by Luke Donegan
How quickly they heal, he thought. In this very room, there was such horror. Such rage.
He looked around the dining room of Ocean-Hearth. Children at the tables. Empty plates and glasses half-filled before them. The debris of a bountiful lunch.
The ceiling gleamed with new materials. Wooden beams spanned the ceiling supporting the roof above. The Builder and his wards had enclosed the ceiling with smooth, white plaster. Moldings decorated the ceiling between the beams showing animals that had once populated the world – bears, elephants, kangaroos, wolves, images of a harmonious Nature. The children, already forgetting the horror of what had befallen here had gathered around the big man to point and ask the names of each animal.
The Teacher closed his eyes. Roaring! Tearing! Ripping! If only his mind could be rebuilt, and the memories plastered over.
“Teacher?” asked Grace. “Is the story of the Pellpenar a prophecy? A prediction of the future?”
Erys opened his eyes. He pondered the question carefully. “Yes, I believe it is,” he answered. “Tarc is a real place. It is a great continent thousands of miles to the south. And animists do live there. Saskareth of the emu people told me that his people have, on occasion, met with the penguin people of Tarc. Like the emu people, the penguin people used to live amongst humans, thousands of years ago, before Loss and Decline. And like the emu people, their community has survived.”
“But do you think they will come here?” asked Grace.
Erys nodded slowly. “Yes, I do. They will know, as we do, that Passage has ended, and that the world has begun to heal. They will want to meet us. And perhaps there will be ways we can help each other, to build a new kind of world. A world untarnished by the mistakes of the past. We can only do that by getting together, by talking and by helping each other.”
“Hearth-Mother,” a child called out, holding her hand in the air. “Can I ask a question?”
“Of course, Jayda,” said Hearth-Mother.
“Teacher,” the girl asked excitedly. “Will the emu people come back too?”
Erys paused. The emu people. They had suffered too much on that last day, and sacrificed more than their human companions. When all others had hidden, they had defended the Museum and the Nature Dome, and the animals.
What a price! What a terrible price they had paid. Erys shut his eyes, wanting to erase the tragedy.
The surviving emu people had returned to the desert. Erys prayed that one day they would forgive his people for what they had endured.
Sian sat beside him. Her eyes were on him, but he could not return her gaze. He feared he would begin to weep. Through the knot in his throat he answered: “Yes, I think so. I hope so, Jayda. But there is much healing to be done before they return.” He swallowed hard. “But one of them is still with us. Saskareth! He chose to stay.”
“Is he your friend?” asked a boy.
“Yes. He is my good friend.”
“Ooh ooh,” cried Jayda, waving her hand in the air. “Teacher! Teacher! Were you and Jay friends as well?”
Tears welled in his eyes.
“That is enough,” interjected the Hearth-Mother. “The Teacher and the Curator have given us more time than I am sure they can spare. Together children, say ‘thank you Teacher’.”
The children as one body rose to their feet and bowed. “Thank you Teacher,” they chorused.
“You are welcome,” said the Teacher.
“Now, time for afternoon rest,” said the Hearth-Mother.
Through cries of protest Rhada and Grace organised the children back to their rooms. As Jayda passed Erys she said: “When I grow up I want to be a Teacher like you and Jay. I want to be the Teacher at the Museum. Do you think I could?”
“Yes,” said Erys. “I think you will make a fine Teacher.”
Erys and Sian waited silently for Rhada to return. Sian smoothed Erys’ long, dark hair. She smiled as she looked at his face. He had been returned to her. And the scars that had marked his face were now gone, wiped clean by his transformation into the Spirit. He had come back cleansed and new.
“That was a nice story,” she said.
“Yes, well. It is the least I can do.”
“It is good for the children. It gives them hope.”
“Yes,” he said. “And it is not a foolish hope. I believe they will come, one day. And I believe the emu people will return. When enough time has passed.”
