, so that moving over it felt like stirring live coals from ashes. And so they uncovered the eggs. There were nine in total, each the size of a human torso. One Bailey could tell at a touch had never quickened. But the others were viable, something healthy and living stirring within. Only waiting for their season of life. He looked up to find Derringer’s grin matching his own, the sweet warmth of her expression creating a strange kind of fire in his center. She had a smudge on her cheek from where she’d brushed it against the wet bark. Such careless artistry. Didn’t the Ancients make holy buildings of stained glass?

But then she was looking away, a hand at her chest as though she was trying to contain something, there. Or perhaps as if there was something already constrained. Her brow furrowed as she turned away to sling off her pack and carefully lay the egg she’d collected within while he did the same. They covered the other eggs as best they could with the precious time they had, and then beat a hasty retreat. On their backs, the eggs continued to radiate left-over heat through their delicate shells all the way back to the house, where they finally stored the eggs beside the fire they stirred in Bailey’s room. He had debated keeping them in the main sitting area, or perhaps in the kitchen, but he feared the temptation would prove too much and someone might abscond with them in the night. No, better like this, kept marginally secret, where he could keep an eye on them.

“Do you do that all the time?” Derringer asked behind him.

“No, this was only the second time,” he said, turning back.

He wasn’t sure why he felt quite so shocked to see she’d sat down on his hammock, her little feet not quite touching the floor. Most of the furniture in here was covered in projects he hadn’t bothered to clear away. So naturally it would be the most logical place to sit, enthroned among his heavy quilts. She’d drawn them around her shoulders in what must have been an unconscious gesture, because as he cautiously seated himself beside her, she seemed perplexed by the question: “Are you cold?”

“I don’t think I do that, anymore. Feel cold, I mean.” She toyed with the edge of the blanket, thoughtful, as she pushed it off her shoulders. He found himself staring at the delicate brown hairs along her arms, moving even with such a small generated breeze. “I’m not really… sure what I feel. I know it isn’t like it used to be, but it’s hard to say… how. The blanket is soft. It traps heat. But it’s not… comfortable? No, that’s not it, it doesn’t give comfort. It’s a thing that’s there, it has these properties, but something almost seems to interrupt it before I can properly feel it. Although there were a few times where I almost thought…” As she had spoken, her hand had crept to her chest, over where her heart should be.

She was startled from her reverie when he took her other hand. Glass, his fingers told him, but what did they know, anyway. “And this? What does this feel like?”

“Um. A h-hand?” she said, giggling nervously. Oh she wished he wouldn’t look at her with those big, pale eyes. There was that feeling again, like a creeping vine twining through all her innards, making them seize in her mechanism—was he trying to draw it out of her? “Bony? A bit cold? Distinctly hand-shaped?”

He could call on such a lazy smile. It had been a mistake to look at his mouth. If he breathed into her, would she grow warm and fogged? She was losing her opaqueness, the facsimile of skin. Could this glass reform into new shapes under the press of those fingers?

And no, actually, this wasn’t right. In her chest, there was something seriously wrong—something bound and breaking, something she wasn’t supposed to touch…

She dropped his hand, ducking her head so that her hair swept forward. Waiting until she felt the sensation pass. Grateful for the silence; that he didn’t press. “I don’t think I’m quite ready to feel all that, just yet,” she offered at length.

He shifted slightly, giving her a little more space. It wasn’t easy on a hammock, but at least he was making an effort. Eventually he just stood up, giving them both some much-needed distance. A few breaths passed as he apparently settled something within himself before he said, “Our original arrangement still stands. I have a few other things to take care of, today. But I can come keep you company in the greenhouse again, later?” his tone making it a question. Although he only watched her from the corner of his eye, a very slight smile tugged at his mouth when she avidly nodded agreement. Both of them trying not to feel entirely foolish as he left her there.

***

The days settled into a loose kind of pattern. There was a feverish amount of household work to manage in preparation for both his Sister-Houses’ visit and also for the coming growing season. Contracts made months before were fulfilled as the home filled with laborers, agents, travelers, and craftsmen. There were many rooms that still needed to be aired out, and he had a running checklist in his mind of minor repairs to see to. Bailey was fully preoccupied when the message reached him that there was a man outside. He had so far refused to come in or announce himself, but had asked for an audience.

When his schedule was somewhat clearer, Bailey finally made his way out to check on this mystery person. There were sometimes shy sorts, afraid to leave their Houses’ names until they were sure of the reception. A few had clearly fled without permission, carrying no token to allow them to negotiate a contract, their labor still rightfully owed to their House. Often these were better politely fed and then passed along, rather than potentially incurring their family’s wrath.

But the ones Bailey found outside were known to him. The man who met him at the edge of the clearing surrounding the home was a middling-age Red, his long hair very nearly hidden beneath all the beads braided into it. His face was wrinkled perhaps somewhat prematurely: with care, but also with smiles.

“Warden Reed,” Bailey was greeted, formally, but warmly.

“Solaris.” Leaving aside any family name still felt awkward in his mouth. A sad kind of reminder. But if there was any sting left to it, the older man didn’t show it. “And Marta?”

Solaris gestured back further into the trees, in confirmation. “We’ve come to fulfill our contracts, to see to your records and generator.”

“I recall. You didn’t have to wait out here.”

“You had quite a bit more activity around than usual. We weren’t sure… She wasn’t sure…” His face had balanced to slightly more care than smile for the moment as he glanced back into the trees again, where a very large shadow shuffled a bit closer.

Even hunched nearly double, as she was, she still dwarfed the men. Even since the last time he’d seen her, a year ago, she had grown again. Her limbs and digits each carried an extra joint to them, creating three segments of each. They said in the times of the Ancients, modification was rapidly becoming the norm. But born mods were rare these days, only occasionally cropping up in a family every few decades. Bailey rather suspected quite a few more were born than actually lived to adulthood. Marta, herself, had been unwanted by either parent House, the gossip went. What would have happened to her if Solaris hadn’t cut ties with his House and decided to raise her himself was unknown. But the two of them seemed happy enough: Solaris was an excellent weaver and recordkeeper, while Marta had a way with engines, even as young as she was. And although she was shy and generally awkward, she clearly looked well cared-for. Even now, Solaris’s concern seemed to be solely for her, showing little of the exasperation or sullenness one might expect after being made to wait in the cold for another’s comfort. Perhaps the loss of his family’s name wasn’t such a bitter thing after all.

“Warden Reed,” the girl mumbled, looking as if she would much rather stay hidden behind her tree. “Didn’t’em wanna disturb’ee guests.”

“No one is disturbed. Don’t be ridiculous.”

She was about Pin’s age, he remembered. They used to play together, when they were younger. And just as with Pin, she didn’t seem assured with the kinds of platitudes you might give a child. Her eyes were altogether rather too world-weary as she paused before saying, “If say’ee, Warden Reed. I’ll start now. But if please’ee, the work on’ee jenny will go faster if someone would bring’em meals and a cot down.”