She traced a line above his ear. “How much you’ve changed,” she whispered.
He looked at her with fearful eyes. “In a good way?”
For when he looked at himself, in the dead of night, in the quiet, he did not know.
“Yes,” she assured him.
Rhada sat with the Teacher and the Curator on the verandah overlooking the courtyard. She tried to picture the events that had taken place there. Already they were becoming vaporous, hazy memories.
“Who else is to be on this council?” she asked.
“The Triumvirate from the Museum - myself, Jaime, the History Curator, and Masodi, the Science Curator. Erys, of course.” She turned to Erys with a smile. “And then others from the city. The Administrator, the Scion-Judge, the Scion-Supervisor.”
“Can they be trusted?” asked Rhada.
“Yes. I think so. Like us, they did not know the truth about their masters. They want to make amends for their ignorance.”
“And the army?” hesitated Rhada. “The Barracks? Will there be ...”
“No,” said Sian firmly. “The army has been dismantled. And there will not be another.”
Erys stood and walked across the courtyard. The girls watched him leave. Rhada was unaware of his role on the last day. She had not seen his eyes, as he had crouched in the courtyard, baring his teeth, flames between his jaws. But she knew that in some way he was more damaged than most. His eyes were haunted and lost. Only when he had been telling the story of the Pellpenar had he seemed anything like the confident Scion-Teacher she had known.
What she had lost, he had lost also. Although the scars on his face were gone, something inside him was broken.
Rhada and the Curator of Nature talked more about the new council. The Curator spoke at length of the good Rhada could contribute. Of their need for her. But Rhada looked at the hearth around her. She thought about the children pretending to sleep in their beds, the daily rituals of waking, feeding, working, teaching and caring. She knew she would not join the Council. The business of rebuilding a society, of government – that was beyond her. All she craved was a simple life, of hard work and the children. The business of rebuilding could be left to others.
“I will think about it,” she said, as they stood on the front steps of the hearth. Although she knew that they knew she would not join them.
“Okay,” said Sian, nodding and smiling. “Thank you, Hearth-Mother.”
Rhada stepped forward and hugged the Curator.
“Please, call me Rhada,” said the girl with muffled voice.
The Curator struggled with her emotions as she said: “Rhada. Thank you for sheltering me when I was in need.”
The girls parted and Rhada turned to the Teacher. The young man tried to avoid her eyes. She waited patiently until his blue eyes lifted up to hers.
“Teacher, please thank the Builder again for me, and Felicity and the children, for rebuilding Ocean-Hearth. I am forever in his debt. I do not know how to repay him.”
“I will,” said Erys. He paused, then said: “The Builder is designing a statue to stand in the Central Square. It will be tall, and made of bronze, so no-one can forget.”
Rhada smiled. Jay would be uncomfortable with the idea of a statue in his likeness, she thought. But it is for them. Not for Jay.
“He saved us, you know,” said Erys. His words were breathless. As if he had run a hundred miles. As if they were the truest words he had ever spoken.
“He saved us all. He should never be forgotten.”
“I know,” whispered Rhada.
<
br /> But he will be, one day, in the folds of time. In the far future, when the events of these days are like dust on an old, old book. The pages long unturned, and the stories inside long untold.
Sian and Erys walked along the beach, north towards the Museum. It was mid afternoon, but already the day was cooler. Clouds rolled in across the ocean. Clouds! They had seen the first clouds two months after the last day. Tall, white, billowing clouds, gliding across the sky on high winds. Like spirits on the wind. They skated in across the ocean, bearing the promise of moisture, and of new life.
Signs of Nature struggling to its feet were all around them, although some were so small, so tentative only the Curator of Nature could sense them. Like a faint scent on the air, Sian could feel seasons shunting back into their natural rhythms. The cooling of the air as the sun slipped to the north. The taste of moisture on her tongue, although it was yet to rain. The smells of blossom and pollen, riding in from the hills.
Other signs were bold, like the populations of the smallest life forms. Swarms of insects filled the air. Sand midges, mosquitoes, flies - little gray clouds billowed across the sand. She could hear the background buzz of their collective flight. And she could not help but smile.
Butterflies zigzagged in erratic lines over the sand dunes. She took Erys’ hand and led him to the nearest dune. Native creepers and grasses were spreading over the sand. She bent and looked close.
“See here,” she said. “Grasshoppers, feeding off the leaves.”
The little creatures jumped away as Sian and Erys explored. Turning over some thick blades of grass Sian uncovered the small cocoons of some unidentified invertebrates.
Xia, she thought. I wish you were here to experience this. You would have been so happy.
“The surviving bird species will now have plenty of food,” she told Erys. “Their populations will increase.”
“When will you start to introduce species from the Nature Dome?”
“Soon, but slowly,” she said. “It needs to be managed carefully. The smallest ones first. Small lizards, skinks. Frogs. Then small mammals and birds. And then slowly we will introduce the larger predators, but only when these populations have stabilised. It will take a long time."
“Are you certain about this?” asked Erys. “Shouldn’t we perhaps just let Nature take its course?”
Sian disagreed. “I have faith in Xia and Gregor, and in their original plan. These species did not become extinct by natural means. Passage did this to them. We have just been keeping them safe, until the time came to return them to the world.”
You are so uncertain now, she thought. So tentative.
“So few of the animals in the Nature Dome survived the last day,” she finished. “It is the least we can do.”
They returned to the beach and continued along the hard, wet sand. Waves washed in and out, water rushing up over their feet and dragging back, tugging them gently towards the sea.
It will take a long time, thought Sian. But the world is ready for it. One by one we will give them back.
She felt life growing around her, and the life that was a part of her, deep inside. She knew it was wrong to feel joy at this time, when so much had been lost, and when so many had suffered. And yet she felt like a lone flower, in a field of gray dust, opening its petals, revealing its colour to the world. As she placed her hands on her belly, the thought brought a smile to her glowing face.
She looked at Erys beside her.
If only I could get you to talk, she thought. So we could share this wonderful moment of blooming life.
But Erys would not talk about the last day. She did not know what happened to him, how he came back or how he survived. All she knew was that somehow, he and Jay had brought Passage to an end. They had restored harmony and balance to the fragile world.
Clara was agitated. Before her sat a capsule salvaged from the Ark beneath the Museum. Within the capsule were three large, speckled eggs. Why weren’t they hatching? she thought. Why is it taking so long?
This is not the same as in Nature, Sian had explained. Our conditions are contrived. We do not know how long it may take. Be patient.
Be patient. But time was not endless. She saw Saskareth every day and could tell he was diminishing. Guilt and loss were eating him away. She did not know how much longer he would last.
Saskareth, along with fourteen of the emu people, had survived the last day. Passage, which had been burning at his chest, Passage that normally once begun was self-fueling, had faded and finally ceased. But most of his brothers and sisters had perished.
Clara remembered - this group of men and women in emu form, feathers bristling in anguish, eyes bulging and beaks clacking, as they dug themselves free of the damaged Nature Dome. They decided to return home. To the desert!
“Gob, gob, gob!” they cried. “Saskareth! Brother! Return with us! There is nothing here but death!”
But Saskareth chose not to join them.
I cannot go back, he had told the Builder.
They stood on the beach, red faces glazed with the flames of the cremation pyre. It had taken three days to carry the bodies of the dead, both human and animist, from the rubble to the beach. Xia and Paris came last, and were placed at the top of the pyre, side by side.
Clara stood with the Builder, gripping the fabric of his tunic between her fingers, watching the flames curl up amongst the bodies of the dead. She watched the two Curators as they transformed into smoke and ash, their bodies mixing together and roaring into the sky.
I cannot go back, said the animist. I am filled with shame. I cannot face my people.