There seemed little point in argument. When he had a moment to speak with Solaris alone, the man had turned fairly solemn as he explained that their last contract had been cancelled after too many workers quit rather than work alongside her. It had been a big project that required many hands, in close proximity, for long days.

She seemed relieved to be left alone in one of the root basements in the Reed home to do minor tune-ups to a generator. Bailey didn’t really have the time to try to fix what was broken in this situation, although it made him feel somewhat sick at heart to think of her cooped up down there. He was somewhat less than subtle in telling Pin she had an old friend who she really mustspend some time with and counted it as a minor victory when he spotted the two of them strolling the grounds in the evenings.

Bailey’s own nights were quite busy. Each day, he waited for the light to fade from the sky with ever-mounting anticipation until he could once again spend his time with the glasswork woman. He thought he had been fairly successful in pushing down any unwanted or unwarranted feeling of disappointment, but that didn’t stop him from reveling in what little time he had with Derringer. Trying to be concise in telling their history, but entertaining as well. Cursing that so much of the past was tragedy and warning; straining his memory for those stories that might bring brief delight or humor, if only because of the way her face would flush and her bright eye would turn to him to share in her joy. He busied himself with patching up some of his sister’s old trousers while he tried to keep his mind on reciting histories. Only to be continuously distracted by some of her questions, which would reveal something of the world she’d left behind. Or by her laughter, her smile, the way she kept losing herself in her work.

It was dangerous. He’d known from the start that it was, with anything the Ancients had touched. But there was another kind of danger. He’d felt stirrings for women before; he wasn’t made of stone. And of course he’d faced rejection. She had said, plainly, she couldn’t reciprocate. And he’d accepted that. Or he thought he had. He kept his distance, he didn’t press, he didn’t ask, and he certainly didn’t touch; they talked, and they kept to their work. So why were these feelings still so volatile? Seeming to rise and fall with the facsimile of breath stirring in her chest?

Maybe it was the closeness of the work. After the second night, she’d already finished with the greenhouse. So she took to roving his halls, learning the layout of the home as he directed her to minor repairs, or simply showed her around. The house was asleep, so to keep up conversation they had to stay close and speak softly. He was thus hyper-aware of her every movement, taking great pains to keep from any accidental touch, any misplaced word, until he felt his chest might burst with suppressed emotion. It was a wonderful kind of agony, at once exhausting and thrilling. It could go nowhere; it was completely unsustainable. But for those few brief nights, he tried to just enjoy it while it lasted.

Bailey sensed trouble when his father tracked him down a few days in. Talus Mos’s stance was tense, his face set, but he waited for Bailey to finish with the matters he was immediately tending to. Not an emergency, then, but still official.

“Warden Reed,” Talus Mos began, the formality in the address immediately concerning Bailey, “I would never cheat you.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Bailey responded automatically, startled.

“And I am not lazy,” Talus Mos went on resolutely. “And yet I… have no excuse. That Violet woman you brought on, of the House of Derringer—I don’t know how she finished that work so quickly, but I’ve checked it over myself. It’s sound. Artistic, even.”

“Oh. That,” Bailey said, relaxing. “You needn’t judge yourself based on her work.”

“But I do,” he insisted. “And I tell you, with the equipment we had, I couldn’t have finished that in twice the time she did, working alone, and at night. I worked as fast and as well as I could, but I have no excuse—“

“You don’t need one,” Bailey said to stop this outpouring, as much for his sake as for his father’s.

Talus Mos had had somewhat weak spirits, ever since Reed Beatrice had passed. The risk of loving only one with such a blind passion. He was prone to melancholy, only slowly pulling himself back from oblivion when he saw how the children of his late lover’s House might still need him. He had done what he could, taking solace in his glassblowing skills as a sign of his continued usefulness and worth. Being outshone like this had therefore shaken him rather more than either of them could have guessed. He looked old. And lost. His shoulders rounded, little care gone into his braids. Bailey had a twinge of fear, realizing his burden had always been greater than he had initially imagined. He had spent so long worrying over Pin, trying to prepare for her future, he’d rarely put much thought into what would become of his father, if their House’s fortunes should fail. Talus Mos was not a young man, anymore, and his own House hadn’t had much to do with him for twenty-odd years.

Bailey couldn’t leave it like this. “She wasn’t… working with the same equipment,” he allowed. “It made the work easier for her.”

“Other equipment? She brought it with her?”

“It’s an heirloom,” Bailey said, to cut off further inquiry. Something from the Ancients, proprietary to her House, and something she would almost certainly be unwilling to share. Bailey told himself it wasn’t exactly a lie; she was something of an artifact, herself.

But this seemed to be enough. Talus Mos let out a breath of relief, setting aside that burden of inadequacy, at least momentarily. He even managed a smile. “Well, in that case. But heirloom or not, she’s certainly skilled. But I suppose you would know that. You’ve been spending a lot of time with her.”

Bailey turned back to the looms he’d been sorting through. “Have I? Oh. Yes, I suppose. She needed a brush-up on her histories.”

“That seemed to have worked out well for the two of you, then,” Talus Mos said, not blind to the deflection. He paused before saying, “I only met her briefly. But Pin seems to like her. She says she has the most peculiar yellow eyes…”

Bailey glanced over at that. “It’s not like with Nee,” he said, quietly. “It’s not the Wilderness. Her eyes are just like that.” Seeing a trace of pity in his father’s face, he had to smile. “I’m not deluding myself. And if you saw for yourself, you wouldn’t mistake it.”

“If you say so.”

Bailey had certainly spent long enough studying her eyes. It was true, they were a golden sort of color rarely seen in nature. When the Wilderness got a hold of you, it created a similar effect, leeching yellow into the eye. But the Wilderness distorted the iris, making it fill nearly all the white of the eye. There was nothing like that with Derringer Catherine, captivating as her eyes were: like bonny little flowers springing out of the snow.

“What?” she asked, the second-time she found him looking into her eyes a bit too long. He saw her fidget with nerves and immediately looked away, cursing himself.

“Nothing. My little sister only accidentally stirred up some trouble when she told Talus Mos about your eyes.”

“What kind of trouble?”

He paused, but she was likely to run into this again. “When the Wilderness claims someone, sometimes their eyes change to look a little like yours. It’s rare, and people mostly only hear of it. Those who have seen it first-hand are unlikely to make that mistake. So it’s not something you need to overly concern yourself over.”

Her hair had been slipping loose again. He fought the urge to brush it away from her face. They’d found another broken window in an out-of-the-way room in a farther corner of the house, and after she repaired it, they’d mostly been sitting in conversation for most of the night on the sill. The globes they’d shaken into life had slowly gone back to sleep. The moonlight on her skin was a scarlet wash. Her eyes had a soft kind of lighting to them, like dim candles behind a screen Still the most luminous points in the room.

“Talus Mos. That’s the older guy who was working in the greenhouse? And he’s your… father?” she asked, still not very clear. At his nod, she asked, “And who’s the other guy, the quiet one? Is that your brother?”