Red light shimmered on Saskareth’s face as it pitched like a sinking boat between human and animal forms.
He had watched his companions die around him. And as the surviving emu people departed the city, he did not speak a word. During the months that followed this muteness became like an ascendant’s mask, perfect, still and impervious.
Clara observed him day by day, and she knew they were losing him. He was thin. He was not eating. And when in animal form, which was rarer these days, his feathers hung lank and colourless from his head.
Clara looked up from her workbench and cleared her thoughts. She was based in the Nature Dome now. She wanted to be with the animals, always. With the help of Erys and the Builder and the Curators, she had carried the furniture and materials of the taxidermist laboratory into the dome. They set up her new laboratory, which she shared with the Curator of Nature, at the bottom of the grassy hill, near the trees. The stream flowed past her, and she slept on its pebbly shore, wrapped in a blanket each night.
Working with Sian, and with the daily help of Masodi and the silent Saskareth, she slowly brought life to the animals. It had taken a month to glean what animals had survived. Many had perished in the fighting, and more had erupted with Passage. But in the end they rescued half of what the dome had contained. Kangaroos, lions, polar bears, deer – soon the Earth would feel their hoof and paw beats once again.
While Clara worked in the Nature Dome, the other survivors worked on salvaging what little remained of the Museum. The Science Dome had been completely destroyed by the collapse of the tower. The foyer and the ground-floor passages were lost. But much of the workshops and the lower levels of the tower had survived, as had the Nature and History Domes.
The employees had fared better. Most had taken refuge in the tunnels beneath the Museum.
And the Scion-Doctor, now the Doctor, had survived. Clara saw him now, entering the Nature Dome, up on the hillside, with the Scion-Attendant. They walked down the hill to Clara’s makeshift laboratory, and smiled as they approached.
“Taxidermist,” said the Doctor with his soft voice. “I am here to see the Teacher and Saskareth. Have you seen them?"
“The Teacher is with the Curator of Nature today. They went to Ocean-Hearth to visit the Hearth-Mother. But Saskareth is here.” She pointed across the dome towards the desert section. “You will find him tending
the reptiles.”
“Thank you,” said the Doctor, bowing. “I will join him.”
The young man walked away, leaving the Scion-Attendant and Clara together.
“Taxidermist,” said Ismet. “I have no work this afternoon. I was wondering ... could I help you with the animals.”
Clara studied the girl. Her large eyes betrayed a great need to be of use. She knew the attendants were at a loss. For the Museum was no longer a museum. People from the city no longer came, not after what they had seen. The Museum had a different function now. More akin to a nature reserve, a release point, for life into the world.
She studied the eyes of the little girl, and saw her own shyness reflected.
Clara checked the eggs one last time then closed the hatch carefully.
“Come with me,” she said, leading Ismet from the laboratory. They forded the nearby stream by leaping across a series of stepping-stones.
“Each of the animals is kept alive by a canister of nutrients that are pumped through its blood stream. I will show you how to check each system ...”
A few hours later Clara left Ismet in the polar region and returned to her laboratory. For the hundredth time since she and the Curator had removed them from their host, Clara checked the eggs. What she saw made her want to cry with joy. She clenched her hands together in excitement. When she had composed herself she slowly lifted the lid from the capsule.
Inside, the three eggs gently shuddered with movement. Cracks had appeared in each egg. On one egg a large fragment of broken shell clung stubbornly in place. A small beak pushed through the crack and disappeared again inside.
With gloved hands Clara carefully lifted the fragment of shell and pulled it free. She placed it to the side and looked at the egg. A small, feathered head cautiously wobbled up. Its feathers were slick with egg fluids and pasted to its head. Its large bulbous eyes looked up at Clara, unable to focus. Its little black beak opened as the chick emitted its first chirp.
Clara’s heart melted. For this moment alone, all their work in the ark and the Nature Dome had been worth it.