“Lee Parable? No, not exactly. He left Joplin, which is further to the north and has no Houses as we do, so they all take the House name ‘Lee,’ for political purposes. He has known our family for years, though, and he shares a kinship interest with Reed Adelaide, my little sister.” At Derringer’s inquiring glance he elaborated, “She was born of him, and of my older sister, Airadne.”

“So she’s…? Wait, what?”

“Before the Wilderness took her,” Bailey said, thinking this was what had confused her.

“But then she’s not… If she’s Parable’s and Airadne’s daughter, then she’s not your sister.”

“Yes, she is.”

“No, she’s your niece.”

“’Niece’? What’s a niece?”

“It’s—come on,” she said, getting flustered, standing up and starting to pace, “when a sibling has a daughter, that’s… that’s your niece.”

It seemed to be all semantics, to him. They were all children of the same House, raised in the same generation. Who the parent was generally made little difference except perhaps between said parent and child, should they form any kind of bond.

“I fail to see the importance of such a distinction.”

“No, it’s important,” she insisted. “I mean not just in terms of who’s your actual sibling, but also, just… Being an aunt or uncle is… I mean, it’s special! When my niece was born, I—“

She stopped pacing suddenly, her back to him. There was a wretched sound; it might have been her that screamed, or else only something internal starting to yield to pressure. She crumpled forward, a hand at her chest, another covering her mouth. He was on his feet in an instant, all the hairs raised on his neck as he approached, only to halt when she turned half-towards him. Her colors came and went, fading in and out with her labored breaths.

“My niece…” she croaked out. Her face was awful, the grief vivid. Her contorted expression created terrible canyons of the scars on her cheeks. “Oh God, I remember… her. Wh-when she was born, her little hands—the first time I held her, her hands couldn’t even close around my finger. She was—“

She gasped, and the shrill, piercing sound was now clearly coming from her chest, like tortured metal being reshaped. Panicked, Bailey begged her, “Let me help.”

Reluctantly, she straightened somewhat and let him approach, hand still at her breast. “Something is… wrong,” she admitted. “Loose.” She pulled down the front of her shirt a little, her chest wall abruptly becoming transparent.

Bailey was not a healer. He had a fairly rudimentary knowledge of anatomy. Once, as a child, he’d gone with a gaggle of other children with an Orange to see a demonstration in the closest little town, where a healer had preserved a cadaver for the class’s inspection. Looking, now, none of the glass-replicas in motion seemed to bear much resemblance to that long ago corpse. But there was one part, at least, that didn’t seem to be properly moving: at the source of the trouble, there was a still, dark little organ. Opaque where the rest of her was still clear. Something in what looked like a strangle-hold of metal, only feebly struggling in its grip. Three bands surrounded the little organ, with the uppermost metal bent slightly, as though ruptured.

“Your heart,” he whispered. Awe in his voice. “I think it’s an actual heart. It’s bound,” he said, looking up from its little prison to her face.

He hadn’t realized how close he’d actually gotten to her until then. How hard he would have to fight the desire to try to give comfort for the quiet pain he saw there. He knew he would likely only make it worse if he tried.

“Is that what hurts?” she asked, her voice as soft as his. “The binding?”

“The undoing,” he admitted. He should move away. Out of arm’s reach at least, so his treacherous arms wouldn’t so ache to hold her. A fool, he couldn’t bring himself to bring this plan to fruition. “One of the bands is giving way.”

He saw the flicker of fear, and then when she had mastered it. Her voice only shook a little. “Wh-what happens if they come loose entirely?”

He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. A thousand terrible thoughts occurred to him, each more unbearable than the last. Somehow in thinking of all the potential ways she might pass back out of his life, he had never really considered any loss would be entirely permanent. She was a creature of flame, born countless generations ago. If the force of the Ancient’s folly and time hadn’t been enough to destroy her, it seemed unlikely much around here would. And even if he was overreacting, just seeing her in so much pain was sending him into a flurry of unexpected impulses and emotions.

He might have gone on to do something entirely foolish if behind him he hadn’t heard, “Reed Carson?”

Bailey spun around shielding as much of her from view as he could. Irrationally upset at the interruption, heart pounding in fear that someone might have seen her glass form revealed. When he saw it was Lee Parable, he barked out, “What? What is it?” with far less courtesy than he usually showed the Joplin.

There was a long pause. Lee Parable’s face was obscured in the dark. This is it, Bailey thought, feeling like he was in freefall. He should have been more careful. He never should have let it get this far, care this much. He only had himself to blame.

But when Lee Parable spoke, it had nothing to do with either impoliteness or Derringer Catherine.

He said, “Spores.”

The word hung there, drifting about the room. An evil cloud overhead.

Bailey’s legs nearly tripped out from under him as he bolted back for the window, all other thoughts forgotten. As if by looking he could change the narrative. Maybe Lee Parable had been mistaken. A trick of the eye, or a common dust cloud. But he could not long disbelieve his own eyes: the unmistakable miasma of scarlet, leaking from the moon’s bloody grin.

“Where’s it making landfall?” he choked out, holding the sill.

“Two days north,” Lee Parable answered.

Bailey’s hands were shaking, the wood creaking somewhat under his grip. “Spores?” he heard Derringer Catherine ask, tentatively, but his mind was already racing. If they left, now—right now—they might just be in time. The party, all of his careful plans; it was all for nothing, now. But there was no use thinking of that. Lee Parable was waiting for an answer, and there was only one he could really make.

He turned away from the window, saying, “Wake the kitchen staff, first. Tell them we’ll need rations. Then get Pin. Have her rouse the house and get everyone down into the front yard. I’ll be in the armory. Go!”

Bailey could hear the house waking around him, even as he ran, himself, down to the bottom levels. Voices calling, sleepy, panicked, confused, but there was no help for it. He almost didn’t notice Derringer had followed him down until, shaking a globe into life at the armory door to put in the complicated code, the light caught in her wide, glass eyes.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, trembling. There was something in her look—a hollowness, stark as the scars on her face. She may not have remembered the cataclysm that ended the Ancients. Not the specifics of it. But here in the dark with him, hearing the pounding of footsteps overhead in a heart’s stampede, an echo of it still sounded through her.

He busied himself at the door, hands dancing over the tapping sequence that would admit them. It unsealed with a hiss of stale air, the room long unused, but it swung open easily at a touch.

“The moon,” he said, already heading to the far wall where the apparatuses had remained untouched these many years. Trying to remember all the steps he needed to take, as they’d been explained to him. Checking the fuel gauges, straps, extra canisters. They were designed to be worn like packs, the canisters carried on the back, and the wand to spray the fire out like one was watering the earth. Each also came with a protective face-mask, to protect against inhaling either the smoke or the spores.

“Or rather, the forests on the moon. You Ancients did your job too well, there. You meant them to thrive, and they did. But the spores they began to put out, well… I suppose you couldn’t have predicted they could cross that narrow channel back. It took them a while to do that, apparently, but now it’s every 30 to 50 years. It’s early, this time; it’s only been 27.”

The equipment was sound, and he felt a moment’s rush of relief. There was enough here to properly equip a proper House’s size, and spares left over. Of all the things their tithes had to go towards, he was at least grateful that even the lowliest of Houses was always supposed to be well-supplied in this manner.

“Wh-what happens when they get here?” she asked, coming over to help him pick up the packs and stack them outside the door for easier retrieval.

“They grow,” he stated, wryly. “And grow. On anything. In the smallest hint of nutrients. But they weren’t designed for such a rich environment, or so heavy an atmosphere. They sprout and gorge and claw their way up and push out everything in its way until they collapse under their own weight within about a week; rotting, stinking corpses.”

“He said it’ll touch down north of here?”

“It’s too much for any House to handle alone,” he answered. They were now down to just a handful of the packs, each of them picking up as many as they could carry to take directly into the yard. “If we didn’t come together—is everyone ready?” he broke off as Pin trotted in, panting.

She gulped air, nodding. “’S get’em fast’em, ‘n’ cross bett’n ‘cease. ‘S mine?” Pin asked, eagerly, as he passed her a pack.

“You’ll need to keep a sharp eye out. Landfall will come at night. I doubt it will reach here, but—“

“Here?” Pin burst in, face coloring. “No, ‘s come’em with’ee.”

“Hmm. Well. No,” Bailey said, suddenly very busy in re-checking the equipment in his arms. “You’re staying here, to watch after our own lands. I’m going to ask Talus Mos to help you. You’ll need to keep the fire lit in my room, remember to turn the eggs…”

Pin had a few colorful phrases to say on this subject, rather too furious to care that they had a wide-eyed audience. “’S babies half’em age, going!” was the first semi-intelligible thing Derringer was able to pick up. “Any big’em’nough walk’s get’em ready!”

“Yes. Well. And they have others they’ll be leaving at home, to watch their holdings. No one expects us to abandon everything; we each give as much as—“

“Then stay’ee,” Pin said, inspired. “’S’more important, keeping the head of the House, ‘n if’n happen’some’em, ‘s’not as bad—“

“Don’t be absurd,” he said, coolly. And by now Derringer was quite wishing she could just squeak by and leave them to squabble this out, but Pin was still blocking the door.

“Why’s’t absurd’em? Don’t’ee strike the twig ‘n’ kill’ee tree, ‘s the roots burn’ee. So the House. If I’m a twig—“

“You’re not a twig,” he snapped, his voice cracking on the word. Derringer kept her eyes averted, but she couldn’t shut her ears. Oh why couldn’t she have just barreled past the willowy girl. “Pin, I can’t lose any more branches. And it won’t come to that,” he insisted as she started to protest, again. “Please. Stay here. We’ll be back in a few days, and it would be nice if we had a house to come back to and not a pile of splinters. Oh, now,” he said as Pin started crying, the fear finally reaching her past her indignation. He awkwardly shifted the packs he was carrying around to give her a one-armed hug, trying to reassure her that they were prepared, that nothing was going to go wrong. This, at least, finally freed the doorway, as Derringer slipped out, lugging as many of the packs as her arms could carry with the nozzles trailing along and bumping her knees.

The yard outside was a mass of shifting bodies, turned grotesque under the red moonlight. Derringer tried not to shiver as she began passing the packs out, saying that yes, more were coming, and no she didn’t know when they were leaving. Luckily Bailey followed her out shortly and was able to call them to order quickly enough, telling them where more of the packs had been stacked in the hall inside, checking that food had been distributed.

“All contracts can be considered suspended. If you need to renegotiate, this is something we can settle when this is over. Landfall is two days’ walk north of here, and we’ll need to walk through the night.”

“Have the other Houses been reached?” someone asked. “Do they know?”

“We don’t have a tuner,” Bailey admitted, “or any other way to directly reach them.”

“We could send a runner on ahead,” someone else began, doubtfully.

“I’ll go.” It was so dark in the yard, it was safe to say many had not even realized Marta was there on the outskirts of their ring until she had spoken and began to unfold her modified limbs. A few people stifled yelps of surprise as she abruptly loomed overhead. Bailey realized he had never actually seen her at her full height, before; even when standing, there had been a kind of stooped shame to her posture. It was absent, now, as she tossed back her hair and said, “I can be quite swift.”

“Marta,” Solaris cautioned, at once warring with pride and terror, “you can’t go on ahead, alone, not through those woods. I’ll… I’ll come—“

“You’ll slow me down,” she said, not unkindly, but as simple fact. To Bailey, she said, “I’ll get the word out. We’ll be ready.” And on her long, unusual limbs, she strode, disappearing into the forest as fast as a candle blowing out.

There was little else left for them to do but to sort the last of their affairs out and follow after her. Bailey managed to find the time somewhere in the midst of all the tumult and noise to convince Talus Mos to also remain behind, as people broke off either to go back to their homes for more supplies or further instruction, or else prepared to set off north. Frankly it was shocking to Derringer how fast order seem to emerge out of this chaos, and almost before she knew it, they were getting underway.

Bailey glanced back, once, at the tree line, looking back towards home. Spotting a little figure perched up on top of the house as a lookout. She was wearing the flamethrower pack and waving back madly in defiance of her own fear. Stained by the moonlight as they were, her tears almost looked like blood.

***

They moved under torchlight, their shadows writhing across the trees, over the frozen ground in a ring. They bunched together, closer than they might usually walk even with a neighbor. There was no sense in trying to be quiet; their presence was known, their actions closely watched by unseen eyes. Through the darkness outside of the fire’s reach, they could hear things rustling in furtive fits or deliberate treads. A knocking sounded through the trees several times, the noise tracking them. And so they hummed and sang, making a kind of net around them, as if the thin weave of light and sound could offer protection.

And maybe it did. They grew accustomed to being watched, and nothing came out of that dark to confront them. Many of them knew this path north, by daylight, and tried to take solace in spotting landmarks to track their progress and bolster their spirits.

There came a point in the night, however, when they all drew to an abrupt halt. There had been a movement through the trees. Not the wind, but a kind of sigh nonetheless. It swept over them, through them, an oppressive weight. It hit some harder than others. Some seemed not to notice it at all beyond the basic animal sense in the herd, seeing others be affected and halting to wait for them. A few merely shivered. Others stood blinking in confusion. And some were driven from their feet entirely. There was an alien sort of curiosity in the invasion, but whether it garnered their purpose was difficult to say. It passed on again, leaving them to gather themselves, wipe sudden tears from their eyes, and—for a few—to be quietly ill in the bushes. None of them wanted to discuss it, but by hasty agreement a break was called for.

Derringer had been one of those who had merely seen the effects, ducking under Bailey’s arm to hold him up as his knees buckled under him. He seemed somewhat dazed in the aftermath, staring off into the trees as though listening for something Derringer could not hear. By slow degrees his eye returned to tracking the flickering dance of the fire, and then to his companions, and finally to Derringer where she sat beside him under his arm.

“The Wilderness,” he managed on his second attempt, his throat creaking and wooden.

She opened her folded fingers to show him the stones collected there. A wry smile pulling at one corner of her mouth and stretching the scar on that cheek. “So they told me. And I told them it hasn’t got me, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. I’m forming a nice little collection,” she jangled them together before letting them fall out of her palm back onto the ground. “You don’t really throw rocks at them, after they’re taken?”

He shook his head. He was going to tell her it was only superstition. A stone given kindly, now, to remind them—when their minds turned—not to come seeking wrath by stealing livestock or crops. But he was still feeling too vague, a kind of restlessness in his own skin that failed to form the thoughts to words. He knew it was dangerous, leaving himself open like this, seeking after that seductive call at the edges of his hearing. With an effort he dragged himself back to the light and warmth of their company and was surprised to find Derringer still so near to him. Closer, even, having pulled the corner of his open jacket around herself. Giving a kind of embarrassed grimace as he shifted to slip that arm from the sleeve and drew it instead around her waist.

“They kept asking if I was cold,” she mumbled, toying with the frayed edge of the kerchief still tied on her bare foot, over the written words.

“Is this all right?”

She nodded, almost seeming to test herself—or her resolve, or how much she actually felt—as the rigidity melted away by slow degrees, tucking her chin down and settling against him. With her head so close to his chest, he only hoped she couldn’t hear how his heart was pounding, couldn’t feel how his arm around her trembled. His gaze traveling over the waves of her cascading hair as it puddled around them. He wished she would look up so that he could drown in the liquid flame of her eyes, but was terrified to move and spoil it all. All thought of the Wilderness’s dark mysteries driven from his mind. Oh if he could only extend the night, halt the murderous turn of the moon’s ill-begotten spawn and stay like this for a little bit longer.

“When this is over,” she began, her voice small.

But the group was stirring, gathering together again. She flinched back away from him, standing before he had even regained his wits. The absence of the warmth along his side felt a punishing brand as they set off again.

With the dawn, they were heartened to see signs of others having recently passed through here. When they passed near the House of Rush, they were actually greeted by agents of the House who offered refreshment and told them Marta had been through hours earlier. This lightened their steps a bit as they continued on, and before noon their path had joined with a larger and somewhat slower group that had formed from a number of lesser Houses. Many of these, too, had good tidings of having been awoken and warned in plenty of time to start out, while a few others were lucky to have simply spotted the coming spores for themselves. There was a feeling of buoyant comradery in the meeting, less festive than martial, and enough to make them all momentarily forget their sore feet and sleepless night. It likely would not have been sustainable for the full journey, but they were fortunate to have an herbalist in the group they had joined. In one of their brief halts, a fire was set and a cauldron yielded a vast amount of a stimulant the herbalist called the Traveler’s Spirit. It was a thick, green liquid with chunks in it that made it difficult to force down the gullet. It also smelled of wet grass and had an unpleasant turpentine aftertaste.

The long stretch of the road ahead seemed to melt away after that. Bailey could little recall what had happened between his first sip and dusk of the following day, when they found themselves nearing the encampment gathered to meet the spores. It was less that there was a blank spot in his memory so much as it felt that nothing that had happened had been important enough to remember, all the many steps blurring together into a haze of travel. With the effects wearing off, however, his body remembered the trip perfectly well. His feet ached and his legs shook with fatigue. There was an acrid burning in the back of his throat, and his stomach was painfully empty. Without the Traveler’s Spirit, he wasn’t confident they all could have kept up the pace to get as far as they had, so quickly. But it was not an experience he intended to repeat, if given the opportunity.

There was little time to dwell on it, however. Here, the hive of activity quickly swept over their group as people had food shoved on them and were then assigned to tasks and sections to cover. Overhead, the first groups to arrive had already been hard at work in the upper canopies of the trees, shaving off many of the higher branches and erecting platforms so people could fire at the spores overhead without catching the whole forest aflame. Others on the ground level were seeding competitive fast-growing mosses and fungi to make the earth even marginally less accessible to the descending spores. A group of Joplins who had made their way south into the empire were passing out chemicals that could be poured on anywhere they still managed to take root.

Somehow, Bailey finally found himself on one of the upper platforms, less than an hour from the expected landfall. Dotted out as far as his eye could reach were flickers of flame where others waited in preparation. His eye was mesmerized by the sheer numbers of people he could see still mobilizing below—more people than he had ever seen gathered together in one place. The wind set the platform to swaying, the chillness finding its way through his clothing. His nerves jangled unpleasantly, even his weariness being displaced as he glanced over to where Derringer waited with him on the other side of the platform. Lee Parable was initially going to join them, but had ultimately decided he was more comfortable sticking to the chemical route on the ground, rather than deal with the machinery. He could dimly see Derringer fiddling with her pack, now, frowning at the wand apparatus.

”Do you know how to use it?” he asked, and she startled.

“Oh, are you back? I mean, communicative?” She picked up her gear and moved closer, looking somewhat relieved. “Sorry, it’s just… It was so creepy. After you guys took that green stuff, it was like I was suddenly walking with a bunch of zombies. You were all silent, and you just walked straight through without a break for anything.”

Her description did nothing to relieve his stress, and he took out his pipe to distract himself. “That must have been exceedingly dull,” he said, dryly, to cover how his hands shook somewhat.

The red cloud overhead was fast descending, occasionally blotting out the moon entirely, so that Derringer seemed to flicker in and out of sight. “I tried talking to you a few times,” she admitted. “But it was like you were looking right through me.”

The colored smoke from his pipe drifted lazily on the wind. They were lucky it was such a clear, calm night. He knew he should feel grateful the spores hadn’t fallen during a storm or where heavier winds could have blown the spores across half the whole northern lands. But mostly he just felt sick, even the smoke doing little to cut the cold steel wire of tension in him.

“There’s something… I tried to say before. Maybe it can wait,” Derringer said, looking away. And whatever it was, he was suddenly certainly he didn’t want to hear it. However, his heart had only begun to lift when she continued with, “But it probably shouldn’t. It… has to be said. When this is over…”

“Derringer—“ he tried to forestall her words, perhaps with an inkling of where it was leading, even if he didn’t yet want to admit it to himself.

“When this is all over,” she said, firmly, turning to look at him again, “I need to leave. I’ll walk back with you, but then I need to go on. To that little town. Or further south. Maybe to Osla. I don’t know. But I have to go.”

Even in the dark, the crystal reflection of her eyes was a sun-glow. He felt scorched under her gaze. Like a weed drying up and crackling in the summer heat. Right in the heart of him was a sense of brittleness and withering. “I’m sorry,” he said, leadenly. “I… You told me not to, but I pushed you too far—“

“You didn’t. I pushed myself, maybe. But that’s not… You said there were bindings,” she said, putting a hand to her chest. “That they were weakening, bending. I can feel them breaking. I don’t know what will happen to me if the bindings break. But I can’t imagine I’ll survive the aftermath for long.

“While we were walking, I… tested myself a little. Trying to put pressure on just where I can still feel it hurt. It’s like a sore tooth, I just can’t keep my tongue from prodding it. And I… I need to leave. Now. Before the leaving is what finally breaks me altogether.”

His throat worked. He almost said, “Then don’t leave at all.” But it was a senseless and selfish request. Her bindings might hold for another year, or a decade. They might last the rest of his lifespan. And if she waited that long, how much worse would it be when he was finally the one forced to leave her, slipping away into death. It was delusional to think she would stay so long, anyway, a light contained in his tiny lantern, when she had all the rest of the world to set ablaze. Stupid to imagine she would waste even years with him when she could barely stand his touch as it was. And he was a fool twice-over for not having learned his father’s lesson: never to wholly give oneself to just one person.

Before the moonlight was covered again, she watched him swallow down his objections. It almost made it worse, seeing such terrible understanding in her expression. He looked away before the light could return, and it was almost with relief he heard the first shouts of warning from the other platforms.

The spores had arrived.

The sky was awash with red. The descending units, individually, were delicate, spindly things no bigger than a woman’s littlest finger. Along one end of them were wiry protrusions like tiny legs, the bottom section being more of a rod with a bulbous point on the top that contained the actual spores. It was this conversely delicate design that protected them from reaching too great a speed on entering the atmosphere. With the air resistance dragging at it, the weaker parts of it would sheer off, little by little, as terminal velocity was eventually reached just as the ground came rearing up and, on impact, the spores could be released more easily. Their form, luckily, meant that they tended to move rather closely together, caught up in one another’s protrusions. It limited the amount of space that needed to be protected against their invasion. Unfortunately, this also meant that when they did descend, it was en masse, like a hail of arrows already bloodied.

Flames sprouted up to meet the onslaught. The defenders waved their wands overhead, their protective masks in place, aiming at their targets as best they could. Small grenades, tossed overhead, took out still more. The light illuminated their targets, and it was gratifying to see how they sizzled and fell. But the onslaught was unyielding. For every fifty they singed, there were a thousand more directly behind, and still falling. Bailey almost felt he merely waved a torch at the dark, and that the great mass of red gnats swayed out of his path and back again. Below, the ground workers were kept just as busy, scouring the earth in wide swaths, only to go back to the ground they just tread and begin again. Children scurried along between the trees or jumped from platform to platform, bringing extra fuel or chemicals or shovels. At one point a little fellow who looked to be only a handful of summers old tried to carry two of the heavy canisters himself. He misjudged his leap between the platforms and there was a horrifying shriek he barely managed to gasp just before he hit the forest floor.

There were other accidents. The spores had not fallen in their area of the world for some time, and very few had much experience dealing with flames or anything like combat. More than a few people suffered burns, and others lost their heads entirely. Bailey remembered hearing one woman shrieking that the spores were in her eyes. She’d ripped the protective mask from her face and plunged her own nails into her eyes. The last intelligible thing she’d said was that they were burrowing into her, and then only dissolved into broken screams. Her partner on the platform had been forced to quit her own efforts in order to try to get the mask back on the inconsolable woman before the spores really did find their way into the nutrient-rich bloody chasms she’d left in her face. But Bailey had his own battles to fight, and could watch no longer. At some point they must have sent someone else to collect her, because when he looked again, she was gone.

They tried to work in shifts, as best they could, so there was always someone with a full canister while the other switched out. As the night dragged on, however, Bailey began to flag. His hands were clumsy, numb, each burst of flame a smear on his eyes—red and black and white, swirling together into a long nightmare. And then there came a point: there was barely a shout of warning before one of the grenades, thrown too carelessly, exploded directly overhead.

Bailey didn’t remember the blast, exactly. He found himself flat on his back, precariously close to the platform’s edge. Her ears were ringing, eyes almost too painful to open. One leg was dangling into darkness while the other was crumpled uncomfortably beneath him. His protective mask had been blown clean off, and the smoke was nearly unbearable, so thick he almost felt it lodged in his throat. He felt a warm, inhumanly smooth hand on his brow, and his streaming eyes opened to find Derringer kneeling over him. She was saying something, but he couldn’t hear her over the ringing in his ears, the roar of fire, the panicked screams. Over her shoulder, he could see the sky was still filled with spores. Their wretched journey nearly at its end. Greedy for the rich soil beckoning below.

Her fingers found his cheek, and his eyes were dragged back to hers. Her other hand clutched the front of her clothing, over her chest, in a fierce, agonizing kind of grip. And amidst all of this, perhaps it was strange that his first clear thought was to worry what this was doing to the bindings over her heart. If his ears were properly working, would he hear that awful creak of bending metals again?

“I’m all right,” he tried to say, but when he attempted to sit up, she put a hand to his shoulder, firmly propelling him back down. But perhaps this was the push she needed. There was a steady kind of fire burning in her eyes, now, a look of purpose settling over her features as she set aside her own equipment and stood, looking up into the sky.

Her hands were moving together. Almost as one might roll a ball of clay. Palm to palm, they slid, smoothly gliding together, faster and faster, until between her fingers he began to see sparks. They moved between her hands until there was too much for her to directly contain, there. Little spits of lightning began to crawl over the fine bones of her wrist and creep over her fingers until they seemed bathed in the light. Only then did her hands start to move apart, the electricity sizzling as it leapt from one hand to the next, finger to finger, and back again, building louder and brighter all the while until it held steady: arcs of lightning held between her hands, growing thicker and more powerful the farther she spread her arms. Until at the last she made a motion as if hurling it into the air.

It was as if she’d called a thunderbolt directly from the night sky. The white-hot energy burst through the swarm of spores all the way into the stratosphere, burning everything in its path. Bailey, whose eyes were still only recovering from the grenade, thought he might actually have been blinded. He rolled to his side, still coughing wretchedly. And he must have fallen unconscious at some point, because the next he knew it was daylight that was weakly making its way through his eyelashes. He was lying in a canvas hammock, and he could hear the groans of the wounded around him. His lungs still burned, but at his first movement, water was pressed to his lips to at least satisfy the worst of it. When finally he could properly open his eyes, he found Lee Parable and Derringer Catherine hovering over him.

“Take it easy,” Derringer quickly cautioned when he immediately tried to get up.

“The spores?” he choked.

“It’s pretty well sorted,” she assured. At his somewhat frantic look, she said, almost too casually, “We ran into some luck at the end, there. I guess all that atmospheric disturbance was good for something: some heat lightning took out a lot of it all at once.”

Lee Parable was frowning, but he didn’t directly refute her, instead saying, “I saw the sky lit up white through the branches.”

“So you didn’t miss much, and a lot of people left already. Lee Parable says he’s going to stick around for a few more days to help try to kill any we might have missed. Oh, and someone stopped by? He was kind of tall, blond? I think he said he was, oh, Word in Rust?”

“Warden Rush,” Lee Parable provided, which made quite a bit more sense.

“And he wants to talk to you—oh not right now,” she protested when he started to get up again, looking like she might just bodily pin him to that hammock if he kept up in this ridiculous manner. “When you’re feeling well enough!”

“I’m all right,” he said, trying to wave her off and feeling primarily uncomfortable they were making such a fuss over him.

“No, you’re—Bailey, stop, just wait for the healer,” she finally snapped. And perhaps she merely took it for docility, that he abruptly lay perfectly still, his face turned a rather bright shade of red as he tried very hard not to look at anything at all. Although how she could be so oblivious to how perfectly embarrassed her companions were, he wasn’t sure. Lee Parable was reduced to hand-speech, giving abrupt apologies for why he had to leave, right now, immediately, and be elsewhere. Bailey wished he could do the same. Of course, it wasn’t like she had intended to publicly address him in quite so intimate a manner, he had to remind himself. She likely had only picked it up from hearing his family address him, and hadn’t realized the significance of it. And right now, he was far too mortified to even broach the subject with her.

At the very least, it kept him lying still long enough wait for one of the healers to take the time to come check him out. The healer was a rather frazzled-looking older lady who checked his ears and eyes and listened to his chest, frowning when she heard he’d had smoke exposure.

“I don’t like the sound of your breathing,” she said, frankly, “but you otherwise seem well enough to travel. If the cough keeps up for another few days, see someone.” And then she was off, seeing to someone with a burn covering half of his exposed skin.

Bailey’s legs felt rubbery, and he moved stiffly at first, grateful for Derringer’s arm. But by the time he saw Warden Rush still organizing a few of the ground units, his stride was fairly sure again, even walking alone. He had only time to feel freshly embarrassed for his poor state of dress before his uncle spotted him, giving an approving nod.

“You organized things quickly,” Warden Rush said, after the initial pleasantries were over. “It’s one thing to plan at one’s leisure, but doing things right under a time constraint is another thing entirely. That modified girl, the Houseless Red—I’ve spoken with five Houses who said she was their first news the spores were even falling.” He considered Bailey a moment longer before saying, “Don’t concern yourself too much, setting up another meeting with all of our Sister-Houses. We’ll all expect a delay. But when it does happen, you have my support.”

“Y—I… Thank’ee,” Bailey managed, nearly swaying on his feet at the unexpected rush of relief he experienced, only for Warden Rush to laugh and clap him on the shoulder.

“We’ll take it from here. You should get back.”

There did seem to be little enough for Bailey to do, there, and those with bigger stakes in the land or with more resources seemed to have it fairly well-covered. The walk back would certainly be a more leisurely one, following a trickle of people heading back south either to hunt the ground for any missed spores or simply to go home. Bailey might have felt glad to have the walk back to spend as much time as he liked with Derringer Catherine, if it weren’t for the fact he knew this journey was the last he would see of her. He wished he could somehow contrive to drag the trip out a bit longer. But it wasn’t wholly contrivance that resulted in somewhat frequent stops as his breath was stolen away and his coughing worsened.

Still, he didn’t think very much of it until he coughed up the first drops of blood.

In his palm, the droplets glared crimson against the pale linen of his kerchief. He had touched his nose, at first, to find that, no, this could not be blamed on a nosebleed. He thought, then, perhaps it had been only the force of his coughing. The ache in his chest had not abated, as they had walked, and now—mere hours from home—the sensation in his chest had gradually built to a stabbing pain. As the pain had worsened, so, too, had his cough. But maybe it was only the smoke damage.

He could not long lie to himself. The hand he held to his chest could feel the frantic beat of his heart, but it rested near a darker secret: an unspooling of deadly tendrils where it had nestled in his lungs. The blood in his hand blurred with bitter tears, his legs becoming shaky beneath him. It was only fear of further indignity that kept him from fainting entirely, as with a force of will he closed his hand around the soiled cloth and made his shoulders straighten. He had retreated some few steps to get some privacy while the latest coughing passed, and now he forced a look of unconcern on his face as he put the offending object in his pocket and rejoined Derringer.

“Are you all right?

If he told her, he might well undo all the effort that was going to be put into sending her away in the first place. There was nothing that could be done, and it would be selfish and cowardly just to put this burden on her so that he wouldn’t have to carry it alone. Better to smile, now and let her make a clean break of it.

“Of course,” he reassured.

She hesitated, seeing how he had picked up the pace rather significantly, before she ventured, “We could rest a bit longer, if you need to?”

“There is no need.”

She bit her lip, accepting this as something of a rebuke, no matter how airily he spoke it. Perhaps she had misread the situation, and it was only his injury that had kept him dawdling before, rather than any kind of reluctance for the journey’s end. Maybe she had been projecting, all this while.

As much as she had tried to soften it, leaving would still be enormously difficult. That night they fought the spores, after she had called out some of the deepest energies she could feel percolating within her—there had been that dreadful moment when she had turned back and found him lying so very still, with his limbs still all at awkward angles from where he had been so carelessly flung. He didn’t answer to her call, her touch, and the little flutter of a pulse in the delicate curve of his neck had seemed such a fragile, thready thing. She hadn’t intended to feel anything, then, but it hadn’t stopped the terrible wrenching ripping its way inside of her as she gathered him up to take down to the healers. Later, given some time alone, she had allowed her skin to become translucent and taken a cautious survey of the damage. There was now only a single band still in place over the trembling heart, the strain visible even on brief review. If she was smart, she would avoid any further stress she could possibly manage until, perhaps, she could find some way to fix what had already been done.

As they neared the house, she wondered if she wasn’t entirely a fool that she hadn’t broken off from his path, already. There was nothing she had left at the house that she could not replace, and listening to the wretched hacking of that painful cough wasn’t doing either of them any favors. But she kept by him, anyway, increasingly concerned, the paler he became. A few times he had to stop and lean against a tree and cough into his kerchiefs. But he waved aside assistance, managing a smile, and not slackening their pace in the slightest.

As they entered, at last, into the courtyard around the house, he at least allowed his shoulders to sag in relief. The home was quite intact, even if the ground were a bit scuffed-up, still, from when they had had their impromptu gathering. There were a few chickens hissing warnings at them, flashing tiny black teeth in a challenge, but Pin shooed them away as she came at a gallop towards them, giving a brilliant smile she didn’t bother to his behind her hand.

Before Pin could reach them, Bailey said in undertones, “I’ll be sorry to see you go, but it’s perhaps better done sooner than later.”

“I… Yes, you’re right. I should probably…”

But then Pin was upon them, nearly sweeping Bailey off his feet in her enthusiasm. “Oh, slow’d’ee, had neighbors pour’em through all day, and get’ee lead feet ‘n’ all!” she said, but rather too excitable for her scolding to have any weight. But this turned rather to concern as he abruptly bent, coughing heavily into the kerchief he fumbled from his pocket. “Are’ee hurt?”

“Just… smoke,” he gasped, eyes streaming a bit as he was wracked with another cough. “Derringer,” he said when he could speak, the word almost a plea, for she hadn’t made any move to leave.

At Pin’s curious look, Derringer shuffled her feet, guiltily, starting to step towards the house. “I… I have to go.”

“Now?” Pin asked, blankly. “It’ll be sundown in a few hours, get’ee fresh start if’n—“

“No, she has to—“ Bailey started, grabbing Pin’s shoulder in his desperation, but then he could feel it coming on again. And he knew, within the first few coughs, that this time was different. When the blood came, it wasn’t the small droplets he’d managed to conceal so far, but a flood of red spilling past his lips onto the churned earth.

His sister shrieked, now holding him up as he shook and shook, giving weak gasps as he drowned in the torrent. Pin was sobbing, terrified, and when he finally got the breath to whisper something to her, she shook her head violently.

“What’s going on?” Derringer asked, hovering, uncertain. “Let me help, I can help get him to the house, we can get a healer—“

“This doesn’t concern you,” Bailey snapped at her, the viciousness of his tone making her stumble back. “Go. Now.”

She watched Pin help him make his limping way to the house. Neither of them looked back. Pin was trembling nearly as much as he was. When they got to the door, they were met by a number of people who had returned to fulfil their contracts and come, curious at the noise in the yard. Pin didn’t answer their questions, but instead simply requested they help him up the stairs to somewhere comfortable.

To Pin fell the unhappy task of the arrangements. Talus Mos had to be told, of course. Although she kept trying to sort that duty to the bottom of her list, she went to him first. It was as terrible as she had anticipated, but she didn’t have time for his grief. There was the wood to gather, and the spice to collect. Bailey would have told her her to skip most of the ceremony, but he wasn’t consulted, and it was with an obstinate air she put all of her efforts into making all the proper arrangements. Trying to push away the heartsick by falling into the work.

When it finally came time, she looked desperately for tasks unfinished; for any way to delay the inevitable. But there was nothing left to do but the final step.

He’d changed out of his bloody clothes, and he was at least strong enough to walk to the pyre under his own power. He would not—could not—be buried in the family crypt, as their mother had been. Not with the spore aching to burst its way out of where it had nestled in his chest, borne there on the wind when his mask had been knocked loose. But she was determined that he would still have a proper send-off.

It was a House affair, and they were given their space to manage it privately. Talus Mos would have been permitted to attend, but neither of them had really expected him to; he wasn’t really strong enough to endure it. The house was shuttered and dark as the two of them made their way to the little clearing as the sun dipped low over the horizon. All the earth was dark, even if the sky held traces of light.

The wood they had gathered was stacked high enough that he had to hoist himself up, to sit on top. It was not the most comfortable place, perhaps, but he didn’t expect to be there long. He felt curiously detached, once sitting there, taking out his belt knife. Almost unable to believe it. Just a few days ago, there had seemed to be so much promise still left.

“Warden Rush pledged to back us,” he said. “They don’t expect to be called soon, but you should… use this. Call it a funeral feast. People get… sentimental on such occasions.”

He stifled a cough, determined to have his say. There had been no more hemorrhaging since that first scare, and he would not have his last words lost to another.

“Lee Parable can manage most of the planting supervision this year alone, if he has to. We settled what seeds we’d need, and where. But pay attention, and rotate them next year.”

He was pushing it, talking this much, and he couldn’t restrain the cough that tore through him, then.

“Don’t waste the spice on me,” he said when he could. “And remember to take the ring, after I…”

Pin was trying to keep her crying quiet, and he couldn’t bear to look at her as he positioned the knife at his chest. It wobbled in his grip. And he was afraid that, at the last, he wouldn’t be able to do it. But the alternative was to ask Pin to do it, and that could not be tolerated.

And he might have found the courage, then, if he hadn’t looked up to see her approaching through the trees. With her long, long hair floating along in her wake, coming from the gloom, her step slow and sure and her wide eyes alight, she almost seemed an apparition. He opened his mouth, intending to beg her to leave, but he didn’t have the will to ask it of her, again. Instead he was silent as she approached, curiously expectant, though he knew not of what.

Preoccupied as she was, Pin didn’t notice Derringer had arrived until she was standing on the other side of the pyre. There was something frightening in her expression: distorted not by pity nor sadness, but a with avid ferocity as she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me, about the spore?” And when he could give no response, she began climbing up on the bundled sticks and snatched the knife from his nerveless fingers, letting it drop. She pressed, “You would have let me leave without telling me?” Seizing his shirt-front, pulling herself up entirely, he could see the swirling, living light in her eyes as she hissed into his face, “You were just going to die, without saying anything?”

She was too near. Her powerful limbs were almost a cage around him, the heat in them a sweet balm to the wretched shivers he’d been repressing. They were both nearly breathless, and of their own volition his hands had come up to seize her upper arms, fingers partly buried in the molten flow of her hair. Oh if he had to die, would this be such a terribly bad way to go? But—

“Dear, your heart,” he said, weakly.

“Damn my heart,” she growled, closing that last distance.

It was, perhaps, less a kiss than a calculated attack. Her mouth found his, but then so did the flame. It drank on his inhalation, trailing down into his lungs, until it touched the coiling tendril of the sprouting spore, and that burning agony was worse than anything the spore had yet inflicted on him. His fingers spasmed, ineffectually, but there was no breath left in him to scream, no strength to resist. She had gone entirely translucent, focused as she was, and the light in her was nearly too bright to look at. She blazed, little more than fire in a woman-shaped casing, as she held him, burning out the last of the contagion and cauterizing its many wounds.

His first breath of the cool night air was almost unbearably sweet. It rushed to his head so that he swayed, still held up by Derringer’s arms.. But then she let go. She was stepping down and back, away from the pyre. Her hands held at her chest in a staying motion. He could hear Pin, sounding utterly bewildered, shouting questions. She’d ran around and collected his knife, holding it at Derringer in a terrified but determined manner, but Derringer wasn’t even looking at her.

“Wait,” he said, trying to get his feet under him. But she had fled, and Pin had latched onto his arm.

“What was’em?” she demanded. “Are’ee hurt? It was wearing her face—“

“I’m not hurt, she burned it out of me. Let go.” And then, knowing that wasn’t nearly good enough: “Please, I have to go, I’ll explain when I get back.”

There were no footprints to follow, as he had that first day. But there were occasional little signs of her passing: the bent undergrowth, broken twigs, scorched earth, and the smell of lightning. And really, there was only one landmark nearby that she would recognize.

He burst onto the ruins to find her standing at the ledge, her back to him. The light had fled, and it was only under the stars he picked out her form. When she turned, her hands were still clasped at her chest, but her expression was clear.

“It’s breaking,” she said, plainly. “And… I knew it would. I had to get here, before… But I think I’ve figured it out, now. It’s all right.” She took a small step backward.

“Stop! What are you doing?”

“I’ve figured it out,” she repeated. “This… this glass skin. It isn’t me. Even if I lived in it for another thousand years, it was never me.” She took another step back, her heel at the rock ledge. Not even she could survive that drop.

“Don’t. Please, don’t. We’ll fix it. We’ll put the bands right. Please.”

“Shh, Bailey,” she said, giving a tremulous smile. “I know you’re frightened. And I’m sorry. But… it’ll be all right.”

The wind tugged at her, her hair arching out over the ledge. She took a step. And then she was gone.

Concluded-->

#glassworks #sumflowers #ahod #drabble #au

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